Chapter 6

Boss Yeung was jet-lagged, blinking in the hazy Southern California sunshine that felt like a violation. The sky should have been dark, he should have been asleep on the other side of the world, and Scarlett should have been resting at Perfume Bay in the final days of her pregnancy. He'd landed that morning at LAX, on a nonstop from Hong Kong. Perfume Bay's website had listed this outdoor Chinese mall as a local attraction for its guests. Scarlett might have shopped here regularly, visiting its sprawling supermarket, boutiques pumping Canto-pop, and restaurants wafting cumin and garlic. A month ago, she could have stopped here for supplies before leaving town, or maybe she'd holed up nearby. He wanted to retrace her steps. He entered a boba tea shop on the upper level, an outpost of a Hong Kong chain, and at the counter, he ordered jasmine bubble tea with a fat pink straw and the chewy tapioca balls that Scarlett loved. "I'm looking for…" Boss Yeung trailed off. "Do you want to add whipped cream?" the clerk asked. "Chocolate syrup?" Further confirmation he'd ordered a kiddie drink, an undignified choice for a man about to turn sixty. How to explain, where to begin with the clerk? The photo from her personnel file at the factory was so blurred you couldn't make out her features, and he had no record of their affair, no proof that they were linked in any way but for the ultrasound that the technician printed at twenty weeks. A feat of technology greater than the moon landing, a blurry image of the son he'd always wanted. Ultrasounds hadn't existed during his wife's three pregnancies, all mysteries until delivery. Nine months spent predicting, puzzling over the baby's health and sex. Carrying low or high, the mother's predilection for sour or sweet, the mother's age and the lunar month of conception, all factored into their calculations. Three times, his wife gave birth to a girl, with a mounting sense of inevitability and defeat. A relentlessly catchy tune came out of the loudspeakers, the one he'd been hearing in television commercials and thumping from shops in Hong Kong. The refrain was inane and in English, "I love you hot." He would forbid his daughters from playing this song at home. "What is that?" he asked. "Bao Wu," the clerk said. The Guardian. "He's from San Francisco," the clerk added, as if to explain the odd name. Boss Yeung knew the type: born in America, but idolized in Asia. When his eldest daughter had been a teenager, she had adored a floppy-haired heartthrob by way of Los Angeles. A new version seemed to appear every year. Back outside, at the first sip, he regretted ordering the bubble tea, which had a cloying sweetness that tasted counterfeit. There must be something in the air, something in the water in Hong Kong that couldn't be replicated here. Nausea gripped him, a side effect of his medication, and he tried not to heave. Swaying on his feet, he pressed the sweating plastic cup to his forehead to cool down. He pictured Scarlett dead, their son and heir born early, born sick, hooked to tubes, or the tiny body unclaimed in the morgue. His every secret, stifled fear was surfacing at once, every worry that had driven him to America on this impossible mission. — A half hour later, he studied the house at the top of the hill. Yellow police tape slashed across the front door, and in the alley, garbage cans stacked high with trash and recycling, tins of cooking oil, balled-up diapers, and flattened cardboard boxes of infant formula and baby wipes. Authorities must have shut down Perfume Bay, something Mama Fang neglected to mention in their conversations in the month since Scarlett's disappearance. He wouldn't call her, not yet, not before he investigated. The diapers had been fermenting like thousand-year-old eggs, and he covered his nose to ward off the ammonia stench. The backyard's weed-choked, yellowing grass, patches of dirt, and concrete patio had the charm of a prison camp, nothing like the photos from the website that featured a pond under a willow tree, a view of snow-capped mountains, and a young mother serenely cradling her plump son. With scant due diligence, he'd entrusted Scarlett and their child to this sham operation. In how many other ways had Mama Fang's promises fallen short? Finding the sliding door locked, he crept along the house until he found an open window. He tried to pop off the screen, coated in grime, the dust thick as moss. He could have left then, but after envisioning a clue, a sheet of paper that would lead to Scarlett, he picked up a plastic lawn chair and swung it over his head, grunting with satisfaction when it tore through the screen. He pushed the chair under the window and climbed into a bedroom. The impact when he dropped to his feet jolted through his spine. He'd thickened about the waist, stiffened about the knees, no longer a naughty tree-climbing rascal, but he'd landed on his feet. Not many his age, not many in his condition