The Mandarin Club

by Gerald Felix Warburg

  Rachel had joked with Mickey that the delegation’s mixed message was the perfect metaphor for two centuries of Washington’s contradictory impulses towards all things Asian. They would preach democracy while lusting for commercial opportunity. They would come to do good and stay to seek profit—Mickey had called it right years before.

  As they prepared to land, Rachel sat next to Mickey in the plane’s rear. She worried about the ground logistics like a den mother. Mickey was fretting yet again, she noticed, as he had all week, working over his nails as he gazed into space, anxious as a cat looking to sprint across traffic. Suddenly a white-knuckle flier? Couldn’t be.

  Rachel was struggling to stay focused on her pending business with Telstar and others on board. With Booth missing in action—rumors had him accepting a position with Smithson’s nascent presidential campaign or even taking another teaching sabbatical—the care and feeding of her clients, and their legislative champions on the plane, fell largely upon her. The opportunities facing her and her clients in China were sufficiently important that she was along to make sure everything went smoothly—and to lobby Smithson and his colleagues for help on the margins.

  She was in a disembodied state as she ruminated. She sat with Mickey, babysitting Smithson, wondering about Booth. But it was Alexander whose presence she sensed all around her—Alexander’s words, his smell, his touch.

  Barry was so far away, already the forgotten man. Jamie seemed terribly distant, too. On the phone, he was quiet and obedient, the little boy’s small voice sounding tentative. Still, she saw his drawings in the clouds, and she heard his voice playing air traffic controller in the chatter on her headphones. She envisioned him tinkering with his spaceship models, arcing them through the sky with his small hands, orbiting in the imaginary world of an only child.

  “This has got to be my last road trip for a while,” she confided to Mickey as the wheels touched down.

  The arrival of Smithson delegation’s was a breeze. The Chinese seemed to have become downright civil about customs and passports, allowing an easy transit to the exclusive VIP lounge, where the American ambassador was waiting with a Foreign Ministry protocol team. Their bags were loaded swiftly into a couple of trailing Dodge vans, and the entourage barreled into town with a minimum of fuss.

  The afternoon afforded time for a provocative session at one of the government-run think tanks, where earnest scholars posing as the freest of academics spouted the government line. It was clear that the recent leadership campaign to undermine intellectuals had restored orthodoxy.

  A second meeting with carefully selected students at Beijing University confirmed the outline of their stateside intelligence briefing—China’s recent flirtations with openness to the West had spawned a virulent nationalism. The campuses, the city markets, and the local media were devoid of any other ideological glue. The young men spouted a version of “China right or wrong” that would have left Rachel feeling more comfortable if accompanied by empty Leninist rhetoric. The kids, it seemed, were growing up hating America, but liking Americans. Economic flexibility had not brought much change to the rigidity of the masses.

  Perversely, the first spontaneous confrontation in China for the Smith-son delegation came at the hands of their own countrymen. The expatriates were more than willing to rail against Washington policies at an American Chamber of Commerce reception. A bullet-headed aerospace executive named Bernhardt was particularly pointed with the senators, complaining that they were losing sales, right and left, to the Europeans. Chairman Smithson held his ground, though, and the delegation made it through the session, and the balance of two busy days, with few incidents.

  Down time for Rachel and Mickey finally arrived that Friday afternoon. With Smithson attending a formal meeting at the Foreign Ministry—elected officials only—the two of them peeled off, unaccompanied, for a walk in the park.

  They were letting off steam in a meandering conversation, Mickey preoccupied by his concern for the Lee meeting that night, when Rachel finally began to pursue her jumpy companion.

  “You’ve been spaced out all week. What gives?”

  “Nothing,” Mickey said, grinning evasively.

  “Bullshit, Mr. Dooley. I’ve known you since you were practically a teenager. Fess up.”

