by Jess Row
I don’t regret it, though, Ford says. And you won’t, either.
Marcel pours himself a cup of tea, drinks it in one gulp, and gets up from the table without a word. His briefcase lies on a chair at the far end of the room; he takes the folder out and carries it back to the table in two long strides. In his hands it feels like a single sheet of onionskin, as if it might slip out of his grasp and drift away.
I’m supposed to say something before I give you this, he says. Ford stares at him impassively, his hands resting on the tabletop. I’m supposed to apologize. Blood is moving up his neck, seeping into his ears; he feels a rim of sweat on his upper lip. But I don’t think there’s anything I can say to dignify it, he says. So take it. Here.
Sit down, Ford says. He takes a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket and lets the folder fall open in his palm. His eyes dart across the page; he licks a finger and turns to the next, scans it, and turns again. Marcel’s feet feel as if they are clamped to the floor. Ford snaps the folder shut and drops it on the table, nearly upsetting a bowl of peanut sauce. Sit down, he says again. Please. Drink some more tea. You don’t look so good. Remember to breathe, now.
You knew, Marcel says. He grasps the armrests of his chair and eases himself down slowly, willing his muscles not to shake. You knew the whole time.
Ford shrugs again. I had a feeling, he says. When I saw you I knew for sure.
And you’re not going to sue?
Ford gives a single sharp laugh. Would you? he says. If they were offering that kind of money?
Marcel’s eyes are watering. I talked to Wanda Silver, he says. Before I left.
Wanda Silver is a great lady, Ford says. But she’s a sentimentalist. She remembers when I used to come into work with an Afro. Don’t you trust her, Marcel. She’s stuck in a different era.
Is it true? About how you made partner?
That’s ancient history. Ford twists his lips and rubs the edge of his mouth with his fingers. I was in the right place at the right time. There was a lawsuit. The government was getting involved, and they had to hire somebody. And I told them exactly what they wanted to hear. My business is to win cases, I said. Not to cause trouble.
You could clean up, Marcel says, in a dry, strangling voice. Punitive damages. It would be a huge case—it could set precedent all over the country.
Careful, Ford says, shaking his head slowly. You be careful, Marcel. They knew what I would do. This is about you. They want to test you. Make sure you’re a team player.
To test me? Marcel says. What did they expect me to do? Throw the papers in the Bay and call the NAACP?
He gets up from the table and walks across the room, breathing hard, still tasting the sting of the curry on his lips. Overhead, the sky has gone black; he can see a dim streetlight on the road leading to the town, and a few wavering lights along the waterfront. Somewhere a radio is playing, a tune he recognizes, but with strange words; Chinese words, he realizes after a moment. He crosses his arms over his chest, and the nausea passes.
That’s the South China Sea you’re looking at, Ford says behind him. Vietnam is that way. China is up to your right. Canton. The Pearl River.
Marcel closes his eyes and nods.
As I understand it, Ford says, when the British came here, Hong Kong was the back of the back of beyond. No one here but a few fishermen. The emperor up in Peking didn’t know this place existed. At first all they needed was a place to get fresh water for their ships and give their sailors a rest. So they set up a camp on the beach. No one noticed. They stopped here for a day or so and then kept going up the river to Canton. And you know what they had in those ships?
No.
Opium, Ford says. The crack cocaine of the nineteenth century. In a few years everyone in south China was smoking it, and the British were making so much that the Chinese were running out of money. Literally. Not enough silver to pay the bills up in Shanghai. By the time the emperor started looking at a map, the British had their warships sitting in Hong Kong Harbor and there wasn’t anything he could do.
I’m not following you, Marcel says.
You’re smart, Marcel, Ford says. All those East Coast schools. But sometimes I think you don’t have enough dirt under your fingernails. When I was your age we were paying off witnesses at the Pacific Gas fire down in Orange County. We were giving briefcases of cash to burned men in hospital beds. Should I go on?
Don’t, Marcel says. His hands are trembling; he thrusts them into his pockets. For God’s sake. Enough.
