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The infernal bell dinged again. Another paper slid over the line as Jack furiously chopped another onion and threw the pieces onto the griddle. And it wasn’t even the dinner rush yet. He grabbed some shredded meat from a waist-level tub and threw it onto the griddle with the onions. When did the onions turn black? Shit, the heat was so uneven. Cooking here was like playing Minesweeper. Jack wished he had a proper pan. A griddle didn’t let the marinade seep into the vegetables or the onions. It just simmered away with no edges to keep it contained. The tangy-sweet smell wafted up to him as the meat cooked on the metal surface in front of him. Pre-cooked, partially at least, but the customers here didn’t seem to mind. It was soaked in enough sugar and salt to render any more subtle flavors invisible. Jack grabbed a spice jar above his head (literally labeled “spice,” not quite sure what was inside, probably more salt,) and shook the contents over the spitting pile in front of him. He snatched the order slip from the rack above the griddle and impaled it onto a metal spike. Jack grabbed a plate from the shelf behind him, scooped up the pile, and dumped it unceremoniously onto the white enamel, then banged the plate onto the bar in front of him.
“Number 74!” he rang the bell with the heel of a greasy gloved hand. He rocked back onto his heels, trying to prevent the inevitable back ache that would come after his shift.
“One. One meal per shift,” his manager had told him on his first day. What a luxury. He’d brought antacid tablets after the first meal. It wasn’t the spice; it was the grease. Something about food being pre-processed and mass-produced made his stomach pour out unhealthy amounts of acid. But it was better than packing a lunch--there was no employee fridge or microwave, so no way to keep meat fresh or heat noodles. Every shift he’d try something different. Something new, something he hoped would excite him just a little. It hadn’t worked yet, but maybe another helping of the shredded pork he’d just prepared would do it. He chopped another onion for a double-helping, saving the rest for his break. He picked a green pepper out of a drawer to give it some color. Jack grabbed another few fistfuls of soggy pork from the tub--it felt warm, and it was supposed to be refrigerated, but he couldn’t step away from the line now.
He knew that on some level the peppers he bought at the store and the ones that arrived at the restaurant at 4am were the same. Came from the same farms, brought over on the same trucks. Maybe it was the boxes labeled “food service” that sapped the restaurant’s peppers of their flavor, leaving them tasting like different colors of banana peel. But at least it would look nice when he ate it. He scraped his half into a bowl and set it aside with a plate on top of it, then rocked back onto his heels again, bending his knees, trying to keep his spine from stiffening.
Chicken legs weren’t meant to be cooked on a flat griddle, but the next order was just that. Jack grabbed three out of their marinade--lemony, and actually cold to the touch--and snagged a fourth that he’d keep for himself. He placed a metal lid over the sizzling legs and stared over the counter. Some of the usual clientele--students, a few elderly couples eating dinner before it got dark. The real reason for the rush was the line of FoodPanda drivers waiting by the bussing station. A line of men wearing wet raincoats. Shit. Maybe the rain would let up later, but at this time of year, who could say.
As the last of that night’s customers left, Jack turned the griddle onto its highest setting and poured a bitter-smelling liquid over it. A vast cloud of acrid steam surrounded Jack’s head as the hot griddle evaporated the cleaning solution, filling his sinuses. It steamed and hissed and sputtered, caterpillars of foam tumbling towards the edges. He upended a bucket of water over the grill to rinse off the corrosive chemicals. Didn’t envy tomorrow’s first customers at all.
Jack yanked the heavy metal refrigerator door open. A small, mouse-shaped shadow flitted across the back wall into the corner. Jack pretended not to notice. A bead of sweat trailed along the line of his hairnet and into his ear, and the blast of cold air from the walk-in refrigerator made him shiver despite the heat of the kitchen.
He lifted a crate of canned tomatoes from the top shelf, yellow tins with pictures of fat red tomatoes on a vine. Why canned tomatoes needed to be in the refrigerator, Jack had no idea, but as he grasped the corners of the white milk crate, his left hand slipped and the crate fell on his foot. It stung, and then it throbbed. He guessed it would keep throbbing until he could sit down. It was close enough to quitting time. He’d manage. Jack hobbled out of the walk-in, carrying the crate of tomato cans and setting them on a nearby table for the prep team to start on the next morning.
He sat down on a second milk crate and finished the chicken leg he’d saved earlier. A bit salty, but better than the soup he’d tried yesterday.
A letter to Tang Yi was already half-written in his head.
Hi Boss, it began.
