The Leavers(77)

“You’re just going to leave Deming? And me?”

I watched him step into his boxer shorts and thought of Qing, the boardwalk, the fat stars over the ocean. “Of course you’ll come. We can have a big house, all three of us. With a restaurant job, you eat for free. Joey said they might need men in the kitchen, too.”

“Yeah. Dishwashers.”

“Nothing wrong with dishwashing.”

“If it’s such a great job, why doesn’t this Joey go do it herself?”

He opened the bathroom door, releasing clouds of steam. On our bed, he stretched out and whispered. “It’s not safe. Look at that man in the Chinese papers. Robbed and killed delivering food. Lost his life for fifteen bucks.”

“Well, that wasn’t at a restaurant, and it’s always dangerous going into strangers’ homes.”

“Look at the one who was shot at the takeout spot. Through bulletproof plastic!”

“That won’t happen. Waitressing is safe.” I picked a pair of your pants off the floor. “Listen, I want to go. It’s time to try something different. Don’t you think?”

“I think it’s time for me to go to sleep. Forget about Florida, I’ll make the money back for you next month.”

“Leon.”

“If you want money so bad, find a rich guy with papers who doesn’t have to take care of his sister, too.”

“Stop it.”

It wasn’t about the money. I could do better than Hello Gorgeous. Leon could do better than the slaughterhouse. You needed to go to a school where you weren’t called Number Two Special.

I floated the idea to Didi. She socked me in the arm. “Waijiu? Are you crazy? You might as well take the subway to the moon.”

We were standing in the same damn alley, smoking cigarettes like we’d been doing for years, facing the same brick wall of the same building. Didi’s plan was to move to another salon downtown, and when her English got even better, get a job that didn’t involve painting nails. “I don’t understand why you won’t come with me to the other salon,” she said, addressing the bricks. “She wants to go to Florida but she won’t go to Thirteenth Street.”

“I told you I don’t want to.”

“Rocky’s never giving you that manager job. She’s stringing all of us along, even if we’ve been working for longer. They’re going to cut our hours down to nothing and keep these new girls on for cheap. Michelle’s taking over and Rocky will manage the Riverdale salon herself. If you don’t leave, they’ll make you leave.”

She was right, but it hurt to hear. A police car drove down the street, sirens wailing, and I was agitated and weary at the same time. “Don’t you get tired of being in New York?”

“Not really. Things are good now.”

This was true, at least for her. When Quan was going to Atlantic City regularly, sometimes I’d reassure myself: at least I’m not Didi. But since Quan had quit gambling, Didi had the money to go to English classes instead of fronting him rent, and now she was trying to convince him to have a baby. And you couldn’t try to sponsor me for a green card until you turned twenty-one, but after Didi got married, she’d applied for papers. Soon she would be legal and could work anywhere.

“You have a place with your man and your son, and you want to give it all up.”

“I just think this isn’t the best I can do. And they’ll come with me.”

“But you know what it’s like here. Anything can happen in Florida.” Didi looked at her cell phone. “We should go in before Michelle breathes her dragon breath on us.”

“Right, anything can happen. That’s the exciting part.”

“You’re angry about Leon and the money, but it’s nothing.”

“It’s not about the money. You and Quan should come, too.”

“Stay in New York. Get married, have a baby.”

I saw how much Didi would miss me if I left. I would miss her, too, though I already missed her, the way we had been when we only had each other, believing that being the oldest residents at the boardinghouse was a thing to be proud of, when the ambiguity of our lives was terrifying and enthralling, when each new day was equal parts fear and opportunity. My solitary walks through Central Park, the streets so new I could still get lost easily. Riding the subway and watching the lights of the city rear up in front of me, wondering if this would be the closest I would get to love.

IT SNOWED, AGAIN, HEAPING inches of slush, and none of us could remember what it was like to be hot enough to need a fan. Leon cleared a path down the front steps of our building with his boots. “Florida sounds nice right now, doesn’t it?” I said.

“Will you stop with that? I told you, I’ll pay you back.”

“You don’t think I’m serious.”

“I have to go to work. I’ll see you later.”

“Can you say that you’ll consider it, think about it a little bit?”

“Okay, okay,” he said as he walked away.

I went upstairs and called the restaurant in Florida. I told the manager that I knew Joey and was interested in the job, answered questions about how long I’d been in America, said a few English phrases. The manager explained that the restaurant was in a small town called Star Hill, an hour outside of a city called Orlando. “Don’t wait too long,” she said. “We need a waitress soon.”