She kept her head up and her eyes on him. “If you wanted me to wear a nurse’s uniform or a French maid costume or a skirt with no panties or something, I’d do it. So I think you should wear a gun for me.”
“Then so do I.” He went out to his car, got the gun from the outer pocket of his suitcase, and put it in the inner pocket of his black summer-weight sport coat. Carrie seemed to be a woman who never lost an argument.
She came out and got into the driver’s seat of her white car, and he got in beside her. He flashed the inside of his coat.
“There. Was that so hard to do?”
“Not so far. So where are we going?”
She backed out of the driveway, closed the garage door with the remote control, and headed down the hill. “I called some friends, and the word is that the Emerald Cloud Dragon is
“Your friends really know how to research a place. My friends would say ‘Stay away from the egg roll.’”
“This isn’t the kind of place where you stay away from things. It’s the equivalent of a two-star place in France. Maybe even three.”
“Am I dressed okay?”
“Have you got lots of other choices?”
“At the moment, no. I packed in kind of a hurry.”
“Then we’re just right.”
It was a long drive on the freeway from the Valley to Monterey Park. The freeway traffic moved in surges, pushing forward at seventy or seventy-five for a few minutes and then slowing to a complete stop. Carrie drove with the feral alertness of a Los Angeles native. She was quick to make a lane change to get around a slow-moving truck, but if she was trapped for a time, she waited without any outward sign of her impatience.
The trip was a pleasant change for Jeff, because he had almost forgotten what it was like not to be the driver. He got to study buildings and streets that he had only seen in flashes as he drove past at high speed. And he got to look at Carrie while she drove.
Unexpectedly, he thought about Lila. He had made a foolish mistake. This morning, when he was trying to keep her fooled about him, he had shown her the canvas bag of money that he had stolen last night. He had even made a point of spelling out the Bank of America name printed on the bag. In his attempt to persuade her, he had momentarily forgotten that the three men he had robbed worked at the strip club where she worked. The only reason he had known enough to steal the night’s receipts the first time was because Lila had worked at the club and he had seen her boss with a similar canvas money bag. Lila was not, by nature, a suspicious person, but she wasn’t stupid either, and right now she was hurt and angry. She was probably thinking about him a lot today, finding fault with everything he had ever said or done. Could she fail to notice that the bag that had been stolen and the bag that he’d shown her were both from the Bank of America?
“Why are you so quiet?”
“I was wondering why things happen the way they do. You know, unexpectedly.”
“I think I know part of it.”
“Really?”
“Character is destiny, but not the way people think. Were you wondering how I turned up?”
“Yes. That’s exactly it.” He had noticed that she was one of those women who thought they knew what other people were thinking. She was almost always wrong, but letting her think she was right was a good way to control her mood.
“I saw you in the diner and thought you were cute. I was bored, so I came back to meet you. The reason I stayed was that you’re the one I’m going to tell my grandchildren about.” She shook her head. “No, maybe just one of them, my favorite granddaughter.”
“Tell her what?”
“Everything, pretty much. That when I was still young and pretty, one of the things I did was have a passionate affair with an armed robber.”
“You’re going to tell her that’s a great idea?”
She looked at him and smiled. “It depends. I don’t know how this is going to work out yet.”
Carrie parked her car on a side street, away from the shops and restaurants, and they walked to the Emerald Cloud Dragon. As they approached, Jeff could see through the big windows that the dining room was very large. He counted twenty-eight tables, all a blond wood that matched the floors, then stopped because he thought he must have counted a few twice. Carrie seemed to know exactly where she wanted to sit and pointed it out to the host.
When they were seated, Jeff said, “Sure you’ve never been here before?”
“No. But everyone I asked said this is the place.”
“For what? What are we looking for?”
“Perfection,” she said. “A perfect experience changes your life.”
The waiter seated them and left them with menus.
Three waiters gave them tea and water and drinks from the bar while one stood sentinel over them to answer questions about the menu. When the proper interval had passed, Carrie held out her hand to the waiter and gave him a piece of paper with Chinese characters on it. He read it, bowed formally, and said, “Excellent!” before he left.
Jeff looked at her. “You know I’m going to ask.”
“Of course. I asked too. I was told it means ‘the Emerald Cloud Dragon’s best dinner,’ but not in those words.”
“Who is your source for all this?”
“A friend of mine named Jenny Wang. Her parents are Chinese, and they take her to Monterey Park a lot.”
The dinner was a spectacular succession of delicacies on little plates served with great care. To Jeff, it began to seem tragic that he could only eat so many pieces of wrapped meat or seasoned shellfish in one evening.
He and Carrie each tasted every dish set before them, trying a tidbit and then finding they couldn’t resist another, then another. After two hours and forty-five minutes in the Emerald Cloud Dragon, Jeff paid the check in cash, and the two walked out into the night.
It was late and the street was quiet, and Jeff felt a sensation he remembered from summers when he was a teenager in Indiana. Other kids had rules about going home at some particular hour, so Jeff had often found himself out as the numbers dwindled and he was finally alone on a dark street. He had always stayed until the last one left, because for him, being with people meant being out.
He was the only child, and his mother was the only parent, and neither of them was good at the role. His mother had been seventeen when he was born, and the forty-year-old truck driver from Alabama who had talked her into naming their baby Jefferson Davis had quit making his Indiana layovers in her town after about a year.
When Jeff was ten, his mother was twenty-seven and pretty. She dated the way avid outdoorsmen hunted. She took small game from the local area five or six nights a week throughout the year, and then occasionally went on month-long safaris in places far from Indiana. Jeff would be alone while she was in some warm place where rich older men spent their winters, and then again during the spring, when college students and people who could pass for that age partied. Her movements during the summer were unpredictable and varied. He would wake up late in the morning sometimes and find her bed still made and a message on the answering machine that she’d recorded for her male friends, not for him.
Whatever money she left for his use, he spent buying the best clothes for himself and small presents for the mothers of his friends, who invited him to family dinners. On holidays, if he received a gift from any of his mother’s relatives, shamefaced because they had never done much to help her, he would exchange it for something that would make him look better.
As he and his mother grew up and got to know each other, they liked each other less and less. They argued loudly until he was about thirteen, and then avoided talking much during the rare times when they had to be together. Summer nights were freedom, a time for going out and staying out as long as the companionship and
