Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9
Bingo
Like death and taxes, Bingo’s nasty temper was accepted as a universal truth.
Bingo and her father shared few commonalities, though if one squinted hard enough, one could see that they might have a similar face structure and the same low-bridge nose. Maybe. Barely. But among the commonalities that they did share were recognized by the Tr?n siblings as the “bad” genes. Duc’s “bad” genes happily skipped over Jude, tentatively crawled past Jane, but grew like a weed in Bingo’s heart. Both Duc and his third off-spring were fueled by rage, spite, and the refusal to be wrong about anything. This behavior instilled a sense of fear among the other siblings, who viewed Bingo as a grenade. Except now the pin had been pulled during Duc’s inheritance game, and Bingo had turned into a ticking bomb.
Did you know that Philadelphia has always been my favorite city? I remember thinking I could live here forever. Once you bypass the fear of the unknown, con, this place will become your favorite city, too.
Duc’s letter was a complete mystery to Bingo. She was convinced that the letter wasn’t anything more than an old man’s delusions written down in the form of fortune cookie one-liners. His letter did convince Bingo that he must be dying of something, because she was absolutely positive her father had never spent more than a few days in Philadelphia.
When Bingo landed at Philadelphia International Airport early in the morning, the day after the family reunion, she didn’t head directly to the hotel. Instead, she gave the cab driver the address to Duc’s Sandwiches in South Philadelphia. She wanted to see the state of the shop and understand what she was working with. Though she had brushed off her father’s inheritance game as nothing more than the usual Vietnamese patriarchal clownery, Bingo had yet to tell her siblings that she was desperate to win the money. To her, it wasn’t just a game. The windfall would be life-changing.
“Heading to South Philly, eh?” the cabbie asked, a slight chuckle in his voice, as if he could immediately tell she was a tourist. The elderly South Asian cab driver, whose thick gray hair matched his thick Philly accent, raised his brows up and down at her in the rearview mirror, wanting extra confirmation that she really wanted to be dropped off there. The sound of Q102, the Top 40 radio station, served as background noise, the pop music distracting Bingo, who absolutely hated dancing.
“Just so you know, that part of town is overrun with new development,” he continued as he took a sharp left to head onto the I-95 ramp. “Go to Chinatown if you want good Vietnamese food.”
If there was one thing Bingo hated more in this world, it was unsolicited advice. Her jet lag kicked in, along with a dangerous level of annoyance. She wanted to tell him to keep his eyes on the road and out of her business, but she hadn’t reached her usual blind rage. Yet.
“Gentrification is an incurable disease. What can we do about it?” she asked, her tone listless, as she stared out the window at the passing scenery. Philadelphia seemed to her like any other American East Coast metropolis. Steely, cold, lonely, industrial. She could feel her father’s mind games breathing down the back of her neck. It was unclear why Duc had sent her off to Philly, or why he was convinced she would love it, but maybe he saw more commonalities between them than she thought. Maybe he also saw her as steely, cold, lonely, and industrious.
The cab driver shrugged. “Don’t you want to preserve good food and good people?”
She fell silent for the rest of the ride from the airport to South Philadelphia. As she passed by skyscrapers juxtaposed next to old colonial brick homes, her thoughts became more and more discombobulated as she observed the changing landscape. Doubt began to seep in, finding cracks inside her to hide in and grow mold. The inheritance. The money. The competition among her own sisters. Her father’s approval. Jude looking for someone to marry within the next year. Her mother… wherever she was.
There wasn’t much for her back in Portland, aside from mounting debt and a shared house with four other despondent millennial roommates whom she found from an online ad. They were all forced to live together because the world wasn’t economically friendly to unambitious single people. Yet, there was no difference to her between four strangers or her four siblings. Despite the camaraderie she had felt with her sisters over crawfish and beer, she knew it wouldn’t last past sunrise. Bingo needed the money more than any of them because she needed an out. The last few years of her life felt like they had been encased in resin, and she had no mobility or control anymore. She wasn’t like her other siblings—she had always been the lost one.
As sad as it was to admit, even if she won the inheritance, she wouldn’t know what to do with it, which only scared her more.