I suppose you’re not my boss anymore. I didn’t imagine leaving my old line of work would be like this. It’s dull. And that’s its own kind of torture. You’d be horrified at the food we serve here. I was excited when I heard there was an opening at this restaurant, but I should have known better when they told me they didn’t care about all the gaps on my resume. Or that I didn’t have any real kitchen experience.
Zhaozi says I should be a bodyguard. For a policeman, he’s unusually into this Thai show about a mobster and his bodyguard. I tried an episode; it seemed a bit contrived, if I’m honest.
But I explained to Zhaozi that I wanted a job that was less dangerous. “Don’t you want me to come home in one piece every night?” Not that I’ve kept to that--I dropped sixteen cans of tomatoes on my foot today, so perhaps I’ve broken that promise.
So that’s my story of bettering myself.
How’s prison? Better food than I’m eating at work, I bet.
Jack
Jack placed his dishes into the dishwasher and squelched across the damp floor to the large trash barrel by the door. He unhooked the bag, tied the flaps together, and hoisted the bag over his shoulder. Praying it wouldn’t burst, Jack pushed his way out the door and hobbled out into the dark to the parking lot. His foot ached. The trash smelled foul. As he heaved the bag into the dumpster, he saw a familiar figure standing under a street light. A young man wearing a Burberry flannel and carrying an umbrella and a shopping bag. Zhaozi. He waved to Jack, and Jack returned the wave, a sudden energy returning to him.
“I can drive,” Zhaozi offered as Jack tossed his work shoes into a cubby and slowly put his boots on, “what happened to your foot?”
“I dropped some tomatoes on it. You don’t have your motorcycle license yet, and it’s raining outside.”
“I bet I could if I tried. I just haven’t taken the road test yet.”
Jacks’ foot did hurt.
One haphazard and horribly wet motorcycle ride later, Jack found himself back at home. Boots, coat, and helmet all hung by the door, dripping onto the doormat.
Zhaozi stood over the stove preparing some tea. It was nice to live with someone who took care of him. When he first started working at the restaurant, Jack worried he would lose his love of cooking. So far it hadn’t proven entirely true, but the exhaustion was enough to keep him from making a cup of tea as often as he used to.
Jack wondered when he’d first thought of Zhaozi’s house as home. He’d only been formally added onto the lease recently--the landlord required proof of income, and he hadn’t had anything legitimate until this job.
“You should elevate your foot so it doesn’t swell,” Zhaozi hollered from the kitchen. Zhaozi had been his home earlier than that. After his first shift, Jack had come home dejected. He was used to tough jobs, that wasn’t it. It was the sheer banality of his boss’s nagging and the rude customers and the fact that he wasn’t able to do anything about it.
He’d joined the Hsin Tien Group as a teenager and had never had to deal with the monotony of a “real job.” He knew that Tang Yi wanted to legitimize the group, but it had seemed far off. And his work with Interpol may have been legitimate, but nobody has a lifelong career as an Interpol informant. There weren’t many opportunities for advancement, and the job didn’t lend itself to long-term survival.
And that was something he had to think about now. Staying alive for more than another few months or years. People in his world didn’t retire. Not the men, at least. He and Tang Yi would be the first generation to do so successfully. If they succeeded.
Now that he lived with Zhaozi, “being responsible” meant something vastly different. It meant arriving home at a reasonable hour and saving some of his paycheck in an emergency fund. Before Zhaozi, “responsibility” meant covering his tracks and not pissing off the wrong people. There was still some of the latter in his job now, he thought.
***
Zhaozi’s precinct had been selected for Chen Wen Hao’s funeral. Of course it had. Zhaozi hadn’t really had plans for his Saturday, and Jack had to work the second shift.
The next morning, Zhaozi’s alarm beeped at 6. Zhaozi rolled out of bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes and yawning. Today was going to be a long day.
Zhaozi stood in front of the mirror, fiddling with a black silk tie that his new supervisor had thrown him the previous afternoon. This mob funeral had a dress code, and Zhaozi wondered briefly if he’d be dressed the same as the other attendees, or if the cops were dressing in a way that would single them out. He supposed there were positives to both approaches as he fingered the transparent wire that curled around his ear like a caterpillar.