could. Later this fall, he would complete what the ancients had deemed a full span of life, and the cycle would start over. Boss Yeung had outlived his father, his grandfather, possibly every male in the long line of ancestors that led to him. Against his protests, his eldest daughter, Viann, was planning a lavish celebration in Hong Kong, with longevity peach cakes gilded in 24-karat gold flakes. To celebrate him, but also to present herself as both the filial daughter and a deal-maker on the rise. The Harvard grad had been scheming with Uncle Lo, who had six more years to go before reaching this stage in life. An uncle not by blood or marriage, but by long association. Neither understood that Boss Yeung wasn't eager to publicize his age and give off the impression that he was close to retiring, no longer in possession of the fire that lit the ambitions of his youth. He searched Perfume Bay room by room. The guests had left in a hurry, casting aside tracksuits, slippers, and sanitary pads thick as bricks. The mess had the feel of a helter-skelter evacuation from the unexpected approach of bombers on the horizon. Dusty footprints tromped across the carpet, traces of a man's heavy boot. Police? The services at Perfume Bay were legal. Maybe Mama Fang hadn't paid her taxes, maybe she'd been running a secret side business. He recoiled from a giant pair of tan underpants, but then reflexively noted the quality cotton spandex fabric and the double-layer crotch—this assessment second nature to him, after years of manufacturing clothes, electronics, and consumer goods. Back in his childhood, his mother used to drop coins into monks' metal alms bowls, a clattering display of her devotion. Ever practical, she piled oranges on the family's ancestral shrine in the living room, lit votives at the local Catholic church, and festooned musky marigolds at the Hindu temple. Whatever god or gods ruled the universe, she'd ensured their favor for her family. Boss Yeung didn't believe in any kind of luck except the kind you made. He'd rebuilt the fortune his father had squandered at the horse track and on a string of mistresses. At his death, his father left debts and a shortbread recipe that his grandfather, a houseboy, had learned from the British. Armed with that paltry inheritance, Boss Yeung searched for a source of cheap, high quality butter—with the taste of pasture and sky—and when he combined it with rice flour, icing sugar, and cornstarch, the biscuits were simultaneously light and rich, crisp and melting. He spent extra on sturdier, glossier plaid tins customers coveted as gifts and used as kitchen storage, landed orders with the most fashionable department stores, and charged four times as much as his competitors to make the biscuits a luxury. With his success, he expanded with new factories, with new lines of business: plastic flowers so lifelike a honeybee might sniff them and mobile phones affordable enough for an amah to call home to the Philippines every week. He retrieved a baby's sock curled on the floor, as big as his thumb. He'd forgotten how tiny, how helpless newborns could be. Shortly after the birth of their first child, his wife had fallen ill. Though he could have left Viann with the amah, he soothed her like no one else could, rocking her until she fell asleep against his chest. If she started to wake, he'd take a deep breath, to let her know he was still there. As infants, his daughters all seemed to have a strong resemblance to their father—him in miniature, crowned with thick tufts of hair. With each passing year, though, the girls became more his wife's, dressed, fed, and schooled as she wished. Each time he returned from his business trips to his factories, clients, and suppliers after months on the road or on-site, he felt more and more like an interloper. His daughters became strangers and his wife stranger still, and he had only Uncle Lo to confide in. They were both outsiders in Hong Kong, born into unpromising circumstances, tolerated but never accepted by those born rich, those who had been attending the same private schools and respectable social clubs since the time their grandfathers and great-grandfathers achieved the monopolies in palm oil, in shipping, in shrimp paste and oyster sauce from which their families' wealth sprung. A lifetime ago, Boss Yeung became an ally of Uncle Lo after tipping him off about a rival publisher inflating its circulation. "It's not fit for fish-wrap!" Uncle Lo had said, and bought him a snifter of brandy. Uncle Lo drank two shots to every one of his and told stories ten times as wild. He'd escaped China by clinging to an inner tube and swimming to Hong Kong. He'd sold candy aboard trains, jumped onto the tracks to save a little boy, the son of a publisher who gave him a job in the newsroom. He'd once climbed barefoot into a python's cage, and had punched out a conniving upstart in the boardroom. He seemed to have dirt on everyone in Hong Kong. From the