Chinese Cooking for Diamond Thieves (3 page)

She followed me out to the lot behind us, tossed her duffle into the rear of the car, and sat in the passenger seat, clicking on her seat belt.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

I backed out of the spot and threaded through the parking lot to the exit back out onto I-93. “St. Louis, Missouri,” I said, “by way of Massachusetts. How about you?”

“Buffalo, New York. By way of any way I can get there.”

I was curious about why anyone would be going to Buffalo in January. Or to Buffalo, come to think of it, in any month of the year. I didn't really want to go into why I was going to St. Louis, though. No reason not to go into it. It wasn't a secret. It just seemed a little complicated and, if I thought about it too much, a little too “undefined.” So I didn't pursue the topic. Before I'd even gotten the car up to highway speed, she tilted her head back onto the seat rest and closed her eyes. I drove south.

Rule #3: Incredibly beautiful, exotic Asian babes are almost never psycho ax murderers.

 

“Wally Reed?” she asked.

I glanced over at her. She'd been sleeping, her breathing slow and deep and steady, for over an hour. It was night now. Full-on dark. Snow had started falling not long after we'd left the rest stop, snow that had begun to alternate with a sleety, freezing rain that peppered the top of the car with a soft patter. We were stopped, along with the five sets of taillights I could see in front of us. Beyond them flashed rotating wheels of red that I assumed had a state police car under them. The dashboard lights lit up the side of her face as she turned to me. The rest of it was in shadow. She hadn't taken off her knit stocking cap. “You said I thought you might be a Wally Reed.”

“Yeah, Walter Reed,” I said. “You ever hear of him?”

She paused and thought for a minute. “The doctor? The one who went to Cuba or someplace back during the Spanish-American War; discovered the cause of—” She stopped. “Ohhh. I get it.”

It was quiet some more. “That's a good one,” she said finally. “Yellow fever.”

“Sure,” I said. “What do you call them?”

“Gee-Gees.”

“Gee-Gees?”

“Acronym,” she said. “Stands for ‘Geisha Guys.' Guys who have a thing for Asian girls. Guys who have, as you put it, ‘Yellow Fever.'”

“A trifle creepy.”

“We still haven't established that you aren't one of them,” she said.

“I haven't asked you to give me a massage.”

“Or to pour you some sake.”

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

“Nope,” she said. “You?”

I shook my head.

“Yeah, given that banquet I saw you indulge in back at the rest stop, I can see why not,” she said.

“A sound diet is the cornerstone to a healthy life.”

She rubbed her face briskly, with both hands. “Why are we stopped?” she asked.

“Moose would be my guess,” I said.

“Moose?”

“Moose. Somebody probably hit one crossing the road.”

“Does traffic stop for the funeral?”

“Ever see a moose?” I asked.

“Not that I know of.”

“You'd know it,” I said. “They're big. Hit one with a car and you'll take him out, pretty messily, and do about the same to your car. The combined mess of moose and machine tends to shut down the road until they can get a tow truck out to haul off the car and the moose.”

“Where are we?” she asked, covering an impressive yawn.

“Getting close to New Hampton,” I said. “You were asleep all through the middle of the White Mountains.”

“Were they scenic?” she asked.

“Spectacular,” I said, “though arguably not so much when it's pitch-black.”

From behind our car, from our right, I saw more flashing, moving slowly off on the side of the road, that came close and turned out to be another highway patrol car. It slowed, then stopped beside us, and I leaned over when my new friend rolled down her window. The patrolman had lowered his as well.

“Moose?” I asked.

“Moose.” Then he added, “Road's starting to ice up too. Going far?”

“Mass,” I said.

“Why?” he asked.

I grinned. There was not a lot of love lost between Massachusetts and New Hampshire. People in the latter tended to regard people in the former as thoughtless littering jerks who used New Hampshire as their backyard playground. On the other hand, people in Massachusetts, too many of them, were famous for thinking of New Hampshire as, well, their backyard playground.

“Hauling a load of the trash they left back down to dump on their lawns,” I said.

