The Mandarin Club

by Gerald Felix Warburg

  “So,” Barry finally responded, “what if I told you it was none of your business?”

  “Hey, the game was your idea,” Alexander noted, then set his glass down and stood to leave. “This is dumb.”

  “No,” Barry said, catching him firmly by the wrist. “Stay a minute.”

  Alexander first tried to eye him in the dark, then spoke. “You know, I always had this theory. . .”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, I’d make up my own story for you. Like when you’re waiting at an airport, killing time, watching people, and you make up secret lives for them, detailed biographies. You ever do that?”

  “Sure.”

  “After Stanford, once we all scattered, I never really felt I knew you. I never really knew Barry any more. None of us did. The years went by and the rest of us managed to stay connected. You became an enigma. You seemed more and more remote. I wondered where you had gone.”

  “So. . .”

  “So, I made up a story. I had it all figured out.”

  “Right.”

  “I figured you were some secret agent, a regular James Bond type.”

  “That’s a reach!” Barry laughed, too loud, shattering the evening air. A frog scampered through the bushes near the birdbath.

  “I figured Lee had recruited you, made you a Chinese spy. Sold you on the idea he could land you some mammoth business deal if you helped him look good with all the Party higher-ups. That was my theory, anyway.”

  “That would also enrich me, no doubt. What was Mickey’s old line about coming to do good, and staying to do well?”

  “Sure. Then I figured maybe the CIA found you out—had Branko flip you as a double agent.”

  “Thus the need for two safes.”

  “Exactly! A double agent must keep his files straight. Anyway, the absurdity is what gave the theory color.”

  “Bonner, you always were meant to write fiction.”

  “I wish.”

  “It’s your overactive imagination.”

  Alexander finished his drink and, with a swirling movement, launched the ice in the general direction of the woods. They both stared at the moon. They were slowing now, like a carousel after the music stopped.

  “Anyway. . .” Alexander began again tentatively.

  Barry was still lost in a private thought.

  “So, man. . .” Alexander stood and offered a hand.

  Barry did not move as he muttered, “I never asked you my question.”

  “No,” said Alexander, halting. There was some perfect balance to this moment, some equilibrium he was loath to upset. Gently, he placed his hand on Barry’s shoulder. “And you never answered mine.”

  “I’m not sure you really want an answer,” Barry said, his voice so soft Alexander could not quite make out the words.

  “Huh?”

  “I’m not sure you really want the truth,” Barry continued, purposeful now. Alexander noticed the light go out upstairs in the master bedroom. “Sometimes, people don’t, you know. They just pretend to. But then, despite the awkwardness of our situation, I respect you too much to lie.” “Suit yourself,” Alexander said, again fighting the impulse to leave.

  There was some reckoning that needed to be achieved here, Alexander knew, something to be said before either of them could move on, though Alexander was clueless where they were heading.

  Barry turned now. Their eyes were not two feet apart. A breeze rustled the trees. Leaves, still laden from the afternoon thunderstorms, were shedding splashes of water with a shudder.

  “It’s funny,” Barry began, “it’s hard to have all that many secrets from a man who’s screwing your wife.”

  Alexander winced but held his ground, listening.

  “It’s very difficult,” Barry continued. “You know, I remembered the strangest thing the other day. I was sitting at the playground, watching Jamie. Just sitting with my Starbucks, watching his pure joy in his fantasy world. Then I remembered. It hit me out of the blue, like some connected moment from another life, from twenty-five years ago at Stanford. It must have been some kind of premonition. I was jealous of you back then. As if I knew, already. As if I could see it coming.”

  “Barry, don’t be paranoid. There wasn’t much to know.”

  “I saw it, Alexander. I don’t hold that against you. I saw it. I was performing harder, even then, whenever you were around. It was like I was performing, to hold Rachel’s interest, to be the big man on campus. Working at it. Filling the silences with happy talk. Trying so damn hard to impress her—even then.”