beginning, Boss Yeung had known he couldn't keep up, but around Uncle Lo, no venture seemed too daring, and in the decades since, both men had prospered. — Boss Yeung rubbed his face with both hands, fighting the urge to take a nap on one of the many beds at Perfume Bay. Not long before he'd met Scarlett, doctors had diagnosed him with a chronic blood disease, its course unpredictable. A patient might live two months, two years, or two decades more. The doctors had asked about his family history, if he'd inherited the illness from his mother, father, or a grandparent. Impossible, he said. Exposure to chemicals at his factories—it must have been that. His bloodline wasn't tainted. If his ancestors had cursed him, then he'd cursed his children. He told no one, not his wife or his daughters or Uncle Lo. He didn't want their pity or their fear, or the prayers of the Celestial Goddess, who had extracted a fortune from his wife. Besides, a cure might be found before he experienced his first symptoms. The illness had unleashed something in him, sent him chasing after new business and chasing after a clerk in his factory. Scarlett's compact, sturdy strength stirred him, and so too her youth, the thick locks that she shed onto his pillow, hair without end that he could have woven into a rope to climb down from a tower. They spent most nights together at his apartment on the factory grounds. Her pregnancy seemed a good omen, for what dying man could create life? When the ultrasound revealed a son, it seemed his fortunes had turned. Although he had dismissed the religion and rituals of his mother and his wife as superstition, he now began grasping for signs and omens. For certainty. Because no greater certainty existed than the rights, privileges, and protections of every U.S. citizen, he sent Scarlett to Perfume Bay. Uncle Lo had promised she would have VIP status. They had arrived early for her flight. While at the airport café, he marveled at the size of her belly. Her pregnancy had filled her out, softening her sharp angles and her sharp temper, and after a series of fights, she'd begun eating the traditional diet he wanted for her and the baby. He already missed her body, tucked next to him in his bed, and her calm navigation on their weekend drives. She studied maps for days, weeks in preparation, and had an unerring sense of direction, like a bird that migrates to another hemisphere and finds its way back. She thought they should postpone her trip to Perfume Bay. He'd been waking up drenched in sweat, and she wanted him to see a doctor. "Don't talk nonsense," he'd said. The departures hall had echoed with chatter and the clack and whine of suitcases as passengers sprinted toward the security gate. The new terminal was all curves and skylights, the latest foray by foreign architects who came to China to build projects at a speed and scope like nowhere else. A dizzying futuristic white reflected in polished stone floors, cold and barren as the moon. If he told her about the illness ticking within, she wouldn't leave him. First he'd have to admit to her—therefore to himself—that he might sicken, might die. Chimes sounded, followed by an airport announcement. He couldn't make out the words over the hiss of the steamer on the espresso machine. As Scarlett walked toward the counter to get a refill of hot water, a tai tai with huge sunglasses tried to flag her down, asking for sugar. Scarlett was dressed in black, just like the attendant behind the counter, but so were a few other travelers in the café. The tai tai—a haughty Chinese housewife with a diamond ring big as a gumball—had sized up Scarlett as part of the servant class. Scarlett shook her head. The tai tai sighed in irritation and offered her a crumpled yuan note. Taking in the scene, Boss Yeung rose, ready to intervene in case Scarlett lost her temper and cursed out the tai tai. He waited as Scarlett returned with a glass sugar dispenser, and without saying a word, started pouring into the tai tai's cup. Even after the tai tai said, "Enough—enough!" Scarlett kept pouring, finally emptying the dispenser all over the table. The tai tai opened her mouth, as if to protest, but the sight of Scarlett's fury seemed to silence her. "Would you like anything else?" Scarlett asked. Boss Yeung pulled her away while the tai tai fled, knocking over a suitcase in her haste. Scarlett would send herself into labor, getting worked up like that! She was unrepentant, angry that he'd interrupted her revenge against the tai tai, who must represent every wealthy woman who had snubbed her, and maybe served as a stand-in for his wife. She could have been angry that he was sending her away. He'd come to believe if they'd left things differently that day, if he'd told her how much she meant to him, all their later troubles might never have followed. — He found no sign of her at Perfume Bay. None of her clothes, not her honey-scented body lotion that she rubbed on her belly to prevent