‘Have you considered an electronic invitation?’ Nelson murmured. ‘So much faster and you get instant RSVP’s. Better for planning.’
‘Oh, no, no, it’s going to be quite a formal occasion. One shop has already let me down with their digital silliness.’ Jane said. ‘That’s why it’s so last-minute.’
‘Our shop can do personalized video messages,’ Nelson persisted with a sibilant accent so different from Winston’s native English. ‘Let me demonstrate. Your guest downloads his e-mail containing the hyperlink,’ Nelson reached for a handy computer keyboard, ‘He clicks here to register any dietary concerns. He downloads a map to your venue and,’ Nelson smiled dazzling white teeth, ‘He can even play an MP3 or QuickTime video of you saying how much you look forward to seeing them.’
Nelson’s fingers were strong and graceful. ‘We can do the video shoot in half an hour, right in your own home. Or, I could do it right now, with this camcorder.’
Oh, God, Lorraine would just adore slapping on the Max Factor for Nelson’s camera. Poor Winston was jogging up and down on his toes behind Nelson’s shoulder, wagging his head, ‘No, no, no!’ Had he forgotten this was a charade? Didn’t he have those cards under the counter?
Nelson’s sample video was a lot more fun than any stodgy cards; Nelson in a rented tuxedo purred from a little video frame, ‘So plan a very private function. Your own.’
Something out of Nothing was going terribly wrong. Winston was waving his head and hands at Jane like a frenzied marionette. There was a phlegmy smoker’s cough from the shadows as Chu Senior left his swivel chair and came up behind his gesticulating son. The old man swore under his breath, ‘Diao ne,’ and returned to his abacus, shaking his head at Nelson’s panicked tarantella.
Jane held her ground. ‘If I wanted a video of my mother, I assure you my family could do that perfectly well. What I’m looking for is a good old-fashioned printing service.’ She also knew that most of Lorraine’s guests might think ‘download’ referred to a private function best conducted on the toilet.
Nelson’s sales spiel was making Winston and Jane late for Baldwin’s class. Finally, she peeled herself away and Winston joined her around the corner of the shop in a state. ‘You see? He’s all-powerful. That stupid demo mesmerized you!’
Jane raced him to the tube. ‘Oh ye of little faith. I’ll be back Monday morning to pick up the cards. You impress your father with your cool handling of my emergency. Somehow I don’t think he noticed anything but your St Vitus Dance.’
‘None of these strategies works for me! And I’m Chinese!’ Winston despaired.
‘But you’re not, really, are you, Winston?’
Winston thrust his face inches from Jane’s nose and pointed at it. She refused to give in. ‘Looking Chinese doesn’t mean you have the mind of Sun Tzu. What’s that chirping?’
‘The latest iPhone. Dad asked me to test it.’
‘Oh, hand it over. I’ll turn it off.’
At the tardy appearance of the two conspirators, Nigel raised one overworked eyebrow. Baldwin was mid-lecture. ‘Tactic Nine. Watch Tigers Fight from the Mountain Top. Delay entering the field of battle until all the other players have worn themselves out with squabbling. Then attack and just pick up the pieces.’
Kevin crowed, ‘This one’s easy! Like watching H&M wage a pre-Christmas price war with Zara and diminish their margins during the best sales season of the year. Then we mop up with after-Christmas blow-outs.’
Winston leaped up, anxious to forget his bickering with Jane.
‘Yes, Winston?’
‘Epson wanted to jump into the laser printer business but when they offered a laser printer at five per cent below market price, they triggered a price war with other companies. That move brought the whole laser printer range into competition with their core business—dot matrix printers. As a result, dot matrix was forced out of business.’
‘Dot matrix printers,’ sighed Nigel. ‘Quaint, weren’t they?’
Baldwin folded his hands, ‘Excellent, Winston. Sometimes it’s best to do nothing. Inaction can be an aggressive weapon. For example, Intel held back on PDA and mobile phone business to protect its trusted relationship as supplier with other large electronic companies.’
When Baldwin saw how happy this business citation made Nigel, he added, ‘But I prefer the Cao Brothers story.’ His eyes glazed over as he murmured, ‘Year 200, AD.’
