The kitchenette was an alcove. In his parka, he filled the space entirely, turning in place, looking at things so that she would look at them too — the cupboard hanging open, the frozen explosion of clutter. No walls visible, just cardboard boxes, garbage bags stuffed with clothes, luggage. Mushrooms floating in a wok.
Refrigerator, he said. He tried to open it and bumped his leg. Sink, he said. Everything very complete. He turned on the tap and put his large fingers in the water, rubbing them together like a man feeling silk. He looked at her. Lifted his fingers to his face and tasted the water, brushed the water off his brown lips, leaned in and drank from the tap, came up with his cheeks full, spit in the sink, brushed the water from his lips, twiddled his large fingers to shake the water off.
Water, he said. Hot, cold, everything.
Bathroom, he pointed. Laundry dripping in a doorway.
He came towards her, his arms whispering on the body of his parka and she stepped back. This is it. He pulled open a pleated screen she had not noticed and pointed inside at a blackened mattress.
It has everything, I think. Take a look. You have window. He pushed himself inside and pulled the chain on the bare bulb to show that the light went on and off, tugged the shade and it went up. She saw the gray houses tumbled down the slope outside, the clotheslines and antennas and tree branches. The sides of the shed were plywood construction barricades. There was no lock on the screen door.
The mattress a little dirty. You put a sheet, I think. Turn it over. In the summer, put a fan. You don’t need much, I think. It is okay for you. You don’t have husband, he smiled. You don’t have baby.
He was waiting for her, standing over the broken mattress.
She shook her head from the doorway.
It’s good, she said.
She put her hand in her tight pocket and felt her money.
You give me key.
When she heard the door close downstairs, she went inside her shed and sat on the mattress, thinking she would finally sleep. She took her sneakers off, her socks off. She turned on her side and one of the hard rusted wires coming through the canvas snagged her jeans. She shifted. She kneeled up and checked what was left of her money, rubbing the bills apart with her shiny calloused fingers to make sure she counted them all. Her lips moved, counting. She took the classifieds out of her bag and spread them out and concentrated on what they said.
She went back out to Roosevelt Avenue and, walking briskly with her arms crossed and her shoulders hunched, headed to the intersection where the subway was. People were teeming off the subway. She saw Pakistani women carrying their children outside a Dunkin Donuts. Then she lost sight of them. People bumped her. She started moving with the crowd, looking above their heads and seeing that she was going into a Chinatown, a thicket of vertical signs, the sails of sampans and junks, too many to read, a singsong clamor rising. No English. There were loudspeakers and dedications and banners for Year of the Dog. Voices all around her, calling and calling. Here, here, here, come and see! Someone spitting in the street. Crying out and running along next to her, pushing and pleading, grabbing the sleeve of her jacket. They put flyers in her hands and she dropped them. Missing teeth, younger than they looked. Illegals from the widow villages. Body wash, foot rub, Thai-style shower, bus to Atlantic City. A neon sign for KTV turned on in the dusk. She saw the endless heads of strangers, the crewcut workmen, running crates of rapeseed out the back of a van. The feet coming, the sneakers everyone wore, the work boots, the spike-heeled boots worn by the women. The square-faced workmen smoking Golden Crane, wearing Gortex, wearing military castoff. The women had black hair, black leather jackets, black purses, lion’s manes of hair dyed orange, teased and split and tinted. Faces glazed white with photo developer. She smelled the buckets and the hose. They were shoving by the scales. You give me a pound. You give me two for one. Give me three. Be honest a little.
The crowd was a river with girls coming through it like flower-boats sailing along. The mothers were looking at the oranges in the market stands. The girls were pretending to be good. They had to let their mothers talk. They were looking at other things, at things that were happening on the street. The girls were part of a different society. She saw a Chinese girl with no one, with a scabbed ear and breast implants, her face flushed and sweat-greased and strung out.
The crowd went under the train tracks. Billboards carried hepatitis warnings. Tall blue-black Africans gesticulated, selling something in the street. The way was narrow because of the vendors. A block of squid gelatin hissed on a grill. She smelled coal fire. Chicken skewers cost a dollar. But you can’t buy anything until you get a job, she said. In the crowd, she saw one American face, a guy in cornrow braids, looking sideways, sliding through the crowd, looking back at her. Then he was gone, headed for the projects, which were here before all these Asians like herself, the boat people and country people with gold teeth, the ones who grew up under communism, who took out loans and built something. The wet black bags of garbage were piled up in walls along the curb forming a channel that they moved through. There was too much to see and she noticed small things. She saw a hairstyle, a black mohawk, the brown scalp shaved on the sides, and when she saw his face, she was right, he was from Mexico and now he did deliveries for a man with a jade bracelet who had learned enough Spanish to tell him what to do. She passed ducks on steel hooks behind the grease-smoked windows of kitchens where she would ask for work. Everyone was like her, she thought, and she did not see any police.
She was here in New York for a reason. She was never going to get arrested again. She was going to stay where everybody was illegal just like her and get lost in the crowd and keep her head down. Forget living like an American. It was enough to be free and on the street. She’d rather take the scams, the tuberculosis, the overcrowding. She knew how to get by. On the street, she watched for undercovers. The paper carried stories of deportations, secret detentions, prisoner abuse. A Morristown cabdriver of Syrian ancestry was thought to be held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. The Federal Bureau of Prisons had a list of detainees, but not all its detainees were on the list. A lawyer hired by the family said a person cannot simply vanish.
Zou Lei stopped reading and started doing sit-ups.
I’ll be fast, she thought. They’ll never get me.
All she needed was to make some money. Pay her rent. Eat shishkawap. The fresh air was free.
What you want? the girl said in English, in McDonald’s. I doesn’t speak Mandonese.
The hot water. No tea, only the water.
What?
One cup the hot water.
What does she want? the boy in a visor asked.
Forget it, I got it now. The girl made a hand gesture, hooks on her fingers, acrylic tips, filling and lidding the Styrofoam cup.
Zou Lei put her hand around the cup and drew it across the countertop.
You give me the spoon?
The girl gave her a plastic spoon.