stretch marks. Without Scarlett, he'd been robbed of his senses, found himself in a world without color, light, sound, taste, or touch. After Scarlett left, orders had fallen, credit tightened, and a worker on the assembly line killed herself by jumping off the roof of the dormitory. A teenager, a girl far from home, someone's daughter, someone's sister, crushed by the seven-day workweeks and fifteen-hour days. To prevent copycat suicides, the plant manager put a new lock on the door to the roof, gave raises, and hired a monk to purge the factory of evil spirits. Working, working, always working to make up his losses, Boss Yeung turned gaunt as a candle flame. Weary, the simplest tasks accomplished only through monumental effort. Even his walks around the factory floor seemed to take twice as long. He vowed never to be careless again, not in business, not with this pregnancy, and so for an additional fee, Mama Fang had provided daily reports about Scarlett. Maybe Mama Fang had exaggerated and lied, just as she'd exaggerated and lied about the accommodations. According to her, Scarlett had stopped eating and Mama Fang forced her to drink cans of chocolate-flavored nutritional supplements. And she'd broken another guest's finger, while fighting over the remote control; the medical costs had been added to the fees Boss Yeung had to pay. Scarlett must have suffocated here, the air stale and hot with the scent of bitter herbs and vinegar. He couldn't remember if he or Mama Fang had suggested that he take custody of their son. With her kind, her wishes dissolved into yours, and she anticipated what you needed before you knew yourself. If she'd been an entrepreneur in China, Mama Fang would have built an empire that rivaled Uncle Lo's, one of those self-made billionaire queens who trafficked in commercial real estate, medicinal ointments from Tibet, and recycled cardboard boxes. The night he'd authorized Mama Fang to pay off Scarlett, the night Scarlett had escaped, he'd come down with a high fever. He'd woken in sheets soaked in sweat, and all but crawled to his driver to take him home to Hong Kong. The rash on his calves had returned, a constellation of tiny red spots. Doctors confirmed his illness had turned aggressive and recommended a bone marrow transplant. A sibling or a child provided the best chance of a match. Boss Yeung had outlasted his younger brother and sister. His daughters, then. In the old tales, filial children cut out a chunk of their own flesh to feed starving parents, enslaved themselves to pay for funerals, and sat shirtless all night to draw mosquitoes away from their sleeping mother and father. In the dining room, before the cook served the meal, he gathered their cheek swabs. To search their family's past and predict future health, he told them, but secretly, he'd get their bone marrow typed. At least one had to match. His wife had been away on a high-level, high-priced pilgrimage in the mountains with the Celestial Goddess. None of them knew about the baby. If they rejected the boy, Boss Yeung would cut off their allowances, disown them, and divorce his wife. Would they mourn their father when he died? Only out of obligation, not out of love, except for Viann. Viann had opened her mouth, much like when she was a child and he would pop in a melon seed or haw flake. He swabbed up and down, applying firm pressure. Of all his daughters, she was the most likely to suspect an ulterior motive. He dropped the swab into the collection tube and snapped on the top. "Maybe we're descended from emperors," Viann said. Daughter No. 2 had gagged on the swab and tears sprang into her eyes. She didn't want to know what genes she carried for disease and the years she might have left before the onset of symptoms. "It's like reading the date on your gravestone." "Nothing's set in stone," Viann said. "Nothing defines you, not even your mistakes." A jab at No. 2, who was banned from several of Hong Kong's finest department stores after pilfering luxury goods, avoiding jail time only after Viann intervened by cutting a promotional deal with the buyers. Daughter No. 3 had dropped out of university to become an assistant to the Celestial Goddess. Her breath stank of wet dog, despite her strict vegetarian diet. After Boss Yeung swabbed her, she announced she'd live to 127. "A prime prime." "You might," Viann said. "What's the use of a long life, without meat or fish or drink? You must feel 127 already!" No one matched. His two youngest shared half of Boss Yeung's markers, and Viann, none at all, a consequence of fate and of genetics. He'd wanted a match between him and Viann, he admitted only then. Of his children, she was most like him, in her shrewdness and ambition. She had once asked why he and Uncle Lo had never gone into business together. He had dismissed the idea with such vehemence that she must understand that their camaraderie might not bear the open acknowledgment of Uncle Lo's superior financial