A Certain Smile

by Judith Michael

  "Yes, exactly. Just as in China."

  "But there's a difference," she said stubbornly. "You can't say these things out loud—"

  "You have heard me say them."

  "To me. In private. I'll bet if you called a meeting and made speeches attacking your government, you'd be in jail before you knew it."

  "Give us time," he said, very quietly, and Miranda felt a stab of pain. Why did she have to attack China, when he had made it so clear that he cared deeply about it and hoped it would see better times?

  That's why. Because he does care, and I don't want him to. I want him to say that America is better, a better place to live. I want him to want to live there.

  And she knew then that she had been wanting that for some time, that it had crept into her thoughts, taken root and flowered, and now she could no longer ignore it.

  The light faded, the tour groups returned to their buses, and still they stood, looking out over a darkening lake. "You see how much alike we are," Li said at last. "We both wanted to be writers, we loved Zane Grey, we found professions where we create things, we criticize our countries but still love them. And we both have American fathers."

  Miranda burst out laughing. "That's certainly true."

  "And now we will have dinner." He led her down a long corridor. "Here is our restaurant, Tingliguan, the Pavilion for Listening to Orioles."

  "What a lovely name."

  "And a lovely place. Come, we have a table."

  They sat close together, at the water's edge, and chose their fish for dinner from a squirming, thrashing tank. "The Empress Cixi had one hundred dishes for each meal," Li said, "but we will have fewer."

  She looked disappointed. "How many fewer?"

  "Oh, say half as many. But if that is not enough, we will order more. Shall we choose together?"

  They bent over the menu, Li translating and describing the dishes, Miranda recognizing some of the written characters and reading them with delight. They drank Yanjing beer and talked of childhood and school, work, parents, children, friends made and lost. And when dinner was finished and they left the pavilion where once emperors and empresses had listened to the songs of orioles, Miranda became aware of their dreamlike movements, so familiar, almost a routine. Once again, they left a restaurant, arms touching, and walked to Li's car. Once again, they drove to his house and parked by the gate in his wall. And once again they moved through courtyards to his bedroom, to his bed, where, once again, they made love and slept and woke to the sun to begin a new day that would belong to them because they would begin and end it in each other's arms.

  It was so perfect that she hugged it to herself, cradling it in her thoughts. But it was not perfect, even as a dream. Because there was no identifiable place in which it could be repeated again and again. There was no place in which she could imagine with certainty each new day truly belonging to them.

  "My love, my love," Li murmured, sometime in the middle of the night, and Miranda could not tell if he were awake or asleep. "Always, always ..." His arms tightened to bring her closer and they woke and he moved his hand along her body, bringing her to desire. She stretched beneath him, her arms above her head, her long neck arched. "Ah," he said with a quick brightening of his eyes, "now I have you." He clasped her two hands in his and pinned them to the pillow, he kissed her eyes, her mouth, the vulnerable line of her throat. "We are free of all bonds, except the one that holds us to each other. This one. This one that cannot be broken. I have you now, and I will never let you go."

  "No, don't," she said. "Don't let me go. Ever."

  He kissed her again, and, still imprisoning her hands, came into her, and when at last he released them, Miranda felt a quick stab of sorrow, as if something had been lost. But she held him to her as he lay upon her, and would not let him go until they began to fall asleep and then he slid down beside her and they lay locked together beneath the silk coverlet with its leaping dragons and soaring birds, and she breathed in the warmth of his skin, and felt his steady heartbeat answering hers, and her hands moved over him in long lingering strokes, beginning and ending in whispers, and so, in the soft darkness of his bed, they slept.

  "Did you dream?" Li asked the next morning as they drank tea and ate sweet bean paste buns in his sunlit courtyard. "I dreamt I told you ... no, it must have been real. Did I speak to you last night in my sleep?"

  "Yes."

  "Did I tell you I love you? And that you belong with me always?"

  "Yes."