“We’re here,” the driver said, pulling her out of her thoughts as the cab lurched to a sudden stop. A broken neon Duc’s Sandwiches sign loomed over her, taunting her, reminding her of how far she had to go to get the money. It was all a dog and pony show, and Bingo was more than ready to perform.
Except it wouldn’t be as easy as she thought. Her jaw dropped as she took in the dilapidated store. The photos online didn’t do it justice, or showcase how abandoned it really was. The sign was broken in half, so only the Duc flashed in staccato. Bingo braced herself and scanned the rest of the store. The edges of the front door were rimmed in hard rust, and the signature green color of the store brand had peeled off in splotches, giving the logo an accidental ombre effect. Graffiti coated the entire storefront, and a broken window on the far right somehow had glass on the sidewalk and not on the inside, as if someone from inside the shop was trying to break out. Bingo took out a key and unlocked the front door, revealing what looked like an empty sandwich shop masquerading as a money laundering scheme. But it wasn’t just the store that was dark and empty; not a soul was walking around the street in the early-morning hours. Where the hell was everyone in Philadelphia?
Bingo could feel the money slipping away from her, like a tsunami reversing away from shore, as if the shore was poisonous. She couldn’t help but wonder if her father’s schemes had something more sinister behind them, a dying man’s last act of cruelty. Bingo had always suspected he liked her the least. Coming out as gay probably didn’t help, even though he kept repeating over and over okay, sounds good on the day she told him she was into girls. She was not only convinced the old man was dying but also that he had given her the worst storefront because he didn’t want her to win.
Or maybe it was a fucked-up concoction of both reasons.
“I thought you said this part of town was full of new development,” Bingo said, aghast.
“Well, I didn’t know you were talking about this old shitter!” the cabbie called out, the car still running. “I can take you to another spot if you want food. You must be hungry after all the travel.”
His tenderness almost touched her. But she was too hardened to crack and too selfish to see beyond the horizon. Bingo had never covered five spaces in a row in her life. She’d just been on one losing streak after another. She felt desperation overpower her rage for the first time in a long time and felt incredibly alone. She didn’t know what her father was talking about; Philadelphia felt so lonely. How on earth could she ever call this shit city home?
“Where do you suggest then?” she asked feebly, her usual comebacks lodged in her throat. She had to rethink her strategy. It wasn’t just the store she had to revive now; it was the entire damn block, the entire neighborhood. If she wanted to win, she had to fish for answers, clues, any scrap of information to help her win over the hearts of Philadelphians. “I know you’re not Vietnamese, but you’re an Asian immigrant cabbie, which means you’re more Philly than anyone else. Where do people go for bánh mì here?”
“What the hell is a bang-meh?” he asked. His left arm rested along the rolled-down window. This time, though, Bingo could feel him really studying her. She could tell she was the most unusual ride he’d had in a long time. Confusion crossed his face as he tried to understand why this strange woman, who just hopped off a flight an hour ago, was chasing Vietnamese food so dramatically in Philly.
“Bánh mì,” she said, correcting him. “It’s like a Vietnamese sandwich. French baguette? All sorts of mystery meat between it? Paté spread? Julienned vegetables? Usually not more than five dollars when it really should cost at least fifteen dollars? Sir, we are parked right in front of a bánh mì shop right now! You never been inside Duc’s Sandwiches?”
“Oh! A bang-meh! Of course I know what that is,” he said, still mispronouncing it as he slapped his wheel in a moment of flashing clarity. “You mean a Vietnamese hoagie. Love those damn sandwiches.”
“But have you been inside this shop?” she asked, thumbing the shop behind her.
“Nah, that spot has been empty for years,” he said. “I used to go back in the day when it first came out here. But there’s better stuff now.”
“Take me to your favorite spot for Viet hoagies, then.”
He nodded in acknowledgment. Once Bingo was back inside, her luggage taking up most of the seat space, he swerved the cab in a figure-eight motion quickly, knocking Bingo back into her seat. A car honked at them, and a few curse words flew through the air. “I know the perfect spot. It’s on the outskirts of town,” he said. “Everyone loves this spot. Uppity Ivy kids, broke college kids, old folks, working-class people. I’ve taken more than a few drunk and sober souls there—either at the crack of dawn, late at night, or for a lunchtime meeting.”
