Sun Lee's father owned a little chandelier shop in Chinatown and called himself, rather bumptiously, a Lightolier. Only a few blocks from the churning marketplace of Canal Street, where vendors aggressively peddled handbags, watches, bean sprouts and turtles, Mr. Lee's Lightatorium was nestled on Brite Street, a mini district dedicated solely to lighting. "All your lighting needs" were met on Brite Street, and if your lighting needs furthermore involved a few extra pounds of crystal beading dripping aristocratically from your ceiling, Mr. Lee's Lightatorium: Your Chandelier Heaven was the place for you.
An only child with an imagination can go far. An only child with an imagination who grows up in a chandelier shop on Brite Street can go farther. And so it was in the tinkling glitter of dozens of low-hung or propped-up chandeliers that Sun Lee learned to play with his matchbox cars or assemble his puzzles without causing any undue vibrations. The rampant fragility of the chandelier shop imposed upon the child a deep placidity that worried and irritated his father. Sun seemed to believe that disturbing even one of the thousands of dangling prisms was a Thing Not To Be Done above all Things Not To Be Done and he had consequently learned to walk so weightlessly and talk so breathlessly that he often seemed to disappear altogether.
His father, the Lightolier of Brite Street, did not take his title... lightly. He did not trouble himself about his neighbor shopkeepers, who sold floor or desk lamps. As a purveyor of light in its most exquisite domestic manifestation, (he was not without proper regard for the sun after all) Mr. Lee regarded himself as a nobleman of his trade, and instead of any earthly competitors, his professional adversaries were dust, shadows, clouds, and sunglasses worn indoors; anything that would diminish the shimmering, delicate sparkle of his beloved chandeliers. While not encouraging customers to fondle the chandeliers, Mr. Lee continuously dusted and swept the shop. Sun often watched his father's dusting routine from his corner, nestled beneath and between the feminine curves of three chandeliers.
To Sun, whose mother had died the year he was born, the chandeliers were all females. They tittered and gossiped as he imagined women would (you couldn't bump one without setting them all in a tizzy) and they were of course endlessly vain. No matter how invisible he became, napping beneath their crystal fringes, or staring up their crystal skirts at their secret bulbs, they would find some other stimuli to set them chattering: heavy trucks tackling potholes, slamming doors, and passing cars that bled hip hop bass lines for miles. To all these, the ladies of the Lightatorium shivered and murmured in response. Sun, as any man would do, only half listened to their conversations, but he wouldn't give up their company for anything.
***
One day, as Sun ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in his corner, safely tucked beneath and between his three iridescent aunts, a tall, brisk woman holding a little dog entered the shop. The chandeliers quivered soundlessly, as if preening for the visitor. Mr. Lee hid his feather duster and adopted a messianic gesture of invitation: open, half-stretched arms, to all who were willing to come to the Lightolier.
"Yes hello how are you today? Would you like to see some chandeliers today?" Thus Mr. Lee began his courtship of the tall, brisk lady. She delayed her reply, even twirling once to get a full view of the shop before making eye contact. She took enough time to wordlessly establish herself as the one in control of the conversation.
"Hi there." She extended her free hand to the Lightolier. "I'm Inez Gilberto, art director, SheShe magazine. I would like to use your shop for a photo shoot, Mr..."
"Lee! Mr. Lee!"
"Mr. Lee. You have a great space here, I can't tell you how unique this is." Inez reached out to pet one of the lamps as if it were her dog. "Are you interested in renting out your shop as is for a weekend? We can make sure you're fully compensated for your time. I'm thinking the shoot will be sometime early next month."
Mr. Lee was visibly pleased with the proposal, since he had always known his Lightatorium was a place like no other, and he accepted on the spot. Sun peeped out from his corner. Streaks of peanut butter and jelly elongated his mouth (he was one of those perplexing children who eats a sandwich from the middle out) but his frown was still discernible. He could not say why, but he knew it was not a good idea to give the whole shop over to strangers for an entire weekend. He imagined he felt the chandeliers stiffen in shock, but the Lightolier was shaking Inez's hand as he walked her to the door. Her little dog yipped pointlessly.
The weeks before the photo shoot were particularly strained for the Lightolier and his little son. The boy had meekly tried to express his disapproval of the scheme, but words did not usually serve him well and, even if they had, he couldn't put his presentiment about leaving the shop into words. (He didn't even know about the word "presentiment.") So the boy took his quiet revenge by disappearing when wanted and appearing when unwanted. Mr. Lee's days became a series of turning around and leaping backward with a gasp at the undetected presence of his silent son, followed by hours of uneasy solitude while the boy was secreted away somewhere in the chandeliers.
On the day of the photo shoot, Mr. Lee proposed a trip to Coney Island.
"Wouldn't you like to take a ride on the Wonder Wheel?" Mr. Lee directed his question to the room in general, since his son was hidden somewhere in the crystal jungle. The chandeliers did not respond. "Alright now, that's enough. The magazine people are coming today, so let's take a little holiday..."
