By Wednesday the calendar had nine X's. Naomi was running on four hours of sleep a night, interpreting Lin Group's due-diligence calls by day and writing testimony by night. Gloria watched Lily with the grim cheer of a woman who had done this before — when Naomi was in college, when Lily was small.
"Mama, you look like a ghost," Lily said one night, drawing dragons at the kitchen table.
"I feel like a dragon," Naomi said. "A tired dragon."
Lily studied her. "Dragons aren't tired. They're waiting."
Naomi smiled and kissed her daughter's head, and thought: children see more clearly than the rest of us.
Thursday. Eleven days to go.
Kevin Chen called with news from the commission staff: two of the seven commissioners were leaning Hale's way, two were firm supporters of preservation, and three were undecided. "Undecided means winnable," he said. "But Naomi — Victor's team is bringing architects. Renderings. Economic projections. They're going to make demolition sound like a gift."
"And we're going to bring eighty-year-olds who eat lunch there," Naomi said.
"Bring them," Kevin said. "It's better."
Friday night, Priya screened the documentary on a laptop for the seniors. The room went quiet watching themselves — Mr. Wong teaching calligraphy, the ESL class practicing English introductions, the lunch line, the little garden on the roof where Mrs. Chow grew bitter melon. When the three minutes ended, someone in the back started clapping, and then the whole room was crying and clapping at once.
Priya posted it that night. By Saturday morning it had half a million views.
Victor's lawyers sent another letter. This one named Naomi personally.
Rachel read it and laughed without humor. "He's scared. In fifteen years I've never seen him scared."
The final Sunday before the vote, Naomi brought Lily to the center. Mrs. Chow took one look at the little girl's drawing — a dragon curling around the Mei Lan building — and held it like a scroll of great value.
"Your mother," Mrs. Chow told Lily solemnly, "has a dragon's heart."
Lily beamed. "I know. I drew it."
That night, Gloria made soup, and they ate together, all three generations around the small table. Naomi's phone buzzed constantly — commission staffers, reporters, Kevin, Priya. She put it face-down and let the soup steam rise around them, and for one hour she was not a story. She was just Naomi.
At midnight her phone rang. Not buzzed — rang. Rachel's name on the screen.
"Naomi." Rachel's voice was tight. "Someone threw a brick through the center's front windows. Both of them. Glass everywhere."
Naomi was already pulling on her coat. "Are you there?"
"On my way. Mrs. Chow is already there — she called me. She's sweeping up glass, Naomi. She's eighty-two and she's sweeping up glass at midnight."
Naomi woke her mother, called a car, and rode through the empty streets with her heart hammering against her ribs. The center looked wounded when she arrived — the front windows dark holes, glass glittering on the sidewalk under the streetlights. Mrs. Chow was indeed sweeping, her small frame bent over the broom, while two seniors held dustpans.
"Po —" Naomi began.
Mrs. Chow looked up, and her eyes were dry and furious and utterly unafraid.
"他们以为我们会害怕," she said. They think we will be afraid. She went back to sweeping. "让他们想吧." Let them think.
Naomi picked up a second broom. Behind her, more cars were arriving — Elena, Priya, Kevin, neighbors from Clay Street, half the seniors' grandchildren. Someone brought plywood. Someone brought a thermos. By two in the morning the windows were boarded and the sidewalk was clean, and somebody had taped Lily's dragon drawing to the plywood.
Tomorrow was the vote. Tonight, the building wore a dragon.
Naomi stood on the sidewalk and looked at it, and she was afraid — she would not lie to herself about that. But fear, she had learned in Beijing and in boardrooms and in restaurant dining rooms, was just the price of admission.
The dragon stayed.
Chapter Seventeen
The Hearing
The hearing room on the fourth floor of City Hall had two hundred seats. By eight in the morning, every one of them was taken, and the crowd spilled into the hallway and down the marble stairs.
Naomi arrived with Mrs. Chow on her arm. The old woman wore her best jacket, navy blue with frog buttons, and carried a folder of photographs: the center in 1966, the center's roof garden, a lunch line from last Tuesday. Elena and Rachel flanked them like honor guards. Behind them came the seniors — Mr. Wong with his calligraphy brush tucked in his breast pocket like a pen, the ESL class arm in arm, three generations of the Lau family.
Across the aisle sat Victor Hale's team. Architects with laptops. Consultants with binders. A publicist with a camera. Victor himself was not there — he had sent his lawyers instead, which Naomi found interesting, and Kevin found very interesting.
"Means he's nervous," Kevin murmured, sliding into the seat beside Naomi. "He only skips rooms where he might lose."
The commissioners filed in at nine: seven men and women with nameplates and water glasses and the composed faces of people who had already made up their minds and would spend the day pretending they hadn't. The clerk read the agenda item — the Hale Harbor rezoning, Piers 30–32, including the Clay Street transit corridor — and the room settled into that particular hush that Naomi recognized from a thousand restaurant dining rooms: the sound of people deciding how the evening would go.
Victor's team went first. The architects dimmed the lights and projected renderings — glass towers catching the sun, a plaza with fountains, a transit hub rendered in warm, welcoming light. The consultant spoke of jobs, tax revenue, revitalization. Everything was beautiful. Nothing was real.
Naomi watched the undecided commissioners watching the screen, and she thought of the plywood still covering the center's windows.