Published in Saturday Reader

---

He reached down and scratched his leg, avoiding the deep wound he had not allowed to heal for seven years. He was always careful to not let it get infected, but the skin was often irritated. Today was worse than most.

He sat in the corner of Double Happiness Donut House, as far from the counter as he could get. He eyed the woman behind the register, and took note of doors and windows. Skinny Dave said she stayed open until after the bar on the corner closed, feeding donuts to drunks as long as they were buying.

The fluorescent lights were so bright he might have heard them hum, if the TV weren’t filling the place with foreign jabber. It sounded Chinese, but it wasn’t. He’d done enough time with Kenny Chan to know what Chinese sounded like.

Two cops walked in and stood at the donut display. Fucking typical, he thought. Like right out of some joke. Just my luck to be done in by a fucking joke.

He would not do this tonight.

The next night his leg itched worse. He hadn’t used the wound to hide anything in a month, not since he got out. It felt empty, like his stomach.

The woman behind the counter smiled, like she remembered him from the night before. She put his donut on a plate, and added a handful of donut holes.

“On the house,” she said in an accent thick as double glaze. As if he were now a regular.

He turned, hit his leg on the corner of a chair. White pain enveloped him. He held his plate steady, and never winced. He had taught himself to take this kind of pain.

This was nothing like the pain Kenny Chan could bring. He jumped him while he slept, kept trying to get at the white powder hidden inside his leg. Crazy Chinese fucker, had the best stuff in the place, had to try and take his.

He sat at the table in the corner with his back to the wall. The pain hummed in his leg, but he kept his hands above the table.

He looked across the room at the woman behind the counter. There was no doubt she was the owner. Skinny Dave called her Chinese, but that was Skinny Dave. Ignorant fucker thought all Asians were Chinese. Probably thought his Kawasaki was Chinese.

She was older, maybe by twenty years. Probably his mother’s age. That was the first he’d thought of her since he got out. He wondered what she would look like now. He tried to picture her running her own business, and laughed. That would be different.

He wondered why the woman had left Skinny Dave hanging. Maybe she didn’t understand the consequences. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t his problem. He waited until the place was empty. He didn’t look at her as he walked to the counter, ignoring the pain in his leg.