He grinned back. “Good,” he said. “But you might want to take a break. Salt trucks are coming this way. Be easier driving after they're through.” He waved. The line of traffic in front of us had started moving. There was enough snow and ice on the road that I could hear it crunching beneath the tires. We passed the moose—its mortal remains anyway—that was on the side of the road next to a pickup truck. Given the shape of the front panel of the truck, the moose had done some customizing work on it.

“Wow,” she said. “They are big.” She yawned.

When she yawned again, I asked, “Tired?”

“Yep,” she said. “I was mostly pretending to sleep, waiting to see if you were going to try to molest me.”

“Same here. Only I was just pretending to be driving. Next rest stop, do you mind if we pull off and sleep for a while?”

“Oh,
now
it gets weird.”

“Only if you can contain your natural impulses to throw yourself on the first sensitive but manly American guy who picks you up at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere,” I said. “Besides, you heard the highway patrol guy. If we wait until the salt trucks come through, the road'll be in better shape.”

I slowed and eased off the highway and came up the ramp that led to the rest stop parking lot. There were separate spaces for trucks and cars, and I wanted to park as far away as possible from the row of throbbing diesels idling in the truck lot. But I didn't want it to look like I was driving us off into the shadows too deeply, away from all the other cars and trucks. That could have seemed a bit weird. So I nosed the Toyota up against the curb close to the restrooms and the covered pavilion that held the snack and soda machines.

“You go first,” I said, pushing my chin toward the restrooms. “I'll stay with the car.”

She opened the door. “There are some snack machines over there,” she said. “Want me to get you another course in your banquet?”

“Pass.”

When she returned, I took my turn. I washed my hands and face in the sink and brushed my teeth. Time to tuck myself in for beddy-bye. At an interstate rest stop. Alongside what was basically a hitchhiker I had picked up randomly. At another rest stop. I didn't think this was taking me in exactly the sort of life direction my counselor back at Beddingfield would have approved of.

We pulled the levers to make both front seats recline back as far as they could, which is, in a Toyota, nowhere near comfortable or conducive to sleep. I offered her the sleeping bag. She took it, unzipped it, and tossed it over herself. I had on a pair of silk underwear I used to ski in, heavy corduroy pants, a cotton shirt, and a knit sweater. I threw my parka over me. It was full of some fluffy material guaranteed to keep me warm on most of the mountain slopes of the Himalayas and to wick away moisture like a sponge. It didn't, however, have much going for it in the way of bedclothes. As long as I was warm, though, I'd be able to sleep. I burrowed my way into the seat and rolled onto my side. The trucks hadn't gotten any quieter.

“How do you know I'm not a psycho ax murderer who's going to castrate you in your sleep?” she asked me, after we'd both rustled around a bit and found what seemed like the most comfortable places to be and had been still for a while. I could tell from the sound of her voice that she'd pulled the bag up around her head.

“Be a clear violation of the rules,” I said.

“Rules?”

“I have some rules,” I said. “They're pretty dependable.”

“Which rule covers this?” she asked. She'd sat up.

“Number three,” I said, rolling over. “Rule Number Three is that incredibly beautiful, exotic Asian babes are almost never psycho ax murderers.”

“Oh,” she said. She lay back down. It was quiet, except for the rumbling engines of the trucks in the lot beside us and another going by on the highway right then that changed gears with a throaty growl.

“I'm curious about what Rules Number One and Two might be,” she said.

“Stick around,” I said. I rolled back again and faced the door handle and closed my eyes. I'd figured, with the combination of the truck noise, the sodium lights in the parking lot casting sickly yellow shadows, and the oddness of having a complete stranger lying next to me, that it would take time to go to sleep. I was wrong.

I woke up to a truck horn blasting and, simultaneously, the sun coming up just enough to edge over the side of the car and hit me right in the eyes. I tried to burrow deeper into my parka. My arms had twisted around and wadded it, and it wouldn't go any higher. I kicked around a couple of times before giving up and rolling over onto my back. She was already awake, sitting up, looking at the frosted interior of the windshield. All the windows in the car were covered in an icy rime. It was the view beer must have from inside a frosted mug.

