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It's nearly three when Ming gets back from a meeting with the town planning office, and he's still not right in his skin. He excels at schmoozing with the bureaucrats—laughing (not too loudly) at unfunny jokes, speaking deferentially—but humiliation always follows like a hangover, leaving him angry, needing to put the world sharply back into order.
He parks in his reserved spot by the warehouse entrance, and slams the car door when he gets out. Heat presses down, a heavy, sweaty hand after the comfort of air conditioning, and he walks quickly around to get his files from the back. He spots pale green from the corner of his eye, and his mouth tightens.
The kid next door bought the green car for himself after returning from abroad, and whenever Ming sees it here that means his own son is either being picked up or dropped off. He'd been looking forward to some calming time in his office, but now he has this to deal with. The car's parked on the other side of the rubbish sorting shed, trying to monopolize the shade. On one shed post, the metal bucket where staff and drivers toss their cigarettes is smoking heavily from the nail it's hung from, blurring the outline of the car into that of a malevolent ghost.
He should go over and toss some water in. Pat keeps complaining that the facility shouldn't allow smoking at all; the bucket out here in the sweltering heat is a compromise of sorts. Ming watches the smoke drift over the green car, and imagines the kid next door rushing out to the car park and wailing about the stench getting into his upholstery, the soot on his windows. It's a cheering thought. It'll serve him right.
He walks inside with a spring in his step, hoping to cross paths with the kid and make his day a little worse. When that doesn't happen—the kid knows enough to hide from him by now, probably locked in the bathroom again, texting Pat and begging him to get back soon—he calls Krem into his office to go over invoices. Krem's twitchy and overly-polite, but Ming can always get him to do all the computer stuff for him.
He's trying to get to the bottom of why shipments to Nakatani Construction are being charged standard trucking rates (he really hopes the answer isn't Pat, who's a stickler for obeying rules and regulations over maintaining the business partnerships Ming's nurtured over decades) when the building shakes violently, with a boom concurrent with the sound of shattering glass.
Ming rushes out of the office, Krem on his heels, to find everyone else also racing for the exits.
He wants to demand answers, but from the chaos around him he doubts anyone knows more than he does. He follows Jeab out into the carpark, and chokes on the roiling black smoke that billows up in a cloud. He can hear someone in the murky darkness, several people, calling emergency services, and refuses to allow himself to feel helpless—he grabs Krem and drags him back inside. His grandfather built this business from an empty dirt lot; he will not let it burn. They dash through the warehouse, grabbing fire extinguishers and running back outside to press them into any available hands, then going back for more.
His hands are sweat-slick and the smoke nauseates him. But if the flames get inside the building, through the jagged ruins of the windows, it's all over. Everything he fights for, the legacy he wants for his children, ungrateful as they are.
He hears sirens, grabs the last fire extinguisher from aisle 3, and runs again, lungs burning.
If his business survives, his employees will all get bonuses, he swears. All their cars and the delivery vehicles in the lot have been moved to the decorative lawn fronting the road, clearing space for the fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances that pour in. Jeab's helping the office clerk soak towels and hand them to the warehouse staff to wrap around their heads as they try to get close enough to the flames engulfing the pit where the rubbish shed stood to put them out. Ming tries desperately to think what volatile material could have been tossed out carelessly, hoping there won't be a secondary explosion.
All those stupid drills over the years that he'd griped about for wasting valuable time… Ming's proud of his people for their calm and loyal efforts. When the firefighters take over, he pulls his staff back. Anyone burned or coughing at all is handed over to the paramedics. It's under control, and Ming's knees go weak, shaking so badly he stumbles. He belatedly recalls he needs to call Lily, and Pat, and Pa, but his phone's not in his pockets when he pats himself down. He can't recall if it's on his desk or in the car; he can't go look for it because there's shouting now, something happening in the carpark just beyond the shed's smoldering remains.
The green car isn't green anymore, or particularly carlike; it was blown on its side in the explosion, and now paramedics and firefighters are swarming over it.
Ming asks, and asks, and finally is told that the kid next door had been napping in the car, seat reclined and oblivious to impending disaster. Ming goes hot and cold when he realizes, so suddenly dizzy that he doubles over and vomits miserably. Someone—Jeab—ushers him over to be examined by the paramedics.
"His son's boyfriend is in that car," she says. Tears are cleaning paths through the soot on her face, and the paramedic looks at Ming with unbearable sympathy.
Ming reaches out, catching Jeab by the arm. "Can you call my wife?" He knows he's exposing his cowardice, but he cannot tell Pat this. To this day, Pat lies to him about that boy, and Ming will never accept the truth.
Jeab winces, but pulls out her phone to make the call. Ming's mind is so full of thoughts he can't focus on any of them, and when Jeab hands him the phone he stammers.
Lily cries, in that way she does where her voice doesn't change at all. If he wasn't married to her for over twenty-five years, he wouldn't even notice. "I'm going next door," she says, and over his protests he hears a door bang, and then the rapid slap of sandals on pavement. "He's her son, you have to—"
Which is how Ming is forced to endure telling Dissaya the news, ordering her to take a taxi with Lily to the hospital and not risk driving. He'll meet them there, he promises. None of them mention Pat's name; after her first grief-stricken shriek, Dissaya barely even insults Ming. He wonders if somehow she's become reconciled to their children choosing to ruin their lives with each other. If only to spite him.
