by Matt Wallace
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For escapists like me who still need a fictional America that somehow manages to be more ludicrous than our real one.
PART I
WEEKLY ROUNDS
STOP ONE: CHINATOWN
Lena hasn’t visited Canal Street much since moving to the city. Most of her excursions outside her own neighborhood revolve around collecting ingredients and product for cooking, and she rarely attempts Chinese dishes. She hasn’t had any professional call for it, either. The mid-range kitchens in which she and Darren first worked in New York were all muddled American fare. Their brief foray into working on high-end restaurant lines at Porto Fiero largely saw them preparing Italian fusion appetizers (although you never used the word “fusion” around the executive chef).
Bronko pilots one half of Sin du Jour’s catering van fleet, such as it is, through the narrow side streets off Canal, rolling over uneven cobbling from another century. The size of the passenger’s seat in the commercial van and the chasm of space between herself and Bronko make Lena feel impossibly small.
Outside her window, Manhattan’s Chinatown is still very much what it has always been, despite being held in a vise grip by three of the most expensively and newly gentrified neighborhoods in the city: Soho to the north, the Financial District to the south, and, to the west, Tribeca. Sure, there are restaurants that have closed due to rent hikes. There are new hotels and luxury condos rising in the periphery. But between Delancey and Chambers, between East Broadway and Broadway, Chinatown remains the city within a city that was last transformed by the great deluge of Hong Kong immigrants in the sixties and seventies.
The same low-income residents still crew their small family storefronts and occupy their modest apartment buildings. The district has managed to repel the corporate hordes partly because Chinatown still feeds the rest of the city. As much new money as old is spent in its myriad century-old restaurants and on its imported cuisine. Another factor leading to its preservation is that immigrants have never stopped seeking a new life within its borders; they’re still arriving from the East every week, and still upholding the traditions and ideals of their predecessors.
But the biggest reason Chinatown has largely resisted the great injection of hipster botulism stretching and smoothing the face of the rest of the city is the same reason the neighborhood was founded in the first place. Chinatown remains Chinatown because of the people who built it and their children who saw it to fruition, because they own the place, and finally and most powerfully, because they want it that way.
Bronko explains all of this to Lena despite the fact she never asked. It’s not that she isn’t interested; it’s simply that Lena is still confused by both the reason for this outing and his half-inviting, half-ordering her to accompany him. Bronko made it clear this wasn’t related to an event Sin du Jour is catering. He simply told her to get in the van because he had “weekly rounds” to make and needed her help.
As the old van shambles through the heart of Chinatown, informed eyes can spot the dialect changes as new arrivals flood the district from the rural areas of Mandarin-speaking Fujian province in southeastern China. Lena, of course, can’t tell one from the other. The small storefront before which the van finally halts is practically barricaded with angular signs. The Cantonese characters hand-painted on each have been fading into the cheap wood for decades at least.
“First stop,” Bronko announces. “Everybody out.”
Lena looks behind them at the large cargo space of the van that is mostly bereft of equipment and completely bereft of any personnel besides her.
“Uh, sure, Chef,” she says, unbuckling her seat belt.
By the time Lena has hopped down from the passenger’s side, Bronko has already trekked around and is opening the van’s rear cargo doors. She trots to catch up, just in time to see him grunting as he removes a large cooler from the back of the van and place it as gingerly as possible on the sidewalk.
“What’s in there, Chef?” Lena asks.
“Lunch.”
Her brow furrows. “Whose?”
Bronko doesn’t answer. Instead, he instructs her to grab one end of the cooler, which she does. It’s heavy enough to be filled with several cases of beer.
The storefront’s interior seems to suck any intruding daylight into its murky, dust-filled corners. It appears to be a secondhand furnishings shop. There are rows of particleboard shelves filled with out-of-box appliances and used cookware. Chairs, not a single one matching another, are stacked awkwardly, even perilously, almost to the ceiling. Several larger pieces of furniture have large handwritten price tags tied to them. Several well-maintained layers of undisturbed dust cover everything.
The place doesn’t smell like a junk shop, however. That’s the second thing Lena picks up on. The scents that assault her nostrils, earthen and bitter and something else entirely that’s almost antiseptic. They’re not quite culinary smells, and yet they’re nothing like anything Lena’s nose has experienced in Boosha’s otherworldly apothecary back at Sin du Jour.
“What am I smelling, Chef?”
“Nothin’ anyone born on this side of the world would recognize,” Bronko informs her. “Nobody from the other side of the world born in the last thousand years would either, for that matter.”
A strong swell in Lena wants to demand what the hell that means, but she crushes it down. However frustrating she still finds the world in which they operate, Bronko is still the executive chef, and Lena is still Lena. On the line or on a battlefield, she’s a soldier. She follows the chain of command.
