Land of Big Numbers

by Te-Ping Chen

  “It means ‘cat-headed eagle,’ ” I told her. She cocked her head slightly and thought before shaking her head, stumped.

  “An owl,” I said.

  She laughed. “No way,” she said, and hit me lightly on the side of my arm; it was the kind of gesture of hers that drove me crazy, at once sisterly and flirtatious. “That’s actually really good.”

  “Okay, now changjinglu.”

  “Changjinglu.”

  “Long-necked deer.”

  “A giraffe?”

  “You got it,” I said. We both laughed, and I tapped my pen and tried to think of more.

  The window was to our backs, white sill gritty with dust from outside. She was so close that if I’d leaned over just a little, our shoulders would have touched. Then, without warning, she reached out and gently traced the blurred outline of my right ear, crumpled and flattened. It was a congenital defect, with me since birth. As a child, at my mother’s suggestion, I’d tried growing out my hair to cover it; the effect was not good.

  “Neat,” she said casually. She said it felt like a melted candle. “So soft,” she said, as I held my breath and tried not to breathe on her. I’d had garlic at lunch that day but hadn’t had a chance to brush my teeth yet, and for that suspended moment I felt simultaneously absurd, sordid, and blessed. Why didn’t I order the soup? Or the salad?

  That night, most thrillingly of all, after we’d watched two movies and I’d gotten up to leave, she turned to me. “You don’t have to go,” she said, and it was like a great gift had been handed to me, along with the blanket she tossed carelessly my way as she went to her room. Later, I lay in the dark on her couch, listening to the sound of the water as she took a shower. When she opened the door, a yellow rectangle of light spilled out and there she was, wrapped in a towel, pausing in the frame as though she could sense my excitement. My heart stopped. Little tease!

  I inhaled in anticipation and began to sit up, but she was already disappearing into her room and sealing the light behind her.

  After that, I slept fitfully. At last around 3 a.m., unable to contain myself, I got up and went to her bedroom door, listening for any sound, imagining her prone within. When I agitated the handle, though, it refused to move.

  * * *

  After I returned from the coffee shop, I deliberated a long time over what piece of mail to give Perry. There were bags and bags of it: the glossy fashion magazines that had continued to arrive for six months until finally her subscriptions must have been canceled, the credit card bills made out to her name, and many more of that genre. There was a wedding invitation from a friend in Minnesota—​I knew it was a wedding invitation because I’d opened it—​but the fact that it had been opened was obvious; the envelope was all ripped. The next morning, I stopped in a stationery store and bought another square white envelope that mostly matched, copied the addresses in careful script, and resealed it.

  When I handed it to Perry that night as he stood on my porch, he looked at it and caressed its edges. “Finally,” he breathed. He looked like he wanted to rub it against his face. “Is that all?”

  “You can’t open it,” I told him, a little primly, not answering him. “That’s a federal offense, opening someone else’s mail.”

  He shrugged and slid his finger under the flap. “Well, don’t tell anyone.”

  He opened the envelope and I watched his face as he removed the thick ivory card inside. The wedding invitation said Portia Vaughn and David Cohen request the pleasure of your company and had letters wrapped in fingers of ivy.

  “You didn’t need to open it,” I told him. I was angry that he hadn’t listened to me, such an unmannered person. “I thought all you wanted was the return address.”

  He turned over the invitation and the envelope, examining them. “Hey,” he said. “It’s not stamped.”

  My chest thudded a little—​how could I have forgotten that?—​but I kept calm. “Weird,” I said. “Maybe they hand-delivered it.”

  “The return address is all the way in Minnesota,” he said. I shrugged and tried to contain the urge to rip the card out of his hands. I started to close the door, but he stuck his foot in it. “Wait,” he said. “I’m not feeling very well. Can I have a glass of water?”

