After O'Brien left, the café fell quiet.
Behind the counter, the young man with dreadlocks changed the music to Ray Charles's soothing "Georgia on My Mind." The low piano notes drifted through the afternoon light.
Darnell shuffled back with his plate. He'd gnawed the tomahawk steak down to the bone, and now he set the plate on the table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"So..."
He lowered his voice.
"You're really going to his house tomorrow?"
"Yeah."
"Are you really a Chinese student at Columbia University?"
"Maybe I am, maybe I'm not."
Lin An raised a hand to signal the server and pulled out a ten-dollar bill.
"One hot coffee, with milk and one sugar, please. The rest is your tip. Thanks."
The server hurried over, smiled at Lin An as he tucked the money into his order book, then hurried away.
Once the server was out of earshot, Darnell glanced around and lowered his voice even more.
"All right, bro, tell me what's going on with you. Who are you, exactly?"
"I don't know."
Lin An spread his hands. He had no memories of the person whose body he had taken over, so he really didn't know anything.
"The night you found me, I lost my memory. I didn't have any ID on me, either... Keep this secret for me."
"Of course!"
Darnell thumped his chest in assurance.
"I'm the most tight-lipped Ni Ge in all of New York. I..."
[This Ni Ge is going on and on. I don't think he's reliable.]
[Look on the bright side. Ni Ge are all like that. We can keep an eye out for the streamer.]
[I feel like the streamer has nothing to fear.]
[It's not that he's got nothing to fear. He's just like a dead pig that doesn't care about boiling water.]
The Bullet Screen cracked jokes, but Lin An didn't care in the least. He wasn't angry at all... These were the people who kept him fed and clothed. What was wrong with them teasing him a little?
Besides, they had a point. They weren't slandering him; he really was like that... He couldn't change even if he tried, so he might as well leave it at that.
"Sir, your hot coffee, with milk and one sugar. Can I get you anything else?"
Lin An picked up the coffee and took a sip. Its bitterness spread across the back of his tongue, with a hint of sourness.
"No, just the check."
"Certainly, sir."
[That cop from earlier was a little clueless. The streamer helped him save at least two grand, and he just ran off without paying.]
[He probably didn't think of it. He's over fifty and still patrolling the streets, the lowest rung in the department. Clearly, he has no people skills and doesn't know how to suck up to his superiors. Even if he arrests a ton of criminals, do you think he'll get promoted?]
[True.]
[People always say there's no office politics in America. In reality, if there's no office politics for you, it just means you're not worth playing politics over. You're a nobody.]
"Bro, since you don't have any ID..."
Darnell lowered his voice until it was barely more than a whisper.
"If you say you're a Chinese student at Columbia and the cops find out, could that get you in trouble?"
"I'll be fine."
When you're out in the world, you get to decide who you are. What was there to be afraid of?
Lin An was patient. Darnell looked much older than his age, but in truth, he was just an eighteen-year-old Black kid. He'd seen a bit of the world, but all his experience came from the streets.
He knew how to deal with other Black guys on the street, where he could shoplift without getting caught, which streets had broken cameras, and which neighborhoods the cops patrolled every fifteen minutes.
Those were the survival rules a kid raised on the streets of New York had learned over several years.
But Darnell couldn't know what it meant when an NYPD officer suddenly lost more than two thousand dollars.
He couldn't know that the "20% penalty" in an IRS CP2000 notice wasn't just a bill to a family earning less than fifty thousand dollars a year. It was a noose.
He couldn't know the helplessness a high school graduate felt when faced with words like "cost basis" and "1099-K"—when they were English, yet he couldn't understand a thing.
And he certainly couldn't know that in this capitalist country, a person's worth wasn't determined by what was written on their ID, but by how many problems they could solve that nobody else could.
If you could solve other people's problems, money and ID weren't problems.
And right now, Lin An could solve the officer's problem.
"He's a cop, bro."
Darnell's voice took on an almost pleading edge of anxiety.
"A cop, you get me? You did him a huge favor today, and he's grateful. What about tomorrow? The day after? What happens when he remembers to check your ID?"
Lin An set down his coffee. The cup clinked softly against its saucer.
"Do you think he'll check up on me?"
"I don't know if he will, but whether he can and whether he will are two different things..."
"Darnell." Lin An cut him off.
Darnell fell silent.
"Have you ever thought about..."
Lin An said.
"Why did he come to me today?"
"Because you helped him."
"Right. I helped him. But the question isn't whether I helped him. It's, 'Who else can help him besides me?'"
Darnell blinked.
"Do you know how much it costs to find a lawyer in New York who can handle this kind of tax problem?"
Lin An said.
"Five hundred dollars an hour, starting rate. And those lawyers won't tell him he can still get a refund. They'll tell him the case is complicated, that they need to look into it first, and that he has to pay a two-thousand-dollar retainer."
He paused.
"Can O'Brien afford that?"
Darnell was silent for a moment.
"No."
"So he's got two choices."
Lin An held up two fingers.
"Choice one: tough it out on his own, get fined by the IRS, have his wages garnished, end up on a credit blacklist, and maybe even lose his home. Choice two: come to me for free, and I'll solve his problem."
He lowered his fingers.
"Which one do you think he'll choose?"
"You, obviously."
"Exactly."
Lin An said.
"Why would he check up on me?"
Darnell opened his mouth, then closed it.
"He needs me."
Lin An's voice was calm.
"More than I need him. In this relationship, I'm the one with a solution, and he... is the one who's trapped. A trapped man doesn't bite the hand reaching out to pull him free."
A few comments drifted by on the Bullet Screen.
[That's cold, but it's true.]
[That's what they mean by "ability is identity." If you're useful, then your identity is real.]
[That's the essence of American society. If you can solve problems, you're legitimate. That piece of paper... it's for people who can't solve problems.]
[That's not necessarily true. What if he runs into a cop who's really strict?]
[In New York? A strict cop? Hahahaha!]
[Besides, O'Brien's NYPD, not ICE. He handles street crime, not immigration status.]
[Even if he knows Lin An is undocumented, so what? Lin An saved him at least two thousand dollars. What does two thousand dollars mean to a cop these days?]
[Do you think he'd turn Lin An in?]
[What's in it for him?]
[Nothing. Only trouble.]
[Once the problem is resolved, even if Lin An says he's an illegal immigrant, this cop won't arrest him. He'll try to help Lin An sort things out, and if he can't, he'll offer him shelter.]
[I make money as a landlord in America, and we're not even in the same world. I'm not afraid of you turning me in, so I'll tell you a secret.]
[In America, the people most likely to turn on you and show no gratitude are other Chinese immigrants, especially that crowd who cross through South America. They're the most selfish. Being near them makes me sick. The people most likely to be grateful and risk their lives for you out of gratitude are white people.]
[Bro, you sound like you've got experience.]
[I've had my guys shoot dead several white idiots who messed with my properties. Even when the FBI caught them, those hitmen knew they'd get the death penalty, but they still didn't give me up.]
[Why?]
[Because their families live in my houses. As long as I'm still in business, their families can keep living there. If I go down, their whole families go down too.]
[What about Black people?]
[Black people are loyal and will kill for loyalty, but they don't think things through, so things can go wrong.]
Darnell clearly hadn't considered that angle. He still looked anxious, but Lin An was so calm that Darnell trusted him and stopped pressing the issue.
But Darnell made up his mind: if things took the worst possible turn, he would run with his good bro.
No matter what, he wouldn't let the cops catch his bro.
Before you continue