acumen. Uncle Lo had arranged an appointment with a highly regarded specialist and launched a bone marrow drive, getting himself, his wife, and his children all typed, but the tycoon's greatest gift had been his suggestion: a cure might be found in the baby that Scarlett carried, in the stem cells circulating through the umbilical cord. The men were in the steam room of Hong Kong's most exclusive private club, with a years-long waiting list you joined in the hopes your children, yet-to-be-conceived, might someday terrorize their amah at the pool while you perfected your tennis stroke, relaxed over dim sum with a real estate magnate, or bet huge sums at each golf hole. Around Uncle Lo, Boss Yeung felt chosen, marveling at how their friendship brought adventure to what would have been an otherwise predictable existence. And what did Uncle Lo find in him? A friend who could be counted on—for drinks until dawn, for secrets of any size—who was grateful for the attentions, but not overly, obsequiously so. Uncle Lo had enough of those. "Your own blood is the most powerful medicine." Uncle Lo leaned back, exposing the birthmark splashed on his chest. "Then let's join our blood." Boss Yeung inhaled a cloud of steam and coughed. He'd always wanted their eldest children to marry. Uncle Lo had resisted. "If our children are old enough to get married, then it means we're getting old." The excuse wounded Boss Yeung. Why would his friend reject the idea of uniting their bloodlines—because he thought Boss Yeung's was tainted? The future of that bloodline was slipping away, along with the chance of a cure. He entered the kitchen. Sometimes when Boss Yeung called Mama Fang, he'd heard the clank of pots and pans, and so her office must be nearby. Thirsty, he searched for a glass, but the cabinets were bare. Cupping his hands under the faucet, he slurped tap water with a mineral tang and walked into the ransacked office, with an upended leather desk chair, a dead plant, and filing cabinets. He sought files about the guests, jotted notes with details only he might understand were significant to Scarlett. He yanked out drawers—empty. Receipts scattered on the floor, including one for Lum Femcare, which sounded like a medical clinic. The slip listed an address on Foothill Boulevard, where he'd exited the freeway for Perfume Bay. He'd go there next. The private investigator hadn't found Scarlett, but he'd worked for a paycheck, not out of duty or love. A search of her mobile phone, left behind at Perfume Bay, turned up a listing for her mother, but the calls went straight to voicemail. Nothing on her Internet browser or work emails led to her village, either, and no one in the factory had heard from her. Scarlett's apartment held few photos: a man with his daughter on his shoulders; a laughing woman on a carousel; and a blond man with a cleft in his chin, rugged as a mountaineer. Not friends or family but strangers, printed on the slips of paper that had come with the frames. A discovery that kneed Boss Yeung in the gut—how alone she'd been in the world. The trail petered out in California, too, even though the runaway teenager had been the strongest lead. The boyfriend's parents had been shocked to learn the baby they believed aborted remained gestating and did not allow his detective to interview their son. "Who's to say it's his?" they asked. The detective was still trying to track him down separately. In the last bedroom, Boss Yeung found a square outline in the rug, matted down from a heavy load. From a massage chair, like the one he'd requested for Scarlett? A flash of blue caught his eye, a slip of paper sticking out from underneath the closet door. The blue of the Pacific, on the California page, which she must have torn out of the atlas he'd given her. He smoothed out the paper, worn soft as cotton after being folded and unfolded many times. She didn't have many belongings, in a life where she never had belonged anywhere for long. Scarlett would have stared at the map until the freeways were imprinted in her memory, a web of veins. The parallel lines of the 5 and the 99 and the 1 and 101, the ladder rungs of the 80 and the 10 and the 60, crossing the immense state. She'd torn it out in preparation for this trip. Even before leaving China, she might have suspected he would betray her and brought the map to plan her escape routes. He heard footsteps outside. Mama Fang! When he swung open the front door, two police officers stared him down. — Short and stocky as a gingerbread cookie, the officer wore aviator sunglasses, masking her expression. Her brawny partner stood behind her. Though she'd identified herself, Boss Yeung hadn't caught her name. Neighbors must have reported an intruder. Stonily, she asked him to step outside and for his identification. That much he gathered, as he cursed himself for his limited English: he read some, understood less, and spoke almost none at all. She wasn't much older than Viann, and