Graduates in Wonderland

by Jessica Pan

  I remember when I used to walk around like this in Beijing, taking photos of Taiwanese ice cream, piled as high as the ceiling, or getting lost in a maze of Chinese alleyways for fun. You can always tell the new arrivals from the jaded expats: The new arrivals are the ones staring at the fried scorpions sold at the night markets (I remember it so well) and the weary expats are the ones yelling at Chinese waitresses for bringing out the wrong kind of eggplant dish.

  I resemble the latter group more and more. I suddenly find myself growing impatient with daily life here. Before, when oncoming passengers would rush onto the subway before I could get off at my stop, I used to view it as a fun game (“Challenge accepted!”). Now I scowl and use sharp elbows. I don’t want to stay here so long that I can’t see the good parts anymore. Your adventures in Paris just made me realize how my experience in Beijing is already heavy with memories, not all of them nice.

  In a cab on the way home from work one night last week, I turned to my right and saw Ray, next to the car window, cycling home. My first reaction was to roll down my window to get his attention, but before I could manage this, the light changed and my cab sped away from him. Watching him recede into the background is the most contact we’ve had since I walked out of his apartment.

  I’d been trying to completely repress all thoughts or feelings about that whole situation. You’re the only person I’ve told about Ray, because I feel so embarrassed about playing an ingenue to an older man. I shudder to think about how long the charade would have gone on had the Erection Angel not struck Ray down. I was never going to marry someone like Ray—­cold, proud, and twenty years my senior. I could have wasted entire years on him.

  Want to hear about my dream? Great! I’d love to tell you. Last night I dreamt that I opened the door to a doctor’s office to find every guy I had ever dated sitting in the waiting room. They sat side by side in rows of chairs: high school boyfriends, flings from Brown, a few token Australians from my year studying abroad, and then Bruno, George, and Ray. They sat, absentmindedly flipping through golf magazines, and waiting for their names to be called for a checkup, unaware that their common link was me.

  I don’t need a psychology professor to tell me, “Your track record is not so hot!” I’ve fallen into so many flings because I’ve always felt that I must explore! I must have adventures! I only live once! But there were a lot of mistakes in that waiting room. Only a handful loved me, but those were the ones I never loved back.

  I contemplated this briefly in bed before I realized I was already running ten minutes late for work. It doesn’t help matters that another expat editor my age just got promoted and subsequently he’s started wearing a suit to work every day. A three-­piece suit. Why do some people have to go and ruin everything for everyone? He’s breaking the code! Before his promotion, he wore tank tops, baggy jeans, and flip-­flops.

  Now I’m wondering if I was supposed to start dressing in a power suit when I got promoted. Also, perhaps I should not have come to work today with my hair pulled back in a bandanna, which I thought could be interpreted as vaguely “Chinese” instead of its real meaning, “I’ve lost complete control of my bangs.”

  I don’t really care, though, because although I’ve loved working here, I think I’m over it. I’ve written hundreds of stories now about family relationships, been to dozens of tourist spots in Beijing, and finished fifteen full issues. I’ve fought with our designer, Echo, six thousand times.

  But I still want to be a journalist—­I’m just not sure how to get to that career from here. In Beijing, it’s easy to brush up against journalists and foreign correspondents (or date them, i.e., Ray). I’ve met the foreign correspondents for TIME, the New Yorker, and the Guardian, but there’s still such a strong distinction between their jobs and mine. Even if someone made me the correspondent for the New York Times today and told me, “Go report on the Chinese migrant community!” I’d just stand in one place holding my tape recorder. I don’t have hard news skills, despite everything I’ve learned on the job here. I almost think that I do want to go to journalism school, but I’m still against doing this in New York, a city jam-­packed with journalists and sky-­high tuition fees. But where would I go? I’m scared to make a move, but I feel stuck.

  Isla tells me that I’ve been sighing a lot lately, and so she’s trying to drag me out of my funk. Why can’t she just let me go home and order takeout and watch bad TV? This is my right as a person on the verge of giving up. She’s sneaky, because she makes a big show of inviting me out in front of our entire office, which means I can’t very well reply in front of my other colleagues, “Isla, I have a stack of pirated DVDs and a giant Toblerone waiting for me at home.” This is social tyranny. She’s insisting that we eat bad Mexican food at her favorite hole-­in-­the-­wall and drink a pitcher of margaritas. Each. This is Australia’s cure for sadness.

  Isla also told our bosses that our workload is too much for two people, and she hired a new intern to help us out for a few weeks.

  He has dark hair and nice hands. I tried not to notice this, but Isla sits between us, and it’s the only part of him I can see from the corner of my left eye.

  Do not worry! I’m not going to date my own intern.

  Love,

  Jess

  P.S. He’s English.

  MARCH 20

  Rachel to Jess

  What is with you and English guys? I think you might have a problem. Not a big problem, though. What I really want to know is, how does a girl from Texas end up with a tendency to go after English guys? Wait. Isn’t one of your brothers married to an English girl? Developmentally, what happened to you guys?

