This Is a Bust (16 page)

“Is this something I need a date for?”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Well, you can just come by yourself if you want.”

“Something tells me that I'm going to be the only one there
who's old enough to drink.”

“We don't allow alcohol at any church functions. It's just a
social kind of thing. I don't have a boyfriend, so you know, I'll dance with anyone who wants to.”

“I don't know how to dance.”

“You
don't have to dance. There'll be good music to listen

to
there.”

“I really don't think I'm going to go, Lonnie. There's a big
game on that night. Rangers and Islanders.”

“You'd rather stay at home and watch a baseball game?”

“Hockey.”

“Well, mayb
e the next dance, you won't have anything 
to
watch.”

“Yeah, next time,” I said.

“I have to go get the mop,” Lonnie said, backing away. “I'll
see you tomorrow morning, officer.”

“I'll see you tomorrow,” I said. Lonnie dragged her broom
into the back and I walked to the door.

“Hey!” the old woman said to me. “You!”

“Me?” I asked.

“You're that policeman, right?” she asked. The old man
grunted and rustled the newspaper he was hiding behind.

“Which one?” I asked.

“The one in the newspapers.”

“Yeah, that's me.”

“You don't know anything about women, do you? No
wonder you're always by yourself.”

“I'm alone but I'm not lonely.”

“Shut up!” she said. “Didn't you know that pretty girl was
asking you to go to the dance with her?”

“I was waiting for her to ask me.”

“She was asking you to ask her!” insisted the old woman.

The old man grunted again. “Why are you like this?” he
asked the woman in a smoky voice. “When you muddy up the water, no one can drink.”

“You mind your own business!” the woman said to the man
before turning back to me. “You're not going to be young forever,” she said, taking a rationed sip of coffee.

You sure didn't stay young, lady, I thought.

I looked at Lonnie stagger around with the mop. I stuck my
hands in my pockets and shifted my feet. I looked into my heart and found something there.

—

Lonnie's church was Transfiguration, which was on the inner elbow of Mott Street. The dance was being held to raise funds and to celebrate the Chinese New Year. They couldn't have had it on the actual day, since most of the young people had to be with their families.

The
huge church with the stone-and-iron fence out front
was an imposing sight in Chinatown mostly because it was bigger and more solid than the surrounding crappy brick tenements. The church looked like a stone battleship run aground on a Hong Kong block.

Transfiguration ran after-school and weekend Bible and
pre-college study programs for kids. The details and hours were posted in a glass case mounted on the outdoor fence. Another glass case had a list of last year's high-school grads who had also attended the church's programs. Next to their names were the colleges they had gotten into in English. The non-Ivy League colleges had phonetic Chinese characters next to them so people would know how to say them.

I
put my back against the case and checked my watch again.
Lonnie was 15 minutes late already. I heard muffled beats from the church's basement. I reached up and batted a red balloon tied to the iron fence. I felt stupid. I was an old man, I didn't go to church, I didn't go to college, and now I was being stood up for a teeny-bopper dance.

I looked down at my wing-tipped Florsheims. I'd wasted
a quarter on a polish and shine from the shoe guy by Columbus Park. I licked my thumb where I had burned it slightly on the iron. I'd forgotten you were only supposed to touch the handle.

A group of five boys in black suede jackets walked by. Two
of them had their hair brushed into the Bruce Lee/flattened cotton swab look.

I watched them as they went up Mott and one of them
looked back at me. I crossed my arms and lifted my chin. He smiled and pointed to my right.

I turned and saw Lonnie. Her hair was done in curls. She
wore dark blue eye shadow with wet red lipstick that made her lips glisten wickedly. Two obviously fake diamond earrings shook nervously under her jaw, but you couldn't be unhappy about them on a girl like her.

She had on a black wool coat that was a little short. I stared
at her legs. The long uniform skirt of Martha's didn't have a slit, and I'd never gotten a good enough look at them. The sight of those legs could derail a train.

“Robert, look at you, wearing a jacket and a shirt! I can't
believe you got so dressed up!” When she touched my arm, it bothered me because it made me think of her in a sexual
manner. I had always found her attractive, otherwise I wouldn't have talked to her so much at Martha's, but I never had the thoughts I was having now. And to be walking into a church at this point, even for a non-believer, felt horribly wrong.

“Are you okay, Robert? Why are you making that face?”

“What kind of face?”

“Like you're scared.”

“I'm okay.” I patted my pocket to check my wallet and I was
dimly aware that my left arm was slightly restrained by Lonnie's right hand. I guess I could have slipped her hand into mine very easily, and maybe she was waiting for me to. I wasn't sure what to do, and I was still thinking about it when we got to the door. Lonnie broke off and pulled the door open.

“Officers first,” she said.

“Thank you, miss.” We walked in past the closed doors of
the administrative offices. Upbeat music floated up from below. It sounded familiar and got louder as we went down the stairs.

Streamers
were taped to the exposed pipes running along
the ceiling of the church's basement, making the room seem a little less sad. The dance floor was exposed and empty, save for an older Chinese couple shuffling slowly. The high-school-aged disc jockey leaned against a pole, one hand on his hip. He jumped to attention when we walked in.

About
20 kids, varying in age from early- to mid-teens, were
sprawled around three round banquet tables against the far wall. Apart from the dancing couple, I was the oldest person in the joint. I stared at them, shocked at the sight of older Chinese people being affectionate in public.

