‘Merry Christmas,’ Del said.
Tommy wanted to tape her mouth shut, not because her greeting was completely off the wall – after all, Christmas was only seven weeks away and supermarkets were already selling decorations – but because she almost made him laugh, and laughter was not going to help him convince Gi of the seriousness of their plight.
‘Gi,’ Tommy said, ‘I would like you to meet a friend of mine. Miss Del Payne.’
Gi inclined his head politely toward her, and she held out her hand, and Gi took it after only a brief hesitation. ‘Miss Payne.’
‘Charmed,’ she said.
‘You’re terribly wet,’ Gi told her.
‘Yes. I like it,’ Del said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Invigorating,’ she said. ‘After the first hour of a storm, the falling rain has scrubbed all the pollution from the air, and the water is so pure, so healthy, good for the skin.’
‘Yes,’ Gi said, looking dazed.
‘Good for the hair too.’
Tommy thought, Please, God, stop her from warning him about prostate cancer.
At five-feet-seven, Gi was three inches shorter than Tommy and, though as physically trim as his brother, he had a round face utterly unlike Tommy’s. When he smiled, he resembled Buddha, and as a child he had been called ‘little Buddha’ by certain members of the family.
His smile, though stiff, remained on his face until he let go of Del’s hand and looked down at the puddles of rainwater both she and Tommy were leaving on his office floor. When he raised his gaze and met Tommy’s eyes, he wasn’t smiling any more, and he didn’t look anything at all like Buddha.
Tommy wanted to hug his brother. He suspected that Gi would return his embrace, after a moment of stiffness. Yet neither of them was able to display affection first -perhaps because they both feared rejection.
Before Gi could speak, Tommy hurriedly said, ‘Brother, I need your advice.’
‘My advice?’ Gi’s stare was disconcertingly direct. ‘My advice hasn’t meant much to you for years.’
‘I’m in deep trouble.’
Gi glanced at Del.
She said, ‘I’m not the trouble.’
Clearly, Gi doubted that assertion.
‘In fact,’ Tommy said, ‘she saved my life earlier tonight.’
Gi’s face remained clouded.
Beginning to worry that he was not going to be able to make this connection, Tommy found himself babbling: ‘Really, she did, she saved my life, just put herself on the line for me, a total stranger, got her van bashed up because of me, she’s the reason I’m even standing here, so I’d appreciate if you’d invite us to sit down and-’
‘Total stranger?’ Gi asked.
Tommy had been plunging forward so rapidly that he had lost track of what he had said, and he didn’t understand his brother’s reaction. ‘Huh?’
‘Total stranger?’ Gi repeated.
‘Well, yes, up to an hour and a half ago, and still she put her life on the line-’
‘He means,’ Del explained to Tommy, ‘that he thought I was your girlfriend.’
Tommy felt a blush, hot as oven steel, rising in his face. Gi’s sombre expression brightened slightly at the prospect that this was not the long-anticipated blonde who would break Mama Phan’s heart and divide the family forever. If Del was not dating Tommy, then there was still a chance that the youngest and most rebellious of the Phan boys would one day do the right thing, after all, and take a lovely Vietnamese girl as his wife.
‘I’m not his girlfriend,’ Del said to Gi.
Gi appeared willing to be convinced.
Del said, ‘We’ve never dated. In fact, considering that he doesn’t like my taste in hats, I don’t see how we ever could date. I couldn’t go out with any man who was critical of my taste in hats. A girl has to draw the line somewhere.’
‘Hats?’ Gi said, confused.
‘Please,’ Tommy said, speaking as much to Del as to Gi, ‘can we just sit down and talk about this?’
‘About what?’ Gi asked.
‘About someone trying to kill me, that’s what!’
Stunned, Gi Minh Phan sat with his back to his computer. With a wave of his hand, he indicated the two chairs on the other side of his desk.