Loving Time

nineteen

Around eleven-thirty A.M. on November 2, April Woo paid a visit to the Fifth Precinct on Elizabeth Street, which now had its first Chinese commander. The first person she saw in the detective squad room was Lieutenant Alfredo Bernadino. The wiry Italian had a huge nose that had been broken more than once and looked as if he’d been born on the wrong side of the Mob fence. Smooth as the roughest grade of sandpaper, Lieutenant Bernadino was very popular in Chinatown. People believed he was fair in the right kind of way. The Lieutenant kept one eye open to the big things and the other eye closed to the little things.

“How ya doing, Alfie?”

“Dio mio, it’s April Woo, as I live and breathe. How’s life in the Two-O?”

Her former supervisor and head of the squad gave her the high-five, then settled down to talk in the metal visitor’s chair of Detective Francis Harding, who was out on a call.

“Busy.”

Different. Down here they were Alfie and April and Frank and Carlin, they high-fived each other and didn’t stand on too much ceremony. Uptown was kind of starchy. If somebody tried to call Sergeant Joyce Margret Mary or MM or anything cute like that, she’d take his head off. Which was one of the many reasons April didn’t appreciate the serious etiquette breach of Sergeant Sanchez calling her querida as if they were high school sweethearts.

“Or is it sergeant now?” Alfie chewed on a wad of gum at the same time as an unlit cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth. From the mangled and soggy condition of the filter tip on the cigarette, it looked as if the Camel had been lodged there since April left a year ago.

April smiled modestly. “I guess you saw the list.”

“Congratulations.” Deadpan, Alfie held out a small hairy paw.

April shook it, a little embarrassed. Maybe he could forget how she got her first promotion, but she never would. Four years ago she’d cuffed a gang member on the street and brought the sullen kid to the holding cell in the detective squad room. She’d been in uniform then, and the kid was having trouble with a triple loss of face. First, he was arrested. Second, he was arrested by a woman cop who’d had no trouble getting his Glock automatic away from him. And worst of all, she was a Chinese woman cop.

The kid had a gang-member tattoo on his right hand that was brand new to them, and he had no doubt already killed a number of people in Taiwan before he turned up in the Chinatown bean-curd factory where April and two other uniforms found him threatening the manager and four employees with his Glock.

Up in the interview room Alfie had asked the kid a lot of questions with April translating for him. After a while they left the kid to think things over. As April got ready to head back downstairs, out to the street, Captain Marcello Malacarne, the precinct commanding officer, wandered in. He nodded at her, then held out a piece of paper to Alfie. Alfie wiggled his finger at April as if he had a thought, then reached for the paper. April was required to stand there deaf and dumb, but there was nothing new about that. She was used to it.

Captain Malacarne, another mean-faced Italian with a long history in Chinatown, said, “This just came to my attention. What do you want to do about it?”

Alfie scanned the piece of paper. “Yeah. Sandford. Order to appear for promotion.” He made a so-what gesture.

“Sandford retired last month.”

“Ah, yes.” Alfie remembered. He nodded solemnly, considering the situation. Guy had been in uniform twenty-two years, and they got around to promoting him two months after he retired. Somehow, the report of the retirement hadn’t reached the Personal Orders department.

Lucky for them the Fifth was being assigned another detective. Unlucky for them they had no such officer to report for the promotion. Problem was that if the Fifth happened to report that little detail, the whole situation would be thrown into question. Another precinct could very well end up with the extra detective.

A few seconds later, with no more words having been said, the Captain had departed. Lieutenant Bernadino turned to April. “You want to be a detective, Officer?”

“Yes, sir,” April replied.

“Then report for promotion first of the month, ten A.M.” He handed her the paper so she would know where to go.

“Yes, sir,” she said, taking it.

She often wondered how she had been assigned to the Two-O, where Chinese-speaking detectives were not exactly in the highest demand.

“I was hoping to meet the new C.O.,” she said now.

“Good man,” Alfie said, nodding and chewing. He wouldn’t comment either way. Didn’t matter to him who came and went; things didn’t change much in the detective squad. He didn’t say that Captain Chew might very well be out at one of the three thousand and two meetings and social events at which the Chinatown leaders expected their top man police chief to be in attendance every month. Nor did he ask April why she wanted to see the captain, or what was up with her. “What goes around comes around,” he said after a moment.

“That’s what I was thinking,” she murmured. Her watch read 11:55. George Dong closed his office from twelve to one. “Well, I got to go.”

Alfie smiled and took the cigarette out of his mouth. “Thanks for dropping by,” he said.

The offices of Dr. George Dong were in a new building right across the square from 1 Police Plaza. He was on the second floor, facing south. In fact, every time he came out of his office, rain or shine, the very first thing George Dong saw was the prisonlike brick structure of police headquarters. April noticed this as she waited for him downstairs.

Three days a week George Dong operated on eyes in the morning and had office hours from three to six in the afternoon. Two days a week he was in his office all day except from twelve to one, when he shut the office for lunch. He had told April his schedule to indicate how well-ordered a person he was, balanced and in control of his life. Worthy of attention and respect.

This was the kind of information that was guaranteed to throw April into the slippery bog of despair about herself. Although she had mastered her facial muscles about the same time as she learned to read, she was in control of absolutely no aspect of her own life. There was nothing orderly about her life except the inevitability of chaos and the dense fog that surrounded nearly all of her cases as she walked into them.

“You could have come upstairs.” George pushed out of his building’s entrance at exactly 12:02.

“I just got here,” she murmured.

