He closed the suitcase and shoved it back in beneath the junk and waste. Then he flopped down on the mattress with the window open and slept with the sound of the city rumbling in his ear.
A few days later he knocked on the office door again, looked at the order ticket as he waited: beef with eggplant, brown rice, egg drop soup, can of soda. He did not blame the professor for ordering this muck; the restaurant was one of only a few in the neighborhood that made deliveries.
The door opened. The professor smiled at him, was wearing a dark blue suit and pink tie. He handed over the bag and again the professor tipped him more than three dollars. Then the professor asked him, “How long have you been here? In New York.”
He said, “One year,” even though he had only been in the country since June.
“How is your English?”
He shook his head and said, “Not very good.”
The professor nodded, stood in the doorway with his brow furrowed. “Have you thought about taking classes?”
He glanced behind the professor into the office, did not see anyone else in there with him.
“No time for classes. I’m always working.”
“If you are interested I can make a few suggestions. I know it can be hard not knowing the language.”
“Right,” he said. He looked at his watch. “I have to go. Thank you.”
The professor nodded again and closed the door.
That night before the dinner rush he sat in front of the restaurant smoking. Fong and Wai-Ling kept to themselves because they were Cantonese and thus did not like him; and because he was originally from Fuzhou, they knew that he did not like them either. He watched cars pass by, admired the curvy women with long braided hair sauntering down the avenue. Eventually, he started thinking about the professor and what he had said. A part of him was offended; they didn’t know each other, and yet he had presumed that because he did not speak English and because he was delivering food that… that what?
Had he meant to be disrespectful? To speak out of place to a stranger back home might cost you. But this was not home, and maybe he was just trying to offer some advice, one countryman to another. But were they even countrymen? Here, in New York, in the Bronx, it might appear to be so, a bond in the shape of the face and eyes. They were from China, but certainly they both knew that there were different Chinas — like the U.S., there was the top of the Gold Mountain, and then the rest.
He decided to take a quick walk, turned off the main avenue, and passed a small party happening on the street in front of the cluster of brick buildings that lined the road. He had seen these parties all summer: There was music, smoking food on a grill, even dancing. The smells intrigued him. People drank beer from big bottles and laughed. Girls wore short shorts and tiny tops, men in baggy shirts and shorts that came down past their knees, some with bald or close-cropped heads or even big tufts of bushy black hair. Everyone wore pieces of glittering gold — around their necks, in their ears, on their fingers, and around their ankles and wrists — so that with each movement they seemed to glimmer and shine.
All the voices, the bodies, the faces, so new. The skin of one so dark and smooth like a fine leather, and then another so light like rays of melted sun. Men with gold teeth, women with firm bodies, thick in the legs and butt. It was not just a different place, but a different planet, and only by not being there anymore could he sense how thick and smothering his life in Hong Kong had become: the rush and hum of constant millions buzzing his senses, ready to shatter like a crystal cage and crush him. Here he felt free, could move, think, listen. It did not bother him that he did not understand what was being said around him. When he stepped out into the streets there was maybe a woman with a child in a stroller, another in tow; or a small gang of dark-skinned boys cajoling and roughhousing, making their way down the block; or girls walking tall and brazen, whispering to each other and shaking their heads and waving their fingers as they spoke back to the cat-calling boys. On every other corner was an old man or woman with a big umbrella and a two-wheeled cart selling paper cups of crushed flavored ice in the slate of summer heat.
He went back to the restaurant, found Mrs. Liu looking for him. He took the new orders, hung the bags on his handlebars. His first drop was to one of the bigger buildings in the neighborhood, where he buzzed and had to wait for the person to come down. A young woman opened the door. She had dark half-slanted eyes, her skin like a pale chocolate cream. She was his height, but seemed taller because she was so thin, her arms and neck stretched, scrawny. If her face, like her body, had not been so sucked out and sickly he might have thought her beautiful. He took her money and handed over the bag. Her hair was long but stringy and tangled, and the skin on her arms and face and neck was mottled, blotchy. A stained sour smell came from inside the door. He counted the money; she was short more than two dollars, but he looked at the woman and smiled and said, “Okay.”
That night in his apartment he kept thinking of her, the woman with the scrawny wrists and neck.
He finished eating, then took a shower, put on a clean shirt and fresh pants, combed his hair, and went out.
He knew his way, though he never made deliveries in this area north and west of the college, which was Fong’s area. The roads were mostly quiet and empty, the murmur of traffic on the expressway nearby, the occasional screech and rattle of the train that snaked overhead and through the neighborhood. When he had first arrived he would kill hours on the trains, would pay the fair and ride them end to end. Either the 4 train or the D — he preferred the 4 because it ran above ground in the Bronx, past the enormous stadium with the bright white lights. The trains were much dirtier here than they were in Hong Kong, but this did not bother him. He liked the tossed feeling of motion, liked to think that he was traveling from one end of New York to the other.
When he got to the building he went to the pay phone on the corner. From his wallet he pulled a business card and dialed. Then he stood at the phone booth and waited, knew he was being watched now through an apartment window. It was like this too in Hong Kong, when he went to one of those places, being watched at the front door by a camera or spy making sure he was not a policeman or vagrant or gangster who could not be trusted. He counted to fifty in his head, then he went to the front door and was buzzed in, took the stairs to the fourth floor. He knocked on the door and it opened just a crack. He saw her eyes, the dark painted lashes, then she unlatched the lock.
The place looked exactly as it had the last time he had come. Neat but spare: a flowered curtain, candles on the table, the smell of jasmine and incense. He looked at the woman, short and small, older than he, her breasts squeezed into her low-cut blouse. She had long flowing hair and light gold skin, and from a distance one might think she was ten years younger than she was. He had found her randomly one night. It had been late and he had been wandering, trying to learn this new place so that he did not get lost. She had walked up to him and started talking to him, and by the way she smiled and ran her hand up and down his arm he knew who and what she was.
He gave her sixty dollars as he had that first night. She took him by the hand into the bedroom which smelled thick with perfume. Inside there was only a bed and a chair against the wall and he wondered if she slept on the same bed where she worked. She slid her shirt over her head and he did the same. She smiled and said something to him, but he did not know or care what she was saying. He lay naked on the small soft bed and she on top of him, and for the next thirty minutes he closed his eyes and thought of the women from home he had known and thought he could love.