“I’d love to,” she said almost immediately.
So caught up was he, in that moment and with Mei Ling, that he forgot, right on the spot, what he’d already been drinking.
MEI LING DIDN’T just sculpt clay; she seemed to mold the lives around her. During that first date, although it really had been no more than an extended coffee break, Tetsuya had witnessed what kind of a woman Mei Ling was. As they sat across from each other, people in the café stared at her, somehow immobilized. He received a clear message of intent from each of them. The women weren’t jealous, just curious, as if staring at her deeply enough eventually might yield all her secrets. The men all seemed to appreciate that someone was with her, even if it wasn’t them. It was entirely possible that Tetsuya simply was projecting this onto people based on his own attraction to her, but he didn’t think this was so.
When Tetsuya was with Mei Ling, he felt imbued with a calm, tranquil energy, almost as if he were in the presence of a great mystic. He seemed to be discovering firsthand the powerful satisfaction that comes from pursing a relationship. Immodestly he felt validated as being some supreme judge of character.
Walking back to the office after coffee, he tossed his cigarette to the ground. When Mei Ling noticed he was no longer smoking, she quickly doubled back, intent on finding the butt. When she finally did, she stubbed it out then tossed it into a nearby trash can. It was all done with such swiftness, the carnation in her hair never moving out of place, that Tetsuya would’ve forgotten the episode altogether had it not been for the words she uttered as she linked her arm back through his. “Please be careful,” she said.
They spent their first night together at Tetsuya’s apartment. Mei Ling told him she was embarrassed about the possibility of keeping her roommate awake and suggested they go to his place. Her roommate had enough issues as it was, she explained. There was no need to bring around a man she was seeing.
That first night they sat on the sofa drinking Malbec and talked into the early morning about everything. Tetsuya opened up to her about his father’s sudden death and why his mother was especially attached to him now. They discussed art, and Mei Ling was impressed to hear that Tetsuya was familiar with many of her favorite artists, such as Kinji Akagawa and Madeleine Boschan, the latter of whom she commended for her use of found objects. She considered the Winged Victory of Samothrace, that great Hellenistic masterpiece, to be the most formidable image of woman ever created, made even more powerful by her lack of a head.
“With the absence of a head and therefore brain, it’s almost like something else is propelling her toward us. The spirit of her body perhaps.”
“Didn’t the statue originally have a head, though?” Tetsuya asked.
“Possibly. But no one—that we know of—has ever seen it. She triumphs without it. She doesn’t need to see us to know who she is.”
As the dawn light peeked through the slats of the blinds, Mei Ling brought Tetsuya’s head toward hers and kissed him lightly on the lips. His lips, she said, were the softest she’d felt on a man. She slowly removed his clothes and traced her fingers over each muscle. It felt to Tetsuya that she was reading his body, committing to memory the trails of veins that ran up and down his forearm. She told him to tense his abdomen so she could lick the lines of his muscles. Tetsuya watched her as he brushed her hair through his fingers. She treated his entire body with the same level of worship, investigating each piece of him with exquisite care and authority. When she slid his underwear down to his ankles, she stared at him in wonder. She whispered to him, almost a warning of what she was about to do. He caught the words love and pieces, but her voice was too soft for him to make out a full sentence. He didn’t care. She kneaded his cock gently with her small hands, then took him in her mouth.
After they made love, she wriggled out from beneath him and reached for a clip, which she used to tie her hair back from her face, though a few stray hairs stuck to her forehead. She lit one of his cigarettes and went to stand on the balcony. She drew a blanket around her breasts, although she seemed confident enough in her own nakedness. The blast of heat from the open balcony door came to him instantly, and he pushed the duvet down to the edge of the bed with his feet, writhing into the mattress with a reserve of energy. The foam mattress was the kind that retained the shape of the body on top of it. Tetsuya imagined himself poised above, looking down at the outline their bodies had made on it, like lovers immortalized in chalk at a crime scene.
The street smells from outside didn’t reach up this far. The only scents Tetsuya could make out were the hot air, cigarette smoke, and his own spilled sex, which all had combined to create an anxious odor—a forbidden flower recently plucked. He wouldn’t mind that awful street smell if it came. He might lie back, breathe it in, and wait—perhaps only seconds—to become even dizzier.