So much for greetings. They were in the very early stages of getting to know each other and did not shake hands or kiss. In fact, neither April Woo’s nor George Dong’s face revealed anything at all. Their Confucian heritage had taught them the essential rules on the cultivation of mind and heart. In this case, wu wei (nondoing and knowing you’re not doing it) was an absolute necessity.

The first time April met George he’d been carrying a Wilson tennis bag and wearing a navy warm-up suit with red stripes down the legs. He had a round moon face studded with small, nondescript features. Not exactly chubby, but in no way well formed by Western standards, George reminded April of a Cantonese dumpling to which all spices had been added, then erased. Garlic is smashed and placed in the pan, swirled around in peanut oil for thirty seconds, then carefully removed so that no traces whatsoever remained in the sauce. The idea was blandness made your tongue work to find the flavors.

George was like that. April did not know whether the tennis racket was for real or for show, but she did not miss the meaning of the warm-up suit at their first meeting. He was reserving judgment on her. For the office, however, his attire was a different matter. Today George was wearing an excellent English tweed jacket of the sort April had seen on Jason Frank, the other doctor she knew. And gray slacks and a crisp blue shirt with white collar and cuffs. He looked every inch the successful professional. Without further ado he started walking, thus commanding April to follow.

Today he was going west two blocks to his newest favorite restaurant. Inside the crowded restaurant was an empty table in the window that seemed to have been reserved for him. When they were seated at it, without asking for the menu, he ordered in Chinese.

“That okay with you?” he asked April when the waitress was gone.

She nodded and told her first lie. “Sounds great.”

“Good.” He twisted his gold signet ring around his finger, studying her speculatively. “Have you ever had a permanent?” he asked suddenly.

“What?”

He pointed to the top of her head.

Ah, one of those frizzy jobs that always looked so wrong to April on Asians.

“No. Have you?”

“You should consider it. Curly hair would look great on you.”

Her mother had curly hair. It looked shitty on her. April nodded a second time. Her training told her a low-class person speaks and reveals his immaturity. The perfect Confucian model is a person who does not speak and lets his silence reflect his wisdom. Mike called this restraint of feeling and passion passivity and told April he sometimes felt like slapping her for being like a stone. Even now, in a Chinese restaurant with George, she felt her sluggish blood stirring, just thinking about Sanchez’s perverse opinions.

She realized she had tuned George out. He was telling her how a few weeks ago he did laser surgery on the cataracts of the grandmother of the owner of this restaurant, and now the ancient zumu could see better than when she was a girl. The old woman’s children and grandchildren were so impressed that she no longer needed her glasses, they thought the three thousand dollars was a small price to pay. George never got a bill for any of the meals he ate there.

“Wow,” April murmured; “must be nice.”

“There’s nothing nice about it. I feel good helping people,” George said importantly.

April played with her chopsticks. Her mother believed George Dong was the ideal candidate for marriage and wanted her to close on the deal soon. She was having trouble working up an interest.

“But then there’s a downside to everything.” George looked at her gravely.

“What’s the downside?” April piped up dutifully.

“The family thought it was such a miracle that their blind zumu could suddenly see without her glasses, they all wanted the surgery.”

April didn’t laugh. She could see how that could be awkward. “How did you manage that situation?”

“Twelve pairs of contact lenses.” Now he laughed.

And now April understood why an American-born Asian like George, who had grown up in Queens and attended Columbia University and Columbia Medical School, would come down to Chinatown to practice medicine. Here, his patients never questioned his fees, didn’t rely on insurance to pay their bills, and thought he was a god.

She laughed, too. “That’s a lot of contact lenses.”

“The disposable kind.”

“Ah. Makes a difference.”

“Indeed it does.”

He fell silent as April poured the tea. It was the right kind, with the leaves floating around in the pot. George watched her.

“Can you cook as well as you pour?”

April moved one of the tiny cups to his side of the table. Her father was a chef. George had to know that. “I know how,” she said, raising her eyes to look at him directly. She didn’t have a whole lot of time to hang around the house chopping, though.

“I like a woman who can cook.”

“And has curly hair. Any particular color?”

George flushed. “So you know,” he said.

April nodded. It was a common police technique to make the person on the other side of the table think you already have the whole story even when you don’t have a clue. The waitress deposited some metal serving dishes on the table and removed their covers. On the one closest to her, wrinkled gray sea slugs and smooth white squid lazed around in brown oyster sauce. April repressed a shudder.

“My mother told your mother, right?” George asked.

Again April nodded. George shrugged and immediately launched into the story of the lost love who’d broken his heart. A girl with curly yellow hair from Philadelphia who played the violin and was a Catholic. Apparently the affair had gone on for a long time although neither family approved. Religion was the issue with his. Anyway, by the time they both graduated from medical school, the girl had left him for an Indian anesthetist. Seemed pretty clear to April that George would enjoy never getting over it for the rest of his life.

“What about you?” he asked.

“What about me?” April hid a sea slug under a piece of lettuce on her plate and delicately picked up a piece of lemon chicken.

“You’re very old. Why aren’t you married?”

April was twenty-nine. She raised the piece of lemon chicken to her mouth and held it there, perfectly balanced in the chopsticks, while she delicately took a tiny bite. Twenty-nine was not so old, certainly not very old. Then she took another bite and another until there was nothing left. She was trying to think of something to say that would not damage either George or herself. Finally she put the chopsticks down and answered.

“Heaven does not speak, but the four seasons proceed on their course,” she murmured.

“No kidding. That bad.” George propped a tweed elbow on the table to support his chin while he gazed at her with interest. “I think we may have something going here. What do you think?”

April dabbed her lips with the stiff white napkin. She did not want to tell another lie. So she poured another cup of tea and looked remote.