The Leavers(111)

Daniel asked the waitress for three bowls of spaghetti and meatballs and a platter of garlic sticks. Eddie’s unblinking gaze felt like being cross-examined. Tammy said she’d heard that the restaurant served the best American food in Fuzhou.

“This food isn’t American,” Eddie said.

“Well, it’s Italian,” Daniel said. “But the dishes are more of an American style. They would call it Italian American.”

Tammy said, “But is it Italian or American?”

“It’s both.”

“But Italians aren’t American,” Eddie said.

“Sure, they can be Italian American. Like if your parents were born in Italy, but you were born in America.”

“Then you’d be American,” Tammy said. “Because you were born in America.”

“Well, you can be Chinese American. I’m Chinese American because I was born in America.”

“But you have a Chinese face so that makes you Chinese,” Tammy said.

“Americans can have Chinese faces. They aren’t only white people.”

Tammy and Eddie glanced at each other and Eddie muttered a quick sentence in Fuzhounese that Daniel couldn’t catch.

“I’m right here, you know,” Daniel said. “I can hear you talking about me.”

“We’re not talking about you,” Tammy said.

The tomato sauce was too sweet, the pasta overcooked, and Daniel ached for a proper New York thin slice, folded in half and chowed down while standing at an oily pizzeria counter. Tonight, he’d pick up food on the way home and eat in front of the TV. If he was in Manhattan or Ridgeborough his friends would be buying him shots, but instead he would return to an empty apartment. His mother was supposed to be coming home late, on the bullet train from Xiamen, where she had spent the last two days for work. She no longer watched him so carefully, like he was in danger of vanishing, and on weekends they spent hours walking around the city together, having long, easy meals, and he would feel warm and full. But when she made plans for him, mentioned people she wanted him to meet or a trip they might take in the future, he would feel a sticky dread, like he had overslept on a winter day and woken up to discover it was already dark.

He didn’t want to be alone, not today. “What are you two doing tonight?”

They exchanged another glance. “We have dinner with our families,” Eddie said.

HE WAITED FOR THE bus to West Lake Park after his last class of the day. Yong would be working late tonight, or at a business dinner. One night he had taken Daniel to his factory, and Daniel had looked down from the executive office at rows of women at sewing machines. “Your mother doesn’t like to visit me at work,” Yong said.

Once or twice a week, Daniel took the bus out to Leon’s place to eat with him and Shuang. He played with Yimei in the park, showing her how to toss a Frisbee and do wheelies on her bike, and wished she were his real sister, or at least his real cousin. When he mentioned these visits to his mother, she said, “Maybe I’ll come with you sometime.” But tonight Leon was also busy; he’d said he had to work late.

Now that Daniel was making money again, he had started to pay Angel back, little by little. He had cut up his credit card and was chipping away at the balance, but whatever extra he had left over, which wasn’t a lot, he sent to her. She never responded, but deposited the money.

He hadn’t heard from Roland either. The last time he had googled Psychic Hearts, several weeks ago, he had read a review of their latest show with the headline “Don’t Believe the Hype”:

While guitarist Nate Lundstrom—a former member of a number of Meloncholia projects—is technically and stylistically astute, Psychic Hearts’ new, dancier configuration lacks the claustrophobic, manic-depressive, and almost mystical cohesion of its original pairing. The looping beats have gotten frayed and agonizingly repetitive, and Fuentes’ howls grown stale, like a fifth-rate Lightning Bolt meets bubblegum pop . . . How can something so heavy sound so damn minimal? Sure, it’s cool, kids, but there’s no there there.

The bus arrived. Of course, all the passengers were Chinese. It had taken him weeks to not find it surprising that everyone around him, including the people on TV, including the hottest girls, were all Chinese. Being from America made him an object of desire, which was both flattering and strange; girls flirted with him when they found out he was from New York. Even Tammy, who had a boyfriend, walked a little too close when they went to lunch. He’d hooked up a couple times with a girl who’d gone to high school with one of the other World Top teachers, a sales manager at a company that manufactured plastic slippers. There was another girl, too, a friend of a friend of Eddie’s, who lived in the suburbs with her parents and texted him sporadically.

There was a comfort in belonging that he’d never felt before, yet somehow, he still stood out. The bus driver eyed him for a beat too long when he bought the ticket, as did the woman in the seat across the aisle, a bag of groceries on her lap. Yong and his mother assured him his Chinese sounded close to normal now and not as freakish as it had when he first arrived, but Daniel figured it was his clothes, his bearing, or the way he looked or walked or held himself, something that revealed he wasn’t from here. Even if he encouraged them to ask questions, he often grew tired of the students and other teachers at World Top finding him a source of perpetual fascination. His students asked him why he was so tall, even if Eddie was taller than him, and prodded him to sing songs to them in English. When the other teachers asked what he did for fun and he said he liked to walk around and listen to music on his headphones, they laughed.