Jack was keeping all these, his memorabilia. There was the porcelain Kwan Gung, an idol before which Jack could burn incense, bow, offer greetings, feel sorrow, hope. He'd miss Pa. Miss all the old ways he'd finally come to understand and respect.

Deeper in the box, a Social Security card, and Ma's Death Certificate, twenty years old. He tested the flashlight. It still worked.

He took the Hennessy carton and carried it out of the apartment. He carried it down the five flights of stairs, thinking how light it was, this box holding fifty years of living.

He stepped out into the bright sun and squinted down Mott Street. He paused for a long moment, let his eyes sweep over the streets, the neighborhood he'd grown up in, and was now leaving, yet again. Having been born into it, he'd been too close, and hadn't been able to see it clearly. Now, at long last, he did. Chinatown symbolized a bygone era, when the old Chinese bachelors were hemmed in by racist hate, denied their families, forced into doing women's work, to clean, to cook. The hate was still around, but the Chinese, no longer hemmed in, were free now to find their place in America.

Jack saw it clearly now: why Pa came-for opportunity, for himself, but more important, for his descendants, why he'd stayed until the day he died. And why all the tattered shreds of China that remained had been so dear to him. He'd lost so much of it that he couldn't bear to see it disappear from the single most important part of himself he had left, his only son. Jack had mistaken it for narrow-mindedness, but realized now it had been love.

Chinatown was a paradox, a Chinese puzzle he'd never been able to figure out.

Perhaps it's true, he thought, that one can never go back home, but then it was also true that a part of oneself always remains there, memories always with us in our hearts and minds.

The wind came up, blowing through his reverie.

So long, Pa, he was thinking, as he shifted the box up to his shoulder. He took a last look and made his way down the narrow winding street.

Lucky

It was early afternoon and the gambling basement was empty. Lucky went to the cheap card table by the rear wall and searched through the pile of newspapers stacked there. He was looking for news about Uncle Four's murder case, but found nothing except two tea-stained newspapers that were already weeks old. Lucky read the accounts in the Post and the Daily News and laughed. How The Chinese Cop Broke The Big Uncle Murder. And Love Triangle In Chinatown Murder. Jack, the hero cop.

Lucky toasted up some chiba and found an article in the New China Times: Officials of the On Yee Merchants Association decried the recent violence in the community and proposed that civic leaders, tong leaders, and social workers cooperate with Fifth Precinct officers in a new Community Liaison arrangement designed to alleviate tensions between the various groups. Lucky sucked in smoke, cracking a smile.

He had placed the blame for Gee Man's death on a renegade crew that had since been washed. In a generous gesture, he had called for a new peace between the Ghosts, the Dragons, and the Fuk Ching. Now he was the peacemaker. The new dealmaker on the block. The Merchants Association had nominated him to work with the police. The streets were profitable again. He went partners on a new gambling basement on Bayard Street.

He was looking forward to Christmas, when the next rush of gamblers would line his pockets. And when he hooked Jack and the other undercover dogs, he'd finally be truly untouchable.

Friends

Jack bought two packs of Red Rockets from the Lee Bao grocery, where fireworks were quietly available to the locals for ceremonial purposes. Now, thirty days after Pa's burial, Jack would be returning to the cemetery to set off the fireworks and to plant Flame Azalea bushes by his tombstone, Rhododendron calendulaceum, that would bloom full with red flowers in the spring.

The Lee Bao was on a small side street where Alexandra's grandparents had lived, and Jack thought about her as he made his way to the corner flower shop. He'd figured Alexandra wrong. Beneath her tough, pushy lawyer exterior, there was a woman who cared deeply for her people. He had called Alexandra about the handkerchief, and since her grandfather was buried at Evergreen, they had agreed to drive out there together that Sunday.

She brought the tins of roast pork and chicken, bolt tong go, and packed them into the backseat of the Fury, next to the azaleas.

They visited her grandfather's plot first, where he lay under a foot-long grave marker in the old bachelors' section of the cemetery. They completed the ritual silently and then headed toward his father's grave.

The leaves were falling from the trees, dappling the landscape with swatches of amber, brown, and yellow. The sky was a crisp cool blue, stark sunlight shining, illuminating the autumn day.

They came to Pa's headstone. The ground was cold and hard, and Jack had to force the folding shovel into the ground before he was able to turn enough dirt to plant the bushes.

They ran through the prescribed motions dutifully: Incense. Bowing. She braved the firecrackers.

They finished up with the bok tong go and the cha sieve and bundled the incense and papers back into the car.

They had dinner by the bar at Tsunami, sake and beer, with sushi that floated by on a chain of wooden boats, new-tech Japanese style. When the distraction passed, Jack said soberly, "It's official. I'm transferring out. Two weeks vacation, then I report to the Ninth Precinct, in the Alphabets."

"Won't you miss the old neighborhood?" she asked.

"I'm not going far," he answered. "I'll still come by to eat and shop, but at least I won't spend every day in Chinatown."

"Feel bad?"

"I wish things could have worked out better. With what I knew, who I knew, I thought I could make a difference. But everything I do gets compromised. Makes me feel like I'm losing something."

She touched his hand. "This is your home."

"Was my home. I live in Brooklyn now."

Alex clinked her glass against his in a toast. "To home, wherever that may be."

"And where's home for you?" he asked.

"I've got folks in Hawaii. Oahu, where I grew up. You know, Waikiki Beach?"

"Sure." Jack grinned. "Paradise."

"I miss my family, sometimes, and the friends I left behind. The things we used to do when we were younger."

"Childhood in paradise," Jack toasted. They drained their sake cups.

"At all the family reunions there'd be a luau, with poi and roast pig, mahi mahi, and maanapua. There was sweet fruit and sunshine and we kids would just run wild."

Listening to her speak, Jack realized where he'd take his vacation time, before the transfer became reality, before the change of seasons.

Oahu, he thought, downtime in paradise. Recharge himself.

"This time of year," Alex was talking as if in a dream, "we'd visit the other islands, sell pineapples and macadamia sweets on board the cruse ships."

Jack could almost see it happening…

The local children clad in brightly colored leis and pareos performed the hula halau, dancing down the wooden Promenade Deck to the call of the Hukilau song.

Mona leaned back in a deck chair, relaxed in tan linen pants and canvas espadrilles. She loosened the silk scarf draped over her white T-shirt. The azure blue of the sheltering sky stretched as far as she could see. The ocean below was darker, sparkling and clear only when it rolled in over the reefs toward the whitesand shores. The caressing warmth of the sun had already put color back in her skin, and the rhythm of the ocean breaking against the bow soothed her, made her feel ping on, in harmony with the world. When she touched it, the jade sang, Wind over water. Flowing. Auspicious omen to cross the great stream. Selfpreservation. Water purges, revitalizes, but may bring chaos, danger. Weather the danger. Flow…