Rule #22: No matter how bored you are in a situation, it could always be more boring sitting in the dress department of a clothing store.
Over the next two days, we got Corinne moved into an apartment in a building one over from where Langston and I were living. A friend of Langston, one he had high hopes of eventually making more than just that, had an empty bedroom. Her name was Bao Yu. Around non-Chinese, she went by Jade. Which I kind of liked because unlike most Americanized versions of Chinese names that seemed to be picked completely at random for no reason except to sound as awkward or dated as possible, “jade” in Mandarin is yu. So it sort of made sense. Bao Yu—“Precious Jade”—was waitressing at the Eastern Palace.
The move didn’t take long. Corinne’s only possession seemed to be the bag that had been sitting at her feet when I met her. After I hauled it up to Bao Yu’s apartment, I took Corinne to the Eastern Palace. I introduced her and pointedly explained to Mr. Leong and his wife that she was just a friend and not a girlfriend, and they immediately began referring to her as my girlfriend. Mr. Leong asked if she had any experience waiting tables. She did, she told them. She’d worked summers in a Chinese seafood restaurant in the International District in Seattle.
“What were you doing in Seattle?” I asked her.
“Growing up,” she said. “I was born there.”
“Wow,” I said. “You’re quite the woman of mystery.”
“You bring girlfriend in here, you two be all time making love talk, making flirt talk,” Mr. Leong said, interrupting us. “You not be working. You be wasting time. My time.”
“You still have family there?” I asked.
She shook her head. “My parents died four years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Car wreck,” she said. Which was thoughtful. Not thoughtful that her parents died in a car crash. But thoughtful to tell me what it was. Sometimes somebody will reveal something, like “I’m going to die soon,” and then not say anything else, and you wonder if you’re supposed to pursue the conversation or if you’re just supposed to say, “Okay,” and let it go. It would have been gruesome and maybe too pushy for me to ask how her parents died. I appreciated her telling me. I also noted that she didn’t break up or become emotional about it. She just gave me the information. Which meant she had come to terms with it. Or maybe she didn’t want to show any of her feelings about it to me. I found myself hoping it was the former.
“I no have time pay for people to stand around making love talk,” Mr. Leong said. “You want job making flirt talk, you go somewhere else.”
We promised we would not utter so much as a syllable of love talk between us. Or flirt talk. I’m not sure if that assurance was what sold him. Still, he told Corinne to show up the next day to work lunch. We left the restaurant and walked out into the bright sun. It was chilly.
“You know when Mr. Leong said ‘You got good dress, nice dress’?” Corinne asked me as we were walking down the alley to get back to the car.
“Yes,” I said. “Mr. Leong’s English is only slightly more successful than his comb-over, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Well,” she said, “me no got good dress.”
“No nice dress, either?” I asked.
“No nice dress.”
“We go mall,” I said. “You get good dress, get nice dress.”
We then had to call a moratorium on speaking Leong-style pidgin because we couldn’t stop laughing and I was trying to drive. While Corinne tried on some dresses at the mall, I sat outside the dressing room and, looking at the mannequins, tried to remember if I’d ever seen a real female with a neck anywhere near as long as these. I thought about Tucker’s Rule #22: No matter how bored you are in a situation, it could always be more boring sitting in the dress department of a clothing store. I had made that one up as a child, when I’d had to go shopping with my mother. I’d always figured no matter how bored I was, I could be thankful I wasn’t sitting in a women’s apparel department. And now there I was. And I reflected that I had been right. Corinne came out of the dressing room and showed me the first one, a sleeveless black dress. It looked nice on her. Which is like saying it’s cold in New Hampshire in the winter. It looked really nice.
“Jeez,” I said. “You’re a girl.”
“That sounds suspiciously close to flirt talk,” Corinne said. She turned away from me a second too late to hide her flushing face.
Ms. Masterson called me later that afternoon. I’d dropped Corinne and her new dresses at her apartment building. I went back to my own apartment and was thinking about dinner when Ms. Masterson called to ask how things were going. I told her. About Corinne’s new job. And about going to the mall for dress shopping. I did not tell her how nice Corinne had looked in the dress. I didn’t think full disclosure was necessary.
“Can I ask you something, a favor completely unrelated?” Ms. Masterson asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“How would you feel about me coming by the restaurant during your slack times,” she said, “and you giving me some cooking lessons?”
“FBI not paying enough?” I asked her. “You need to take a second job making shrimp fried rice?”
“I want to impress my boyfriend,” she said. “He thinks I’m a lousy cook.”
“Is he right?”
“Completely,” she said. “Embarrassingly. Which would normally be okay. But he’s kind of an amateur gourmet. If you can teach me some basics—like, say, that cucumber recipe you fed me the other day—I might be able to change his opinion.”
We made plans for her to come in during the lull between lunch and dinner. I told Corinne about it the next afternoon when she was coming in to work the dinner shift.
“She’s kind of driven, isn’t she?” Corinne said. “She must have checked you out pretty thoroughly to know your ancestors came over on the Mayflower.”
“You mean that crack she made about me being the only Chinese chef who isn’t Chinese?” When she nodded, I answered, “First, there are lots of non-Chinese who can cook Chinese food, obviously.”
“Just none as good as you are,” she said.
“Also obvious.”
“Or at least think you are.”
“And second,” I said, “My ancestors didn’t come over on the Mayflower.”
“They probably waited until the butler and the maids could go over first and get the house in order, right?”
“I come from a modest past,” I said.
“Modesty must have worn off some time back,” Corinne said.
I let that slide. “She is an interesting person. She’s also worried about us.”
“Why do you say that?” Corinne asked.
“She probably does have a gourmet boyfriend,” I said. “And she does want to learn to cook some Chinese food. But if she’s here at the restaurant learning to cook, that’s also a reason for her to be around the restaurant where we’re both working, to keep an eye on us in case there’s any trouble.”
Corinne pursed her lips. She had her hair pulled back and up into a loose bun. It made her look older. I saw Mr. and Mrs. Hsiang coming through the door. They’d already called ahead to plan a menu for a party of ten they’d invited.
“Then, too,” I said, “you heard her theory on us. She might just want to hang around to see if we do have all the makings of a love story.”
“Do we?” Corinne asked.
Before I had a chance to reply, she’d turned away to go greet the Hsiangs as they were seated. Which was just as well. Because I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to answer that.