Just then three young girls entered the Lightatorium. They were as sallow and boneless as a trio of jellyfish, with their arms floating on invisible air currents, and they each wore a magnificent headdress of feathers and netting. From Sun's point of view --the ground-- their feet were all straps and spikes. His view of their bodies was obscured by a shelf of chandeliers, but when he looked up he saw only the remains of mangled birds in nets. He could easily imagine what came between the deadly spikes on bottom and the mess of feathers on top. He screamed from his corner. The girls screamed. The chandeliers vibrated. Mr. Lee brandished his duster and tried, paradoxically, to silence the other screams with his own. Inez Gilberto burst through the door with a shout just as a slow-moving ambulance took to its siren, and her little dog ran loose through the shop, yipping and howling luxuriantly. Sun took a breath and began a new scream, then the phone rang, a photographer's assistant dropped a floodlight, and one of the models stepped on another model's foot with her spiky shoe, giving the latter model's scream more conviction. Following Sun's lead, the screams rose in pitch. He suddenly chose to appear very quickly and with a lunging motion from his corner, prompting a more frenzied chorus of shrieks from the models. Meanwhile, the ambulance siren had not yet subsided. Inez stomped her feet, Mr. Lee made a dash for his son, and the little dog continued its heroic refrain of ecstatic yelps. A decorative mirror shattered and burst off the wall.
Reaching for his son's collar, Mr. Lee tripped over the little dog, tumbled forward, and grabbed a few strands hanging crystal beads as he fell. With an anguished roar, foreseeing in a millisecond all that was about to occur, the Lightolier pulled down his own centerpiece chandelier, the largest and most glorious grand dame of all. Thousands of crystal beads rained from on high just before the carcass of the thing descended with a ignominious crash upon Inez Gilberto's little dog and Mr. Lee's left leg.
***
Mr. Lee's Lightatorium did not feature as a romantic backdrop in the next issue of SheShe magazine after all. After the mess of crystal, dog, and feather was cleared away, the idea of a photo shoot simply receded. The same ambulance that had contributed to the fatal cacophony took Mr. Lee to the emergency room, where his his leg was set and put in a cast. The little dog, valiant to the end, was not so lucky. Sun dusted and swept the shop for days after the incident in order to appease his father's angry silence, but he remained convinced that he had somehow done the right thing, despite the loss of the grandmother chandelier.
-- Professor De Busque
Sun Lee's father owned a little chandelier shop in Chinatown and called himself, rather bumptiously, a lightolier. Lying on his tummy looking out at the rain by the front window on Saturday morning, two classmates turned up with their parents, and ran around the cramped shop sneering “Light-o-leeeeeeeeeeeeer, drunk on beeeeeeeeeeeeer.” Sun tired to concentrate on his Batman comic. A tear squeezed out from under his eyelid, but he was able to catch it in his cupped palm before it smeared the precious pages. He whispered under his breath, “Doesn’t drink beer.”
His father was painfully proud of the shop, prouder of it than he would ever be of Sun. Sun’s mother doted on him, smothered him with affection, really, but it didn’t make up for the fact that his father regarded him as something of a burden, like an unsightly mole. Not that Sun was unattractive. His mother paraded him up and down the seafood and vegetable markets, and her middle-aged housewife friends would jump out from behind his stalls to express their jealousy for having such a beautiful little boy. Most all of them knew about his hand, but as he was always careful to keep it in his pocket, his father was the only one who made him feel badly about it. And it had been his fault.
Sun had been four. He was so enraptured with his father’s work. He spent hours at the store with him while his mother sold bootleg dvds for a little extra cash to send home to her village. Not only did his father sell chandeliers, he also repaired them, and before the accident, he crafted them himself. Back then, on Thursday nights, he rented a small studio above a poultry vendor, which he roughly outfitted for his newest hobby – glass blowing. Since building and business regulations were never enforced, he had set up a rough kiln, and there was always an open fire with various ominous-looking cauldrons scattered about. Sun’s mother had never visited, so she didn’t suspect what evils were lurking there, ready to snatch her precious boy’s perfect hand.
And so it was, one July evening without the slightest breath of a breeze, that Sun rose sleepily from the pallet his father kept in the corner for his naps. Sun really should have slept for another 45 minutes at least, but the relentless stillness of the air had unsettled him. His father was counting on that much more time alone, so when he swung around with the molten piece of glass clinging to the edge of a stick, the last thought in his mind was that Sun might be there. As he turned, Sun in his drowsiness thought his father was offering him something to play with, and reached out to grab the glowing end. After, there wasn’t much to be done, and Sun’s right hand would always be a twisted, useless lump of flesh.
So it was understandable to other people why Sun’s father was a bit stand-offish in his presence, why he constantly nagged his wife to have another child. But it wasn’t understandable to Sun. He just wished that his father would play with him again, or look at him when he spoke to him, instead of at what used to be his hand. But he preferred his lamps and his lampshades, his lamp-stands and lamp-wires. Sun spent countless hours in the shop while his mother toiled away at various trades. He was happiest when the lightolier’s was busy, because then he could curl up in his corner with his comics. He hated when other kids came in. He wasn’t teased or bullied, he was ignored, which was far worse, because he couldn’t even try to stand up for himself if no one could see him. He was probably happiest walking through the market with his mother, basking in the adoration of her frumpy friends whose sons were dim-witted and plain.
It had been two years since the accident, and Sun was not happy. It was very gloomy and gray outside, and apart from the two piggish classmates and their parents, no one had come in or out of the store. Sun pushed himself up from his nest of pillows and blankets and stood in front of the window, nudging it sadly with his toe before leaning his face against the glass, the coursing raindrops blurring from too close up. He heard his father pad softly up behind him. He walked with the silence of a cat, and was persistently scaring Sun’s mother around the apartment. Sun sighed, waiting for his father to stand for a moment and then retreat without a word. He felt a gentle hand on his shoulder and looked up, startled.
“Certainly is a wet day,” Sun’s father said as he looked out across Canal Street. He didn’t look down, but if he had, he would have seen his son’s face turned up towards him like a pristine orchid, shining brighter and prettier than any of the glitzy lamps the lightolier had on offer.
-- Professor P'ohlig
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