The Scared Stiff

37

There are Chinese restaurants all over the world, but in each part of the world they’re a little different, altered by local tastes. In Guerrera, the local taste runs heavily to jalapeño peppers, so in that country, when the Chinese menu describes a dish as “hot and spicy,” it means something even more dangerous than the same dish in the States.

In Guerrera, it is generally agreed that the finest Chinese restaurant is Carla Fong’s, on Avenida de Doce de Julio in San Cristobal. Mrs. Fong is not herself Chinese; she is Guerreran, and she runs the front of the house from her seat at the cash register. Her husband, Fong Fang, is the chef, and a good one. The place is simple and clean, mostly Formica, with exotic travel posters on the walls, mainly not Chinese. There’s Mount Fuji over there, next to the Taj Mahal.

Arturo and I got to Carla Fong’s a few minutes early, having phoned for a reservation, and the place was quite full. I would guess most of them were lawyers and a few were shoppers. There were no tourists. Tourists don’t go to South America to eat in Chinese restaurants, no matter how good they are.

Arturo had explained, when he’d made the reservation, that we would be lunching with Carlita Carnal, a local celebrity, so he’d asked for a quiet corner table, and our hostess, Mrs. Fong’s daughter, who looked Chinese but was named Tiffany, smilingly showed us to a table near the back that was partly shielded from the rest of the diners by a Chinese screen crawling with ferocious dragons.

Carla Fong’s was the only place I knew of in Guerrera where you could drink Tsingdao, the very good Chinese beer. We ordered two from Tiffany, she went away, and I said again, as I’d been saying for the last hour, “I’m still worried.”

Arturo, as he’d been doing for the last hour, tried to reassure me, saying, “You can trust Carlita. She won’t turn us in.”

But that wasn’t what I was worried about. I had thought Arturo and I had been very clever in our cover story, yet Carlita Carnal had seen through it as though it were plate glass. Were all our cover stories that stupid and obvious? Had nobody in Rancio believed I was a deaf mute? Had the good folk of Sabanon snickered behind their hands at the idea of my vow of silence?

To put it in a nutshell, which I was afraid to voice out loud, was I not good enough for the whole original scheme? Was insurance fraud, after all, beyond my capabilities? I was suffering from massive doubt and a deeply lowered self-esteem. When I contemplated myself, all I could see were inadequacies and failings. He isn’t up to it, a tiny voice kept whispering at my inner ear.

I sighed. Arturo looked concerned. He said, “Hermano, what we got to do is not worry. What we got to do is plan.”

“I know. You’re right.”

“Carlita’s gonna come through for us,” he said. “So I been thinkin’, you know? And I think what we do, we go in there, in the building, late this afternoon.”

“We let it go that long?”

“No, wait now,” he said, and Tiffany brought our beers and three menus and went away. We drank beer from the bottle and Arturo said, “What I think we do, we get like a map from Carlita, like what hall we go down, what door, where the file cabinets are, that kinda thing.”

“Probably,” I said. “She’ll probably be able to do that.”

“So we go in late this afternoon,” he said. “With sandwiches.”

I put my bottle on the table. “Sandwiches?”

“Because what we gonna do, we’re gonna hide in the men’s room, see?” he said. “When they shut down for the night. Then, real late, we go there, to the files, and we get the paper, and then we find someplace we can sleep awhile, and then we go back in the men’s room, and come out when they open the place in the morning.”

“So there’s no break-in,” I said.

“You got it,” he told me. “No break-in, so nobody’s suspicious.”

“What if we oversleep?”

“We’ll buy a little alarm clock,” he said. “And the sandwiches.”

I said, “And the quesillo.”

He gaped at me. “What? That Ifigenia give you? How you gonna carry that, man?”

“We’ll get a little box,” I said.

“Naw, forget about it, forget the quesillo.”

I said, “I’m not forgetting it, Arturo, and you’re not getting it from me. I’ll get a little box, and we’ll carry it in with us, with the sandwiches and the alarm clock.”

“But no beer,” he said, and drank some beer. “They got water fountains there, we’ll just do water.”

“That sounds good,” I agreed, and Tiffany came around the screen again, this time escorting Carlita Carnal.

“Hi, guys,” she said. She took her seat, thudded her shoulder bag onto the floor beside her chair, and looked at our beer bottles. “I love that stuff,” she said, “but I can’t drink it. I’ve got to watch my figure.”

“Everybody watches your figure, Carlita,” Arturo said.