  “All right,” said Mickey, scrambling for misdirection. “You want confession?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m about to go over the falls; I turn fifty later this year.” He gazed past her. “I need to make some things right in my life—I might as well admit it.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. . .” He was wringing his hands again. “I feel like I’ve been dancin’ with the devil. I shoulda lived my life differently, shoulda said some things years ago.”

  “Like what?” She was peering at him with penetrating eyes.

  “Like, well, for starters, I had a wicked crush on you at Stanford.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m serious,” he replied, pleased at how easily he had sidetracked her inquiries. “I had this fixation on you. At first, I felt like a jerk for it because Barry was a friend and I was all for women’s liberation and respect for—”

  “Liberated? You? Ha!”

  “I thought it would be ganging up to make a pass at you—you know, tacky.”

  “And why didn’t you ever reveal your sentiments?”

  “I never really was very good at sharing personal confidences. Maybe it was the Army brat thing.”

  “You had plenty of girlfriends, for God’s sakes. I was probably just terra incognita—unknown territory for potential conquest. Must have been a guy thing.”

  “I was curious. You led with your chin, the whole tough cowgirl shtick. I just knew there was more under there for whoever knew the magic password.”

  “You thought you could seduce me with a password?” She stopped and crossed him now, arms akimbo. They were in the middle of an expansive gravel walk in Ritan Park, which sits in the middle of the embassy district, and not far from Rachel’s hotel. Mothers were queued up with their children to pay for ice creams opposite a messy duck pond.

  “That’s not what I mean. I was seeing a lot of girls from the Business School, hard-bitten types. I felt as if I was just a notch in their belt on a Saturday night. I was, like, a workout for them, some fling they would fit carefully into their over-programmed schedule.”

  “Which you vigorously resisted, no doubt.”

  “What can I say? I was a horny grad student looking for fun. It was like fast food, though. Unfulfilling. Not exactly romantic. I ended up wanting more—and you were obviously deeper than the rest. But you were my roomie’s girl.”

  “’Story of my life.”

  “You know, guys always try to make decisions for women they like. You probably think that’s sexist. It’s innate, though—a male thing to protect those we care for. Take it as a compliment.”

  “Mickey, I’m actually rather flattered. You were a bit of a hero figure to me then. Larger than life.”

  “A hero? C’mon.”

  “Sure. You were the one I figured would accomplish great things. You were the real risk-taker, the one I figured I’d be hearing about in the news someday.”

  “Ya never know,” Mickey muttered, privately amused by her unintended irony.

  “I’m developing this theory about life,” Rachel continued. “I think where our generation went wrong was to confuse adrenaline surges with some higher consciousness. We thought cliff diving and smoking dope were so very deep. But they didn’t yield any vital human experience. They were just a cheap rush.”

  “I always thought you were sweet on Alexander,” Mickey said, abruptly returning to the previous subject. “All those long talks, those walks in the rain. I thought you were the other night too, come to think of it—at Mr. K’s.”

  “It showed?” said Rachel, laughing. “Actually, Mickey, if this is the day for grand confessions, I should admit it.
It seems I’ve quite recently fallen hard for Mr. Bonner.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I think it may actually be quite serious.”

  “You were sweet on him! I love it! So, how come you never acted on your impulses before?”

  “Good question.” She picked at a thread in her madras shirt. Trim and short sleeved, she looked like a Junior Leaguer abroad. “I never was particularly good at acting on impulses. And then motherhood rather limits one’s spontaneity.”

  “I mean, back then.”

  “Guess I was afraid of where it might lead. Even before Stanford, I wouldn’t let myself be wild, like the other kids in school. They dropped acid for kicks. I drank Coca-Cola.”

  Mickey waited again. His struggle to listen amused Rachel; she felt as if she was watching a middle-aged man learning to ride a bike.

  “I suppressed a lot in those days,” Rachel continued. “I really did care for Alexander, that deeper vein of his character. But you were dangerous.”

  “So, why did you choose Barry?”

