The next day, I walked the footpost, but avoided the toy store. I was scared I’d run into Moy in the street, but it didn’t happen, and I went home as soon as I could.
Between beers, I caught the American evening news and saw that Kissinger wanted to normalize relations with Hanoi. It was March 26, but it felt like an April Fools joke.
“Why the fuck were we there!” I screamed at the TV because Paul wasn’t there to hear me. I suddenly felt a rotten taste in my mouth that I had to get out. I went to the bathroom.
Paul had bought a tube of Chinese herbal toothpaste because we’d run out of Crest. I squeezed it onto my toothbrush and shoved it into my mouth. It tasted like they’d counted sugar as an herb. I looked at my face in the mirror and pulled one eyebrow up with my free hand.
“Are you a postman, now, Mr. Chow?” I asked out loud, spraying toothpaste foam around. I tilted my head and spat onto a plastic robot soaking in the sink.
I stuck my hand in and pulled it out. It was about a foot high and metallic gray. One hand was shaped like a hook and the other held a serrated sword. Wasn’t Paul too old to play with toys like this?
The early evening was muggy. After I’d finished brushing,
I stripped down to my briefs. I went into the living room and turned the TV back to the Chinese channels. The communist channel was following Chinese dignitaries on a tour of Japan. The Japanese already had full relations with China. America couldn’t be too far behind, especially if we were already talking to Hanoi. The Taiwan channel featured a show on raising koi, but unfortunately, it was in Mandarin with no subtitled characters. I could pick out “fish” and “water.” I settled for watching the huge fish wriggling through the water and working their mouths open and shut.
I wondered about how long I could go without having a drink.
When Paul came in, he was carrying two plastic bags packed with boxes. When he saw me in my briefs he said, “God.”
“It was a tough day at the office,” I said. Then I pointed at his bags. “What did you buy? Cigarettes?”
“No. Old Moy’s closing his toy store! Everything’s 75% off, so I got a bunch of robot models. I had to borrow money from my sister to buy more.”
“What’s going on?”
“The old man’s furious! He was saying he won’t stand for police harassment.”
“Why?”
“Pretend you don’t know what happened, Robert.”
I thought about Old Moy and Moy and how helpless they would be outside of Chinatown.
“Paul, you left a robot in the bathroom sink. I thought you were too old to be playing with toys.”
“These aren’t toys. These are limited-edition Japanese models. These usually go for ten bucks. Sorry about the
sink. You have to soak the plastic to clean it before you can paint them.”
“When’s that toy store gonna close?”
“Soon, I guess. It’s a madhouse there. After I got through with it, all the good stuff was gone.”
“I’m not going to buy stuff. I just want to talk to the guys.”
“You sure you want to go there? A lot of people saw you beating up the old man. I think it’s a really bad idea for you to go,” Paul said.
“It’s okay. I’m an old friend.”
—
As I made my way over to the toy store, I thought about all the years I’d gone to Moy’s family store to play wind-up toys, long before I ended up working there. Kids from all over the city would come to that one store because it had the best prices.
After hours, Moy’s dad would open one of every robot or car for me and Moy to play with. He’d let us play as long as we wanted. When we were done, he’d bring the games in the back and reseal them in plastic.
When I turned the corner to the store, I saw the lights
were turned out. The midget was leaning against a nearby fire hydrant.
“What happened?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “The old man collapsed and an ambulance took him away.”
“What!”
“I’ll assume you’ve heard what I said but can’t process it yet,” said the midget. “Anyway, I feel bad for Old Moy. Not just because he’s gone to the hospital. For a businessman he had no marketing sense. I used to buy board games from him. One time I told him to give me some games free and I’d challenge people to play there in the store, but he said no.”
The midget turned and spat. Then he looked at me hard. “Hey, you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just that I knew the guy.”
“I know. You were pushing that poor old man around.”
“I didn’t push him around!”
“You pulled him out of the post office. All he was doing was helping people with their mail. He wasn’t selling drugs or girls.”
