Ebony Scales

Chapter 3

Joy looked around the tiny apartment and sighed. She guessed the three of them had been lucky. After all, she had a job, albeit one that mostly consisted of singing songs with little kids, although there were some ambitious young workers who were desperate to improve their English in order to get ahead in their jobs. The job provided the apartment, and the management was willing to look the other way on the fact that Joy had three people living in an apartment designed for only one, as long as she didn’t create any problems.

They had food and clothing as well, with Yingtai finding her own job in a garment factory, running the automatic iron that pressed the pants that were produced on the sewing floor. The work was hot, dirty, and the pay was crap, but for Yingtai, it was her first “real work” experience. In fact, she often bragged that the work was easy for her, compared to her life in the village. “I sweat the same amount, but there’s less dirt and no snakes,” she would say, as she relaxed. “Best of all, we have dramas.”

It was perhaps the only thing that Joy wished Yingtai hadn’t picked up an affinity for, the so-called “dramas” that to Joy seemed to be little more than soap operas. Yingtai was entranced with the television from almost the first time she turned it on, a tiny third hand set that had come with their apartment. Joy constantly reminded herself that the young woman had grown up in a village where electricity was almost unheard of, and whose movie experience consisted of perhaps a half dozen or so DVDs was still going through culture shock. “At least she hasn’t gotten into fashionable clothes or designer knockoffs yet,” Joy reminded herself on her day off as Yingtai sipped at tea and stared, zombie like at the screen. “And her hand is getting better.”

Joy finished the last touches on their dinners, a variation on Cheeseburger Helper that Joy had learned to make living in Washington. She supposed her own indulgence was just as strange to Yingtai as Yingtai’s dramas were to her, but the easy to make comfort food was also cheap, and it allowed Joy to experience flavors that she hadn’t realized she had missed, living in the village. She put together two bowls, setting aside another for Longwei when he returned, setting one in front of Yingtai. “Here you go.”

Yingtai smiled, and reached forward to turn off the television. Regardless of her obsession with dramas, she kept the manners she had been taught in the village, meaning that meal times were family times. “Thank you,” Yingtai said in soft English. She had been practicing more since coming to Chengdu, and her skill was increasing.

“Thanks. How are your dramas?”

“Very nice. Do people really live this way?”

Joy chuckled. “Well, let’s just say it’s an exaggeration in a lot of ways.”

Yingtai tilted her head. “Exaggeration?”

“Sorry. It means to make big things seem bigger, or little things seem smaller. Make things more than real life.”

Yingtai nodded, and repeated softly to herself. “Exaggeration.”

Joy was about halfway through her bowl when Longwei came in the door. He was breathing heavily, his face sweaty. “Great news,” he said, foregoing any greetings. “I have a lead on the Triads.”

“Thank God,” Joy said, standing and leading him over to the sofa. She got him a cup of water, and his bowl of food. “But you need to eat, and tell us what you found while you calm down. You look like you’ve been running like a mad man.”

Longwei took his bowl thankfully, using his chopsticks like a spoon to shovel the food into his mouth. In almost speed eating record time, he demolished the large bowl of ground pork, cheap pasta, milk and cheese powder, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before setting it down. “I was running,” he said, after clearing his mouth with a large swallow of tea. “I had five guys on my ass for a while.”

“What did you do?” Joy asked, after Longwei repeated his words to Yingtai in Chinese.

“I decided to take a more direct approach, after the past two months,” Longwei said, giving voice to his frustrations. He had tried a similar approach to Yingtai, finding work in an industry that was traditionally associated with the Triads, but hadn’t found success. He could only find day jobs, most of them manual labor that the actual gangsters left to their flunkies to deal with. His pay was skimmed and the Triad’s cut taken even before Longwei saw the few crumpled bills that were passed his way on a daily basis. “So, I went to a mahjong parlor.”

Joy shuddered. She knew that all forms of vice, especially gambling, drugs, and prostitution were heavily controlled by the Triads, and for Longwei to walk directly into one of them was a very direct risk. “So I can assume you found some action.”

Longwei breathlessly chuckled, nodding his head. “Yeah, I walked out with over fifteen thousand yuan. Outside, a few of the Triad thugs who hang out to fleece the winners approached me, and we got into a conversation. I let them lead me back to their place, a go go bar where they encouraged me to drink and spend money on the girls.”

Joy suppressed a tremble of anger and jealousy at Longwei spending money on other women, knowing in her mind it was needed to accomplish their mission. “So how did you end up running away from them?”

“Well, what these guys didn’t know was that I can’t get drunk.”

“You can’t?”

“No. At least, not on regular alcohol. I’ve found a few back hill brews that can give me a buzz, but you could make a Molotov cocktail out of them, they’re so strong. In any case, I had to let loose some of the money, but I maneuvered them into another high stakes game. I knew it was going to be unfair, but they thought I was already pretty drunk, so it wasn’t as rigged as I had worried at first. They also tried to trick me by changing the game to poker, which a lot of Chinese don’t know how to play. Thankfully I learned the game when I was in America.”

“You still haven’t told me how you ended up running for your life from five Triads.”

“When I ended up winning a hand worth another ten thousand yuan, the Triads became a lot less friendly. When I scooped up the cash and stuck it in my pocket, I found myself surrounded by the thugs, who suddenly wanted to play more. Of course, after changing decks and such. I knocked out two of them and took off out the door, running as fast as I could.”