The Dotted Yellow Line

Okay, it’s clear to me that I need to speed this up a bit. Lately, I’ve been running a chapter a month instead of once every two weeks. Part of that is that my regular in person writing group hasn’t been able to meet as often. The bigger part is that I’m fighting my usual tendency to start something then veer off in multiple directions. It could be way worse, I could still be sitting around thinking about what to do with Chapter 2.

I’m okay with where things are story wise, but I’m feeling like the story is still about to happen and that’s not really a good thing. No, I’m not trying to write a thriller. It’s just that I want to stop feeling like I know where it’s going and what scenes eventually have to happen, but I’m still choosing from any number of routes for getting there without quite being there. In very loose terms, the best stories push forward and outwards all at the same time. It’s a bit like Einstein, as you approach the speed of light mass gets bigger which prevents you from ever going beyond the speed of light.

The other twist I threw myself was the bit about Absalom Absalom which I haven’t read in like thirty years. I’ve always had Absalom in mind along with One Hundred Years of Solitude, both books that are in one sense about the rise and fall of small towns in remote places. I’d mostly left it to the side (where it belongs). Now that it’s slipped in, I need to at least make sense of the saga of the Sutpen family and its impact on Quentin Compson as he tries to explain his world to northerners. So will I divert myself into studying Faulkner (an endless task) or will the wikipedia suffice?

I am pleased that two characters who I’d avoided Jan Grady and Marie are both moving forward. I’m still not sure whether I have the grooves slipped in for the more fanciful bits of the story, like the ghosts.

In the meantime, every week that passes is another crisis of confidence. Writing this has always felt uphill and I’ve imagined that there would be spots where the process would coast. I don’t think it’s straight downhill once you hit a point in a draft, but most of my own writing that I’ve liked acquired a kind of momentum of inevitability. As I’ve written sections of this I have had that, but writing a draft is like choosing a single highway and I keep wanting to go off on one of the side roads or at least see them before I step on the gas pedal.

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Chapter 5 Sammy Wong's

It wasn’t until I got to the half-moon-shaped doors that fronted Sammy Wong’s restaurant in Sacramento that I felt guiltier than I expected. No, it wasn’t Marie. Yes, when I had suggested to meet Jan Grady at Sammy Wong’s for lunch, Marie’s stare might have melted the telephone receiver. Yes, her initial response was, “ I thought this was a business meeting.”

Still I had at least in my opinion managed to save matters by asking Marie if she wanted to come along. After asking me why I would want her at a business meeting, she declined. Marie then shook her head and told me, “No, I want you to tell me more about why you don’t like talking about your father’s family or about money. Besides, if we go to Sacramento, you’ll want to go see your mother.”

Naturally, I agreed though I’m not sure it was the kind of thing where my agreement mattered. I don’t avoid topics like that because I choose to. It took many years for me and considerable training to get this way. I figured I’d save that explanation for another day. It was also true that Marie would go to great lengths to avoid dealing with my mother.

Not taking any chances, I had finished my phone conversation with Jan by saying quite loudly,” Sorry Jan, just needed to check with my wife on the date and time.”

I was feeling guilty for a very different reason. Even though my Dad’s restaurant, The Lost Province, had served its last customer twenty five years ago after he died, I was still used to thinking of Sammy Wong’s as my father’s restaurant’s arch rival.

It was more accurate to say that Sammy Wong was one of my Grandfather’s arch rivals among the leaders of the valley’s Chinese community. The three wealthiest Chinese men in the Sacramento Valley were my Grandfather who made his real money running the gambling house that served as the economic heart of Paperson, Wilson Tang the man who turned his corner grocery into a chain of supermarkets across three states, and Sammy Wong whose name was now associated with a dozen restaurants across California and one in Shreveport, Louisiana. The rivalry between the three took many peculiar turns. For instance, Wilson Tang was arrested in 1971 for trying to open a gambling house in Sacramento. Wilson already had nine successful markets and was seventy four years old at the time. No one really understood why he even tried since the Chinese gambling business had dwindled since the completion of Highway 80 to Reno.

Given that context my Grandfather buying a Chinese restaurant of his own in 1952 that was literally around the corner from Sammy Wong’s was just typical of the way the three men communicated by deeds instead of words. It was perhaps more than a little twisted that my Grandfather eventually turned over management to my father, his eldest son, in 1958. The problem was simple enough, my father had little chance to outshine Sammy Wong and he never did. One of the big questions in my life was whether or not my Grandfather did that on purpose.

