“What’s this about?” The man’s face changed.
Peter came over, but he wasn’t sure if the man had been here before. He turned to us and asked, “Is this his second time?”
Before we could answer, the man flared up, “This is my hundredth time. So what? I paid.”
Manyou laughed and told Peter, “There was a fella here just now in the same kind of jacket, but that was a different man.”
“That’s true,” I piped in. I knew the other man — he was an accountant in my father’s bureau. This fellow fuming in front of us was a genuine stranger, with a beeper on his belt. He must be a cabdriver or an entrepreneur.
Peter apologized to the man, told him to go ahead and eat, then he explained the truth to Mr. Shapiro, who had become so edgy that some customers began to look identical to him. “How the hell could I tell the difference?” our boss said. “To me they all look alike — they’re all real Chinese, with appetites like alligators.” He laughed heartily, like a young boy.
Peter interpreted his words to us, and we all cracked up.
On the second day, we lost about six hundred yuan, so that was the end of the buffet. Lucky for us, Mr. Shapiro didn’t withhold our wages, which we all received the next day. This was the beauty of working for Cowboy Chicken — it was never late in paying us, unlike many Chinese companies, especially those owned by the state, which simply didn’t have enough cash to pay employees their full wages. My mother often got only sixty percent of her salary from her weather station, which could not increase its clientele, or run a night school, or have any power over other companies. She’d sigh and say, “The longer I work, the more I lose.”
At the sight of my monthly wages—468 yuan — my father became heartbroken. He’d had a drop too much that night, full of self-pity, and, waving a half-smoked cigarette, he said to me, “Hongwen, I’ve joined the Revolution for almost forty years, and I earn only three hundred yuan a month. But you just started working and you draw a larger salary. This makes me feel duped, duped by the Communist Party I’ve served.”
My youngest brother butted in, “It’s never too late to quit, Dad.”
“Shut up!” I snapped. He was such an idiot, he couldn’t see the old man was really suffering. I said to my father, “You shouldn’t think that way. True, you’re not paid a lot, but your job is secure, like a rubber rice bowl that nobody can take away from you or smash — even a tank cannot crush it. Every day you just sit at your desk drinking tea and reading newspapers, or chatting away, and at the end of each month you take home a full salary. But I have to work my ass off for a capitalist who pays me by the hour.”
“You make so much and always eat high-protein food. What else do you want?”
I didn’t answer. In my heart I said, I want a job that pays a salary. I want to be like some people who go to their offices every morning for an eight-hour rest. My father kept on: “Cowboy Chicken is so delicious. If I could eat it and drink Coke every day, I’d have no need for socialism.”
I wouldn’t argue with him. He was beside himself that night. Indeed, I did often have some tidbits at the restaurant, mainly fries and biscuits. As a result, I seldom ate dinner when I came home, but mainly it was because I wanted to save food for my family. My father, of course, assumed I was stuffing myself with chicken every day.
After the disastrous buffet, Mr. Shapiro depended more on Peter, who in fact ran the place single-handedly. To be fair, Peter was an able man and had put his heart into the restaurant. He began to make a lot of connections in town and persuaded people to have business lunches at our place. This made a huge difference. Because their companies would foot the bill, the businesspeople would order table loads of food to treat their guests to hearty American meals, and then they’d take the leftovers home for their families. By and by our restaurant gained a reputation in the business world, and we established a stable clientele. So once again Mr. Shapiro could stay in his office in the morning drinking coffee, reading magazines, and even listening to a tape to learn the ABCs of Chinese.
One afternoon the second son of the president of Muji Teachers College phoned Peter, saying he’d like to hold his wedding feast at our restaurant. I knew of this dandy, who had divorced his hardworking wife the year before; his current bride used to be a young widow who had given up her managerial position in a theater four years ago in order to go to Russia. Now they had decided to marry, and he wanted something exotic for their wedding dinner, so he picked Cowboy Chicken.
Uneasy about this request, Mr. Shapiro said to Peter, “We’re just a fast-food place. We’re not equipped to cater a wedding banquet.”
“We must not miss this opportunity,” said Peter. “A Chinese man would spend all his savings on his wedding.” His owlish eyes glittered.
“Well, we’ll have to serve alcoholic beverages, won’t we? We have no license.”
“Forget that. Nobody has ever heard of such a thing in China. Even a baby can drink alcohol here.” Peter grew impatient.
Manyou, who could speak a few words of English, broke in, “Mr. Shapiro, Peter is right. Men of China use all moneys for wedding, big money.” He seemed embarrassed by his accent and went back to biting his cuticles.
So our boss yielded. From the next day on, we began to prepare the place for the wedding feast. Mr. Shapiro called Cowboy Chicken’s headquarters in Beijing to have some cheesecakes, ice cream, and California wines shipped to us by the express mail. Peter hired two temps and had the room decked out with colorful ribbons and strings of tiny lightbulbs. Since it was already mid-December, he had a dwarf juniper and candlesticks set up in a corner. We even hung up a pair of large bunny lanterns at the front door, as the Year of Rabbit was almost here. Peter ordered us to wear clean uniforms for the occasion — red sweaters, black pants, and maroon aprons.
The wedding banquet took place on a Thursday evening. It went smoothly, since most of the guests were from the college, urbane and sober-minded. The bride, a small woman in her mid-thirties, wore a sky-blue silk dress, her hair was permed, and her lips were rouged scarlet. She smiled without stopping. It was too bad that her parents hadn’t given her beautiful eyes; she must have been altered by cosmetic surgery, which had produced her tight, thick double lids. Baisha said the woman owned two gift shops in Moscow. Small wonder she wore six fancy rings and a tiny wristwatch in the shape of a heart. With so many diamonds and so much gold on her fingers, she must be lazy, not doing any housework. From her manners we could tell she had seen the world. By comparison, her tall groom looked like a bumpkin despite his fancy outfit — a dark-blue Western suit, a yellow tie studded with tiny magpies, and patent-leather boots with brass buckles. He had a hoarse voice, often laughing with a bubbling sound in his throat. When he laughed, you could hardly see anything on his face except his mouth, which reminded me of a crocodile’s. His gray-haired parents sat opposite him, quiet and reserved, both of them senior officials.
The man officiating at the banquet spoke briefly about the auspicious union of the couple. Next, he praised the simple wedding ceremony, which had taken place two hours ago. After a round of applause, he turned to our boss and said, “We thank our American friend, Mr. Ken Shapiro, for providing us with such a clean, beautiful place and the delicious food. This is a perfect example of adapting foreign things to Chinese needs.”
People clapped again. All our boss could say in Chinese was “Thank you.” He looked a little shy, his cheeks pink and his hazel eyes gleaming happily.
As people were making the first toast, we began to serve chicken, every kind we had — crispy, spicy, barbecued, Cajun, and Cowboy original. An old woman opened a large paper napkin with a flowered pattern on it, and studied it for a long time as though it were a piece of needlework on lavender silk which she was reluctant to spoil. A bottle of champagne popped and scared the bridesmaid into screaming. Laughter followed.