  Right now, I’m at the National Library. Most days I come here to study with Jacques and Marc in the philosophy reading room and I cart my books over from film and media studies. The rooms are deathly silent. People frown at you when you sneeze. It is a VERY SERIOUS place, where Jacques and Marc pull out copies of Derrida and Foucault, and I pull out old movie magazines. Right now, they are sitting across from me with their noses stuck in their computers.

  They’re both a little older than me, and they love talking about movies and books and also my mistakes in French. It feels like what I imagine having older brothers is like. Do they make fun of your taste in movies and give you book recommendations and also sometimes get you drunk?

  Sometimes Tall Sasha meets us outside and we stand on the steps shivering with Jacques and Marc, making conversation over our thick black vending-­machine espressos.

  Things changed so quickly—­I remember attending a seminar here my first week of school and just thinking what a big, empty place the library was and how Paris was so lonely.

  I see these guys all the time and Olivier comes out a lot with us too. I’ve figured out that he is not dating anyone, he is not gay, and he always tries to take the seat next to me. Because he’s currently between jobs, we meet for coffee with Sasha about three times a week.

  I can’t help but feeling like Olivier’s trying to get me alone.

  “You like horses? Do you want to go to the races sometime?”

  (Jacques cuts in.) “Yeah, let’s all go to the races!”

  Or

  Me: I can’t wait to see this movie.

  Olivier: I’ve been looking forward to it too! We should go.

  Marc: Great! How’s Tuesday?

  I know we’re moving toward something, but at a painfully slow pace.

  Most nights end like this: We’re all standing around in a group, deciding where to go next, when Olivier takes my hand.

  And kisses my cheek.

  And waves good-­bye.

  Sasha brings him up and nods at me knowingly. I haven’t confided in her, but she knows I love him. How do girls always know?

  Also, the writer, Lee, wrote back to me again. He’s now halfway through my novel and he sent me an honest e-mail about how importa
nt it is to write books that people will actually read. He told me about his early novels, and the books that made a big splash in the literary world, and the difference between them. He wrote that no matter how beautiful the language and the characters are, we read fiction for stories—­which is what my book lacks. He added that the word novel means new, which is what mine needs to be.

  Lee’s leading a writer’s colony in Canada over the next month but will get back to me on the second half as soon as he can. Meanwhile, I’m trying to interpret what his feedback means for my future writing. Writing a plot-­based story is so not what I learned in any class. “Write characters,” I’ve been told. “Write what you know.”

  He says, “All literature is longing.”

  To me this means every character is driven by desire, but I’m still mulling this over.

  Sometimes I want to give up and just write a romance novel.

  Love,

  Rach

  APRIL 2

  Jess to Rachel

  Um, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I must do it quickly. I am typing furiously before Isla and our intern come back into the office from lunch.

  I have a thriving online relationship with my intern. Oh God. I just turned twenty-­four. I should know better. What am I doing? Oh God. Omigod.

  There. It’s out there. Now you know and now it cannot be stopped.

  Cons: Could lose job? Least professional editor ever?

  Pros: This could be great fodder for the plot of a romance novel you are going to write.

  His name is Sam Singer. Through my company’s online messaging system, we began discussing upcoming articles, which then broke off into questions about our own personal travels, and then escalated into making light jokes about our colleagues. Then, a thousand messages later, he’s telling me he thinks the bandanna I wear in my hair is cute.

  This is not standard boss/intern territory, right? The typical intern job description does not include calling the boss cute, does it? If it does, this definitely explains why all of my summer internships led nowhere.

  Other than the intricacies of flirting via instant messenger, here’s what I have learned:

  Before Sam arrived in Beijing, he spent a month backpacking through India and from there he flew to Nepal to climb Mt. Everest. I’m going to let that sink in for you. He climbed Mt. Everest!

  He is from a specific part of Northern England that makes him a “Mackem.” Whatever the hell that means. His accent sounds more Irish than English to me; it has a melody to it. His sentences dip low and then end high.

  He has dark brown hair and light hazel eyes. He has a grin that makes him look just like a young, slightly crooked Tom Cruise. When he smiles at me with one eyebrow raised, I know I am not strong enough to ignore my attraction to him. Why must his eyebrows have the ability to do that?? What evolutionary purpose does this serve except to make women want to throw themselves at raised-­eyebrowed men?

  Okay, I guess that is actually a pretty good evolutionary purpose. I just figured out the answer to my own question while typing this. Well played, Evolution.

  Unfortunately, I can’t technically see him without blatantly turning my chair around to look at him. Why must Isla sit between us? She’s already as thin as a rail, but since I can’t directly stare at Sam throughout the entire workday, I need her to be entirely invisible as well. That way, I can see what Sam is doing, what the back of his neck looks like, and if he’s looking at me. This is not too much to ask, is it?

  While chatting online, we are the funnier, wittier versions of ourselves. In person, our conversations are stilted, hindered by the constraints of work etiquette. We ended up in the elevator together yesterday and it was very awkward—­he rambled on about taking A-­levels in French and then I blurted out something about you in Paris. We work on the twenty-­eighth floor, and as the elevator slowly rose, I tried to salvage the conversation by asking to see what he was listening to on his iPod.

