Chinese Cooking for Diamond Thieves Read Online Free Page B

found what seemed like the most comfortable places to be and had been still for a while. I could tell from the sound of her voice that she’d pulled the bag up around her head.
    â€œBe a clear violation of the rules,” I said.
    â€œRules?”
    â€œI have some rules,” I said. “They’re pretty dependable.”
    â€œWhich rule covers this?” she asked. She’d sat up.
    â€œNumber three,” I said, rolling over. “Rule Number Three is that incredibly beautiful, exotic Asian babes are almost never psycho ax murderers.”
    â€œOh,” she said. She lay back down. It was quiet, except for the rumbling engines of the trucks in the lot beside us and another going by on the highway right then that changed gears with a throaty growl.
    â€œI’m curious about what Rules Number One and Two might be,” she said.
    â€œStick around,” I said. I rolled back again and faced the door handle and closed my eyes. I’d figured, with the combination of the truck noise, the sodium lights in the parking lot casting sickly yellow shadows, and the oddness of having a complete stranger lying next to me, that it would take time to go to sleep. I was wrong.
    I woke up to a truck horn blasting and, simultaneously, the sun coming up just enough to edge over the side of the car and hit me right in the eyes. I tried to burrow deeper into my parka. My arms had twisted around and wadded it, and it wouldn’t go any higher. I kicked around a couple of times before giving up and rolling over onto my back. She was already awake, sitting up, looking at the frosted interior of the windshield. All the windows in the car were covered in an icy rime. It was the view beer must have from inside a frosted mug.
    â€œExotic?” she said.
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œLast night you described me as—I think I am quoting you correctly here—an ‘incredibly beautiful, exotic Asian babe.’”
    â€œSo you’re objecting to ‘exotic’ but not to the other stuff?” I asked.
    â€œI did find the ‘Asian babe’ reference to be simultaneously sexist and racist,” she said.
    â€œI can’t tell you how deeply sorry I am,” I said. “I’m very poor at apologizing for the inherent racism of my breed. I can only blame it on our natural genetic superiority.”
    â€œYeah,” she said. She rubbed her face with both hands and pulled her hair back. It was longer and a glossier black than it had seemed last night. “Whatever.”
    â€œDid you sleep okay?” I asked her.
    She nodded. “You?”
    â€œI tossed and turned a little bit,” I said. “I was trying to figure out how you could use an ax to castrate someone.”
    â€œLikely there would be a lot of collateral damage in the process.”
    â€œI prefer not to think about it,” I said. “I’d rather think about breakfast.”
    She polished the window on her side of the car with her fist, clearing a little, golf ball–size hole through some of the frost. She peered out.
    â€œI’m guessing room service is out of the question,” she said.
    We opened the doors and stiffly stepped outside. It hadn’t gotten any warmer. The morning air was so sharp it seemed brittle. Our exhalations exploded in clouds of steam. The snow and sleet had stopped. There was just a dirty white crust on the ground. I could see a long hump of snow out on the side of the highway. The plows must have come through while we slept. There was a kink in my neck that wasn’t going away soon, and a sore spot on my right hip where I’d laid on the loose seat belt buckle part of the night. I had never spent the night in a car. I wasn’t looking forward to doing it again.
    â€œThink this part of the New Hampshire interstate might have some places where we can get a bowl of
zhou
and a side of crispy
youtiao?
” I asked her. The thought of a classic Chinese