The Year of the Crocodile Read Online Free PDF Page B

you do everything this fast, no wonder you don’t want to have an orgy on film. It would be embarrassing for you.”
    Adam Reynolds looks over at her. “Shut the fuck up and admit you like my cake.”
    She frowns at it. “Edible, I suppose.”
    My father shakes his head. “Never get involved in a land war with Hong Mei,” he says, “when cake is on the line.”
    Adam gives him a flat stare. “So it comes to this. I will eat the piece in front of me. You will eat the piece in front of you.”
    Funny. I knew when they met there would be a nuclear explosion. I just didn’t realize that they would end up laughing and mangling Princess Bride after the radiation had dissipated.
    By the end of the night, my dad is doing shots with Adam Reynolds. Adam is deemed not quite sober enough to drive, and when he talks about getting a car, my mother makes shocked noises.
    â€œA total waste of money,” she says in disbelief. “We have a perfectly good couch. Stay here.”
    No fucking way will he accept, I’m thinking.
    He accepts.
    Adam Reynolds. Multibillionaire. Sleeping on my parents’ couch. My mom gets him blankets; my dad finds him an extra toothbrush and a pair of sweats that will undoubtedly be too loose at the waist and too short in the leg.
    We are all about to head off to bed.
    â€œHey,” Adam says. “Tina. Blake. Mabel.”
    Blake and I stop, hand in hand.
    Adam is still in jeans and a T-Shirt. He gives me a goofy smile. I would never have guessed that Adam Reynolds would be silly when he’s drunk.
    But he stands up and rummages in the computer bag that he brought with him. “I have these.”
    He pulls out a handful of red envelopes.
    My breath sucks in. One of the things about being young and Chinese—particularly if, like me, you grew up with very little money—is that you learn to be mercenary at the lunar new year. It’s traditional for adults to give red envelopes to children. The theory is that what they give away will come back to them over the course of the year.
    Everyone we know is like us: varying degrees of struggling. That means that the red envelopes I once collected usually had a dollar in them, maybe ten if it was a close family friend.
    But Adam Reynolds? I have no idea what Adam Reynolds will give. Blake explained to me once that anything under a hundred grand didn’t even seem like real money to him.
    Mabel approaches first.
    â€œGong xi fa cai,” Adam says in semi-passable Chinese, handing her an envelope. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he had been practicing the phrase.
    â€œGong xi fa cai,” she replies.
    Blake is next. “Gong xi fa cai, asshole,” Adam says to his son. He passes over the envelope with one hand, as is traditional, and Blake takes it. The fistbump that follows is not traditional.
    Then it’s my turn. “Gong xi fa cai,” he says to me.
    I almost say it back. They’re just words, ones I say without thinking about their meaning. Happy New Year, essentially. Except that’s not what these particular words actually mean.
    Wishing Adam wealth and prosperity for the new year is like wishing a shark more ocean. He can’t swim through the tiniest fraction of what he already has.
    I’m supposed to do something risky this month. I’m not sure if there’s anything riskier than asking Adam Reynolds a personal question.
    â€œWhat would you want?” I ask him. “If I could wish any one thing for you, would you really pick wealth and prosperity? Or would you ask for something else?”
    He looks at me. His pupils are dilated. I can smell soju on his breath. For a second, he looks old—older than his fifty years, older even than he looked sitting in the hospital after his heart attack.
    He rubs one hand through his graying hair, sending it up into little spikes. Then he looks away.
    â€œOne more email,” he says.