When Chan arrived home, he was greeted by the aroma of corned beef hash.
“Hey, Pop, I’ve got dinner on,” said Dave III.
“Sounds good,” said Chan, heading straight for the Jack Daniels he knew would be waiting for him like an old friend.
“You got mail,” said Dave, cracking eggs into the frying pan.
“Thanks,” said Chan. “Make mine sunny-side-up.”
“Of course, Pop. Wouldn’t do it any other way.”
Chan sat at the dining room table. Going through the envelopes, he noted they all looked like bills. The last one, however, caught his attention.
“David Han?” he asked aloud so that his son could hear him. “Who’s David Han?”
Dave laughed as he brought in the plates of steamed rice covered with generous portions of corned beef hash and topped by two fried eggs each. “I saw that. It’s you, Pop. Your Korean alter-ego.”
“Say what?”
“David Han,” said Dave. “That’s Korean, right? Add a C to Han and you’ve got Chan.”
Chan laughed. “Ah, very good, Number One Son. Yes, I suppose that could be a Korean me. I wonder if your mom would love him more than me?”
Elaine Chan’s name had been Kong before David married her.
“No way, Pop. She loved you just fine as a Chinese dude. If David Han wanted to horn in, he wouldn’t of stood a chance. Besides, I wouldn’t be me if your alter-ego had been my dad. I’d be my alter-ego, David Han the Third. Hey, I like me just the way I am, half Chinese and half Korean. Pretty exotic. Drove the babes wild at UCLA.”
Chan, smiling, took this all in while sipping his Jack Daniels. He drank JD because Elaine had liked it to cook with. She never drank it, but after she died, Chan had become more and more a fan of the Kentucky bourbon.
“Yeah,” he said after his son was done, “and if you’d turned out to be pure Korean, I’d have been very upset. I’d be wondering just who this mystery father of yours was, and I’d be looking for him.”
His son laughed, but the moment he made the joke, Chan was sorry he did. If there was one thing he knew for sure, he and Elaine would have always been faithful to each other. A vision of Kathy Sakaguchi passed through his mind.
“Open it, Pop. “Let’s see what kind of mail my mystery other dad got.”
“No,” said Chan. “I’m not opening some other person’s mail. I’ll just write there’s no such person at this address on the envelope and put it back in the box. The mail people can sort it out.”
Dave laughed. “Good pun, Dad.”
Chan shook his head. “Right. But anyway, they will have to sort it out.”
“Aw, man, that’s no fun,” said Dave. “Let me see it.”
Chan slid it across to him.
“Huh. No return address.” Dave held it up to the light, but the envelope was too thick to see through. “Come on, Pop, let’s just do it. It probably is for you. They just got your last name wrong.”
Chan shook his head. “Uh-uh. Just put it down.” He dug into his hash. “Great job, Dave. The yolk is runny, just the way I like it.”
“You betcha, Pop. I know how you like it.”
Chan took a sip of his Jack, then picked up the other two envelopes. One was from Shell Oil, the other from Liberty House. They were the only two credit cards he carried. He was still a bit wary of the notion that you could pay for things without cash. Credit cards were growing exponentially in popularity. His son had just recently announced with great pride that he now had a MasterCard. This one wasn’t restricted to gas or a single department store. With it, Dave could buy things everywhere. Or so MasterCard claimed.
After dinner, Chan wrote on the envelope that there was no such person and returned David Han’s letter, or more likely his bill, to the mail system cycle. Out in the front yard, he stopped to watch the last of the sunset over the Waianae mountains off to the west.
“Excuse me?”
Chan turned back to the street. A tiny Japanese woman stood at the low front gate.
“Mrs. Watson,” said Chan. “Good evening.”
“Good evening, Mr. Chan,” said his next-door neighbor. “It’s a beautiful sunset tonight.”
“Yes,” agreed Chan. “People say you can’t find a place that can match Hawaiian sunsets.”
Mrs. Watson held out a large envelope to him. “The mailman left this for me by mistake. It’s got your address on it, but it’s not your name. I thought I’d better give it to you anyway, just in case.”
Chan walked over and took the envelope. The address was indeed his, but the addressee’s name was David Han. There was no return address. Chan stared at the label.
“Is something wrong, Mr. Chan?”
The detective came back to himself. “Oh, no, nothing at all. It’s just odd, you know? How it’s for a David Han. If you add a C to Han, it is me.”
Mrs. Watson laughed. “Yes, yes, that’s why I thought I’d better give it to you. It probably is for you, I thought.”
Chan thanked her and walked back to his front door. Maybe, he wondered, he should stand there and wait for Mr. Alipio, the neighbor on his right, to bring him a piece of mail addressed to David Han that had been left with him.
Shaking his head, he went inside, picked up a pen, and wrote the same note on this one. No one by that name at this address. Then he took it out and deposited it in the mailbox. He stood for a moment and looked over at the Alipio house, then smiling, he went back inside.
That night he lay in bed thinking about Kathy. Odd how he missed her in a very different way than he did his wife. The feeling was different, a different kind of ache.
Kathy had said she needed to eat dinner with her parents tonight and that by the time they paroled her, if she behaved well, she’d still need to get to bed for an early start in the morning.
Chan thought about Elaine. And then he thought about two pieces of mail addressed to David Han. As he fell asleep, his mind swirled with images of Kathy, Elaine, and David Han, his Korean alter-ego.
Lanning Lee 