Chapter 18 The Second Date
The Second Date
The next evening, Natalie came down from her apartment in a gray UC Berkeley T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. She had a sweatshirt folded over one arm, just in case.
She opened the front door of her building and saw Danny across the way.
He stood there in jeans and a wrinkled black T-shirt. His hair was still damp from the shower.
“Hi,” Danny said.
“Hey.”
They set off down Des Voeux Road West.
They walked west because the pavement was too crowded eastbound.
The late afternoon was hot, muggy, and sticky.
Buses shouldered toward stops with their brakes sighing.
Delivery men pushed carts stacked with crates.
Shopfronts took over whatever space the sidewalk had not already lost to bins, signs, buckets, stools, and broken concrete.
The street smelled of diesel, dried seafood, hot oil, and the faint medicinal bitterness from a pharmacy. A fruit stand had mangoes stacked in plastic crates and dragon fruit cut open under cling film. Outside a cha chaan teng, two men smoked.
They passed a small bakery still selling pineapple buns under yellow light. A woman in office clothes walked past carrying flowers and a plastic bag of toilet paper. A boy in a school uniform stood outside a convenience store eating fish balls from a skewer while looking at his phone.
The sidewalk was broken in places, so they had to pay attention. At one narrow spot, a shop had set plastic tubs along the curb and left only a strip of uneven pavement beside them.
Danny took Natalie’s hand to help her past so she would not trip.
A bus stopped ahead, and people pushed toward the door before the last passenger had stepped off. A taxi honked. Someone shouted from inside a shop. A man had set a folding table on the sidewalk and was sorting green vegetables into plastic bags.
Danny stopped in front of a 7-Eleven.
The orange, green, and red sign glowed over the doorway. Inside, fluorescent light poured over narrow aisles. Refrigerators hummed. The shelves were packed with drinks, snacks, instant noodles, umbrellas, tissues, batteries, hangover cures, chocolate, and Octopus-card signs.
“You hungry?” Danny asked.
“Yeah, I can eat.”
“I’m starving.”
They went inside.
The air-conditioning hit them at the door. The shop was narrow and bright. There were drinks along one wall, magazines near the front, shelves of chips and candy, instant noodles, umbrellas, tissues, batteries, shampoo, phone cables, and a small hot case by the register.
Natalie picked up a basket.
Danny didn’t bother.
Without saying anything, they split up to look around.
Natalie went to the refrigerated case. There were triangular sandwiches in plastic boxes, rice balls, small salads, noodle cups, yogurt drinks, bottled coffee, soy milk, and rows of tea. She stood in front of the sandwiches for a while, then chose chicken teriyaki, crab stick salad, and egg.
She moved to another aisle. There were single-serving cereal boxes: Frosted Flakes, Froot Loops, and Koko Krunch.
Until she came to Hong Kong, she had never heard of Koko Krunch.
It turned out that Koko Krunch tasted almost exactly like Cocoa Puffs but was shaped like a cartoon bear’s face instead of round balls.
The next aisle had cookies. Oreos in several flavors: vanilla, chocolate cream, strawberry cream, green tea, and peach oolong.
On a lower shelf, there were Kjeldsens single-serve butter cookies.
Below that, Khong Guan custard cream biscuits.
She looked at the upper shelf again and picked up a small roll of three green tea Oreos and put it in her basket.
Danny found her in the cookie aisle. He was carrying two drinks, a packet of chips, and something wrapped in plastic.
“What did you find?” she asked.
“Pocari Sweat. Vitasoy. Shrimp chips. This thing.”
“What thing?”
He turned the package around. “Rice roll.”
“You don’t know what it is?”
“I know it’s a rice roll. I don’t know what’s inside it.”
“I’ve had it before. It’s not very good.”
“Well, I’m going to give it a try anyway.”
Natalie shrugged. “Your funeral.”
She looked at his drinks. “You drink Vitasoy?”
“Sometimes. You?”
“I usually get Vita lemon tea, but I’m getting a Coke today.”
“That’s in the back.”
She nodded.
“What do you have?” he asked.
She showed him the basket. “Chicken teriyaki sandwich. Crab stick salad sandwich. Egg sandwich. Oreos.”
“Oh, yum. I’m getting Oreos, too.”
Danny took a small pack of plain vanilla Oreos from the shelf.
“Can I have one of your sandwiches?”
“No,” Natalie said. “Get your own. They’re right over there.”
“How about we share?”
“Okay.”
“I like egg.”
“Everyone likes egg. It’s safe.”
“What about crab?”
“I like crab better than tuna.”
“Tuna is okay.”
“Tuna is always okay but crab is better.”
He looked back toward the refrigerated case. “They have tuna with corn.”
