Double Cup Love Page 9

  “But I don’t have a He-Man, Dad.”

  He wasn’t falling for it.

  “You want the car or you want a He-Man?”

  “I want the car.”

  “You sure? This is what Americans call put the car before the He-Man.”

  “Yeah, I want the car.”

  “Why do you want the car?”

  “The car is green. I like green. Plus, it’s bigger. He-Man is just…a man.”

  “Ha ha, OK, here’s your car.”

  He handed me the car.

  Thirty-two years later, it’s still here: the green He-Man car driven by a belief in unconditional love between father and son. Despite everything that’s happened between us, I see myself as privileged. My dad stopped the world on March 7, 1985, to remind me that he loved me, and I’ll never forget it.

  I told myself that I’d take care of Emery the same way my dad took care of me. And in a way, I succeeded—I do treat Emery like Dad treated me: lots of cutting jokes and cheap shots sprinkled with random acts of kindness.

  Emery hadn’t been planning on coming to Chengdu, because he was eight chapters away from finishing a fantasy novel he’d been working on for two years. Most of the time he wouldn’t even pick up the phone, ’cause he was in the lab. But China was something he couldn’t resist.

  I visited China because I knew it was good for me. Like eating broccoli. If you roasted the garlic just right, got that Maldon flake salt poppin’, and kept the stems to a minimum, I might sit in an airplane for it. Emery, on the other hand, lived on frozen broccoli. Son kept bags of it in the freezer at home, microwaved it, and ate it like clockwork. I appreciated broccoli and China because I sensed they were good for me. Emery lived for them.

  I shared a Netflix account with Emery, and every time I logged on, it was halfway through a Chinese, Korean, or Japanese film. Dude didn’t watch anything in English besides Braveheart. He preferred Asian women, read Asia Times Online, couldn’t wait for the rise of China—but, surprisingly, didn’t care much about Chinese food. I asked him about it one time.

  “I’m very allergic to MSG.”

  “You can be allergic to MSG?”

  “Oh yeah, I get horrible headaches, dry mouth. I hate Chinese food in China.”

  Emery was one of the few people who went to China in spite of the food. He read so much news about recycled oil, fake meat, and exotic roach strains that it was impossible for him to eat Chinese food in China without imagining himself infected with some futuristic zombie virus.

  “Why do you want me to come to China, though?”

  “I need you to bring Mom’s ring.”

  “Ahhh. You could just have her mail it, though.”

  I didn’t want to get all sentimental on the phone, but it meant a lot to me that Evan and Emery would be with me in China when I proposed. But I couldn’t just tell Emery. Like my dad, I offered a gift in place of communicating real human emotions and just hoped that he’d connect the dots on my design and understand why he had to be there. I mean, why actually tell someone how important he or she is to you when you can just offer airline tickets instead?

  “Just bring it to China and I’ll pay your airfare.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yup…and help me cook.”

  “Hmmm. How much cooking?” Emery was always careful about committing to any work not involving a computer and headset.

  “Just help out when we do events upstairs on the roof. I’ll do the cooking, just help set up and serve.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I don’t have to run payroll, go to the Liquor Authority, or get sued for a Four Loko party? You’re not going to hotbox the basement and hang out with birds when Sam Sifton shows up?”

  “Dick. Just set up and serve.”

  “If you ask me to help with the tax audit, I’m going to be very upset.”

  “Evan’s on the tax audit.”

  “You know Evan is going to fuck up the tax audit.”

  “Motherfucker, just get on the plane. This is not a business deal. There are no hidden strings. I just want you to be out here for an important life moment ’cause you’re my brother.”

  “OK, but every time I get excited for one of your life moments, you fuck your life up and then I try to fight you and you end up running around the apartment complex naked. I’m just trying to avoid seeing your balls again.”

  Every two years, Emery and I used to have an all-out, no-holds-barred fight. The last time we fought was in the parking lot of Cattleman’s Steakhouse, right before my dad sold it. Emery was criticizing Evan’s management of Baohaus, and I jumped in to defend Evan. Not because I didn’t think Evan could improve, but because Evan was my mans, and if anyone was going to criticize my mans, it was gonna be me.