We want power, Ford says. Isn’t that right? We want a seat at the table. But nobody is innocent, Marcel. We’re the last people on earth who can afford not to know that. Take my advice. Don’t make waves. Listen carefully—and let them know you’re listening. Someday your silence will be worth so much they’ll bankrupt themselves trying to pay you off.
He stands up and holds out his hand.
Tomorrow I want you to meet me down at Exchange Square, he says. There’s some friends I want to introduce you to. Business partners. You’d be amazed at the opportunities that come your way in a place like this.
When they step outside the gate Vinh lights a kerosene lantern, which crackles and sparks and gives off a whiff of greasy smoke. You watch your step, she says. Sometimes there are snakes in the road. Be careful. Follow close behind.
I will, he says. There are insects singing all around them, unfamiliar clicks and chirps, and a low hum that reminds him of crickets, the sound of late summer evenings in Yonkers. He feels a strange sense of clearness, of spaciousness; the sensations of the world are almost unbearably vivid. The white glow of the lantern wick. The distant buzz of a motor scooter. The faint smell of incense. A small girl’s voice, shouting something he can’t understand.
Do you know Mr. Ford for a long time? Vinh’s voice comes out of the darkness.
Not really. I met him five years ago.
You are maybe a little afraid of him.
He speeds his pace, until he is walking alongside her. Of course I am, a little, he says. He has a lot of power. He’s very important. But why do you say that?
She turns her head and looks at him earnestly, her eyebrows drawn together. There is no need to be afraid, she says. He is a good man.
Sure he is, Marcel is about to say, but the words stick in his throat, and he only nods.
When I met him I did not speak English at all. Three years ago. He gives me tapes and books. Every day we have lessons. He is a good teacher.
And you are a good student. Your English is excellent.
Also he teaches me the Internet, she says. Online investments. Already I have made a little money. A pair of large moths dance around the lantern, and she brushes them away. I think the black Americans must be very generous, she says. Hong Kong people are not like this.
Marcel laughs softly. Not all black Americans, he says. We’re all different. Mr. Ford is—well, Mr. Ford is special.
She nods, as if considering this idea carefully.
Vinh, he says, you’re not from Hong Kong, are you? How did you come here?
From Cambodia, she says. A wisp of hair has come loose from her braid; she pushes it away from her forehead. I was a refugee. I live in the camps for a long time.
And your family?
She looks over his shoulder with a distracted smile. My parents are dead, she says. A long time ago. During the war. I have two sisters in Siem Reap.
They reach the bottom of the hill and pass along the waterfront; the seafood restaurants are crowded with families, shouting conversations across enormous round tables. The ferry has already pulled up at the pier. I should hurry, Marcel says to her. Won’t it leave soon?
Wait. She brushes his arm with her fingertips, and they stop, facing one another, in the middle of the street. Her eyes are open wide, her chest rising and falling. In America he did something, she says. Yes? In America he is a criminal.
No, he says. Who told you that?
I am not stupid, s
he says. Tears emerge from the corners of her eyes. You tell me the truth. Mr. Ford says to me, one day we can go to America. I think he is lying. Look at your face! In America he is not free.
Marcel looks over her shoulder at the ferry. Vinh, he says, he isn’t lying to you.
She takes a deep breath, and folds her arms across her chest, pursing her lips.
So what do you do now? she asks.
I don’t know, he says. I need to go home. As soon as I can.
Back to San Francisco?
Yes, he says. He thinks of his apartment, his view of the city from Pacific Heights: the enormous TV covered with a layer of dust, the kitchen with three plates and two forks, the piles of dry-cleaning bags and takeout menus. An ache begins in his chest and spreads to his fingertips. I can explain all this, he thinks. I had good reasons. I’m not a criminal. But the words echo and fade, as if he had shouted in an empty room.
