Hardboiled Ep4-“Chinatown”
ANNOUNCER: Empress of Blandings Productions presents radio’s newest detective—Jack Cassidy, PI—and her thrilling adventures, in—HARDBOILED!
MFX: Opening theme
SFX: Door opening
LIM: Oh—hello. I’m sorry to disturb you. Is this, uh, the office of Jack Cassidy?
EFFY: It surely is. Are you in the market for a private detective?
LIM: Yes. Yes I am. I had hoped Miss Cassidy might be able to help me. I’m trying to find someone.
EFFY: Finding someones is what Jack does best. What name shall I give?
LIM: Lim. Lim Hing Yee. Are you sure that she will...
EFFY: That she’ll what?
LIM: That she’ll find herself able to take me on?
EFFY: That depends. Are you willing to pay in advance?
LIM: Yes.
EFFY: Did you actually murder the person you want her to find?
LIM: What? No!
EFFY: O.K., well, those are the only two criteria. If you’re a warm body with ready cash and you’re not actually a murderer, everything’s jake. (SFX: Knock knock) Hey, Jack?
JACK: (muffled) Yeah?
SFX: (Door opens)
EFFY: Customer here for ya. A Mr.—I’m sorry, was it Yee?
LIM: Mr. Lim.
EFFY: Mr. Lim. He’s trying to find a missing person.
JACK: Mr. Lim. Glad to meet you. Come on in. Thanks, Eff.
SFX: Door closes
JACK: Sit down, Mr. Lim. Make yourself comfortable.
LIM: Thank you. I—(hesitates) I’m sorry, may I ask—? Are you quite, quite certain you are willing to take me on?
JACK: Well, sure. Why wouldn’t I be? You harbouring some kind of deadly secret?
LIM: No. And I may say your secretary already asked me if I was a murderer, and I answered in the negative.
JACK: Good. Nothing personal, you understand, but we’ve been burned before. Not that you’d tell us if you were a murderer if you were one, I suppose. But, of course, if we asked you, and you said yes you were, well, it would save us a lot of trouble up front, wouldn’t it? Anyway, why the concern?
LIM: Well—you’re really my only hope, Miss Cassidy. You’re the fifth private detective I’ve come to—and you’re the last one I would have thought to approach. None of the others would take me on.
JACK: Did you try this subtle flattery on all of them?
LIM: Miss Cassidy—
JACK: What is it about your case, Mr. Lim, that no dick in town wants to touch it with a ten foot pole?
LIM: I didn’t tell any of them about my case. I didn’t get the chance. They turned me away as soon as they saw me or heard my name.
JACK: …Ah.
LIM: The second one said he hadn’t room for any more clients. I thought that was nice of him. Everyone else just said they didn’t work with my kind.
JACK: They all said that?
LIM: Well, one or two of them got quite colourful on what it was about the Chinese that they objected to, but it was all the same general idea.
JACK: I’m sorry.
LIM: But the last one had a secretary who was quite friendly, and she said I should try you.
JACK: Well, that’s gratifying. She have good things to say about me?
LIM: She said most people wouldn’t hire a detective who was a woman, and that she personally didn’t care to associate with you, because she thought you were an awfully—a “queer fish”, I think she said—but I couldn’t afford to be choosy.
JACK: Well, that’s less gratifying.
LIM: You asked me if she said good things, so—
JACK: Yes, I know I did. Well, this dame gave you good advice. I’d be more than happy to take you on.
LIM: Thank you, Miss Cassidy. I’m very grateful.
JACK: Don’t mention it. Now, what about the case?
LIM: It all began a few months ago—at the Qixi Festival, in Chinatown. It is a celebration, which takes place every year on the seventh day of the seventh month, to commemorate the legend of the Cowherd and the Weaver-Girl. You do not know this legend, I suppose?
JACK: Can’t say that I do.
LIM: The story goes that a favourite handmaiden of the Empress of Heaven, a weaver, fell in love with a lowly human cowherd. But of course it is forbidden for celestial deities to wed ordinary mortals, so when the emperor of heaven learned of their love affair, he banished one of them to the farthest corner of the western sky and the other to the farthest corner of the eastern sky. And to ensure they never saw each other again, he put a wide river of stars between them—the Milky Way.
JACK: Oh. Kind of a grim ending.