  "I thought it was another part of my dream. Perhaps it was, and you were in it. Do you think I am dreaming you and soon I will wake up and find none of these days has been real? Or perhaps you are dreaming me. In which case everything is all right as long as we don't wake up." He looked beyond her, his face meditative, then shook his head. "No, it has its attractions, but I would rather be awake with you than dreaming. Shall I tell you what I dreamt? That you and I were on a sailboat, at the helm, and we passed an island with a magnificent fairytale castle. Smoke was coming from all the chimneys, so we knew that everyone was at home, all the princes and princesses and kings and queens and servants, and we decided to go there because we were sure they would let us in to share their wonders. What did you dream?"

  "Oh, it was much more confused than yours. You and I were riding bicycles to the market, and then I was in a garment factory signing a hundred contracts, and then I was measuring a terra-cotta warrior because I wanted to make a cashmere sweater for it, and then I was in Beijing, walking in the Haidian district, and I got lost and knew I'd never get back to my hotel, and I was incredibly sad, and then you found me and we went on the marble boat and sailed away."

  "Ah, we both dreamt of boats and sailing."

  She smiled. "Among other things."

  "So it is clear that we both are thinking of travel."

  "Yes."

  "But, alas, instead we go to work."

  She smiled. "And are you still going to talk to Sheng about... whatever it is you're going to do?"

  "I have not changed my mind, if that is what you mean. Yes, I will talk to Sheng, but I will go ahead on my own, if I must, because it seems I have committed myself, in my head. Now." He switched subjects again with the abruptness she had come to expect. "You remember that tonight we are going to Liulichang."

  "And dinner with Meiyun. She left a message at the hotel yesterday, saying she would meet us there at five o'clock."

  "Then we shall be there."

  They kissed, and, like the couple in Miranda's dreamlike routine,

  like a man and woman who had found a place to be permanent and make each day theirs, they left the house and drove away, to spend a day in the city.

  "You are less anxious today," said Tang Po in the conference room at the Palace Hotel, and it was said so kindly that Miranda did not feel he was intruding on her privacy.

  "Yes," she said. "Thank you for being so understanding."

  "We all have troubles and disappointments and losses," he said. "Sometimes they vanish, and sometimes not, and if not we find ways to adjust and make a life. A different life, perhaps, but not necessarily a worse one."

  She carried those words with her when they parted at the end of the day, along with a contract from Tang Po that was far better than anything she had dreamed of. Good and bad, she thought. A contract that is everything I could hope for, and advice telling me to adjust if I don't get what I want.

  Li. The two of us. Together.

  But what if I don't want to adjust?

  Chapter i

  Li arrived at the Palace Hotel to find Meiyun in a small booth in the bar, drinking vodka on ice. "You look happy," Meiyun said, almost accusingly, and he laughed.

  "Do you think I shouldn't be?"

  "I think you are risking a great deal. As I told Miranda in Xi'an."

  "Did you? She did not tell me that."

  "And does she tell you everything?"

  "I don't know," he said, looking surprised at the idea. "I hope n
ot."

  "Well, then, why should she tell you this?"

  "Because it was a warning."

  Meiyun looked at him closely. "And have you not had many warnings, in your days together?"

  "I love her," Li said quietly. "Next to that, the warnings fade."

  "Oh, my dear." She reached across the table to take Li's hand. "The day before my husband took his life, he wrote me a letter, which I found when the authorities allowed me to go home. Among other things, he quoted a line from our favorite poem: The sun warms the dancing lake, but overhead the heron casts a shadow that warns of cold below.' Dear Li, to ignore the warnings is to drown in the cold."

  "Or to fly with the heron upward, into the warmth."

  A quick frown passed over her face. "You are going with her, to America?"

  "I did not say that."

  "Then I am an old woman who hears but does not understand."

