I squinted up at him. “Why do you want so badly to help me?” I said. “Is it really me you’re protecting? Or is it your father? Because somehow I feel he’s no longer the hard man you say he is. Maybe never was. And I’m guessing maybe you made up that dramatic little story just to scare me. But even if it’s true, I’ve dealt with scarier people. Now why you’ve chosen to show me all this fish stuff is still a mystery to me — though I’d wager you just like getting off on your own smarts and impressing people. You’ve either read too many books or listened to people who’ve read too many books. Either way, it’s not my fault that I can’t understand half the things you say. But what I do understand is this. .” I leaned forward on the couch. “Your father is a thug. Not only that, he’s a coward. He threw a woman down the stairs and broke her arm. Who knows what else he did or could’ve done or might do in the future, but men like him only have the guts to do that to a woman. You’re a smart boy. You know I’m right. He’s your father and you want to protect him. That’s fine. It’s admirable. But my business with him has nothing to do with you.”
I stood from the couch and walked around the table, stopping a few yards from him. “I’d tell you to fuck off, but that would be rude. I will say that I have police buddies who know exactly where I am and who your father is, and if I don’t say hi to them next week, they’ll know where to come find me.” I took a long drag from the cigarette, flicked it on the ground. “I want to speak with your father. That’s it. All the rest of this doesn’t mean a whole lot of shit to me.”
Junior glared at my cigarette on the floor, still curling smoke, then at me. I couldn’t tell if he believed me or saw through my empty threat. From behind him, the stingrays swam languidly around his thin, stiff figure like a flock of vultures.
His eyes looked past me and he nodded and before I could turn I felt the Mexican’s meaty arms clasp around me, crushing my chest so I could hardly breathe. My feet left the floor, my body seeming to spin like the ceiling fans above me, and I felt a fumbling at my ankle holster and soon saw Sonny Jr. with my five-shot, which he deposited in his jacket pocket. He said something in Vietnamese, and the Mexican shoved me to the floor, forcing me flat onto my stomach. With his knee digging into my lower back, he twisted one of my arms behind my shoulder and held the other to the floor before my flattened face. I could do nothing but grunt beneath him, a doll in his hands, the tile floor numbing my cheek.
I looked up and Sonny Jr. had taken off his jacket. From his pant pocket, he now pulled out a switchblade, which he opened. The Mexican wrenched my extended forearm so that my wrist was exposed. Junior kneeled and planted his shoe on my palm. He steadied the blade across my wrist.
“Wait!” I gasped. I struggled but could hardly budge under the Mexican and his boulder of a knee.
Junior slowly dragged the blade. I could feel its icy sharpness slice the surface of my skin. It was like a crawling itch, not yet painful, but my jaw clenched so tightly that it ached. He lifted his shoe. A line of blood appeared across my wrist, swelled.
I suddenly saw Junior’s open palm beside my face. He pulled back his sleeve and revealed the thin pale scar, like a bracelet, around his wrist.
“You and I,” he murmured, “now share something.”
He wiped the blade twice on my sleeve, closed it, and returned it to his pocket. He stood and I could no longer see his face, but his voice came out bitter and hard, like he was shaking his head at me:
“I know exactly who you are, Mr. Robert. The minute you arrived at our door, I knew. You are a man who has nothing to lose. But that does not make you brave, it makes you stupid. Happy told me you were a foolish man. What were you going to do — kill my father? Break his arm? Yell at him? Everything I have told you is true, and I meant every sentiment. Yet you are too sentimental to listen. You want to come here and be a hero and save your former wife from a bad man. You want to know how he has hurt her, and why. But in the end, the only thing you really want is to know why she would leave you for slapping her and then stay with a man who threw her down a staircase.”
The cut on my wrist was deeper than I had thought. I could feel the sting sharpening, the skin breaking as I bent my wrist and blood dribbled down my arm.
Junior’s shoes reappeared before my eyes, a foot from my nose. He was now speaking directly over my head like he was ready to spit on it.
“Do you know why fish swim in schools? To protect themselves. To move more easily. To find food and a mate. Now who do they choose to swim with? Their own kind, those they resemble most. Why do you think nearly every casino dealer in this city is Asian, and nearly every Asian dealer is Vietnamese? Because we enjoy cards and colorful chips? No. Because we flock to each other. We flock to where there are many of us — so that we will belong and survive. It is a very simple reality, Mr. Robert. A primal reality.”
He bent down, speaking closer to my ear. “What made you think she ever belonged to you? Or that you ever belonged with her? You call her Suzy, but her name is Hong. It has always been and always will be Hong. America, Mr. Robert, is not the melting pot you Americans like to say it is. It’s oil and water. Things get stirred, sure, but they eventually separate and settle, and the like things always go back to each other. They’ve made new friends, perhaps even fucked them. But in their heart they will always return to where they belong. Love has absolutely nothing to do with it.”
He sighed loudly and stood back up. “That’s enough. I’m tired of speeches.”
He lifted his shoe above my head and stomped on my hand with the heel.
I screamed out. The Mexican dismounted me. After a long writhing moment I forced myself to sit up. I held my injured hand like a dead bird. I couldn’t tell if anything was broken, but my knuckles and fingers felt hot with pain, enough to distract me from my aching shoulder and my wrist, now smeared wet with blood.
Junior pulled out the linen napkin again and tossed it at my feet, then handed the Mexican my gun. He wandered back to the piranha tanks, snug in his jacket again and with his hands in his pockets. As if ordering a child, he said to me, “If I ever see you again, I will do much worse. You will now go with Menendez here. He will take you back outside. Remember, you have seen nothing here. If necessary, I will hurt my new mother at your expense. I like her, but not that much.”
He nodded, and the Mexican led me out of the room by the arm, gently this time. Junior’s voice crooned behind me: “Go home, Mr. Robert. And try to be happy.”
As I held my left hand wrapped in the napkin, the Mexican ushered me to another door, which revealed another staircase, which ascended into an office identical to the last one, except we stepped this time out of a painting of cranes flying over a rice paddy. The office opened into the pet store next door to the restaurant. We walked down the dark aisles, passing the droning aquariums and the birdcages and then the dog pens, where weary shadows stirred inside, their dry whimpers following us to the front entrance. Deep in the store, something squawked irritably.
I was released outside into a rainy, windy night. It was like stepping into another part of the country, far from the desert, near the ocean. I must have looked at Menendez with shock because he said, in a gruff but pleasant voice: “Monsoon season.”
He handed me my five-shot, closed the door, and I saw his giant shadowy figure fade back into the darkness of the store.
I DROVE DOWN I-15 toward California in soaked clothes. My left hand lay throbbing in my lap, the three broken fingers wrapped tightly in the linen napkin and my wrist bleeding through the cuff of gauze and tape I’d used from my first aid kit. I could still move my thumb and index finger, but they too felt swollen and numb.