He doesn't leave the hospital until after midnight. All his employees have to be examined in the emergency room, and he worries for them, of course. He shuttles between there and the surgery waiting room where Dissaya's family huddle together near the door, and Pat sits at the back, silent and still next to Lily. He hasn't spoken to Ming yet, hasn't asked about their family business or his own father's health. Pa and her girlfriend have taken on the caretaker role, bringing drinks and food, charging phones and fetching blankets.
The police track Ming down there, taking him aside to ask questions about his disposal of hazardous materials and animosity toward his son's boyfriend. He's honest with them about everything except that he'd seen smoke and ignored it. They suspect him, of course, but so does his family and Dissaya's. After all, he punched the kid once in a supermarket, in broad daylight. (He still wishes he'd punched him harder.)
That doesn't mean he wants him dead.
To everyone's immense relief, the kid makes it through that first night, and keeps hanging in there. He's on a ventilator at first, and his broken leg will need surgery, but the shrapnel from the explosion did not go through his heart or lungs or eyes, despite cutting so close, and his odds of brain damage are low. He wakes up after four days, and the first thing he asks is, "Where's Pat?"
Dissaya, finally, opens the door and lets Pat in. Ming heard a rumor that one of the kid's friends went down on hands and knees, begging her to let Pat see him, but she'd refused because she didn't want Pat to have a chance to say goodbye, if it came to that. Ming doesn't want Pat near any of them, but her unfairness and pettiness, punishing Pat just because of her grudge with his father, feels unnecessarily cruel. He tells Lily that Dissaya's just irrational like that.
Lily insists on accompanying Ming when he visits that evening, less of a buffer than a minder, making sure he doesn't cause harm or speak out of turn. They present Dissaya with tins of butter cookies and bags of bottled drinks, and Ming speaks a handful of sentences to the kid next door—to Pran—with Pat glowering at him from one side and Dissaya from the other.
He clearly remembers Dissaya telling Pat his father was disgusting, and the knife-sharp shame he'd felt when Pat turned to him, betrayed.
This is worse: Pat watches him as if they're strangers and Ming is a threat. He's clearly exhausted, face drawn and hair lank, eyes red. Ming's not sure if he's showered or changed his clothes in days. He definitely hasn't returned home or to work since the accident. Shamefully, Ming's been grateful for the reprieve. Pat will ask questions, and Pat knows him and his tells better than the police do.
Words of comfort and encouragement stick in his throat and come out clumsily, and Pran doesn't say much in return, dazed from painkillers. In all the years they've lived beside each other, Ming can't recall ever having a conversation with Pran, though he's yelled at him, warned him, blamed him, and knocked him down. He wants to know what his son likes about this boy; why Pat will lie to Ming's face to protect him. But he has no right to ask. Not here, not when Pran nearly died.
After a painfully long fifteen minutes they make their excuses and leave. Pat doesn't see them out.
Lily sighs, her shoulders slumping. "He looks terrible. All those bandages and tubes. I feel so bad for him, and his family, and Pat. His poor face…"
Ming has to swallow down wounded outrage, because where's her sympathy for his business, that puts food on the table and pays for her house and children? The damage is still being assessed and cleaned up, and his staff are recovering from burns and smoke inhalation. He barely has time to eat these days, so busy with meetings and interviews. The police have played him drive recorder and security footage showing him staring at the green car.
He tells them that if he wanted the kid's car gone that badly he'd have had it towed for trespassing. He's only done that once—Pat had been irate—but that was enough to make it a satisfying threat. Why would he risk a fire? It makes no sense, he says, but he can tell that they find his hatred equally nonsensical.
Even aside from the police threatening criminal charges, he's facing fines for allowing smoking on the premises and for improper handling of gas cylinders (despite the driver who put them there swearing the welders told him they were empty and sealed). Because of that, he doubts he can count on insurance. He may need to sell the house, if he can find a buyer willing to tolerate the neighbors.
"Pat's not coming home, is he?" he asks.
Lily looks at him. She's always defended him and his ways, telling the children to obey, to respect their father. She's quietly proud of his accomplishments. But her eyes are clear as she says, "I don't think so. He's made his own home."
Ming feels like a fist is tightening around his heart. Neither of them have been invited to visit Pat's condo. Not that Ming would go. He doesn't want to give the impression he encourages his son's so-called relationship.
"Give it time," Lily says. "Maybe, once Pran has recovered…"
It's easy enough to imagine this as the beginning of the excuses: once Pran has recovered. After the new year. When the rain stops. When it's not so hot. Maybe next month, then year, and eventually never. All gone up in smoke.
He supposes another man would swallow his pride and try to insinuate his way into his child's life with apologies and promises, but he has a business to run and a lawyer to speak with. He doesn't have time. He straightens his shoulders and walks briskly away, with Lily one step behind him.