by Jenna Blum
Jiang and Tan were speaking, and he turned back to them, away from the crowd. He belonged with them. He ate the choice lamb ribs they deposited with love on his plate, and he picked out succulent pieces to place on theirs.
***
Before leaving work for the day, Zinnia stopped off in Carey's office. "Have you made any calls yet?"
"No." He felt irritated. "I'll get to it."
She sent him her look of prim displeasure, which he knew to be one of her most insufferable and therefore effective weapons. "But you must do it soon. Quickly."
"Why?"
"It's Thursday. Tomorrow people will leave for the weekend."
Carey pursed his lips. "I hate mixing business and pleasure."
"Really! Is that what you believe?"
"Yes."
"It's your philosophy?"
"Yes."
"Who took Matt out, those nights, when he met Gao Lan?"
Carey sighed. "I did."
"Look what happened then."
"All right, Zinnia, Jesus. Okay. I'll do it." Defeated once again by a Chinese woman. He was no match for them. Waving her off with one hand, he reached for the phone with the other. "I'll call."
Carey got lucky with the fourth call, and within an hour was on his way to a restaurant to meet a woman he had dated a few years before. Still unattached, was what he'd heard. As soon as he called and she answered the phone he knew it was true, for she jumped. Yes, of course she would meet him. Tonight? Certainly. She would be disappointed when she realized Carey had not called her for any personal reason. So be it. Zinnia was right, he needed to help. So he made the call.
The restaurant was on the capital's northeast end, in a quarter that had once been home to diplomatic offices and hotels but had now been swallowed by the relentless swell of commercial buildings. Inside, the place preserved some semblance of the old décor, with stone stools and wood-scrolled tables. He arrived first and sat drinking tea, watching the door for her to come in.
It was romantic, living in China. There was beauty in it. He heard parrots screeching in cages on the other side of the dining hall, caught the happy tide of dinnertime Chinese as it rose and fell. Always there was something to please him. Wonderful food. Gorgeous women. They never stopped attracting him, even if he had yet to meet one he wanted to stay with.
He knew that staying here was a sort of delaying tactic, a way of stretching out his youth. It was at home he'd be much more likely to find a woman. Laowai men, even the ones most flat-out crazy about Chinese girls, generally went home to marry. They chose one of their own. Girls they knew from high school. Girls from their hometowns. Girls who looked like their mothers, like the men themselves. But not Carey. He reached for his small, thick cup of aromatic tea and sipped it, listening to the ambient well of Mandarin conversation. He would not go home that way.
It was probably moot—the time to go home had come and gone. He had passed the golden point sometime in his late thirties. Now he was forty-five. If he went back he'd step down—on the job, in society, among friends, and with everything having to do with women. Here he was like royalty. Just being a foreigner gave him unassailable value, but it was value he couldn't take with him. Either go home and retire that part of himself forever which had grown to love his position, or stay here in China. Grow old here. Choose a woman. Just choose one. Die here. He stared gloomily out the window at the blue-bowl October sky.
The door opened and Yuan Li came in, ultra-chic in leopard heels and a fashionable fringe of black hair. She was glorious, in her thirties now, confident. Perhaps he should look at her again. Carey toyed with the idea. She was kind, supportive, lovely. She had bored him, though, as he recalled, and he had ended it. No doubt he would end it again, in time, if they were to restart, which was why he would not. It was clear that she was willing. He could tell by the way she looked at him. No, he told himself, don't act interested, not that way. Be friendly.
For the first hour of their meeting he engaged her in a sweet, solicitous conversation that traded all kinds of news: about jobs, relatives, travels, hobbies, vacations. He had been in China long enough to know how a meal should be done, with a long exchange of pleasantries and moods preceding any hint of a disclosure or request.
Finally, after they had talked long and the food he'd ordered had arrived and been eaten, he spoke casually. "It happens I am looking for someone. Gao Lan. Am I correct in recalling that you knew her?"