LIM: Well, not quite. Once a year, a huge flock of magpies rises up to form a bridge across the Milky Way, and the Cowherd and the Weaver-Girl are able to meet on it for just one day—
JACK: —On the seventh day of the seventh month?
LIM: Just so.
JACK: Well, it’s nice to hear about magpies doing something constructive for once.
LIM: Ordinarily this festival is of particular importance to newlyweds, or perhaps a good opportunity to fall in love, but there are so few Chinese women in Edmonton now that we simply gathered to celebrate, without attaching any particular romantic significance. I certainly did not expect to fall in love that day. But I did.
JACK: You met a dame?
LIM: I met a woman. The most beautiful woman I have ever seen, or could ever hope to see. When I first set eyes on her I thought for one wild moment that she must be the Weaver-Goddess, come down to visit earth in mortal form again.
JACK: How did you meet?
LIM: She was observing the festivities from a narrow alley just off of 98th street—near Wong’s Public Lunch Cafe, where I work. I happened to duck into the alley, and, er, unfortunately I ran straight into her. I apologized profusely and helped her pick up the basket of clothes I had knocked from her hand. And then we began talking. And then, well, we couldn’t seem to stop talking. I had never spoken to anyone like that—so freely and easily. She had such wit and grace. She laughed at my jokes. I laughed at her jokes. We must have stood there, not aware of anything around us, just conversing, for—oh, hours, I suppose, Miss Cassidy. Have you ever fallen in love? So suddenly, all in a moment, the way they do in books?
JACK: Eh? Oh. Um…
LIM: I’m sorry. It does not matter. The point is—as night began to fall, she seemed to come to herself, and realize how long we had been talking. She said she would have to leave, at once. I realized I did not even know her name. I asked where I could find her—when I could see her again. She would not tell me. She simply asked me to wait at Patricia Square Park, the following day at eight o’ clock, under the big elm tree.
JACK: She didn’t show, huh?
LIM: No, she didn’t. But inside a knothole of the elm, she had left me a letter. You may see it, if you like (SFX: paper rustling); I keep it with me always. Although unless you can read Chinese you will have to take my word for it that it is beautifully written.
JACK: And what’d the letter say?
LIM: She said that she had fallen in love with me just as desperately as I’d fallen in love with her—but that we could never see each other again.
JACK: Mysterious. Did she say why?
LIM: No. Since then we have continued to correspond. We leave letters for each other every week in the knothole of the tree. But I have never seen her face since that first day.
JACK: (whistles) Hell of a way to get to know a dame. So now you’d like me to track her down, eh? Doesn’t sound like she wants to be found.
LIM: I know. I have avoided trying to seek her out again before now—there must be a reason why she cannot see me. There was supposed to be another festival happening this month—the Moon Festival. I had hoped perhaps that I might see her there. She had mentioned in a letter once how much she loved this festival. But the City of Edmonton obliged us to cancel the celebrations—
JACK: Why?
LIM: Officially, because we light many paper lanterns in order to celebrate, and the city feared they might start a fire. But they have been increasingly seeking out excuses to ban the celebrations we hold in Chinatown, of late. Anyway, it does not matter, because I discovered last week that I am soon obliged to leave Edmonton—I have been accepted to study at the University of Toronto, and I cannot possibly turn down the opportunity. But I cannot bear the thought of leaving her behind, either.
JACK: Sure. Well, I’ll see what I can do. I’m sure she won’t be too hard to find—there can’t be more than, what, a hundred or so Chinese women in Edmonton?
LIM: Seventeen.
JACK: I’m sorry, say again?
LIM: There are exactly seventeen Chinese women in Edmonton. I know them all, and she isn’t one of them.
JACK: I—are you sure? That can’t be right.
LIM: No one has moved here from China since the passage of the Exclusion Act, in 1923. No one has been able to. Before that it was really only men who were able to come here, to find work. There’s a few hundred men living in Chinatown now. But, like I say, only seventeen women.
JACK: Jiminy.
LIM: Yes.
JACK: Didn’t anyone want to bring their wives when they came? And children?
LIM: Do you know what the fee was to emigrate to Canada, Miss Cassidy?
JACK: Fee? There isn’t any fee, as far as I know—
LIM: Not for people like you. My father brought me here as a small boy just after the Great War. He was one of the few who brought a child, hoping that I would grow up to find better opportunities in the West. For this privilege he paid the government of Canada one thousand dollars.
