Tales of Accidental Genius
Page 11
people to grow flowers against;
the communal hutong bathrooms were now
the only facility in Beijing with heated toilet seats,
deluxe rain showers, steam rooms (with eucalyptus infusers),
part-time attendants, and nightly golf-cart shuttle service.
When people asked how Weng had become so rich,
he told them about his success with competitions.
Soon everyone in his hutong was entering competitions,
and a month later someone won a Jet Ski.
Only Hui was suspicious.
“Know why the oldest tree in Tiantan Park is still there?”
“Because it’s ugly,” Hui said before Weng could answer.
“Anything that stood out for its beauty or strength was cut
down.”
Weng handed Hui some coffee-flavored tea.
They were standing next to each other,
looking at the Rolls-Royce.
“Better come second, even third,” Hui winked. “Less attention.”
“I only bought it to drive to Ningbo.”
“I know,” Hui said, going into his house,
“which is why I have a present for you.”
A moment later Weng’s neighbor reappeared
with a bag of Hello Kitty bobbleheads.
“I got these cheap. Arrange them on the back shelf
of your new car. Then everyone will think you’re a joke.”
But Cherry was still on his mind.
And though he could no longer see
the logic in driving to Ningbo,
it would at least spare him the sadness
of being in Beijing without her.
The next day, as he was packing for the trip, Mr. Yi came by.
He parked his car next to Weng’s, unaware that his neighbors
would now believe Weng had won a second Rolls-Royce.
“I came to see if you’re really going,” Mr. Yi said.
“You told me it was a good idea.”
“Well it probably isn’t.”
“Why don’t you come with me?” Weng asked him.
“Impossible,” Mr. Yi said. “It’s nothing for you to worry
about—but there are some wrinkles here
that need to be ironed out.”
The wrinkles Mr. Yi was referring to
had come about after the release of Baby Golden Helper.
Soon after the first tricycle went on the market, police stations
across China were inundated with calls
from panic-stricken parents
with reports of toddlers filling their pockets
with candy and riding off into the sunset.
One five-year-old-boy was found
three hundred miles from home
trying to buy diapers with chocolate coins.
十一
Weng had never been to Ningbo, but had seen it on the news
when the twenty-two-mile-long Hangzhou Bay Bridge was
first opened to the public.
The news team had been reporting from the middle of the
bridge at a service center called
THE LAND BETWEEN SEA AND SKY.
Weng had also seen a history program on Ningbo,
and knew there had once been two lakes inside the city,
but only Moon Lake remained,
and Weng imagined people going there at night
to see their faces change in the water.
Weng completed the journey to Ningbo in one very long day,
stopping only for fuel, spicy noodles, and coffee-flavored tea.
At the first gas station, a team of workers swarmed around him.
Weng nodded politely, then went to find the toilet.
An old blind man was outside cleaning his shoes with a tissue.
The old man said he was waiting for his son.
Weng arrived in Ningbo around midnight and checked into
a hotel Mr. Yi had told him about with glass walls
and a dozen different escalators going in opposite directions
with no passengers.
The women at the front desk had gold badges
with their names in English and Chinese.
An older man carried Weng’s bag to the room,
then asked if he would inspect it closely.
“It’s very nice,” Weng said, looking around. “Thank you.”
“So, if you had to give it a score,
what do you think would be fair?”
“Very high score,” Weng said.
“What about out of a hundred?”
“A hundred out of a hundred,” Weng said.
The porter couldn’t believe it. “Can I admit to you, Mr. Fun,
that my wife is head of maid services?”
“Then it’s the nicest room I’ve seen in my whole life.”
“Please, Mr. Fun, this is too much, you’ll bring us bad luck!”
Weng handed the man a stack of yuan,
but in an old-fashioned gesture,
he refused the money and Weng had to stuff
the bills into the porter’s pockets.
“Before I go, Mr. Fun, I’m going to linger outside your door for
a few minutes in case there’s anything else you can think of that
you might need in the moments following my departure.”
In the morning, Weng looked out at the city. He had never been
so high up, and imagined how useful it would be
to have a pair of binoculars.
“Hello, is this Reception?”
“Yes, Mr. Fun, what can we do for you?”
“How do you know my name?”
“I can see it when you call, Mr. Fun, but if it upsets you,
I’ll pretend that you’re nobody. Do you recognize my voice, sir?”
“Your voice?”
“It’s the porter from last night! How does the room look
this morning? Still magnificent?”