“It’s against the law.”
“Helping people with English is against the law?”
“People should learn English and not depend on someone to do it for them all the time,” I said.
The midget scratched his chin and said, “When people learn English, that’s when they stop writing back to China.”
“But anyway, you understand that what he was doing was illegal. He was taking money.”
“I guess it was.”
“It’s federal property. There are laws.”
“Sure there are. Of course.”
“He shouldn’t have been there, and he forced me to do what I had to do.”
“You’re absolutely right, Officer Chow.”
We didn’t say anything for a few minutes and watched people slip into restaurants and dried-beef stores. I looked at the midget’s open denim jacket and saw a tie that reached down past his belt.
“What’s this?” I asked, opening the jacket some more.
The midget was also wearing a dress shirt and slacks.
“Remember that tourist, the one who wanted to play Sorry! against me? He’s a filmmaker and he wants to do a documentary about me. We’re shooting in a studio tonight.”
“You’re going to be a movie star! People are going to ask for your autograph.”
“He brought down Chinese chess players and American chess players from Boston. I’m going to play a dozen people in a row.”
“You don’t need to dress up for it. You might hurt your luck.”
“Believing in luck is for people who don’t believe in themselves! I only wanted to look better for the camera. I don’t want to make the Chinese people look bad.” The midget fidgeted with his tie. “So Paul really cleaned up, huh?”
“Yeah, he came back with two bags of toys.”
“Those aren’t toys, they’re precision models.”
“I can’t believe Lonnie lent him all that money.”
“It wasn’t much, it was only $40.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Lonnie wouldn’t give him the money, so I did.”
“Hey, I’m going to make that stupid kid pay you right back!”
“Don’t worry about it! It’s not much money to me. He’ll pay me back.”
“How’s he going to pay you back? He doesn’t have a job.”
“I wanted to give him a break, just like you’re giving him a break by letting him live with you. You know, nobody ever helped me, not that that stopped me from becoming who I am. I carved my own first chessboard pieces from dirty, dried-out sponges the cleaning lady threw away. I got sick a lot because there were germs and bacteria on all those pieces. My mother used to say that that was why my body didn’t grow up right.”
“That’s not true. It’s genetics.”
“Yeah,” said the midget. “Anyway, I wanted to loan the money to Paul to get him started.”
“How is he going to make a career out of toys?”
“I’ve never made a bad investment in anything or anybody,” said the midget.
Paul wasn’t around when I came home, but he had placed all his robots in a small plastic washing tub in the corner
of the living room. When I went to sleep that night, I had a nightmare that Paul’s robots were lined up and shooting at me.
—
The next morning, I went to Martha’s to find Lonnie.
“Paul didn’t come home last night. Do you know where he is?”
“He wasn’t at my parents’ house. Did you hit him?”
“No, I didn’t hit him! I didn’t even yell at him. He’s been hanging out late at night, but this is the first time he never came back.”
“I’m sure he’s okay. Robert, are you okay? Your eyes are all red.”
“That happens when I get worried.”
“Maybe you should ask the midget.”
I went to the park. When I found the midget, I went up and said, “Paul didn’t come home last night.”
The midget looked at me.
“I’m sure Paul can take care of himself,” he said.
“This is the first time he’s been out all night. Maybe something happened to him.”
The midget folded up his arms and crossed his legs.
“Paul said you were pushing him hard to get a job, so he got one serving drinks in a gambling hall. He works late.”
“Where’s this gambling hall?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why would he work in a gambling hall?”
“Hey, it beats waiting tables,” said the midget.
—
I waited until about 0200 before going over to an unremarkable storefront on Chrystie Street. I went into an adjacent alley and found crude, uneven concrete steps leading down to a lower level.
I could hear upbeat Cantonese pop music and men’s voices talking loudly and quickly. I held onto an unpainted metal handrail as I made my way down to the noise in the dim light.
I stood in front of a dull gray metal door and heard a peephole cover swing open and shut.
