Jack
Saturday, June 5, 10:58 a.m.
My brother lives near Chinatown, sort of up a straight line and over a few blocks from here. It’s about a nineteen-minute walk and close to the same by car with current traffic, so we opt to hoof it.
Hallie leaves her bag at the terminal again, but I bring my backpack with me because I have no idea what’s about to unfold and where it might lead me.
We head down Folsom to Fremont, turn left on Battery and right on Bush until we reach Grant Street and the famous green-tiled Dragon Gate arch that leads to Chinatown, guarded on either side by giant stone lions. With every step, my nerves ramp up.
As we walk, I try to imagine for a minute that Hallie and I are here just being tourists too. Two friends exploring the city, shopping and eating and talking and laughing like life is completely normal.
It’s amazing how different the neighborhood becomes as soon as we pass under the archway. The buildings are all three to four stories high with shops on the ground floor and apartments above. They are painted different colors, and many are run down. All the signs are written in Chinese and English. Red lanterns dangle overhead, strung from rooftop to rooftop. Souvenir shops overflow with Buddhas, trinkets, and I Heart San Francisco merch.
The air smells like incense and something else—garlic and ginger maybe?—from the gazillion Chinese restaurants competing up and down every neighboring street. Interspersed between the numerous fresh fish and produce markets are bakeries, tea shops, and foot massage parlors. It’s as if we are on a bustling street in Hong Kong, not miles from redwoods and the Golden Gate Bridge. The building numbers start to climb as we head north in search of Alex’s last known address.
“You okay?” Hallie asks.
“Yeah, why?”
“You have this look on your face…”
“I’m fine. Just a little nervous.” I’m reassuring myself as much as I’m telling her. “How are you doing? About Owen?”
“I’m okay. Thanks for checking.”
“Of course.” I look at the number on the nearest building. We’re getting super close. Just a little farther down. “Thanks for coming with me. It means a lot.”
“Anytime.” She smiles and gives my hand a light squeeze. Unfortunately, it’s the hand with the tattoo, so it’s less comforting than it might have been otherwise, but the gesture grounds me.
And then we find it. It’s an unassuming, faded-green three-story apartment building that has seen better days, above a psychic reader storefront. It is flanked on either side by Top Ming’s Beauty Salon on the right and Hop Sing Trading Company to the left. I scan the names at the buzzers, but everything is written in Chinese, because of course it is.
“How do I know which one is his? If it even is his?” I ask. I highly consider pressing them all. That seems to work in movies; someone is bound to be trusting enough to let me in.
I ask three different people passing by if they can translate the buzzers for me, and not one of them speaks English. Finally, a woman passes by who understands my request and rambles off a bunch of Chinese names, none of which sound like Freeman.
“If he lives here, there has to be someone who knows who he is or at least be able to tell us where we can find him,” Hallie reasons.
The thought occurs to both of us at the same moment. We look up in unison at the dirty, purple wooden sign with gold lettering of the business on the ground floor of Alex’s building. A large crystal ball and stars painted underneath the Chinese words with an English translation that reads LING PO, PSYCHIC, ALL ANSWERS REVEALED.
“All the answers? That’s a tall order. She must be good,” I say.
“It’s worth a shot.”
I imagine there are subspecialties in psychic arts like there are in medicine. Like, you can specialize in talking to the dead versus telling the future or palmistry or tarot or reading tea leaves. I don’t doubt there are real ones, but there are more charlatans who say ambiguous statements that have a high likelihood of being applicable to any situation or person. Stuff like: “I see an elderly gentleman—a fatherly figure—and he seems to be standing on the grass” and the next minute the person is connecting the dots and believing it’s Grandpa from beyond the grave because he used to love golf.
The minute I see Ling Po, I know she’s the real deal. She looks like Edna from The Incredibles with a short, jet-black bob and ginormous glasses that magnify her eyeballs to twice their size. All the better to see the future with. She’s probably somewhere in her late fifties or early sixties. She’s sitting at a table inside an otherwise empty room like she’s been waiting for us to arrive, puffing on a cigarette that she jabs out as we enter.
The walls are painted red, and a thick, crimson-colored velvet curtain hangs floor to ceiling from a rod behind her like a backdrop. White Christmas lights rim the ceiling. There is a painting on one wall of a hand with an eye at the center of the palm, and on the other a giant yin-yang symbol surrounded by dragons. It feels authentic except for Adele playing faintly in the background.
“Come in, come in,” she says, and fans us toward her with her hands. She lights a stick of incense and turns off the music. “I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
“Hi. Actually, I was looking for someone and was wondering if you might know of him? I think he lives upstairs, so maybe you’ve seen him?”
She blinks her eyes. “Do you have a picture?”
I don’t. Not a recent one. And as far as I can tell, Alex isn’t on social media. I honestly have no idea how much he might have changed physically in nearly two years. “He looks a lot like me, just taller and fuller. Blue eyes. And his hair is longer. Not long-long, but like shaggy long. But then again it might not be now. I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“Hard to find a person if you don’t know what he looks like.” She smiles and reveals a gold tooth.
“Right. I think maybe he lives here in this building—or at least he used to. This is the last address I have for him, so I thought you might have noticed him.”
