Chapter 1 — Arriving
“How much longer should we wait for Lynn, dear?” Ting-lan asked.
Ting-lan stood outside a two story, brown shingled house with her husband, Kang and their two children, Shen and Luan. Like her husband, she had a slight Mandarin accent. Both were second generation Chinese Americans and picked up the accents from listening to their parent’s speak broken English at home. Thankfully, both children spoke fluent, accent free English and Chinese. At five-three, she was the shortest of the family and the only one who carried extra weight. Her daughter stood a couple inches taller and had the body of a ballet dancer. Ting-lan wasn’t fat, but had a fuller figure not uncommon with women in their mid-forties.
The sun was out and the smell of saltwater in the air. The roar of the ocean and hundreds of people at play came from beyond the house. To the left and right of the house were similar rectangular homes, either permanent vacation homes or more likely, rentals.
“If we had cell phones we could call her, Father,” Shen said. Like his father, he stood five-eleven and had a slender build, although age had filled out Kang’s frame whereas Shen looked like a strong wind would blow him away.
“I do not want to hear anymore about cell phones.” Kang glared at the green, white and red garage door. “I want you to paint over that this week.”
“What color, Father?”
“Confer with your mother. I only care that we no longer have the Italian flag on our new vacation home.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you suppose that is her car?” Ting-lan pointed at a Cadillac convertible with dealer plates and a temporary license taped to the back window.
“Mrs. Masterson drove a Pontiac when she showed us the house. Perhaps she bought a new car with her commission on the sale.” Kang turned to his son. “Check the front door, Shen.”
As Shen ran up the stairs to the front door, a man approached from the neighboring property. He was Caucasian and in his late thirties. He had the kind of build that looked like he’d played sports as a younger man, but now spent most of his time watching others play on television.
“Hello, I’m Jim Anderson,” Jim said with his hand outstretched toward Kang. “Are you the new neighbors?”
“I suppose we are,” Kang said as he shook Jim’s hand. “I’m Kang Huang. This is my wife, Ting-lan and my daughter, Luan. My son, Shen, will be rejoining us in a moment.”
“My wife and daughter are at the beach at the moment. I tell you, I am glad to see a family moving in to that house. We live here full time and that house has been the bane of our existence for the last couple summers. All summer long it is one non-stop party. Loud music, drugs, sex, you name it. We were thinking of moving, but then we’d heard that the place had sold and it wouldn’t be a rental anymore.”
“It is our vacation home and we are not the party types.”
“The front door is unlocked, Father,” Shen said as he rejoined the family.
“It was nice to meet you, Mr. Anderson. We will have your family over for dinner once we are settled.” Kang watched Jim depart and then said, “Everyone grab something from the car. Let’s see our new home.”
Ting-lan whispered in her husband’s ear.
“Oh yes. Luan, close your eyes and follow your mother.”
“I’ve already seen pictures of the house. It won’t be a surprise.”
Kang eyes narrowed. “Do as you are told, Luan.”
Luan shrank under her father’s glare. “Yes, Father.”
Luan took her mother’s hand and followed her up the steps and into the house. After being led around a couple corners her mother stopped, placed her hands on Luan’s shoulders and turned her body 90 degrees to the left.
“You may open your eyes, Luan,” Kang said.
A giant red bow sat on top of a black, Yamaha baby grand piano.
“Happy birthday, angel,” Ting-lan said.
“It’s beautiful!” Luan squealed. She hugged her father and then her mother. “I can’t believe you bought me a piano for our vacation home.”
“We know how much your music means to you and we didn’t want your vacation to be a torture,” Kang said.
Luan flipped open the keyboard lid and ran her fingers over the pearly white keys. “I want to play it right away.”
“We need to unload the car first,” Kang said.
“And then we’ll need to get started on dinner,” Ting-lan added.
“Is it all right if we have a tour of the house first?” Shen asked.
“That is a marvelous idea,” Ting-lan said. “We can decide on what furniture, if any, we will be keeping. A lot of it will go straight to the trash, starting with that.” Ting-lan pointed at a plastic phone in the shape of a duck.
Besides the large living room the house had a large kitchen, a dining area, six bedrooms, three bathrooms, and two large decks. The floors were all hardwood as were the walls. It was also furnished with a lot of tacky décor, mostly Italian or nautical themed items.
It was on the back deck that they finally found the missing real estate agent. She was in the eight-person hot tub, having her own little party. She had a drink in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. A pack of cigarettes and a half empty bottle of tequila sat on a small bench within arm’s reach. An empty bottle of Absolute lay on the floor of the deck. A beige pantsuit and sensible women’s lingerie draped over a lawn chair. Several glossy shopping bags with the name “One of a Kind Lady” and silhouettes of well proportioned women, sat next to the chair. In the distance the ocean and parts of the white Jersey beach were visible.
“Welcome to Seaside Heights!” Lynn shouted as she stood and shook out her long black hair. She wore a pink, string bikini that strained to accommodate her breasts and plump posterior. “How do you like your new house?”