“I’m not real good at secret knocks or passwords,” I said to the door, at about where someone’s head would be on the other side. “But I’ve got on steel-toed shoes that can bust this door off the hinges.”
“Officer!” said a muffled voice from the other side of the door, “This is a private club. Members only.”
“I’m not here as a cop,” I said. “I’m here to see someone who works here.”
“Who are you looking for?”
“I’ll show you when I see him.”
Someone cranked a bolt back and the door opened. A light cloud of smoke poured over my face as I walked into the Tang San Cai gambling parlor. Taiwanese KMT money had set up the place, hence the Mandarin name. It was a pretty classy joint. Tang San Cai referred to the tri-colored glazed pottery of the Tang Dynasty, large replicas of which bookended the gambling tables. Cameras sat atop the urns, barely hidden by plastic shrubbery.
Blackjack, poker, dominoes, and pai gow tables spread out in the four directions. Smoke from cheap Chinese cigarettes swirled around the ceiling lights. Looking at the gamblers, mostly men in their 40s and 50s, I thought about my father. I thought about how he and his waiter buddies would hang out in these gambling joints to take the edges off of their 12-hour workdays. Every time these old men opened their mouths, they added to the overall reek of alcohol, which was strong enough to make my eyes go googly.
The two busiest tables featured attractive young female dealers with collared shirts that were open down to the third button. I might have liked them if they had showed some emotion, good or bad. The girls looked practically catatonic as they pulled in chips and tossed cards with the same unblinking efficiency as their male counterparts.
Nearly every block in Chinatown had a gambling den but they were all going to be shut down soon, and not by the vice squad. A referendum was going around in New Jersey to open legal casinos in Atlantic City later this year. The Chinese gambling joints were trying to hold on to their clients with Chinese culture and history.
“Uncle, you don’t want to give money to those foreign devils, do you?” the coat-check girl would say.
The Brow would be on my ass in two seconds if he knew I was infringing on an area that was strictly for the vice squad. I was risking my shield to find that little hood. I caught the attention of one of the girl dealers and she gave me the evil eye. I recognized her as someone I’d once written up for moving violations.
I suddenly found the patterns in the carpet very interesting and sauntered away. I saw Paul at one of the dominoes tables. He was serving a drink with a cherry in it to a tubby old man.
I stepped in and said, “Paul, let’s go home.”
He held his empty serving tray over his crotch and said, “How did you find me?”
“I found a Polaroid of you walking out of here in one of those Asian youth books and I looked at the address on the back. Now let’s go.”
“This is my job. You’re not my boss.” Heads were turning in our direction. Pretty soon, some heavies were going to start making their way over.
“Paul,” I growled, “do I have to stick my gun into your back to get you to leave with me?”
He sighed, set his tray by an urn, and followed me out, his head slightly bowed.
When we got down the block, he started whining.
“You know how much money I was making there? I was getting about $10 an hour with the tips! I can pay the midget back already.”
“Where the hell were you last night? You never even called.”
“I called at midnight on the dot.”
“I don’t answer the phone on the hour, you know that.”
“I can’t keep track of your stupid little habits.”
“So where the hell were you?”
“One of the big bosses came in and took us out for a late dinner. Then after, he let us sleep over at his penthouse.”
“Who are these guys, Paul?”
“The Hakka Charitable Association. They’re businessmen.”
“You’re not stupid, Paul. You know they’re a front for a gang.”
“All I do is serve drinks, Robert. I’m not a gunman or something.”
“Paul, you stay there long enough, they’re going to ask you to drive cars out to abandoned lots in East New York and abandon them. You know what are in those trunks? The bodies of people who displeased the management. Yeah, think about that. Then before you know it, they’ll have you beating up people who haven’t paid back their loans. Maybe you’ll have to cut up some girl for not sleeping with your boss. Then you’ll be the one popping people, piling bodies into trunks, and telling younger boys to go abandon those cars.”
“Really?”
“I see it all the time,” I said. It was an improbable, worst-case scenario I was building, but what the hell. I had to scare this kid straight and for good.
