The call went through. The gentleman told Nan on the air, "It doesn't work that way, Jimmy. An off-duty officer has no right to revoke anyone's driver's license. He isn't even entitled to issue a ticket for a traffic violation. That means your license is still valid. Don't worry about it."
"Should I do somesing to prevent zer trouble down the road?" His heart was pounding; this was the first time he was speaking on the radio.
"You may go to the police station and file a complaint. Do you know what station this officer is at?" "I don't."
"Find that out and file a complaint. We mustn't let this sort of police brutality pass with impunity. It's outrageous to threaten people with a gun when he was off duty. All right, it looks like we're out of time. You're listening to Legal Talk. Our toll-free number is 1-800-723…"
Nan didn't know the word "impunity," and neither would he bother to lodge a complaint, since it was impossible to find out what station the policeman belonged to. He was glad he still had his driver's license.
10
HENG CHEN hadn't shown up at Ding's Dumplings for several days, and Nan substituted for him. The staff upstairs often talked about Heng, and sometimes Nan joined their conversation. They felt that Heng must be too ashamed to continue to work here since everybody knew his wife had dumped him. Nowadays it was commonplace for young women from mainland China to leave their husbands for white men and Chinese Americans, but in his case, he had lost Maiyu to a black man who was at least fifteen years his senior. For that, Chinchin believed, he must have felt more humiliated. Nan didn't think so. He could see that Kellman was attractive to women, especially to those who needed a strong shoulder to rely on. Kellman was the kind of fellow who would buy flowers for his girlfriend a few times a week and would take her to the movies, the theater, museums, and concerts. In contrast, Heng had yet to find his bearings here. He just worked and worked, and he must have been boring to Maiyu, who couldn't tolerate it that her husband, formerly a promising young historian, had grown less and less competent than herself. More troublesome, some men from mainland China tended to have a devil of a temper because they had lost their sense of superiority, especially some college graduates who had been viewed as the best of their generation in their homeland; here as new arrivals they had to start from scratch like others, and mentally they weren't primed for such a drastic change. Worse still, their former privileged life had deprived them of the vitality and stamina needed for grappling with adversities in order to take root in the American soil; as a consequence, the emigration blighted many of them. Undoubtedly, Heng was one of those men.
Heng had once told Nan that his parents would call him collect from his home village every other week, even though they didn't have anything urgent to report. For them, this was a way to show off to the villagers, none of whose children had gone to college, to say nothing of making big money in New York. His parents would go to the village office and use the only telephone available for the two hundred households. Every call from home cost Heng at least fifty dollars, so he and Maiyu often fought over the phone bills. He admitted to Nan that in a way he himself was to blame, because he had once sent back a photograph in which his rear end leaned against a brand-new Jaguar parked in a driveway beside a grand Tudor house, as if he owned both of them.
Rolling her large eyes, Chinchin said to the waitstaff joshingly, "You mainlanders, Communist supporters, must've been used to sharing husbands and wives, so it's no big deal to Heng. If Maiyu had a Taiwanese husband, she'd better be careful-he would kill her."
" Heng is no man," Aimin said.
"You shouldn't blame him," Nan broke in. "It's hard for him to survive here. How can he compete with Kellman, who has everything Maiyu wants?"
"Kellman can't be as rich as he appears," Chinchin said.
"But he owns a business and has a lot of confidence." Nan tugged a piece of tissue out of a dispenser on the counter. "Maiyu must feel vulnerable and want security."
" Maybe Heng is no good in bed," Aimin said, gnawing her thumbnail.
"Come now, he's already down, no need to kick him anymore," Nan protested.
"I'm sure Heng hasn't had enough sex education and can't satisfy Maiyu. "
"Aimin, you really have a mouth on you," said Chinchin.
Strangely enough, Yafang had been tongue-tied the whole time the conversation was going on. She looked pale today. Aimin asked, "Yafang, what do you think of Heng? Does he look like a man to you?"
"He's a hungry wolf."
"Wow, how come you're so angry?" Chinchin said. "He's just a little crazy, horny man."
"How do you know he's horny?" Aimin asked. "I just know it."
Nan was amazed by Yafang's remarks. She seemed to know more about Heng than the rest of them. Perhaps something had taken place between her and him when Nan was back in Boston over the weekend. What had happened? Why wouldn't Heng come to work? Why was Yafang so irascible?
Peeling scallions in the kitchen, Nan thought about his conversation with the female staff upstairs. Though Heng was physically small and weak, Nan felt that sex shouldn't be the reason Maiyu had run out on him. He remembered Gary Zimmerman, who had been his roommate during his first year and a half at Brandeis. Gary, skinny and poor, was crippled, with one leg shorter than the other and his left arm unable to stretch out freely, yet he never lacked girlfriends. Sometimes this Israeli would date two girls together and even frolic with both of them simultaneously in his queen-size bed, making such a racket that Nan, in the next room, couldn't sleep until they quieted down in the wee hours. Except for his sonorous voice, Gary had nothing extraordinary, but he spoke English fluently and was at home in America, so his demeanor and confidence attracted the females around him, especially those who were learning Hebrew from him and sympathized with his handicap. By contrast, Heng's problem was that he had been enervated and diminished here. Having little English, with neither hope nor confidence, how could he rival Kellman?
11
THAT NIGHT after they closed up, Nan and Yafang left together for the subway station. She was wearing a gabardine peacoat that gave her a cinched waist. It was sprinkling, and the murky puddles on Canal Street reflected the neon lights and would disappear whenever a car crushed through them. Nearby wisps of steam were rising from a manhole. There were still many people on the sidewalk, though most of the shops were locked up. Along the other side of the street a Chinese man was biking from the opposite direction against the slashing wind, the back of his white raincoat bellying out and making him anomalous, like a ghost. As if unable to see far, his eyes were fixed on the front wheel of his bicycle; on the handlebars hung a plastic bag still giving off steam. Nan turned to watch the back of the deliveryman, who vanished at the street corner a block away.
On the subway platform, Yafang told Nan that Heng might never come to work again. "Why?" he asked.
"He dare not."
With the slackening clank an A train came to a stop, disgorging passengers. Nan could have taken it, but it didn't stop at Kingston-Throop avenues, where Yafang would get off, so he waited with her for the C train.
After the platform quieted down some, he said to her again, "I still don't understand why Heng won't come to work again. Who's he afraid of?"
"Me."
"You? Why?"
"I'll knife him if he comes close to me again." "What's going on?"
"He… he forced me to have sex with him." "What? A man like him could do that?"