Zhaozi had looked up a tutorial for how to tie a tie online the night before, but it was no use in his early morning delirium. Jack was at his side in moments. Even though he was stood in front of a mirror, Zhaozi hadn’t noticed the other man reach his side. Something left over from Jack’s old job, he supposed. Not something he’d been taught at the police academy, or at least not taught effectively. Jack kissed Zhaozi’s ear and took the tie from his hands. His long fingers danced like a pianist’s around Zhaozi’s throat, effortlessly tying a perfect Full Windsor. Jack pressed his chin into Zhaozi’s neck. Zhaozi sagged backwards into Jack’s chest, feeling his warmth even through the stiff cotton shirt at his back. How he wished he could stay there a moment longer and fall back asleep against Jack’s warmth, fall asleep with this strong man who had given up a glamorous life to work in a grimy restaurant and live with him, a junior officer who couldn’t even balance on a ladder.
Jack smiled, all messy hair and soft skin and broad shoulders, and pressed a kiss into Zhaozi’s hair. An unmarked black car honked its horn outside and Zhaozi rushed out into the already-humid morning.
***
This was Shaofei’s first mob funeral. It was not the police department’s first. Enough members of the underworld had connections to local politicians that Shaofei’s superiors had gone to mob funerals. Ostensibly as security, but Shaofei wasn’t 21 anymore. He knew there was more than that. Handshakes and sidelong glances meant that his superiors who attended such occasions weren’t just there as security. Money and goodness knew what else had changed hands.
He could be frustrated with this, or he could acknowledge that leniencies like these were the only reasons he still had his job after his relationship with Tang Yi had come out. Shaofei bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. As official security, he wasn’t allowed to eat at the event itself, and all he’d had was an energy bar.
After the first hour, the room began to grow stuffy and hot. Shaofei had at first been happy he hadn’t been stationed in the mist outside, but now he thought better of it as the pale sun baked the attendees through semi-covered windows and carbon dioxide from those assembled slowly accumulated, the maroon carpeting absorbing both sound and oxygen from the mourners.
Shaofei sat and stared at the man beside him, and laughed internally at the handcuffs he wore. Tang Yi could escape them if he’d wanted to, dislocating his thumb from its socket, ignoring the pain or potentially nerve-damaged enough not to notice it after a while–he wasn’t sure. He did know that the man’s first knuckle on each thumb was larger than usual, and wondered if there was any cartilage left. It was the sort of thing Shaofei noticed now, wondering if this semi-reformed mobster would develop arthritis in his hands from too many times escaping handcuffs. Joints poisoned bit by bit after a young lifetime of escaping rival gangs and police, escaping people like him. Knees skinned, head concussed, nerves blunted. No less beautiful for it, even if his hair was less expertly coiffed than usual.
Despite the efforts of cleverer men than Shaofei, Tang Yi had survived the onslaught from rival gangs, from the likes of his biological father who now lay in a coffin mere yards in front of him. Shaofei wasn’t clear on the details–only that Tang Yi had found the body and called in the emergency. Details were fuzzy, and Shaofei hadn’t pressed. He didn’t need to make things more difficult. He was the sort who liked to talk, talk too much when he had something on his mind, and Tang Yi was nothing like that. It left Shaofei feeling helpless, able only to press the cuffed forearm of the man beside him and hoping to channel feelings of warmth to him, as though thoughts could permeate layers of wool and cotton and seep into Tang Yi’s skin.
Shaofei hadn’t thought about the future a year ago. He’d thought about clearing his old mentor’s name. He’d thought about finally bringing down HsinTien for what they’d done (for what he thought they’d done,) but retirement? Marriage? He was close to thirty, but his day-to-day hadn’t allowed for it.
No, that wasn’t it. Plenty of his colleagues had dated, had married. Policemen weren’t known for monogamy, but it had happened often enough. Sitting in this funeral with far more respectable community leaders than he’d expected at a mob funeral, he wondered what a mob wedding was like. Zuo Hongye had something huge planned, he knew, but Shaofei wasn’t sure if that was a cultural thing or just her personality. He imagined that when Tang Yi got out, and assuming they were still together, they’d have a small ceremony. Tang Yi was going legit, and while neither he nor Shaofei was the type to care what others thought, unions like theirs had only become legal recently. And most people in Tang Yi’s world wouldn’t be too keen to be seen and photographed at a same-sex wedding. And his own family wasn’t very big, in any case. They didn’t travel much, and he wasn’t sure if his Catholic relatives would make the trip. He wondered if they would need security. Civilian weddings didn’t usually have police presence, but his world was changed now, changed utterly.
He’d caught himself thinking about marriage again. Tang Yi was still incarcerated, and had made no serious moves in this direction. But it beat listening to another speech about Chen Wen Hao’s philanthropy and general goodwill towards humanity.