“They told me it was a pretty clean business. They never said anything about killing people.”
“No business is clean, Paul.”
“I know the cops aren’t clean. You know the clubs pay out bribes to stay open? I saw it.”
“Those cops are going to get caught, and that gambling den is going to be closed.”
When we got into our building, we went up the stairs.
I continued up, past the floor of our apartment.
“Where are we going?” asked Paul.
“To the roof,” I said.
“Why?”
“I want to show you something.”
The roof-access door had a sign over it, saying “NO ENTRY” in both English and Spanish, so you know it had to be taken seriously. I picked the padlock with the sharp end of my key ring coil.
“Isn’t this illegal?”
“I have the grandfather clause. I lived here before the sign was posted.” Which was true. I got the lock open and the door swung back. We could see stars in the sky.
“Over here, by the water tower,” I said. We went over.
“What do you see, Paul?”
“Chinatown.”
“Look at those windows,” I said pointing.
“They’re bright.”
“You know why they’re bright? Those are fluorescent lights in there. That’s where they’ve got women and children sewing clothes around the clock. See those restaurants down there?” I pointed to the 24-hour joints on Bowery. “That’s where men are working 12-hour shifts. They’re working for way below minimum wage. Those are the people your gambling den’s taking money away from.
“My father worked as a waiter all his life. He didn’t come over to serve uptown Chinese and tourists, but that’s what he ended up doing because he didn’t know any English and wasn’t too smart. He wasn’t an angel, either, but he did what he could for his family. Every buck he made was honest, and he lost a lot of that honest money gambling. Those motherfuckers who run the gambling prey on their own kind, and they take advantage of this entire community.”
Paul looked out over Chinatown.
“Is that true about your dad?” he asked.
“What?”
“He jumped off the roof.”
“He was drunk. He fell off.”
“You know, you have to stop drinking, Robert.”
“I’ll stop drinking,” I said, “if you just get an honest job.”
“Okay,” he said quickly. “You’re on!”
“Hey, don’t I get to have one for the road, at least?”
Paul shook his head.
“Son of a bitch, you fast-talked me into it!”
We went downstairs and poured out my last beers into the sink. I was pissed at myself for crying.
—
I woke up with a dull feeling in my head, as if a sack of marbles was pressing out from inside my skull against my forehead. I swung around, put my feet on the floor and my head in my hands.
All the alcohol in the apartment was gone, but I knew that if I went downstairs to a bodega and got a beer, the feeling would go away. I could forget all about trying to quit drinking. The thought made me drool a little bit.
My door opened and the midget strolled in. I looked up at him.
“Your bedroom smells funny,” he said. “When was the last time you washed your sheets?”
“What time is it?” I asked.
“About 8:30 or so. I’ve been here for a while. Paul let me up. I didn’t want to bother you until you were awake. You know, my brother quit drinking so I know what needs to be done.”
“I don’t need help.”
He sniffed the air again and wrinkled his nose.
“That smell’s definitely not good,” he said.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked him.
“Well, because you get unlimited sick days, you’re going to start calling in.”
“For how long?”
“As long as it takes.”
“How long could it take?”
“Are you taking bets or something? Just call in sick, already.”
I reached for the phone on my desk and picked up the receiver. Standing up made me feel like Elmer Fudd after he shot himself in the head with his rifle. I talked on the phone and didn’t have to fake anything with regards to sounding woozy. It was irritating having a voice directly in my ear. I hung up at what I thought was an appropriate point and rolled back into bed.
The midget disappeared for a second and came back with a glass of water and what looked like two tiny dried flower blossoms.
“Drink this and take these,” he said.
“No way, man. I don’t go for Chinese medicine. Probably turn me into a diabetic.”
“These are Flintstones vitamins! You probably won’t be able to eat, so these should keep you alive.”
I sat up in bed and put my back to the wall. I chucked back Dino and Fred and washed them down with half a glass of water.
“Are you hungry?” the midget asked.
“No.”
