On Santa Monica’s white-sand beach, the line in front of the Chinese jianbing cart seemed to be growing again. It curled past the paddleboard-rental stand and looked ready to stretch all the way into the sea.
The sudden increase in customers might have meant the jianbing tasted better now, or that the portions had gotten bigger. Or perhaps the man selling them was simply more appealing and better suited to the customers’ tastes.
Standing at the food-truck window was that cool, handsome Chinese man with black hair, dressed in a fitted black tank top.
Steam billowed from the hot griddle. Captain Xue used fingers seemingly immune to heat to lift a freshly cooked jianbing, flip it over, then paint several rough strokes of sweet bean sauce and chili sauce across the surface.
Liang Youhui poked his head out from behind Xue Qian and grinned. “Can you manage it, Brother? Why don’t I cook instead? I’m better at this than you are!”
“You’re better than me?” Xue Qian kept his eyes lowered as he worked and gave a cold laugh. “Where does jianbing guozi come from? And where are you from?”
Liang Youhui answered with perfect seriousness, “I haven’t been doing much else these past few months. I’ve been practicing making jianbing all the time. I trained myself!”
Xue Qian sounded almost rueful. “Couldn’t you have learned a more sophisticated skill?”
Liang Youhui was perfectly practical about it. “This is the easiest way to make money!
“Look at this. Soybean flour mixed with mung-bean flour, fried dough sticks, crisp crackers, egg, scallions, sweet bean sauce. One jianbing costs me only a dollar to make. I sell it for eight. That’s seven dollars profit each, and I can sell hundreds a day…”
Liang Youhui leaned close to Xue Qian’s ear and quietly ran through the arithmetic of his little business empire.
A smile tugged at Xue Qian’s mouth. “Eight dollars? You’re damn ruthless.”
Liang Youhui chuckled. “No merchant gets rich by being innocent!”
Xue Qian did not voice what he was really thinking. Young Master Liang, who used to scatter money by the handful at the glittering Jinxiu Huangting Club, drinking and chasing pleasure without blinking at the cost, was now counting on his fingers to work out whether seven dollars profit per jianbing would cover a month’s rent and living expenses.
Liang Youhui went on, “I only come on weekends. I don’t usually work the cart. I hire a few international students to help out. I have a proper job that actually pays the bills too!”
Liang Youhui worked for a company under a high-end wine distributor, handling public relations and sales for its wine trade with China.
The job suited him almost absurdly well. Young Master Liang had never been good at highly technical, meticulous work, but he did have a cheerful handsome face and an extraordinary gift for talking people into things. Put him behind a desk doing technical work and he could not sit still. Send him out to dinner tables and drinking sessions to charm clients and work a room, though, and he was completely in his element. That was advantage number one.
Second, Young Master Liang had always possessed a taste for the finer things. His former life of luxury had not been entirely wasted. He understood the high-end wine market very well, and when he met domestic distributors and business owners to discuss imports, he could talk fluently and persuasively about every detail.
He himself had once opened several bottles of cellar-aged wine in a single evening and signed bills totaling hundreds of thousands without blinking.
Now he watched other bosses wave a hand in front of him and calmly sign contracts worth hundreds of millions.
Some people still recognized Young Master Liang and asked with open curiosity, “How’s your father doing these days?”
Liang Youhui would answer, “He’s about the same. Whatever happens to him, I still have to live my life and earn enough to eat.”
Some people mixed contempt with a little cheap sympathy. “All right. You seem pretty straightforward when you do business, kid. I’ll sign with you.”
Liang Youhui would say, “Uncle, don’t worry. I’m optimistic about the market for these brands. We can grow the business even bigger later. If there’s money to be made, everyone should make some.”
Captain Xue’s rough hands were callused from handling guns. They were excellent for fighting and arresting people, but a little too crude for making jianbing. His technique genuinely was not as good as Young Master Liang’s.
Whenever he tore or ruined one, he simply folded the wrecked jianbing up and ate it himself.
Liang Youhui could not hold back his laughter. “Brother, nobody does it like you. How many have you eaten this morning already?”
Xue Qian ate with the same ferocity he brought to everything else, swallowing a jianbing in a few bites. “What? I eat a few of your jianbing and suddenly you can’t bear to part with them?”
“Of course I can!” Liang Youhui looked Officer Xue up and down. “Your stomach’s already sticking out.”
Xue Qian instinctively straightened his back, puffed out his chest, and sucked in his stomach, apparently wanting to look a little more handsome. The movement made the contours beneath his fitted tank top even more obvious and emphasized his broad chest.
Liang Youhui stood nearby chewing on two scallions. “Damn… Brother… huge.”
Xue Qian said, “What’s huge?”
Liang Youhui lowered his voice. “Your pecs.”
Xue Qian: “…”
Xue Qian snapped, “Eat fewer damn scallions. Your mouth reeks.”
Liang Youhui said, “Scallions taste good.”
“They smell awful from here.”
Liang Youhui shamelessly gave a little laugh. “Don’t worry, Brother. Before I kiss you, I use floss and mouthwash.”
The jianbing “young master’s” food truck had now acquired a rather intense jianbing “master,” and the customers in line found the combination entertaining, especially a few women who clearly appreciated the view. One or two blond women struck up conversations with Officer Xue. Even after buying their food, they lingered at the window, letting their eyes travel over the chest and abdominal lines of the sexy black-haired man behind the counter.
One blond woman asked in a low, flirtatious voice, “Handsome, do you know Chinese kung fu?”
Without even lifting his eyelids, Xue Qian quietly asked the man behind him, “What did she say? Spicy or not spicy?”
