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He wasn’t surprised to discover that his brother had built up a reputation in jail. “I was expecting it,” he says, the day Yik gets out and Lefty is waiting for him in a car. Tapping the wheel with two fingers, he’s suddenly anxious that his intentions weren’t transparent. “I’ve been waiting, like, for you.”
He looks over at Yik—nah, it’s Jau now, he’s gotta remember that—he looks over at his big brother, but the guy is still looking out to the sea view out of the car, one hand on the side of the window and one hand in his lap. Barely any reflection in the glass ‘cause it’s too light outside.
It had just seemed dumb, eight years ago, to visit Yik and have nothing to show him. To have nothing he could do for either of them. Like, a slap in the face or something, kicking a guy while he was down—Lefty was out but Yik was in, he was out but he was still the pathetic guy who couldn’t hold a gun right. And besides, he’d said he’d wait for Yik, he said he’d hold on.
(One time, a few months after Yik’s sentencing, Lefty’d been face down in an alley. Cheek turned into a puddle that smelled of piss and vomit. The first muddled thought that went through his mind was: Yik would know what to do. Yik would know how to solve this. Cleverly, without getting into an alley and getting beaten up. But then what advice could Yik even give, with the correctional officer breathing down his back in the waiting room. What would it look like, that Lefty couldn’t even handle a couple thugs on his own.
In the end, Lefty thought—miserably, but prodding misery into a new shape which he could almost convince himself was bravery—I gotta shape up before I see him again.)
He knew Emily visited Yik, sure, but he had nothing to do with her. In the early years, every time they saw each other it was all barbs and dumb insults. The last time they’d really had a conversation was, what, probably six years ago? Lefty’d said something like: Shut the hell up before I bash your pretty face in and people decide they don’t wanna fuck a cunt with a cut up face. And then she’d stormed off, and the last he’d heard of her she’d started working in a hair salon or some shit—a proper hair salon, even, no massages or nothing—and left their back-end world behind proper. Well, Lefty had figured: that was right, leave the visiting and the care packages to the chick who wasn’t doing anything to prepare for her boyfriend’s release.
Lefty, though, Lefty had shaped up. He’d done his share of the work. Laid the tiles on the ground, some metaphor like that, paving the road so that when Jau got out—Lefty would have everything set for his return. And he does now! And Jau will know that soon, even if Lefty hasn’t shown him anything yet.
His fingers are still itching on the wheel. He wonders if it would’ve been better to visit after all. If maybe his faith in Jau got taken the wrong way and he’s being ignored right now—it’s been ages, the silence is dragging and anxiety is gnawing behind Lefty’s teeth. He could never read that guy well.
“I know.” Jau says, after a moment. He turns his face towards Lefty and smiles. “Thank you for waiting.”
Right, Lefty thinks, relieved. Of course.
“Once we get you settled,” he says, grinning back though the gratitude, “Let’s buy that restaurant.”
They go to the restaurant first, of course.
“Man,” he says, prodding at the menu card. Feels like the cardstock is flimsier than it used to be. Cheapskates. He chews his lower lip, frowning. Maybe he should have taken his bro to a different restaurant, a better one. The carpet looks old and ragged as shit too, and the lights are so dim they’re almost going out. Doesn’t bode well for the quality of the food. He should have picked some place better for them to go, but it’s way too late now. Shit. They’ve already sat down. “Haven’t been to this place in nine years.” He says, injecting bravado. “Jeez, it’s worse than it used to be, huh.”
“Really?” Jau is examining the menu, written in English without any Chinese to go off. He looks up briefly. “No, it’s quite nice. It just feels quite nostalgic to be here.”
Huh, Lefty thinks, relieved again.
Anyway, did Jau learn some English in prison? Lefty’s just frowning at the little serif letters on his menu, trying to piece together his order from the English classes he failed at school. Beef well-whatsit? Sounds like the shit. He tries to remember what the fuck he’d ordered when he came here nine years ago.
“You have seafood?” He asks the waiter. “I’ll take the seafood.”
The waiter’s face is bland. “We have king crab with oyster, or pan-fried sea bass with mushrooms in a—”
“Sure,” Lefty says. “I’ll have both. Sounds great.”
The waiter hesitates. “Those are two of our specialty courses. If you’d like to look at our—” The waiter says something in English here, too fast for Lefty to catch, “—menu instead, there are some pastas and rice dishes which may be more to your preference…” He moves to touch the menu in Lefty’s hand, and Lefty snaps the menu shut.
“Yeah,” Lefty interrupts, smiling with his teeth. “I said I’ll take both. The crab and the fish, yeah? Do I tell you how raw I want the fish now?”