“Exotic?” she said.

“Huh?”

“Last night you described me as—I think I am quoting you correctly here—an ‘incredibly beautiful, exotic Asian babe.'”

“So you're objecting to ‘exotic' but not to the other stuff?” I asked.

“I did find the ‘Asian babe' reference to be simultaneously sexist and racist,” she said.

“I can't tell you how deeply sorry I am,” I said. “I'm very poor at apologizing for the inherent racism of my breed. I can only blame it on our natural genetic superiority.”

“Yeah,” she said. She rubbed her face with both hands and pulled her hair back. It was longer and a glossier black than it had seemed last night. “Whatever.”

“Did you sleep okay?” I asked her.

She nodded. “You?”

“I tossed and turned a little bit,” I said. “I was trying to figure out how you could use an ax to castrate someone.”

“Likely there would be a lot of collateral damage in the process.”

“I prefer not to think about it,” I said. “I'd rather think about breakfast.”

She polished the window on her side of the car with her fist, clearing a little, golf ball–size hole through some of the frost. She peered out.

“I'm guessing room service is out of the question,” she said.

We opened the doors and stiffly stepped outside. It hadn't gotten any warmer. The morning air was so sharp it seemed brittle. Our exhalations exploded in clouds of steam. The snow and sleet had stopped. There was just a dirty white crust on the ground. I could see a long hump of snow out on the side of the highway. The plows must have come through while we slept. There was a kink in my neck that wasn't going away soon, and a sore spot on my right hip where I'd laid on the loose seat belt buckle part of the night. I had never spent the night in a car. I wasn't looking forward to doing it again.

“Think this part of the New Hampshire interstate might have some places where we can get a bowl of
zhou
and a side of crispy
youtiao?
” I asked her. The thought of a classic Chinese breakfast of hot soupy, fragrant rice with toasted bread sticks made my stomach grumble.

“I'd settle for waffles,” she said.

“Wow,” I said. “You
are
exotic.”

Rule #60: You can go home again, although the place might be slightly dusty.

 

We stopped at a gas station, where we took care of the Toyota's dietary needs and then walked across the lot to fill ourselves at a restaurant. She glanced at the menu after we sat down. “Would you order for me?” she said. “I need to—uh—‘freshen up.'” She told me what she wanted and disappeared in the direction of the restrooms. I ordered. Waffles for her. With blueberry syrup. Scrambled eggs for me. I looked out the window. The sky was a bright blue bowl. The sun was harsh, with a chilly light. Cars pulling out of the gas station belched out wisps of steam from their mufflers. I rubbed my hand over my cheeks and felt the stubble. I'd shaved last at Chris's place. I needed to again.

She came back to the booth and saw me brushing my fingers along my chin.

“You could use a little freshening up yourself,” she said.

It was an odd thing to say. But I was distracted. It was the first time I'd seen her with her hair combed, without the stocking cap. Her hair was blue-black, long and straight. She wasn't pretty. She wasn't anything like the China doll she'd mentioned last night. She wasn't ugly, either. Or even homely. Her face was long, with high cheekbones. She didn't look like a Han, the most common ethnic Chinese. She looked a little Mongolian. I realized I didn't know her name. I decided not to ask. She hadn't exactly been a fount of information about herself. Maybe she had her reasons. If she wanted me to know, I concluded, she'd tell me.

“We'll be in Andover before noon,” I said. “I'm thinking of freshening up there, with about a one-hour hot shower.”

“What's in Andover?” she asked.

“It's where my parents live,” I said. “It's where I grew up.”

“So now that we've slept together, you're taking me home to meet the folks,” she said. Which I also thought was a weird thing to say.

“The folks won't be there,” I said. I told her about the trip. My parents and two other couples they'd known since their college days had been talking, ever since those days, about a sailing cruise around Indonesia. They finally decided if they didn't do it soon, they weren't ever going to. So they did. They rented a fifty-foot ketch and the captain who came with it, and they became the crew. They would be on the high seas until spring or until, as my mother said, they were taken captive by Indonesian pirates.