No justice, no peace?

No just us, no please?

The community’s activist media would stay focused on this, Jack thought, and the DA’s office would be very aware of that. This one wasn’t going to be bargained away in some sealed juvie deal.

There was a freestanding black-and-white photograph of Hong, a smiling teenage face, just above the altar space. Below that was the closed casket the parents were forced to accept, so horrified were they by the damage to their son’s face.

A ring of flowers surrounded the closed coffin.

They could hear the band starting up across the street on the park side, a sad sweet “Nearer, My God, to Thee” in four-four time.

The pallbearers readying themselves to shoulder the load.

Suddenly, the mother uttered a harrowing cry, then exploded from her seat and threw herself across the coffin, knocking over her son’s framed photograph. The father and relatives rushed over to console and to restrain her. The mother was screaming, “Aah Jai! Ah Jai!!” and beating her chest, trying to tear her heart out, clutching at her hair. She fell to the floor, kicking, pounding the polished stone with her fists.

The relatives lifted her up, managed to slump her onto a seat, surrounding her from all sides supporting her, all of them wailing now, words useless in the whirlwind of grief.

The father stood speechless, ready to collapse.

The pallbearers lifted the casket, slowly beginning to walk toward the street. The band urged them on, the hearse standing at the curb with its tailgate open.

Up and down the street, drivers waited patiently as the pallbearers stepped slowly through the frozen morning, loading the coffin into the vehicle. The mother collapsed again and they carried her into one of the Town Cars. The band played until the last car moved off around the bend to Bayard, en route to the New Chinatown, then to Brooklyn, and on to everlasting sorrow.

Life Is Suffering

Sai Go sat in the barber chair and watched Bo in the mirror wall of the New Canton. She caught his glance and raised the chair, pumping the lever with her foot to position him.

“You look tanned,” she said with a smile. And tired, she thought. “Had a good time?”

“Yes,” answered Sai Go as she draped the plastic sheet over him, discreetly returning the clinic card and prescription note. “You left them here last time,” she said, grabbing a spray bottle.

Sai Go recognized the items immediately and nonchalantly pocketed them.

“Thanks,” he said. “And I’ve got something for you, too.” He produced a souvenir key ring with the Disney World logo, pleased by the happiness it brought to her face when he handed it to her.

“It’s got a light.” He smiled. “When you press the button.

For the dark places.”

“A wonderful gift.” She beamed, flashing the light. “Thank you much.” She remembered the talismans she had for him, but decided to wait until the end of the massage before showing them to him.

She misted his hair.

“The weather was good,” Sai Go said. “We went all over.”

Bo worked the little electric clipper against the long black comb.

“People swimming. People having fun,” he continued.

She misted again, and he squinted at the comb whipping around, chased by the buzz of the blades, hard salt-and-pepper clippings spraying across the plastic sheet.

“Everyone out in the sun,” he said, blinking.

“Just like a postcard,” Bo said, focused on the top of his head.

Sai Go felt himself floating, drifting behind his eyes. He scanned the overcast street in the mirrors, and felt detached, out of place. When he brought his focus back, he saw his quick trim, neat and tight. Bo was dusting his neck with powder, brushing him off. She loosened the plastic sheet.

He closed his eyes as Bo’s strong fingers kneaded the knots where the cords ran from his neck into his shoulders. He took a slow deep breath, released it the same way. He thought he’d felt something catching in his chest as she massaged his shoulders.

Inside his forehead he imagined palm trees and blue skies, the hot Florida sun on his face. Her thumbs dug into the base of his skull, rotated there, and then her forearms pressed and rubbed the sides of his neck.

He imagined a pack of greyhounds sprinting around a track, chasing a mechanical rabbit, and remembered he’d fallen asleep during the last race, but still came out a winner, a grand fifty dollars on the day.

Gum Sook’s herbal tea had made him feel good the first two days, then his energy faded and he became tired. He was sleepless the last days of the trip.

“When you get back, go to Sister Kee the herbalist,” recommended Gum Sook. “Put together litchi and seaweed. Boil garlic and chives with duck eggs. Mix in red wine and royal jelly. Eat and drink like a thick soup. For two days. I’ll write it down so she’ll know what to do.”

He’d appeared weak, and the two da jops, kitchen helpers, made sure he got home okay after they’d landed at LaGuardia. A see gay, radio car, returned them to Chinatown, and he’d slept most of the first day back. He woke up remembering his regular massage and haircut appointment, and the key ring.

Bo felt Sai Go sagging, drifting, with his eyes shut, to another place. She was sad to see how drained he looked, sensing that he was slowly dying. She chanted a Buddhist prayer in her head that never showed on her face as she drove her elbows into the clenched muscle behind his lungs, pushing the cancers back.

Sai Go opened his eyes as he started to nod off, jerking his head backward. Bo gave him a final squeeze and began drumming his back with her fists. When she was done, she presented him with the talisman Kwan Kung card and the jade gourd, slipping the red cord of the pendant over his head.

Sai Go was touched, not only by her healing hands, but by her generous compassion, which he didn’t understand, and didn’t feel he had the time to figure out. Here was a woman, working hard and saving every dollar to pay off the snakeheads so they wouldn’t turn her into a whore, and yet she presented him with new talismans, trinkets he’d seen for sale on Chinatown streets that had probably set her back twenty dollars. Cheap enough, but it was the thought, he reminded himself.

“Thank you,” he said meekly. “But you shouldn’t have,” aware of the precariousness of her financial situation. He gave her the usual tip, but when he tried to pass her an extra twenty, she became hock hee, indignant, about accepting payment from him.

It was not Sai Go’s style to force it upon her.

“It’s only a small gift,” she said firmly. “Why won’t you let me enjoy giving something to you?”

He had nothing to say to that.

“How about this,” he suggested. “I’ll bet the twenty on a horse for you. It’ll be like Lotto, okay?”

Offered a chance to test her luck, she couldn’t refuse. A small smile broke through and she said, “If you like.”

“Good then,” he said, relieved. “I’ll bring you the ticket.”

At the OTB, Sai Go reviewed the list of entries and settled on the eighth horse in the eighth race, an eight-to-one underdog. Sai Go watched the odds changing across the board, the smart money running to the number five and number two horses, driving their odds down. The number eight horse looked even better to him then.

The teller at the window was confused when he saw the resident bookie purchase a legitimate ticket. He noticed Sai Go’s sickly pallor and thought better of making a wisecrack.

Sai Go paid quickly and avoided any players who were looking for action. On the street he bought a small silk jewelry purse. It cost a dollar and he chose a red one for luck, red with gold embroidery. He tucked the OTB ticket inside and zipped it up.