This time he falls asleep sitting up, in the same plastic seat on the forward deck, balancing his empty briefcase on his knees. He dreams that he is at a college party in Williamstown, wandering down a dark hallway lit by flickering candles, with a plastic cup of beer in his hand. He opens a door, looking for the bathroom, and walks out into Candlestick Park, the wind whipping his jacket behind him like a cape. Sheets of paper are falling from the sky, drifting, swirling, like giant snowflakes, piling in drifts around the lampposts and in the gutters. He stoops and picks one up. It is a memo, or a letter, with an address printed across the top, but the words are blurred, shifting; he brings it closer to his eyes, and sees that it is written in a strange alphabet, full of slashes and curlicues. I need to call the office, he says. I need to find a translator. He gropes in his jacket for his cell phone, but it has disappeared. All his pockets are empty. He feels water trickling around his ears, down his forehead, and starts awake, opening his eyes in a panic.
It is raining. His shirt clings to his skin, and raindrops are running down his forehead and into his eyes. He stands up; his shoes are full of water, as heavy as bricks. The ferry lurches forward under full power, the engine vibrating loudly, and through the rain he can see the shimmering lights of the skyscrapers, growing larger every second. Get inside, he says to himself, you’ll ruin your shirt, those are Ferragamo shoes; are you crazy? But his feet stay rooted in place, unable, unwilling to move. The rain falling on his face is the warmest he’s ever felt, warmer than rain on a hot summer day in Yonkers. He tilts his head back and sticks his tongue out: it has a slightly salty, briny taste.
I could head south, he thinks. Toward the equator. Someplace where it’s eighty degrees and sunny every day, where there’s no TV. No basketball. He imagines himself at the ticket counter, handing over his American Express card. The first plane to Micronesia. To Malaysia. To Tahiti. If I stepped onto this ferry, and then disappeared, he wonders, would they look for me? Would they even be surprised? The boat heels sideways, and he moves away from the tilt, instinctively, reaching for the rail. The city has become a wall of light, streaking, bleeding into the churning water. He grips the rail with both hands, forcing himself to stare straight ahead, until he feels the brightness surrounding him, dissolving him, as if he’s stepped inside the sun. What a relief, he thinks, what a relief, to be invisible.
Revolutions
Merit and demerit are ever interpenetrated, like light and darkness.
—Bodhidharma
In his sleep he hears the morning sounds of Chiang Mai: motorbikes and tuk-tuks whining past Tha Pae Gate, fruit sellers cursing scavenger dogs, monks’ feet scuffling in the alley as they pass, collecting alms. He stirs and turns his face to the window, and even before his eyes open he knows the difference. In the kitchen the air conditioner switches itself off with a hollow rattle. He pushes himself upright and stares out at the day. Fog chokes the harbor, and the world is a study in shifting grays: pewter, charcoal, newsprint. The nearest tower blocks are faint shadows. Hong Kong, he tells himself, and an ache spreads through his chest, as if he’s swallowed ice water. Again he wonders how it is possible, to wake in a vacuum, in the absence of sound.
In the late morning he gives himself a sponge bath and sits at the table next to the window, resting his leg brace on a chair. His sketchbook lies open in front of him, charcoal and pencils to one side. The fog has lifted, and the view is immense: the green humps of the mountains and the endless spread of Kowloon beneath them; planes landing in slow motion and traveling the length of the peninsula before slowing to a crawl; giant container ships sliding silently around the point at Kennedy Town. But the blinds might as well be drawn. He shuts his eyes and wishes for waking dreams. It has been a month and a half since he fell off a motorcycle on Surawong Road in Bangkok, and six months to a year before he will be healed and able to return to Thailand. He presses his hands over his face to shut out the light.
At two he takes the elevator to the street and hails a taxi to drive him east on Hollywood Road, stopping at a building that rises like a mirrored stele out of the antique district. The Wong Hun Fat Rehabilitation Centre, the sign on the office door says. For two hours he lies on a cool floor while a Buddhist nun lifts his leg slowly, a little farther each time, bending the knee so slightly that he is hardly aware of the movement. He breathes deeply, as instructed, and holds his hands cupped together below the navel. His eyes close, and he is surrounded by color fields, blue passing into violet passing into lavender. Sunlight patterns his eyelids; he tastes leaf-mold in the air. The movement that he hasn’t noticed stops. He lifts his head and sees white light patterning a white floor, a gray-robed woman calling him, saying finished, finished.
