by Charles Yu
* * *
—
BLACK AND WHITE. Two cops, one of each race. In the opening credits they drive around in a black-and-white police car, even though they’re detectives. Which doesn’t make sense. Often neither does the plot nor the motivations of the characters, nor the backstory, nor any of it, if you think too hard, which means thinking about it for more than the time spent watching it. But the template works, and you don’t mess with a working template.
Sometimes there’s a Floating Latina. They put her on marketing materials in select demographically targeted neighborhoods. Technically on the poster, but not where your eye lands. She’s off to the side, her head near the edge, smaller than those of Black and White (and thus, through the magic of forced perspective, rendered a good ways behind the two leads). Her pretty face hovering in a sea of abstract space.
* * *
—
There’s a pattern, a form, a certain shape to it all. The idea that any problem, no matter how messy and blood-spattered, from EXT. STREET to INT. OFFICE or INT. CRIME LAB or INT. CHINESE RESTAURANT, any blight or societal ill, any crime of hate or intolerance, can be wrapped into the template. The idea that there are clues, and the clues can be discovered and understood, at a reasonable pace, i.e., one major breakthrough or setback for every commercial break, with each act a new understanding of the problem. That they, our heroes, can get to the bottom of things, and in the end, it’s human nature (jealousy and treachery and, you know, murder). A strangely optimistic idea. A deeply ingrained hope that they, Black and White, will be able to face that danger, get a handle on it. Downtown may be gritty and dark and full of evil but on some level an unspoken belief, a faith that we live in a manageable world with its own episodic rules and conventions:
Life takes place one hour at a time.
Clues present themselves in order, one at a time.
Two investigators, properly paired, can solve any mystery.
And there’s just something about Asians—their faces, their skin color—it just automatically takes you out of this reality. Forces you to step back and say, Whoa, whoa, what is this? What kind of world are we in? And what are these Asians doing in my cop show?
There’s just something about Asians that makes reality a little too real, overcomplicates the clarity, the duality, the clean elegance of BLACK and WHITE, the proven template and so the decision is made not in some overarching conspiracy to exclude Asians but because it’s just easier to keep it how we have it. Two cops roaming the city. The precinct, the car, the bar after work. The decision is made but it’s not a decision at all, it’s the opposite. It’s the way things are. You do the cop show. You get your little check. You wonder: Can you change it? Can you be the one who actually breaks through?
INT. GOLDEN PALACE CHINESE RESTAURANT—TAKE TWO
Dead Asian Guy, still dead.
WHITE LADY COP
He’s dead.
BLACK DUDE COP
Mmhmm.
WHITE LADY COP
So we have a body.
BLACK DUDE COP
We have a body.
CLOSE ON: White Lady Cop.
SARAH GREEN, 31
pretty but tough but emphasis on the pretty. Smart cookie. Good at her job. Great at her job. Came from a broken home, worked her way up to become the most respected detective on the force. Hair pulled back in a ponytail, suggesting general competence with the handling of her weapon and herself and also that she’s the kind of gal that orders draft beer if it’s available and is not averse to glancing at the sports section if it happens to be lying around. That kind of gal. Also, pretty. In case that wasn’t clear already. Very very pretty.
GREEN
(gazing at a dead Chinaman)
What are we looking at?
BLACK DUDE COP
Family drama, probably.
(pause for effect; chimes in the distance, vaguely Oriental)
Some kind of cultural thing.
CLOSE ON: Black Dude Cop.
MILES TURNER, 33.
Tall and built. Really built. Like, if-gray-T-shirts-hadn’t-been-invented-already-they-would-have-to-be-invented-just-so-Miles-could-wear-the-shit-out-of-them built. That kind of built.
Fade tight, edges perfect, skin flawless. Distractingly handsome. Yale then Goldman then a hedge fund, on his way to even bigger things when his father, twenty-seven-year veteran of the NYPD, was killed in the line of duty. Entered the academy the day after his dad’s funeral, graduated top of his class. Been on the force ever since—going on eleven years now, but starting to get antsy.
Youngest in department history to ever make detective (recruited by the FBI, as well as several NYC billionaires to head private security). Cops don’t usually get this famous, but then again Miles Turner is no ordinary cop. Everyone wants a piece of him. Currently weighing his options, but can’t bring himself to tell Green yet. They’re a team—and, considering the smoldering looks—maybe something more?
TURNER
(sexy whisper)
You hear something?
You’re off to the side watching all of this. A spectator.
Black and White both turn to look offscreen, peering into the darkness, their faces lit perfectly. But there’s nothing there. Then:
GREEN
Miles.
TURNER
What?
A sound, from deep background, in the alleyway—richly audible sound effects.
In the shadows is OLD ASIAN MAN, 70s.
Turner draws his weapon, steady and calm. Green draws her piece as well, flicks the safety off, finger on the trigger. She looks uncharacteristically nervous.
TURNER
Who’s there?
GREEN
Hands where we can see them.