“What is the meaning of this, Mrs. Masterson?” Kang said. His annoyance at the presumption of the realtor to use his property without permission, took a back seat to his shock over her new look. The slender Caucasian woman he’d met last month when he and Ting-lan first visited the property had been replaced by a woman desperately trying to recapture her youth. It appeared that inside of a single month she’d had her hair dyed black, spent thousands augmenting her breasts and buttocks through surgery, and spent every day in a tanning bed.
“What have you done to your body, Mrs. Masterson?” Ting-lan asked.
“I decided to get a makeover. My husband left me for some young, dumb bitch and I figured if you can’t beat them you might as well join them.” Lynn stepped out of the hot tub, took a deep drag on her cigarette and wobbled to her shopping bags. “I got all new clothes, too. Check out this dress.” Lynn held up tiny piece of sparkling black spandex.
“Please extinguish that cigarette, Mrs. Masterson,” Kang said. “I was unaware that you smoked otherwise I would have informed you that we do not allow smoking on our property.”
“Yeah, the smoking is a recent thing, so are the boobs.” Lynn hefted her breasts and smiled. “Can you hand me that towel?” she asked Shen as she pointed to a towel less than three feet away.
Shen picked up the towel. “Here you go, Mrs. Masterson.”
“Call me Lady-L. It’s my new name. Can you be a big sweetie and help dry me?”
Ting-lan pulled her son away from the shapely real estate agent. “Please give us the house keys. You may dry yourself out here and then come inside and change your clothes.”
“Okey-dokey.” Lynn reached into the pocket of her pantsuit, removed a set of keys and handed them to Kang.
While Kang and Shen unloaded the car and Lynn Masterson changed in one of the first floor bedrooms, Ting-lan and Luan familiarized themselves with their new kitchen.
“Will Shen have classes with you or Father?” Luan asked.
“He may end up in my economics 101 class, but he’ll have to wait until third year to have one of your father’s classes,” Ting-lan said. “Even then your father’s graduate students teach most of his computer science courses these days, one of the benefits of full professorship. We lowly associate professors still have to teach our own classes.”
“If I go to Princeton I hope I have one of your classes.”
“Hopefully you will be at Julliard, studying music.” Ting-lan opened a drawer and made a face. “We will be throwing out all of these kitchen utensils. It looks like some of these were never washed.”
“Will we eat out while we’re here?”
“Of course not. The food they serve in restaurants these days is vile, full of chemicals and fats.” Ting-lan pulled the drawer out and dumped its contents into a black garbage bag. She then handed Luan a pair of yellow, rubber gloves. “I want every surface in the kitchen scoured before we even think about bringing any food in here.”
“We’re on vacation, you know,” Luan said with a snotty tone.
“Do not let your father hear you talk to me in such a fashion, young lady. You may be old enough to vote, but that does not mean that you are too old for a spanking.”
“Yes, Mother.” Picking up a sponge and a 409 spray bottle, Luan got to work.
By time Kang and Shen had the car completely unloaded, Ting-lan and Luan had started making dinner and Lynn Masterson had finally emerged from the bedroom. She wore the sparkly spandex dress which barely covered her ass or tits. In addition to the tiny dress she wore a pair of platform heels, hoop earrings that brushed her shoulders, a half pound of makeup and so much perfume that people on the far side of the boardwalk could probably smell it. Despite that, Kang still invited her to join them for the family meal.
“Oh, that’s so sweet, but I need to get to Adrenaline Tattoos. I want to get some work done before I hit the clubs tonight. I want to look sweet for all those fine, sexy guidos.” She minced over to Shen. “What do you think about ‘Lady L’ in cursive right here?” Lynn dragged a long fingernail across her chest, just above her ample cleavage. When no reply came she pulled a card out of her purse and handed it to him. “Call me after you’ve spent some time in the hot tub and we can hook up.”
Shen slipped the card in his pocket as Lynn wiggled her way out the front door. Ting-lan snapped her fingers. Shen placed the card in his mother’s outstretched hand.
After dinner Luan was finally able to play her new piano. After a few warm up exercises to loosen up her fingers and verify that the piano had been properly tuned, she launched into Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G Major. Ting-lan sat on the other side of the room, proofing an economics journal for Harvard University Press, lying up against her husband while he reviewed his notes for an upcoming meeting with Princeton’s board of regents. Shen was rereading “War and Peace”. Other than Ting-lan occasionally interrupting Luan to point out a mistake in her playing no one spoke for the next hour.
After quiet time, the family changed into their matching Tai Chi outfits, white cotton pants and long black cotton jackets. When their father led them outside and toward the beach, both Shen and Luan were horrified.
“We’ll look like stereotypes,” Luan whispered to her brother. “A Chinese family practicing martial arts in matching outfits.
“Can’t we do Tai Chi by the hot tub, Father?” Shen asked. “There is more than enough room up on the deck and it has a view of the ocean.”
“Do not ask questions to which you already know the answer. A connection to the chi of the earth is a vital part of the exercise.”
As they exited the house Luan pulled her hair back and used a rubber band to create a pony tail. Her black hair fell to her shoulder blades and had a tendency to flip into her face when doing Tai Chi. While Luan liked her long hair she sometimes thought that it would be nice to wear it short like her mother. Ting-lan’s hair barely touched her shoulders.
