Down the backstretch it’s still Geisha’s Gold and Noble Emperor. Behind them the others are scrambling for position, dropping in, and saving ground, barreling out or breaking sharply, all driving to catch the leader. The pace quickens; Ming Sing is in ninth position. A half mile to go.

Secret Asian Man dances around the outside and takes the lead. Ming Sing is boxed in along the rail in eighth place. The field is bumping and pushing the leaders.

They come to the clubhouse turn.

It’s still Secret Asian Man, with Buddha’s Baby, and Chu Chu Chang ready to pounce. Ming Sing is in seventh.

They’re three-wide off the turn. Double Happiness, Chu Chu Chang, and Buddha’s Baby. Ming Sing is sixth, the rest of the field digging for the leaders.

At the top of the stretch, the jockeys are waving their whips.

The leaders spread apart a gap. Ming Sing dodges out and follows Double Happiness down the middle of the track. Sword of Doom, fighting through horses, chases them. Buddha’s Baby loses ground, and Chu Chu Chang blocks off the rest of the field.

A mad dash the last three lengths and at the wire it’s Ming Sing by a neck, then Double Happiness, and Sword of Doom. Buddha’s Baby finishes fourth.

Sai Go pumped his fist and cheered quietly. The race, which took merely a minute to run, had been a thing of beauty. He waited for the posting of the payout, thinking that his exotic bets, via his man at Happy Valley, were going to bring in more than ten grand. He had taken Lucky’s pick, Ming Sing, and boxed the bet with other longshots into double and treble wagers. The exotic bets available in Hong Kong made the same type of action in the states seem like standard play; pay-outs in the Fragrant Harbor were astronomically higher.

He downed a shot of Chivas and sat on the sofa as he waited.

The numbers came up on the screen.

The dailo Lucky had won more than six thousand, but Sai Go’s own exotic bets had won him over eleven thousand. Minus the dailo’s money, his take was over five thousand, all from working a hot fix.

The money would be wired into his U.S. Asia bank account the next day, minus his Happy Valley cohort’s commission and the transaction fee.

Sai Go rubbed his eyes and turned off the set, plunging the room into blackness. What to do? he wondered. How to enjoy the jackpot? when the irony of it all came back upon him.

What was he thinking? With four months to live, he was getting excited about taking five thousand out of Happy Valley? Should have made a list, he thought, of all the Chinaman things to do before cashing in.

Go to Bangkok, drink, and fuck himself to death.

Go see all the places he’d never been.

Go home to Hong Kong and China to say good-bye to the few elderly relatives who were still on speaking terms with him.

Now, closer to the end of the line, he wasn’t sure he wanted to take his death on the road. He considered making his last stand in Chinatown, hunkered down in his rent-controlled one-bedroom walk-up.

He had about twenty-eight thousand in the bank, and a fifty-thousand-dollar life insurance policy from Nationwide that still listed his ex-wife as beneficiary. That was it. No wife, no kids, no family. Parents long since passed. His sister and cousins, all estranged. World without end, amen.

He knew he needed to take his money off the street, call in all debts. He could explain, if necessary, that he was starting a bigger operation, and required a larger financial investment. Once he recouped everything, he told himself, he’d still have time left to do whatever it was that one does at the end of one’s life.

He thought about getting a haircut, a massage, a Chinese newspaper, but quickly fell asleep on the sofa, in the darkness unsure of where the rest of his life would lead after that.

Roll By

In the rush-hour morning, Jack caught the M103 bus running, almost at St. Mark’s. The city bus brought him quickly down to Chinatown. He hopped off near Bayard and went west to Mott Street, past the old tenement where he’d grown up, where Pa had finally died.

A crowd of old folks had gathered, blocking the sidewalk outside Sam Kee Restaurant. Jack crossed the street, away from the dingy storefronts that had seen the better days of his youth.

Billy’s tofu factory was down the block. Billy Bow, the only son of an only son, was Jack’s oldest neighborhood friend. He had been Jack’s extra eyes and ears on the street, and he’d provided Jack with insights and observations into the arcane workings of the old community.

The Tofu King was the work of three generations of a longtime Chinatown family, the Bows. It was once the biggest distributor of tofu products in Chinatown, but was clearly no longer the king. Competition had grown steadily as new immigrants from China arrived, and the Tofu King now resorted to promotional gimmicks to hang on to its customers. Every Tuesday was Tofu Tuesday, half-price for senior citizens, and after 6 PM daily, rice cakes and dao jeong soybean milk were three for a dollar.

Billy’s grandfather had started it all by growing his own bean sprouts, then perfected the process of cooking soybeans and passed it on to his son, Billy’s dad, who then hooked up with soybean farmers in Indiana, and expanded the shop. Finally, Billy, conscripted into the family business, targeted their tofu products toward a more diverse health-oriented marketplace, and expanded the shop into the Tofu King. Now the business struggled, not only to maintain its place against the new competition, but also staggering under myriad business costs that kept rising.

Jack remembered the three rudderless years he’d worked in the Tofu King, in the suffocating backroom, cooking and slopping beans into foo jook tofu skins, and tofu fa custard. That was long after his pal Wing Lee died, but before Jack had finally graduated from City College.

When he peered through the steamy storefront window, he could see Billy near the back, animated, making faces, and gesturing with his hands.

Jack stepped into the humid shop and listened as Billy ranted on about the latest atrocities. “The health department, wealth department is what they should call it, comes down with a new regulation every fuckin’ month. Just so they can shake down more money from Chinamen.”

Preaching to the kitchen help, thought Jack.

“Ew ke ma ga hei, motherfucker,” Billy cursed in his best Toishanese, the original tongue of the first immigrants to Chinatown. “Thousands of dollars in fines.”

Jack picked up what he needed, went toward Billy who continued to vent in the general direction of the slop boys in the back. They frowned and nodded their heads at everything he said.

Feigning surprise, Billy turned to Jack and laughed, “Oh shit, it’s Hawaii Five-0! Green cards out, everybody! Book ’em, Jack-O.”

Jack was happy to see Billy grinning, a momentary departure from the edgy-depressive that Billy normally was.

“Wassup, man? You look like you got some man tan there.” Billy took a breath, shook his head sadly as Jack plopped onto the counter the three plastic containers of bok tong go he’d taken from the refrigerator case.

“What’s up with the crowd outside Sam Kee’s?” Jack asked.

Billy chortled. “They’re waiting for the free for ngaap duck. The inspectors said it’s now illegal to hang ducks and chickens in the window, without temperature controls. Gave old man Kee a two-hundred-dollar fine, and a citation.”

Jack was shaking his head, looking for So what?

“So the old man catches a fit, threatens to throw the ducks into the street. All the old folks are hoping to catch a freebie.”