“That's Mr. Jen and his wife,” said Lonnie. “He's been the
janitor here for as long as I can remember.”

“Who's the disc jockey?”

“Oh, that guy. He's one of my brother's friends. He asked me
to go to the dance with him.”

“You didn't like him?”

“I told him I was coming with you. Actually, I told him I was
coming with you before I even told you about the dance.” She took off her coat and put it on a hanger. “Anyway, he's just a kid.”

Lonnie had on a thin red blouse. There was no doubt in my
mind that the Martha's uniform was designed to flatten every curve in the female body.

“You want to hang up your jacket?” she asked.

“No, I'll just undo the buttons a little.” After thinking a bit, I
said, “Lonnie, how come nobody's dancing?”

“Well, the kids really wanted disco, but the church said no.”
That explained why the DJ was playing bland Chinese pop music from a generation ago. “This music's really terrible, isn't it?”

“It's not bad,
it's just old. When I was a kid, we used to dance
to the Beatles and Rolling Stones. Kids don't dance anymore. They'd rather just be home playing with their

CB radios, right?”

“Do you want to dance, Robert?”

“No, this music makes me want to watch Mr. Jen.” We
watched the couple dance. When the song was over, he bowed and she curtsied. Watching that made me wish I'd seen my parents dance. The DJ shuffled over to the record player. He threw on another record and put the tone arm down. That sulk of his could be contagious.

“Is everyone having fun?” Lonnie asked the tables of kids.

“No,” the collective chorus said.

“Lonnie, this music stinks.”

“I thought there was going to be dinner here.”

“Well, we have punch and cookies,” said Lonnie. “If you're
hungry, you can have some.”

“Those almond cookies are stale.”

“Come on now, they taste fine.”

I found a wall to lean against. I felt like I was at a surly
11-
year-old's birthday party. Where were the toy whistles?

“I'm sorry you're not having fun, Robert,” said Lonnie,
running up to me. “I really thought some of the older people were going to show up.”

“I'm here, doesn't that count?”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“No, Lonnie. I'm just a little irritable because these shoes are
kinda tight.”

“You want to sit down?”

“I'll si
t down right here.” I picked a dented metal folding chair that was far away from the kids. Lonnie hastily pulled out a chair and sat down next to me. She looked tired, too.

“I really tried to put something together that would be fun,
but now I feel like I ruined everything. You just can't make everybody happy. The older people didn't bother to come and the younger kids hate this.”

“Lonnie, it's not your fault. People never appreciate things.”

“Maybe.”

“What do you do here at the church?”

“I'm kind of a chaperone. I take the kids to museums or
the zoo. I show them there's a whole world outside of Chinatown.”

“I used to think there was. I thought that being in the Army
would do that for me.”

“It didn't work?”

“Only showed me that no matter where I was, I was a
Chinaman, and I could never be anyone else.”

“Did you wish you hadn't joined the army?”

“Join? I was drafted. I didn't have a choice.”

“Oh.
I've been with the church for more than 10 years. That's
by choice.”

“Me, myself, I never saw much use to the church. I mean,
church is nice for people who believe in it, but it doesn't seem to do anything real. All they do is collect money, right?”

Lonnie shifted her mouth a little.

“Well, I come to this church because it was one of
the sponsors for us to come to the U.S. So it's more personal obligation and my gratitude than a religious thing for me.”

“I'm sorry if I made it sound like church was stupid.”

“Don't worry about it, Robert. I don't care. I haven't even
finished the Bible.”

“Look, how about we get out of here and go have dinner? I
mean a nice one. We're all dressed up already.”

“I was supposed to stay and clean up after the party.”

“Don't
worry about it. I'll talk to Mr. Jen. He'll shut the place
down.”

—

We got a table at Garden of Peking on Mulberry, a place
I have walked by many times. They used tablecloths and didn't serve rice because at high-class Chinese meals, you're supposed to fill up on meat to show how much money you have.

“We don't often have dignitaries here, officer,” the waiter
said. He was staring down Lonnie's blouse. “You want me to roll for you two?”

“We got it, big boy,” I said. We took the flour pancakes and
threw on duck meat and skin, green scallion stalks, and a spoonful of plum sauce. I wrapped one up for Lonnie, who seemed to be struggling a little.

“Thank you, Robert! I'm so clumsy. My hands are tired
from the bakery.” After a bite, she said, “It's good. I can't remember the last time I've had this.”

I t
hought about the last time I had eaten Peking duck. It was
right after my father's funeral.

“Yeah, I can't remember the last time, either,” I said.

“It's so fatty.”

“That means it was a happy duck.”

“I'm sure it wasn't happy when they killed it.”

“This duck was happy to give its life up to feed hungry
people.”

“Would you give your life up for someone else?”

“Lonn
ie, I'm a policeman. That's what my job's all about.

I'm
dying a little every day and nobody cares.”

“Who was that girl you came into Martha's with a few
weeks ago?”

“She was an old friend.”

“Is she your Valentine?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“She's very pretty.”

“That's not the most important thing.”

“What do you look for in a girl?”

“I guess someone who has the capacity to like me.”

“You mea
n, you want to find someone who will love

you,
right?”

“That's it. Hey, Lonnie. Does my hair look okay?”

“It looks really good.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes! It's really you.”