“Right,” Carlita said, dismissing that pleasantry. Reaching for her menu, she said, “Have you two picked yet?”

“Not yet,” I said, and opened my own menu.

Arturo said, “Carlita, how’d it go?”

“Oh, fine, fine,” she said, airy as an éclair. “Lunch first, I’m starved.”

I said, “You know this place, do you?” Because, though I’d been there several times, I thought it best to pretend I didn’t know it.

She said, “Do you want me to order for you?”

“I’d love it.”

“Smart man. How about you, Artie?”

“Sure,” Arturo said.

Tiffany reappeared then, with a bottle of local seltzer for Carlita, complete with glass. She put them down and took out her little pad and pen, and Carlita walked Arturo and me through the menu, helping us choose. She was clearly very knowledgeable, much more than me.

Tiffany went away, and Arturo said, “Just tell us, Carlita. Do you know how we can get it?”

“Yes,” she said. “But I really can’t talk all that stuff on an empty stomach. Is Ifigenia still suing that publisher in Venezuela?”

Arturo grinned. “You know I can’t talk about that,” he said.

“It was worth a try,” she said, and looked at me. “Your first time in Guerrera?”

“Yes,” I said. Unfortunately, at the same moment, Arturo said, “No, he—”

“I’m sorry,” I said, into her grin. “I was thinking about the restaurant, first time in the restaurant. No, I’ve been in Guerrera several times. I was at Lola’s wedding.” Looking at the abashed Arturo, I said, “How long ago was that, Arturo?”

“Fourteen years,” he said. “I remember you there.”

“Before my time,” Carlita said, and Tiffany arrived with a pot of tea and little handleless cups. Now all I need, I thought, is for Tiffany to recognize me as an old customer, though she’s never recognized me before.

Nor this time. She went away and came back with food, and then she came back with more food. It was all very good, as expected, and we didn’t talk again until we’d finished every last bit of it.

My fortune cookie was in Spanish. I handed it to Carlita, saying, “How’m I doing?”

She looked at the fortune, then smiled at me. “It says, ‘You will be rescued by a beautiful woman.’ ”

“Good,” I said, thinking of Luz but knowing that isn’t what she meant. In fact, knowing that wasn’t what the fortune had said. “I’ve been wanting to be rescued by a beautiful woman,” I said.

Arturo said, “Carlita, now will you tell us? And maybe draw a map, where we go?”

“I’ll tell you about it,” she said, and finished her tea. “I know the clerks there, naturally,” she said. “So I went in and told them a story, some research I was doing, not about those records but property records I know are kept nearby. I said I just wanted to look through them for a while, and they’re used to me there, so they left me alone.”

She bent down to her shoulder bag, found what she wanted in it immediately, and pulled out a letter-size envelope, which she tossed on the table in front of Arturo. “So I got it,” she said.

I gaped at the envelope, and so did Arturo. Then he picked it up and opened it, while I said, “That’s it? You already got it?”

“Well, I was there,” she said, “and it was easy. Easier for me than for you.”

Arturo had taken the form out of the envelope. He looked at it, wide-eyed, then folded it and put it back in the envelope. He folded the envelope and put it in his pants pocket. Then he looked at me and started to laugh.

So I started to laugh. Then Carlita started to laugh. Then Arturo lunged toward her, as though he were going to give her that bear hug after all, and she pulled back, still laughing, hands up defensively as she said the Spanish equivalent of Down, boy, down.

We gradually stopped laughing. I said, “And it was going to be so hard.”

Arturo said, “We had it all plotted out.”

“The whole caper,” I said. “Carlita, I feel like hugging you myself, and you know us cold Northerners.”

“I know all about you cold Northerners,” she said, with amused skepticism.

Arturo said, “Why you didn’t tell us?”

“I thought it would be more fun,” she explained, “if we ate first, so I could have my scoop a little longer.”

“I don’t even mind,” I said. “This is wonderful.”

“Good. And thanks for lunch.” She reached for the strap of her shoulder bag. “I’m off.” She stood, shrugging the shoulder bag into place, and pointed at me to say, “And remember the deal. If they get you, I’m the exclusive.”

“Promise,” I said. “Carlita?”

“Yes?”

“What do you think? Are they gonna get me?”

“Well,” she said, “they get almost everybody sooner or later.”

“I’ll keep beautiful women around,” I suggested, “to rescue me.”

“A good idea,” she said. “Artie, say hello to Ifigenia, and be good to her for a while.”

“Okay,” Arturo said.

She grinned and winked at me. “See you later, Felicio,” she said, and was off.