CHAPTER 1
“I am not going to wear a qi-pao to Donna Feng’s party, Mother!” I was standing in front of the mirror that hangs on my bedroom closet door while my mother, Betty Lee, held the Asian-style dress against my body, the plastic hanger pushing firmly into my neck.
“Why not?” my mother returned in somewhat of a whine. “You look so cute.”
I think most of us can agree that women in their late twenties do not want to be labeled as “cute.” And you could definitely put me on that list. Who am I? Lana Lee, nice to meet you. I’m your not-so-average Asian American gal, recently turned twenty-eight, with not a clue in the areas of martial arts, math that goes beyond long division, or how to speak any dialect of Chinese. But I can use chopsticks like a son of a gun. So that’s something, right?
If you had to find me in a crowd, it wouldn’t be a problem because 50 percent of my hair is currently pink. I love hamburgers and pizza almost as much as I love noodles, and if you asked me to cook you a proper Chinese meal, we’d both starve that night. That’s why I manage my parents’ Chinese restaurant instead of cooking there. Trust me when I say, no one wants me behind a wok.
In recent weeks, I’d come up with the idea of adding a catering service to the family business as a way to help bring in extra money. Summer months at the noodle shop could be slow, and we were dead smack in the middle of July. With Peter’s artistic help, we put together a flyer advertising the new service and left a healthy stack at the plaza’s community center and included them in all our take-out bags.
Our first catering job was for Donna Feng, the owner of Asia Village—the shopping plaza my family’s restaurant was part of. It was Donna’s birthday, and she wanted to have a fancy dinner party at her house. When she first proposed the idea, I of course jumped at the opportunity, thinking that it would include food for maybe ten to fifteen of her closest friends and family.
That was not the case. It turned out she was thinking more along the lines of a small, intimate gathering of fifty. You know, because all of us have a close-knit group of fifty friends. Regardless, I was up for the challenge, which was nothing Ho-Lee Noodle House couldn’t handle. At least that’s what I had to keep telling myself in order to keep the butterflies from causing a frenzy in my stomach.
I’d had a very specific dress in mind for the party, and it did not resemble this navy-blue qi-pao covered in dragons and clouds that my mother had picked out. The black dress I had chosen, with its high lace collar and cap sleeves, was feminine, sleek, and most of all mature. It didn’t make me feel like a little kid playing dress-up.
My mother is a small Taiwanese woman with an extreme desire to keep me at the age of seven, and this dress was evidence of that. She released the hanger’s hold on my neck and waved the dress in front of me. “But this is so beautiful. If Mommy was younger, I would keep this for myself.”
“Well, Mother, as they say, age is just a number. It looks like it will fit you just fine.” I smiled sweetly at her.
She scowled in return and laid the dress on my bed next to Kikkoman, my black pug, who had been watching our every move with intrigue. Kikko sniffed the satiny material before letting out a groan that might be mistaken for a very human sound of misery.
When my mother turned around to face me, she planted her dainty hands on her hips—as was her customary stance when speaking to me—and jutted her head forward with determination set in her dark-brown eyes. “Everyone else who is working will wear the same dress. This will show high class.”
“So Peter’s going to wear that dress?” I responded with a smirk.
My mother did not find it amusing. “You are not funny, Lana Lee.”
I glanced back at the dress on my bed. “Neither is making me wear that dress.”
“Why?” my mother asked. “Your sister is okay wearing this dress. She did not give Mommy such a hard time.”
“That’s because she’s a kiss—”
“Hello!” a cheerful voice yelled from the living room.
“We’re in here!” I shouted back.
It was my best friend and roommate, Megan Riley. And hopefully she could talk some sense into my mother. Kikko hopped down onto the floor and wiggled her curly tail as she went to greet Megan, who was on her way to join us in my bedroom.
Her blond hair was ironing-board straight, and she was dressed in a black T-shirt and skinny jeans, most likely coming home from a shift at the Zodiac, the bar where she works. Lately she had been working a mixture of random hours due to staffing problems they were having. I couldn’t ever be sure when she’d get home, and when she’d need to run off to start pouring drinks. “Oh hey, Mama Lee,” she said, giving my mother a hug. “It’s nice to see you.”
My mother looked up at her, squinting as she assessed her. “You look skinny.”
“Ma, you always say that.” She squeezed my mom’s arm playfully and turned to me. “What are you guys up to? Want to get some dinner or something?”
