Most of Mr. Wing's customers weren't local.
He looked over his spectacles as the boy and the girl walked in the door. It wasn't really hard to read them-
-the young man crossed his arms the moment they walked in, rolled his eyes, and glanced around with only the
most cursory of interest. His girlfriend, on the other hand, looked around the shelves with an eager coo and
a squeal.
He didn't care for either one of them, but customers were customers, and the proper Chinese ones seemed to
know better than to come in. He hopped out of his chair and hobbled to them with his best smile. "Good
morning!" He said with a smile. "I help you find something?"
"Oh, I'm just looking. These little jars are just adorable."
The thousand wondrous ointments of Mr. Wing were indeed in an assortment of attractive packages.
Lacquered boxes and painted porcelain held things weren't strictly necessary--aside from a minimum of
protection, he could theoretically ladle his potent concoctions into a ziploc bag, but that would be a
disgrace to his work.
"This one make you lucky!" He said, pointing to a blue decanter with the character for happiness inscribed on
it. "This one make girl pretty!" He shot her a roguish smile as he pointed out the vessel in the shape of a
peach, complete with green leaves, but the woman seemed a little put off by the compliment.
"I...um...These actually have stuff in them?" She picked one up, and for a moment Mr. Wing was afraid she
would drop it. But she bounced it in her hands a couple times instead, just feeling the heft of it. A ring
nearly broke her concentration on the jar, but the boy who came in with her waved it off and stepped away as
he fished his cell phone out of his pocket. "What is it?"
Oh, 'what is it', couldn't she read the sign? "Magical ointments," written in the same script civilized
Chinese had been using for centuries, was it that hard? He tried to take her ethnic deficit into account, and
kept up his happy shopkeeper facade.
"Is Chinese medicine! Good medicine, people make for centuries." He nodded authoritatively. Of course she
didn't believe in it. But she nodded in return, and smiled with the pretense of interest, at
least.
"Yeah, no, I got a second." The man who came in with her said into his cell phone. "Lee's all, 'hey, this is
pretty let's go look!' and so now we're in some chink shop and she's looking at some china shit--the ceramic
stuff, yeah."
"Jack!" The woman--'Lee' he had called her--hissed, looking furious. The man flicked his wrist at her in a
universal gesture of disregard, and turned back to his conversation. She looked back to Mr. Wing, who simply
put on his best blank mask of a face to see how she'd handle this.
Lee bowed her head.
"I am sorry." She said, in contrite, near-perfect Mandarin. "My boyfriend is kind of an idiot."
"Ah, you speak Chinese!" He said in return. "I do not have many customers who..." He trailed off as her
look became panicked, and began to shake her head.
"I don't...I just know that. In about four other languages." She gave a sidelong glance at Jack as he
continued to talk on his cell, stepping out of the store, and then shot an apologetic rictus of a smile to Mr.
Wing. "I kind of have to say it a lot."