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Автор Джин Квок
ALSO BY JEAN KWOK
RIVERHEAD BOOKS
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Copyright © 2014 by Jean Kwok
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kwok, Jean.
Mambo in Chinatown / Jean Kwok.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-101-63255-0
1. Chinese American women—Fiction. 2. Chinese Americans—Fiction. 3. Ballroom dancers—Fiction. 4. Family secrets—Fiction. 5. Family life—Fiction. I.
Title.PS3611. W65M37 2014 2013043639
813'. 6—dc23
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For Erwin, Stefan and Milan,
and to the memory of my mother,
Shuet King Kwok
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
One
My name is Charlie Wong and I’m the daughter of a dancer and a noodle-maker. My mother was once a star ballerina at the famed Beijing Dance Academy before she ran off to marry my father, the handsomest noodle-maker in Beijing—or at least that’s what she always called him before she died. Hand in hand, they escaped to America to start their family. Unfortunately, my mother’s genes seemed to miss me altogether. I took after Pa, minus the good-looking part. And minus the manual dexterity as well: he never managed to pass his considerable noodle-making skills on to me, much as he tried. So at twenty-two years old I was instead working as a dishwasher at a restaurant in New York’s Chinatown. Pa was their noodle master. Customers lined up at the back door to purchase packages of his uncooked noodles to take home.
Peering now through the window that connected the tiny dishwashing room to the kitchen, I could see Mrs. Lee standing by the back door. She’d put on extra lipstick for Pa, and she fixed her eyes on his tanned hands wrapped around the bamboo pole.