They’re going to shoot him. You have to say something. But how can you? You don’t have any lines.
Old Asian Man steps into the light. Turner sees him just in time.
TURNER
No!
Green lowers her weapon, breathing heavily. Turner clenches his jaw.
GREEN
Thank you, Miles.
They share a meaningful look—this is the heart of Black and White, right here, how their partnership evolves, and of course, all this sexy eye contact.
In front of them is the person Green almost shot: Old Asian Man, pushing a cart full of plastic bottles.
Turner shifts his weight, nervous.
GREEN
Sir?
TURNER
(to Green)
I don’t think he understands you.
Turner turns toward Old Asian Man, stoops down a little.
TURNER (CONT’D)
(little too loud)
Do you understand me?
OLD ASIAN MAN
(without accent)
Yeah, man. I speak English.
Old Asian Man turns to you and smiles.
Green laughs. Turner, pissed, looks at the director.
The director yells CUT.
Ever since you were a boy, you’ve dreamt of being Kung Fu Guy.
You’re not Kung Fu Guy.
But maybe, just maybe, tomorrow will be the day.
INT. CHINATOWN SRO
Home is a room on the eighth floor of the Chinatown SRO Apartments. Open a window in the SRO on a summer night and you can hear at least five dialects being spoken, the voices bouncing up and down the central interior courtyard, the courtyard in reality just a vertical column of interior-facing windows, also serving as the community clothes drying space, crisscrossing lines of kung fu pants for all the Generic Asian Men, and for the Nameless Asian Wome
n, cheap knockoff qipaos, slit high up the thigh, or a bit more modest for Matronly Asian Ladies, terrycloth bibs for Undernourished Asian Babies, often shown in montages, and of course don’t forget the granny panties and soiled A-shirts for Old Asian Women and Old Asian Men, respectively. This interior space also acting as a conduit for information via the invisible, complex, and (to an outsider) incomprehensible inter-window messaging system for the building, which works in real time and is lower than the lowest of tech—basically you point your face in the general direction of the person you want to communicate with and you yell at them what you want them to know. Somehow, despite the cacophony (or because of it) your recipient usually gets the message.
In the long tradition of immigrants living above their place of work, the SRO sits on top of Golden Palace. It goes: ground floor restaurant, the mezzanine for offices, then seven more floors of SRO living—fifteen single-room apartments per floor, a small bathroom with shower and toilet at the end of the hall. Noises and odors from the kitchen never stop pushing up from below, day and night, year-round (even on Thanksgiving and Christmas), so that when you’re sleeping you are, in a way, still inside the restaurant. You never really leave Golden Palace, even in your dreams.
INT. CHINATOWN SRO—STAIRWELL—NIGHT
As you climb the stairs to your room, you pass by every floor, each one its own ecosystem, its own set of rules and territories.
The second floor is where your folks live. You should stop in. It would make her happy. Not that she would show it. Not that she would smile. More likely a scowl. You should be a better son. For a moment. But it won’t be a moment. It’ll be more. It will be guilt and that heavy feeling, it will be a deep sigh, it will be heavy and unspoken and you don’t know if you can do that right now.
The Cheuks live on three. Have lived in the SRO as long as your parents have. A daughter, who was smart, but ended up working downstairs, and a son, Tony Cheuk, who was luckier, was born a boy and had a chance to move to the city so he did, a good son who sent money and packages of food; when you were a kid, a Generic Asian Boy, you’d wander by their door, hoping to catch him on the right day and you might get lucky. Tony might give you an almond cookie from Phoenix Bakery or slip you a buck or two just to show off.
There’s no fourth floor. Four is very bad. Four sounds like death.
Five is where the Hostess lives (20s, pretty, exotic)—she plays prostitutes so often the women here have shunned her, and the men and older boys hold doors open for her and say how can she be blamed for her beauty, while trying hard not to look too close, her skintight cheongsam hugging every curve. Also on five is the Casino, which is really just a room shared by three Asian Gangsters (late teens to mid-20s, tattoos, their stringy muscles and bony frames not quite filling out their crisp white undershirts; always smoking, even in their sleep).
Sixth floor is where the Monk lives—he hasn’t spoken a word in forty years. Older Brother’s room was down the hall from the Monk’s. He was the only person the Monk would allow, their rooms on opposite ends of the floor.
On seven lives the Emperor. No kid is brave enough to knock on the Emperor’s door. Legend has it that, many years ago, the Emperor played, well, an emperor. Ming Dynasty, imperial guards and everything (although by middle school most kids hear the full story, which is that the Emperor was the emperor as in Emperor’s Delight, a brand of frozen Oriental Cuisine TV dinners—siu mai and har gow in just two minutes. Steamed buns in three. Just poke holes in the top with your fork, place in the microwave, and in no time you’ll be ready to feast like the Emperor himself.