  “Barry chose me. It always just seemed inevitable. He was kind—kind and clever. He seemed safe. The Eagle Scout, the banker’s boy.”

  “You make it sound like a trip to the dentist. You jumped into it with your eyes open, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, barefoot and pregnant.”

  “What?”

  “As I said, I kind of rushed to do the expected. Didn’t seem like a lot of options at the time.”

  “Really? That quickie ceremony in the garden at Serra House? I thought. . .” Mickey began to realize how many things might not have been as they had appeared. How much of the past was a lie?

  He regarded Rachel in a new light. “What happened?” he asked.

  “Oh, Mickey, you know it seems like another century now. I was twenty years old. All you guys were much older. You forget—you were all catapulted into these jobs you could only dream of. Happened overnight. Remember the Last Dance? Your visions were already realized. You were celebrating. I was scared. The morning after, I was still an undergraduate, five years away from a doctorate in history. Barry was commuting to Shanghai, and I was. . . well, I was ‘in a delicate way.’”

  Mickey had no idea what to say, and was grateful when Rachel continued after a time.

  “I lost the baby. About three weeks after the wedding. Miscarried one day in Shanghai. My first trip to China. Barry had already gone up to Beijing for a meeting. I was alone in this hotel bathroom when it happened.”

  “God, Rachel. How horrible.”

  “It was horrible. Took almost fifteen years for us to manage to start a family again. And, I really think something in the anxiety, the sense of loss, the pressure to perform, made Barry nuts. I was not blameless there, either.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “Nobody did. Our little bedroom secret. But you know, we make our own choices in life. I always seemed to be following somebody else’s idea of where I was supposed to be.”

  “And your idea would have been. . . ?”

  “Not sure I ever let myself figure that out. Just felt I was missing something everybody else had enjoyed. I always felt like I was a little too late to the party.”

  “We did have a good time. But then, I was always playing at being the class clown. Least that’s what Branko tells me lately.”

  “Branko? What have you been talking with him about?” She turned to confront him.

  “Oh, he’s been all over my case—become my new Father Confessor.”

  Mickey was biting his nails again, his cuticles pink from the self-inflicted wounds. “Rachel, it’s like I said—I shoulda lived my life different.”

  She squinted at him, studying him carefully, disconcerted by his stumbling introspection.

  They walked in silence for a bit, drifting away from the crowds of mothers and baby strollers around the pond. The humidity matched that of Washington’s Tidal Basin. Rachel spotted an ice cream cart and bought a Summer Shower popsicle—red, white, and blue. Mickey declined, but watched her enjoy it, amused, as her lips changed color.

  He was carrying some oppressive burden, Rachel could now see. She was determined to ferret it out.

  “Do you ever ask yourself what exactly you’re doing with your life?” She had not meant to sound so accusatory.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what’s your mission here on the planet? How are you contributing to the advancement of the species?”

  “I’m just trying to get through the week.”

  “Do you intend to stay in China doing the Telstar thing forever? Are the boys going to go to college here? Where the hell are you going to be in ten years?”

  “Shoot,” he said, foundering under a tide of self-doubt, “I don’t even know what I’m going to be doing next month. A buddy of mine in Beijing has this theory. ‘We make our own little Hell,’ he says. ‘We reconstruct some of the dysfunction from our own childhood.’”

  “Are things that far gone for you?”

  “Rachel, you have no idea.”

  “You want a beer?”

  “No. I’m trying to stay on the wagon. Except for ceremonial stuff, like toasts.”

  “Mickey Dooley sworn off the hard stuff? What in God’s name is that about?”

  “Over thirty days now.”

  “Mickey!” She halted abruptly, putting a firm hand on his shoulder. “What the hell is going on? You got a girlfriend somewhere doing a make-over on you?”

  He shook his head and gave her a tight smile. The sun’s glow softened his baldness. In the angled light, she could see now a reflection of his former glory—his manic smile, the frenzied energy of the college years. There was still an intensity about him, although only a fraction of his old power remained.