AS FAR AS they were both aware, no one in the office knew about their affair. Tetsuya and Mei Ling had a discussion about it and considered it a good idea to be as discreet as possible. With Ji Min in town, Mei Ling went back to working almost full-time for him. Tetsuya felt crazy in her presence around the office and found it increasingly difficult to keep up their boss-and-secretary act. He kept imagining his office door closed and the glass fogging up and her screaming while he took her over his desk.
He’d argued with her after they’d been together two weeks. “I don’t care what people think. I’ve never felt like this before,” he said.
“We can’t be like that here, Tetsuya. You can’t flaunt your personal life and expect people to take you seriously.” She leaned closer to him, her eyes darting around to make sure they were alone. “If we keep things between us, they’ll be that much more ours. Don’t you want that?”
She was right, of course; he just found himself incapable of acting professionally around her. They walked side by side to the lab to consult with the chemist on a new scent he was developing. All the while, he had to stare straight past her into the spaces around her, to the side, never head on, because he would have to sleep with her right there if he did. It was like a scene in a play he had to rehearse to perfection, convincing the audience night after night but never himself.
He decided to actively lie about Mei Ling. He went out to lunch with Ji Min and told him about a girlfriend back in Tokyo whom he was hoping to bring over as soon as he had established himself in Singapore. He said she was perfect, with a stunning body, but she wore expensive clothes she couldn’t afford and shared an apartment with a friend in Shibuya that wasn’t within her budget. When Ji Min asked her name, he said it was “Keiko,” the name of the old woman he had befriended back home. It was the first time Tetsuya had even thought of her at all, and he was surprised how she’d finally turned out to be of use to him. It wasn’t like him to lie, but he found it easy and gratifying. He rationalized the lie to himself with the knowledge that the imaginary girlfriend almost certainly did exist in Tokyo because there were thousands like her living there.
Mei Ling told him her roommate was asking so many questions about her whereabouts lately that it would be easier if Tetsuya just met her.
He showed up early with a bottle of Shiraz and white roses for both of them.
“What a wonderful gesture, Takeda-san. Just perfect,” Mei Ling said, accepting the bottle and one of the bouquets. She wore an apron that was clearly not hers, as she was swimming in it. She kissed him and brought her arms up around his neck, as if she needed to mark him for the night. As she clung to him, Tetsuya spotted someone descending the stairs with careful deliberation; Mei Ling turned around and met her at the foot of the stairs.
“Tetsuya, this is Yan Fang,” she said, taking on the new role of chaperone.
“It’s nice to meet you.” He brought the flowers to her in a gallant motion.
He saw where the body-image issues Mei Ling had mentioned came from. Yan Fang wasn’t fat, but her big-boned heftiness made her seem larger than her weight. Standing next to Mei Ling, who was small and petite even
in high heels and the roomy apron, Yan Fang seemed like her weathered, older sister, an exchange student who’d been improperly matched to her summer host. She had a round, globular face and lips she had hastily smeared with an unflattering shade of cherry-red lipstick. She was gussied up in a way that showed the infrequency with which she must’ve attended formal events. Her hands were beautiful, though: white and smooth, well cared for in a way the rest of her seemed not to be. Tetsuya imagined they must have inspired the most lifelike of Mei Ling’s sculptures.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Yan Fang said. “You sounded so perfect that I was beginning to think Mei Ling had made you up.”
He heard the precision with which she chose her words and thought she might’ve had few chances to practice English in the past.
“Let’s sit down,” said Mei Ling. She opened the wine in the kitchen and returned with three glasses. She filled Yan Fang and Tetsuya’s, then her own as an afterthought.
“I understand we all work in the same building, Yan Fang. What do you do?” asked Tetsuya, keeping to the comfortable basics.
“I’m in advertising,” she said.
“Yan Fang is putting together the ad campaign for Jame Vu, that new fall fragrance Ji Min is managing. She also headed the campaign for Chingta Biscuits you see all around the city,” added Mei Ling.