As he spoke he watched her face. First he saw the trace of insult. She understood now why he had called her. Then in her eyes he saw caution and calculation. Good. That meant she knew her.
Still, she took her time before she answered. "I have not seen her in quite a while. Maybe a year or two. I don't know where she is right now."
The waiter came with the check, which Carey took.
"So I'm not too clear," Yuan Li continued.
"I'd appreciate your telling me if you do hear."
"I can ask."
"Thank you," he said, and then returned smoothly to their previous topic, which was the leasing of a building on which she had been a project manager. Altogether he sat with her for more than two hours that night. They consumed three appetizer cold plates and three entrée dishes, plus a small forest of beers, most of which, admittedly, were drunk by him. They observed every nicety and parted as friends, even trading warm and potentially meaningful embraces. And all of it was for those few sentences uttered in the middle, cast lightly on the table—Do you know where she is? No. Will you find out? I'll try. Thank you.
Carey steered Yuan Li out to the sidewalk and saw her into a taxi, waved warmly from the sidewalk as she pulled into the street. Ah, it was a nice life here, in its way; the gravity of history, the traces of gentility, and the pleasure of now. He liked the freedom and the forthrightness, which had their own way of coexisting with the oppressions of the government. It wasn't so much that people liked the government or approved of it, such questions being irrelevant anyway; it was that they were good at living with it. Against all odds, despite its severe gray undertone, Carey found China a joyous place.
He sighed. Had he stayed too long, had he let things go sour, was he trapped? Maybe he should have been more like the other lawyers in the firm, like Matt; he should have based himself in Los Angeles and just made sojourns here. But he had been seduced by China. It felt so exquisitely good here. Once he arrived, he had really never wanted to leave.
He held up his hand for a taxi. It was not his world, though, and no matter how long he stayed here, it never would be. He would always be an outsider, and despite a marvelously warm mix of etiquette, kindness, and convention the Chinese did not truly welcome outsiders.
So if he went home—but who was he kidding? It was too late to go home. He was too old. And he climbed into a car and drove off into the Beijing night, thinking instead about where he would go to drink, to hear music, to run into old friends and maybe, with any luck, meet new ones. He named a club to the driver, an address in a hutong off Sanlitun, and lay back to watch his adopted city pass him in a pleasant procession of lights, skyscrapers mixed with the old-fashioned red lanterns that still hung outside restaurants as they had for centuries, wherever people gathered to eat and cement their relationships.
Maybe he would have to stay.
The next morning was Friday. Maggie went by Sam's house to drop off a good-luck gift. The taxi waited with its engine idling while she knocked on the gate. It was a polite, preemptive knock; she didn't expect him to be there, intending, if he was not, to leave her gift outside. Where it belonged.
But his footsteps came across the court, a little impatient. He was working. Then he unlatched the gate and saw her, and his face changed. "Hi," he said.
"Hi." She smiled a little. He was glad to see her. "I brought you something. I can't come inside or anything, I know you have to work, I just want you to have this. For luck."
"You're so kind," he said.
"You'll have to give me a ha
nd." She stepped back toward the taxi and he followed her out over the sill. As they approached the trunk the driver released the catch and she showed Sam what was inside, a potted evergreen tree that filled the entire space.
He stared. It was the last thing he had expected.
"I brought it for your court," she said. "It will get tall." They hauled it out together, and he set it by the gate. It had a shape like a spiral column.
"Of course, if you don't like it, hey," she said. "If I ever come back to Beijing and dine in your restaurant and it's not in evidence, I won't be hurt. I promise."
"It'll be here," he said, and she could tell by the way he was smiling that it was true. "Thanks."
