Chapter 76

I glanced across the table at Cee Cee. “Pick up is at seven,” she reminded me.

“So, six? Six-thirty at the latest, I guess.” I told Susan. She and her husband had a quick exchange in Chinese, then Susan said to us, “Seventy-five dollars. You leave at 2:00 A.M.”

Ick. It was nine-thirty now. “So late?” I asked her, not wanting to appear ungrateful, but anxious to secure an earlier departure if possible. Two o’clock would mean we’d be out all night, and I had actually been hoping to get some sleep.

“Mmm,” she replied affirmatively. “He has to stay here with me, help me close, we close at midnight, other crews come in, then he has to take me home, we have our own dinner, he pick you up here at 2:00 A.M.”

One look at Josh and his anxious, hooray-I’m-going-to-the-Great-Wall-of-China face sealed the deal. We’d be ready at two o’clock. We paid for our dinner and gave her the $75, plus a $25 “tip” to ensure her husband didn’t “forget,” and we left.