JACK: You’re kidding.
LIM: No. Five hundred dollars per person.
JACK: Is that…still the cost of emigrating here?
LIM: No, no. You are not listening. This Head Tax was not effective in its intended purpose of completely dissuading any Chinese from moving here, so the government abolished the tax in favour of banning Chinese immigration almost entirely.
JACK: ….Oh.
LIM: That is why I was so surprised to see a young woman—moreover a woman I had never seen before. And why it is so strange that I have never seen her around the city ever since. Perhaps I only think she is beautiful because she is one of the very few women I’ve ever seen But I don’t care. I love her. If it turns out that by ordinary standards she is the ugliest woman in Asia, it would not matter. To me she is perfect.
JACK: Sure. Sure. O.K., I’ll do my absolute best to find this doll for you.
MFX: Transition
SFX: Twittering birds, distant sounds of children laughing and shouting
JACK: Eff? What are you doing here?
EFFY: Well, you said you were going to stake out the elm in the park all night, and I thought I’d come by and see how you were doing. Don’t worry, it’s six thirty now and I closed up the office at five like always.
JACK: What the hell is that?
EFFY: It’s a picnic basket. What does it look like?
JACK: What for?
EFFY: Well, let’s see, for sandwiches, and chicken salad, (SFX: rustling paper) and bottles of lemonade (SFX: clink), and some saskatoon pie I made this weekend, oh, and some leftover nalysnyky—
JACK: Effy, I’m not sitting in this park for a picnic.
EFFY: Well, I am. I’m off the clock. Anyway, you can’t sit here behind a bush for twelve hours on an empty stomach. What if it grumbles, and alerts the mysterious woman to your presence?
JACK: Effy—
EFFY: Pie?
JACK: You are exhausting.
EFFY: If she does come, I want to see her! This is maybe my favourite case you’ve ever taken on.
JACK: (mouth full) I’ll bet it is.
EFFY: They fall in love at first sight—but their love is forbidden—so they have to leave secret messages in an elm tree under the cover of night—ooh! This is so much better than murders and bolshevists and things.
JACK: We don’t know that their love is forbidden. We don’t know what her secret is. Maybe she doesn’t care for him at all, but she can’t figure out how to let him down gently. Or maybe she has an ugly old husband and ten children.
EFFY: (dreamily) Or maybe she really is a weaver-goddess, come down to earth to fall in love with a good man.
JACK: Cripes.
EFFY: “Maybe she doesn’t care for him at all”—get on with you. Girls don’t spend weeks on end leaving love-notes in trees just to be polite.
JACK: I did some digging this afternoon. Lim was right—there’s only seventeen Chinese women living here, and here’s no record on the census of any Chinese women under the age of forty in Edmonton at all. Legally, at least, this doll doesn’t exist.
EFFY: Gosh. No wonder he fell in love at first sight. It’s just like that play.
JACK: What play?
EFFY: You know, where the fella is raised by pirates, and he’s never met a woman his own age until he meets the girl he falls in love with?
JACK: Haven’t the foggiest. Either way it doesn’t seem like the most healthy basis for a relationship.
EFFY: You’re so cynical.
JACK: Comes with the territory, angel. When I enrolled in detective school the application said right at the top “wry, hardbitten characters only. Those with a sunny outlook and gay demeanour need not apply.”
EFFY: Yeah, yeah.
JACK: And then there was a footnote that said “Romantic-minded optimists should consider secretarial school instead.”
EFFY: You know, when Yee was paying the fee, he had to clean out his whole wallet and scrounge through his pockets to pay the last few bucks in nickels and dimes. And I asked him if he was sure he could afford it, and if he wanted me to see if I could negotiate some kinda reduced rate—
JACK: You’re very sweet, but please don’t say things like that to customers.
EFFY: But he said no. He said every cent would be worth it even to see her face just one more time. And I asked him how he knew, and he reached into his coat and pulled out a whole stack of letters, and he said each one of them would be worth ten times what he’d just paid me.
JACK: Sheesh.
EFFY: So then I asked him which letter had made him realize he was in love. And he said he could quote perfect lines from any of them all day long, but that the real truth was that he had known the first moment he looked into her eyes. Isn’t that just dreamy?
JACK: You and Mr. Yee both have read too many fairy tales.
EFFY: Have you ever had that? Where you looked at someone, and just knew?