the stiffness in her manner made her seem a recent graduate of the academy, eager to prove herself yet already assuming, already resenting those who questioned her authority. Sunlight winked off her badge, and her poly-blend pants had a knife-edge crease, with no stains or loose threads. She'd left the engine running on the patrol car, its radio crackling with a garbled shaman's chant. Her partner headed around the corner to the backyard, where he would presumably find the busted window screen. "How much?" he asked. In China, he had settled such matters by paying the fine on the spot. He hadn't withdrawn much from the airport ATM, sixty dollars minus what he paid for lunch, and he hoped it would be enough. Her mouth hardened, and she repeated her request for identification. The dry heat was making him light-headed. He reached for his passport, in a travel pouch tucked into his waistband. The officer ordered him to keep his hands up and she patted him down. Yesterday, he'd been a chief executive, used to deferential and preferential treatment, but here he was nothing. The officer's belt bristled with a walkie-talkie, a nightstick, keys, and a gun—a gun. Police in China didn't carry guns. They didn't have to, but Americans were violent, and so too their police. Patches of sweat began blooming under his arms and on his back, and his bowels went hot and loose as a bowl of ramen. She found nothing on Boss Yeung, and neither did he. His identification had gone missing, along with his wallet and mobile phone. He pointed at his car, mimed pulling open the glove box, hoping she'd understand. She nodded and followed him. He got into the car. Maybe he'd left everything under his seat, tucked in the sun visor, or under the rental paperwork? No. He popped open the glove compartment and out spilled amber bottles of his medication, which he'd stowed for safekeeping after taking a dose in the mall parking lot. He was drowning in the car's toxic fumes of hot plastic and air freshener. He'd paid for his boba tea, and then—he must have left his wallet in the shop, or dropped it in the parking lot. The officer scrutinized his bloodshot eyes, his nervous hands, his rumpled clothes, and his scarecrow frame—that of a junkie, of a thief in search of his next high. After he climbed out of the car, she asked if he had—had what? He didn't understand the word, until she said, "doctor." She must want the prescription. He didn't have one on him. She made the motion of opening the car door, with a look that seemed to be asking for permission. If he resisted, he'd seem guilty. He nodded, and she motioned for him to sit on the curb. She held each pill bottle up to the light: the pale blue painkillers, white and canary-yellow pills to boost his blood counts and keep the disease at bay, taken three times a day, once before bed, on an empty stomach, or with food, each dose a bitter reminder he'd become an invalid. Chinese medicine, too. Prescribed by an herbalist, the tiny black balls smelled like burning autumn leaves and in the eyes of this American, it must have seemed like dark magic. He felt naked, her scrutiny intrusive as a finger jammed down his throat. The officer frowned and checked to make sure he remained sitting. He noticed the black metal bars on the rear windows of the squad car parked behind his. She'd arrest him, detain him, and tie him up in legal proceedings, wasting time that he didn't have. He couldn't try bribing her again, not with his wallet gone. Then he remembered the change he'd stuffed into his back pocket. The bills, damp as tofu skin and stained by the touch of many hands, filled him with as much jubilation as if he'd won the lottery. "I help," he said. The officer ignored him, or perhaps she didn't hear over the crackle of the walkie-talkie. He waited until a woman walking her poodle passed. Officials who campaigned most loudly against corruption had the blackest hands, and the officer wouldn't want witnesses. He stood and rapped on the trunk, trying to get her attention. She spun around, and he flashed the bills at her, his hand quick as a blackjack dealer's. She thrust her face into his and barked something at him. She sounded angry, and he wondered if he'd sunk himself deeper into trouble. He sat down on the curb, watching to see what she would do next. Returning to the car, the officer picked up a bottle with a loose cap and pills cascaded with a clatter onto the seat, onto the floor mat, and likely every one of the car's crevices. She bent over, scooping up pills. If he'd been thinking clearly, he wouldn't have slipped around the corner. He wouldn't have crossed the intersection and flagged down the bus. But then, the fleetness of his step wouldn't have returned, either, nor the speed and strength he thought he had lost forever. — Until he mentioned Mama Fang, the Chinese receptionist remained tight-lipped, and wouldn't confirm Scarlett had visited the clinic. "She's a client of Perfume Bay," Boss Yeung