An elderly Chinese man, perhaps in his late seventies or early eighties, enters from whatever occupies the space beyond the back of the shop. He’s wearing a Hall & Oates concert T-shirt from 1977 that appears ready to disintegrate at will on his small frame, twill trousers that are probably from the same era, and a pair of dirty sneakers. A few wisps of steel-gray hair still cling to his spotted, wrinkled scalp. Eyes that are undeniably sharp and shine amber even in the low light stare at them with open skepticism.
“Tarr, meet Mr. Mok,” Bronko says, motioning at the small figure, “owner and proprietor of this fine establishment.”
Lena opens her mouth to greet him but is unable to get a word out before the old man shoves a finger two inches from Bronko’s bulbous nose and begins shouting at him in severe-sounding Cantonese.
Bronko responds by setting down his end of the cooler and holding up his hands in the universal gesture of placation. To Lena’s surprise, he also begins speaking what sounds to her admittedly uneducated Western ears like perfectly fluent Cantonese.
She does, however, quickly realize the conversation revolves around her, in whatever language they’re choosing to have it.
The discussion ends with Bronko breaking back into English to insist, “Dammit, Mok, I said she’s cool, all right? Let it go.”
Mr. Mok falls silent, but he’s still staring daggers up at Bronko. He’s half the head chef’s size and twice his age, yet in that moment, Lena isn’t sure who’d be left standing if they chose to go at it with fists i
nstead of words.
Fortunately, in the end the old man just nods, once, sharp and final. He turns his fierce amber eyes on Lena.
“Welcome,” he greets her, his accent thick but the word deliberate and clear.
Lena finds she can only nod in return.
Bronko flashes her a “your eyes only” look that is drenched in exasperation for the old man, but Lena can tell the pair of them have a long-standing relationship. There’s an obvious familiarity there, even a bond. She imagines they go through a form of this exchange every time they meet.
Bronko takes up his end of the cooler and Mr. Mok leads them across the shop and through a beaded curtain separating the front of the store from a back room. It’s crammed to the gills with more secondhand junk, everything from children’s Big Wheels to home fry cookers stained with petrified grease, and none of it sorted in any particular order, at least to the casual observer.
In the corner of the small cluttered space, four other elderly Chinese people, two men and two women, are seated around a circular wooden table. As Lena enters behind Mok and Bronko, she’s immediately intrigued by two things: the first is that all four of them appear to be wearing the exact same Hall & Oates concert T-shirt that Mr. Mok wears, and the second thing is they’re all enthusiastically engaged in a board game.
More than that, it’s an English board game, something called A Touch of Evil, and judging purely at first glance, it’s more elaborate than any of the board games like Clue Lena was forced to play as a child.
There are in fact two full shelves adjoining the corner behind them that are filled with colorful boxes of all shapes and sizes, containing dozens upon dozens of board games. Many are illustrated with Cantonese and Mandarin characters, while others are English editions. Judging from the size of some of them, they’re even more elaborate than the one spilled all over the tabletop now.
The foursome doesn’t stir, doesn’t even stop play, as Bronko follows Mok into the space. As soon as they become aware of Lena’s presence, however, the game immediately ceases and the entire mood of the room changes. One of the couples stands with a spryness defying their advanced years, while the other two turn in their seats, no less at the ready.
Lena isn’t sure what she feels in the next moment. It’s as if the barometric pressure in the air abruptly shifts, and something like electricity touches the surface of her skin, raising microscopic hairs. It’s as if the actual environment in the room has turned against her.
She’ll realize later what she felt in that moment was power: power emanating from that table and those people, power attached to an intangible “ready” switch that was suddenly flipped when she walked into their space.
Lena will hope she never experiences that power’s “on” switch.
Mok holds up his withered hands, repeating the same word in Cantonese several times. Then, in a loud and careful mockery of Bronko, he gives them two thumbs-up and says, “She cooooool.”
The foursome around the table immediately relaxes, and the physical effects permeating Lena’s body recede as the air in the room returns to normal.
The Chinese contingent, including and especially Mr. Mok, all laugh, not at Lena but at Bronko.
“Assholes,” Bronko mutters under his breath.
The foursome returns to their game, and Mr. Mok apparently doesn’t feel the need to introduce any of them to Lena. Instead, he walks past their table to a dark depression amid the wall-to-wall junk. Lena realizes it’s actually a small door at the top of a staircase.
The steps are earth-covered stone, lit by work lights hung from the low ceiling and, in the absence of those, old Christmas lights strung along the wall. The stairs descend longer and farther than Lena thinks possible. There are several offshoots along the way, small nooks opening from the side of the staircase into lighted rooms. The trio never pauses long enough for Lena to register more than brief flashes of each.
In one room she glimpses several young people in flowing multicolored robes doing what Lena registers as hand-to-hand combat training. There are glints of light on the steel of weapons, broadswords and Chinese hooks. In another room, the corner of Lena’s eye catches the back of a white-haired woman or man’s head as they kneel in prayer before an altar adorned with green plants and carved stone.
By the time they reach the very bottom, Lena has counted over two hundred steps and her breathing has become labored. The air feels a lot thinner wherever in the bowels of the Earth she’s found herself.