JACK: Sure. When I first met you I knew you’d be an excellent secretary.
EFFY: Silly. I don’t mean things like that. I mean, you know. Love at first sight.
JACK: Have you?
EFFY: I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean sometimes you see someone and you say to yourself “that’s a keen bird!” But they never stay keen for very long.
JACK: Yes, whatever happened to Albert?
EFFY: Oh, he’s ancient history. He tried to get fresh with me.
JACK: Wouldn’t’ve thought you’d object to a little getting fresh, in moderation.
EFFY: We went to see that flick Desire, at the Strand—
JACK: The one with Marlene Dietrich?
EFFY: —the one with Gary Cooper—and he put his hand up my skirt and snapped my garter. So I popped him one in the snoot and left. Never did find out how the movie ended. All my boyfriends lately have been such palookas. Honestly, it’s enough to make you swear off men.
JACK: (chuckles) Mmn. (Pause.) Y’know, Effy—
EFFY: Hey! Is that kid going up to the tree?
JACK: Where?
EFFY: Him—the little Chinese boy. See?
JACK: You’re right. And—yep—he’s putting a letter in the knothole. O.K.—wait here, precious. (SFX: footsteps across grass) Excuse me, kid. Can I ask—hey, wait!
JACK: (narrating) The boy took one look at me and then turned on his heel and tore off across the park.
JACK: Stop! Come back!
JACK: (narrating) But he was already going hell for leather down 95th street. I hotfooted it after him as best as I could, but the kid was speedy, and it had been a while since I’d been dragged along on this kind of a footrace. He led me on a merry chase for two or three blocks before he spotted a streetcar about to pull away from its stop, leaped nimbly onto the back running board, and handily left me in his dust.
Ad break
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SFX: Door opening
JACK: Morning, doll. You’re at work early.
EFFY: Well, you never came back to the park last night, and I wanted to find out what happened. Did you catch the kid? Did you track him to Chinatown?
JACK: Nope. I lost him around 107th avenue.
EFFY: He shook you that easy?
JACK: What I was going to do if I caught him? He couldn’t’ve been older than fourteen, and I bet twisting the arm of a reluctant stooge for information is a hell of a lot less satisfying when said stooge is a literal child.
EFFY: But you tried to see where he went, right? I mean, you didn’t come back to the park.
JACK: I caught the next streetcar to Chinatown, just to ask around a bit.
EFFY: And?
JACK: No sign of him. A couple of people told me a boy about the age of the one we saw works over at Chung’s Laundry, so I went and talked to the guy who runs it. He said his son helps him run the business, but I couldn’t get much else out of him. Don’t think I accomplished much beyond giving him the heebie-jeebies over why some white flatfoot was sniffing around asking personal questions.
EFFY: Did you ask if anybody knew of a beautiful young girl?
JACK: Yeah. Everyone was positive no such dame exists. They all gave me to understand in no uncertain terms that if they’d ever seen an attractive young Chinese woman, they’d most definitely remember. So everything seems just as mysterious as it was.
EFFY: Actually, it’s mysteriouser.
JACK: Mysteriouser and mysteriouser, eh?
EFFY: I was going through those census records you pulled from the library again this morning, and guess what? The kid we saw yesterday shouldn’t exist either.
JACK: What do you mean?
EFFY: The youngest Chinese person living in all of Edmonton is twenty-three years old.
JACK: Huh? Are you sure?
EFFY: Positive. Take a look. (SFX: flipping pages) I mean, there’s no way that kid we saw yesterday had hit puberty, right?
(Pause)
EFFY: Jack? You’ve got that I’m-about-to-crack-this-thing-wide-open look on your face.
JACK: You bet I do. You know why?
EFFY: Because you’re about to crack this thing wide open?
JACK: I think I just might be.
MFX: Transition
SFX: Door opening.
JACK: Good morning, Mr. Chung. Sorry to bother you again, but I—
CHUNG: Huh! You again? I already told you yesterday, my son and I work here, running laundry business, and that’s all I have to say. I am not hiding anything.
JACK: “I am not hiding anything” is kind of a strange thing for somebody who’s not hiding anything to say unprompted.
CHUNG: Well, it’s the truth. Now, if you have no clothes to wash—
JACK: Look, Mr. Chung. Could you just tell your son I don’t mean him any harm? I’m not a cop or anything, just a lowly private gumshoe—
CHUNG: If you really have gum on your shoe, we’re very good at getting that out, but otherwise I must ask—
JACK: Just—just tell him I’m a friend, O.K.? And that I have an urgent question for him from the—uh—the cowherd.