Tang Yi was still cuffed, but allowed to wear a suit because of the formality of the occasion. As black-suited man after black-suited man approached the coffin, Tang Yi shifted in his seat, fiddling with a stick of mahogany-colored incense which would soon eat up even more oxygen in the already-stifling room.
The incense offering was the one time Tang Yi was permitted to go up unaccompanied.
A man in that same black suit and tie as Tang Yi, Shaofei, and every other man in attendance nodded to Tang Yi. Shaofei watched as Tang Yi stood up, unfolding from his seat like a paperclip. Prison had stripped Tang Yi of much of the muscle mass he once carried, and the once tailor-cut suit now seemed boxy over the man’s shoulders. He stared straight ahead, long legs slowly moving him to the shiny obsidian coffin at the front of the hall. A second man offered a small flame to Tang Yi, and Tang Yi dipped his stick of incense into the flame until the dark brown stick began to glow at the tip. A faint trail of smoke drifted off of the stick, fading upwards and behind Tang Yi as he walked forward, until it was obscured by the lights of the ceiling.
He did things so deliberately, even without his classic pompadour and colored suit. Shaofei watched as Tang Yi took his stick of incense up to the front of the room to where his father lay. (Did Tang Yi think of Chen Wen Hao as his father, really?) In a few months, Tang Yi would have known Chen Wen Hao longer as a dead man than as a father alive. The tall man laid the smoking stick down on the altar, gently, like he was placing the final ace atop a house of cards. Shaofei admired his delicacy.
There was a calm about Tang Yi that Shaofei had seldom seen before his lover went to prison. Unsure of its source–perhaps the inherent lack of control which incarceration imposes on a person. Even white-collar criminals, businessmen whose only documented violation was tax evasion weren’t permitted their own kitchens.
He’d sent him letters, of course, talked on the phone during the five-minute intervals that were allowed. He hadn’t written to his former boss yet because he knew it would only make the older man lose face. It could even seem like taunting him, the man who had only broken the law to save his daughter being written a casual note by his inferior, a man who had started and maintained a relationship with a gang leader and managed to keep his job. It wasn’t fair, and Shaofei wasn’t about to remind him of that by writing, reminding him of the freedom they didn’t share.
Initially he hadn’t known what to write Tang Yi, either. Miss you. Hope they’re feeding you properly. You’ll never guess what our new superior officer did yesterday–truly our precinct always draws the short straw. Huang Yi Qi got a kitten last week and sends all of us pictures on a daily basis. He’d resisted the small-talk urge to ask Tang Yi about his sister. Hsin Tien was still in the process of clearing its image, and a letter asking about Zuo Hongye might alert suspicions.
His first letter to Tang Yi had been about birds. Are there pigeons in the yard where you are? Maybe seagulls? One time a pigeon made a nest in my window, and I never realized because I was working the night shift. I only noticed after the babies hatched and started tapping on the glass at all hours. It was sweet. Wish I had a picture.
Tang Yi had replied with a pencil sketch of a pigeon. Shaofei had it taped to the wall above his bed, imagining a window there instead of a white wall, with a nest just like there had been all those years ago. He’d thought about framing it, but he liked being able to touch the paper itself–never the drawing, but the rough edges of the cheap sketch paper it was drawn on felt soft beneath his fingertip at night. A reminder of Tang Yi’s wool suits, pressed until they creased like paper, like so many pages of a commissary sketchpad.
Tang Yi returned to his seat, fingers fiddling with the air in the absence of an incense stick. Shaofei ached to touch him, to feel a pulse of lifeblood in the man who wore such a mask of calm.
It seemed like the funeral would never end. Eventually, the last speaker handed his mic to an usher and sat down. Attendees started filing out of their seats and into the larger hall to the left for a reception.
Bartenders at five different bars were pouring drinks, mixing and shaking them in all-black canisters while wearing all-black uniforms, perfectly-ironed black oxford shirts with silk ties and wing-tip shoes. Shaofei half-expected robotic hands to emerge from the long, starched sleeves of each bartender’s shirt.
Tang Yi gestured to the nearest bar with his shoulder, unable to make the gesture casual with his cuffed wrists. Want anything? The man’s eyes asked.
“I’m not allowed. On the job, remember?” This was different from the time Shaofei and the other junior officers had tried to infiltrate Andy’s club–this was a respectable affair, and Shaofei was on thin ice as it was. He ordered two Coca Colas for him and Tang Yi, making sure to get a straw so the other man wouldn’t have to raise a glass to his lips with the cuffs on. He knew better than to offer Tang Yi anything alcoholic–he was sure it wasn’t allowed. The white paper straw contrasted against the brown of the cola and the sleek sheen of the highball glass that the soda was served in.
