She was not borrowing it now. That was what the room could hear, even the one man in it who could not understand a word. She was standing at Table Twelve in her apron with her father's therapy bills in a drawer at home and her unfinished degree just mocked in front of strangers, and the language her mother had given her had not thinned or faded in the years of carrying plates. It had waited, intact, like something set carefully aside rather than lost.
Tang Min said, in Mandarin, quietly, "Your mother taught you very well."
"She did," Gabi said in Mandarin. "She taught me that if you can say a thing truly in two languages, no one can make it smaller in either one."
Silence settled over Table Twelve, full rather than empty this time. Harcourt had stopped arranging his face. Out at the windows the river carried a line of bridge lights past the glass, indifferent and magnificent, and somewhere behind her Gabi could sense Karen still in the doorway, witnessing now in a different sense than Mr. Feng's.
Mr. Feng looked at her for a long moment, and then, with great deliberation, he placed both hands flat on the edge of the table, pushed his chair back, and Mr. Feng slowly rose to his feet.
Chapter 6 — One Hundred Thousand Dollars
The room did not look at Bill Harcourt first. It looked at Feng Jianguo.
Gabi felt the shift before she understood it, the way she always felt a table turn — a small change in air, glasses stilled, a conversation that had been performing for itself suddenly waiting for permission to continue. She stood beside Table Twelve with her hands folded in front of her apron, her spine straight not because she was calm but because her mother had taught her how to stand in a room that wanted her smaller.
Walk in like the table was set for you.
Feng stood slowly. He was not a tall man, but age had given him a gravity that did not need height. He adjusted the cuff of his jacket, looked once at Gabi with an expression she could not quite read — not pity, she was grateful for that — and then turned to Harcourt.
When he spoke, he spoke in English, careful and unhurried, so there would be no misunderstanding for anyone at the table, for Oscar hovering near the door of the River Room, or for Karen Doyle, who had come in quietly with a fresh bottle of water and stopped when she sensed what was happening.
"You owe this woman one hundred thousand dollars."
No one laughed.
Harcourt's smile had already thinned. Now it vanished altogether. For a second Gabi saw something naked cross his face — calculation, and beneath it, fury that the calculation had nowhere to go. He had chosen his witness himself. He had insisted on it, loud enough for the whole room to hear, when he thought the bet was a joke at her expense. Feng Jianguo of Shanghai, his honored partner, the man whose signature he needed on the Halsted Yards papers before the week was out. He could not dismiss him now without dismissing the deal along with him.
"Now, Feng," Harcourt said, and tried for a chuckle that died in his throat. "Let's not get theatrical. It was a bit of fun. A wager between — "
"It was a wager," Feng said. "She spoke. Not one sentence. Many. Correctly. She answered Mr. Tang's question about her studies. She explained where she learned. There is no dispute."
Tang Min, who had been watching Gabi with a new, cautious attention, gave a single nod. "No dispute," he said.
Xu Lihua said nothing at first. She studied Harcourt the way she studied numbers on a page, without sentiment. "The terms were clear," she said at last. "One hundred thousand."
Gabi's heart was beating so hard she was afraid the table could hear it. She kept her eyes level. She would not look down at her shoes, would not look at Karen for rescue, would not do any of the small shrinking things the room expected a waitress to do when rich men discussed money that had her name on it.
One hundred thousand dollars. The number had been absurd when Harcourt flung it across the tablecloth like a napkin he intended to take back. It was still absurd now, but absurd in a different direction. She thought, stupidly and clearly, of the envelope on the kitchen counter in Bronzeville, the one where she kept the physical therapy invoices in order of due date. She thought of her father Emmanuel trying to hide how much the exercises hurt. She forced the thought away. If she thought about it she would cry, and she would not cry in the River Room.
Harcourt looked around the table for an ally and found only waiting faces. He looked, finally, at Gabi. What he saw there seemed to irritate him more than Feng's verdict had.
"You planned this," he said quietly.
"No, sir," Gabi said. "I was bringing you dinner."
A sound escaped Tang Min that might have been a suppressed breath of laughter. He covered it with his napkin.
Feng sat down again, unhurried. "In my experience," he said, "a man's word is easiest to keep when it was given in jest. Because then there is no excuse that he was confused."
That landed. Gabi watched Harcourt understand that every second he delayed was being recorded in the memory of three people whose respect he could not buy back later with a better vintage. His jaw worked. He reached for his phone.
"Fine," he said. "Fine. Let's be sportsmen about it." He said the word as if it cost him something physical. "Account details. How do people — " He gestured impatiently at Gabi, then caught Feng's eye and corrected himself with visible effort. "Miss Mensah. How would you like it sent?"
She had rehearsed nothing. There had been no moment in her life when rehearsing for this would not have been madness. But International Business at DePaul had drilled certain things into her before she left, and waitressing had drilled in the rest: when a table gives you an opening, take it cleanly and do not apologize for taking it.
"I can write down my account and routing numbers, sir," she said. "My bank accepts wire transfers."