WE KEPT ON GOING—1 STEP BY 1 STEP, ALL OF US. WE walked, and we looked. Bricks were red, brown, and even gray. Windows were wide, small, and tall. Sidewalks were gray, flat, and cracked. People looked at us, and they looked away. We saw twigs on the street, old stains, and little crushed leaves. We saw people in windows sipping, thinking, talking, and dreaming. And then Tony said, “I see a red pig.”
It was ahead of us, across a street. A bright red pig, big as a person, on the front of a building over a street across the way. We held on to our cans in our arms, and waited for a light to turn green and cars to stop and hold up, and ran across. I heard all our feet scuff over the street.
“That’s my red pig,” said Darnell. “Big and bright.”
The big red pig glowed over a big red door. Tony pushed it open and we followed. A young-looking man smiled and asked, “One, two, three, do I see four?”
“Yes,” I told him. “I guess so.”
I looked around and saw people eating and realized that it was a place to eat. I wasn’t sure what we should do.
“We need directions,” I told the man.
“We can help,” he said. “But wouldn’t you like a snack first?” Then he held out a hand so we could see a bright yellow round couch around a round table.
“There are flowers on the couch,” said Pilar.
“Wow, there are,” said the man. “All this time, I never noticed. What would you like to eat?”
“We get to eat?” asked Darnell.
“Everybody has to eat,” the man told us. “That’s why we’re here.”
“A ham sandwich,” said Tony, and the rest of us added “me too,” one right after another.
“No ham,” the young man told us. “No sandwiches. We have pork. Pork buns, barbecue pork, ginger and pork noodle soup, pork fried rice, moo shoo pork. Pork egg rolls.”
“Egg rolls sounds funny,” said Pilar.
“Eggs roll, eggs break,” said Darnell.
“They don’t roll,” the man explained. “And there’s no egg in them. Maybe a little in the dough. You don’t know Chinese food?”
“Don’t they eat it in China?” I asked.
“They eat it everywhere,” he said. “All over the world. For a long time. They eat Chinese food here, they eat it in Mexico, they eat it in Indiana. I bet they even have Chinese food at the North Pole.”
“I want to go to the North Pole!” I told him.
“Have the egg rolls there,” he told us with a smile. “Then tell me if ours aren’t better. My grandfather started this restaurant.”
Tony told him, “My grandfather has a scratchy chin. He scrapes everybody when he kisses them. That’s what my mother says.”
“Hey, mine too,” the man told us. “We used to say, ‘Hey, Grandpa, just blow us a kiss.’ Hey, egg rolls are a good start for you. I’ll bring eight.”
“That’s 2 for you, 2 for you, 2 for you, 2 for me,” I told everyone.
“The orange sauce there is sweet,” said the man, pointing to a bowl in the middle of the table with
2 sauces and 2 colors. “The yellow sauce is spicy—be careful.”
As soon as the man turned around and walked away, Darnell put a small finger in the orange sauce and licked it.
“Mighty sweet,” he told us. “You’ll like it.”
“What about the yellow?” Tony asked.
Darnell told us, “I’m not gonna try something when someone says, ‘Be careful.’”
The man brought the food to us and 1, 2, 3, 4 small plates. The food—the egg rolls—looked like big fat golden puffy fingers, not rolls. They smelled delicious.
There were forks, knives, and spoons already on the table, and red napkins and a red envelope that Pilar tore open with her teeth. It had 2 small sticks inside.
“I’ve seen those,” said Tony. “You stab food with them,” he said, and took a stick and tried to stab one of the egg rolls. But the egg roll rolled away. Pilar had to stop it with her knuckles, before it rolled off the plate.
“Egg rolls roll!” she said.
We left the sticks next to the plates and picked up forks. Darnell held his egg roll like a Popsicle and took a bite. Then we all did. I could taste onions and green things and crispy stuff. We plopped down the sweet sauce, and dragged our egg rolls through the orange pool, and took more bites.
“Can Conrad do these for us sometime?” asked Pilar.
“Like, every time,” said Darnell.
There were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 more people in the place, also eating. They lifted their heads, looked at us, and looked away. A man laughed. A woman got up and left, in a hurry. Another woman called over the young man and whispered something. She frowned. She whispered, but she looked angry.
The nice man came back to us and made sure we had water, then asked if we’d like tea.
“Tea,” said Pilar. “Dorothy has tea sometimes. She puts a little bag in water.”
The man made a face and shook his shoulders.
“Not at Peking Duke’s,” he told us. “Never. Tea leaves have to breathe. I’ll show you.”
He brought over a small red pot and lifted the lid. A little cloud came out.
“Take a whiff,” he said. We did.
“Flowers,” I said. “And oranges.”
The man poured out hot tea into small cups for all of us. Darnell picked up his cup in his hands.
“It’s hot,” he said. “Like hot chocolate.”
Pilar took a small sip.
“But it’s just hot,” she said. “Not chocolate.”
Tony blew on the cloud coming out of his cup.
“My cloud is going to rain on Darnell,” he said. “Darnell is gonna get wet.”
Darnell took a sip of tea and made a face.
“Tastes like oranges a little, Sal Gal,” he told me. “But mostly it tastes like a tree.”
“Tea,” Pilar said to him, but Darnell just repeated:
“Tree. Tree. Tea tastes like tree.”
