The following is an excerpt from the story You:
A week or so later I was down at the Hong Fat restaurant on Bayard Street in Chinatown ordering takeout, General Tso’s chicken for Sarah and a steaming order of moo goo gai pan for myself. We’re talking here about early Saturday afternoon, not the evening or the midnight hour or beyond, when forces for my demise gather and urge me forward. The sun was out and the streets were a pageant of color, with gorgeous young Chinese in their quilted jackets and vegetable stands with the ubiquitous bok choy. You had the sense of community and industry combining to create an atmosphere of safety on these crowded streets, some mammoth intelligence free of the clamoring Western ego. I couldn’t really say why certain places are holy, but Chinatown was one of them for me.
Actually, I was back in childhood, with imperturbable Charlie Chan in his white suit in a world not quite my own solving the mystery of the day with the assistance of his ineffectual but well-meaning son. It was a world in which some kind of tranquil order could reign. I was safe from myself and from the world I lived in with the peerless one.
Download this story as a pdf: You