The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(55)
“They mean well. Yours, anyway. Mine—I think they’re just trying to save face—to not look like parental failures to their nosy neighbors.” Sam smiled. “Either way it’s quite generous of you to even consider lunch under such strange circumstances.”
“What can I say, there’s something in the blood.”
Sam looked confused.
“Filial piety,” Greta said. “I swear that’s part of our DNA. Maybe the next Human Genome Project will locate our highly evolved guilt triggers and the overwhelming desire to never let our Asian parents down. It’s like karma on steroids.”
“Indeed.” Sam smiled and nodded in agreement.
Greta closed her laptop. “So, knowing all of that, what do you think about dating apps?” she asked, folding her arms.
He smiled, as though to keep from wincing. He looked at her, then peeked his head out of her office, looked around, then turned his attention back to Greta. “Hmmm… at this point in my life, I’ve been stricken with what my friends call terminal honesty. So, if you ask, I’ll always tell you the truth. I’m not really an app guy.”
“Oh.” Greta respected his candor. “What kind of guy are you then?”
Sam found Greta’s coat on a hook behind her office door and opened it, offering to help her with the garment. “I’m more of a share-an-umbrella-in-the-rain kind of guy.”
She let him put her coat on for her. “Good answer.”
Too bad it’s not raining.
* * *
As they chatted and walked up the street toward the Space Needle, Sam listened with what Greta felt was genuine interest, instead of waiting for his turn to talk over her like so many other men had done on first dates, first lunches, even simple meetups for coffee. Nor did he treat the fact that she’d helped create a dating app as a sign that she was somehow more promiscuous or had slept with scores of men and possibly women, as research. She found herself relaxing in his company, even though she had a million things to do and a dinner tomorrow night to get through, or avoid.
“You know,” Greta said, “I’m afraid you might have become the unwitting victim of my parents’ irrational fear of me never getting married. It’s because my zou mou was a rebel flower. My dad’s mom got kicked out of some bohemian boarding school in England back in the twenties and remained single till the day she died, though she did manage somehow to get knocked up later in life.”
Sam shrugged. “Some women want a child but not a husband.”
“Not in my family. In my family that’s either a scandal or a tragic failure. Some sort of character flaw. But she raised my dad and he turned out reasonably okay.”
Greta brushed up next to him as they squeezed through a crowd of middle school children assembled on the sidewalk for a field trip. He felt strong but gentle. Solid but graceful. He seemed unhurried, unstressed. The opposite of what Greta saw whenever she looked in the mirror. “Where are we going for lunch?”
“Well, considering how busy you are and how you’ve probably eaten at every restaurant within walking distance of your office, and also considering how parking in this city is seemingly theoretical…” Sam led her around the corner and up onto the grass parkway of Seattle Center, walking in the direction of the towering sculpture of red cylinders known as Olympic Iliad. Near the sculpture, in the shade of a maple tree, a picnic blanket had been spread on a wide bed of grass. Standing next to it, looking bored and smoking a cigarette, was a young kid with a skateboard. Sam handed the boy some money and thanked him. Greta looked on, somewhat bewildered as he left.
“I thought we’d do something a little different,” Sam said, kneeling and gently removing her shoes. Then he removed his own and they sat down on cushions.
Next to the blanket was a large wicker basket and a round chafing dish, the kind Greta was used to seeing at catered office parties. Beneath it was a package of lit Sterno.
Sam smiled and then removed the silver lid. As steam wafted out Greta could smell rich bone broth with ginger and goji berries heated to full boil. She watched as he opened the basket and carefully lifted out several lacquered trays. He set them down and removed the plastic wrap to reveal elegantly arranged dipping items: noodles, dumplings, thinly sliced flank steak, pork belly, tofu, zucchini, squash, cabbage, bok choy, enoki mushrooms, and skewers with raw shrimp and scallops. He then set out two bowls and small bottles of chili oil and hoisin sauce.
“Is fo wo okay?” Sam said, looking up.
“You’re kidding, right? I love Mongolian hot pot,” Greta said. “How did you…” Then she realized her parents must have shared what her favorite foods were.
Sam smiled as he opened two bottles of sparkling mineral water. “I didn’t bring any baijiu, but I figured you still have a busy day ahead of you, and sending you back to your office with a hangover is a bad first impression.”
“This looks… amazing. I can’t believe you went to all this trouble,” Greta said, nervously looking around as tourists and businesspeople walked by, admiring their elegant lunch. A motorist honked and waved. “Are we allowed to do this?”
“I’ve been away from Seattle for a few years,” Sam said. “But I’m pretty sure urban picnicking isn’t a crime, though if the police come by we’ll just tell them this is a mobile soup kitchen and invite them to join. I brought an extra bowl.”