Burning Time

51

The tours of duty were eight in the morning to four in the afternoon, or four in the afternoon to eleven at night. Every week they had two days of one and three days of the other. Periodically the days and hours were switched. April yawned into her napkin. There was a reason the Department organized the duties this way, but she didn’t know what it was.

It was nearly one-thirty in the morning. She could see the time on a clock that hung between two lurid posters of bullfighters. She had to be back at work in five and a half hours. Her car was a few blocks away, still in the precinct lot. After she picked it up, she figured it would take her half an hour to get back to Astoria. Tomorrow morning it would take a good forty-five minutes to return over the bridge and make it across town. That left her with four and a quarter hours of sleep only if she didn’t count the time it would take her to shower and dress in the morning.

Still, she didn’t make a move to close her notebook.

“Finished?” Sanchez asked, eyeing her plate. Still uneaten was a pile of refried beans, some rice, and at least half of a seafood enchilada with guacamole.

April picked up a sprig of cilantro and chewed on it, nodding.

“You liked it?” he asked.

They were in a tiny restaurant in the neighborhood that April had passed a hundred times. It was dark and quiet, looked to her like it was likely to go out of business soon. The front window had a bead curtain in it and some spearlike sticks with ribbons on the end that Sanchez said they used in Mexico to irritate the bulls at the beginning of bullfights.

“I liked it,” April said, not entirely certain that she did. There was a heaviness in her mouth that she had a feeling would not go away for a long time.

In fact her mouth was actually quite sluggish and foul as a result of eating Mexican food. This was probably because of the cream and cheese that the scallops and shrimps were cooked in before being wrapped up in the pancakes. Tortillas. More cheese on top. Humh. Twice-cook pancakes. Every dish in Chinese cooking had a name. April silently named this dish Sluggish Mouth Pancake.

But it wasn’t only the pancake bathed in cheese that was somewhat unpleasant. The raw onions in the mushy green stuff he called guacamole tasted like soft soap with bite-the-tongue bits of sharpness in it. April couldn’t think of any textures in Chinese food that were similar.

Refried beans were smooth but tasteless. The Chinese used fermented or sweetened beans for flavorings, but did not eat them alone. Not even the rice was the same. Chinese rice was put into cold water and not stirred or seasoned until it was done. It came out white, and was for mixing with the tastes and textures of all the other dishes on the table. Mexican rice was cooked with oil and spices. Interesting, but heavy in the mouth.

She chewed on the cilantro, hoping to purify her mouth. This reminded her a little of the time she tried goat cheese and felt like she was eating vomit. But Sanchez was studying her with such intensity she knew it was a matter of national pride to him that she approve of it. His father did this kind of cooking. His mother must be very fat. April smiled at the thought of a waddling Maria scolding her son the police sergeant on the phone. “Hola, Miguel, es Mama.”

Both April’s mother and father were very thin, the kind of thin that always looked unnatural to her in light of the number of dishes piled high with food that appeared on the table every day. It almost seemed to her like they were starving in the midst of plenty.

Maybe if she ate more of this kind of food, her bottom would become plump and round in the American style. April realized she was thinking all these things about food because she liked sitting there with Mike, listening to him talk about his family and the cases he’d worked on. And she felt better talking to him about the ten thousand things she had to do in the morning than she would if she had gone home to brood about it on her own.

“You liked it,” he said, “but what did you really think of it?”

April ducked her head, considering how to approach the subject. “Very good combination of tastes,” she said seriously. “I think I liked your fish the best. What’s that green stuff, kind of spicy on the side?”

“Tomatillo. It’s like a green tomato with an onion skin over it. You have to peel it.”

“The fish was very fresh.” She nodded her approval of the snapper. “And I think avocado tastes better plain. On your dish it was plain.”

There was a brief silence as they thought about avocado. They had talked about it earlier. It was another food the Chinese didn’t have. Like thirty different kinds of chilis and sauces made with chocolate.

“Do you like to cook?” Mike asked.

No one to cook for. April bit her tongue. Her mother or father did all the cooking. “I know how,” she said. “What about you?”

“I like it. Does that sound weird to you?”

The waiter cleared off the table.

“No. It runs in the family.” April reached for her bag.

“You want me to drive you home?” he asked suddenly. The table was cleared and a check put by his water glass. “They want to close.”

“Yeah, it’s late. Let’s go.” She reached into her bag for her money. “How much is it?”

He shook his head.

“It’s not a date. I have to.” She objected in such a passionate way he had to smile.

“Of course it’s not a date. But—” He cocked his head in the direction of the kitchen. “It’s only a token. If they saw me letting anyone else share it, I would get a bad name.”

April fell silent. She liked the fact that he didn’t make it a man-woman thing. He said anyone else. She wondered if this was where his father was a cook before he died, and that’s why the bill was only a token. She understood about tokens. Everybody save face. She didn’t feel she could ask him right then, though.

“I’d like to drive you home,” he said when they were out on the street.

It was a warm, clear night. April looked up at the crescent moon. Her mother used to torture her with a story about a girl child whose angry parents sent her to the cold, empty moon as punishment for her disobedience. April grew up thinking the world’s favorite symbol of romance was a prison whose walls closed in to nothing every thirty days. No romance for her. She smiled at fish-in-water Sanchez.

“Thanks, but then I’d have to take the subway back.”

They turned up Columbus, heading for the precinct.

“Not necessarily. I could come and get you. We could talk about the case,” he said.

April shook her head. “That’s a very hard way to get from the Bronx to Eighty-second Street.”

“I get up early,” Mike argued.

“I thought this wasn’t a date,” she said more sharply than she meant to.

“Who said it was a date? We’re working a case together. So I drive you home, what’s the big deal?”

They debated about the bigness of the deal all the way back to the lot. Fine to work with each other. Maybe okay to have Mexican food. Not okay to drive back and forth in red Camaro making everyone in her neighborhood and everyone in the precinct think just what April didn’t want them to think. She drove herself home, stewing about the trouble she was in with this case, and with Mike who wasn’t going to be happy just working together for long, no matter how nice he could be when he wanted to.

She was not surprised to find the light on in her parents’ part of the house when she got back at two o’clock. Nor was she surprised when her mother opened the door loudly demanding, in Chinese, explanations from her thoughtless daughter. How she could stay out so late without letting her worried mother know where she was? Who was she with, and what kind of no-good person would let her come home at this hour all alone?

“Mom, I’m a cop,” April said wearily. “I’m on a case.”

“What kind of case at two o’clock in the morning? I know what kind of case. Humh. Boo hao case.”

“I’m a cop,” April protested. “Just doing my job.”

“Maybe a cop, but still a woman.” Sai stood there with a hand on her skinny hip, resolutely blocking the door, as if she would not budge an inch until her every question was answered, including what her daughter had been eating to make her mouth smell so bad.