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Chinese from America would look like.
    I lounge in bed, staring at the wall, trying to picture Gordon Lou. He must be around Father’s age, mid-fifties. Maybe he wears glasses, just like Father did. But his glasses would come with a chic, "MADE IN USA" frame, unlike Father’s old, broken pair he had worn throughout the decade of the Cultural Revolution. But what would a pair of American eyeglasses look like? Suddenly I remember the American who visited China when I was a teenager -- Henry Kissinger. He wore thick-rimmed glasses that made him look like a curly-haired panda. Is it possible that Gordon Lou looks like Henry Kissinger, only with a Chinese face?
    I chuckle at the absurdity of my thoughts. No matter what Father’s old schoolmate looks like, something in my life is going to change. I hope for the better.
     

2 Gordon Lou: Gentleman Avenger
     
    “ Time’s running out, Mr. Lou,” the senior associate at Sachs & Klein warned me on the phone yesterday. Corporate Department partner Tabor Wilcox is himself involved in my deal with the people in China. How else could these shysters justify $200 per hour in fees? “It’s all in the fine print, Mr. Lou,” the guy said. Right. I do understand that the twice-redlined Purchase Agreement with Shanghai has to be finalized now, or my trip there will be postponed. As I sit studying the draft, I notice the red light blinking on the phone. Lotus again. One of these days, I'm going to fire that pest. "What now?" I ask on the speakerphone.
    A voice as low as a mosquito buzz comes through, hardly her usual coquettish tone. "Eh-ks-cuse me, Sir, two gentlemen are here to see you. Shuu … should I direct them to your office?"
    She never calls me "Sir." I pick up the receiver. "Where are they from?"
    Lotus hesitates. I can see her watery, lychee eyes roll as she searches for the right words. "Downtown," she murmurs.
    "You mean the fellow from Sachs & Klein’s office on Wall Street?"
    "No, but I think you better see them," she whispers.
    IRS? FBI? City Hall? Who the hell are they? For the first time in a long while, indeed since I considered myself having "made it in America," I feel I have no choice. "Send'em in, then."
    I thrust the document into the brown folder by my foot and push the tiger-head bookends together to straighten the books on the teapoy. Larger Than Life , a biography of Armand Hammer, sits beside Iacocca: An Autobiography , a current bestseller of the man who revived Chrysler. And there is my favorite, the blue cloth-covered, string-bound edition of The Analects of Confucius .
    The Chippendale mahogany desk shows my reflection: elbows on the edge of the desk, chin resting on my locked fingers. To my far left is a bronze bust of my guiding light Confucius, the phone, a picture of my daughter, Irene, taken shortly before she dropped out of Gotham U. in her junior year, and a paperweight -- a gold-plated statuette of a dragon encased in crystal, a custom-made gift from my deceased wife, Marlene.
    Irene was born in New York in 1964, the Chinese Year of the Dragon. We gave her the middle name Long , for dragon. It hurts me to think that she never uses it. She's American, she has told me more than once, not Chinese. She's no dragon lady, but a flower girl, as in Flower Children. The way she is now, I’d call her a junkie. Her only Father's Day present since her coming of age is the sign "MAKE LOVE, NOT PROFITS". It's buried somewhere in my desk drawer. I cherish the thought that at least she occasionally thinks of me, but I hate the message. Oh, well …
    The marble and brass table lamp with three candelabra sits to the left of me. The Columbia University seal is embossed on the gray parchment shade facing the visitor. Facing me, however, is the seal of St. John’s University, the most prestigious school in pre-Communist Shanghai. I had Lotus find a Chinatown craftsman to mount the famous of my Alma Mater: “Light & Truth.” It reminds me my Chinese roots and my