CHUNG: ….O….K. I will do that.
JACK: Thanks.
CHUNG: (under his breath) 哎呀, 你这是怎么了？瘋狂的白女人.
MFX: Transition
JACK: I made my way to the narrow alley behind the laundry to smoke a pensive cigarette and consider my next move, but as it happened, it didn’t need very much considering. Because I had barely lit up before I heard a soft cough, and discovered standing next to me the very person I had come to Chinatown to find.
YIN HAN: (timidly) Hello.
JACK: Well, hey there. Not going to run away from me this time?
YIN: I’m sorry about yesterday. I—I thought perhaps you were with the police or something, and I panicked. But you don’t look very much like a cop, up close.
JACK: Much obliged, Miss Chung.
YIN: (draws in her breath sharply) Did you know? Yesterday? All along?
JACK: Nope. Just figured it out this morning. Mr. Lim fell in love with a beautiful young woman, but there was no such person in Chinatown.
YIN: So you are a friend of Mr. Lim?
JACK: Well—sort of. Actually he hired me to track you down. He couldn’t understand why this relationship of yours couldn’t move beyond tree-notes. And I must say, even having uncloaked your dark secret, I’m not so sure I can understand it either. I mean, I know the ratio of eligible bachelors to eligible maidens is about five hundred to one, so you can afford to be choosy, but he seems like an awfully nice young man, as young men go.
YIN: It’s not that. I—you wouldn’t understand.
JACK: Try me. (Pause) Do you love him?
YIN: Of course I love him. I love him with all my heart. I’ve loved him for months.
JACK: Months? I thought you only met in August.
YIN: Well, yes, but I—I used to see him. Around town. And…he works at Wong’s Cafe, and I knew he’s supposed to throw away all the uneaten food at the end of the day, but he’s always taking leftover chop suey to beggars at the end of his shift. And once I saw a man beating his dog, and Lim rushed over and made him stop. And when I saw him come into the laundry he was always so friendly to my father, and he would always tip generously, even if he probably couldn’t afford to. I don’t know. Little things like that. Maybe it sounds silly.
JACK: Not as silly as everything else about this case. So why the Shakespeare-comedy gimmick?
YIN: My parents wanted a boy. One that my father could bring with him to Canada, and raise to take on his business, or make his own way in the world.
JACK: But they just got you?
YIN: My mother died giving birth to me, and my father decided it would be expedient to raise me as the son he wanted. Until recently I didn’t object so much—it is not easy to be a woman in this city, and especially not when there are so few women like you. May I ask, do you dress the way you do in the hopes of being mistaken for a man?
JACK: I just find trousers terribly comfortable.
YIN: I personally would have preferred to live as myself. Although you’re right about trousers. But it wasn’t such a great hardship—until I saw him. For the first time I was desperate for someone to see me as me. I wanted to meet him, just once, not looking like a twelve-year-old boy. So I slipped out, in a dress, during the Qixi festival, and I made sure I ran into him. And it was perfect. He was perfect. He is still perfect. I have avoided being seen by him as much as I possibly can since then, in case he recognizes me. But every time I spot him out of the corner of my eye, he gets more and more handsome.
JACK: O.K. So you love him. He loves you. What happens if you go to your dad and you say, “Pa, I’ve met a swell cat and I’d like to plight him my troth.” Would he disown you or something?
YIN: Disown me? Of course not. But I know he would feel betrayed. And disappointed. And—and anyway, I couldn’t do it.
JACK: Why not? And why would your father be so disappointed? Seems to me there’s worse things could happen to a girl than getting married to a nice lad. If I’d ever told my old man I was getting hitched and settling down he would’ve started turning cartwheels around the dining table.
YIN: He wants more for me than that. Than—just being a wife, I mean. And I want more for myself than that. We’ve been saving up for my education. I want to go to a real university—and get a real education—and—and make something of myself. Can you understand that?
JACK: Sure. But you know that you don’t need to stick to the cross-dressing to do all that, right? I mean, I got myself an education, and I more or less made something of myself, I hope—
YIN: Did you do it with a husband?
JACK: Well. No.