“Yes,” Weng said, looking at the clothes he had begun to hang
from his suitcase, “I was calling to see if you had any binoculars
or a telescope I could borrow?”
“A wise and original request,” the porter said.
They arrived ten minutes later on a silver tray,
and Weng spent the rest of the morning looking out at Ningbo
from the 186th floor.
All those people, he thought,
and not a single one who knows or cares
that I am here or anywhere.
There were two pairs of slippers in a plastic bag next to the bed,
along with body lotion and a shoeshine mitt.
Weng thought of the old man he’d seen cleaning his shoes with
a tissue outside the gas station toilet,
then wondered if his mother and father were together again.
He stayed in his room for the rest of the day and watched
television, though sometimes got up
and went to the window with his binoculars.
At any moment, he thought, a person is dying or being born.
He ate in the hotel restaurant that evening,
but the food wasn’t spicy enough and the waiters kept coming
over to ask if he’d ever had Champagne.
There were also English translations of dishes
on the menu, such as:
HUSBAND AND WIFE LUNG SLICE, SALIVA CHICKEN,
and ALUMNI PERCH.
When Weng was almost finished with his meal,
a noisy group of foreigners came down on the escalator
and took a table in the far corner,
where they laughed to themselves over bottles of wine and beer.
Weng watched the foreigners eat with knives and forks,
make toasts and cheer one another.
One woman was laughing so much
she had to dry her eyes with the napkin.
After supper, Weng went up the escalator
to a mezzanine level for a foot massage.
He asked the masseuse about her life,
and she spoke about her daughter
and the funny things children say.
When the music stopped, the foot masseuse
left her stool to change the CD.
When the massage was over, Weng unfolded a piece of paper
with the address Mr. Yi’s assistant had dug up
for Cherry’s family.
“It’s not very far from here, Mr. Fun,” the masseuse said.
“Do you have a car?”
Weng went back to his room and thought about
what Shirley would look like.
He also thought about calling Uncle Ping, and asking if he
really did have a “long-term plan,” as Mr. Yi had suggested.
He also wanted to know if more lucrative work was the only
reason Cherry lived alone in Beijing—
while her daughter, husband, and parents were in Ningbo.
But when he made up his mind to place the call,
he just opened his phone
and scrolled through old messages.
From his window the next morning,
Weng looked down with his binoculars
at children in a schoolyard doing morning exercises.
Like colorful birds, they stretched their wings
to a music no one else could hear.
Weng thought of Shirley again,
wondered if she were one of the colorful birds.
Without binoculars the children were so far away,
but Weng could feel the flutter of their lives
from the 186th floor.
For the next two days he sat in his Rolls-Royce
outside the address he’d been given,
and on the third day he saw Shirley.
He knew it was her because of the blue squirrel hat
he had seen in Cherry’s hands that first time
they met at the Temple of Heaven.
It was hard to drive at a walking pace,
so he rolled a hundred yards behind,
close to the curb, trying not to lose the small, quick figure,
as bicycles swarmed behind him,
mesmerized by the Hello Kitty bobbleheads.
When Shirley arrived at the school gates,
a group of girls ran to meet her,
Weng used his binoculars to watch them
hug and jump in the playground with joy.
That afternoon, Weng stayed in the hotel and
watched a film about a girl, her grandfather, and a bird.
Then he went down to the spa on the mezzanine level,
but a different masseuse was working,
so he made an excuse and went back to his room.
Next morning, Weng wanted to follow Cherry again,
but he felt too awkward spying on a child he didn’t even know.
So he stayed in his room watching more television,
and took his meals early.
In the evening, he walked around the lobby of the hotel,
then found somewhere to sit
and read through Cherry’s old text messages.
The foreigners who had laughed and drank toasts were gone,
and the waiters were just standing around looking idle.
A fresh wave of guests arrived overnight,
and next morning the restaurant was packed
with international businesspeople
eating breakfast over newspapers and laptop computers.
Weng left the hotel early and drove around Ningbo,
stopping to eat fish-head soup in a small park.
He decided that, since he had followed Shirley to school once,
he could follow her home once, and so arrived a full hour
before dismissal to secure a good parking spot.
As he waited, Weng smelled something
and realized the plastic container of fish-head soup
left over from lunch had split and leaked
into the Rolls-Royce’s Blenheim carpet.
He collected as many bones as he could,
and put them in the wood-grain tray.
