The Glint of the Luopan

Chapter 4

Can I help you with something?"

Suresh was standing in front of the sink, rinsing the cauliflower. The first man who had ever cooked for me. The linoleum floor was clean and smooth, things were arranged neatly on the shelves. He wanted everything in order and he wanted the woman to stay out of the kitchen.

"No no, will you sit down, please? Just be my guest. Take a fruit from the basket if you're hungry." He shooed me away.

I took an orange, but only to roll it between my hands and sniff my palms afterwards. I was in a playful mood. I got down on my knees and placed my head on the counter separating the kitchen from the living room, rolling the orange next to it. Only after a while, Suresh turned around and saw my head lying on the counter like a big coconut.

He grinned. "Well, you are some interesting fruit." He held up his knife as if he was about to split my head in half. I quickly pulled it back.

"No, this one, you won't get."

"I know. You're a tough nut to crack."

"Am I?" I smiled innocently. I knew that coconuts sometimes traveled long distances by water, just letting themselves be taken along by the stream. Suddenly, I wished I could do this with my head as well, just letting it drop down into some river or ocean that would transport it to some lonely island. Or back to my family.

"By the way, you can put on some music if you want to." He pointed to the laptop on his small desk.

I searched myself on Spotify and picked out some not too emotional songs.

"So, what was this thing you wanted to tell me about work? Where you screwed up?"

He half-turned towards me. "Oh, well. I had to do this presentation and, as I told you, I started preparing half an hour in advance. So, it was kind of shitty."

He kept moving around the mushrooms in the frying pan, sometimes scratching his head so that his dark curls twitched. I felt the strong urge to run my fingers through them.

"I'm so happy that I don't have to work a corporate job. It would be the death of me." At least that's what I imagined, after all, I had never had such a job.

"And how do you support yourself?"

"Well, I'm getting a disability pension because of the accident I had." I took a long breath. "And orphan's pension."

Suresh stopped stirring the pan, staring straight ahead for one moment.

"So, you're an orphan? I thought that you had a dad."

"It's complicated." I cleared my throat. "My mother died when I was very young. As to my dad, he...well, as you know, he's not in my life right now. Half-orphan's pension."

"So, half of a Charles Dickens' character, I guess." He turned all the way around. "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to say that. You must have a difficult life."

"Oh well. At least it's given me the means to lead a pretty independent life." I was amazed myself that I managed so well on my own.

"Right, which brings me to the question, where will we begin to search?" His eyes twinkled. He was certainly enjoying being an amateur PI. "These days, I think that he would have left more traces on the internet than in the outside world. So, I could access some U.S. databases for you if you want. Chinese ones too, but you have to help me with the language. You can speak Chinese now, right?" Cheekily, he stuck out his tongue.

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, yes, I'm on it, I'm learning it."

Suresh turned around again and tended to his cooking. "You know, my dad was never physically absent, but he never really was present in my life either. Ever since that accident I had when I was a kid, things seemed to be off. Like, we were out of tune."