The room tugged at Janice's heart. She resisted the urge to snoop. The kid had problems studying, that was all; it wasn't his fault. He was brave about it, terribly brave, she knew. The other boys teased him because he was big. He was in a hard school and struggling to stay there-and as it turned out he deserved to be there. He was no dummy. The kid surprised them all with his psychological testing. The kid was actually smart. He could do the work if he wanted to. He could be a star.

By eleven David was supposed to be, if not in bed, at least in his room and ready for bed. Still, Janice didn't want to jump to conclusions. Maybe she had misunderstood him. Maybe he had a good excuse. She went back into the kitchen and sat on the stool in the kitchen, played with Alvera's note, and called David on his cell phone. The phone rang three times before the answering function picked up.

"Hey, it's David. I'm not here right now. Leave a message."

This upset Janice even more. How could he not be there right now? He had the thing in his pocket. Janice screamed into the phone. "David! Call me right now. You know the rules. It's a school night! I'm supposed to know where you are." She slammed down the receiver.

Then she realized she hadn't told him where she was, so she called again. "David! I'm at home."

She hung up a second time and marched into her room to undress. It was a hard, masculine room, everything in colors of beige and brown because Bill didn't like anything girly. She wasn't surprised that Bill wasn't home. He worked even longer hours than she did and was often out of town. This upset her, too. Despite the comforting massage, tension crept back into her neck and shoulders. She wished Bill were there to consult about David.

When they were together the couple talked about David and his problems endlessly. Usually he was in the other room because neither of them actually spent any leisure time with him. It was difficult when he was so sullen. So their family outings consisted of dinner together Saturday nights at one of the better restaurants and that was it. Although that was a lot of fun. The three of them recorded and rated every meal in a journal, carefully listing what they'd eaten and drunk and how much they liked or were disappointed by the restaurant.

David remembered every single thing about every restaurant from the time he was three. She could call him up any time of the day and ask him about something they'd done years ago, and he could tell her without having to look it up in the journal. Sometimes she'd be in a meeting and she'd call him with the question just to impress her friends.

They didn't do anything else but eat for entertainment. Bill was focused on his legal cases; he wasn't athletic, wasn't interested in the theater or movies or having a country house. If they planned a vacation, it was always with the caveat that he might have to cancel at the last minute. Even by Janice's standards he was a workaholic. She was angry with him for not being as good a father as she was a mother, but she would have liked his advice tonight.

Finally she poured herself another drink and turned on the news. On the news she heard a story about a missing man in Central Park. This alarmed her further because she knew that David played there with that really nasty girlfriend of his who she wished would fall off a cliff and die. She waited for her son and husband to come home from wherever they went to escape her. She had another drink and fell asleep.

Thirty-one

Go to bed, Mom-everything's fine." Wearily, April closed the front door of the house and climbed the stairs to her two-room apartment. Dim Sum joyously yapped at her feet and her mother followed close behind.

"That big rie, ni. I see you on TV, small news tlee time." Skinny Dragon Mother began to wheeze. For almost ten years, since she'd stopped working, she'd gotten no exercise. Leisure time hadn't been good for her. "What's long with boyflen?" Even though the front door was closed and Skinny didn't have to show off her English for the neighbors, she screamed in English anyway.

"Go to bed, Ma." April's nose told her that her mother had had a big day. She'd walked three blocks to the beauty parlor. The chemicals that curled her two inches of naturally straight gray hair into a fine frizz and dyed it black and shiny as shoe polish smelled like a combination of ammonia and artificial raspberry jam.

She relented.

"You look great, Ma. Did you get your hair done today?"

"No!" Skinny slammed the door as hard as she could. "Don't cly," she ordered. "Get betta boyflen. One two tlee."

"What makes you think something's wrong?"

"Call tlee time."

"I told you. Everything's fine." April threw her purse on the hot pink tufted sofa from Little Italy that she'd bought both as a great luxury and a rebellion from the hard Chinese chairs in the living room. The effort of not thinking about Carla's long tanned legs made her head feel as heavy as a brick.

Skinny Dragon Mother flashed one of her powerful silent messages that only an idiot wouldn't understand. Message 403 was a bit of detective work worthy of any squad in the city: Everything couldn't be fine. Worm daughter slept at home last night and night before. Came home tonight again. Tomorrow day off. If everything so fine, why no boyfriend for three days? Skinny was so excited by the prospect of April's failure at love with a Spanish ghost, she'd stopped the wheezing for the moment. Her renewed health didn't help April's morale one bit.

"One two tlee," she repeated, about getting a new boyfriend.

April didn't miss much, either. Usually the Dragon- real name Sai Yuan Woo-was happy to show off her brightly colored, look-like-silk blouses that didn't match the patterns of her slacks and jackets. This was her attempt at scaling the peaks of high American style. But tonight she'd dressed down; she was wearing her peasant outfit. Black peasant pants, shapeless black cotton jacket, black canvas shoes with the rubber band across the top. She must have changed when Mike called those three times trying to reach her. Whenever the Dragon dressed this way, she wanted to hide her true motives and true self. Her goal was to appear humble and simple to the daughter she wanted to control, and nothing special to the gods who ruled the heavens and earth so they wouldn't confuse her prosperity in Astoria, Queens, USA, with happiness and cause her harm. Whenever Sai became a peasant, ten kinds of bad luck for April were on the way. The outfit was as lethal as a voodoo hex.

The phone rang, the dog started barking, April stood there, certain that pins were sticking in the real her. The ringing phone caused her mother-way overbalanced at the moment with aggressive male yang-to grab her arm and roughly shake her. Skinny was several inches shy of five feet and weighed about three and a half pounds, but she spun April around with no trouble. The phone rang a few more times. April ignored it. "Maybe boss," Skinny screamed. "It's not my boss."

"How know, nil Maybe lose job." Sai punched April's arm. She didn't want worm daughter to lose job until she had a rich Chinese husband. When she wasn't calling April worm daughter, she called her ni, which was just plain old you.

"Okay, okay." The screaming that passed for love in the Woo household propelled April into the bedroom just in case Maslow had been found in the last hour and she'd missed it. But they both knew the caller was the Spanish threat to the Han dynasty.

"Sergeant Woo," she said into the receiver.

"Querida, why are you acting like this? Are you crazy? Carla is nothing to me. She's just a mixed-up girl I helped once. I told her all about you. She has the highest opinion of you. You're overreacting. You know what girls are like. This is nothing." Mike blabbered into the phone.