“You okay, Tarr?” Bronko asks without looking over his shoulder at her.
“Check rog,” she answers, trying to filter out the bitterness before it bleeds into her words.
The subterranean chamber into which the staircase opens is more like an elegantly finished basement in a home from the 1970s. The walls are paneled with a dark, richly textured fake wood. Several cabinets and chests of drawers line them. A lush Oriental rug covers most of the laminate floor. It’s bare except for a small, ornate table in the center of room upon which incense is burning. Lena smells lilies and something sweet like anise.
“Over here,” Bronko instructs her, guiding the heavy cooler across the room.
They place it on the rug in front of a gargantuan, hand-carved bamboo armoire that obscures most of one of the room’s walls. Its closed doors are large enough to fit a MINI Cooper. Each side has large Cantonese characters carved upon it.
“Are we serving down here, or—” Lena begins to ask, only to have Bronko put a thick finger to his lips to silence her.
He points to the adjacent wall. Mr. Mok is rummaging through one of the room’s many chests of drawers. As they watch, the old man carefully removes and dons a pure white linen Wudang over his vintage rock T-shirt and trousers. A black-and-gold sash is then deftly slipped over that. He fits a hexagonal hat of dark silk over his small, mottled head and finishes by removing his sneakers and replacing them with soft, pure white slippers.
The last thing he removes from the drawers is a rolled-up rug, which he carries with him and unfurls between Bronko and Lena, directly in front of the armoire doors.
Lena isn’t sure whether she’s more intrigued or apprehensive as she watches Mr. Mok kneel upon the rug and raise his arms, beginning to recite a deep, almost lyric prayer to some unseen power.
She looks over at Bronko, who smiles reassuringly back at her.
It helps a little.
When Mr. Mok finishes reciting the incantation, or whatever it may be, he motions impatiently at them both.
Lena again looks to Bronko for a sign of what to do. In answer, he gestures at the doors of the armoire, grasping the handle of the one closest to him.
Lena does the same, gripping the handle of the door on her side. When he gives her the nod, she pulls it open. It’s heavier than she would’ve thought, and Lena actually has to use her other hand to help move it the rest of the way.
An inhuman squawking greets them all as she and Bronko push the doors aside, and Lena quickly realizes the armoire houses a terrarium of some kind. She also immediately sees that the armoire is just a façade, and the glassed-in enclosure it conceals recedes far back into the wall of the room, as well as high above the ceiling. It’s an entire cavernous hollow beneath the street into which someone has built a small window. The cavern is filled with cane stocks and lush green foliage, dripping with moisture from a top-of-the-line irrigation system erected throughout the habitat. Dark, flat, craggy rocks have also been planted in the soft soil that fills the bottom of the enclosure.
The creatures are the size of small ponies. They’re mostly birds, except for sections of their sleek bodies that appear armored, almost like turtle shell. Shining gold feathers with splashes of fiery red cover the majority of their bodies, including their long necks and dagger-shaped wings. Long, hooked beaks the same orange-speckled brown of their exoskeleton dominate their small skulls, each one topped with strands of flowing red plumage that fall across disturbingly human eyes.
Ther
e are two of them, grooming each other lazily there upon the rocks. One is slightly larger than the other, but beyond that small difference, Lena would be hard-pressed to tell them apart.
Upon spotting Bronko, they leap down from the rocks, squawking merrily, and press the curved tips of their beaks to milk saucer–sized holes in the glass separating them.
“Larry and Mary, my Chinese eagles,” Bronko greets them warmly, letting them nip affectionately at his fingertips through the glass.
“Not eagles!” Mr. Mok insists. “And that not their names! I tell you every time!”
“Welp, until you give ’em names, they seem to like Larry and Mary just fine,” Bronko tells him, undisturbed.
“Not the place of mortals to name them!”
Mr. Mok follows the brief tirade by launching into a stream of angry, accusing Cantonese.
Bronko ignores him, looking at Lena.
“It’s feedin’ time.”
Lena nods. She’d deduced that much by now.
“What are we feeding here, Chef?”
“Fenghuang,” Mr. Mok answers for him.
Lena just blinks at him. “Okay, but that doesn’t really help me—”
He gestures grandly to the birdlike creature on the left. “Feng!” Mok declares, enunciating slowly and exasperatedly as if to a small, slow child. Then, sweeping his arms toward its counterpart: “Huang!”
“Boy and girl,” Bronko explains. “Or, y’know, male and female, if you wanna be literal. They’re known as the Chinese phoenix. Only no fire.”
“What are they, though?” Lena asks, her own patience bottoming out.
“Protectors.”
“Of what?”
Bronko takes a deep breath, then shrugs. He seems at a loss.
“Balance, I guess. I’m just a li’l ol’ hick from Beeville, Texas; the higher mysteries of Chinese spirituality and whatnot are slightly above my pay grade.”
“Right,” Lena says. “A hick who speaks fluent Chinese.”