  “You were several years older than Ra—”

  “No. You still don’t get it. You would just sit there. Sit and watch and listen. Remember the line Mickey and I used? To provoke you? ‘Step right up. Pay five dollars and make the mute man speak!’”

  “I wasn’t competing with you—”

  “Chicks dug it. Thought you were very deep. They always wanted to draw you out of your shell, to mother you.”

  Alexander regarded his glass, still empty. Before he could speak, Barry bolted for the kitchen. “I’ll get you another,” he called over his shoulder.

  Barry was back soon, ice cubes in one bare fist, the liquor bottle held by the neck in the other.

  “What?” Barry asked, his arm unsteady as he poured.

  “Nothing.”

  “No, what were you thinking?” Barry said as he gestured accusingly with the bottle.

  Alexander was on autopilot now. But Barry, it seemed, could detect his emotions.

  “I was thinking that you still never answered the question.”

  “You’re right,” Barry said as he sat on the edge of a deck chair. He sipped slowly at his drink. “But this time, I’m going to.”

  “There was a man named Alan Wallingford. . .” That was all Barry said for a while, as Alexander waited. “He lived with his wife and two daughters in New Canaan, Connecticut. Great kids. One is up at Hampshire College, at that great film program there. Lovely girl. The other, a soccer player, is on her way to Sarah Lawrence next year.

  “Alan was a wonderful man. You would have enjoyed each other if you’d ever met. Did deals on Wall Street all day. Loved the theatre at night. Loved to hike, to swim. Did the Matterhorn. Pike’s Peak. Mount Rainier. Played the horn. Wrote sonnets. A remarkably multi-dimensional guy—a true renaissance man.”

  Alexander watched as Barry began to reach, then to coil, as if in pain, pulling his knees to his chest.

  “Alan died on February ninth. Pneumonia and ‘other complications.’ Nice obituary in the New York Times.

  “I loved him, Alexander. I loved him for seven years. Shared a space on this planet with him. Shared a fantasy that we could openly be together, some way, somehow. That someday we could stop compromising, stop maintaining pretenses. You, of all people, Alexander, understand what it’s like to lose someone you love. But you’ll never know how hard it is to love someone, to live with your secret, but then to have to watch from a safe distance while they die, denying it all.”

  “My God, Barry—”

  “You know what was the hardest?” Barry demanded. “The very last lie, the last one. That goddamn obituary.”

  “You should have said some—”

  “So proper. So fucking proper. It made me nuts! In the end, I became irrational after all those years of calculation. I loved the man for seven years, and I wanted to think I could be some small part of that last story. I wanted to read my name there. I wanted it to read, ‘Barry Lavin also loved him.’ I didn’t want to be excluded just because our love was inconvenient, that seventy-three percent of Americans think it’s some socially aberrant behavior. It was real. Anyway, it was a stupid need, a stupid desire.”

  “No.”

  “Stupid!” Barry was shouting now, flinging the arm that held the Amaretto bottle, splashing the deck. “He lied to his wife, almost to the very end. He lied to his daughters about his disease. The lies were the means to an end, to our times t
ogether. We deserved that time, we cherished it, lived for it. I didn’t mind all the lies so much when he was living. But with his death, I just couldn’t tolerate them all any more. It was like a goddamn sacrilege, denying my life. I’ll never live that lie again.”

  “Barry, you should have said something.”

  “Like what?”

  “I mean—”

  “What the fuck could I have said? People want you to stay in your box. You contradict the caricature—the archetype they’ve pegged you for—and, well, that gets real uncomfortable.”

  “I just wish you hadn’t felt like you had to shut everyone out,” Alexander said. “You should have had someone there for you.”

  Alexander set his glass on the railing and waited, staring at the moon.

  “Branko was the only one who knew,” Barry said.

  “You told Branko?”

  “I never told him. I never volunteered my little secret to anybody. Didn’t even tell my mom—even when I was afraid for my own health, that maybe I was a danger to Rachel. I just told Rachel recently—and you, now.”

  “How did Branko find out?”