  Emery was three years younger than me but had been stronger since eleventh grade; from that day on I stopped fighting him toe to toe and instead I’d Mayweather him. Stick and move and if all else failed, fight dirty. When he stepped to me in the parking lot, fists up, I ran into the adjacent construction site and found a rock. I threw the big-ass rock at Emery’s stomach, stopped him in his path, and started beating him over the head with a wooden door stopper until Pops broke it up.

  “You fight dirty!” Emery yelled once Dad pulled us apart.

  “I didn’t want to fight at all! You fucking started it.”

  “You run like a bitch.”

  “I don’t want to fight, but if you’re going to unilaterally decide that we’re going to fight, I’m going to Mayweather you.”

  “Mayweather doesn’t throw rocks and hit people with door stoppers, you fat fuck.”

  “He should. It’d be a lot more interesting.”

  Despite it all, Emery was my heart. While we argued the most, we had the same intentions and values. It’s how we acted on those intentions and values that became the problem.

  —

  Three days after our phone conversation, Emery showed up at Hakka Heather’s, exploding with excitement.

  “Dude! This is a hooker hotel!”

  “Ha ha, we picked a good one,” said Evan.

  “And it’s next to a Hooters!”

  “Yeah, man, they got broccoli and protein,” I said.

  “Oh, don’t worry, I brought a case of Quest Bars from home. China is not going to ruin my digestive system this time. I refuse to shit my pants this trip.”

  “Good luck, my ass just randomly makes espresso with no warning out here and then I have to take a shower.”

  “UGH! No, no, Edwyn, I’m not shitting my pants this time. I refuse! This setup is too good for me to be sitting in this room shitting my pants. Do you realize where we are?”

  “Starbucks?” Evan said. He’d seen too many off-menu espressos.

  “No, dude, a CHINESE SUPER 8 HOOKER MOTEL. I can’t wait to watch these round eyes walk in and out with hookers. This is the best trolling position ever! And yo, did you know there is an insurance company set up in the room next to yours? I just saw this delivery guy go up the elevator on a moped, ride it through the hall, deliver food to the insurance company, then drive back into the elevator and go downstairs.”

  Emery was right. China, at this moment, was a beautiful place. Especially if you believe heaven is a movie directed by the Coen Brothers.

  “If you wanna see some ratchet shit, go to the meat market. I need some pork belly anyway,” I said.

  I was prepping all morning for our first event at Hakka Bar upstairs. The menu was something simple and familiar: red-cooked pork belly, seaweed knots, braised egg, bitter melon, and garlic cabbage. I live for the meat and three: rice, meat, three vegetables, and something sweet. It’s a deal cooks have negotiated with the People since before I can remember. What does everyone want Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday once they move out of their parents’ home? Mom’s food. That’s what the meat and three is: the ten-dollar reenactment of your mother’s table. In this way, cooks are surrogate mo
ms. Eating your way through the box, staring at the bottom of a greasy Styrofoam container, you come to grips with the distance between the already passing satisfaction and the memories it evoked. This isn’t your mom’s food; this isn’t your mom’s house; and this isn’t your mom’s love. It’s a moment you bought for ten dollars: three songs about Mom at Karaoke Boho.

  “Hakka Heather told me there are two meat markets. One in the mall and the other is what she calls the ‘ultra premium’ meat market,” I told Emery.

  “Oh, for sure, I’ll go to the meat market. I bet it’s so nasty. I’m going to finger swine rectum and make Evan smell it.”

  “Gross, dude! Don’t fucking do that shit. I could get foot and mouth disease, man,” Evan said.

  Emery could smell blood in the water. He immediately picked his nose and chased Evan around the room with a stinky finger. I can honestly say with no irony, I really missed having Emery and his stinky finger around.

  Evan and Emery decided to go to the Ultra Premium Chengdu Meat Market, so I went to Treat, the grocery store in the mall. I asked the locals in the lobby about whether I should walk or cab and got differing opinions.

  “You could walk, but you will sweat.”

  “Hmmm, there is no train stop here.”

  “Must take cab, you will sweat.”

  “Must take cab, you will become dark.”