Dread. That feeling that Bingo was feeling was dread. She could almost feel time pressed against her neck like a knife, reminding her that not only was she up against the clock, but she was up against her three brilliant sisters and her overly confident brother. She had to turn her shop around first. She needed the money more than any of them.
Without putting on his blinker, he merged the car into the next lane and headed for the exit. “Say, how long are you in town for?” he asked. He jerked his head toward her pile of bags. “Seems like you’re in it for the long haul.”
“Just for a year,” Bingo said firmly. “Hopefully less.”
“You got stuff waiting for you back home? People and such? Maybe even little people? And little creatures?”
Without hesitation, Bingo nodded robotically and flashed a smile. She knew what the strange man wanted to hear. He wanted to hear that everything was fine in her life. That he wouldn’t have to worry about another lonesome, childless, loveless woman passing through on a solo trip. “Yeah, I have a partner, kids, dog, white-picket fence. The whole American Dream. All back in Portland. So I can’t stay too long, you know?” She could see the cabbie’s shoulders relax, the tension he had held waiting for her answer dissipating into the ether. She would be nothing more than a blip in his life. Just like how she was in most people’s lives.
“That’s good. You’re my last ride of the day. After I drop you off, I’m gonna go see my grandkids,” he said, a smile etched on his face for the first time since Bingo got into his car. “We all need to feel needed. Otherwise, what’s the point of living?”
Bingo didn’t say anything. Exhaustion had finally snuck up on her. She leaned back and watched the unfamiliar city pass her by again, her makeshift home for the year. She let her little white lie envelop them, and she basked in the possibilities of who she could have been in another lifetime, where she really did have people waiting for her. What type of dog would she have? What would she have picked for a career? Would her family have been happier had her father never gotten as wealthy as he did? Would her mother have stayed?
But none of that mattered. She was in this universe. She didn’t just want the inheritance money so it could fix her insolvency, but more so that it could make that white lie a reality one day. She’d be able to pay people to love her. Just like how her father got his second wife, Connie, to marry him for money. Maybe that money could find her some company and some friends, at least for a little bit.
She closed her eyes as the cabbie turned the radio volume higher, grateful for the ornate Desi music to be a buffer between them—between reality and her white lie.
“Hey lady, wake up, we’re here.”
Bingo woke up, groggy, wiping the dribble of drool from her mouth. As her eyes began to adjust themselves, disappointment ballooned as she saw what was outside the window: a ginormous line snaking and weaving down the block in South Philadelphia. Three months had passed since she had moved to Philadelphia, and this would be her tenth attempt at trying this sandwich spot. Without fail each time, it had been sold out by the time she reached the front of the line. She watched in awe as human after human, stacked one after the other, like upright dominos, formed an amorphous pattern that could only be discernible from atop a skyscraper. People from all different backgrounds across the sprawling city queued up, waiting to inch a little bit closer to the front of the line. Even from inside the cab, Bingo could smell the lemongrass and the star anise before she saw the smoke erupting from the backyard-rigged BBQ pit. At the sight of all the people waiting, Bingo felt defeated, wondering what it would be like if the smoke would just swallow her whole. Numerous conversations coated in heavy East Coast accents mingled with transplant accents floated all around her, reminding her that she was still a stranger, a transplant to this city that she had not yet cracked. What exacerbated her loneliness even more was realizing that she’d have to stand in line solo. Again. For the tenth time.
The day the cab driver had recommended this place to her seemed so long ago, as three months had seemingly felt like three long years in purgatory. She was awaiting a sentence and wasn’t sure she even knew what outcome she wanted.
Her patience wore thin, and her frustrations turned inward. She blamed herself.
She’d made little to no progress on her own storefront. Maybe it would be better if she stopped trying, and just ran out the clock until one of her sisters made it first. Besides, Bingo was used to giving up early; it was something she learned from her mother, after all.
Did you know that Philadelphia has always been my favorite city?
