Chapter 26
CHAPTER 26
Paulina
The robot arms were malfunctioning. Not in a “there’s a screw or two loose” kind of way. More like a “the robots are sentient and are rebelling” kind of way. Though the robots were able to manufacture a sandwich in less than thirty seconds, after assembly, they would fling the sandwich all the way across the room—at a speed of around ninety miles per hour, about the average MLB pitch. Sandwich or baseball, it made no difference; the impact of the pelt remained the same. Paulina, in one of her walk-throughs with some local food influencers, witnessed in horror as one of them was hit in the face with a bánh mì gà. His glasses flew off his face, and his nose began to bleed profusely, gushing a bright ruby hue. Throughout the commotion, between the blood and slices of cold chicken, yelling and crying, Paulina tried her best to assuage the situation.
“Look how futuristic and innovative we are! We even deliver directly into your mouth! What other delivery app offers these types of features?” Paulina laughed nervously as another sandwich whizzed so fast past her head, it fluttered her hair, breaking the sound barrier.
The food influencers never came back. And with each new negative review that had come out, Paulina’s desperation grew as the silence grew louder around her.
No one was coming in, and the money was running out. She was afraid that in the rat race toward their inheritance, she was the last one, the fabled rabbit who decided to take a nap, and all the other turtles had hurtled forward. Despite all the buzz and marketing she’d put into a soft launch, no one had come in.
However dire things had gotten, she had refused to reach out to Oliver for help, despite collecting a pile of unanswered texts from him, asking how the store was going, how she was doing. But the worst messages asked if she needed help.
Help? Help?
As the third-oldest daughter, Paulina Tr?n had never asked for help in her life. Her entire childhood, she’d flown under the radar, always living at the margins of the family. Help was a dirty word to her. Plus, she’d been actively avoiding Oliver ever since he revealed he had a daughter. Esther . Esther sounded cute. Esther also sounded like responsibility. And Paulina was allergic to responsibility.
There was no way in hell she was about to admit she was in trouble.
She didn’t want word to get back to her father about how bad things had gotten under her management.
Which was why she was thrown for a loop when she showed up to the shop and saw her father’s lawyer, Mr. Ng?, standing outside the doors. Her stomach began churning as she observed him. What the hell was he doing here? His hands were stuffed in his pockets, his forehead pressed against the black window, his eyes squinting, trying to make out the new layout. Though his slouch was familiar and comforting, a small slice of home—even if the idea of home was fractured—Paulina was terrified. Whatever he’d report back to her father could determine how close she was to winning the inheritance. She didn’t know enough about Mr. Ng? to determine how to sway him.
Though she had grown up with memories of him walking through the hallways of her home as if he lived there, going into her father’s office every day, closing the door behind him, and the hushed tones between the two of them—he was still a stranger to her. She always wondered what her father and he talked about so much. What would an uneducated man turned purveyor of sandwiches and a shady lawyer have in common? Mr. Ng? was a constant, mysterious shadow in her life, and she never thought much of him beyond just that narrative.
“Mr. Ng??” Paulina feigned delight. “What are you doing here?”
He turned around and waved eagerly. She towered over him, adding two more inches with her black boots, and could see the bald spot at the top of his head. From the aerial point of view of nearly six feet, his baldness could have been mistaken for a crop pattern.
“Ah! Hello, con!” he said, still wearing a big smile. “I haven’t been to San Jose in many, many years, not since the time your father opened this shop back in the mid-nineties, and before that, not since the early eighties. Your mother loved this shop the most, you know. She opened this shop with pride.”
Paulina laughed anxiously, surprised at how talkative and lighthearted he was. She’d only ever known him as Duc’s stoic right-hand man. “Here for a nostalgia tour, then? Vacation, perhaps? Funny choice in picking San Jose to come to relax, though.”
“Vacation? Me? I’ve never been on vacation in my life!” He chuckled. “No, no. I’m here to make my rounds, follow up, and report everything back to your father. He wants updates on how you’re all doing. And well, it’s my job to keep him well informed of progress made on all fronts.” His smile remained the same as he gestured for her to let them both into the shop. He was not budging. “And you’ve been… well, particularly quiet. May I see what you’ve done with the place?”
