Naomi touched the jade pendant at her throat. Mama Zhao, she thought. You'd have laughed tonight.
She was brushing her teeth when the phone buzzed on the bathroom counter.
Unknown number. 415 area code.
She stared at it. It was nearly midnight. Nobody called at midnight with good news or no news. The phone buzzed again in her hand — insistent, patient — and Naomi Carter, who had faced down a billionaire in two languages not four hours earlier, felt her stomach drop like an elevator with cut cables.
She answered.
Chapter Four
The Video
Naomi woke to the sound of her phone screaming.
Not ringing — screaming. A pileup of vibrations against the nightstand, one on top of another, like the phone was having some kind of fit. She fumbled for it, squinting: 6:12 a.m. Forty missed calls. Two hundred and eleven text messages. Her thumb hovered over the screen, and the notifications kept coming, stacking faster than she could read them.
Girl is that YOU??? — Elena
Naomi. Call me. It's Marcus.
You have to see this — Priya Sharma
Good Morning America wants — unknown number
She sat up slowly. The apartment was quiet — Saturday morning quiet, Gloria already up making grits, Lily's cartoons murmuring from the living room. For one blessed second Naomi thought she might still be dreaming. Then she opened the first link Elena had sent, and her stomach dropped through the mattress.
It was her. Last night. Maison Lumière, candlelight and all — filmed from the pearls woman's table, steady as a tripod. There she was, setting down her order pad. There was Victor Hale's strangled laugh. And there was her own voice, low and clear, speaking Mandarin to a dining room that had gone utterly silent.
The caption read: Billionaire bets his waitress $100K she can't speak Chinese. She DESTROYS him in Mandarin. Wait for the poem.
Two point one million views. Posted nine hours ago.
"Oh, no," Naomi whispered.
"Oh, yes," said Gloria from the doorway, holding a wooden spoon like a gavel. She was grinning so wide it had to hurt. "Baby, you are all over my phone. Sister Denise sent it to the whole prayer chain. The deacon's wife says you 'spoke in tongues.'"
"Mama, please tell me you did not—"
"I told them my daughter speaks the King's Chinese." Gloria came in and sat on the edge of the bed, and her grin softened into something prouder and more private. "You were magnificent, baby. Your father would've cried."
Naomi's throat tightened. Her father had been gone twelve years — a bus driver with a laugh like a tuba, dead of a heart attack at fifty. She pushed the feeling down. "How bad is it?"
"Depends on your definition of bad." Gloria counted on her fingers. "The Chronicle called. Two morning shows. A man from something called 'The Hungry Local' —"
"That's Priya. The food blogger. She filmed—" Naomi stopped. "Wait. Did she film it? The one who was at the next table?"
"She says she's sorry and also you're welcome." Gloria stood. "Come eat. Lily's been asking."
In the kitchen, Lily sat at the table in her dragon pajamas, a bowl of cereal going soggy in front of her, a crayon drawing of a green dragon spread beside it. She looked up with enormous seriousness.
"Mommy," she said. "Are you famous?"
Naomi poured coffee with hands that were only slightly unsteady. "I'm a waitress who had a weird night at work, baby."
"Kayla's mom says you made a billionaire cry on the internet."
"I did not make anybody cry." Naomi sat down. "Eat your cereal."
"Can I be famous too?"
"You can be whatever you want. Finish the dragon first." Naomi studied the drawing — the dragon had five claws and a kind face, and it was breathing what appeared to be musical notes. "He's beautiful, Lily-bug."
"He's you," Lily said matter-of-factly, and went back to her cereal, and Naomi had to look out the window for a moment.
She tried to keep the morning normal. She really did. She helped Lily sound out the spelling words — because, friend, beautiful — while Gloria fielded the landline like a switchboard operator from 1957 ("No, she is not giving interviews before breakfast, young man"). She washed dishes. She folded laundry. She did not look at her phone, which buzzed every ninety seconds on the counter like an angry insect.
At one point she caught a glimpse of the video's comment section on Gloria's tablet, left open on the kitchen table. Thousands of comments. Strangers arguing about tones and translations. A woman in Ohio writing: My daughter just asked me to sign her up for Mandarin classes. A man in Guangzhou writing in English: Tell this waitress her Chinese is better than my son's. Naomi closed the tablet gently, as if it might bite, and went back to the laundry.
At ten, Elena called for the fourth time, and Naomi finally answered.
"Two point four million," Elena said without hello. "Naomi, the comments — people are translating the poem, there's a whole thread about Li Bai, somebody made a supercut of Hale's face — have you seen Hale's face? It's a meme now. It's called 'the hundred-thousand-dollar face.'"
"Please stop talking."
"The restaurant's phone hasn't stopped. Marcus says Hale called him at seven this morning screaming about 'ambush journalism.'" Elena lowered her voice. "Naomi. Are you okay? Really?"
Naomi looked at Lily, humming over her dragon, at Gloria braiding Lily's hair with the TV murmuring in the background. Normal. She was holding normal together with both hands.
"I don't know yet," she said honestly.
She was hanging up the dish towel when the light changed in the living room — a shadow falling across the window, wrong for the hour. Naomi went to the glass and looked down at the street.
A black car idled at the curb in front of her building. Long, dark, patient — the kind of car that didn't belong on a Richmond District block of laundromats and dim sum shops. As she watched, the rear door opened, and a man stepped out into the morning light.