What happened next didn’t altogether surprise Shaofei–serving alcohol without food in a hot room at the funeral of a high-ranking mobster was a recipe for a fight, but he hadn’t expected the target to be Tang Yi. Tang Yi, the man who had made a habit of being civil with everyone–firm but always calm, never vindictive unless it was personal.
The man had come over, not slowly and with purpose. Shaofei noticed he wasn’t wearing a radio, and didn’t look familiar. Not from his interactions with the gang, and not from the hundreds of files that he’d read on them at the precinct. This man was not Hsin Tien, or at least not someone local. He walked past the table, then doubled back. Shaofei could have blamed it on his blind spot, right behind his left ear, and might do so on the paperwork, but truthfully he’d just been caught off-guard.
The man’s fist had collided with Tang Yi’s face before either Tang Yi or Shaofei. Brass knuckles collided with the side of Tangi’s left eye, knocking him off guard as he grasped with cuffed hands for the edge of the table to steady himself, but the table was top-heavy, a metal-ensconced circle of plywood held up with one tube of shoddily welded steel. It swayed. Tang Yi stumbled, and the table crashed to the ground, sending its dull gray tablecloth flying. Shaofei lunged forward, hoping to get between Tang Yi and the mysterious attacker, but the attacker dodged, and Shaofei narrowly avoided getting a black eye to match Tang Yi’s.
Shaofei dodged again, almost rolling into the toppled table and knocking down another. He grabbed the assailant around the legs, and the man crashed to the floor, cursing and trying to wriggle free. Shaofei held on tight, unarmed and still unassisted. He couldn’t see the room very well as the man struggled and thrashed him around like a fish, but most of the conversations around them hadn’t stopped. The man was larger than Shaofei, burly and broad-limbed and wearing a gunmetal watch. He was determined, that much was clear.
Only one other policeman had even acknowledged the fight–the one-sided attack, more like. The shorter figure of Zhaozi came hurtling across the large banquet hall. One of the unknown assailant’s legs was close to breaking free of Shaofei’s grip, but Zhaozi placed a hand between the man’s shoulder blades and cuffed him while Shaofei restrained his arms. Shaofei locked eyes with Zhaozi, both wordlessly communicating that neither had seen the man before.
Tang Yi’s hands may have been cuffed, but his legs were free, and he easily could have kicked the knees out from under his assailant, more easily than he could have escaped the cuffs. But he had done nothing. He was hoping desperately for parole, for a re-sentencing, and he would get neither if he fought back. Tang Yi got to his feet somewhat awkwardly, wrists still fastened together, staring straight ahead at the white wall in front of him. Shaofei turned to Tang Yi, but the man’s expression was unreadable. No tears, but there was a look of defeat behind Tang Yi’s eyes. No-touching rule and professionalism be damned, Shaofei took Tang Yi into his arms.
Shaofei pressed his face into Tang Yi’s neck. He knew that this awkward handcuffed hug was the most he’d get for six months. Tang Yi’s breath was slow and measured–something practiced, mechanical. He relaxed minutely against Shaofei–nothing noticeable to any onlookers. Shaofei thought it was funny–the man was hugging a police officer but drew the line at being visibly comfortable with another person.
Shaofei used to think he was good at reading Tang Yi, but even now he couldn’t be sure if the man who attacked his lover was someone Tang Yi had known or not. He’d refused to say. Of course he had. The man wanted to escape prison legally, not give the cops another potential connection. Some things had to be let go, pride be damned.
Shaofei was about to glance over again at the unknown assailant, but realized that security had already taken the man away. Was that unusual? He’d never been to a funeral like this, a mob funeral where a fight broke out. It didn’t make sense–why didn’t this man simply have someone stab Tang Yi while he was in prison? It must be a message. Shaofei stopped himself. His detective’s brain was already working, and he stomped out this new train of thought. Tang Yi was no longer a person of interest with his police sketch pinned to his dining room wall. He was a man who lived, who breathed, who loved, and who desperately wanted this behind him.
Tang Yi wasn’t one for effusive letters, although his appreciation was evident. Shaofei hoped Tang Yi would send him another drawing, although the man had a swiftly-forming black eye. Now wasn’t the time. But before an unmarked black car showed up to bring Tang Yi back to prison, before their embrace broke, Shaofei turned and pressed his lips to the side of Tang Yi’s neck and felt the man melt in his arms.
For now, this would have to do.