“I have you.”
“There are a couple of reasons why that won’t work.”
The Burmese PI found himself glancing out his window as he calmed his eyebrow tick. The covered market was visible below. It would be difficult to get much in the way of travel expenses on this job, and he was thinking how best to increase his rate as compensation.
Calvino waited for a reply, thinking Naing Aung was running manpower estimates through his head.
“I have a friend who can watch the back,” Naing Aung finally said.
“I want to meet him.”
Calvino wondered if Naing Aung had picked up from Perry Mason or Sherlock Holmes the idea that watching the back of a market was not nearly as important as having someone watching your back.
As he looked out the window, Naing Aung found a solution to his problem sitting at a roadside table drinking tea.
“I will introduce you to my colleague.”
Calvino smiled. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
Naing Aung, a head shorter than Calvino, walked beside his new client, greeting shopkeepers and vendors as they edged their way down 27th Street. Skynet TV dishes angled out from third and fourth-floor balconies. A Muslim with a white skullcap and white cotton shirt and trousers, his beard flecked with gray, shook Naing Aung’s hand as they passed.
“My colleague is from America,” he said. “Mr. Calvino.
“Will the American buy my sweets? It is my dream.”
The Muslim made a sweeping gesture with his hand at a large glass case filled with candies. His gold-framed glasses rested heavily on his nose. Calvino thought the vendor was going to start talking about his dreams too when a taxi honked, edging forward slowly to clear a path among schoolchildren walking two and three abreast toward the main road.
Moving on, the two men passed several lottery vendors. “Moe Yan Lottery Enterprises” was painted on a sign hanging in front of one of the shops, the white frame chipped along the edges. The pitch was the same as at every shop: “Make yourself a billionaire.” Not a dollar billionaire, but a kyat billionaire, and that was a wholly different scale of wealth. Every other shop was a lottery shop. The signs promised a way out of poverty.
“My clients ask for lucky lottery numbers. They dream of a number and phone me to ask if it is lucky.”
“Do they ever win?”
“You don’t need to win to believe. All believers are winners. This is the wisdom of our fathers.”
Naing Aung had managed to sum up the whole machinery of astrology and religion without the hint of an eyebrow tic. To give him credit, thought Calvino, he did seem to believe that what he said was true.
Opposite the Hindu temple on 27th Street, four lottery shops competed for customers. In the lottery trade, a shop positioned opposite a temple presented the faithful with a gateway to test their good fortune. Naing Aung is right, Calvino thought. Belief in luck is powerful—and good business.
The Burmese PI walked slowly as he explained about Khin Myat, the man Calvino had seen him staring at through the window. Eight years of working as a freelance journalist in New York, taking translating jobs here and there, had given Khin Myat time to witness how the truly rich in America lived—though it was mainly from TV that he knew them. He’d taken an American wife, who worked as a refugee counselor for an NGO—that’s how they’d met—and they had settled in Queens. Her much larger income had supported him after they married.
Sarah—that was his wife’s name—had ended up dumping him for a union official she’d met at an Occupy Wall Street protest. Sarah had told Khin Myat that she was washing her hands of refugees—too much baggage. Khin Myat had found a job at Walmart spying on shoplifters and worked double shifts, building up lots of overtime.
Poor Khin Myat hadn’t seen it coming, that this wife would leave him. Sooner or later she’d get bored with her union official—Naing Aung had consoled his friend with this thought many times. Wives changed… governments, too. Khin Myat read about the political changes in Burma and went to a travel agent and charged a one-way ticket to Rangoon to his wife’s Visa card. He’d confided in Naing Aung—or so the latter told Calvino—that he’d rather slam against a brick wall as his own master than scan security-camera feeds in Walmart for the rest of his life.
Naing Aung guided Calvino past several storefronts. Squeezed between the lottery shops was a roadside café with wooden tables, red plastic chairs and locals drinking tea and eating sweets and fruit. Naing Aung greeted another young Burmese man dressed in blue jeans and a New York Mets T-shirt. He turned to introduce Calvino, but before he could open his mouth, Khin Myat turned to Calvino with a handful of lottery tickets.
“How many do you want?”
Shock crossed Naing Aung’s face like someone watching a car about to smash into a crazy monk on a pedestrian crossing. He gestured with both hands, waving them at Khin Myat.
“What?” asked Khin Myat, trying to read his friend’s lips. “No lottery ticket? Okay.”
Khin Myat shook his head as he laid the tickets on a table. He registered his defeat by drinking from his teacup. Naing Aung glanced sheepishly at Calvino to resume his introduction.
“Mr. Calvino, meet my good friend and colleague Khin Myat. He lived in New York. He was born on a Monday.”
“I was born in New York on a Tuesday,” said Calvino, smiling as he extended his hand.