‘CE?’
‘If you insist, Nigel. 200 Christ’s Era.’
‘With all respect, not Christ. CE stands for Common Era.’
‘Do unto others hardly being a banker’s motto,’ Winston muttered.
‘King Yuan Shuang dies, leaving behind three sons. He bequeaths his throne to the middle son. Angered, the eldest tries to reclaim his birth right, but when their enemy Cao Cao stages a frontal assault on them, the three squabbling brothers unite in defence. So, class, what should Cao Cao do?’
‘Pull back. His attack united the brothers.’
‘Exactly, Dan! And when Cao Cao withdraws, the Yuan brothers go back to quarrelling. Cao Cao whittles away four of their provinces over the next three years. Finally, he picks off the eldest son.’
‘Yes, we do that when the share prices are driven down far enough,’ Nigel commented.
‘The two remaining Yuan brothers flee to the distant tribe of the Gongsung Kang. Cao Cao asks the Gongsung Kang for the Yuan brothers’ heads. Shortly afterwards, two boxes were delivered to his gate.’
Jane tried to imagine Bella’s head in a box.
‘You see, Cao Cao knew any attack would have forced the Gongsun Kang into a alliance with the Yuan brothers. Instead, he just waited for Gongsung Kang to do them in.’
Winston squeaked: ‘This is our homework?’
‘Yes,’ Baldwin chirped. ‘Coffee now?’
Sammie’s silence at Jane’s blithe reference to The Travelling Kitchen’s weekly wrap party had stuck in her mind. Jane decided, half-listening to the second strategy of the evening—something about knives and honey—to meet Joe at the studio. She texted him to that effect and was rather startled to get his welcoming, ‘i’ll tell reception xx j.’
The weekly wrap party was in full swing, the ‘swing’ being more of a slow-motion heave, thanks to litres of Antilles punch from the show. Rachel was thrusting her shallow bosom at the guest chef and rattling at him like a machine gun. Still dressed in her studio uniform of Burlington cashmere and signature apron, Bella had weighed anchor at the far end of the Green Room, hair-sprayed curls bent in conference with the chef’s PR woman.
Looking bored, Joe leaned on the bar near the door and watched as Jane was introduced to the chef. She waved to Bella who returned a neutral salute.
‘Bit frosty, that,’ Jane observed to Joe over the lip of her wine glass.
‘She cheesed off at some rumour you heard that I’m going to replace her with someone else. Where do you hear such things? I can’t be bothered—I’ve got a title for your idea: Famine to Feast. What’d’ya think?’
Jane watched Bella carefully. ‘What happened to Feed the World?’
‘Too tired. Beside, I couldn’t get Geldof’s people to return my calls.’ Bella’s prow turned slowly in their direction. The whole room felt the shifting tide as Bella ploughed through the chef’s adoring claque to reach Joe and Jane.
‘Leaving soon?’ This directed entirely at Joe.
‘I’m shattered. Mr Steel Band over to you.’
‘There’s something we have to discuss, Joe. Call you later.’
‘How about Chefs Without Borders?’ Joe suggested during the drive home. When Jane didn’t respond, he tried, Recipe for Hope? The blue glow from Lorraine’s window reminded Jane to run upstairs to cover her mother’s snoring form with a blanket and turn off the floating DVD ‘bonus features.’ Even as she descended back towards their front door standing ajar, she wondered if Bella could bear to wait even half an hour.
But no, Joe’s BlackBerry rang. ‘Tell he
r I’m in the bath.’ He grumped holding the phone towards Jane. She didn’t take it. He threw it on the rug at their front door and pulled at his hair, ‘Didn’t you hear me? I don’t want to talk to her! Pick it up, God dammit! I don’t care what you tell her!’
She was tempted to do just that—push Bella aside. Then she saw the way Joe pulled his temples up at both sides, his green-brown eyes reddened by booze and stress. It was nothing more than a histrionic director’s pose, which showed off his still-luxurious hair, and for a decisive second, he resembled a snarling tiger full of ego and impatience. This wasn’t her Joe; it was something Bella would do.
Suddenly Jane knew she must resist the temptation to play along.