She narrows her eyes. “You a cop?”
I laugh. “No, I am definitely not a cop.” Amateur detective, crime fighter, and dog kidnapper, yes, but cop—no.
“You want a reading or not? I’m busy. Lots of customers.”
I look around. The place is dead empty, every pun intended. Unless she’s seeing spirits. Maybe I’m underestimating her.
She lights another cigarette and exhales her drag in my direction. I fan it away and explain, “I’m just trying to locate my brother.”
She remains tight-lipped, staring at me as if I haven’t spoken. After a moment she eyes my pocket where my wallet is and then looks back at me. I get it. This conversation is over until I fund it.
“Never mind—we’re sorry to have taken up your time,” Hallie apologizes and tugs at my sleeve.
“Hold on a second,” I tell her and then fish out my wallet and lay a twenty-dollar bill on the table in front of Ling Po. “You’re a psychic, right? You should be able to tell me where he is.”
“Reading thirty-five,” she says firmly, and I extract another twenty.
“Do you have change?”
“No change,” she says as she pockets it. Alrighty then. She comes to life like a pinball machine after a token has been inserted and motions to the two chairs in front of her. “Sit, sit.”
I look at Hallie, and she raises her eyebrows and smiles as she takes a seat. I follow suit.
“Give me your dominant hand,” she instructs and reaches for it. She studies my palm and then runs her fingers lightly over it, tracing the lines.
“I see you on a journey. You come from afar. You’re looking for something.”
So far, I’m not impressed, but then again, I’ve probably only gotten fifty cents worth of my reading. But then she says, “Your heart line is chained. Indicates emotional trauma. You’ve suffered great emotional loss, depression. Someone close to you, yes?”
It’s the sort of thing she has fifty-fifty odds of getting right because who doesn’t have some loss or depression at some point. “Yes.”
She smiles. “This person takes care of you in this life. An adviser of some sort. A man of great importance and influence, not only to you but to many.”
“My father. He died recently.” A lump forms in my throat.
A knowing grin spreads across her face as she nods. “Yes, I sense male energy surrounding you. Helping you on your journey. Even in death you look to this person, want to feel his approval.”
I get a chill down my spine. She could simply be reading the cues from my body language and responses to draw conclusions, but when she adds, “He gives it to you,” it’s as if I can suddenly sense him here in the room. It’s exactly what I need to hear and what I never fully felt from him. Tears fall from my eyes, and I quickly wipe them away with my free hand and apologize.
Ling Po moves her finger to the line below it that curves down across my palm at an angle. “Your head line shows you are a highly creative individual. Crosses in the line show a crucial decision ahead that affects your fate. Fork in the road. You must choose.”
Okay, that’s a little uncanny. I unconsciously shift closer in my seat, trying to decipher how she can extract that meaning from a simple palmar flexion crease. “Is there any indication which road I should take?”
“Each road is the right one. Different outcome. Both have challenges to overcome. Everything in life is an opportunity to learn. Learning is not just in school. Trust your intuition.”
So that’s super helpful.
Her finger moves again across my palm and then rubs back and forth against another line. “I see you have had your heart broken many times. You hold on to people long after they have served their purpose, and this causes you pain. Purpose is not always what it seems. The universe works in mysterious ways. It is all part of necessary life lessons. Sometimes someone is there for a short time, sometimes a long time. No matter. All the same. All necessary.” She points to two small lines on the side of my hand just beneath my pinkie finger. “Only when you let go, love will come. Happiness will come.”
I think I saw that last part once in a fortune cookie. Or maybe it was in my mom’s book.
When I think about it, everyone I’ve ever been close to has broken my heart at some point. I suppose I’ve come to expect it. Perhaps what Hallie said earlier is true—not every person is meant to stay there forever.
She traces a faint line down the center of my right palm. “This is your fate line. See how it breaks? This means external forces heavily influence your life. You find escape in your imagination.”
She puts my hand down and smiles and doesn’t say another word. She’s like a toy that’s run out of batteries. That’s when I realize she’s done and still hasn’t told me anything about where I might find Alex.
“Wow—that’s pretty amazing that you can tell all that from my hand,” I say and shift in my seat. “So…is there anything there more specifically about my brother? Because I was thinking when you offered the reading that maybe you had some information about him.”
“Please—he’s come a long way, and it’s urgent he finds him,” Hallie interjects impatiently.
Just as I’m thinking it’s possible Ling Po is waiting for me to re-feed her meter before giving me the information I’m looking for, there is the sound of a door opening and the red curtains that rim the room part. A young Asian woman who looks to be in her early to midtwenties enters, holding a tray with a small, clay teapot and a single cup. She looks out of place, dressed in a cropped Pogues T-shirt and a pair of denim shorts, her jet-black hair swept up into a long ponytail.
She nods to us and averts her eyes as she puts the tray down to the side of Ling Po on the table. Ling Po speaks to her in Chinese, and the young woman glances at me and straightens, then responds to her. They go back and forth for a minute, and then ultimately the young woman trains her eyes on me. She gestures gently with her head in the direction of the door from which she came.
“Follow me,” she says.