Ha Jin - A Good Fall

I did not respond. I disliked this Fujianese woman and felt she was too smooth. She went on, “Do you have a driver’s license?”

“I have one from North Carolina, but I’m not sure if I can drive here.” I had spent some time delivering produce for a vegetable farm outside Charlotte.

“That shouldn’t be a problem. You can change it to a New York license — easy to do. The motor registration office is very close.” She smiled, revealing her gappy teeth.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“I won’t charge you extra rent. You can have this room to yourself, but I hope you can drive the girls around in the evenings when they have outcalls.”

I tried to stay calm and answered, “Is that legal?”

She chuckled. “Don’t be scared. The girls go to hotels and private homes. No cops will burst in on them — it’s very safe.”

“How many times a week am I supposed to drive?”

“Not very often — four or five times, tops.”

“Do you pay for the girls’ meals too?”

“Yes, everything but long-distance phone calls.”

At last I understood why my female housemates always ate together. “All right. I can drive them around in the evenings, but only in Queens and Brooklyn. Manhattan’s too scary.”

She gave a short laugh. “No problem. I don’t let them go that far.”

“By the way, can I eat with them when I work?”

“Sure thing. I’ll tell them.”

“Thank you.” I paused. “You know, sometimes it can be lonely here.”

A sly smile crossed her face. “You can spend time with the girls — they may give you a discount.”

I didn’t know how to respond. Before leaving, she made it clear that I must keep everything confidential and that she had asked me to help mainly because she wanted the women to feel safe when they went out. Johns would treat a prostitute better if they knew she had a chauffeur at her disposal. I had seen the black Audi in the garage. I hadn’t driven for months and really missed the feeling of freedom that an automobile used to give me, as though I could soar in the air if there weren’t cars in front of me on the highway. I looked forward to driving the women around.

After my landlady left, I stood before the window of my room, which faced the street. The crown of the weeping cherry, motionless and more than forty feet high, was a feathery mass against a sky strewn with stars. In the distance, a plane, a cluster of lights, was sailing noiselessly east through a few rags of clouds. I knew Mrs. Chen’s offer might implicate me in something illicit, but I wasn’t worried. I was accustomed to living among the prostitutes. When I first figured out what they did for a living, I had wanted to move out right away, like my former roommate, but I couldn’t find a place close to my job — I was a presser at a garment factory downtown. Also, once I got to know the women a little better, I realized that they were not “bloodsuckers,” as people assumed. Like everyone else, they had to work to survive.

I too was selling myself. Every weekday I stood at the table ironing the joining lines of cut pieces, the waists of pants, the collars and cuffs of shirts. It was sultry in the basement, where the air conditioner was at least ten years old, inefficient, and whined loudly. We were making quality clothes for stores in Manhattan, and every item had to be neatly ironed before being wrapped up for shipment.

Who would have thought I’d land in a sweatshop? My parents’ last letter urged me again to go to college. But I couldn’t pass the TOEFL. My younger brother had just been admitted to a veterinary school, and I’d sent back three thousand dollars for his tuition. If only I had learned a trade before coming to the United States, like plumbing, or home renovation, or Qigong. Any job would have been better than ironing clothes.

The brothel had no name. I had once come across a newspaper ad in our kitchen that read: “Angels of Your Dream — Asian Girls from Various Countries with Gorgeous Figures and Tender Hearts.” It gave no contact information other than a phone number, which was the one shared by the women. I almost laughed out loud at the ad, because the three of them were all Chinese. Of course, Huong could pass for Vietnamese, speaking the language as her native tongue, and Nana could pretend to be a Malaysian or Singaporean, since she came from Hong Kong and spoke accented Mandarin. But Lili, a tall college student from Shanghai, looked Chinese through and through, even though she spoke English well. She was the one who handled the phone calls. I guessed Lili would return to school when the summer was over, and then Mrs. Chen might hire another twentysomething who was fluent in English. I wasn’t sure if my landlady was the real boss, however. The women often mentioned someone called the Croc. I had never met the man, but I learned from them that he owned some shady businesses in the area and was a coyote.

I liked having dinner with my housemates. We usually ate quite late, around eight p.m., but that was fine with me, since most days I didn’t leave the factory until seven. Often I was not the only man dining with them; they offered free dinner to their clients as well. The meals were homely fare — plain rice and two or three dishes, one of which was meat while the others were vegetables. Occasionally the women would prepare a bowl of seafood in place of a vegetable dish. There would also be a soup, usually made of spinach or watercress or bamboo shoots mixed with dried shrimp, tofu or egg drops, or even rice crust. The women would take turns cooking, one person each day, unless that person was occupied with a john and another had to step in for her in the kitchen. Some of their clients enjoyed the atmosphere at the table and stayed for hours chatting.

Whenever there was another man at dinner, I would remain quiet. I’d finish eating quickly and return to my room, where I would watch TV or play solitaire or leaf through a magazine. But when I was the only man I’d stay as long as I could. The women seemed to like having me around and would even tease me. Huong was not only the prettiest but also the best cook, depending less on sauces, whereas Lili used too much sugar and Nana deep-fried almost everything. One day Huong braised a large pomfret and stir-fried slivers of potato and celery, both favorites of mine, though I hadn’t told her so. None of them had a client that evening, so dinner started at seven thirty and we ate slowly.

Nana told us, “I had a guy this afternoon who said his girlfriend had just jilted him. He cried in my room — it was awful. I didn’t know how to comfort him. I just said, ‘You have to let it go.’”

“Did he pay you?” Lili asked.

“Uh-huh. He gave me eighty dollars without doing anything with me.”

“Well, I wonder why he came here,” I said.

“Maybe just to have someone to talk to,” Huong said.

“I don’t know,” Lili pitched in. “Maybe to find out if he could still do it with another girl. Men are weak creatures and cannot survive without having a woman around.”

I had never liked Lili, who would speak to me with her eyes half closed as if reluctant to pay me more mind. I said, “There’re a lot of bachelors out there. Most of them are getting on all right.”

“Like yourself,” Nana broke in, giggling.

“I’m single because I’m too poor to get married,” I confessed.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Huong asked.

“Not yet.”

“So would you go with me if I wasn’t a sex worker?” Nana asked, her oval face expressionless.

“Your taste is too expensive for me,” I said, laughing, though it was only partly a joke.

They all laughed. Nana continued, “Come on, I’ll give you a big discount.”

“I can’t take advantage of you like that,” I said.