With half an hour to go before the school bell,
Weng sat watching passersby
through the car’s parking cameras.
Although he was afraid of how it would make him feel,
he more than ever wanted to catch a glimpse
of Cherry’s husband
so that his hopes might be crushed entirely
and he could return to Beijing.
Perhaps Shirley’s father traveled for work?
Or was he bedridden?
Or crippled and able to move only one eyelid?
When Shirley appeared at the school gates
(with no father to meet her),
Weng felt self-conscious and awkward again,
but started the engine,
and resolved that once she was home safe
and through the outside door of her apartment building,
he would go straight back to the hotel and pack for Beijing.
However, at some point Shirley turned off the usual path
and Weng lost sight of her.
He stopped and got out of the car.
Perhaps she had gone down one of the side streets
with the idea of taking a shortcut?
Then, suddenly, there she was in the doorway of a shop,
holding a bag of Ningbo fried batter.
“Here,” she said, holding out the bag to Weng.
“You can only get this in Ningbo.”
Weng didn’t move.
“Go on,” Shirley said. “Don’t be shy.”
Weng took the bag.
“Why did you follow me to school the other day?”
“You’re mistaken,” Weng told her. “I don’t—”
“No mistake,” Shirley said, holding up her phone,
“I recorded you.”
“Your phone takes video?”
“We don’t have to play games,” Shirley said. “I know who you are.
My mother told me about you, but never said that you were rich!”
“I’m not rich.”
“Modest too!”
Then Shirley pulled him toward the car.
“Wait till my grandparents see you. They will be so surprised!”
“No,” Weng said. “Stop! What are you doing, I’m a stranger—
you shouldn’t be talking to me, get away!”
But Shirley was already climbing
into the backseat of the Rolls-Royce.
“What’s that smell?” she said.
Weng tapped on the glass. “You have to get out.”
Shirley wrinkled her nose. “Smells like a hutong in here!”
Then people were starting to look
so Weng got in and drove away quickly.
“It’s like you’re kidnapping me!” Shirley said.
“I’m stopping at the next corner and you have to get out!”
But Shirley said if he did that, she would scream.
“Just take me home,” she told him. “You know the way.”
When they were near her apartment Shirley asked if Weng
would drive her to school the next morning.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “No way. Impossible.”
“Aren’t you here to surprise Mom for her birthday?”
Weng looked at Shirley in his mirror. “But her birthday was
eight months ago, and she lives in Beijing.”
Shirley gave a sly smile and leaned back in her seat.
“So you are my missing father.”
“Your father is missing?” Weng said with more hopefulness
than he intended.
“Not anymore,” Shirley said, “Unless you’re trying
to keep your return secret?”
> “Yes! Yes! I am trying to keep everything secret.”
“But you’ll still drive me to school tomorrow?”
“No way.”
“If you don’t, I’ll tell my grandparents that you’re back.”
“But I have to be somewhere. I have important business.”
“But you’re rich, Dad! Take the day off—take the year off!”
“How will you explain to your friends and grandparents the
strange man driving you to school?”
“I’ll say that I won a competition.”
“Funny,” Weng said. “That’s what I usually say too.”
“I’ll tell anyone who asks I won Bunny Pops Bingo.”
“What’s Bunny Pops?”
“As my father, you may as well learn that Bunny Pops Bingo
is my favorite app, which is also a candy now. I’ll explain to
everyone that I won a Bunny Pops Bingo prize jackpot of a
Rolls-Royce to drive me to and pick me up from school for as
long as you want to keep everything secret.”
“I don’t know,” Weng said. “Seems too complicated—and how
is it connected to Bunny Pops, exactly?”
“I’ve been playing Bingo since I was three on my phone
and there are prizes—it’s simple. I’ll get you the app if you
want—do you have a phone?”
“Yes,” Weng said. “A very good one, actually.”
After getting out of the car, Shirley tapped on the glass.
Weng pushed a button and the window
whispered into the door.
For a few moments, Shirley just stood there looking at him.
“All this time you were gone,” she said finally, “I thought it was
my fault because you had wanted a boy and got me instead.”
When Weng got back to the hotel, he had to lie down.
Then, about eleven P.M., he got another foot massage
because the masseuse he knew was back.
“What’s it like being a parent?” he asked her.
“It’s hard,” the woman said.
“Because you don’t have time for yourself anymore?”
“No,” the masseuse laughed. “Because you worry so much.”
“About money?”