Excerpt

Fourth: Firescape

The sun was shining the day I first saw Firescape.

It was chun jie. I think this is significant if for no other reason than, at that time of year, Embarcadero gets less sun than the North Pole. I never been to the North Pole, but I got the Wiz's word on it. Where I been, lo, these many years, is here, and I can count on one hand the Spring Festivals in which I haven't just about chattered the teeth right out of my head.

The big event of chun jie is the parade. It's a long parade that winds all along the Wharf and the Sang Yee Gah for hours, then ends up in the Gee Gah around sunset, where it sort of crumbles into a big block party. Then there are fireworks and bonfires and dancing and mountains of food.

Pandemonium. Chaos. That's the chun jie. Doug likes it—the noise, the people milling, the smells. When he was just a shrub, we'd watch from this second floor flat over the Gee Gah where I sometimes overnighted when I didn't feel up to dragging my tail back to the Farm after a day downtown. I'd sit in the window casing and Doug'd perch out on the fire escape in his little clay pot while the sun went down and the fireworks went up and the whole universe paraded by underneath.

Later on, he liked to be right down in it, which is hao with me—just fine, you know—'cause Doug'd gotten bigger and that new brass pot Kaymart got him was nothing I'd be yearning to haul up a flight of busted stairs and out a window.

So this particular year, we're mingling with the universe and tailing the parade through the Sang Yee Gah when I feel this sort of tugging at my immortal soul.

I look to Doug, naturally, 'cause usually this means he has a message of import for me. But he's just soaking up chun jie with his boughs waving and his needles all quivering in the thrill of it all. (Which, since I asked, he's intimated to me he enjoys because it reminds him of the frisky winds that blow up the slopes of Mount Diablo. How he knows this, I don't savvy, since I am not Tree.)

Anyway, I get, right off, that this tugging at my immortal soul is not of Doug and I glance around to see where it might originate. And that is when I see Firescape for the first time. She is standing next to a baozi wagon along the parade route waiting for a taste of the wares. I suspect her stare—which, as I glance at her, goes someplace else—was the source of the tugging at my immortal soul.

And why should she stare at me? I'm no great shakes to look at, let me tell you, unless you happen to like small, dark and stringy. But I am in company with a venerable Radio Flyer and Doug, and I am aware that any guy dragging a red wagon with a Tree in it attracts attention, even here.

She-who-is-no-longer-staring-at-me is a vision in black and red. Black silk quilted jacket with red collar and cuffs, black silk quilted leggings with red leather hi-tops. An assault weapon hangs jauntily from one shoulder.

The vendor hands her a paper-wrapped bao into which she bites delicately, then wipes her chin on the back of one dainty hand. This gives her the opportunity to glance at us again without seeming to.

She is a China-doll, her flower-face golden, her eyes like tear-drop chips of dark amber. But unlike any of the hundreds of Chinese girls I've seen along the Sang Yee Gah, her hair is the color of October trees—a shade of red you see only once a year.

I am smitten. So smitten, Kipling pops into my head, courtesy of Archaic Literature 101, Professor Lombard Street instructing: San Francisco, Kipling said, is a mad city—inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people whose women are of a remarkable beauty.

My heart sighs. Mr. Kipling said a mouthful.

A breeze stirs and Doug brushes my hand with a scented bough. I am urged to cross the street and meet this vision. I look for an opportunity and see one—there, between the dragon boat and the Dog of Heaven.

I manage to get me, my wagon and my Tree through the parade and across the street. I get yelled at, and some firecrackers go off right under the wagon, but we make it.

Too late. The red-haired Chinese girl is gone, red hi-tops, assault rifle and all.

I feel like a deflated balloon. Then I have the hopeful thought that the vendor might know the girl.

"What girl?" he says.

"Ninja-girl in black and red. Red hair. You just now sold her a bao."

The vendor shrugs. "I sell lots of baos."

"Not to red-haired Chinese girls carrying AKs, I'll bet not."

"Why you wanna know, chico?" the vendor asks, suspicious-like.

Honesty, I decide, is the best policy. "I'm smitten," I say.

"What the hell's that—smitten?"

I blush. "I think she's neon. Number one jade."

He laughs. "You jingbing, chico. She's King's Guard. Colonel, by the pips on her uni."

My heart beats a little faster. I have tumbled at first gander for a Colonel of the King's elite knighties. What a ditz. I might as well have fallen for a goddess…