It was time for Number Nine: Let the tigers fight.
She stepped daintily over the BlackBerry.
The telephone row lasted fifty-five minutes by Jane’s bedside clock. Joe shouted that first: he could be away and if possible, would be away on an independent project for six weeks without jeopardizing Bella’s “career comfort level,” whatever that was, and second: that anyone, even Sammie could produce her rubbish, and (after a worrying silence,) no, that didn’t change anything, he’d make sure the frontal shots weren’t fattening, keep the camera moving, (after another long tirade from Bella’s end) and third, (his voice rising) his new project actually wasn’t any of her business, she didn’t run his whole life any more than he ran hers, and as far as she was concerned, it could be a show about gourmet dog food . . .
Jane fell into an uneasy slumber, as Joe’s snarling, muttering, and cajoling in the living room continued. Yes, inaction could be aggressive indeed, if it left Joe’s raw frustration wrestling with one of the best battlers in the business. Would letting the tigers fight at last burn out this magnetic dance of loathing and desire that was waltzing into focus more clearly every day? Joe’s passion as well as persistence, even muffled by the bedroom door, warned Jane there was no easy victory in sight. By the time his heavy form settled into its customary trough in the mattress, Jane had already suffered one nightmare—of Bella’s disembodied head staring up out of a breadbox tethered to a horse’s saddle ridden by the majestic Nelson Chu.
‘Would you like this on Blue-Ray?’ Nelson smiled, lifting Bella’s head up by her long hair.
Jane stood facing him, surrounded by a great emptiness across a windy field and answered, ‘No, thanks, Nelson, just embossed.’
Chapter Ten, Kou Mi, Fu Jian
(With Honeyed Mouth, Carry Sword in Belt)
Jane began her workday Monday exploring rumours that her colleagues in the Camden office would have refused to deny; Chalkwood’s three-days-a-week might be cut back even further.
Jane endured a morning of polite evasion on the phone. Dispirited, she begged off Chris’s invitation to test a Japanese vegan menu. Neither her morale nor her sinuses felt up to wasabi.
Chris’s menu preferences matched his book recommendations—more exploratory than soul satisfying but very hot with adolescent poets who sought his obscure recommendations. The head-tripping novelists among Chris’s ‘Best Of’ favourites had won over the slightly older Gen-X’ers. Jane even trusted Chris with the Rhyme-Timers on condition he didn’t give Winnie-the-Pooh another postmodernist spin—one mother had complained when Chris told the pre-schoolers that Eeyore needed ‘mood-enhancing medication,’ and Tigger was ‘probably ADD.’
Chris was even less successful with the elderly, or as he called them, The Brillos. The previous spring, he’d moderated a short-story workshop for the elderly until his dispassionate deconstruction of Colonel Armstrong’s memoirs was more than that upright soldier could stomach. With regret, Jane dissolved their Pensioner’s Prose Workshop. The oldsters’ short stories lay forgotten in a storeroom drawer.
Chris took the Bookworms once while Jane was down with a cold. He sent Mrs Wilting off with the doorstopper, Gravity’s Rainbow as well as William Gibson’s Zero History. Predictably, Thomas Pynchon and Mrs Wilting came to no good end, as was clear when poor Ruth slid her Gravity back to Jane across the counter.
‘It was like climbing Everest without any oxygen.’
‘Did you reach the peak, Mrs Wilting?’
‘Yes, Jane. Gibson was fun, but is Pynchon worth the cerebral frostbite? Do us a favour, dear, and keep him out of Carla’s reach.’
Today Jane had a personal reason for declining Chris’s Japanese fest. She was meeting Dan O’Neill for lunch in Chinatown. It wasn’t a romantic appointment—he called it a study session—so she didn’t mind his suggestion they meet in a restaurant that had never seen better days. A ray of feeble sun shot dust motes dancing through the steam from the kitchen. The clatter of cheap porcelain behind the swinging doors made the atmosphere safely unseductive.
Shaving cologne wafted off Dan, although already at midday, the smoothness of his morning deforestation was wearing off. It was a nice enough aroma, even if it hinted of overeager American hygiene. He read off his Baldwin’s handout, ‘Use flattery, plan evil, speak with forked tongue.’
