"What?"
"Don't take anything personally."
She almost laughed. Six years of Friday nights. There was nothing left to take personally — or so she told herself, tucking the phone with Devon's eighteen-forty back into her apron pocket, squaring her shoulders, and walking toward table nine with her professional smile already in place, warm as tea, steady as stone.
Chapter Two
The Man at Table Nine
Harrison Blake entered The Jade Pavilion the way he entered every room: as if he had paid for the air in it.
He was fifty-eight, tall in the way of men who have never been told to sit down, with silver hair swept back like a breaking wave and a suit that cost more than Mara's car, her rent, and Devon's tuition combined. Behind him came the three men from Beijing, and the contrast was almost comic: Blake loud and gleaming, gesturing at the lanterns as if he had hung them himself; the three visitors quiet, observant, moving through the dining room with the unhurried precision of men who had seen a hundred rooms like this one and remembered every detail.
Mara knew their names from the reservation notes Marcus had rattled off. Mr. Zhou Weimin, sixty-eight, chairman of the Beijing consortium — silver-haired, spare, with the stillness of deep water. Mr. Feng, in his fifties, broad and watchful, the kind of man who smiled rarely and meant it always. And Mr. Tao, early forties, sharp-suited, who checked his watch every ninety seconds as if time were a subordinate that needed managing.
Blake was already performing. Mara could hear him from the service station, his voice carrying across the dining room in the particular boom of a man addressing an audience of three.
"—built half the skyline you see out those windows," he was saying, sweeping an arm toward the river. "The Hancock renovation? Mine. The River Point tower? Mine. This city doesn't pour concrete without asking my permission first."
Mr. Zhou inclined his head politely. Mr. Feng said nothing. Mr. Tao checked his watch.
Mara picked up the water pitcher, tucked her order pad into her apron pocket, and walked over with her smile arranged — warm, professional, revealing nothing.
"Good evening, gentlemen," she said. "Welcome to The Jade Pavilion. May I start you with sparkling or still water?"
Blake looked up at her the way a man looks at a painting that has been hung crooked — with irritation at the inconvenience of it. "You're the server?"
"Yes, sir. My name is Mara, and I'll be taking care of you this evening."
"I requested the best server you have." He said it to her face, as if she were evidence in a complaint.
"Then Marcus gave you exactly what you asked for," Mara said pleasantly.
Something flickered across his expression — surprise, quickly buried. Behind him, Mr. Zhou's mouth twitched at the corner, almost a smile. Mara filed that away.
Blake turned to his guests and, with visible effort, produced Mandarin. What came out made Mara's toes curl inside her silent shoes: the tones flattened, the vowels mangled, a phrasebook massacre. Huānyíng lái Zhījiāgē — welcome to Chicago — delivered as though Chicago were a personal gift he was bestowing. Mr. Zhou nodded with exquisite courtesy. Mr. Tao checked his watch.
"My interpreter had car trouble," Blake announced to the table, to the room, to anyone in earshot. "Unbelievable. Do you know what I pay that man? But it's fine. I speak the language." He tapped his temple. "Ten years of night classes. I'm practically fluent."
Mara, who had once watched a first-year student at Peking University try to order dumplings and accidentally request a nap — shuǐjiǎo versus shuìjiào, a tonal tragedy — kept her face perfectly still. Ten tourist phrases, she estimated. Maybe eleven, if you counted gān bēi, cheers, which every businessman learned on day one.
The ordering began, and with it the performance intensified. Blake ordered for the table without asking — Peking duck, sea cucumber, a bottle of baijiu at a price that made Priya's eyes widen from across the room — narrating each choice like a documentary host. "The duck here," he told Mr. Zhou, "is the best outside Beijing. I had it flown — well, not flown, but you understand. I know the owner."
He did not know the owner. The owner was a seventy-year-old woman from Guangzhou who had never met Harrison Blake and, Mara suspected, would not have liked him.
Through it all, the three Beijing men were polite to the point of opacity. Mr. Zhou answered Blake's questions with short, elegant sentences. Mr. Feng watched everything, including Mara, with those rare, meaningful smiles. And twice — twice — Mara caught fragments of rapid Mandarin between Mr. Zhou and Mr. Feng, too quick for Blake's eleven phrases, pitched low under the table's conversation.
This man talks the way a drum sounds, Mr. Feng murmured. Loud and hollow.
Patience, Mr. Zhou replied. We are here for the riverfront, not the drummer.
Mara poured the tea without a tremor, without a flicker, her face the smooth professional mask of six years' practice. But inside, something was uncoiling — a slow, familiar heat. She understood every word. She had understood every word since she'd walked up to the table, and no one at table nine knew it but her.
Blake snapped his fingers at her — actually snapped them, twice, in the air. "Sweetheart. More of the cold tea. And tell the kitchen to hurry with the duck. My guests are important men."
Sweetheart.
Mara set down the pitcher with a care that was, in its own way, a complete sentence. She looked at Mr. Zhou, who was watching her now with an attention that felt less like observation and more like recognition. She looked at Blake, at his certainty, his gleam, his absolute confidence that the woman in the apron was furniture that poured.
"Of course, Mr. Blake," she said. "Right away."