“It was much better before it went to committee,” Yan Fang said. “My sexy teens on the beach were turned into a bored housewife in minutes. They said young people have no interest in baking. Whatever.”
Tetsuya thought she used the last word with a peculiar amount of gusto, seeming to imitate the way she might’ve heard it in a movie.
“They say she can sell anything,” said Mei Ling, gravely.
Glass in hand, Tetsuya stood and wandered to the mantle. He fingered the ledge over the fireplace, digging his nail under a part where the cream lacquer had chipped. A small, rectangular mirror that was propped up at an angle surprised him when he met his reflection in it. It leaned against the wall on top of a red cube. Perched upon the cube was a silver cup with a small handle, like something that might’ve once held a child’s first milk. He peered inside the cup and saw it was halfway full of dull brown wisps, some matted and clumped together. He stuck his finger inside. Fur.
“What is this?” he asked, looking at Yan Fang in the mirror.
“My cup of fur,” said Yan Fang with a certain amount of pride.
“Her childhood cat wandered away and was caught in a hideous trap in the woods. She chewed her way out but never came back. The fur was all she left behind,” Mei Ling explained, as if it were a story she’d heard so many times that she could now lay partial claim to it. “Isn’t it morbid?”
“A bit, although people do keep ashes in the same place,” he said. “How did you know it was your cat?” he asked Yan Fang.
“I just knew. I’ll never forget the color of her fur. I loved her,” she said, with a finality that ended the discussion.
Mei Ling’s cooking skills weren’t up to par with the rest of her winning attributes. She had attempted char kway teow, an ambitious dish for even an experienced cook—something Tetsuya’s mother used to prepare on anniversary nights for his father. It was made with thick, flat noodles stir-fried in dark soy sauce with prawns, eggs, bean sprouts, fish cake, cockles, green leafy vegetables, and Chinese sausage. But she had burned the sausages at the end so that small, hardened black bits stuck to the vegetables and swam in the sauce like flecks of dirt.
The two roommates ate it heartily, so Tetsuya followed their lead, praising the food with each satisfied moan. He looked forward to the coffee, an area in which he knew she wouldn’t disappoint.
Yan Fang followed the conversation with her eyes, occasionally offering a brief opinion or a question. At one point, she asked Tetsuya if he’d ever been married.
“Of course not, Yan Fang,” Mei Ling answered for him. “Don’t you think I would’ve told you?”
“I thought maybe you didn’t know,” she said, tossing back the rest of her wine.
Later, over coffee, Mei Ling related a story from work to them. Tetsuya watched her closely, a brief wave of amazement washing over him. He smiled to himself, childishly, as if momentarily discovering the delight of his relationship for the first time. He glanced at Yan Fang who, while nodding along at everything Mei Ling said, seemed to be squinting at her. When she caught Tetsuya looking at her, she affected a wide-eyed concentration.
After dinner, Yan Fang was eager to do the dishes. She was up and into the kitchen before either of them could protest.
“Just let her,” said Mei Ling. “She’s acting strange tonight. This might not have been the best idea.”
“She’s just jealous. You could make a paper bag look sexy. And your bad cooking was adorable.”
“You didn’t like my cooking?” she asked coyly.
“I sat through it for my chance to be alone with the cook.” Tetsuya moved her to the couch and kissed her, cradling her head in his hand, delicately manipulating its position with the grip of his fingers. Because he was kissing her, the sounds of the apartment had receded into the background. But he suddenly noticed the sink was no longer running, and the dishes, clinking and crashing before in a way that had almost sounded deliberate, were now silent. “Where’s Yan Fang?” he asked.
“Gone to bed, probably. Should we do the same?” Her eyes were half closed, and she spoke with a smile that was just short of being self-satisfied.
“Where can I find the bathroom? I had a lot of wine.”
“Upstairs. I’ll be right here, waiting.”
