Mambo in Chinatown

—

A few days later, Adrie

“What do you mean?” It seemed to me I’d suffered plenty already. My shoes were as full of holes as Nina’s.

“You need to videotape yourselves.”

Nina drew in a quick breath. “No.”

Ryan shrugged. “Seems like a good idea to me.”

Nina said, “That’s because you’ve never watched yourself on video. Every dancer wants to kill herself after seeing herself on film. It’s a known thing. Don’t do it to them, Adrie

Adrie

Ryan and I exchanged glances. I took a breath. “Do it.”

Nina whispered, “You’ll be sorry . . .”

Adrie

—

Ryan and I sat on the floor, huddled against the wall in the small ballroom, watching the video together. When it was done, we were silent. I glanced over at him. His face was gray. I felt like I wanted to cry.

I whispered, “It’s my di

He slanted me a look. “Yeah.”

“Wait for me at the Chinese restaurant on Lexington Avenue, okay?” Since I never actually ate out, it was the only place I remembered off the top of my head. I always noticed it when I went by. Today, I felt like I needed to do something nice for myself.

“The one on the corner?”

“I’ll meet you there in a few minutes. You leave now so it looks like we separated.”

When I stepped into the restaurant, he had gotten a table for us. The place was deserted, except for one other couple in the corner.

He squinted up at me. “I’ve never seen anything more awful than myself on video.’”

I burst into laughter. “Did you see my shoulders, raised all the way up to my ears? And I’m supposed to be the professional.”

“I like your shoulders. You looked great.”

The waitress came to our table with the menus. She was Chinese, with her hair pulled back neatly from a plain face. I felt like a foreigner, sitting there with a white guy, wearing my ballroom clothing. The menu was long and complicated. I was tired, and as always, it cost me so much effort to read at all. The words blurred into a soup of letters.

I closed my eyes. “Do you mind if I just do it?”

“Go for it. I eat everything.”

I quickly ordered in Chinese. My Chinese wasn’t great but after all of those years in the noodle restaurant, I could order fluently.

“That was impressive,” he said.

I breathed in the faint smell of grease and steam in the air. “I used to work somewhere like this, only less upscale.”

The waitress came with our drinks and all of the food I’d ordered. She placed fried rice and noodles on the table as side dishes. Ryan’s eyes lit up at the sliced beef with red pepper, green scallions, ginger and watercress. I could smell the jumbo shrimp and a vegetable dish with snow peas, baby corn, Chinese cabbage and bamboo shoots.

I’d automatically chosen chopsticks. Ryan had done the same. He dropped his napkin and stuck his chopsticks into his mound of rice while he retrieved it. Then he saw my face. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry.” I reached over, plucked his chopsticks out and set them on the table. “You can’t do that. It’s how we place chopsticks when we do rituals for the dead and it’s considered very bad luck.”

“And here I thought I was pretty good too. What else do I need to know?”

“Do you really care?”

“Sure. I mean, if I come to di

I stared at him a moment.

He rubbed his chin, not meeting my eyes. “You wanted me to help your friend learn to drive in my car, right? That was what you wanted from our bargain. She probably uses chopsticks, I could look dumb. Umm, never mind.”

I took pity on him. “Okay. Chopsticks are really important to us because they have to do with food and rice, which is essential to our survival. Your chopsticks are like two lovers. They always need to be together, side by side. We never use only one chopstick for anything. Never tap with your chopsticks on the side of your bowl, because that’s what beggars do and it’s bad luck too. Never gesture toward someone with them or wave them, again, that’s impolite. Don’t chew on them, that’s unhygienic. Never dig for your food with chopsticks because it looks like you’re digging a grave and it’s bad luck as well.”

“Whew. Lots of bad luck here. Okay, let me give it all a try.”

He did pretty well and I felt better after I’d eaten.

Ryan was surveying the restaurant. “They thought about feng shui before they designed this place. Those two Imperial guardian lions they placed at the front door—they’re needed because of the bank across the street, right? Though I don’t fully understand why.”

I was amazed. “Yes, because a bank is so powerful, the restaurant is afraid it’ll absorb all of the good qi. The lions counteract that stream. I’m surprised you saw that.” Many Chinese establishments took feng shui seriously, and they often consulted a feng shui master before making any architectural and design decisions. I’d grown up with that concept of balancing the energies within a space for good fortune, but I hadn’t expected anyone non-Chinese to notice.

“We often need to take feng shui into account when we design for some of our clients, whether they’re Asian or not.”

“Do you do any of the actual pla

“Some.” He took a sip of his soda. “I’d like to do more. I’ve been thinking about going back to school to get a degree in landscape architecture. Fiona’s always pushing me to do it. But I’m not sure.”

“Why not?”

“I love the work, you know? I love being outside, my hands in the soil, creating something beautiful out of the earth. I love knowing that living things will thrive where I place them. Like Evelyn, Fiona thinks I’m crazy for not calling myself a landscaper, but for me, being a gardener is the best part of the job. I wouldn’t want to move too far from that.”

I thought about what I’d been through in the past months. “I understand that fear of losing yourself, of changing faster than is comfortable. But in the end, your soul’s in your own hands, isn’t it? No one can make you into someone you’re not, no matter what your title is. It’s about becoming your true self.”

He gave me a crooked smile. “You’re quite something, Charlie. What about you? Do you have a boyfriend who wants you to become a studio owner or something?”

I laughed. “Oh no, being a dancer and a teacher is more than I’d ever dreamed of. That’s hard enough.”

Ryan tapped his finger against the table. “The thing is, I’ve been looking at Mateo and Keith and all those guys, and I somehow had the idea that when I was watching them, I was seeing myself. But that wasn’t true at all.”

“Yes, that’s exactly it.” I chewed on a snow pea. “Everyone around us is so good and then you watch yourself on video and suddenly you realize how far you still have to go. I guess that’s why Nina said not to do it.”

He chuckled. “I didn’t see anything wrong with the way you looked.”

“I didn’t notice you doing so badly either.”

He reached out with his finger and brushed it across my face. “Eyelash on your cheek.”

My skin tingled where he had touched me. I gestured to the waitress for the check. “I’d better be getting back.”

—

I found I couldn’t stop thinking about Ryan after that. When he came in for his lesson the next day, I was aware of every step he took. We were attracted to each other, but like Nina said, that could just be the chemistry of dancing together. He had a girlfriend, and I couldn’t imagine bringing a white guy home to Pa. Pa could barely accept the idea of me with a Chinese man I’d known my entire life, like Winston. Plus there was the strict studio policy against fraternizing with the students. I could lose my job like Estella had. There were so many reasons Ryan was wrong for me, but when he held me in dance position, he felt just right.