YIN: I don’t even know if the University of Alberta accepts Chinese people. There are already so many restrictions on what there is I can do—even living as a man. And even if, by the slimmest of odds, some university somewhere was willing to accept me—I couldn’t possibly have an education and career and a husband. So many places still have those, what d’you call them—marriage bars. And I know what men are like. I’ve grown up surrounded by virtually nothing but them, after all. Even Lim Hing Yee wouldn’t want a wife like me, I promise.
JACK: Seems to me he wants a wife exactly like you.
YIN: No. He would want to live in perfect, old-fashioned, old-country domestic bliss, with a beautiful wife to clean the house and cook the dumplings. And that isn’t who I was brought up to be. That isn’t who I am. I love him. But I can’t do it. (beat) Do you think I’m crazy?
JACK: Why would I think that?
YIN: For sacrificing a chance at true love for the sake of a nearly-impossible shot at finding a career?
JACK: You mean, for not sacrificing everything you’ve worked for for some fella you only properly met a month ago? No, I don’t. I’m a hardboiled PI, Miss Chung; I don’t believe in true love.
YIN: You don’t?
JACK: Nope.
YIN: Well, you’re wrong about that. But thank you.
JACK: So? What would you like me to do now?
YIN: You’re in the employ of Lim Hing Yee, aren’t you? Doesn’t that mean you have to go straight back and tell him how to find me?
JACK: Well, technically, yes. But if you really and truly don’t want to be found, I’m not going to expose you against your will. That would be against the Private Eye Chivalric Code.
YIN: Is that a real thing?
JACK: Do you want to be found?
YIN: (deep breath) No.
JACK: O.K. then.
YIN: He’s going away to Toronto, yes? He’ll start a new life there, and….and eventually we’ll both forget about each other.
(But she sounds wretched.)
JACK: Maybe the magpies will make a bridge between here and Toronto next August. God knows we’ve got enough magpies around here.
YIN: (sad chuckle) That is a beautiful story, don’t you think?
JACK: It’s a little gloomy. English fairy stories about falling in love tend to run more to the “happily ever after” line.
YIN: It’s bittersweet. I like bittersweet. I’ve never really expected a happily ever after for myself. Your whole country is set up to ensure people like me don’t get happily ever afters. I suppose you’ve never been—I don’t know—spat at as you walk down the street, for instance, or had the front window of your store smashed three times in one month—but those are the sorts of things that don’t seem to happen to princesses who get happy endings, either. I’d take bittersweet for myself.
JACK: I have occasionally been spat at on the street. Although I imagine it’s a different flavour of spit. And if you think I can be cynical about true love, boy, wait’ll you hear what I have to say about happily ever afters.
YIN: There was supposed to be a festival here this week—the Jūng-chāu Jit—that’s my favourite festival. And the story that goes with that one is bittersweet too. The woman in that story has to go to live in the moon, and leave the husband she dearly loves behind on earth. Maybe studying medicine is a little like trying to climb into the moon for me. But I have to try.
JACK: That’s what you want to do? Become a doctor?
YIN: Don’t laugh.
JACK: Why would I laugh at that? Doctors are very serious people. You should’ve heard the gales of mirth that went up when a young Jack Cassidy told people she wanted to become a private dick. They were probably audible in Saskatoon.
CHUNG: (calling from off) Yin!
YIN: I must get back to work. Please—please don’t tell him where to find me.
JACK: I won’t. I’ll say I searched high and low and I couldn’t crack the case.
YIN: Thank you, Miss Cassidy. You are a kind woman. You have done the best thing you could have possibly done for us.
MFX: Transition
EFFY: Jack, you have done the worst thing you could have possibly done for them!
JACK: Eff, life is not a fairy tale. And if it is, maybe it’s a Chinese fairy tale, all of which seem to have these tearjerker endings.
EFFY: You are standing in the way of true love!
JACK: No, I’m not! She is! Or maybe society is. Anyway, life doesn’t always have a happy ending.
EFFY: But I wanted it to have a happy ending. It was such a beautiful story.
JACK: It was damned silly was what it was. Both of them, spending all this time pining after somebody they knew deep down they could never have. Idiotic.
EFFY: But they didn’t know! You can never really know until you look someone in the eye and confess your love and they say “Beat it, Mac”.
JACK: She’s as good as told him to beat it, Mac. She’ll be in the moon and he’ll be leaving her mooncakes, or they’re on opposite sides of the Milky Way, or something. Now, give Lim a call, would you?
