Trade Me (Cyclone #1)(34)

Blake speaks Mandarin? This is news to me. I smile tightly. “I thought you’d like that,” I say instead.

The kitchen door opens and Blake comes out. He’s wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. It must be humid back there, because the shirt clings. Just a little. He’s not built like a wrestler—he’s far too thin for that—but there’s nothing on him but muscle. His tattoo is visible, rippling on the skin of his arm. I swallow.

“Thank you, Mr. Zhen,” he says in passable Mandarin. Son of a bitch. “I…” He pauses, thinking. “Now bowls clean. Tomorrow I more fast.”

His vocabulary sucks. His grammar is terrible. Blake Reynolds speaks white-boy Mandarin. But he actually speaks it.

At that point, Blake looks over and sees me. He blinks, and then very slowly, he smiles.

He holds up his hands. “No bowls!” he says.

“I thought I’d give you a ride home,” I say in English.

He switches naturally. “Ah. You’re a goddess.” He smiles at me. “I thought you were just here to taunt me.”

“Why taunt you as you walk past when I can taunt you the entire way home?”

“Good point.” But he grins at me and puts on his coat. Which is good. I didn’t want to look at Blake’s biceps anyway.

He follows me to the car parked just outside, starts to go to the driver’s side, and then shakes his head ruefully, circling back to the passenger side.

He slides in and leans back against the seat.

“Tired?” My tone is not entirely innocent.

In response, he groans. “Last year, I ran a fifty-mile race in the mountains of Spain. It was cold and raining. Someone died of hypothermia. I fractured my tibia.” He shuts his eyes. “That was worse than this. Marginally.”

It’s a good thing he’s shut his eyes. This way, he won’t notice that I’m only going twenty-five miles an hour.

“So,” I say. “You speak Mandarin.”

“My dad took me to China for three months when we were working out some manufacturing details. I forced myself to do some crash-course learning, enough to be polite. It smoothes things over when my father—um.” He stretches and rolls his neck. “Speaking of impressing people. You’ve been holding out on me.”

I pull out—slowly—onto the main thoroughfare. “I’ve been holding out on you? You have to be kidding me.”

“Yeah. You give that whole our-lives-are-equal-value speech, and then you don’t tell me that your mother is some kind of badass.”

“My mom?”

“Mr. Zhen told me all about her. What is she, some kind of super-lawyer?”

I don’t want to get into this with him. I hate trying to explain Falun Gong to Westerners. Sometimes, I wish my parents had been caught up in something comprehensible, like tax reform or Tiananmen Square. I’ve tried telling people before, and it rarely goes well.

Falun Gong is a system of exercises, something like Tai Chi or Qi Gong. It’s illegal to practice it in China, so illegal that the Chinese government runs reeducation camps to forcibly brainwash practitioners.

No, it’s not a freedom of speech issue. No, it’s not a religion, not like you understand it. It’s never going to make sense to you, which is why immigration judges don’t always get it. It’s like free exercise of…exercise, and my mother spends all her spare time beating her head against that wall.

“Come on,” Blake says. “You can tell me.”

I sigh. “She’s not a super-lawyer. She’s not even a lawyer. She quit school when she was sixteen.”

He frowns at this, sitting up straight. “Huh. From what Mr. Zhen told me, I imagined her sitting in a tiny law office in Southern California, striking fear into the hearts of xenophobes everywhere.”

“No. She only strikes fear into the hearts of xenophobes buying cakes at Wal-Mart.”

At his puzzled look, I explain.

“She decorates cakes for a living. The immigration stuff is just…a hobby. She helped a friend figure out what she needed to do, made some connections. Then she helped her friend’s friend. The next thing you know, she’s the person who knows random things. She helped Mr. Zhen find a decent lawyer. Then she helped him pay the bills.”

Blake considers this, rubbing his chin.

“I’m pretty sure that makes her even cooler. By day, she frosts cakes.”

“By early morning, really,” I interrupt. “She goes in at five. She’s off by two.”

“By late afternoon,” Blake continues, without missing a beat, “she’s…uh…”

“Please don’t give my mom a superhero name.”

“Fine. What is it like having her for a parent? That must be totally cool.”

I think. “Terrifying.”

A silence descends on the car for a moment.

“And you know what?” I say. “I didn’t pick you up because I wanted to talk to you about my mother. I need to talk to you about your dad. You’ve been holding out on me.”

He doesn’t bother pretending that he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. He puts one hand over his face. “Yep,” he mutters. “The Blake and Adam show. Here we come.”

“Were you going to mention that to me?”