said. "You saw her about a month ago." The receptionist's expression darkened like a thunderhead. "She's a client of Mama Fang." "Mama Fang," she muttered, and he suspected the proprietor of Perfume Bay had left the clinic with a large bill. "You're in touch with her?" Her nails, long red talons, tapped her desk with indignation. "Ask her!" "She told me to come here. Before we meet this afternoon." Mama Fang had said no such thing, but the doctors of Lum Femcare must be interested in finding her. "Please," he said. "I'm the father. I can pay any remaining charges." He was the only man in the waiting room, and he could feel the patients staring at him. They, too, were all Chinese. Shifting uncomfortably, their ample bottoms spilling out of their seats, their breasts swelling into udders, and their inquisitive faces round and gleaming. No matter how much the women had wanted their children, each at some point must have cursed the man who'd done this to them, the father who wouldn't suffer the aches of pregnancy and the agony of labor. The receptionist exhaled, and Boss Yeung wondered if the financial hit had threatened her job, if the clinic might close. He told her he could put the doctor in touch with an investor at Perfume Bay, who could take care of the rest of the bill. After she left her desk, he studied photos of the babies tacked onto the walls. Round cheeks, chubby fists, little faces in cozy knit hats, and wearing embroidered silk tunics from their red egg parties. Jealousy stabbed through Boss Yeung's chest. These mothers had always been certain of their children's whereabouts, memorized the curve of their noses, every mole, the shape of their big toes. Boss Yeung could only guess at his son's. His son! What traits would his son inherit from him: The same long fingers? His bowlegged walk? The set of his mouth, or the intense focus that he was starting to understand might drive others away? Until now Boss Yeung hadn't understood why she'd fled. After escaping the police this afternoon, he grasped how fear and anger fueled your first steps, and how defiance kept you going. The longer she remained on the run, the harsher the punishment Uncle Lo would try to exact. He'd made the hunt his, compelled to intervene because he'd been the one to refer her to Perfume Bay. Married to a daughter of Communist royalty, he had the backing of the Party to go after his enemies: a supplier who cheated him was imprisoned and died a month before his release. A rival lost his factory to eminent domain, after the government rerouted the subway through his neighborhood. Uncle Lo wanted Scarlett jailed, somewhere she could think upon her crimes, and with each passing day, Boss Yeung wavered. The receptionist returned to her desk and began typing, her fingernails clacking on the keyboard. A patient interrupted. "I've been waiting for an hour!" Her skin was blotchy as rotting strawberries, and her body seethed like an overgrown garden. The receptionist glanced at her. "The doctor will see you soon." She pulled out a file. "I'm going to pee on the floor," the patient warned, and the receptionist waved her in. A moment later, the patient shouted she needed toilet paper. Sighing, the receptionist got up, leaving the paperwork that held the secrets of his baby's health, his growth and progress, secrets that might shed light on Scarlett's state of mind and hint at her whereabouts. Secrets to finding his cure. Reaching over the counter, he snatched the file and might have escaped for the second time that day, but for the mother squeezing her double stroller through the door—twins, two girls with lace headbands and dumpling cheeks. The mother apologized, flustered. He tried to ease the stroller through. The wheels caught on the doorjamb, the toys hanging off the stroller's handle rattled crazily, and the newborn on the right gasped, a held breath that sucked the air out of the waiting room, stopping time yet also carrying the inevitability of a cresting wave: the piercing howl that would follow. Those cries—that need. The mother popped a pacifier into one newborn's mouth, which she spat out. He yanked the stroller again, to no avail, and the mother picked up her daughter, shushing as the other twin wailed, thrashing her head back. She'd give herself whiplash. He dropped the file and opened his arms, and the desperate mother thrust the baby at him so she could tend to the other one. He crossed his arms, clasping the baby against his chest, as her head fell back, tiny and bird-bone light. He supported her neck, and with his other hand, cradled her bottom. The overhead light transfixed her, and he turned to give her a better view over his shoulder. Viann had loved lights, too. The baby smelled like fragility, like talcum powder and diaper cream. The receptionist returned and retrieved the file from the floor. Although he braced himself for her scolding, she told him the doctor could see him now. He handed the baby back to her