  “It was the weirdest thing,” said Barry, wiping his face on the back of his hand and straightening. “Some crazy deal about some Chinese agent he was running. Apparently, the CIA was tipped by a source in Beijing that there were a couple of guys from the Chinese mission at the UN tailing me. I was doing some big transaction with Shanghai, and the Chinese were trolling for guys they might be able to blackmail, to help them get some deals for prohibited satellite technology or something.”

  “And Branko?”

  “Branko warned me.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Said it was his professional duty. Specifically said he wasn’t telling me out of friendship. Just wanted me to know that if the little Commie buggers ever threatened to out me, I should tell them to fuck off, and then tell Rachel everything so they couldn’t use it as leverage to blackmail me.”

  “Sounds like Branko.” Alexander shook his head. His limbs felt heavy as he peered at his watch. “Hey, you know, I should get going.”

  “Not fair, man.”

  “What?”

  “I get my question.”

  “Barry, c’mon. Haven’t we covered enough ground for one night?”

  “No. I get mine, too.”

  “It’s late.”

  “It was my goddamn idea, Alexander. Now it’s my turn. It’s an obvious question.”

  “Shit.”

  “When did you fall in love with my wife?”

  “Do you really want to go over all the—”

  “Because I love her, too, you know. I loved her first. I didn’t stop loving her just because. . . it was awkward.”

  “No, I know you didn’t.” Alexander felt like a jerk. He was speaking in almost a whisper now. “She knows that, too.”

  “She was in denial for so long. She didn’t want to accept failure, but she didn’t want to live a lie any more than I did. It was so unbelievably hard for us both. She felt abandoned. She deserved better. It wasn’t her fault. Wasn’t anybody’s fault.”

  “Jesus, man.”

  Barry punched him on the shoulder, not that lightly. “So answer the damn question.”

  “I don’t know. . .” Alexander saw no alternative. “I always was attracted to her, Barry. She was honest and mischievous and full of life, even when she seemed so vulnerable. She was better with people than I was, so much more engaging. I admired her. But there was nothing romantic then. She was like a kid sister. You two were a couple before I got to know her well. It always felt safe, our friendship. Like loving her that way would be some kind of sacrilege. It wasn’t until after she was wounded this spring. The whole bombing thing seemed to change her outlook so much. She seemed more sure of what she wanted, like she finally wanted to live her truth.”

  “But at Stanford?”

  “I never even kissed her,” he said, lying now to console Barry, to ease the man’s loss.

  “So I was jealous for nothing?”

  Alexander put his hand on Barry’s shoulder again. “Maybe it was a premonition.”

  They walked together down the steps, around the house, and through the damp grass, their soft footfalls feeling like the careful steps of conspiratorial teenagers, creeping home long past curfew.

  As they crossed the darkened drive, Alexander turned once more to Barry. “Thanks,” he said.

  “Yeah, sure.” Barry stiffened and stepped back, remembering something.

  “Oh,” Barry added, almost as an afterthought, “about the safes?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Poems.”

  “Poems?”

  “Alan used to write these incredible poems. And photographs. He would take lots of photos, too. Landscapes from our hikes together. Portraits.” Barry took a deep breath and exhaled.

  “Towards the end, I kept everything. It helped keep me sane. Somehow, the stuff I kept in there became a kind of memory chest. They were like artifacts, each with a story to tell. I needed to keep them, to have some tangible evidence it had all been real. I needed to know it hadn’t just been a dream I’d lived alone in my head for all those years.”

  THINGS FALL APART

  “Gentlemen don’t tell tales,” said Alexander, determined to resist Rachel’s inquiries.

  “No, really!” Rachel demanded. “What the hell were you guys talking about for so long? It was as if Barry knew everything before we even came in the door together. I was upstairs drifting into dreamland and there you two were, yammering on like the old days, talking about God-knows-what.”

  It was almost noon, and Rachel’s call found Alexander at his office.

  “We were talking about the good old days.”

  “Sure.”