The Emperor’s job was to present these plastic trays of steaming delicacies to a family of blond people somewhere in the middle of America, and then bow to them, while off-screen, in the shadows, a gong sounded (and further off-screen, in the mists of history, you could hear the collective weeping of a civilization going back five thousand years). Afterward, the Emperor would get his check and spend it on beer and rice liquor, tipping glass after glass until he was drunk enough to laugh about it, until he was drunk enough that he didn’t feel shame or anything else, including his fingers and toes. Not that he had any need to be ashamed around the SRO. He had only admirers, and even today the Emperor has an imperial aura about him from that role, not to mention diminishing but nonnegligible residuals supporting his claim to the throne. A few extra bucks a month goes a long way in this building.
On the eighth floor, you find your mother, standing near your door.
“Have you eaten?”
“What? How did you?”
“Elevator,” she says.
“Ma. You know that thing is a death trap. No good thing has ever happened in that elevator.”
“You were almost born in there.”
“I’m not sure which way that goes.”
“You didn’t stop by,” she says, and instantly your face turns hot.
You hug her and are reminded of how much she has shrunk in recent years, the top of her head maybe reaching your collarbone, if she stands up straight.
“Got some food for you,” you say, handing her a plastic bag full of bah-chang.
“This is for me?”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t drop it off,” she says.
“I figured you’d come and get it eventually.”
“Real nice, Willis,” she says, but she takes it anyway. You see the scars on her sinewy wrist and forearm—twin belts of raised, darkened skin.
“There are a few different kinds in there. For Dad, too.”
She looks in the bag.
“Yeah. The ones I like. With the mushrooms?” She smiles. “Go see your dad later,” she says, more a request than a demand.
“How’s he doing?”
“Not great. Could use your help.”
“He won’t talk to me. Not like he used to.”
“Not that kind of help. He wants to move the bed over to the wall.”
“He doesn’t need me for that. The bed’s not even—” But then you see the way she is looking at you and you realize: she wouldn’t be asking if he could do it.
“Okay,” you say. “I’ll come down later.”
FLASHBACK: YOUR MOTHER
The earliest memories you have of her, she is Young Beautiful Oriental Woman.
She packs lunches for you, in her off-hours costume: floral print blouse, polyester bellbottoms. She crouches by the narrow strip that passes for counter space, assembling a small pian-tong, a kid’s lunch divided into neat compartments: in the main section, three boiled dumplings filled with ground pork and bits of ginger and chopped-up scallions. In the two smaller sections, a dollop of soft rice with yam, and a handful of slightly bruised grapes. She presses the lid down tight, wraps a large rubber band around it for good measure (you’re five, you’ll drop the box at least three times before you eat), and hands it to you.
You remember a hundred quiet dinners the two of you had, your father still at work. For dessert, more grapes or cubed cantaloupe if you’re lucky. If not, a Dixie cup of diluted fruit-punch-flavored Hi-C. Room temperature but you don’t care. You sip carefully, savoring each taste, and then when it’s almost gone, turn the cup all the way over until that last stubborn drop makes its way down the waxy inner surface onto your tongue. You take the last bite of your dinner and announce that you’re done. I’m full, you say, but in truth you want a little more and your mother knows it. She feeds you from her bowl. This close, you can smell her breath, sharp and almost sweet, vegetables and garlic. Telling you stories about how she first came to this country. Her dreams of what life would be here.
After dinner, she does the dishes in the communal sink down the hall, wipes them dry, and brings them back in the room, storing them under the table. (In an SRO you think in all three dimensions. A room isn’t a layout, a footprint, it’s a spa
ce, a volume, and when you start to understand that, you can’t believe how much volume there is in here. You hang things, and you hang things on those things. You stack and pile and cram, you make use of every available cubic unit of your life, not just a floor plan or a schematic. You find hidden spaces within a hollow object, a hamper or a laundry basket, a box of dried tea leaves, a cookie tin, things inside things inside things.)
After she cleans herself up a bit, she goes downstairs to work at Golden Palace. She works nights, mostly, and the timing is off—her start time an hour or two before your dad gets home. You have a routine: you are allowed to watch television for thirty minutes after Ma leaves, and then you put yourself to bed.
You remember waiting by the front door as she put on her work costume. You remember the moment after she’d gone for the night. When it was quiet. Her emotional energy draining from the room, her protective field slowly dissipating.
FLASHBACK
Your mother studies from a textbook. How to Make $1,000,000 in Real Estate. No experience or capital needed, just a few basic principles (location, location, location) and a willingness to work hard.
The Friday nights she doesn’t have work are the best. A couple minutes to eight, you look at her and she nods, and you click on the television to the kung fu show. The opening credits get your heart racing. The weary traveler. The white dude that they dressed up to look vaguely Asiatic. But you don’t care. You’re here for the sound effects. You’re here for the martial arts.
The steady rhythm of foot strikes, hand strikes, blows to the torso, blows to the head. Then the music kicks in, jarring dissonant strings, conflict in a minor key. Random gongs.