EFFY: Oh, I have to break the news to him?
JACK: No, I’ll talk to him in person. See when he can come by the office. I’ll tell him I did my best, but it was in vain. And maybe we can negotiate a reduction in the fee for my incompetence. He’ll probably need that extra cash in Toronto.
EFFY: (muttering) Oh, sure, it’s okay for you to offer him a fee reduction…
MFX: Transition
JACK: I left Effy grumbling to herself in the office and headed for home, looking forward to a weekend free from any star-crossed lovers or officious, romantic-minded secretaries. But scarcely had I set foot into my apartment that evening when Effy rang up, announcing that the only possible time Mr. Lim could speak to me was at seven o’ clock the following day. Thus, Saturday evening found me back at the office, where I found Effy, perched on her desk and looking like a child on Christmas morning.
JACK: Where’s Lim?
EFFY: (suppressed glee) Not here yet, I guess.
JACK: Effy, what’s going on? Why d’you look like you’re sitting in the catbird seat?
EFFY: Do I? No I don’t.
JACK: Did you draw up the invoice for Mr. Lim?
EFFY: Mmhmm.
JACK: Now, we can discuss the fee reduction when he gets here, but if—
SFX: Knock knock knock
JACK: That’ll be him. Come in!
SFX: Door opening
JACK: Wha—
YIN: I’m sorry. Have I come at the right time?
JACK: The right time?
YIN: Your secretary called me and said that Lim had one last message to deliver to me before he went away. She said he was unable to make it down to the park, and that it was very important that I come here to receive it. Did she not tell you?
JACK: No, as a matter of fact, she didn’t.
YIN: Well, may I have the letter, please?
EFFY: It’s not here.
JACK: (hissed through gritted teeth) Effy—
EFFY: But he left it around here for you. I think I know where it is. Will you come this way, please?
SFX: (Footsteps)
JACK: (Whispered) Effy! What the hell are you playing at?
EFFY: (aloud) Just through this door here!
JACK: The stairwell? Are you taking us up to the roof? Effy, what is going on?
YIN: You do not know what’s happening either, Miss Cassidy?
JACK: What’s happening is, tomorrow I’m finding a new secretary. Unless she’s bringing us up to the roof in order to push us off and rid the world of two cynics who don’t believe in happy endings, in which case—
(JACK and YIN both gasp. Music in)
JACK: (narrating) The roof of the humble three-story building on Jasper Avenue where my offices are located is not usually a very beautiful place. I’d been up to it before, to smoke the odd cigarette, and usually it’s just me, some gravel, and maybe a pigeon or two. Now it had been transformed.
YIN: Oh, my goodness!
JACK: (narrating) Criss-crossing the roof in every direction were glowing paper lanterns. Dozens and dozens of them, in every colour of the rainbow, they bobbed and flickered in the twilight. The whole roof was lit with a soft multicoloured glow—and standing right in the middle of it, directly in front of us, was my client, Lim Hing Yee.
LIM: Hello.
YIN: (softly, stunned) Hello.
LIM: We couldn’t have a proper moon festival, so I thought you might like a small facsimile of one.
YIN: (ditto) I—how—?
JACK: (whispering) Was this your idea?
EFFY: (whispering) I may have organized a few things.
JACK: (whispering) I swear to God, Eff—
LIM: Do you like it?
YIN: It’s beautiful—but—
LIM: Yin, listen to me. I love you. I have never loved anyone but you. I never will love anyone but you. This is not a youthful phase that I can go to Toronto and forget about. I am sure I could learn many valuable things at the university. But how to mend a broken heart will not be one of them.
EFFY: (whispering) Isn’t that a good line?
JACK: (whispering) Cripes.
LIM: When Miss Cassidy’s secretary called me up yesterday, she told me everything. (JACK groans) And there is one point in particular I would like to get quite clear. Apparently, your primary reason for believing we could not get married is that I would not want a wife who attends medical school—that I would want a wife to clean the house and make the dumplings. Is that so?
YIN: I—well, isn’t it true?
LIM: True! What would I want with a wife who can make dumplings? I have worked in the kitchen at Wong’s Public Lunch Cafe for seven years! You should see the dumplings I can make! I’ll bet you anything you like they’re infinitely better than any dumplings you could ever hope to turn out. And medical school! What kind of man with a brilliant wife would not want a brilliant wife who is also a doctor?
