“Nobody,” Byrnes said.
She tried to remember how long ago it had been. Years and years, that was certain. And would he think her frivolous now? Would he accept what she had done (what she was about to do, actually, since she hadn’t yet done it, and could still change her mind about it) as the gift she intended it to be, or would he consider it the self-indulgent whim of a woman who was no longer the young girl he’d married years and years ago? Well, who is? Teddy thought. Even Jane Fonda is no longer the young girl she was years and years ago. But does Jane Fonda worry about such things? Probably, Teddy thought.
The section of the city through which she walked was thronged with people, but Teddy could not hear the drifting snatches of their conversations as they moved past her and around her. Their exhaled breaths pluming on the brittle air were, to her, only empty cartoon balloons floating past in a silent rush. She walked in an oddly hushed world, dangerous to her in that her ears could provide no timely warnings, curiously exquisite in that whatever she saw was unaccompanied by any sound that might have marred its beauty. The sight (and aroma) of a bluish-gray cloud of carbon monoxide, billowing onto the silvery air from an automobile exhaust pipe, assumed dreamlike proportions when it was not coupled with the harsh mechanical sound of an automobile engine. The uniformed cop on the corner, waving his arms this way and that, artfully dodging as he directed the cross-purposed stream of lumbering traffic, became an acrobat, a ballet dancer, a skilled mime the moment one did not have to hear his bellowed, “Move it, let’s keep it moving!” And yet—
She had never heard her husband’s voice.
She had never heard her children’s laughter.
She had never heard the pleasant wintry jingle of automobile skid chains on an icy street, the big-city cacophony of jackhammers and automobile horns, street vendors and hawkers, babies crying. As she passed a souvenir shop whose window brimmed with inexpensive jade, ivory (illegal to import), fans, dolls with Oriental eyes (like her husband’s), she did not hear drifting from a small window on the side wall of the shop the sound of a stringed instrument plucking a sad and delicate Chinese melody, the notes hovering on the air like ice crystals — she simply did not hear.
The tattoo parlor was vaguely anonymous, hidden as it was on a narrow Chinatown side street. The last time she’d been here, the place had been flanked by a bar and a Laundromat. Today, the bar was an offtrack betting parlor and the Laundromat was a fortune-telling shop run by someone named Sister Lucy. Progress. As she passed Sister Lucy’s emporium, Teddy looked over the curtain in the front window and saw a Gypsy woman sitting before a large phrenology poster hanging on the wall. Except for the poster and the woman, the shop was empty. The woman looked very lonely and a trifle cold, huddled in her shawl, looking straight ahead of her at the entrance door. For a moment, Teddy was tempted to walk into the empty store and have her fortune told. What was the joke? Her husband was very good at remembering jokes. What was it? Why couldn’t women remember jokes? Was that a sexist attitude? What the hell was the joke? Something about a Gypsy band buying a chain of empty stores?
The name on the plate glass window of the tattoo parlor was Charlie Chen. Beneath the name were the words Exotic Oriental Tattoo. She hesitated a moment, and then opened the door. There must have been a bell over the door, and it probably tinkled, signaling Mr. Chen from the back of his shop. She had not heard the bell, and at first she did not recognize the old Chinese man who came toward her. The last time she’d seen him, he had been a round fat man with a small mustache on his upper lip. He had laughed a lot, and each time he laughed, his fat little body quivered. He had thick fingers, she remembered, and there had been an oval jade ring on the forefinger of his left hand.
“Yes, lady?” he said.
It was Chen, of course. The mustache was gone, and so was the jade ring, and so were the acres of flesh, but it was surely Chen, wizened and wrinkled and shrunken, looking at her now out of puzzled brown eyes, trying to place her. She thought I’ve changed, too, he doesn’t recognize me, and suddenly felt foolish about what she was here to do. Maybe it was too late for things like garter belts and panties, ribbed stockings and high-heeled, patent leather pumps, merry widows and lacy teddies, too late for Teddy, too late for silly, sexy playfulness. Was it? Oh my God, was it?
She had asked Fanny to call yesterday, first to find out if the shop would be open today, and next to make an appointment for her. Fanny had left the name Teddy Carella. Had Chen forgotten her name as well? He was still staring at her.
“You Missa Carella?” he said.
She nodded.
“I know you?” he said, his head cocked, studying her.
She nodded again.
“You know me?”
She nodded.
“Charlie Chen,” he said, and laughed, but nothing about him shook, his laughter was an empty wind blowing through a frail old body. “Everybody call me Charlie Chan,” he explained. “Big detective Charlie Chan. But me Chen, Chen. You know Charlie Chan, detective?”
The same words he had spoken all those years ago.
Oddly, she felt like weeping.
“Big detective,” Chen said. “Got stupid sons.” He laughed again. “Me got stupid sons, too, but me no detec—” And suddenly he stopped, and his eyes opened wide, and he said, “Detective wife, you detective wife! I make butterfly for you! Black lacy butterfly!”
She nodded again, grinning now.
“You no can talk, right. You read my lips, right?”
She nodded.
“Good, everything hunky-dory. How you been, lady? You still so pretty, most beautiful lady ever come my shop. You still got butterfly on shoulder?”
She nodded.
“Best butterfly I ever make. Nice small butterfly. I want do big one, remember? You say no, small one. I make tiny delicate black butterfly, very good for lady. Very sexy in strapless gown. You husband think was sexy?”
Teddy nodded. She started to say something with her hands, caught herself — as she so often had to — and then pointed to a pencil and a sheet of paper on Chen’s counter.
“You wanna talk, right?” Chen said, smiling, and handed her the pencil and paper.
She took both, and wrote: How have you been, Mr. Chen?
“Ah, well, not so good,” Chen said.
She looked at him expectantly, quizzically.
“Old Charlie Chen gotta Big C, huh?” he said.
She did not understand him for a moment.
“Cancer,” he said, and saw the immediate shocked look on her face and said, “No, no, lady, don’t worry, old Charlie be hunky-dory, yessir.” He kept watching her face. She did not want to cry. She owed the old man the dignity of not having to watch her cry for him. She opened her hands. She tilted her head. She raised her eyebrows ever so slightly. She saw on his face and in his eyes that he knew she was telling him how sorry she was. “Thank you, lady,” he said, and impulsively took both her hands between his own, and, smiling, said, “So, why you come here see Charlie Chen? You write down what you like, yes?”
She picked up the pencil and began writing again.
“Ah,” he said, watching. “Ah. Very smart idea. Very smart. Okay, fine.”