Bingo gathered her bag from the back seat, thanked the driver, and stepped out of the cab to brave the juggernaut line. As soon as she attempted to cross the street, a biker whizzed past her, causing her to stumble backward. She yelped, throwing her bag straight up toward the sun. Her hands scrambled in front of her, frantic for anything to steady herself, and she grasped the side mirror of the parked car next to her at the last minute, coming close to falling an inch off the ground.
“Jesus!” Bingo cried out as she swung herself back up. All the zen she had accumulated in the cab ride over had disappeared faster than a breaking news cycle. Her anger was back in full force. Bingo wasn’t just her usual mad; she had reached category four levels. “You could have killed me! Go back to your mother’s basement if you can’t afford a goddamn car!”
A cold, awkward silence fell on the crowd. Conversations halted in midair. Even the smoke billowing from the BBQ pit looked like it had frozen in time. Everyone stared at Bingo, unsure if they should help the forlorn woman with an untamed pixie haircut and a nose piercing, standing in the middle of the street, yelling like an old man on a lawn.
The biker braked hard toward the front of the line and hopped off. A woman. She moved her bike off to the side, turned around, and began walking toward Bingo slowly. She removed her helmet. The moment their eyes locked, Bingo couldn’t feel her rage or her toes anymore. All she felt was curiosity and intense attraction. The biker had bundled-up black hair that was sticky with sweat, thick arched brows, and flushed, red cheeks. Bingo didn’t have to guess her ethnicity. The woman had the same Vietnamese features as her, but they were much softer than Bingo’s. It was a softness that felt like familial comfort, almost like laying your head on a cold pillow after a long day.
“I’m so sorry,” the woman said with sincerity. She bent down and helped gather all of Bingo’s items, which had spilled out of her bag. “Sometimes I push myself to go faster and faster, until I can’t think of anything else. Do you ever get passionate over anything like that?”
Bingo was mesmerized by her bright voice, the type that could call cartoon birds to land gently on her fingertips. Was Bingo losing it? She snapped herself out of her reverie before her infatuation could balloon. She knew better than to pursue a woman like her. Rejection from cool Asian women with sleeve tattoos who rode bikes was worse than rejection from straight white men. Not that she would even know what it’d be like to be rejected by a guy. She’d never even kissed one. Rejection just stung more when the call came from inside the house, and Bingo had too many scars from the queer dating scene in Portland, from aloof women who didn’t know what they wanted. She could feel her walls coming back up, telling her to hold steady.
“No, I don’t have any passions,” Bingo snapped. “I don’t have time, or money, or resources. We’re living in late-stage capitalism, don’t be so insensitive.” She wouldn’t allow herself to become distracted by a pretty woman. That would have been too quotidian of her. She was there for the money. Nothing else. “However, your passion almost killed me back there.”
The woman threw her a look. “I heard some sharp insults spew out of you that could have skewered me. Words hurt, too, you know.”
Bingo raised a brow back. “So do you live in your mother’s basement…?”
The woman laughed, and Bingo tried to ignore how her laughter sounded like wind chimes, and how refreshing it was, like a cold glass of anything on a porch swing. “Let’s start over. I’m Iris,” the woman said, winking at Bingo and extending a hand. “Let me make it up to you. Lunch? On me?”
“Sure,” Bingo responded. She took her hand, unsure what she was agreeing to. “If you want to wait hours in line to make it up to me.”
“Don’t worry, the wait time is only ten minutes for you.” She winked. She gestured for Bingo to follow her up to the front. “I own this place. You just have to watch me make lunch.”
“You… own this place?” Bingo asked, both impressed and aghast. Iris was now her mortal enemy, and yet, it turned her on.
“Don’t let the gleam of it all blind you,” Iris said as she waved her hand toward the crowd. “I’m still poor, haven’t broken even yet. Maybe, one day, I’ll break even. Maybe, I’ll even be able to open my own storefront one day.”
Bingo swallowed. She knew she was in trouble. It was the age-old question that no saint, poet, or philosopher ever had the answer to. Money or love? Which did she need more to survive? But most of all, what would bring her the most happiness? It was an endless wild-goose chase to get both. Aside from their horrid tempers, being a fool in love might be the second thing her father and she had in common.
“Philadelphia really is the best city in America,” she whispered under her breath as she resigned herself to her fate and followed the stunning Vietnamese woman inside.