Red Mandarin Dress Page 9

  “You have observed well, Pan.”

  “Eating girls won’t come to a shabby place like ours, but they bring profit to a restaurant. We will have to change too.”

  “Thank you so much,” Peiqin said, though slightly disappointed with the general introduction. For her purpose, she needed to know something more concrete.

  The tidbits about three-accompanying girls from her other colleagues were also secondhand, vague, unreliable with their embellishments. After all, none of them had any real experience.

  So Peiqin went one step further. Through her connections, she succeeded in obtaining help from Ming River, the particular restaurant where Qiao had served for the last year. The restaurant manager, Four-eyed Zhang, suggested to Peiqin that she should talk to Rong-a “big sister.”

  “Rong, the eldest among the girls, is in her mid-thirties, a big sister with longer experiences, more connections, and more importantly, a list of those regular customers requesting the service. And she’s well-read in her way, too, especially about Chinese culinary history, which makes her popular among old customers,” Zhang said. “Some of them will call ahead for eating girls, and she helps to make arrangements. As for new customers, it’s not always easy to approach them, and her experience can be invaluable. Rong is also said to have befriended Qiao.”

  “That would be the perfect one for me. Thank you so much, Manager Zhang.”

  “But you have to get her to talk. She’s quite a character.”

  So she phoned Rong. Peiqin introduced herself as a would-be writer. Having learned from Zhang about Rong’s knowledge of Chinese cuisine, she invited Rong out to lunch at Autumn Pavilion, a restaurant known for its fresh seafood. Zhang must have known Rong well as she agreed readily.

  Rong stepped into Autumn Pavilion in a white jacket and jeans. A tall, slender woman, with no makeup or jewelry, she was not easily recognizable as an eating girl. Choosing a table in a quiet corner, Peiqin explained what she needed-in addition to an introduction to China’s culinary tradition, she would like to learn something about Qiao, so she might be able to write a short story about it. It was not too difficult for Peiqin to play a would-be writer, filling her speech with popular quotes, but she wondered if Rong really believed her.

  “It’s interesting,” Rong said. “Not too many people want to be writers nowadays. You crawl on the paper for months, and all the money you make can hardly buy a meal.”

  “I know. But I’ve been working in a restaurant for more than ten years. I have to do something different besides caring about three meals a day.”

  “You may be right about that. Now, we are sort of colleagues, so you don’t have to order like those Big Bucks,” Rong said in a crispy voice, picking up the menus. “Slices of lotus roots filled sticky rice, home-grown chicken immersed in Shaoxin yellow wine, live bass strewn with ginger and onion slices. These should be enough.”

  “What about the appetizers?”

  “Let’s have a couple of deep-fried oysters. I’m going to Ming River tonight, you know. We are here to talk.”

  “Great,” Peiqin said, glad that Rong knew better than to be an eating girl in her company. “Now, how long have you known Qiao?”

  “Not too long. From the time she came to work at Ming River. That’s about a year ago, I think.”

  “According to Zhang, you kindly befriended her. So you know a lot about her.”

  “No, I don’t. In our business, people usually don’t ask and don’t answer. She was young and inexperienced, that’s why I gave her a suggestion or two. Now that she’s dead, I don’t think I should tell-even if I knew something.”

  “Whatever you tell me goes only into the background of my story. No real names will be given. I give you my word, Rong.”

  “So it does not have to be about her?”

  “No, not necessarily.” Peiqin understood her reservation, for people could sell the information about Qiao to a tabloid magazine. “Zhang knows me well. Otherwise he would not have given your name to me. It’s just for my fictional story.”

  “Well, here’s a fictional story,” Rong said, draining her cup in one gulp and holding a golden-fried oyster in her fingers, “but with real background information about the profession. I won’t give the girl’s name. For a story, you don’t have to take it too seriously.”

  It was smart of Rong, whose insistance on its being fictional meant she was not responsible for whatever she was going to say.

