“I thought you found a new cutter,” she teased. “At one of the designer shops, hah?”

Sai Go grinned. She was happy to see this as her comb and electric clipper danced, spraying bits of gray and white hair off his head, small clumps catching on the plastic sheet around him.

“One of those young girls made up like Hong Kong movie stars?” Bo continued, “A siu jeer girl to cut you a new style, hah? Give you a great massage, make you feel like young man again, hah?”

Sai Go chuckled, told her again and again that it was just some family business that had come up. He remembered she had given him the gold-plated Buddhist card, the talisman, many haircuts ago. He’d explained to her then that in his line of work he dealt with good people and bad people alike, explaining why he carried a box cutter in his back pocket.

Bo had detected sadness in him then, and still now, in this older man who she guessed was about twenty-five years her senior. She felt sorry for him, and tried to cheer him up with clever sayings, giving him five extra minutes of shoulder massage. The Buddhist talisman had been one of several that she carried to ward off the sex-slave snakeheads. She’d told him it would protect him in his travels.

Sai Go’s haircut hadn’t required much imagination. Years of ministrations by Chin Ho’s barber shop on Doyers Street had shaped his hair into a military-style crewcut, the sides trimmed very tight to the skull, the top about an inch long and angled back. Bo rubbed gel into the top so the sheen would disguise the gray there. He looked younger than a man in his fifties, she thought, although this day he looked tired, a bit distant, his mind drifting elsewhere.

When he looked in the mirror, Sai Go saw a beat-up, baggy-eyed fifty-nine-year-old mask of wrinkles, worry lines etched into his brow. Fifty-nine—the numbers five and nine, in Chinese sounded like not enough. True, he thought, Not enough luck, not enough time . . .”

“It’s the massage,” he heard Bo say, still teasing. “Must be I give a better massage, hah?”

Sai Go smirked, closing his eyes as the roar of the blow-dry gun filled his ears.

Bo released the lever and the chair dropped so that she had a higher angle to work from.

It was the massage, he thought, the only time he’d ever felt tension leaving his body. He liked the way Bo dug her elbows into the tops of his shoulders. He shut his eyes as she pressed down harder into the deep part of the muscle, then dragged her elbows along his shoulder blades. Her fingers worked the joints, pressing nerve points that ran along the spine.

Bo had strong fingers and hands, and knew just how much force Sai Go could tolerate.

“Everything’s stiff,” she said innocently. “Very hard. What have you been doing? See? Miss a week and your back’s all screwed up.”

“You’re right,” he heard himself say. “I’ll try not to miss any more visits.”

She said, “You’re working too hard, that’s what it is. You need to drink hot soup. Wintermelon, foo jook, mushrooms.” She gave him a pat on the back. “It’s the wintertime. You know how to make soup, don’t you?”

She put her thumbs into the depressions at the base of his skull and worked the nerves, then followed with hands, firmly grabbing, kneading the musculature and cords inside the back of his neck.

He took a long and deep breath, held it a moment before releasing it, thinking, He was fifty-nine, and she was thirty-something, yet she was mothering him?

Bo’s pressing and digging, pushing and rubbing, forced his inner energy, his chi, to circulate. He felt his blood moving, the joints of his fingers crackling as he clenched and unclenched his fists underneath the plastic sheet. Finally, she balled her fists and pounded his back. Playing the drum, it was called.

When she was done, he gave her his usual ten-dollar tip, generous but not so overly generous that it suggested anything more than simple appreciation of services received. Knowing her story, Sai Go felt sorry for her, for her predicament, supporting two generations back in China, and having to fend off the snakeheads.

After Sai Go left the New Canton, Bo had begun to sweep up the hair on the floor around her station when she noticed the folded square of paper directly underneath the chair. It was a prescription card with notations she didn’t understand, from the Mon Tang Pharmacy on Mott Street. Folded along with the card was a piece of notepaper from Chinatown Imaging, and a scrap of crinkly cellophane that had the Chinese words Ming Sing, or movie star, scrawled on it.

On the Chinatown Imaging note was the word chemotherapy with appointment dates during previous weeks. They all seemed to be Thursdays. Below the dates was a scribble of Chinese words, several of which she understood to mean cancer and radiation.

A freezing wind suddenly swept into the salon, and Bo quickly glanced toward the door, but she knew that Sai Go was long gone. She stepped out into the cold street anyway, looking both ways to make sure he wasn’t still in sight.

Back inside the shop, Bo tucked the papers into her pocket, and reminded herself to return them on his next visit. She realized then why Sai Go had missed his last trim and although she hadn’t noticed any hair loss, he did appear fatigued, quieter than usual. The word radiation lingered in her mind, and she considered whether there was another talisman that could prevent the pain of cancer.

Friends

At eleven, the Sunset Park waterfront shimmered in the frosty moonlight far below his studio window. Dressed for the chill, Jack was adjusting the holster with the Detective Special on his hip when his cell phone trilled. Seeing Alexandra’s name appear in the little window above the keypad, he was surprised, because the only times she’d ever called before was when he was on the job.

“Hey, what’s up?” he asked.

“Did I catch you at a bad time?” Alex sounded tired.

“No, I was just going to drop by Grampa’s.”

There was a short pause, as if she were sipping a drink or something. “Right. Got a question about a permit for a gun,” she said.

“Shoot.” He felt himself grinning.

“The application process is real complicated, I hear.”

“Wait, who’s this for?”

“Myself.”

“You?”

“Long story.”

“Well,” he checked the Timex on his wrist, “give me the short version.”

“There was a smuggled girl we put up in the shelter. In the last few days, Doris has been getting nasty threatening calls at the reception desk.”

“What kind of threats?”

“‘Stay away from our women.’ ‘Your office may catch fire.’ Crap like that.”

“No shit. In Chinese?”

“Mandarin, sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“Doris said, with a sort of accent, like Fukienese, maybe. Two nights ago, when we closed, two guys were peering in through the blinds. After that, I felt like someone was following me, like from a distance.”

He pulled his black North Face jacket from the little closet.

“Fukienese?” he asked.

“Chinese, for sure. Last night I thought I saw one of them outside Confucius.”

“Go to the precinct and file a Form Sixty-One report so it’ll be on record. And it could support your pistol application.” He paused, checking for his keys. “You still have that friend in the DA’s office? ”

“Yes,” she said.

“Well, you’re a lawyer yourself. That will help. But the DA’s office could call the Licensing Division. Know what I’m saying?”

“Right.”

“After you get the paperwork in, I’ll set you up at a pistol range. Learn how to shoot the right way. I know a guy on the West Side. Nice guy, Chinese, too.”

“Yeah, sure.” He heard her chuckle. “Thanks a lot.” It sounded like she took another sip, before saying, “There’s some other stuff . . .”