Bronx Noir

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.