Liang Youhui said, “Americans can’t handle spice, so no chili. She’s asking how good your skills are in bed.”
Xue Qian cursed, “Fuck. Tell that little slut I’m well hung and good in bed. If she wants to try me, tell her to bring it on!”
“She wouldn’t dare try, but I would. Brother, you can bring it on with me anytime…” Liang Youhui licked the corner of his mouth, then turned toward the blond woman outside the window and began bragging extravagantly. “Of course he knows Chinese kung fu! Jeet Kune Do, Wing Chun, Bruce Lee, Wong Fei-hung, just like you see in the movies. My buddy is incredible. He even won an amateur sanda championship!”
The sanda championship at an internal police competition was actually true, so that part was not boasting.
The blond woman looked intrigued, her eyes curving flirtatiously. “Have your friend come out and teach us a few moves. We want to learn too!”
“All right, let me ask him.” Liang Youhui turned back to Brother Xue. “Brother, this chick says you’ve got monolids and I’ve got double eyelids, you’ve got a big mouth and I’ve got a small one. She wants to know which of us has the bigger thing in his pants!”
Captain Xue nearly stopped cooking altogether. He glanced at the blond woman, then glared at Liang Youhui. “Fuck. Tell her the truth. Which one of us is bigger?!”
Captain Xue’s English was evidently beyond rescue. He had not understood a word of the woman’s West Coast accent. Liang Youhui laughed so hard his shoulders shook and blinked his peach-blossom eyes at him. “Which one of us was bigger again? I forgot.”
Xue Qian ground his back teeth slightly. “Just wait. When we get home, Brother will remind you.”
Liang Youhui turned back to the women and said cheerfully, “My friend’s just hopelessly cold and boring. I’ll teach you some Chinese kung fu another time!”
The bikini-clad women headed toward the beach, curling their fingers at Young Master Liang. “Come on, handsome! Let’s ride beach ATVs!”
Liang Youhui turned to Xue Qian again. “Those girls said they want to buy me drinks at a bar. They said I’m really handsome, like Leonardo DiCaprio before he got older and filled out. Brother, do you think I should go with them?”
Xue Qian tossed the small spatula he had been using into the bucket of dishwater.
Shameless little tease, looking to get fucked?
Xue Qian grabbed Young Master Liang by the collar, moved out of sight of the food truck’s small serving window, and hauled him into the rear compartment. He shoved Liang against the hard metal wall hard enough to make him yelp. Xue Qian immediately crowded close and bit down on Liang Youhui’s lips, kissing and nipping at him while the rough stubble on his chin scraped across Liang with scorching possessiveness.
Liang Youhui made muffled “mmph-mmph” sounds as Xue Qian bit at him, yet his hands still roamed restlessly over Captain Xue, groping and rubbing him like a shameless brat begging to get fucked.
Xue Qian squeezed Liang Youhui’s handsome face and threatened, “Go ahead. Flirt one more time.”
You think I can’t tell you were spouting nonsense at those blond demons? I couldn’t be bothered arguing with you, and now you’re getting smug?
Liang Youhui grinned cheekily. “Good Brother, I won’t flirt anymore.”
Xue Qian reached down and grabbed Young Master Liang through his trousers. “Can’t hold back anymore?”
Liang Youhui quickly shook his head. “Brother hasn’t fired the starting gun yet. I’ve been obediently holding myself back.”
Xue Qian finally smiled, though it still looked like a sneer. “So tell me. Which one of us is bigger?”
Liang Youhui said brightly, “Who knows? Maybe one of us has gotten bigger. We haven’t seen each other in months, so let’s compare again?”
Xue Qian narrowed his eyes at him, clearly struggling to hold back, and leaned close to Liang Youhui’s face. “I can’t hold back either… Let’s compare again.”
……
Whenever Captain Xue’s rough, smoke-tinged voice let slip even one or two tempting words, heat immediately gathered below Liang Youhui’s belt.
They handed the jianbing cart over to the international students working temporary shifts, and Liang Youhui tugged Captain Xue toward home.
Xue Qian freed one arm and draped it around Young Master Liang. In a low voice he asked, “Where do you live? What street?”
Liang Youhui said, “Out of the beach park and two blocks over.”
Xue Qian said, “Good spot. Rent must be expensive.”
Liang Youhui nodded. “It isn’t cheap, but it’s convenient. Besides, if you run a food truck, you have to choose somewhere with plenty of customers. If you’re unwilling to pay for the location and the rent, you’ll never attract enough business.”
Xue Qian tilted his head and looked at Young Master Liang, then nodded too. He reached over and pinched Liang’s cheek, understanding now how hard the man had worked to build a life for himself in a foreign country.
The two walked with their arms around each other, shoulders pressed close, so wrapped up in each other that they stopped paying attention to the traffic lights and crossed even on red.
A light truck slammed on its brakes beside them and the driver rolled down his window to swear. Captain Xue glanced at the driver and made an apologetic gesture, then arrogantly pulled Young Master Liang close and planted a loud kiss on his face.
At last they were abroad, somewhere they could act freely without caring who saw them, and all the feelings they had suppressed for so long spilled out at once. No one on this foreign street knew either of them. Liang Youhui’s arm curled around Captain Xue, and his hand slid boldly from Xue’s waist down to his ass, daring to pat the tiger’s backside. Xue Qian shot him a threatening look. “Touch all you want. Keep count. However many times you do it, that’s how many rounds I’ll fuck you later.”
Liang Youhui shivered. “Oh my god, I’ve already touched you more than ten times! Brother, you’ll have to fuck me more than ten rounds today. I’ll keep count for you.”
Xue Qian: “…”
I’m gonna fuck you till you spring a leak today.