The Silent Girl

with. But I’m certain you will find someone else.”
    He looks at me, and I see pain in his eyes. “Yet you never remarried, Mrs. Fang.”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    “There must have been men who were interested.”
    “How can you replace the love of your life?” I say simply. “James is my husband. He will always be my husband.”
    He takes a moment to absorb that. Then he says: “That’s the way I always thought love should be.”
    “It is.”
    His eyes are unnaturally bright when he looks at me. “Only for some of us.”
    We reach the dumpling house, where the windows are fogged with steam. He steps forward quickly to open the door, a gentlemanly gesture that strikes me as ironic, since I am the one carrying a lethal sword. Inside, the cramped dining room is packed, and we are lucky to claim the last empty table, tucked into a corner near the window. I hang the scabbard over the back of my chair and pull off my raincoat. From the kitchen wafts the tempting scents of garlic and steamed buns, painfully savory reminders that I have not eaten since breakfast. Out those kitchen doors come platters of glistening dumplings stuffed with morsels of pork or shrimp or fish; at the next table chopsticks clack against bowls, and a family chatters in such noisy Cantonese that it sounds like an argument.
    Frost looks bewildered as he scans the long menu. “Maybe I should let you order for both of us.”
    “Are there any foods you won’t eat?”
    “I’ll eat everything.”
    “You may be sorry you said that. Because we Chinese really
do
eat everything.”
    He cheerfully accepts the challenge. “Surprise me.”
    When the waitress brings out an appetizer platter with cold jellyfish and chicken feet and pickled pig’s feet, his chopsticks hesitate over the unfamiliar selection, but then he bites into a translucent chunk of pork cartilage. I watch his eyes widen with a look of delight and revelation.
    “This is wonderful!”
    “You haven’t tried it before?”
    “I guess I haven’t been very adventurous,” he confesses as he dabs chili oil from his lips. “But I’m trying to change all that.”
    “Why?”
    He pauses to think about it, a strip of jellyfish dangling from his chopsticks. “I guess … I guess it’s about getting older, you know? Realizing how few things I’ve actually experienced. And how little time there is to do it all.”
    Older
. At that I have to smile because I am almost two decades older than he is, so he must consider me ancient. Yet he does not look at me that way. I catch him studying my face, and when I return the gaze, his cheeks suddenly flush. Just as my husband’s did the first night we courted, on a spring evening heavy with mist, like this one.
Oh James, I think you would like this young man. He reminds me so much of you
.
    The dumplings come, soft little pillows plump with pork and shrimp. I watch in amusement as he struggles to pick up the slippery morsels and ends up chasing them around the plate with his chopsticks.
    “These were my husband’s favorites. He could eat a dozen of them.” I smile at the memory. “He offered to work here without pay for a month, if they would just give him their recipe.”
    “Was he also in the restaurant business in Taiwan?”
    His question makes me look straight at him. “My husband was a scholar of Chinese literature. He was descended from a long line of scholars. So no, he was not in the restaurant business. He worked as a waiter only to survive.”
    “I didn’t know that.”
    “It’s too easy to assume that the waiter you see here is just a waiter, and the grocery clerk is only a clerk. But in Chinatown, you can’t assume anything about people. Those shabby old men you see playing checkers under the lion gate? Some of them are millionaires. And that woman over there, behind the cash register? She comes from a family of imperial generals. People are not what they seem here, so you should never underestimate them. Not in Chinatown.”
    He gives a chastened nod. “I won’t. Not now. And I’m sorry, Mrs. Fang, if I in any way sounded disrespectful of your husband.” His apology sounds utterly sincere; it is yet another reason I find this man so surprising.
    I set down my chopsticks and regard him. Now that I have eaten, I finally feel able to address the subject that has been hanging over our meal. The noisy family at the next table rises to leave with a squeal of chair legs and a noisy chorus of Cantonese. When they walk