"No problem," she said. It had been easy, with Zinnia powering her through the city flower market and subjecting vendors to penetrating inquisitions on the suitability of various potted shrubs and trees to a Beijing courtyard, to choose one. The whole idea, Zinnia confided to Maggie on the side, was almost quaint now, for no one had courtyards. It was a way of life which had vanished. Nevertheless they settled on the spiral tree, and Zinnia had the young vendor's assistant carry it outside. When it was in the taxi Zinnia said suddenly that she would take the next one; her lunch hour was over. Maggie could see her busy eyes already thinking ahead to the work that waited on her desk. Maggie hugged her. "Thanks," she said.
And now the tree was on the ground, outside Sam's gate, with him looking at it. He did like it. "I loved your father's memoir, by the way. It was beautiful," said Maggie. The taxi was still there, engine running.
He looked up slowly. "He came. He's here."
"Your father?"
"He got a visa, bought a ticket. He did it. He's here."
"You said he'd never come."
"I said wrong," said Sam. "It was Xie that got him here. I don't think anything else could have."
"That's where he is?"
"In Hangzhou."
The news, and the look on his face, gave her a flush of happiness. "That's wonderful. Good for you. Good." She looked at the taxi. "I've got to go."
He nodded. "Thanks for the tree."
"That's for luck," she said.
And he said, "I'll take it."
That afternoon Maggie worked on her story. She didn't yet know the ending, but there was no reason not to go all the way up to that point.
As she often did when she started a piece, she began by just writing, following her spine, which in this case was connectedness. She spent some hours re-creating scenes, conversations, and explanations, weaving them in and around her notion, which was her sense of what he had shown her.
Then there was the question of the piece's forward propulsion. She took a fresh sheet of paper and wrote six words in block letters on three lines:
TEN CANDIDATES.
TEN BANQUETS.
TWO SLOTS.
This was the logical forward movement—the announcement, the whirlwind preparation, the banquet itself. She would write to this. She taped the page up on the wall in front of her. Now she could go back to the beginning. She turned back to her computer and opened a new file. Like any blank page it was filled with possibility. She typed the words Sam Liang and then jumped so hard she almost broke her chair. Someone was knocking at the door.
She pressed her eye to the peephole. It was Zinnia, leaning toward the tiny glass circle with that hurried look in her eye. Maggie pulled back the door. "Hi."
Zinnia pumped past her, glasses flashing in triumph. "Sorry! So sorry to come without calling, but I just found out, and I was near here."
"You can come without calling anytime. Found out what?"
"I know where Gao Lan is."
"Sit." Maggie steered her to the couch. "Where?"
"Here. Not far. She lives at the Dongfang Yinzuo. The Oriental Kenzo. It's a big residential and commercial development downtown."
"How'd you find out?"
"Carey found out."
"That's where she lives, or where she works?"
"Where she lives. I don't know where she works yet. But I called her already. She is home today. She says we can meet her there in an hour. You want to?"
"Yes!" said Maggie.
"Zou-ba," said Zinnia, happy, Let's go. She never even sat down. She turned for the door and Maggie followed.
In the back of a taxi, stuttering through choked side streets toward the Dongfang Yinzuo, Gao Lan closed her eyes and cradled her small packages. In her lap she held a packet of tea, an exceptional orchid oolong, and snacks—melon seeds and biscuits—the things that must be offered to guests, and which she did not keep.
Her man was not in town. He was in Taipei with his wife and children, which was why she could receive these people. She wouldn't want the man anywhere near an encounter like this. He did not know she had a child. If he did, he would end her employment. That was unthinkable. Shuying and her parents lived on the money she sent home every month, though they had no idea what she actually did. She sent home almost everything she earned. She did nothing except work out in the gym, which he paid for. She ate in the apartment, taking as little as possible. Sometimes she walked. She never bought anything, she just walked. When he came she bought the foods he liked just before he arrived. While he was there her only thought was to please him.
Before Shuying was born, life had been different. She let out an ironic laugh. She certainly was not living the life her parents had once had in mind for her. Far from it.