  “It was, well, private.”

  “But I would like to—”

  “Rachel, trust me on this one. And—hey, you need to get caught up. Unbelievable things are happening. The planet never rests.”

  “What do you mean?” She was still groggy with jet lag, struggling to clear her head after two Tylenol PM’s and nine hours of deep sleep in her own bed. “Actually, I had these bizarre dreams about Wyoming and World War II.”

  “That seems appropriate. The surreal is upon us.”

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  “With?”

  “With the real world. What’s the word out of Beijing?”

  “Oh, they’re playing it for all it’s worth. “Kidnapping. . . CIA plot.” They’ve been running stock footage of the Air Force plane and Smithson for hours. They’re kicking out Ambassador Davis. Gave him twenty-four hours to leave.”

  “Davis?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He didn’t even know. . . Actually, I’m really not sure any more.”

  “They’re using some weird war crimes language. Trying to make it an issue at the UN.”

  “War crimes!?” Rachel was incredulous. “They’re American kids, they’ve got American passports, an American dad. Mickey was getting screwed on custody in the Chinese courts. They violate their own laws. He couldn’t even take them home for the summer.”

  She stopped. She was lying barefoot on the couch in her living room, thinking of Jamie again—Jamie, with his mournful eyes, looking anxiously at her as she saw him off to summer camp that morning.

  “Rachel, it’s OK. You don’t need to justify yourself.”

  “I feel like we’ve got to justify everything. Me. Mickey. You. Everybody.”

  “Relax. You’ve just come straight through twelve time zones.”

  “Sure.”

  “I mean, you haven’t heard the worst of it yet.”

  “The worst of what?”

  “The annual war games the Chinese have launched against Taiwan are bigger than ever. That’s probably what the Chinese over-reaction is about in the first place. It’s just for cover. They aren’t going to start a war over a custody dispute.”

  �
�Great frickin’ timing. They roll out the big war games the day we leave.”

  “Could be they were waiting for something to distract people, to use as a smokescreen. They always have their ‘summer games.’ They’re called the ‘Jiefang Live Fire Combined Services Training Drill.’ But they’re usually later, in July or August.”

  “Right.”

  “My sources say this year it’s different. Appears they’ve cooked up something major, building on the joint maneuvers they’ve been doing with the Russians. They’re using all the new hardware their military’s been importing—the destroyers, the new Russian Sovremenny. Testing their amphibious assault groups. The whole works. They’ve even announced a test firing of their new Ju Lang missiles, the submarine launched ones. They could trigger something much, much bigger here.”

  She stood now, bouncing nervously on her toes. Alexander’s report was sobering, and she wanted to get the blood flowing again—anything to jump start her foggy brain.

  “Hey, since we’ve been talking, there’s an MSNBC crawler saying the U.S. has just expelled three Chinese diplomats in retaliation.” “Unbelievable,” she mumbled. “It’s all BS. They’ve had this war game stuff planned for months. The Chinese always like to say they’re provoked. Goes back to the Opium Wars and their nineteenth century blame-the-foreigners game. The Pentagon correspondent says the Chinese are announcing live fire missile tests on targets in the Pacific east of Taiwan. That’s clear across the island!”

  “There goes the summit.”

  “You’re probably right. They must’ve wanted an excuse. This stuff they’re doing is so calculated, like it was sitting on the shelf ready to go.”

  Rachel was gazing out the window, sliding open the curtains with the back of her hand. The sunlight was brilliant, and the scene she viewed was impossibly green, almost jungle-like, compared to the barren urban landscapes of Beijing. The impatiens were tucked into their shaded beds, none the worse for the oppressive July heat. The Japanese maple was stretched out full, leaves covered with a soft sheen. Geraniums stood in pots lining the back porch. Barry had kept the yard well watered. She’d meant to thank him for it.

  “Beijing seems like some apparition to me now,” she said. “As if we just made it up that there’s this big country far away that wants to go to war over some sixty-year-old misunderstanding.”