  He smiled faintly. "You are far younger than most, and you understand everything." He gazed at his hands, folded on the table. "So few days. Things move too quickly, sweeping us along ..." He looked at

  Meiyun. "I think about going to America with Miranda. I think about asking her to stay here with me. Would you approve of either one?"

  "It is not for me—"

  "I am asking you."

  She sighed. "What can I say? Some people uproot themselves and are happy, or at least satisfied, while others long always for home; they are always strangers." She leveled a look at him. "Love is not enough."

  Li winced, remembering a conversation with Miranda. "I called Miranda a romantic for saying that it ought to be."

  "And here she is." Li turned to see Miranda walking toward them.

  "Meiyun," Miranda said and with American openness spread her arms wide. To Li's amazement, Meiyun did the same, and the two women embraced like old friends. Men would not do this, Li thought, certainly not at only a second meeting, certainly not across cultural and geographical boundaries. How fortunate women are, that they can doit.

  "Wonderful," Meiyun said, standing back to admire Miranda in the blue dress with its deep collar. "The dress has improved since you first tried it on. No, how foolish of me. It is you who have changed. Happier. And more easy with yourself You no longer slouch. Now the dress is truly yours. But come, I am impatient to show you this. Here, sit beside me." She took a box from the seat beside her. "Open it, open it, I cannot wait another moment."

  "The cape," Miranda said. "It's really finished? I didn't believe you could do it." She opened the box and unfolded the pale gold tissue inside. "Oh," she breathed. "Yes, it's exactly as I imagined it."

  Li leaned over the table to look and when Miranda simply sat, gazing at the folded cape, he plucked it from the box and held it up. "Beautiful," he said softly. "A beautiful design."

  The cape was a cashmere fabric, lightweight and soft as silk, deep black lined in gold satin. Scattered about the blackness were the gold outlines of large, lush magnohas that had been laser-cut into the fabric so that the lining could shine through. A hood lay softly over the shoulders, the gold lining like a flower all its own. A single jet button was at the throat.

  "Purity, simplicity," Meiyun said. "Nothing extraneous. But those flowers! They move with the cape: alive and truly sexy." She looked from Li to Miranda. "Would you not say?"

  Miranda laughed. "I would, but I didn't think you would."

  "Sex is the thread that holds all fashion together, you know that, Miranda. Stand up, please." She took the cape from Li and placed it on Miranda's shoulders, fastening the button and smoothing the fabric.

  She draped the hood lightly over Miranda's head, framing her face. "How lovely it looks on you. I am very sorry that it is going to someone else. You deserve it."

  "It belongs on you," Li said, his look absorbing Miranda, drawing her deeply into him. He knew Meiyun was watching and it did not matter. I adore you, his look said, his look that lifted and consumed Miranda, and for a long moment they all were silenced by the power of his love.

  "And who does get the cape?" Li asked. He had ordered champagne and he filled their glasses. "Someone we can admire?"

  Meiyun smiled faintly. "Not very much. She is an actress of ordinary talent but great beauty. You may have seen her on television; her name is Wu Yi."

  "A small world," Li murmured. "She is having an affair with my son."

  "Sheng and Wu Yi?" Meiyun was surprised. "That means he is doing well. From what I have heard, Wu Yi does not look twice at men who are not successful."

  "Yes, he worries about that." Li shrugged. "I cannot help him there; what father would be listened to, telling a son who is mad for a great beauty that he would be better off staying home with his wife and child?" He contemplated the cape, softly folded again in its box. "You must have made this very quickly."

  "Meiyun has good people," said Miranda. "They had only three days, but they did it beautifully."

  "It was the design," Li said. "People always do their best work when they are creating something brilliant and perfect."

  They looked at each other. Meiyun turned her attention to her vodka while their eyes held, their hands clasped beneath the table. After a moment, she said, "You have come very far. You chose not to stop when you could. And now what will you do?"

  "We're just being together," said Miranda. "We haven't talked about anything else."