  I stared at his foot; I didn’t like his foot there. But it was such a reasonable request. I went inside and got him a glass and sat opposite him at the kitchen table as he drank it, the two of us very silent. I could see him looking around the room. I shouldn’t have poured him such a tall glass, I thought. He seemed determined to finish every drop, as though it would be an affront to waste any of it.

  At this point in the script, a man might slam his fist on the table, race through the rooms, and demand answers. He did not. He just sat there, drinking and looking around.

  “Are you sure you didn’t know her?” he said, looking at me oddly. “I swear, some of this furniture looks exactly the same.” He was staring at one plant in the corner, green leaves touched with brown, which stood in an orange pot. “Like, that plant. I guess maybe it was the landlord’s?”

  “I told you, I haven’t lived here that long,” I said stiffly. And somehow the act of speaking broke the spell, and I was able to get up, indicating to him that he, too, should leave.

  He was smiling now. “Okay, okay, I’ll go. Thanks for this,” he said, patting the envelope.

  “No problem,” I muttered, and shut the door behind him.

  * * *

  Six months after I’d met Lisette, there came a Saturday morning when I did not expect to see her. But then there was a buzz at my apartment and her voice sudden and warm on the intercom, saying she was downstairs. I let her up and began rushing around the room, kicking dirty laundry under the bed, madly stacking dishes in the sink.

  When I opened the door, she was standing there, staring at me with a strange intensity in her blue eyes. “I’m going away,” she said, smiling. “I’ve decided.”

  I felt the excitement that had fizzed up inside me subside. “Already? You just got here.”

  “Not now,” she said. She walked in and threw herself on the couch. “In a couple weeks. I’m leaving town.”

  My stomach dropped, as if all the muscles and sinews that had been keeping it suspended abruptly forgot their roles.

  “What?”

  “I’m going to start over,” she said. “Like the pioneers. I’m going to move away.”

  I stared at her stupidly, still standing. “Where?” I only seemed capable of speaking in one-word questions.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know yet. But I’m going away, I’m going to start a new life.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m tired of my life here,” she said. She kicked off her shoes and began wiggling her toes. “I’m moving away. New life. New identity.”

  “What happened?” I said, half wondering if this was a game.

  She frowned, and admitted that she’d been fired from her office the previous day. “But that’s not why I’m leaving,” she said. “I just want to start over. And I’m going to need your help,” she said.

  “Why me?”

  “Because you’re my friend,” she said impatiently, “and I can trust you.” She went to the kitchen and began rifling through the refrigerator.

  Lisette was helpless in a lot of ways, but she was also canny, and she knew, I think, that I’d do most anything for her. In the weeks that followed, she was hyper, talking constantly about her plans. She’d wake up early and call me, buzzing with one idea or another. One day she purchased maps, lots of maps. Another day she threw out all of her books and lamps, left them outside on the sidewalk.

  “Why are you doing this?” I kept asking her, to which she’d shrug.

  “I’ve been so bored,” she said. “I’ve been stuck.”

  In the last week before she left, I took off work and helped her clear out her apartment, arranging her things into tidy piles. The stuffed animals went to Goodwill, along with assorted furnishi
ngs and six bags of clothes. “I still need to pay my landlord for the rest of this month,” she hesitated, not looking at me.

  “I can handle it,” I told her. She’d been sitting opposite me on the floor, sorting through a stack of papers, and when I said that, she rose up on her knees and hugged me unsteadily. “Thank you,” she breathed into my closed-up right ear. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  The day before Lisette left, I managed to persuade her to come see our amusement park. She hadn’t wanted to, she was exhausted, she said, but after all I’d done, I’d insisted and she said yes. I wanted the day out, just the two of us, wanted her to see the place where I was host and the locals were guests, enjoying the rides that I’d made. At the park, we ate funnel cake and roasted peanuts. To my surprise, though, Lisette stubbornly refused to go into the Tunnel of Love. She shuddered, looking at it. “No thanks.”