She reluctantly took out her keys. “I’m actually still in the middle of a soft launch you know, so things aren’t quite up to speed.”
Mr. Ng? said nothing. He just simply cleared his throat, lifted his scuffed black loafer gingerly over the threshold, and stepped in. His requisite oversize suit nearly drowned out his small frame, and he began craning his neck in all directions. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and whipped out a small green pocket notebook from the inside of his jacket. The sound of his ballpoint pen clicked into action, and it somehow echoed throughout the empty store. His hand began making notes, comments, observations, and at one point, it looked like he’d even drawn a few pie charts, and a life-size map of the store. It felt as if he were carrying a proverbial clipboard, and he’d come to audit her.
After an eternity in purgatory, Mr. Ng? finally spoke.
“Strange direction you decided to go down, huh? All this… fancy tech you brought in… for sandwiches. You know, your sisters went different directions,” Mr. Ng? said, sucking through his teeth. He began to walk up to the automated arms, touching them, and tapped through the ordering tablet, looking at all the options available. “How’s business going?”
Paulina put on her fakest smile. “It’s going amazing . Truly. Everyone here has been so fascinated by watching robots make sandwiches. I have a lot of content creators come in to take photos and videos. Kids love it, you know. Silicon Valley loves it.”
“Yes, but what about the loyal customers? The locals? The San Jose store has always been a mild success because of the returning customers. The elderly? They’re our biggest base here,” Mr. Ng? said, eyebrows furrowing as he jotted more notes down in his green notebook. “Wait, where is Ch? Mai? She’s been working for us for nearly twenty years.”
From her vantage point, Paulina scanned his notebook.
Robot. Sterile. Strange. No life. Happy? Ch? Mai?
Why did everyone keep asking about Ch? Mai? Who was Ch? Mai again?
And happy? Why was happiness a criterion in order for her to win a shot at the money? No life? What kind of notes was Duc looking for? But mostly, how could her father still manage to insult her from oceans away? She swallowed hard and began to see the money, her future, everything, slipping through her fingers. She decided she had to fake and lie her way through the mess. If her father wanted to see happiness, she was going to give the old lawyer the performance of her lifetime.
“Ch? Mai was slowing me down. I’ve decided to focus on the next generation,” she said breezily. “Modernize this place a bit more, keep up with trends.”
“You can modernize something without alienating the elderly,” he said, almost in a didactic tone. “You know most old people hate technology, right?”
“Of course I knew that,” she said soothingly. “I just thought this would be more for ‘the kids’ than their grandparents, you know?”
“So… this is for children ?” he responded, scribbling more things. “You like kids, then?”
“No, I hate kids,” Paulina said absentmindedly, her mind wandering to Oliver and Esther. A daughter. Oliver had a three-year-old daughter. “Can you imagine having a kid? After the way we grew up? A mother who abandoned us, and an absentee father? Talk about repeating the cycle of trauma. Can you imagine what I’d be like as a mother? I’d feel sorry for that kid.”
Mr. Ng? paused in his note-taking; she could tell he did not like her response one bit. “May I see a demonstration?” he asked, though it sounded more like a command.
“Of course! Happy to give one,” she said nervously as she walked up to an open tablet. Beads of sweat began forming under Paulina’s brow. Her hands shook as she tapped an order in, and worry began to crystallize in her lungs. The bugs were fixed, right? Her lead engineer had sent an email late last night with some code pushes, but she hadn’t had a chance to take a look at it yet. She stared at the place order button. What if she just pretended the machines weren’t working today?
As if on cue, the robots came alive and made a sandwich without Paulina’s command. A loud whirring sound came on as each arm roared into action, the machines sounding like nails on a chalkboard, turned up to the highest volume. With each arm programmed to handle a section of the sandwich, it was as if they were fighting each other to make the sandwich themselves.
“Interesting,” Mr. Ng? whispered in both horror and fascination. More notes.
“SORRY IT’S SO NOISY!” Paulina shouted over the metal arms crashing into one another. “WE’RE WORKING ON THE SOUND!” Continuing on their rebellious streak, the arms somehow began to speed up more, causing the screeching sound to go up a pitch. Paulina grinned widely, and weakly gave two thumbs-up to Mr. Ng?, who had now covered his ears.