  Despite everyone’s concern for perspiration and tanning, I got on my N.Y. shit and walked. Chengdu has a subway system on par with, say, Philadelphia. You can walk a half-mile to any train station and go to most parts of the city. But in Chengdu, it’s also possible to step outside and walk to your choice of three different super malls within a mile radius of your home; it’s just not an enjoyable walk. There’s nothing intimate or charming about it. Scooters, mopeds, and bikes zip around, cars jump the curb; at every turn there are six-lane streets, skywalks, and freeways. It’s like some sort of ugly, twisted Ayn Rand nightmare: Architects Gone Wild.

  If you’ve never been to a major Chinese or Russian city, it’s tough to grasp how uncomfortable cities built by communists are. Just imagine if Redman and Mumm-Ra*2 collaborated on a city; that’s what Chengdu looks like. A disgusting mummy lair accented with a touch of pre–Cory Booker Newark, neatly encased in a delicious cocoon of coal smog. You’ll get robbed in West Philly, but it happens in a setting with spectacular Victorian architecture, and you’re consoled knowing your hard-earned money is going toward a crispy pair of Air Force 1s or Meek Mill’s funeral.*3 I’d rather be robbed in West Philly than massaged in Chengdu with a room facing the street; the views are so spectacularly putrid that it makes West Philly feel like Queen Anne’s world.

  After about twenty minutes, I arrived at Raffles City: a four-level mall concept developed in Singapore and transplanted in Chengdu. It had a Din Tai Fung noodle shop, a movie theater, office space, and this light pavilion installation that looked like one giant piece of backlit Chex Mix. Treat, the Hong Kong grocery store, was on the basement level. Approximately seventy percent of the businesses in Raffles City were international, and the prices were higher than in most places around Chengdu.

  You walked around and saw almost all Asian faces, but there were levels to this shit. Teenage kids with disposable income and designer clothes politicked at the custard or red bean drink spots. Taiwanese restaurants and stands were popular with these kids because the food was cheap. There were also Westerners with very idiosyncratic tastes. You could never peg what a Westerner was going to try. Some were adventurous, walking back to their office through the mall with pig ear on a stick, while others played it safe with fried rice steamed in lotus leaves. The older Chinese businessmen had an affinity for Gan Guo,*4 a popular Sichuanese dish featuring dry heat, aromatics, and your choice of protein stir-fried and delivered to your table in a wok, the Chinese equivalent to pasta-in-the-pan.

  I’d become numb to malls. I’d grown up in mall-infested central Florida and had now seen malls on six of the seven continents. They were all the same, phallic, egotistical structures with minor design distinctions; a collection of broad-stroke stimulation under one roof aiming to please everyone but really just leaving behind a lot of broken hearts and dirty napkins in the food court. I was pondering the numbness when my phone rang.

  “Dude…did you just get my text?”

  “No, I’m distracted. This mall is fucking horrible.”

  “Look at your phone, Edwyn.”

  It was Emery. I put him on speaker and opened up his text, which contained three images. The first photo was a line of three stalls at the meat market where a Chinese kid about six years old had pulled his pants down and was pissing in the gap between a chicken and pork vendor.

  “OK, so don’t get any pork that kid pissed on.”

  “Keep looking, Edwyn….I found the MOST ULTRA PREMIUM CHENGDU MEAT.”

  I went to the second photo: black chickens and yellow chickens hanging from their necks over a giant rectangular butcher’s block where huge duck and chicken carcasses were laid out. Right in the middle of the photo was a sleeping Chinaman.

  “Did you see it?”

  “Son! This Chinaman is SLEEPING with a squad of dead chickens!”

  “For real! It’s the best! This meat market is fucking crazy. It smells HORRID, but there is so much ratchet shit going on. They are selling meat from this stand, and people are picking meat AROUND a sleeping Chinaman.”

  “I don’t even want to see the third photo.”

  “Oh, the sleeper is my favorite, but I saved this one for last ’cause I know you’ll be VERY impressed.”

  “Stop it. What is the third photo?”

  “I can’t tell you, Edwyn, it’s too good. You need to see photo three for yourself.”