When the Huang family walked onto the crowded boardwalk, Luan’s fears were realized. Several people pointed at the family and a couple people even laughed. They made their way onto the beach and found an area not occupied by people lying on beach towels, playing volleyball, throwing Frisbees or generally showing off their bodies. Luan and the rest of the Huang family had never understood the desire to lie on a beach for hours on end, doing nothing except increase the chances of skin cancer.
As Kang led them through a session of Tai Chi, Luan had to admit that the beach was a nice location despite the audience. The warm sand felt great on her feet as the sun warmed her face. She ignored the people around her and concentrated on breathing in the fresh, ocean air. They were nearly finished with their workout when a group came upon them that were impossible to ignore.
“Joey, check out Mulan,” a muscular man in his early twenties yelled. He was shirtless, deeply tanned, and had glistening, black hair. Tribal tattoos circled both arms. “You can karate chop me any time, sweetheart.”
“When you get sick of Dim Sum you can try out my Italian sausage,” Joey said who was just as muscular and tan as his buddy.
“Leave the chink girl alone, Gino,” a young woman said. She had her raven hair piled high on her head and wore a black bikini that barely covered her artificial breasts.
“Gia’s right,” said another young woman in a nasal whine. She too had a fake tan to go along with her fake boobs. “Besides, I’m hungry and you promised me a dinner at Fabio’s”
“Give it a rest, Adriana,” Gino said as he glared at his companion. “We’ll eat when I say.”
Shen stopped following his father’s movements and stepped toward Gino. “You need to apologize to my sister.”
“I don’t need to do nothing, chop sticks,” Gino slammed his chest into Shen’s and knocked him down. Although Shen was a few inches taller, Gino had him in weight and all of it from sculpted muscles.
Ting-lan ran over to Shen and helped him stand. “Please do not fight.”
“You better step off, mama-chan,” Adriana said as she pulled a cigarette from her purse. “Gino’s been spoiling for a fight all day and he’s always wanted to go up against someone who knows chopsocky.”
Luan raced to Joey and then pushed on his chest. “Leave my brother alone. We don’t want any trouble.”
“Give Joey a kiss and we’ll leave you guys alone,” Gino said.
“Give Joey a kiss and I’ll kick your slant-eyed ass, bitch.” Gia stepped forward, her face an inch from Luan’s.
“That is enough,” Kang said. “There will be no fighting. Ting-lan, Shen, Luan step back.”
Ting-Lan and her children stepped away from the trouble makers.
“There’s going to be a fight, old man,” Joey said. “If you want to get your ass kicked instead Hop Sing Jr., it’s fine with us.”
Kang stood silently, his hands at his sides, his feet shoulder width apart.
“If that’s how you want it,” Gino said and then threw a punch straight at Kang’s nose.
The punch didn’t land. He threw another and Kang dodged that one as well. Kang’s body barely moved as he avoided every punch that Gino threw. When Joey got into the act Kang got a whole lot more animated, leaping, twisting and even rolling to avoid their fists. A crowd began to form.
“Fuck this shit,” Gia said as she removed a small black tube from her purse.
“Look out, Father,” Luan yelled as a jet of liquid flew from the device in Gia’s hand and into Kang’s face.
“You want some too, bitch?” Gia said as she pointed the pepper spray at Luan.
Kang’s hands shot to his face and Gino landed a punch. Kang went down and then Joey kicked him. Shen ran forward to help his father just as a police siren wailed from the boardwalk. Joey and his crew looked to the sound and then ran down the beach in the opposite direction. A half a minute later a uniformed policeman ran after the group as another stopped and checked on Kang.
“Are you all right sir? Do you need medical attention?”
“I will be fine. Please go help your fellow officer.”
“Stay here, we will need a statement.” The policeman ran after his partner.
Shen helped his father to a sitting position. Although Kang tried to hide it, Shen could tell that he was in pain.
“Perhaps medical attention would be wise, dear,” Ting-lan said as she knelt next to her husband, her face twisted with worry.
“It is nothing that a good night’s sleep will not cure, my love.”
A few minutes later another set of police arrived and took everyone’s statement. Afterwards the family was led to a police van where Gino and Joey sat with their hands handcuffed behind their backs.
“Are these the gentlemen who assaulted you, sir?” the police officer asked Kang.
“I do not wish to press charges, officer,” Kang said.
“We do not need you to press charges, sir. We just need you to answer the question truthfully.”
“Yes officer, the gentleman on the left punched me and the one on the right kicked me in the ribs.”
The family returned home and Shen helped his father to his bedroom. Kang’s eye was swollen and he clutched his left side. Ting-lan filled a couple plastic bags with ice, placed one on Kang’s face and the other on his ribs.
“Mother, I would like to go down the boardwalk to do some shopping,” Luan said.
“I do not want you out there with those ruffians,” Ting-lan said.
“I need a swim suit for tomorrow. The one I have no longer fits well.”
“Your mother has spoken, Luan.”
“Yes, Father,” Luan said, looking at the ground.
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