“HOW FUN IS THIS, RIGHT?” Paulina said, nearly screaming. “IT’S SO NOVEL!”
“How interesting,” Mr. Ng? whispered again.
“WHAT DID YOU SAY?”
He just shook his head.
“WE’RE EMPHASIZING THE ‘FUN’ IN MAKING SANDWICHES! THERE’S JUST SOME SLIGHT KINKS WE HAVEN’T QUITE WORKED THROUGH!”
But it was as if the robots wanted to ensure that she wasn’t going to win her inheritance. Just as Paulina went to shut them down manually, a robotic arm picked up the finished sandwich and chucked it at Mr. Ng? so fast, he barely ducked down in time. They watched in terror as it shot out the door and barreled straight into an old woman crossing the street, knocking her shopping bags right out of her arms and causing her to tumble forward. Her hands and knees splayed out on the gravel, for all to see.
The robot arms began to wind down and return to their sleep state, as if nothing had happened at all.
“Don’t say anything,” Paulina said through clenched teeth.
“I wasn’t planning on it,” Mr. Ng? whispered. “But as a lawyer, I have plenty to say. Mostly: that was close. ”
A crowd formed around the old woman as they helped pick her up, then her bags of groceries off the ground. A case of loose oranges eluded everyone’s grip and began rolling downhill.
Mr. Ng? turned toward Paulina and clicked his pen again, symbolizing that he was done. “I must ask, Paulina. Have you been happy since you’ve arrived in San Jose? You’ve been here what, nearly seven months?”
“Happiness is subjective,” she said wryly. “No one is ever really happy , it’s an elusive fantasy. I’m just… doing my job.”
Mr. Ng? made another note, then looked back up to her, a hint of sadness in his gaze. “Your father didn’t do all of this on his own, you know. He had a lot of help behind him. It’s okay to learn to ask for help from time to time.”
Paulina was already tired and cranky, and the mention of her father was triggering, a cherry on top of a pile of growing family trauma. “You wouldn’t think that from the way he talks about his origin story on how he got started. You’d think the man had gotten bitten by a radioactive spider and gained all this money, fame, and success overnight.”
Mr. Ng? stared at all the robot arms behind the counter, then he turned around and pointedly stared at the crowd of folks who still surrounded the old woman, on the corner of McLaughlin Avenue and Story Road, in the bustling heart of San Jose’s ethnic enclave.
He closed his eyes and put his arms behind his back. “There’s always more to the story than meets the eye, con. You think a refugee, who never graduated high school, had gotten here miraculously on his own?”
Paulina didn’t say anything; she just leaned against the counter and folded her arms. “What are you trying to say, Mr. Ng??”
“You’d be surprised at who will show up for you if you learn to ask for help,” he said cryptically. “Also, con, your father cared about you in his own way. It’s hard to see now, but maybe one day, you’ll be able to understand that he did his best.”
Mr. Ng? gathered himself and headed toward the front of the shop, his hand on the door handle, ready to leave. “That guy you were seeing a while back, he lives here, right? Up in San Francisco? It was a bit on and off again between you two for a long time, wasn’t it?”
Paulina looked at him, wondering how on earth he knew about Oliver Chen. Without waiting for a response, Mr. Ng? plowed on. “You two seemed to really care about each other, you know.”
“How on earth would you know anything about my relationship with Oliver?” Paulina asked defensively. “Did my father say something to you?”
Mr. Ng? turned back around to face the second-youngest child of Duc, the third daughter, and the most elusive one, who no one really knew well. They locked eyes and for a microsecond, she could have sworn they had similar features. But it was all eclipsed by the fact of how tired he looked. He appeared exhausted, worn down, and Paulina saw him as human for the first time, perhaps burdened by being Duc’s sidekick, or perhaps because there was a longing in his face that only someone like Paulina could catch. She knew that look well.
“Con,” he said quietly. “I know a thing or two about tipping the scale of love—how one person can love the other person more, and you wait your whole life for the scale to balance out, but it never does. It just never does. But you don’t even care, you’re just happy to be on the same scale. And all you can do is wait. And you do wait.”
Paulina watched as he left the store. His retreating back grew smaller as he rounded the corner and disappeared. Tired herself, Paulina wondered which side of the scale she was on when it came to Oliver, and if she missed the entire point of being sent to San Jose.