  “She was born in the early seventies,” Rong started, nibbling at the fried oyster. “The maxim that ‘beauty is not edible’ was a favorite one for her parents. On the wall above her cradle was a poster of Chairman Mao’s ‘iron girl,’ tall and robust, muscles hard like iron. Indeed, when people have a hard time feeding themselves, beauty is like a picture of cake. In her elementary school, she drew a magnificent restaurant as her dream home, which she didn’t step in until she was fifteen.

  “Her beauty blossomed in the mid-eighties. While her parents’ maxim might no longer be universally true, it still applied to her. In an age of connections, it took much more than looks to become a model or a star. She had no connections. For a girl from an ordinary worker family, a state-run factory job was considered an ideal ‘iron bowl.’ So upon high school graduation, she started working in a textile mill, a job made available through her mother’s early retirement.

  “There, her beauty meant nothing. She worked three shifts, dragged her tired feet around the shuttles, back and forth, like a fly circling the same spot. Back home, she kicked off her shoes and clasped her callused soles. Outside the window, the willow shoots barren in the autumn wind, she knew one thing for a fact: a textile worker grows old quickly. Soon, the spring splendor fades / from the flower. There’s no stopping / the chill rain, or the shrill wind.

  “But that was also the period when things started changing. Deng Xiaoping was launching China ’s reform. She started to have dreams unimaginable to her parents. Looking through fashion magazines, she couldn’t help feeling left out. In the descriptions of the neighborhood matchmakers, she made the clothes beautiful, rather than the other way round.

  “So she came to a decision. She would make the most of her youth. An elaborate plan evolved out of Shanghai dating conventions. Young people would customarily dine out on their first one or two dates. The expense varied in proportion to his wallet or to her glamour. As in a proverb, a beauty’s smile is worth a thousand pieces of gold, especially at the early stages of a possible romantic relationship. The man would be generous with his money like a Sichuan chef with his black pepper. Once the relationship grew more stable, a Shanghai girl would urge her lover to save for their joint future. Occasionally, they might still go out to a good yet inexpensive place, like Nanxiang Soup Bun in the Old City God’s Temple Market, where they would spend two hours contentedly standing in a long line, waiting for their turn to savor the celebrated buns. It was only for a short period, she concluded, that a working-class girl like her might enjoy herself.

  “Her mother was worried about her showing no sign of settling down. ‘I’m not ready yet,’ she said to her mother, ‘for a life with my family squeezing in a room of nine square meters, the baby crying, the wok smoking, the diaper dripping, and the walls peeling like irrecoverable dreams. No, I’m not looking forward to it. I will marry, eventually, like anybody else, but let me first enjoy life a bit.’

  “And she enjoyed herself by trying those dates out in restaurants, insisting on expensive food and wine in the company of each man. The bill cut like a sharp knife, but if he winced, it was his problem. She kept her relationship with each man short and sweet. Well, short, though not that sweet when he could no longer afford her company. She had oyster sauce beef in Xingya Restaurant, roast Beijing duck in Yanyun Pavilion, baked crab meat with cheese in Red House, sugar silk apple in Kaifu Hotel, sea cucumber with shrimp ovary in Shanghai Old House, and so on and on.

  “Her fifth date, allegedly with a wealthy uncle in Hong Kong, proved capab
le of taking her to one restaurant after another. At the end of two months, however, he, too, failed to show up in front of the Cathay Hotel. She was a little disappointed, but the next week, she met her sixth date in Spicy and Hot Pot, enjoying slices of lamb, beef, eel, shrimp, and all other delicacies imaginable, in a boiling pot of chicken broth between them. ‘The spring bamboo shoot looks so shapely,’ she said, picking one with her chopsticks. ‘So do your fingers,’ he said fatuously, holding her other hand. She did not withdraw it. After all, he spent so much for the meals. The following month, she met her seventh date in Yangzhou Pavilion, billing and cooing over a turtle steamed with ice sugar and ham, a celebrated special known for its supposed boost to sexual energy. She smiled, putting a piece of turtle meat onto his plate, and another into her mouth.

