Throne Read Online Free Page A

already being stripped and cleaned by the cooks, and Chang and Mrs. Peng were seated in the back corner, going over accounts, eagerly summing up the day’s income.
    Leaning forward on her elbows, looking past the lucky cat sculpture and the little bowls of toothpicks and mints, Maya stared out the large front window at the narrow street beyond. It was, what, one in the morning? Still people wandered the street, looking like lost ghosts plunging through the column of vapor that came up from the manhole on the far pavement. Two taxis jostled by, yellow like fresh turmeric, and somewhere a siren was wailing. New York, the city of singing sirens.
    Meimei stopped next to her, hands crossed over her chest, eying her last table with disdain. “Go home,” she said to them. “Go home already, ai ya .”
    Maya stifled a yawn and looked up at Meimei’s face. Wide like the moon, pale and fringed with straight black hair, Meimei was never going to grace movie posters. But it was a kind face, and that meant more than anything. Maya smiled a lazy, incorrigible smile, and bumped her hip into the other waitress. “Five dollars and I’ll get rid of them for you right now.”
    “Oh?” asked Meimei, “And how do you do that?”
    “I have my secrets. But you must deal with Mrs. Peng after, okay?”
    “No,” said Meimei, “you crazy? I want to live to see twenty one!”
    “Ha,” said Maya, turning her gaze back to the outside world. “And what will you do when you are twenty one? You will just work work work, more more more.”
    “So?” asked Meimei, “Why? What will you do?” An old conversation this, a smile on Meimei’s face.
    “Me? You think I’m still going to be here when I’m twenty one? Ha! Soon as I can afford it or find a way, I’m leaving and finding my parents,” said Maya, voice suddenly fierce and she repeated her mantra. “Senora Mercedes—my aunt—says that they’re in jail. So I’ll find out where and hire a lawyer. No more New York, no more working like an animal, no more Mrs. Peng!”
    “No more Mrs. Peng?” asked an arch voice like dried beetle husks rubbing together, and Maya snapped up and turned around to look upon her employer. Mrs. Peng was a doll of a woman, hair done up in a tight bun speared by twin ornamental chopsticks, face a work of art, composed of makeup so thick Maya could have gouged canyons through the caked foundation. Mrs. Peng was the stuff of nightmares. Had been in several of Maya’s, crawling towards her through the darkness of her crowded bedroom, black blood pouring from her mouth, hair floating around her tiny head as if she were drowned.
    “Then you not want your pay,” said Mrs. Peng, amused for once.
    “Oh, no, I’m sorry, I mean, please,” said Maya. Mrs. Peng had withheld her pay before. This was no idle teasing.
    “Here then, forty-four dollars,” she said, and placed two twenties and four singles in her hand.
    “Forty-four? But I’ve been here since ten! I should have ninety!”
    Chang stepped up behind Mrs. Peng, whose smile had only grown wider, “Chang say he catch you not working many times today. You not work, you not get paid. Very simple.”
    Maya shot a furious look up at where Chang beamed down at her, and forced the words that came tumbling up her throat back into the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t argue. For every Maya working in a restaurant there were another ten standing outside in the cold, looking to get in. And then what would she tell Senora Mercedes?
    Mrs. Peng watched her with a knowing smile. The moment passed, and with a nod she turned to Meimei and handed over her wages. Chang was already drifting back to the kitchen, a smirk on his face, leaving Maya alone by the cash register. Fatigue pressed down on her slender shoulders like a heavy hand, trying to make her knees buckle, to bow her head, to push her down to the ground. The cooks’ laughter from the kitchen, the lilting strains of Chinese music from the tinny speakers,