Chinatown Beat by Henry Chang

flicked up a cigarette and watched him making ready to go. When he finished dressing, he placed the crisp Ben Franklin on the bed next to her, kissed her on the head, and left the musty cool of the little room.

Sanctuary
    Confucius Towers was a forty-five-story crescent-shaped brick complex.
    Uncle Four took the express elevator to apartment H, twenty stories above the heart of Chinatown. He heard the clatter of ivory tiles as he approached his door. No surprise there.
    His wife, Tam tai, former Taiwanese starlet now longtime mahjong wife was holding court at the squared Wong fa lee antique table, surrounded by a much younger gaggle of siew lai lai, ladies of leisure, chatting her up over cocktails and seafood-sieve madumplings that were displayed on matching pearl-studded mahogany folding trays.
    The wispy romance of Hong Kong pop music floated off a compact disk and spread throughout the spacious living room, around the carved Ming armoire, past the set of zitan-wood Imperial chairs, a ballad just loud enough so they never heard Uncle Four enter, closing the door with a pickpocket's touch. He stood behind the lacquered rosewood and inlaid jade screen that set off the foyer and pictured them.
    Wife, almost fifty, her hair dyed blacker than fot choy, moss threads, and teased perfect above curved eyebrows redrawn daily. Pancake on the crow's feet at the corners of eyes blinking out from heavy shadow and liner, leaving the red gash of her mouth at a restless angle. She wore gold on one wrist, jade on the other; an aging actress in her sunset performance on the Chinatown stage.
    Too much perfume, he could smell it from the door, streaming from the four women at the table. They were talking at each other in choppy, patterned phrases.
    Loo je, sister Loo, was married to the treasurer of the Hip Ching, giving her the unofficial rank of daai ga je, elder sister, in their entourage. She wore clothes from The Limited, and spoke in a mannish style.
    "Business has been good," she said. "Should be bigger bonuses this year."
    Mak mui, her cousin, who was engaged to a senior Black Dragon, cooed, "Wonderful, another gold bracelet for me."
    Shirley, which they pronounced, surly, was the oldest. "Sisters," she said, "life is good. Jade and diamonds for everyone. A toast!"
    The women clinked glasses and drank, settled back into their game, slapping the mahjong tiles back and forth across the table.
    Silly women, thought Uncle Four behind the screen. When he married the second time, it had appeared to be a fortunate match. Using Tam tai's connections in the Taiwanese film industry, he'd established a chain of Chinese videotape rental outlets that stretched from the Chinatowns in San Francisco to New York, from Toronto to Florida.
    They had no children.
    He had a teenaged daughter from his first marriage and had wanted nothing more to do with children after that. This had suited Tani tai fine. At the time they married she was already in her late-thirties, and he knew, secretly, that she was barren. He gave her a share of the video business and the skim money from the Ting Lee Beauty Salon, in which he was also a partner. She made the collections personally, every week on Monday.
    Now, a decade after exchanging vows and toasts, they lived separate lives in the same apartment. Separate bedrooms, separate schedules, and separate vices. The only values left to share were money and jewelry, and never enough of either.
    Pung! Mak mui shouted, grabbing the discarded tile. She splayed out her row of thin blocks and grinned.
    "Mun wu," she laughed. A full house.
    The others groaned and collapsed their hands, then threw dollar bills at her.
    The little ivory blocks were crashed and shoved together into a large pile.
    Uncle Four stepped out from behind the screen amid the racket and entered the living room. There was a short silence as the surprised women turned their eyes to him. His wife raised her chin, smiled, said nothing.
    He murmured lo Dior, wife,