  “It’s my invention,” I told her. “This is how I started my career, back in Beijing.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “I’m sure I did,” I said. “Never mind. Try it. You’ll be wrapped in plastic—​you won’t get too wet.”

  “I’m okay,” she said. “I don’t like enclosed spaces.”

  “You’ll like it, I swear,” I told her. “It’s about rebirth. What it’s like to experience a moment in your life that most of us have forgotten. Come on—​I’ll do it with you.” I tried pulling her by the arm.

  She’d been sulky all day, exhibiting no interest in the details of the park that I’d pointed out, the Hongxi baseball cap that I’d bought her. “Quit pushing me around,” she said suddenly.

  She stalked away, hands in her coat pockets. I followed her at a distance, feeling panicky at first but also excited—​like maybe this was the time to make a gesture of some kind: sweep her into my arms, maybe, stammer out a confession of how I felt! We could ride the Ferris wheel as the sun went down, the sky pulled over us like a blanket, we could share a doughnut, me brushing the powdered sugar from her cheek as we dangled in the air.

  When I caught up with her, though, she had stopped to buy a corn dog and was eating at a picnic table that crawled with ants, and she didn’t look happy to see me. We sat there silently until she finished, and when she suggested we go on a ride called the Sunflower Bunnies, a bunch of white bunny rabbits with seats indented in their bellies that rose dolefully up and down on brass poles, a ride designed for five-year-olds—​it wasn’t (mercifully) my work—​I didn’t argue with her and got on. We sat on two opposite bunny laps, not bothering to belt ourselves in, rising up and down miserably, not speaking.

  “Sorry,” she said, as we walked out of the ride. “I don’t know why I get like that sometimes.” She shifted uncomfortably. “Let’s go home,” she said. “I’m starting to feel a stomachache coming on.”

  * * *

  I still don’t understand why she wanted to leave. To be honest, up until she was getting into her old used car, white with a MY GRANDSON IS AN HONORS STUDENT AT STILES HALL sticker on its bumper, I thought she’d turn back: Just kidding, an aborted experiment, just another emergency-room visit, this one involving a tank of gas and several large duffel bags. I’d participated in the charade, pushing her to take extra bottles of water, an emergency blanket so that she could sleep in the car.

  “Where are you going to go?” I kept asking, but up until she got into the driver’s seat, she said she didn’t know. She’d call me later, she said impatiently, she’d figure it out on the road.

  That afternoon, I let myself into her apartment with her key and spent the rest of that day lying on her flowered couch, and for days after that I kept coming back. If I half closed my eyes or kept them turned a certain way, it was possible to imagine that Lisette was just in the next room, or perhaps in the bathroom, emptying her delicate bowels. Eventually I gave up my apartment across town and fixed it with her landlord that I could keep staying at her place. I liked it there. I’d even gone to the Goodwill to buy back some of Lisette’s things: the orange ceramic mugs she used, kitchen towels, some of her stuffed animals.

  Weeks went by. I didn’t hear from Lisette, and when I called, she didn’t pick up, either.

  It took a long time for me to realize she wasn’t ever going to call, and when that knowledge sank in, for a while it undid me; it was like I was new to the city all over again. I felt pinpricks of despair that felt harder and harder to brush away, sticky like a Hollywood rain, water mixed with milk so it shows on the screen.

  I found new pursuits. In the months after she left, I fell into the habit of wandering the strip downtown, picking out women here and there, following them when they caught my eye, never to their front steps, never approaching them, nothing like that, but sometimes you see a girl by herself and simply wonder: Where is she going? What is her life? And sometimes it is a soothing thing, to fall into the rhythm of another person’s step. There is no violation here of the law.

  Only once was I spotted: a pale blonde with a pointed face who, after an hour, called over a casino security guard, who spoke briefly into his walkie-talkie before accosting me. Up close, the woman’s mouth, small and dry, bore a trite expression of outrage. When the guard demanded my business, I told him I was lost and needed directions. He shook his head in disbelief. “You’d better get out of here,” the guard said warningly, and gave the woman a look that struck me as unnecessarily protective.

