Buddha Baby by Kim Wong Keltner Read Free Book Online Page A

him.
    He waved a hairy, Popeye-sized arm toward her and jerked his meaty hand in the air like he was catching a buzzing fly.
    "Just look at you!" he said. "You'd be a good tea girl if you wanted to be!"
    Lindsey opened a bottom cabinet and hauled out a box of extra mannequin limbs from behind the counter. Like an industrious beaver, she stacked a damlike barrier of miscellaneous body parts between her and the man.
    He slid a business card beneath the thicket of velvet arms.
    "Call me," he said, then made a puckering noise with his livery lips.
    Lindsey felt dirty. Awash with cooties, she was unable to locate any Purell at the moment, so she sprayed herself with glass cleaner and patted her clothes and apron with her white gloves. Dismantling her makeshift dam, she knelt down to stow them back into their storage compartment under the jewelry case.
    She heard a slightly Southern voice float down her way.
    "Don't I know you from somewhere?"
    She figured it was another randy retiree. Popping up from behind the counter, she stumbled back a few steps. As her arm flew back to catch her balance, her fingers got tangled in a display of chunky gold pendants suspended from leather cords.
    "Oh," she yelped, then righted herself.
    It wasn't an old guy. It was a young guy. Well, at least her age.
    "Hi," he said. "We know each other, right?"
    Lindsey looked at the smooth-faced, young Chinese man and was taken aback by his striking, "I play lacrosse" musculature and his remarkably hairless, smug beauty. Before she could say anything, someone bumped into him from behind and he turned his back to Lindsey, allowing her the brief opportunity to check him out quickly, yet thoroughly, without him seeing. She took in his sleek, healthy hair, suntanned neck, and fit body in profile. In mere seconds she speculated that he worked out at least three times a week, had expensive tastes in clothes, and had admirable personal grooming habits. He possessed a certain John-Lone-in-
Year-of-the-Dragon
coolness, but with his suede jacket and cowboy boots he also worked a Robert-Redford-as-Jeremiah-Johnson look. She found the overall effect to be sexy as hell, and was quietly alarmed.
    "Uh, no. Um, I… I don't think so," she stammered, then turned and pretended to dust the computer keyboard. She kept her back to him and waited for him to walk away.
    "Yeah, I'm sure I know you," he said, leaning his elbow on the counter and giving her a slow once-over.
    "Um, no," she said, still avoiding eye contact. She tried to distract him by printing up a cash-register sales tape that made a lot of clicking noise. When he seemed undeterred, she left it turned on.
    "Sorry, this register is closed," she said, then shimmied out from behind the counter and sprinted off. She pretended not to hear when he called out, "Hey, is your name Lindsey?"
    On the way home from the museum, Lindsey stood on the bus and still felt shaky from her little encounter. That tall Chinese guy with the Diesel jeans, immaculately polished skin, and bare ring finger was not just any handsome stranger with bleached teeth and an adorable scar on his chin. She knew exactly who he was, and wanted no part of him.
    Dustin Lee. For all of sixth grade she sat in the desk directly behind his. How could she
not
recognize him? She knew the back of his head like the back of her hand.
    As a twelve-year-old newcomer to St. Maude's, Dustin had been noticeably different from the other Chinese boys in the class. For one thing, he had that funny way of talking. Not a Cantonese, fresh-off -the-boat accent, but a stretched-out way of speaking, a way of taking time with his vowels and an innocent persuasiveness that charmed the teachers with its suggestion of lemonade, barbecues, and rodeos.
    The beginning of that school year had come on the heels of a particularly freezing and wet summer in San Francisco. When the shivering and bored captives of St. Maude's first laid eyes on their new classmate, he was wearing a