The Train to Lo Wu - Jess Row [39]
You can forget about that. Ford leans forward. I’ve got a woman who cooks for me, he says. She makes food you won’t believe. None of that Happy Delight stuff—everything’s fresh, no MSG, no chow mein. She’s got me eating it morning, noon, and night. No more doughnuts in the house, no potato chips. I feel like I did when I was twenty-five. No. Better than that. How long are you staying?
Not long, Marcel says. Cold spreads across the bottom of his stomach. They want me back for a deposition on the seventeenth. Next Monday.
Ford shrugs. Not bad, he says. Not bad for a young comer who wants to make partner. We’ll make it worth your while. There’s some people I definitely want you to meet.
Marcel has to glance away for a second. Another look into those eyes, he thinks, and I’ll be telling the whole story, from beginning to end. The lights inside the club have come on, and through the sliding glass doors he can see the crowd gathered around the bar: young, blond, tanned, thin briefcases, martinis, cigars. A few faces he ought to recognize, from Williams or Choate. Can I ask you an honest question? he says. How can you stand it?
You mean the white boys’ club inside?
I mean being the only one, he says. Sticking out all the time. In the airport I felt like I was in a museum display. Some woman thought I was from the NBA. Wanted my autograph.
I’ll be honest with you, Ford says. Most can’t take it. I’ve had boys making monkey noises at me on the subway. Sometimes babies cry when they see you. Sometimes they’ll pretend not to understand your English. Or make up some excuse: only Chinese menu, or some such thing. I’ve seen lots of brothers come out, and most of them leave after a year or so. And it’s too bad. Because they don’t understand the underlying principle.
And what’s that?
Ford takes a heavy gold pen from his pocket and flattens a cocktail napkin on his palm. I learned this from a friend of mine, he says, drawing carefully. A box with a cross inside it, with a pair of legs underneath, it seems, and a few squiggles attached to the top. This is the Chinese word for foreigner, he says. Gwai. It literally means “ghost.” Or “demon.” Now, usually when they say gwai they’re thinking of the white man—the white ghost. But actually a ghost is anyone who’s not Chinese. White ghosts, red ghosts, black ghosts. He looks up at Marcel, and from his expression Marcel can tell that his attempt to suppress a look of disbelief has failed. It means you don’t really exist, he says. Sure, you might run into a little trouble once in a while. But fundamentally you don’t matter to them. White people, black people—it’s all the same. You’re not on their radar screen. They’ll make deals with you, sure. They’ll take your money. But otherwise you might as well not be there at all.
It sounds like a lonely way to live, Marcel says. He tilts his head at the crowd in the bar. No wonder they stick to their own. You wouldn’t know it’s not Manhattan.
It can be, Ford says. But that’s not necessarily such a bad thing.
On the way back to the hotel Marcel stops the taxi on Kennedy Road in Wan Chai, intending to walk the rest of the way. The driver gives him a knowing smile, and when he steps out of the car he realizes why: the street is a long line of girlie bars, with neon signs blinking overhead. Hollywood Club. Midnight Sauna Massage. La Fleur de Paris. He remembers, now, his uncle Bill telling a story of how he stayed in Wan Chai on the way home from Vietnam and gambled away a thousand dollars in a single night.
Hey! an old woman shouts at him in a hoarse voice. Michael Jordan! Hey, over here!
He ignores her, and takes the first right turn, walks a block, then left, and finds himself on a bustling market street. Stalls piled with mounds of oranges, cabbages, mushrooms; dried squid hanging like fans from a wire. The air is filled with a sharp, sour smell, of fish and dirt and rotting vegetables; he finds it oddly comforting.