“No, we don’t do that for our sea bass.” The waiter straightens, looking more irritated than cowed. It’s always like this with the types working in fancy places. Yeah, well, it’s not like he wears that uniform at home. “And what about you, sir?”
Jau folds his menu shut and rattles off a few dish names that Lefty can’t catch, and then drinks—of course, drinks.
After the waiter’s gone, Lefty says, “No bottle of wine?”
“That’s for when we buy the restaurant,” Jau says. “We have to leave something to celebrate with.”
Lefty laughs loud enough to make a neighbouring woman look over at their table judgmentally. He makes a face at her.
When the food comes, he spends some time just watching Jau eat, knife and fork scraping the plate. Cutting his pastry-wrapped steak into strips and dipping it into whatever sauce he got.
Lefty’s ma used to tell him not to eat “like a convict who just got out of prison”, but Lefty never really picked up the habits she was trying to hammer in. But he’s always sorta been able to picture himself like his ma described, his imagination conjuring up some guy in a too-big t-shirt and shorts. Probably hunched over his food in a Yoshinoya or some other place that put their portions in plastic trays, shovelling down rice like there was no tomorrow. He feels a bit like that when he pries open the shell of the oyster with a knife and sucks the juice off his fingers.
Jau, though, this guy looks like he belongs in this fancy-ass restaurant. Like he never spent a day in jail with too-small portions, eating soft, overcooked rice with soupy vegetables and pork. He looks like a rich guy among rich guys, posture ramrod straight in the chair—Lefty heard prison could do that for folks too.
“What is it?” Jau’s looking at him now, one eyebrow raised as he puts down his knife and fork. He wipes his mouth with a handkerchief.
Lefty leans back. “Nah, nothing much, I’m just looking at you.”
“And how do I look?”
“You look good,” Lefty replies, without stopping to think about it, “You look real good.”
It’s a pretty simple chain of events. Jau gets settled—he bunks in Lefty’s apartment for six months until Emily wheedles her boyfriend into renting a place together (which Lefty rationalises into a positive outcome, ‘cause by the end of those six months he’s had enough of the cunt sitting around his place and pretending she’s welcome there)—they kill some dudes in the meantime, fuck some shit up, and then they fix the shit that got fucked up when those first dudes got killed.
And then they buy the restaurant.
(Like, yeah, round of applause for the girl who got the guy to move in with her, but instead of renting a flat, how about trying to buy a whole fine-dining joint?)
“Let’s fire all the staff.”
“This close to opening?” Jau says. “We can’t fire the cooks.”
“Everyone else?”
“Sure,” Jau says, after a moment of consideration. “We can do that.”
They’ve cleared out a space in the middle for a table Jau ordered weeks ago—it’s meant to be a centrepiece of some sort, all one piece of wood, a solid trunk of whatsit-oak cut into a table-sized block. It’s lying on the floor now, waiting for them to assemble the legs first before flipping it upside down. They’ll need at least two more guys to do it: even for two people, it’s way too heavy to lift.
After they measure the space with tape and Jau chalks out exactly where they want the table to go, they end up hauling one of the square tables back anyway so they can eat. One last meal before this place reopens next week. That’s the plan, anyway, and it looks like they’re gonna get there without a hitch.
“Big fucking table for two,” he says, laying down styrofoam containers from the nearest takeaway.
The chefs aren’t here until next week, but at least they’ve got a bottle of champagne from the cellar.
“Admittedly, it ended up a little bigger than I was expecting. At least we did say we wanted a table to permanently reserve for us.” Jau examines the spread, and then the champagne. “Oh, we forgot the glasses. I’ll go get them.”
It’s pretty funny, digging into a deep fried chicken leg in this place, seeing the crystal glasses put next to orange-white paper cups of iced tea. Their knees knock under the table, and Lefty prods Jau’s ankle with his foot until the other guy concedes to trying a piece of chicken. Guess that’s another reason they wanted the big table, more room for them to stretch their legs. Well, better for Lefty, maybe; he’s always the one slouching.
After the meal, Lefty pops the champagne and pours for both of them. It fizzes as they clink their glasses together, Lefty using a little more force than maybe champagne deserves—he’s used to bashing beer bottles together, give him a little time to get used to it, eh?
He tastes the champagne, sure (it’s fizzy and sweet, like beer with added syrup), but more than that, he watches Jau. The man sips slowly, his eyes momentarily indistinct on the rim of the glass. There’s a tiny upturn to his lips. When he catches Lefty’s eye, that upturn moves into an open smile.
With a little bit of the champagne fizz bubbling in his chest, and a little bit of the alcohol moving to his face—it’s warm in the room, but a nice kind of warm, a just-right kind of warm that heats up the cheeks—Lefty smiles back.