They were old-fashioned, the first people she knew to express nostalgia for the Cultural Revolution. They continued to see it as an experiment of tragic but also noble dimensions. Having been a child in the optimistic eighties, when state-owned enterprises were closing everywhere, Gao Lan remembered being embarrassed by her parents' pronouncements. Standards of living were improving vastly. Everyone else welcomed the change. It seemed to her back then that her mother and father were the only ones who looked back with longing.
They thought she should seek a simple life close to home, but she had other ideas. She went to school, did well in English, and moved to Beijing to work. There was work in the international sector. The pay was modest but sufficient. It was never stable, for businesses came and went, but there was usually something.
And it was wonderful to be young and unattached in the city at that time, with things opening up so fast. She went with her friends to clubs, to parties, to receptions. She learned about life, and being on her own, and falling in love.
She saw girls around her during those years who went out at night as she did, forming liaisons as she did, yet who turned out later to be married. The husband lived in some other city. Sometimes there was a child, and in that case the child was usually with the grandparents. The women lived as if single. They were not libertines, but if they fell for someone, they had an affair. Gao Lan remembered how shocked she was the first time one of them admitted to her that she was married, that she had a little girl. "I have two minds," the woman had said. "Two hearts. One loves my daughter and misses her. The other one is here."
In time Gao Lan had come to understand that many of these girls, when young, had married men toward whom their parents had steered them. At that age obedience was all they understood. Now, though, the deed done, they found it easier to live apart from those husbands and maintain lives of their own.
Gao Lan had been proud then, when she was young, that her life path was hers to choose. Now of course she was alone forever, most likely—especially considering what she had been doing the last few years. Back then, though, she had only been full of joy and freedom.
Her fourth year in Beijing she started a relationship with a foreigner. He was marvelously exciting to her at first—perhaps simply because he was foreign, and so different. He was strong, for one thing. He handled her with confidence. She loved it, but in time she came to see the dark side of the relationship: always, he had to control. He would make a date with her and be effusive in his anticipation, then call her an hour before to break it off. He b
ecame cold if she showed too much feeling for him.
Get rid of him, her friends told her. But she felt empty when she tried to do so. Unwise as it was, she cared for him. She kept going back to him, even when he infuriated her. It had become like a game between them, to be cared for, be accepted.
During this time she met Matt. She was in a club with some friends. The other man had angered her and she hadn't spoken to him in a week. She was bored, tired; even though it was still early she was ready to leave. Then she saw Matt across the room at the same moment he saw her. It was impossible to say who approached whom first; they walked toward each other, smiling. They talked. He was courtly and charming. She wanted to know everything about him. His English was clear, easy for her to understand. She told him about her life, her childhood in Shaoxing, her parents. He seemed to take an interest in everything she said.
After a time his friend, another American from his company, thinner, older, more sinuous, wanted to leave. Matt refused to hear of it. He wanted to stay with her. The other man grew annoyed. Finally Matt said they could go if she could come with him. The other man resisted. They argued, in English too fast and slurred for her to understand; then suddenly it was all right and she was leaving with them. They went to another bar. She and Matt sat close, talking. They went from place to place. She sensed the other man's displeasure, but neither she nor Matt was willing to leave the other's company.
Finally at four A.M. the three of them left the last bar. She and Matt left first. They climbed into the back of a car, close.
"Do you want to go someplace else and keep talking?"
"Yes," she said. She wanted never to leave his side.
His face was a few inches away in the night-dark. "Or do you want to come home with me?"
"Yes," she said. "That."
He leaned forward and gave his address in memorized, approximated Chinese, and as soon as he was relaxed in his seat again he slipped his hand under her skirt. He amazed her. She had never known anyone so free. It was as if her saying yes had burst the tension of not knowing that had held them apart all these hours, and now he couldn't wait another second. Her excitement rose with his, and by the time they got out at his building they could barely make it inside and up the elevator.