  Fuck it. I opened the third photo. Everything seemed OK, and it made me nervous. What the fuck did Emery want me to see?

  “Do you see it?”

  “Shut up, man, I’m trying to concentrate.”

  “OK, OK, let it sink in.”

  It was a stall with poultry and livestock hanging from hooks. I looked more closely at the animals: there was a black free-range chicken, a duck, a duck, a rabbit. No big deal. Wait a minute….

  “Emery…that’s not a fucking rabbit.”

  “Ha ha ha, no, Edwyn. Rabbits don’t have tails like that.”

  “THEY ARE SELLING FRESH DOG IN THIS MARKET?”

  “Dude…DOG. I found fucking DOG. Now don’t go telling all the white people you know! They’re going to think we all eat dog.”

  That was the deadest-ass dog I’d ever seen in my life. The skin was tense, muscles taught, tail erect, head and neck still attached so you saw its face.

  I made myself look at the image for a good five minutes.

  —

  In sixth grade, I wanted a dog.

  “If you get straight A’s, you can have a dog,” my mother told me.

  “What if I have an A minus? I have A’s in five classes, but A minus in one.”

  “A is A. We are not monster parents. A minus is still A.”

  “Can I get a big dog?”

  “How big?”

  “I want a German Shepherd!”

  My mom got a little misty.

  “What? You don’t like German Shepherds, Mom?”

  “No! You always misunderstand me, Xiao Tsen. I love German Shepherd. I had one in Taiwan.”

  “Is it dead?”

  “You so silly! Of course it’s dead. Dogs don’t live that long. You want dog, one day will die. I tell you. When I was in middle school, my dad had many dogs guard the textile factory. Lots of dogs. I love dogs. My favorite was a German Shepherd. Every day, I comb his hair, take him for walk, give him food. He was my best friend.

  “I didn’t have many friend. People all liars. This boy in school tell me he like me, but very annoying. Every day, he come chase me after school so one day I slam door behind me and his thumb get stuck. He don’t like me anymore.”

  “But you slammed his t
humb in the door.”

  “I didn’t mean to slam his thumb in door. He stupid chase me too close! But if he really like me, he would try harder.”

  “Is this how all girls think?”

  “Yeah, girls don’t have many friends in life. Your dad sometimes not even my friend. But this German Shepherd was my best friend. So pretty, every day, hang out with me, follow me, and very kind. Life in Taiwan was hard back then, though. Lots of homeless people in the street. I never forgive myself….

  “One day, I say, ‘I should let this dog run! I am not fast enough to keep up.’ So I let the dog off the leash and run. At first he stay with me, he don’t run. But I tell him, ‘Go, go, you’re free! Go run!’ So he run.

  “I wait for him. Ten minutes, he no come back. Twenty minutes, no dog. Thirty minutes, I start to walk around look for my dog. I’m so nervous. Searching, searching, ‘Where is my dog?’ Then I find him and I cry. I cry, I cry, I cry. The homeless people in Taiwan have metal hooks on rope. One of the homeless hooked my dog leg and pull the meat off. Dog get away, but limping back to me with part of leg missing. Make me so mad! These people are sick! Sick people, who would do this to dog? I so mad at myself and everyone. Only friend I have, they take his leg….”

  My mind scrambled and I felt something like shame when my mother told me this story. I thought, Wait, so not only do “our people” eat dog, but they line catch the leg and that leg came from my mother’s dog?

  These days, I realize my shame was misplaced. When I think about that dog now, I feel sadness, but not any specific pain for being Chinese-Taiwanese because that has nothing to do with it. I thought about what Emery said, Now don’t go telling all the white people you know, but why not? If someone is poor enough to fishhook their neighbor’s dog for a meal, it’s on us to figure out why someone in this corner of the world consciously makes that choice. Being Chinese doesn’t instantly give you a thirst for dog fishing, but getting left behind will give you a hunger for anything that moves.

  “Ed, we’re gonna come meet you back at Hakka Homes. I don’t think you want any of the pork at this meat market,” Emery broke into the silence.

  I ended up getting all of my ingredients at the thoroughly air-conditioned super mall.