He heard the dailo ’s voice again and shook his head, remembering the Jung Wah Warehouse job. That job was mostly the Jung brothers, who had hot-wired the truck inside the warehouse after Shorty had wriggled inside and let them in. They drove off with the entire load, with Shorty locking up the warehouse neatly, and Koo Jai covering shotgun on the rip-off. But abalone and bird’s-nests? They’d unloaded the stuff to the Jung brothers’ cousins who operated a market in Boston Chinatown, but they hadn’t seen any money yet. What the fuck? It would be weeks, maybe months. He’d thought it was a stupid heist but went along to give the Jung brothers face.

He went to the table and took a gulp from the bottle of mouthwash there, gargled, and ejected the green spew into a plastic garbage pail. Thinking it might be better to cool his plan to rob the Fuk’s mahjong club, he sucked out the rinse where it leached into his gums and spat again. The old floorboards still creaked under the dingy linoleum, even after he’d covered it with cheap area rugs from Kmart.

From the back room he could hear the rustling of the comforter, then a soft murmur, like a sigh. He went toward the musty heat, the Rado in one hand, his cock in the other as he thought about Tina, lying exhausted but insatiable in his bed.

She was the night manager at KK’s Karaoke, a basement spot on Allen Street. Koo Jai had done her several times and he knew she hoped to be his girlfriend, even thought she could get rid of the others.

He slipped under the comforter, in the darkness behind the drawn shades, feeling for her. He put the Rado on her wrist, and she moaned, thinking, Not the handcuffs again.

Koo Jai nuzzled the nape of her neck, his cold hard body sucking the heat from the comforter and the hot contours of her backside.

“Ooooh,” she moaned, so cool. She turned and nestled all of her soft and wet parts against him. Admiring the Rado, she slipped her head down to his stomach and wrapped her hot lips around the thick popsicle there.

He watched the tangle of hair pumping back and forth on his lun cock, and wondered how long before he could rob the mahjong club.

Pay off

Bo crossed the Bowery toward the long blocks of jewelry stores that ran down the northside stretch of Canal Street. Fifty shops named Treasure Diamonds, Lucky Star Jewelry, Royal Princess, Golden Jade, Canal National Gems, with the lights blazing from their windows brightening the concrete gray gloom drifting west toward the Holland Tunnel.

She always made her payments on the first Sunday morning of every month, as soon as the stores opened, so she wouldn’t be delayed by other customers.

Almost to Mulberry Street, she paused at the bulletproof glass door of Foo Ling Jewelry and Jade, and waited to be buzzed in.

The Foo Ling’s street windows displayed a dazzling array of diamond rings, bracelets, necklaces, and custom setups mounted with rubies or emeralds, all gleaming under the brilliant halogen lights. There were trays of gold medallions, racks of thick glittering chains, and a section of rich green jade pieces, some carved and beaded into pendants.

She stepped into the dry heat spreading from the lights, went past the display counters along the walls.

The bald-headed old Chinese man sat alone in the back end of the store, his fat bottom propped against a wooden stool. He twisted his frown into a half-sneer, half-smile, removing his finger from the remote door button as he watch Bo approach. Her eyes avoided his.

Hom Sook was how she was first introduced to him, her contact for remitting the monthly payments, and that was how she addressed him regularly now, always reminded how the spoken Chinese words sounded like hom sup, horny, old lech.

The name fit him well, she thought.

Hom Sook was sixtyish, obese, and reeked of the pork dumplings and curry chicken that he loved so much. He had a big head with reptilian features: thin lips, hooded eyes, and a flat nose.

Bo pictured this snakehead each time she prepared her payment envelope.

This time he’d worn the cheap gray rayon shirt with a design of tigers and eagles dueling in the background. He smirked, leering at her, when she handed him the envelope of money.

Bo had always kept the exchange brief, waiting just long enough to see him make the notation. She didn’t want to engage him in conversation, knowing where it would lead.

“Leng nui,” he called her, pretty woman. “ You look tired,” he said in a slithery voice. “How are things with you?”

“Fine,” Bo answered evenly. “Thank you.”

“Have you reconsidered our offer?” he asked, the snake tongue licking his lips.

They had wanted her to whore for them, had promised her a choice of regulars, clean-cut family men who were easy to please. Easy work, they’d said. Money for laying on your back.

“No, thank you,” Bo repeated as he counted out the money, then made a notation in his black book. Seeing this, Bo turned for the door. The old lech swallowed back his lust, his eyes keening to the soft sway of her backside as he made her pause before buzzing her out.

“Leng nui,” he chortled, “see you next month.”

Outside the Foo Ling, Bo took a deep breath, welcoming the cold breeze that swept down Canal. She felt better as she walked, thinking of a small sunny village in the south of China, picturing her daughter and her mother there, half a world and three lifetimes away.

Time and Space

Bo sat in the quiet solitude of her little rented room above Market Street, the silence broken only by the clicking of her bamboo needles, seated at the foot edge of the single bed, her voice a whisper chanting Buddhist nom mor nom mor prayers. She continued knitting this version of her rosary, a black scarf with the Chinese words for struggle, jung jot, stitched across the top in white relief.

In the black yarn were all the colors of bad luck.

In the white yarn, absent color, the insidious tone of death.

She was playing off the bad luck.

Several inches below the Chinese characters was a repeating pattern of horizontal S’s, or white snakes. Two rows of them totaling twenty-five, now twenty-six with the one she was stitching in place.

Twenty-six snakes now. Twenty-six payments to the snakeheads.

She paused, and took a breath, let her eyes rove over the bowl of leftover jik sik, instant ramen, on a tray, over the top of the used dresser, to the grainy photograph of three women:

herself, and Mother, and small daughter in tow.

Only the child was smiling.

The little girl’s mother and grandmother wore uncertainty on their faces, had small lights of hope and resignation in their eyes.

Abruptly, Bo wrenched her attention back to the clicking needles, clicking faster now, left to right, an impatient rhythm.

She hadn’t seen them in more than a year, but they spoke every week, using the discount prepaid telephone calling cards that Sai Go had gotten for her.

Nom mor nom mor nom or may tor fut.

She focused on the needles working the yarn: slip, stitch, purl, her fingers, hands, wrists in active articulation. The same energy came from her hands when she’d cut Sai Go’s hair, massaged his shoulders.

The black acrylic scarf was almost two feet long, knitted in monthly installments of white snakes.

She prayed for strength to finish it, knowing it would take years before she’d be able to pay off the snakeheads.

Nom mor nom mor no more slip stitch, loop through, the ball of yarn twisting in the little plastic basket. Drop the white yarn, wrap the black, complete stitch.

In the back of her mind she remembered the myriad of forgotten jobs, and then the New Canton, and measured the price of freedom.