“Get it if you want. But I’m having this.”
Danny went back and took a tuna-corn sandwich. Natalie went to the drinks and added a Coke to her basket.
They moved to the hot case.
There were siu mai, fish balls, sausages, and small skewers under the heat lamp. A cashier was helping a woman pay her electricity bill. Another customer was adding value to an Octopus card.
“Do you want hot food?” Danny asked.
“Maybe siu mai.”
“You think it’s been there long?”
“Everything in there has been in there too long.”
“Is it the same in the U.S.?”
“It’s hot dogs. But, yeah.”
They got a small tray of siu mai and a skewer of fish balls. Danny added a sausage, then looked at Natalie.
“What?” he said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
At the register, they put everything on the counter: chicken teriyaki sandwich, crab stick salad sandwich, egg sandwich, tuna-corn sandwich, rice roll, siu mai, fish balls, sausage, shrimp chips, green tea Oreos, vanilla Oreos, Vitasoy, Pocari Sweat, and Coke.
“Are we really going to eat all this food?” Natalie asked.
“I just came from work. I’m starving.”
Natalie reached for her wallet but Danny said, “I got it,” so she didn’t take it out.
Danny paid.
The cashier bagged everything quickly. Danny took the bag.
Outside, the heat came back at once.
They walked down a little ways until they found a closed shop with a metal shutter pulled down over the entrance. There was a low concrete ledge in front, just wide enough to sit on if they kept their knees close to the curb.
Danny sat first. Natalie sat beside him and set the bag between their feet.
The street kept moving in front of them.
People passed close enough that Natalie had to tuck her knees in.
A woman stepped around them with two bags of vegetables.
A delivery man stopped near the curb, checked an address on his phone, and went into the building next door.
Someone had left a stack of flattened cardboard beside a rubbish bin.
Natalie took the sandwiches out first. Danny opened the bag of chips, then the rice roll.
He looked at the rice roll, then took a bite.
She watched his face.
“Well?”
“It’s fine.”
“No, you hate it.”
“I don’t hate it but it’s cold.”
“It came from a refrigerator.”
“I knew that. I just thought that it’d taste better for some reason.”
Natalie opened the crab stick salad sandwich and took a bite. The bread was soft and cold. The filling was sweet, with too much mayonnaise.
“How is it?” Danny asked.
“Exactly like it looks.”
“Good?”
“Fine.”
He took the tuna-corn sandwich from the bag and opened it.
Natalie looked at it. “You really bought that.”
“I said I would.”
He took a bite and chewed.
“And?” Natalie asked.
“It’s better than the rice roll.”
She laughed. “It probably is.”
He offered it to her.
She shook her head. “You bought it. You eat it.”
Natalie opened the egg sandwich and split it in half. She handed one half to him.
“Here.”
They ate without talking for a while. A taxi pulled up and let out a woman carrying a cake box. The bakery two doors down had turned on more lights. A man came out of the building behind them, looked at them eating on the ledge, and walked past without interest.
Danny opened the hot food tray.
The siu mai had sweated inside the plastic. He poured soy sauce over it from a packet. Some of it ran onto his fingers.
He wiped his fingers with one of the paper napkins. The napkin tore and stuck to the soy sauce.
Natalie handed him another.
“These are useless,” he said.
“That’s why they’re free.”
She took one of the siu mai with a toothpick. It was hot in the center and not hot around the edge. She ate it anyway. Danny ate two, then opened the fish balls.
“Do you want one?”
“Sure.”
He handed her the skewer.
The fish balls were springy and salty. She ate one and gave the skewer back. He finished the rest.
“Better than hot dogs,” he said.
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“American hot dogs are that good?”
“No, fish balls are just okay. Hot dogs are better.”
She took her Coke from the bag and opened it.
Danny slugged down the Pocari Sweat then opened the Vitasoy.
A bus pulled in beside them. It stopped close to the curb, large enough to block the light from the street.
The doors opened with a hiss. A few passengers got off.
After a few moments, the bus doors closed and the bus pulled away.
A thick cloud of exhaust rolled over them as the bus pulled out.
“Jeez,” Natalie coughed.
Danny was coughing too.
Then Natalie looked at Danny.
“God, Danny, this has got to be the shittiest date I’ve ever been on.”
Danny laughed. “I know, right?”
Natalie picked at her clothes, chuckling at the ridiculousness of it. “This is disgusting. It’s all over my clothes. It’s in my hair. This is so gross.”
Danny looked at her, laughing.
“It got all over the food,” Natalie said. “But I’m still hungry.”
Danny picked up the sausage, looked at it, and ate it.
She looked at him in fake horror.
“What?” he said. “I’m hungry.”
“Yeah, me too.”
They both resumed eating.