“Then maybe you should sleep.”
“I just woke up.”
“Want to read the paper?”
“No way.”
“Want to get up and watch TV?”
“I don’t want to get up.”
“Want to play a game of chess?”
“Not in the mood.”
“Want to hear some music?”
“No.”
“Do you just want to talk a bit?” he asked.
“About what?”
“Whatever pops into your head.”
“Am I going to die?”
“Someday, yes.”
“Hey! Seriously, is this cold turkey thing going to kill me?”
“No. Your body is going to feel like shit, but it’s because you’re struggling to live.”
“What can I do to make it easier right now?”
“You can drink water or some lemon-barley tea that I brought over, eat Flintstones, and sleep.”
“What about when I have to piss?”
“You can go to the bathroom, or I can get you a bottle to piss in.”
“I don’t piss in plastic bottles.”
“You want a glass bottle?”
I closed my eyes and slid down off the wall until I was fully flat on the bed.
“This is funny,” I said. “All this thinking and talking has made me sleepy. But you knew this would happen, didn’t you?”
“Get some sleep.”
I didn’t hear the floor creak so I eased my left eye open. There was nobody there. I guess the midget wanted the door open so he could hear if I started swallowing my tongue. I wasn’t so sure it couldn’t happen.
I let myself slip under into a world that was dark, dull, and throbbing.
—
A slight draft coming in under the sheets made me shiver. I opened my eyes and saw that I was lying in bed with no cover or clothes on. I was sweating.
Then it dawned on me that I hadn’t actually left Vietnam. I’d been left alone in a GP while everyone else was on patrol. Because I’d overslept, they’d decorated it as a joke to look like my apartment.
“How the fuck did they know,” I laughed, amazed at how good a job they’d done.
I could hear people walking around outside the tent, so I hoisted my M-16 onto my shoulder and covered my body with the sheet up to my neck. I was glad I had cleaned the barrel the night before.
I closed my eyes and my fingers made sure the clip was loaded properly. I set the rifle to rock and roll. I opened my eyes only halfway and stayed heavy-lidded. I didn’t want Charlie to see the full light reflecting off of my eyes.
Someone was coming into the tent through a flap cleverly disguised as my door.
I closed my mouth tight and breathed slowly through my nose. I looked at the door and pointed the M-16 at it from under the sheet.
A tiny black head of hair slipped into the GP.
“Chieu Hoi!” I shouted.
The boy stepped in slowly, but in an authoritative way.
“Chieu Hoi!” I shouted again.
He got closer and I could see the holes in his shirt where I had shot him. He sat at the foot of the bed.
“What are you doing, Robert?” he asked.
“I could shoot you again,” I said. “I’ll fix you this time.”
“Why would you do that?” He smelled of cigarette smoke.
“I have a rifle under here. It’s pointed right at you.”
“Is it loaded?”
“Yes, I checked.”
“Well, if you’re going to shoot me, you should at least let me see your weapon. It’ll be easier for me to take.”
“This is some VC trick.”
“Just keep your eyes on me.”
I pulled back the sheet and put my rifle in my lap.
“See this? I’m not fucking around,” I said.
“So I see.”
“Don’t come any closer. I swear to fucking God, I’ll shoot you, again.”
The boy faced me with his shoulders square to me.
“You have to shoot me. Pull the trigger.”
“I’ll do it!”
“Then do it.”
“Don’t think that because you’re just a kid, I won’t!”
“I have a gun, too, Robert.”
I saw that he wasn’t fooling. There was something gleaming in his closed hand. He had quick little hands.
“Shoot me,” the boy said.
“Shut up!”
“Shoot me, or I’m going to shoot you.”
I pulled the trigger. I involuntarily jumped with the kick of the rifle. But there wasn’t any rifle. I looked down. What I thought was the strap of the M-16 was my belt. My hands were empty.
“Illusions are funny, aren’t they?” the midget asked. He eased a cigarette into his mouth and flipped the lighter in his hand. “Actually, I’m going to smoke in the living room. You need fresh air in here.”