  “Before long, she had a problem in the circle she had been moving. Those men introduced to her by her neighbors or colleagues were of similar social levels. None of them could really meet her expectations. One of them sold blood, it was said, before making the last appointment with her at Red Earth Restaurant.

  “‘It’s not my fault,’ she defended herself. ‘They don’t have to hang on like that. Why are those restaurants so expensive? The quality. Why me? My beauty. I eat out not just for the taste in the mouth. In a factory, in front of a machine, I am like a screw, fixed there, lusterless, lifeless. In a high-end restaurant, I am a human being, a real woman being served and pampered.’

  “With high-end hotels and restaurants appearing like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, and with young beautiful girls hanging around them like wild weeds-three-accompanying girls-she soon made another decision. She was attractive, and knowledgeable about food too, and as an eating girl, her company at the dinner table was desirable. Also, she might be able to meet, at one of those Big Buck dinners, her future ‘gold-turtle’ husband instead of waiting for matchmakers to introduce to her another man incapable of paying the bill for her.

  “It turned out to be quite a profitable profession. Choosing ten-year-old Huadiao wine, or the chef’s secret specials, such as dragon fighting tiger-with cat and snake meat in a pot, you know-or abalone with shark fin, she would get a sizable bonus. If the customer wanted some additional service, it was discussable. Soon she began to ‘turn adrift with the waves and currents.’

  “One night, after a light meal with a Japanese customer, she followed him out to a five-star hotel, where she enjoyed for the first time the room service of sushi and saki. To oblige him, she changed into a Japanese kimono, kneeling on a soft cushion until she was rigid like cracked plastic lotus flower. After three cups of saki, however, she began feeling as if burgeoning out like a real night flower, fragrant with the knowledge that the meal cost thousands of Yuan. Later on, he had her take a shower, lie on the rug, and spread wasabi on her bare toes. He took them one by one into his mouth, sucked it like a baby, and declared it more delicious than the salmon sushi. He then moved to spread the green mustard on the other parts of her body while she giggled and gasped under his ticklish touch. He swore by his mother’s name that the ‘female body banquet’ was based on a time-honored Japanese gourmet tradition. Drunk, she missed the details of the ‘sensual feast.’ The next morning, when he offered her money, she declined. Her grandfather had been killed in the anti-Japanese war, she suddenly recalled. Instead, she took hotel restaurant vouchers equal to the amount.

  “Walking out of the five-star hotel, she still felt like she was treading on the clouds and rain of the last night, when she was pushed into a police car. At the time, it was illegal to sleep with a foreigner. She was released after three days because she had no previous record, nor was any Japanese Yuan found on her. Still, it was a huge humiliation and a ‘political mistake.’ She tried to hold her head high, though, showing the room service menu and vouchers to her colleagues.

  “That happened at a time when the city textile industry was already in trouble. Shanghai, once an industrial center, was turning into a financial center. While the new skyscrapers outlined the skies, the old factories were shut down. The factory director seized the opportunity to fire her with one comment, ‘She ate herself out.’

  “So she turned into a full-time eating girl.”

  After a short spell of silence, Rong took a deliberate sip at the wine, which was glittering in the cut glass like a lost dream. She recited a few lines from a poem.

  “The memories of the rouge-colored tears, / of the night amid cup… / When will all that happen again? / Life is long in sadness / like water flowing and flowing east.”

  The lines sounded familiar. Apparently, Rong came to the end of her narrative. Peiqin was disappointed. It was more about the metamorphosis of a girl into an eating girl. She also wondered whether it was somewhat autobiographical, studying the expression on the narrator’s face.

  The waiter brought over a large fish platter in hurried steps. It was perhaps the last course.

  “Look at the fish,” Rong said, raising her chopsticks. “Its eyes are still rolling.”