  As I walked away, the woman muttered, loud enough so that I could hear, “Freak.”

  I walked a few more steps, face hot, and when I was far enough away I turned and faced the pair again, the word surging out of my mouth: “Whore!”

  * * *

  At the trial, Ms. Castle, who keeps a close eye on the neighborhood, told the courtroom that Perry had spent days waiting for me outside my apartment, and that we appeared to be quarreling, and that I would shut the door in his face. On two separate occasions he had gone inside, she says, once late at night.

  It is not a story I relish and so I will tell you quickly.

  The next time I saw Perry was, of all places, at the opera. A colleague of mine had tickets from an investor. We sat through two hours of a woman with a big head and big hair screeching, and finally my colleague left to take a phone call and didn’t return. I sat until the end and filed out with the crowd, Perry among them. I very nearly didn’t recognize him. His red hair had been brushed flat. He was wearing a black coat with a white pinafore-style shirt and bow tie, far more dressed-up than anyone in the room. We sighted each other in the red-carpeted lobby, with its graceful marble urns and yellow lights winking above. I was wearing a simple business suit. It had been three months since I’d seen him, and we greeted each other like embarrassed, long-lost acquaintances.

  He split off from the woman who was with him—​perhaps his sister, I thought; she shared the same ruddy hair—​and then he was outside with me on the pavement and we were walking.

  The night was cool and velvety and inviting. Perry was at my side, and we were both silent. “Where are you headed?” I asked at some point, and he shrugged. “Nowhere in particular,” he said. “I’ll walk with you.” And so he kept walking with me, past the hotels and bars, past the sleeping gas stations and shuttered shops with their graffitied grills, all the way back to my street and up my front steps, then across the threshold, and inside. On the way, he told me about what the desert looked like in the Middle East, and about the hot air like a hair dryer in your mouth, about how the cars there came with devices that beeped incessantly whenever you went over the speed limit, which for him was most days. I told him about growing up in Beijing, the dusty gray of the skies, the freezing winters, and how the rain left dirty scrawls on my father’s fleet of expensive black cars, how I used to like taking a wet paper towel and cleaning them, the meditative feel of the gesture.

  Inside, I flicked the lights on, and the couch, Lisette’s bookshelves, my boots and papers all sprang into focus, like they’d been startled in the mid
dle of some act.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked uncertainly. He looked like a character from a movie, still wearing his tuxedo, ill suited to his surroundings. “I have toast. I could make you some eggs.”

  He nodded. “Sure, that’d be great.”

  I went into the kitchen and started taking out ingredients. He stayed in the living room, where, out of the corner of my eye, I could see him pacing around, inspecting things. I worried, irrationally, that he might wander into the bedroom and perhaps see Lisette’s stuffed animals, the ones I’d rescued from Goodwill, lining my bookshelf.

  “Hey,” I called. “Come and talk with me.”

  He came in and folded himself, like a lanky piece of origami, against the doorframe. “Need any help?”

  I gave him a grater and a knob of cheese and he silently started working it against the metal. I turned back to the stove, where the skillet was starting to smoke and the wedge of butter I’d cut had softened and was turning brown. I threw in six eggs and a cascade of salt, too much salt. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m not a very good cook.”

  He appeared at my side and dropped in the cheese. The kitchen was getting warm. Perry stripped off his coat and opened the pantry door slightly and hung his coat over the top, as if it were something he’d done many times before. After the eggs had fluffed themselves up in the pan, I turned the omelet upside down and divided it in two before pulling out forks from the cutlery drawer. They were Lisette’s and didn’t match.

  We ate in silence. I’d uncorked a bottle of red wine, and we were both drinking steadily. I asked him about the wedding invitation, about Portia and David, if he’d ever heard back. “They never replied,” he said, a little sheepishly. “I guess they might think it was kind of weird, someone they’d never heard of looking for her like that.”