  “What is it?” she repeated.

  “Rachel, it’s like this,” he began, turning to walk again at her side, an arm holding her at the shoulder. “It’s about the boys.”

  Mickey squinted into the distance, doubling back in his mind, looking to dissemble. He had promised Branko he’d keep his mouth shut. This was different, though. This was Rachel. She’d been in danger, too, he rationalized. She could still be in danger, for all he knew, though Branko had doubted she was the primary target.

  Conflicting emotions washed over him. Rachel’s strength, her familiarity, her reassuring presence beckoned like a snug lifeboat. She had confided in him, shared her most intimate secrets. His mind veered this way and that, flipping and flopping, until it settled once again, as it had so often of late, upon the graceful comfort of confession.

  He told her.

  Like an idiot, he told her most all of it in a rush, surprised at the equanimity with which she heard him out. He told her about his custody fight, about his efforts to change his life, to cut his ties to China. Ultimately, he told her about the elaborate Fourth of July plans to leave with his boys.

  “There’s no other way?” she asked with concern when he finally paused.

  “All or nothing,” he said, hands trembling. “I gotta leave. If I leave the boys behind, or if I get busted trying to get out with them, they have a damn bleak future—kids of a run-away American businessman. Children of divorce raised by a maid because their mother is a mean drunk. But if they make it home safe, their whole life is in front of them. We can live happily ever after.”

  “Mickey!”

  “I know. It’s too fucking horrible. It’s like Sophie’s choice. I have no good options. I can’t stay, and I can’t leave without them.”

  “What about Lee? Can’t he help you with the authorities to—”

  “Lee can’t intervene without drawing attention to himself. He’s in danger all the time already.”

  Mickey watched as Rachel began to understand that which remained unsaid. It was a godmother’s intuition, he figured. But then again, it seemed she had always been able to read him.

  “Branko.” She saw it. “Branko’s doing this for you, isn’t he?”

/>   He just nodded.

  “So the old gang is rallying round one last time?” She smiled, pleased at the notion. “Jesus, I can’t believe this is what things have come to.”

  He shrugged, turning with that sheepish grin of his. On impulse, he kissed her on both cheeks as she laughed and hugged him. Then once, after all the years, she kissed him right back, full on the lips, and they spoke no more of his troubles.

  Mickey had told her everything—everything except the effort to bring in Lee. With Lee, in the end, it was so very personal. Mickey had waited until the last evening, hoping that, once persuaded, Lee would not change his mind. They had promised to meet each other some time that Friday night, after the Smithson delegation wrapped up their official activities. Few senior Chinese were going to the U.S. Ambassador’s small July 4 gathering, relations still being too touchy to celebrate publicly with the Americans. Friday’s informal hotel supper was going to serve as the delegation’s send-off, except for the routine diplomatic niceties planned the next day for the airport’s VIP lounge. This would be Mickey’s last chance with Lee.

  There were five round tables of six at the St. Regis Hotel’s meal. They were in a conference room that had few of the decorative touches of a formal dining setting, with senators and staff from both sides drifting in and out with the waiters. The room opened onto a patio and a gravel walkway it shared with a much larger banquet hall, nightclub, and series of shops ringing the courtyard. Several other parties were going on in other meeting rooms and at the outdoor bar. Even with the doors closed, the delegation could detect the distinctive notes of an overzealous wedding band playing some disco tunes across the way.

  Inside, Mickey took a seat next to Lee. He had promised his old colleague a few minutes with Smithson, who was on Lee’s right. After the senator and Lee exchanged a series of pleasantries, Lee turned back to his left and began a sidebar discussion with Mickey. Lee was drinking Tsingtao beer, but then the waiter brought bai jui for the two men to toast each other’s work. Three times they raised a glass in a private ganbei. Mickey kept sober by limiting himself to a polite sip. But he was hurting for something stronger as he steeled himself for the crucial ask.