  The bass, covered in brown sauce, appeared nicely cooked with its tail fried golden. The waiter helped with a long spoon, coming up with a white filet. The meat was tenderly done, but the fish’s eyes seemed to be still blinking.

  “There is a special recipe for the fish. You stuff ice cubes in the mouth of the live fish, fry it in a large wok keeping its eyes out of the sizzling oil, take it out in less than a minute, and pour special sauce all over it on a platter. Every step has to be precise and quick. Then serve it hot. That’s why the waiter was trotting out of the kitchen.”

  So Rong proved her expertise in culinary knowledge, and Peiqin had a recipe that might also go into a story, but that was not what she really wanted to learn.

  “Thank you so much, Rong. It is a good story,” Peiqin said, trying to redirect their talk. “But I am still shocked about Qiao. How could a girl like her have come to such a tragic end?”

  “You never know what a customer can turn out to be,” Rong said, looking Peiqin in the eye. “We are not talking about Qiao, are we?”

  “No. I am just using her as an example.”

  “What happened to Qiao is beyond me. Something like that has never happened.”

  “Could she have made enemies because of her service?”

  “No, not that I know of. In fact, of the three-accompanying girls, an eating girl is the least likely to get into trouble,” Rong said. “Not like in a karaoke club, where the fee for a private room can be a huge ripoff. A lot of things are not listed, and you don’t know the expense until they hand you the bill. Here, all the prices are printed on the menu. You lose no face if you say you don’t like a particular dish. I have suggested a house special called live monkey brain, for instance, to god knows how many customers, but none of them ordered it. No hard feelings against them. It’s too cruel, with a chef sawing off the monkey’s shaven scalp, and ladling out the brains in front of the dinners, and the monkey squealing and struggling in pain all the time-”

  “Now back to Qiao,” Peiqin cut in. “Were you with her the night she disappeared?”

  “No. She should have come that night, but she didn’t.”

  “Could she have gone to another restaurant instead?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Competition is fierce everywhere. Among the girls too. Most of them make a point of going to one particular restaurant, and in a more or less organized way. To be frank, that’s how I have helped occasionally. Things can be complicated. A girl has to deal with the restaurant owner and waiters for the profit-sharing; with the local business management bureau for a business license; with the gangsters for so-called protection; and with the cops too, who may make things difficult for her. So if she turned up in a new place all by herself, she could be driven out by the waiters or gangsters, if not by other girls. It’s their territory. She could get into other trouble too.”

  “So you don’t think she fell prey to the murderer during the service.”

  “No, not in our
restaurant.”

  “Another question, Rong. Did she have a boyfriend?”

  “No, she did not. It’s not easy for a girl here to keep a steady relationship. What would he think-as a man? She has to lie to him about her profession, and the game never lasts long. Once he finds out, everything is finished-because of his wounded male ego.”

  “Did she talk to you about her future plans?”

  “She said she was saving for a flower shop, she had no plans to be an eating girl forever.” Rong added, “Before she had her flower business, she said she wouldn’t think about other things.”

  “So what do you think of the case?”

  “A murderer might have met her in the restaurant, got her phone number, and asked her out days later. On the other hand, she might also have met her fate in a way unrelated to her service.”

  “That’s true.”

  “You are not a cop, are you, Peiqin?”

  “No, I am not,” Peiqin said. “I have worked at the Four Seas since my return from Yunnan. Our state-run restaurant has suffered losses and our chef suggests that we should run it like a high-end restaurant with fashionable services. You may be able to give us advice.”

  That was a true statement. Rong might help too. Not necessarily in the aspect of three-accompanying girls-an aspect Peiqin didn’t want to envision yet.

  “Now that we are talking about it, Peiqin,” Rong said, “there might have been one thing-about Qiao, I mean. Three or four days before that fatal night, a customer came to Ming River, alone. He didn’t look like one who would require a girl, so I didn’t pay any attention to him. He contacted a waiter, requesting a girl’s company. Qiao went over to him. Nothing happened that evening.”