YIN: Quite a lot of men, surely—
LIM: Really? Tell me which of these boasts sounds better: “My beautiful wife is also pretty good at washing dishes”? Or “My beautiful wife is the finest surgeon in the Greater Toronto Area”?
YIN: It isn’t as simple as that.
LIM: It can be. I want to marry you. I love that you’re modern. I love that you’re intelligent. I love that you want to work. I love you in those little trousers and that vest. If the weaver-girl had said to the cowherd, “I’d like to give up weaving and studying medicine at the Great Celestial Medical School,” do you think he would have said “Get out of here! I only want to be wed to a goddess who is also good at scrubbing the floors”? (YIN giggles, reluctantly) If a goddess comes down from the sky and picks you to fall in love with, you cannot just toss her away.
SFX: kiss
EFFY: Aww!
JACK: Should we give you two some privacy? We can head back downstairs—
EFFY: No! Sshh!
YIN: I love you.
LIM: I love you.
YIN: But it—it still isn’t so easy. For a woman, a married, Chinese woman, to attend medical school—
LIM: I know it isn’t so easy. But how can it ever become easier if people don’t do it?
EFFY: Oh, that’s good. Rock-solid argument. You have to be change if you want to see change.
YIN: Maybe some privacy would be nice.
LIM: But Miss Strembitsky gives good advice. You know what she said to me, when she called me up? She said that you cannot assume that you are not fit for a happy ending because of who you are, or what has happened to you. You must fight for your happy ending. Of course—if I am not your happy ending, I don’t want to force you. But if all you fear is the circumstances that conspire against us, I want to fight against every one of those circumstances. Those bittersweet fairy tales may be beautiful. But I don’t want us to be banished to opposite ends of the galaxy. I don’t want you to disappear into the moon. I want to be with you. Forever and ever, until we are both old and ugly and decrepit. And I am willing to fight to make that happen.
SFX: (long, shuddering, happy breath from YIN, and then kiss. Longish kiss)
LIM: Now perhaps we would like to be alone.
YIN: Yes, alone would be nice.
JACK: Yep. C’mon, Eff—
EFFY: Okay, okay.
YIN: And—Miss Strembitsky? Thank you.
EFFY: Yeah?
YIN: Thank you very much.
EFFY: Hey, my pleasure! Buh-bye now!
SFX: Door closing, walking down stairs
JACK: O.K. Henceforth, we are only ever taking on gruesome, horrifying murder cases, and you are answering calls and taking dictation and that’s ALL.
EFFY: But I was right! I was right, wasn’t I? They just needed a little nudge.
JACK: Jiminy Christmas.
EFFY: Even you have to admit that was a beautiful scene we were just privy to.
JACK: Did you get some kind of permit to put up all those lanterns?
EFFY: D’you think she’ll go with him to Toronto?
JACK: Were they all lit with open flames? Pretty dangerous.
EFFY: You are exhausting. Didn’t you feel anything watching that?
JACK: Only thing I’m feeling right now is exasperated with my secretary. (beat) And a little hungry.
EFFY: Hungry?
JACK: All that talk about dumplings. I could really go for some dumplings.
EFFY: We could walk over to Wong’s Cafe. They’re not allowed to have the big street celebration, but when I was around that area helping Lim buy lanterns I saw some of the restaurants have put up some little decorations inside anyway. It’s real pretty down there.
JACK: O.K. (beat) D’you promise that the pretty surroundings aren’t going to tempt you to rhapsodize about fairy tales and the beauty of true love and happy endings?
EFFY: Forget it, Jack. It’s Chinatown.
ANNOUNCER: This episode of Hardboiled featured the voices of:
Ceris Backstrom as Jack Cassidy
Lauren Hughes as Effy Strembitsky
Marty Chan as Mr. Chung
Carol Chu as Chung Yin Han
And Michael Vetsch as Lim Hing Yee, and, as always, your announcer.
Hardboiled is written and directed by Celia Taylor and edited and produced by Tegan Siganski, with an original score and sound design by Dave Clarke.
Hardboiled is presented in association with the Edmonton Pride Centre,and with the support of the Edmonton Heritage Council, the Edmonton Community Foundation, and the Edmonton Arts Council. Tune in next week, when we’ll return with another thrilling installment of - Hardboiled!