“You came just in time,” I told her, grabbing the dress from my bed. “My mother wants me to wear this.” I shook it at her. “Isn’t it ridiculous?”
Megan took the dress from me and looked it over. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Don’t you think it’s a bit cliché?”
“I think it’s cute.”
I threw my hands in the air. “Exactly.”
My mother groaned.
Megan laughed and handed the dress back to me. “Stop being so stubborn, Lana. It’s just one night.”
“I’m not being stubborn,” I replied as I gave the dress in my hands the stink eye.
Okay, in truth, when it comes to the must-knows about Lana Lee … stubborn makes the list.
* * *
The next evening, after lots of internal debate on the merits of wearing the dress I had purchased for myself versus the dress my mother was insisting I wear, I decided not to create unnecessary waves and give in to her request. So I dutifully put on the qi-pao and a pair of black patent-leather stiletto heels to add some edge and went on my way to Donna Feng’s house in Westlake, one of the wealthier suburbs of Cleveland, without another thought about it.
The upper-class widow lived with her two teenage daughters in a house that was large enough to host two full-sized families. Donna had confided in my mother on a few occasions about how difficult things had become after her husband, Thomas, died. She found herself struggling to handle a lot of the affairs that come along with taking care of a house that size. And what with raising two teens, the charity work she did within the Asian community, and her mild involvement with Asia Village, she’d quickly found her hands full. So instead of minimizing her responsibilities, she’d recently hired a maid, a live-in nanny, and a gardener to help with the various tasks around the house.
I pulled onto Donna’s street and parked a few houses down behind my sister’s car. We’d been instructed to park a little way away from the house itself to give the guests the best parking options.
It was approaching sunset, and the humidity of the day had mostly dissipated. A light, refreshing breeze ruffled the leaves on the trees ever so gently.
The dress was a little tight—probably from all the doughnuts I’d been eating recently—and I shimmied myself out of the car, thankful for the respectable slit down the side. As I walked along the sidewalk listening to my heels click-clack, I began to regret my choice of footwear—like I always do.
My sister, Anna May, and Peter Huang, our head chef, were in Donna’s driveway unloading the food trays and dining accessories that we needed for the evening. Peter had borrowed his cousin’s beat-up work van, and it stuck out like a sore thumb in this ritzy neighborhood. I made a mental note that we might need a catering van if we were going to get serious about this side business.
Peter noticed me approaching and gave a casual nod in my direction. His normally ball-cap-covered head was bare, and his shaggy, black hair looked like it had been trimmed and slicked back. Also missing from his typical apparel were the beat-up combat boots he wore in the kitchen at Ho-Lee Noodle House every day without fail. In their place were polished, square-toed dress shoes. He noticed my assessment and spoke before I could say anything. “My mom said I had to, so don’t give me a hard time, okay?”
“I wasn’t planning to say anything,” I lied, biting back a quip about being a mama’s boy. Even though we often teased each other about these kinds of things, I knew that him dressing up was a no-joke zone. “You look sharp.”
“Thanks. I feel weird, though. And they’re so not cool to cook in. I told my mom they were going to get ruined, but she didn’t care.” He shrugged. “So whatever.”
Anna May batted his arm. “Stop saying you look weird. You actually look like a grown-up for once.”
I regarded my sister with a quick assessment. Of course, we looked very similar in our matching qi-paos, but she had gone for classy and I’d gone for sassy. Her hair was impeccably done, a French bun, not a hair out of place. Classic pearl necklace and matching bracelet, French-manicured nails and sensible kitten heels. Whereas my hair was French-braided and swept up to the side in a messy sort of way with strands of pink left down to frame my face, thanks to Megan’s ability to copy hairstyles from magazines. I’d chosen bold silver jewelry, chunky rings, a cuff bracelet, sparkly chandelier earrings, and of course these blasted stilettos.
As I thought about them, my sister’s eyes landed on my feet and she snorted. “Lana, you’re going to die in those shoes within the first hour.”
“I’ll be fine. Let’s hurry and get this stuff inside so Peter can move this van. I’m surprised Donna hasn’t said anything about it yet.”
As the three of us walked inside, I cringed as the toes of my shoes started to pinch. But you know how sometimes you focus on the smallest inconveniences of life, not realizing that things could be so much worse?
Yeah, it was going to be one of those times.
Copyright © 2020 by Vivien Chien.
Excerpt from Killer Kung Pao copyright © 2020 by Vivien Chien.
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