Her name is Ji Shan Sunim. She is Polish, ordained at a Zen center in Krakow, and came to Hong Kong at the request of a teacher whose name Curtis never quite catches, a slurring of syllables that might be Hindi or Japanese. She lives in a nun’s dormitory in North Point, and takes the number 87 bus to the center every day. After each session she allows him one question before rising to greet the old woman who follows him. She kneels, her hands in her lap; in the light from the window her scalp gleams like wet porcelain.
You must get tired, he says. Shouldn’t you have a longer break? You’ll hurt your hands.
They are not tired now.
Not today, maybe. But they will be.
The body is like a car, she says. Someday a car will break down, yes? But you don’t stop driving it.
Si fu. The old woman’s walker clacks on the tiles. Si fu, leih haih bin dou ah?
Excuse me, she says.
It seems to him there is a tiny hesitation before she stands, as if part of her wants to linger. He wishes she would. Each day, as his body loosens, his eyeballs throbbing in the heat of that imaginary sun, the willingness to paint spreads over him, and exactly at that moment she stops and draws away. His eyes open, his body cools, and he silently forgives her again. How do you know? he wants to ask her. As they speak her eyes never leave the floor.
After his session he crosses Hollywood Road and sits in the window of a noodle shop, drinking tea and scanning the river of passing faces, as if there’s someone in Hong Kong he might recognize. Every face he sees seems fixed in dread; even the young mothers with babies seem anxious, awaiting disaster. His sketchpad sits undisturbed in the bottom of his bag.
Outside the center, the nuns wait for the bus in groups, calling out to each other and laughing loudly. They drink tea from glass jars, peel oranges and candy wrappers; a few make calls on mobile phones. When Ji Shan emerges she passes among them like a ghost and stands alone on the corner, fingering her coins; the sea winds blowing along the street flap the hems of her robe like luffing sails.
In the evening his windows are filled with the lights of Kowloon: a shimmering crescent on the black waters of the harbor, a multicolored galaxy, fascinating and unreal. He cooks with his right hip propped against the kitchen counter, stirring a pot of noodles with chopsticks, washing a handful of choi sum under the tap with the other hand. The woman who lent him
the apartment has left a cabinet full of Thai spices in bottles and jars, neatly arranged and labeled in Chinese; so to replicate the recipes he learned at the cooking school in Chiang Mai he must remember the ingredients by smell: galangal and lemongrass, holy basil, oyster sauce and fish sauce. Each dish brings back a specific place. Morning in Pai, drinking tea in the street, looking west toward the mountains of the Burmese border. Bicycling through the markets above Banglamphu in Bangkok. He eats with wild anticipation, sometimes closing his eyes to focus on the scene, but even the smell dissipates too quickly, sucked away by the air-conditioning. An apartment gate clangs shut; children’s feet clatter in the hall. In the silence he feels welded to his chair.
Later, lying in bed, trying to read, his eyes keep straying to the clock, remembering what time it is in America. Nine o’clock in the morning in New York; six in Santa Cruz; seven in Boulder. His friends are pouring coffee and flattening newspapers, mixing paint, switching on computers. In August he sent postcards, giving his new address, saying I’ll let you know what happens, but since then he hasn’t spoken to anyone. What would I tell them, he thinks, what is there to say?
And where are you living now?
A woman I met in Mae Hong Son loaned me her apartment. She’s in France all winter, through the spring shows. She designs sunglasses. She thinks she’s patronizing a famous artist.
What is Hong Kong like?
The streets are as narrow as slot canyons. Skyscrapers next to buildings that look like they’ve been rotting away for fifty years. Garbage haulers with mobile phones. Outside it’s a sauna; inside it’s always winter. Shouting is the normal mode of conversation—even in elevators.
It must be very exciting.
Colorless, compared to Chiang Mai.
Speaking of which—
I’m not working. I can’t.
You have to do something. Don’t you?
I still have the show in New York. That should bring in something. I don’t have to pay rent; I don’t need much to live on.