  Rachel. This is what I saw. I saw Ryan Adams. Paul Simon. Damien Rice. Kings of Leon. Bright Eyes. Jeff Buckley. Carole King. Then, I saw Joni Mitchell’s entire album Blue.

  My immediate reaction was, “Oh, he is not straight.” He often wears pink button-­down shirts and his clothes always seem freshly ironed. But when he holds my gaze, it makes me suspect that he likes me.

  My magazine held a launch party at a hotel last night, and I spotted Sam across the room. We kept our distance amongst our colleagues, but I noticed that he wore a T-shirt instead of his usual buttoned-­up shirts. At the hotel bar, Isla leaned over to say, “Holy shit. Look at Intern Sam. He has muscles. I can see his chest muscles.” I just blinked at her, trying to give off an aura of professionalism. She has no idea. Also, if she goes for him, I will kill her.

  I thought the flirtation with Sam was all just in good fun, but when I stood in the elevator this morning, waiting for the doors to open into my office, I felt my heart racing. It’s too late. I’m in deep. My heart has decided.

  He’s only in Beijing for another five weeks before he travels through Southeast Asia. Then he moves to Australia permanently.

  What do I do, Rach? Go with my instincts and behave rashly? Have a fling with my intern? Act mature and end this before it has begun?

  Am I going to make a huge mistake?

  Here’s a hint: probably.

  Love,

  Jess

  P.S. According to Sam, I am twenty-­six, instead of twenty-­four. I wanted to retain some veneer of authority so I pretended to be older than him. This is how it begins. WEB OF LIES.

  P.P.S. No, Jacques and Marc are not acting like older brothers. Brothers make you sit in the middle seat during road trips and they will always try to bribe you with chewing gum. Don’t fall for it!!! Then they grow up, marry nice women, and suddenly start cooking dinner for you. This almost balances out all the false gum bribing and forced middle-­seat sitting. Almost.

  APRIL 15

  Rachel to Jess

  Jessica! You are really pushing the boundaries of being a boss. Obviously I am riveted, though, so I must know more! And are you going to have to write his reference?

  Also, you keep saying he looks like a crooked Tom Cruise, and I don’t even know what that means. His face is sideways?

  I’ve been going out to lunch with Olivier because he doesn’t work very far away, although the library boys tag along. I’m starting to really like him. Today, our thighs kept grazing each other’s during lunch. However, I didn’t understand the waiter at ALL. At all. Then the waiter asked if I spoke French and Olivier goes, “A little.” I hit him on the thigh hard. And he laughed.

  Wherever this is going, I wish it would hurry up and get there.

  In other news, as I’m sure you’ve heard, Astrid just left after visiting for a weekend, while on her way to Norway. I took her to my favorite spots and on Saturday we ended up at Shakespeare and Company, the famous English bookstore on the Seine, for a book launch party. It was a book about mysticism, so they set up mini tents around the bookstore: a gypsy who tells fortunes, a woman who reads tarot cards, an I Ching demonstration, and so on.

  Stunned-­looking people kept emerging from the fortune-­teller’s tent exclaiming about his talents, so Astrid and I stood in the long line to have our palms read. Astrid went into the tent first and emerged half an hour later. She didn’t even tell me much about what they talked about, but said he mentioned her having a lucrative career. Then I took my turn.

  The fortune-­teller wore a ruffled shirt and a gold earring. He didn’t say anything to me, but just studied my palm. He stared at it silently for at least two or three minutes. Then he let it go and looked at me.

  “Romance is vital to your life,” he said.

  “I did just meet someone,” I told him.

  He nodded. “All I know is that you will have one dominant love in your life, which will be
very happy, and to which you’ll devote yourself completely. But right before that, you will have met somebody who you think is the person for you. He is not.”

  “So is the guy I just met The One or the one before The One?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “Does my hand say when I will meet The One?”

  He looked back at me.

  “It’s not a calendar,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  Okay, so then I felt dumb, but wasn’t he the one claiming he could read my future on my palm?

  I mumbled thanks and pulled back the curtain to find Astrid. We went out next door for drinks and shivered together under a malfunctioning heat lamp as we drank red wine and watched the boats go along the river. I sat stunned for a while, while Astrid brought me back to earth by joking about the way the fortune-­teller might have been mistaken for a pirate in other circumstances, given his costume. I looked at her handbag and told her his “lucrative career” tip-­off about her might have been obvious by her designer purse.

  I hadn’t seen Astrid for two years and we talked about this a lot. She told me that it seems like I’m finally learning how to be more proactive and take things less personally and we discussed how you are starting to think long-­term about your future. Of all of us, she feels the most scattered. While most people are narrowing their options and focusing on one thing, she still wants to be everything. She’s in law school, but she wants to take acting classes and make documentaries, as well as start her own business. She talked at a million miles per hour.

  Even though I know all of this stuff about her life, and it feels so far from mine, Astrid feels like the same person I knew at Brown, just amplified. She both is and isn’t the Astrid I knew before, and though I love her just as much, I have these fleeting moments where I feel like I hardly know her at all. You want to become an actress? When did this happen?