—
I was jerked awake by a sharp pain in my stomach. I turned on my side and pushed my hand into it. My arms and legs were cramping. I was hungry like I hadn’t been since I was a kid. I rolled onto the floor and pulled myself upright on the dresser. One drawer wasn’t closed all the way and my weight pushed it closed on the fingers of my right hand.
I howled out loud.
“Robert, are you OK?” shouted Paul from the living room.
My tongue felt like it was stuffed with dust, so I decided to open the door before saying anything.
I nearly blacked out on the 15-foot trek to the doorknob. I threw it open.
“I want chocolate,” I said to the midget and Paul as they stared at me. “Something spicy, too!”
“Paul,” said the midget, “go get some chocolate bars and a beef noodle soup to go.” He tried to hand the money to Paul, who was still staring at me. “C’mon, Paul!”
Paul snapped out of it, took the money, and left. The midget looked up at my face and kept his eyes fixed on mine.
“Wash up, Robert,” he said. “I think you had a bloody nose and it’s dried on your face.”
—
After I had eaten and drank about half a gallon of tea, I lay down on the couch. Lonnie had come over. The four of us watched TV and didn’t say much.
The Taiwan channel was saying how ironic it was that nobody Chinese would be competing at the summer Olympics in Montreal. China was still boycotting and Canada, which had begun recognizing China diplomatically (and unrecognizing Taiwan) six years ago, wanted the Taiwanese team to drop the “Republic of China” suffix to their official name.
“We are the true Republic of China,” the Taiwanese news anchor said, his head held stiff at a regal angle. “Over many centuries, there have been times when barbarians have overrun the mainland. But order will follow chaos and the country will come together again after this divisive period. It has always been so. It will always be so.”
I had never felt so conflicted in my life. I was feeling a swirl of emotions. I was grateful to the midget and even to Paul, and something was really happening between me and Lonnie. But overriding all this was a general nausea and an incredible desire to tear myself away from everybody and get my hands on just half a fucking drink.
—
A couple days later, when my mind and body had reconnected, I stopped by the toy store on Mott. The sale signs were still in the window. The door was locked, but I could see Moy in the back pushing a broom. I pounded on the door. He shaded his eyes to look at me and waved me away. I pounded again, harder. He gave up, came over, and unlocked the door.
“What do you want?” he asked. He propped the door open with a shoulder and stood in the way, in case I had wanted to come in.
“I heard about your dad. I wanted to know how he was doing.”
“He’s going to be okay. I put him in a care facility in Queens.” Dust bunnies quivered on Moy’s sweatshirt.
“It was a stroke?”
“No. Turns out that it was only his back giving out.”
“It wasn’t because of me, was it?”
“Not directly,” Moy said with a sigh. “He tried to lift some boxes on his own in the storeroom. You know, when you threw him out of the post office, that really broke his heart. You were like a son to him.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“Sorry or not, it doesn’t change anything.”
“Can I visit your dad?”
“He put a curse on you. You should just stay away from him.”
“What kind of curse?”
“The kind that wishes ill will in general.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes. He got it done with a monk over the phone.”
“He must really hate me.”
“He threw away everything you ever gave him. Even his nail clipper.”
“Moy, you’re not going to keep the store open?”
“I’m leaving with my collection, but someone’s bought the store and the rest of the inventory.” He looked up at the sky. Maybe it was going to rain.
“Who’s buying the store?”
“The midget.”
“He has that kind of money?”
“It’s not that much. It’s just a cheap store that sells cheap stuff.”
“We had a lot of good times here. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to move to Queens with Dori and open another store there.”
“Where in Queens?”
“Somewhere.”
“You’re not going to tell me?”
“No. I’m busy now.”
Moy stepped back, let the door close, and locked it. I thought about that entire collection of G.I. Joe dolls Moy had, including the incredibly hard-to-find Land Adventurer: Fight For Survival box set.
I stood and watched Moy move to the back of the store, out of the light. Then I left.