So, here I stood about to have a potentially important business lunch with an old friend and I was the one who had for some perverse reason suggested that we meet at Sammy Wong’s. It was a bit like spitting on my father’s grave, yet something else told me that it was important to meet Jan there and not anywhere else. I figured and hoped that Dad would understand and forgive me. My reason came out as soon as Jan spotted me.

“So this is the famous Sammy Wong’s of the General Mo’s chicken?” was her greeting to me.

“This is the place,” I said as I held the door open for her.

Jan was not dressed for business and she was not dressed for a date either. She wore jeans, heels, and a brightly-colored blouse. I had come dressed for work though without a coat and tie. In heels, Jan was maybe an inch taller than I was at 5’9”. With Jan it was never so much what she wore or any of the individual details of how she looked, she just had a confidence about her. She seemed to both expect to be looked at and not to care about it. I had once listened raptly when she admitted to someone in the dining hall that she’d once been approached by a photographer when she was sixteen and that she had politely refused him. It was, of course, the sort of story once told in a dormitory that would never die.

She was heavier and considerably older than that now, but I’ve always believed that those sort of perceptions of yourself by others imprint when you’re a teenager. Jan was comfortable in her own body and it seemed that she always would be. In other words, she was the exact opposite of me. In terms of the social-sexual hierarchy of the college dormitory, she’d always been well out of my league.

I had picked Sammy Wong’s as a kind of test of Jan’s memory and the Howard Company’s interest in Paperson. I had told the General Mo’s chicken story just once to exactly one person some twenty five years ago.

“I can’t believe that you remembered that story and the name of the restaurant.”

“I’m Jewish. We have an ear for stories about forbidden food…It’s not the only story of yours that I remember either.”

We took a seat at a table. Sammy Wong’s was built into a narrow-windowless building three blocks from the State Capitol. It hadn’t occurred to me, but without the tables and the Chinese waiters the inside of Sammy Wong’s bore an eerie resemblance to the darkened corridor of a college dormitory which just happened to be where Jan and I had once had most of our conversations. My senior year, Jan had dated a rugby player named Jamie who lived in the suite across from me. Jamie usually fell asleep before eleven. Jan was a late night person. I had roommates who went to bed early. I was a late night person. We would run into one another in the hallway.

We actually talked quite a lot and often at three in the morning. Perhaps by design though, it was as if our friendship didn’t exist in the daylight or at least the public life of Dunster House. In many ways, our entire relationship didn’t exactly happen in a regular sense. When Jan came to Paperson two weeks ago, it might have been the longest conversation I’d ever had with her when the sun was out. From that perspective, it’s not all that surprising that I didn’t recognize her immediately.

We sat down. Jan ordered a glass of wine and I ordered a Coke.

“You still don’t drink?”

I nodded. “I’ve never felt old enough and I grew up around a bar.”

“You’re going to have to show me your Dad’s restaurant too later.”

“Sure, but I think it’s a credit union now. It hasn’t been a restaurant in years. The dragon’s now sitting in my mother’s back yard.”

“So, are you ready to order?” she asked.

“Aren’t you going to look at the menu?”

Jan shook her head. When our waiter appeared she quickly told him, “I’ll have the General Mo’s chicken.”

Against my better judgment, I ordered the same.

“So here’s a test. Do you remember the family that brought me here?”

“It was Jeff Feinstein and his father was a Doctor of Public Health who worked with the State of California.”

“Do you just have an incredible memory or what’s going on here Jan?”

“Lucky, I remember your stories. I told you I’d never forget them.”

“Okay.”

As I said it, I was scrambling to remember personal details about Jan Grady. Obviously, she had told me stories about herself too.

“Is it wrong if I don’t want to be the only other person who ever hears them?”

“You could have written or e-mailed me instead of well arranging to buy the entire town of Paperson for the Howard Company. It’s not exactly the usual way to contact someone you knew from college.”

“That’s a long story. Let’s just say that we have a chance to do one another a huge favor here, because of a gigantic coincidence. Lucky, I know you don’t want your stories to languish. Luke Howard is the most famous director in the world.”

“But no one said anything about a movie.”

“This is bigger than that, Lucky. Movies are just entertainment. This is something beyond that. It’s a new way to educate.”