mother, the quivering heat fading quickly, too quickly, from his chest. At her desk, Dr. Lum was younger than he expected, perhaps ten years out of medical school. Stanford, he noticed with approval. Her hands were scrubbed clean, the nails squared-off, and she emanated the scent of antibacterial soap, of probing efficiency. In addition to her diplomas, the wall behind her featured posters of Mickey Mouse and a papa bear tucking his baby into a cradle. He didn't bother with pleasantries. He needed a bone marrow transplant, he said, and his daughters didn't match. Unexpectedly, his eyes welled with tears he'd never allowed himself. "Children usually aren't matches," Dr. Lum said. "You need at least six of the eight markers, and children typically have half from each parent." He explained that daughters No. 2 and No. 3 had four of his eight markers, and Viann, none at all. "None?" Dr. Lum asked. "That's impossible." "My doctor's a VIP." "None?" "None." "Then she's not your daughter." He must have contaminated the sample, or a technician must have mixed up Viann's swabs in the lab. He'd have to get her tested again. Yet his doctor in Hong Kong had seemed so agitated. Hesitating, unlike his usual brusque manner. Suppose—suppose the test had been accurate. What if his doctor wanted to spare a terminal patient the news that he'd been a cuckold almost three decades ago? Dr. Lum didn't know him and didn't care about preserving long-held illusions. He swallowed, his tongue unbearably thick and disgusting. For months after giving birth to Viann, his wife had stayed in bed and wept, pushing the baby girl away. That distance always remained between mother and daughter. A coolness, born out of jealousy and resentment, he'd always believed, as his wife's beauty faded and Viann's blossomed. Boss Yeung spread his hands in his lap, long fingers that he and Viann shared. Dr. Lum flipped open the chart and told him that the baby was healthy, with a strong heartbeat and developing normally. Did his wife consider each subsequent daughter a punishment for her affair? Her guilt might have driven her into the plump arms of the Celestial Goddess. If he wasn't Viann's father, then who? Did his wife have a fling with an old classmate, or an instructor at the club? She'd briefly taken tennis lessons. A friend's husband? His thoughts were like feathers in a storm, whirling out of his grasp. He tried to remember her friends, from the days before the Celestial Goddess. A friend—of his? He had no friends, no friends but Uncle Lo. Uncle Lo, who'd resisted pairing his son with Viann. Uncle Lo, who had twelve acknowledged children. Uncle Lo, who'd always taken an interest in Viann, arranging pop stars to visit her birthday parties and an internship at his flagship magazine. He struggled to catch his breath. Uncle Lo had his pick of women and never would have betrayed him. He couldn't recall a single moment of suppressed ardor passing between his wife and his friend. It had seemed she considered Uncle Lo an irritation, fuming when he kept Boss Yeung out until dawn. Early in their marriage, she had been loyal as a dove, and thrifty, too, careful to make use of every scrap of food and to tailor their clothes to remake them like new. In those days, he'd been ignorant of the mechanics of sex and had bought a manual, as if she were a radio to take apart and put back together. A geometry lesson of angles, an engineering feat of completed circuits, with little of the tenderness, passion, and spontaneity she must have craved. The years sped by. Even after she began worshipping the Celestial Goddess, he'd been faithful to her. Until his diagnosis. Until he met Scarlett. Viann had the intelligence and drive that her sisters lacked, that he'd thought she must have inherited from him, from her father. From Uncle Lo? He felt as though everything he'd taken for granted had failed him, as if gravity had disappeared, as if air had turned into water. The room blurred around him and faintly, he heard Dr. Lum asking if he was okay. He found himself on the floor, staring up at her. In her grip he felt as a newborn must, drowsing against a parent. Oh, Viann. She might never have been his to give up.

—

The walk took longer than expected, and when he arrived at the outdoor mall, the sky had turned apocalyptic, the murky air slashed by streaks of rust and orange. Despite the heat, he was shivering and in a cold sweat after missing a dose of medication. He sat on the edge of the chlorinated water fountain, its blue tiles covered in hundreds of coins, shimmering like the scales of a fish. So many wishes—for his son, for himself. For Viann. He had to get to the boba tea shop on the second floor, where he'd ask if the staff had found his wallet. He lurched to his feet. At the top of the escalator he teetered, then fell. Each tumble, a blow that split mountains and hatched new gods. As he filled with the light of an exploding star, ten thousand bronze bells tolled.