‘Funny, your suggesting this place.’ Jane remembered it as a serviceable but never fashionable eatery.
‘Listed in a guidebook. “Pretend you’re going along with your enemy’s programme. Charm and ingratiate yourself. When you have gained his trust, you move against him in secret”.’ Dan sipped his beer and topped up Jane’s white wine. ‘Why funny? Chinese food in Chinatown. Hey, don’t snap that glass in two.’
Jane stopped twisting the fragile stem. ‘I haven’t been down here for years.’ She kept to herself the memory of a raucous dinner in this very dining room years ago. They’d eaten with some of Joe’s crew until ready to burst with fortune cookies and brew. Unable to interest a passing cab, they’d stood laughing out on the kerb in pouring rain, enjoying post-production euphoria. Their group strolled together until they reached the ornamental gate at the entrance to Gerrard Street where Joe slumped to the base of a lamppost while Jane went back to the Lee Ho Fuk to telephone for a hire car.
It had seemed carefree at the time. Jane now remembered it as boring and uncomfortable. The evening had gone on far too long for a new mother. Her nursing pads had soaked up the rain, puffing into two soggy lumps in her bra. Why had Joe drunk so much that night? What sorrow was he pickling, even then?
It was nice to be out with a man, she thought a little shyly to herself. She imagined kissing Dan, which in itself was a novel fancy after so long with Joe. But wait—they were just two continuing education students reviewing their materials. Jane decided nonetheless to make some effort at acknowledging her companion’s gesture. ‘You’re doing your homework right now, aren’t you? You’re going along with the programme, being charming and ingratiating, and winning my trust? You’re on to Number Ten already, Mr O’Neill.’
‘Well, better I do the charm bit than the pig variation, right?’
The first version of Stratagem Ten advised smiling like honey to hide a knife, while the second recommended acting as stupid as a pig—compliant, dull and hardworking—until the moment to strike.
‘I’m going to choose the second variation,’ Jane joked, ‘I’m going to make a pig of myself. Those dumplings look delicious.’ A trolley of taro rolls and shrimp buns rolled up. Dan selected a series of little dishes. He was, suddenly, too expert for Jane’s comfort.
‘Dan, why are you taking our class?’
He split open his pair of wooden chopsticks and stabbed a haw gow. ‘Just like you—learning something new.’
‘You know these tactics backwards.’ What author created the Dan’s of this world? She’d tested Joseph Wambaugh, but Dan kept popping back out. ‘Dan, you recite Sun Tzu by heart and you aren’t trying to maximize any quarterly profits.’
‘And you aren’t trying to thwart the forces of literary snobbery in a book club.’
‘No.’
‘So, what’s your secret? Starting a business?’
‘Certainly not. It’s all I can do to work the library’s inventory s
oftware. I couldn’t even run a used-book stall, and books are something I do know.’
‘I’m sure you’d do it very well.’
There was so much noise, their awkward silence melted into a cheerful soy-saucy bustle, with clanging woks replacing bronze gongs.
‘So, Dan, how do you know all those modern applications of the stratagems?’
‘Army War College. Between Kuwait, early retirement, joining the force. For a while I thought teaching might be the answer. You’re right—the business angle doesn’t grab me. I’m not sure it’s going to help Keith much, either. Kevin’s pretty funny. That Nigel is scary.’
‘If anyone uses Baldwin’s lessons for the Dark Side, it’ll be Nigel.’ Jane imitated Nigel’s frantic note taking—writing with one hand, twisting his eyebrow into a knot with the other.
‘Oh, everybody’ll get something out of the class. Once you know the stratagems, you’re hooked. You see opportunities everywhere. You catch yourself doing something stupid and say, wait, I don’t have to fall for that anymore—’
‘Yes, yes! But everything around me is turning into a wacky kung-fu movie. The rumble of the tube before it gets to the platform makes me think of war drums. A silk shirt in the John Lewis window makes me want to wear embroidered robes. My kitchen chopper looks like a movie prop. And last week, I actually had to stop myself from buying a rice cooker. That isn’t the real me. I’m a pyjamas and spaghetti girl.’
Love and the Art of War Page 10