“Why do I think you’re doing a pitch here? Aren’t we really just talking about some version of an amusement park ride?”

“Virtual reality is a lot more than that. Yes, they use it to create faux roller coasters in some amusement parks, but Luke wants to explore possibilities beyond that. He’s talking about recreating experience.”

“And why in the heck would anyone care about my experience?”

Jan looked at me for a moment as if she genuinely didn’t know the answer to that. The waiter brought us a listless looking two order of General Mo’s chicken in the meantime. The dish was exactly as I remembered it the one other time I had been to Sammy Wong’s more than thirty years ago. It was deep fried, but the crust looked slightly soggy. The red of the sauce was too red to come by its color by natural means. Jan was picking at hers skeptically. I dug in immediately.

“Lucky, we lived in Dunster House like almost thirty years ago right? So, who was the guy I was seeing then?”

“You were sleeping with a guy named Jamie.” I stressed the word sleeping as I said it.

You know the other day, I was trying to remember his name or most anything about him other than the fact that he played rugby and fell asleep ridiculously early. I remember you and your stories perfectly. What do you remember about me?

“You’re from Manhattan. You’re Jewish and some guy in Central Park once asked you if you wanted to model.”

“Shit.”

The funny thing was that as I looked at Jan, I was surprised to see that she had quite possibly never been all that conventionally attractive or had tastes changed that much in a generation. The whole confidence thing was what made her, but I could actually see that she might not photograph well at all.

“Why shit?”

“It’s like I made the mistake of telling that story once because I was pissed at Louise Craig for bragging about guy’s always hitting on her. It shut her up, but even now it’s about the only thing anyone remembers about me, isn’t it?”

“No, absolutely not.”

“You probably ought to know the whole story. I didn’t turn him down. I went in for a test shoot and they never followed up….So, now that you know that. What do you remember about me?”

“I remember that there was this really attractive woman in my dorm who actually seemed to like talking to me.”

“But you don’t remember any of my stories.”

I was caught. Maybe I did at one time, but I didn’t now.

“What’s that tell you Lucky?”

“I don’t know.”

“I know you’ve tried to write.”

I nodded.

“So….I’m in a position to let you do that and to help your family sell off an abandoned town that may be worthless.”

“What about Uncle Leon’s development study?”

“What about it?”

“Doesn’t it say that it has tremendous potential as an outlet mall or for housing development?”

“Do you believe it?”

“I have no idea.”

“Have you wondered why it’s been for sale for more than twenty years?”

“You know Jan, I don’t know that I remember my own stories that well.”

“Bullshit.”

I’d finished all of my General Mo’s chicken. Jan had barely touched hers.

“Lucky, do you want to do this or not? I know you’re not all that serious about practicing law.”

“What says I’m not?”

I looked it up. You didn’t even pay your bar dues one year.

“I feel like I’ve been stalked.”

“In a way, yes.”

“I’m not complaining. I’m actually sort of flattered.”

“Lucky, do you remember telling me that you had spent most of your life listening to other people’s stories, that the one thing you were good at was drawing other people out about themselves.”

“Well, everyone except my Grandparents.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“It’s true.”

“Do you wonder at all about the fact that we spent all this time talking and you started telling me all these stories about your own family? You even once joked that you were playing Quentin Compson from Absalom, Absalom.”

“I did?”

“Where did that Lucky go?”

Jan was looking at me straight in the eye, something that has always made me generally uncomfortable. It took me a while to answer.

“I don’t know that that Lucky every existed except late at night in the Dunster corridor. I’ve never really been like that any other time.”

“You don’t miss it?”

I’m not sure why, but I chose to lie.

“I’m not sure I’d even remember it had you not turned up.”

Jan then grabbed the check and paid it with a gold-colored credit card. The waiter looked at us a bit oddly.

“Lucky, this really is my job and I don’t have a lot of time not to do my job. I need to know if you want to do this or I need to move on.”

“Do what?”

Jan exhaled pure exasperation.

“You have my e-mail address.”

I nodded.

“Tell me the story of General Mo’s chicken again in the next three days, then maybe we can talk again.”

She picked up her credit card, got up, and motioned for me not to follow her out. I waited a minute, took a piece of her General Mo’s chicken, then left too. On the way out the darkened corridor that is Sammy Wong's I had the strangest feeling though. It was as if I was being followed by a ghost. I don't mean a metaphorical one either.

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