We were all laughing and sipping and making faces and laughing when we heard a siren down the street and saw a big blue light blinking off of the mirrors on the walls of the place we were eating, and the lady who had whispered and frowned was standing up in her blue coat and shaking and pointing at us.
“I called!” she shouted. “I told them crazy people are in here!” Her voice trembled. “What is this world coming to when you go out for dinner and have to look at all these strange, scary, crazy people!”
“Who? What?” asked Darnell, and the woman’s yell got so loud it made our ears hurt and turn red. I could see people in the eating place begin to stand and look around or sit low in their seats.
“Get out!” the woman shouted at us. “Now!”
The big red door swung open and the big blue blinking light filled the room. I heard a plate drop. I heard a couple of people scream. I heard a cup drop and tea splash on the thick red rug.
And then we saw Esther Rivas and London Bridges.
Esther opened her coat to show her gold badge and went to the woman in the blue coat who was standing and screaming. Lon came straight over to us.
“You’ve been leaving a trail,” he said with a smile. “We got a call from the lady at Ollie’s. We got a call from the pastor at the Our Savior Mission. Seems like you’ve been on a mission yourselves.”
Lon turned to the nice man who introduced us to egg rolls and tea.
“I’ll take care of the bill, Duke,” Lon told him.
Darnell asked, “Who’s Bill?”
“I think he means money,” I told everyone.
“Ouch,” said Tony. “Don’t think we have that.”
“There’s no bill,” said the man named Duke. “They seem to like our egg rolls. Just tell your friends to come back soon.”
“Tomorrow?” asked Darnell. “Right after dinner?”
We heard the big red door slam shut and make a noise like a blast.
“I think you lost a customer, Duke,” Esther Rivas told him. “Pull her bill and maybe we can charge her with a misdemeanor. Leaving without paying.”
“Only if she promises not to come back,” Duke said.
“We have to bring our friends back to where they live,” Esther told him. “And consult with them about what they’ve found out about these cans.”
Pilar held up her can of peaches, and I held up my apples.
“You can’t leave until everyone has opened their fortune cookies,” Duke said, and walked over to a bowl and filled his hands with things that made a crinkly sound. He came over and put them into our hands.
“Have you ever had fortune cookies?” he asked. “Sugar, flour, I think sesame oil—I’m not sure. A nice, sweet little taste. But the thing is—the message inside,” he told us. “Crack open the cookie and take out the little slip. There’s a message for you.”
I think Duke didn’t know that most of us couldn’t read more than a few letters. But Esther just said, “Let me see them, too. You can’t leave Duke’s without getting your fortune.”
Tony had already torn off the wrapper and cracked his cookie. He put the crumbs in his mouth and handed the small slip of paper inside to Esther. She read:
“Good one,” said London Bridges. “That’s me every day.”
Darnell had nabbed the slip of paper with the tips of his fingers and slipped the whole little cookie into his mouth.
“It’s good,” he said. “Smooth. Sugar. Too small.”
Esther flattened out his slip of paper and read:
“What’s that mean?” asked Darnell. “I got a fortune cookie that I don’t know what it means.”
“I think it means when you’re walking, you always look ahead to where you’re going,” said Esther.
“But I like just walking, too,” said Darnell, and Lon reached out his hand.
“You got that right, too,” he told him. “It’s nice just to walk, and see what turns up.”
Pilar handed the slip of paper from her cookie to Esther and listened while she chewed. This time Esther said:
“How?” asked Pilar.
Esther Rivas thought for a moment, then told us, “You make yourself happy by being with people who make you happy. People who like and respect you, and you like them.”
“I sure like you, Esther,” I told her. “And you, London Bridges,” I told him, and everyone giggled a little as I felt my face warm up.
“We like you. Like all of you,” said Esther. “C’mon, Sal Gal. Give us a look at your fortune, won’t you?”
I broke open the wrapper with a crinkle. I bit into the cookie halfway and let half fall into my hand. The fortune was on top of the cracked cookie pieces, a slim white slip on gold crumbles. Esther picked it up from my hand and read:
Then I think Esther’s eyes got a little splash in them.
“I think that’s really true, Sal Gal,” she said, but talked to us all. “You get called out one day, go to some place you never thought of, meet some people you didn’t even know about, and it changes your life.”
“It changes you,” Lon Bridges said softly. “Like you never dreamed.”
Duke, the nice man who ran the place, told us, “You’re not leaving here until I show you my favorite fortune. I keep cookies on hand with just that message.”
He put 1, 2, 3, 4 more cookies into the held-out hands of Darnell, Pilar, Tony, and then me, and then turned around to a bowl and brought out 1, 2, 3 more.
“I’ll open mine,” said Duke, who ripped off the wrapper, snapped his cookie in his fingers, and read from the small, curly slip:
“Words to live by,” said London Bridges, and he put an arm around Darnell and then Tony, while Esther Rivas put an arm around my shoulder and took Pilar’s hand.
“We’ve got to get you back to Sunnyside Plaza,” she told us. “Dorothy, Mrs. Byrne—they’re worried. And we’ve got to take a look at what you’ve found out about those cans.”
We went through the big red door under the big, bright, red pig and saw the moon, big and gold, high above the city, and all the streetlights, like little moons, burning and glowing and showing us where to walk.