Passenger(24)

I purchase the gumball machine and lug it back to Clarence’s pickup.

“You like gum, Mozart?”

“I don’t know, Clarence.”

Clarence laughs. “You sure a strange cat, Moe.”

We drive through Mount Vernon and negotiate around the Washington Monument toward a series of fire-scarred tenements farther up the block. We make a few more stops, depositing the last of the swill we collected all morning, and just when I think Clarence will drive me home, we pull up outside a Chinese restaurant on Calvert Street called Fung.

“Come on,” Clarence says, already climbing out of the truck.

“Where are we going?”

“Inside. Take your gumball machine, too, ’less you want someone to glom it, man.”

So, like a fool, I lug the gumball machine into the Chinese restaurant. Heads turn as we enter. We must look like quite the pair. But they seem to know Clarence—a Chinese man in a tall chef hat waves to him and Clarence waves back and actually executes a pretty decent moonwalk—and they soon turn back to their work.

“Come on,” Clarence says, and saunters toward the back of the restaurant, ducking beneath the lazy swing of paper lanterns.

There is a narrow passageway covered by a drape of oriental tapestry at the far end of the restaurant. Behind the tapestry, a set of stairs files up to a second floor steeped in shadow. Overhead, lights flicker in their casings. It is like the set of some bad horror movie. I follow Clarence to the second floor, the pedestal of the gumball machine thumping against my shins with each step. When we reach the top, we are standing before a long corridor veiled by a beaded curtain. I am out of breath.

“Clarence—”

Clarence shushes me. Out of nowhere, the junkman has adopted a piety typically reserved for monks.

I pursue Clarence through the beaded curtain and down the corridor. There are plaster molds of dragons fixed to the walls. A door at the end of the hallway stands half open, emitting a warm tallow glow into the hallway. Clarence goes directly through the door, easing it all the way open with one hand, and I follow, the gumball machine still banging against my legs.

It is a small, dark room, lighted only by the shifting, dancing glow of a television set. A slim, young-looking Chinese girl sits on a futon watching MTV, the volume turned all the way down. Posters of various pop idols fight for space on the wall above her head. She is dressed in sweatpants and a loose-fitting Backstreet Boys halter-top through which the vague nubs of underdeveloped breasts protrude. Her hair is long and as black as a sunless galaxy, straight as a razor and parted perfectly down the middle. Her features—her body—are delicate to the point of fragility.

“Hey, Fortune Cookie,” Clarence says, and the words sound nearly blasphemous.

The girl turns and looks first at Clarence then at me. I am shocked to see she has a dead eye, milky and gray and turned toward the ceiling. She might be fifteen years old.

“Jesus,” I murmur.

“Sit down,” Clarence tells me, then immediately drops to an Indian-style position on the carpet himself.

I set the gumball machine down and follow suit, folding my long legs under my buttocks.

“I know you a skeptic, Mozart, but Fortune Cookie, she can tell you things.”

“Clarence…”

“Come on, now.”

“Hello,” says the girl. Even with that one word, I can tell she is heavily accented. “Name. Please.”

“I don’t know,” I tell her.

“That’s the problem,” Clarence interrupts. “He don’t know who he is. We was hoping you could tell us something, baby.”

“Hands,” says the girl. She leans forward on the futon and holds out both her own hands, palms up, one on each knee. “Please.”

I extend my hands and, somewhat hesitant, place them in the palms of the girl’s. The flicker of the television against her skin makes her look translucent. I cast a glance at the television and see a bunch of teenagers in bikinis frolicking around a pool.

“Heavy,” she says. “Went. Go.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t…”

“Went,” she says. “Go.”

I look at Clarence for help, but the junkman is watching the television, enthralled.

“Went. Stay.” The girl turns over my left hand. In the glow of the television set, I can see the address still written on the palm. “Find. Go. Stay.”

“Aw, shit,” Clarence snickers, grinning at something on the television. “Oh, hell, you see that, dog?”

“Stay. Find. Go. Went. Heavy.”

“I don’t—” I begin again.

“Find. Find.”

She draws my hand up to her face so she can examine the address more closely. Her one good eye scrutinizes my palm while the other floats toward the ceiling. A coy smile overtakes her lips and, despite the dead eye, the girl is suddenly beautiful. She brings the hand even closer to her face and I anticipate her nibbling on my fingers. But instead, she forms an O with her mouth through which she pushes a tiny pink tongue. She brings the hand nearer still, until the tongue hovers just above my palm. I am aware my hand is shaking. Sweat has broken from my armpits and rolls down the nape of my neck. The television light flickers in her dead eye.

“Believe,” she whispers.