When he reached the top of the stairs, a long hallway of blond wood stretched out before him with five doors, two on each side and one at the end, all closed. He tried the first one on the right, but it was locked. He thought it must be Yan Fang’s room. Good, he thought. She must already be asleep. The opposite door opened too fast, but he stopped it before it banged into the wall. It wasn’t the bathroom but a multipurpose area devoted to Mei Ling’s clay work. A table stood near the center of the room, covered in a white sheet; the tallest piece underneath held the brunt of the teepee structure. Tetsuya saw the pinkish clay of one piece exposed in the corner. He pulled the sheet back and picked up Yan Fang’s hand.
It was an amazing likeness. Mei Ling had captured the long, slender fingers that were so at odds with the meaty girth of the rest of her body. The details were incredible—fingernails set in relief with cuticles and even a hangnail on the pinkie, giving credit to the whole piece by showing its willingness to record imperfection. The veins of the hand connected like roads on a map, visibly raised and alive. The hand looked as if it had been caught in a moment of pressure, perhaps dangling off a padded stool with a model’s fatigue, the blood rushing to the fingertips. Mei Ling had been right about the thumb, though; it was too fat, exaggerated, out of proportion and set at an odd, impossible angle. It made its own evolutionary statement; it was so out of place that it seemed unnecessary.
Tetsuya shut the door carefully, summoned away from further investigation by the more immediate need to relieve his bladder. He pushed open the next door. At first the heap of clothes on the floor utterly confused him. Was this Yan Fang’s bedroom? No, there were black-and-white tiles on the floor, a sink, a pink razor. He took it all in, seeing Yan Fang last, resisting an initial instinct to avert his eyes.
She was red faced and panting, her legs in a full straddle over the toilet seat. Her wide hips bucked, and three fingers of her left hand glided in and out of her vagina, lubed and glistening in the harsh overhead light.
A look of instant horror flashed in her eyes, her brain telling her hand to stop. But she was too close, and the damage had been done. She came in quick jolts, knocking her knees together, the caps as big as saucers. When the whites of her eyes settled back in their sockets and she was able to focus on him, he noticed an involuntary fluttering of her eyelids, something that often happened to him during his own clima
x or the moments just afterward. Her glazed look was desperate, and she stuttered indiscernibly between shame and enticement. She opened her legs back up as some sort of last-ditch invitation; they were shaking. Suddenly she looked very cold. She opened her mouth as if to say something but then brought her hand up to her face, which was red and splotched with strain.
He quickly pulled the door shut and came down the stairs, staring straight ahead in a regal pose. His bladder still pushed up against his other organs. Then he felt a small click inside where he knew some urgency had been rerouted. He found Mei Ling in the same position on the couch, only she had removed her skirt and unbuttoned the top of her blouse.
“Relieved?” she asked.
“Yes,” he croaked out, unprepared to speak.
Mei Ling reached for his belt buckle, but he pulled away from her and sank to his knees to pull off her underwear. There was something he would do for her, both hot and sweet like an unexpected favor. With their lovemaking of late so mapped out in its events, the novelty of the act completely jarred her. In the throes of a sudden panic, she clutched his shoulders, possibly urging him to stop, if only half-heartedly. Pillows flew off the couch. The coffee table moved inches, revealing ancient indentations in the carpet. He peered over her mound of hair and took a breath before going back down. He saw the mantle, the propped-up mirror, Yan Fang’s cup filled with fur. Sounds were loud, vibrating somewhere, maybe all around him. He’d accessed a moan from Mei Ling so deep that even the mirror seemed to tilt away from them in avoidance of their reflection.
THE NEXT DAY, Ji Min came into Tetsuya’s office. “We’re going out tonight with a couple of the bosses. They’re asking for you to come,” he said.
“I was going to leave early today.”
Ji Min stared him down.
“I guess I can change my plans,” Tetsuya said.
They went to a Japanese hostess bar. He didn’t choose it; he just got swept up along with the group, everyone clad in dark suits carrying their briefcases in one hand, cigarettes in the other. Tetsuya felt as if he were part a pack of marauding corporate raiders propelled by their own noxious fumes, subsisting on nicotine and alcohol—a trail mix of the wide-checkered-ties set. The drunker you got, the more your boss accepted you. That was how things had been in Tokyo as well; Tetsuya was well aware of this. Matching your boss drink for drink displayed more loyalty than good work or showing up on time.
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