  "As if you will be in China indefinitely?"

  "As if ... we have time to think about it."

  "And what is it you will think about?" There was a silence. "Come, you must be precise. This is not a time for fuzzy thinking. Shall I tell you the questions you should be asking?"

  Miranda shook her head. "We know them. I'd rather not talk about this now. I thought you and I would talk about working together."

  "Ah. To help your thinking. To have all the pieces of the puzzle in front of you before you begin to put them together. Very sensible. Well,

  then, of course we can work together, my dear. You have brilliant designs locked inside you, and you need a place to set them free. My shop can give you that. I am not as excellent a designer as you, but if we are clever we could make our reputation all through America and Europe, and in China, too, with women who have money; there are more of them every day. We would be very hot, as you would say. Women like Wu Yi, who are mad for fashion, have no nationality; they are the same all over the world, and they would pay top money, very top money, for designs with our label."

  Miranda's eyes were bright. "Meiyun Miranda. What a good sound."

  "I think Miranda Meiyun; it flows better. And a Western name in front would be more popular in China and perhaps everywhere else. So, now you have those pieces of the puzzle."

  "Yes, but where would we work?"

  "That is not for me to say."

  "But we could be anywhere, couldn't we? With faxes and E-mail... it wouldn't really matter where we are."

  "For most things that is true. Where would you like to be?"

  "It's where I have to be," Miranda said after a moment. "My children, my family, my work are all in Boulder."

  "And Li is here."

  Miranda met Li's eyes. Their booth was a little island that had drawn into itself as the bar grew crowded and noisy. The three of them were leaning toward each other, to be heard, and their closeness made Li think of a family, leaning inward for support, until Meiyun's words made them draw a little apart. Li is here.

  Li met Miranda's eyes and read her thoughts. But he could be in Boulder. "Yes," he murmured. "I could be." He knew they were slipping into this discussion because of Meiyun's prodding, but that was all right; without her, they might have put off talk of the future until the last minute, when it would be too late. Meiyun's unwavering gaze insisted on honesty, and forced reality into the artificial world they had created in these few intense days.

  "I could be," he said again, still looking at Miranda. "I would have to make arrangements, and that would take some time, but I could be in Boulde
r, with you."

  "Or not," Meiyun said flatly, forcing them to look at all possibilities.

  The brightness faded from Miranda's eyes, and Li turned to Meiyun. "I could do it. Is there so much that keeps me here? These past few days ..."

  "What?" Meiyun demanded.

  Li told her, beginning with his interrogation, the constant surveillance, the planting of documents in his office and home. "Of course it is not all the government—"

  "But others took advantage of the government's interest in you. We know how often that happens. So. Now you want to get away from all this."

  "Yes. And more. Begin again. Build something new."

  "Can you?"

  He looked at Miranda. "Yes."

  Miranda let out her breath. "If you really mean it ... . You do mean it, of course you do. Oh, Li, you'll love it; we'll live together in my house; it would be your house; you would make it yours."

  Her words came faster, and Li realized how many times she must have said them to herself, longing to say them aloud. "There would be work for you. So much work. I know people who can help you get a green card and if we're ... if we're ..."

  "Married," he said gently.

  She flushed, and he saw Meiyun's look sharpen, and he realized that in all their talk and lovemaking neither of them had spoken of marriage. He watched Miranda think about all its implications, and he wondered if it would frighten her and she would change her mind. But instead she smiled. "If we're married, it would be easy for you to stay. And you would find work; start a new company, if you want; work with new architects—" She stopped. "I'm sorry, I get carried away when I'm excited."

  Li touched her face, as if they were alone. But then Meiyun said, "It will take some time to make these plans. And right now, I am very hungry. I thought you had invited me to dinner."

  Li would have resisted— 'We 're finally talking about this; leave us alone —but then he thought perhaps she was right to make them pause. "We did," he said amiably. "And I have chosen a new restaurant, not far from here."