So I find a public call box. The chain on the bracelet is short, to reduce the chances that someone will yank it out, so once I get the bracelet on I have to fumble one-handed for my number book. I read Peter’s number, the call clicks through. Waiting for him to answer, the only part of me that’s warm is my wrist where the contact’s made, and that’s just an illusion anyway, just excited nerves at the periphery of contact.
“It’s Zhang,” I say.
“Hey,” Peter says, looking preoccupied, by which I mean he is looking at something on his lap rather than me.
“Hey. I’m out on the beach.”
That perks him up, blue-gray eyes on me and he sounds interested. “Yeah? Come up.”
Peter lives in a wretched commune, Lenin knows how they ever got a permit. Just goes to prove that five years ago anyone could
get permission to live in Coney Island. The slogan over the door says, “The force at the core of the people is the Revolution” from the
Xiao Hongshu,
the Little Red Book. I press my wrist against the contact and Peter has told the building to expect me because the street door opens.
I climb the stairs because I have a theory that Peter’s building dislikes me and I won’t get in the elevator. Peter only lives two flights up. I knock on the door and he opens it and kisses me there in the hall. He swears nobody cares but I still hate when he does it; if anyone suspected I’m bent it could cost me my job. Not that Lisa and Aruba, who live next door, are in any position to complain about our morals.
“China Mountain,” he says, “where the hell have you been?” China Mountain is a possible translation of my name, Peter likes it.
“I work,” I say. “Got any
pijiu?”
He hands me a beer. Peter and I lived together for three months, we’re still friends. Better friends than lovers. “Want to go to the kite races?” he asks. Peter works in an office but sleep deprivation has never seemed to bother him.
No, I don’t want to go to the kite races. “Foreman Qian wants to sponsor me to Shanghai University.” I sit in one of his big cushions, sink into it like it was a hug and it thrums gently and starts to warm me up.
“Isn’t that kind of surprising?” Peter frowns. Three little lines appear in the middle of his forehead. His eyebrows arch like gull wings. They are lighter than his summer tan, just beginning to fade.
“He wants me to marry his daughter. Then I’ll go to the university, get a job in China, and he can retire back inside.”
For a moment Peter looks as if he is going to laugh but he takes a long pull on his beer instead. “He’s kidding, isn’t he? I mean, arranged marriages are pretty feudal, you know.”
“He’s a pretty feudal kind of guy.”
He thinks a moment. “Can you tell him you already have a fiancé?”
“No, he’s asked before.”
Peter shakes his head. “You have such a complicated personal life.”
No kidding.
“Hey, China Mountain, don’t sit there all stony. You’re all in your skull again. Come on, Rafael, don’t go all Chink.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have come,” I say, sulking.
“Guilt, guilt, guilt, I feel horrible. Now get off your ass and let’s go to the kite races. I’ll introduce you to a flier and he’s skinny and blond and you can polish your obsession for yellow hairs. He doesn’t have a brain in his perfect little cranium but he’s still
hao kan.
”
“If I go I’ll be up all night and I’ll be a wreck at work tomorrow.” But I go, and we watch the silk gliders race all night above Washington Square; red and yellow sails swooping and skimming in the searchlights. Peter never does find his flier.
Next day, Friday. I get back to my flat, shower, change and catch the train back to Manhattan. How does Peter do it? I am at work at six-forty-five, pouring coffee in the vain hope that if I drink enough I won’t accidentally cut my foot off with the cutter. Foreman Qian is there at seven-thirty. I do not know what I will say to him. I will tell him that there is really a girl. I will tell him that I am involved in the sale and transfer of illegal goods and not a suitable choice. I will tell him I am against feudal arrangements like this. I will tell him I have an incurable disease and only have six months to live.
I follow him into his office and he sits down. I notice his jowls hang a little, like a tired bulldog’s. Then I stare at the wall in back of him.
“Engineer Zhang,” he says in Mandarin, “Please you come to dinner on Sunday.”
The wall is white and needs painting. “Thank you, Foreman Qian,” I say, “I would be honored.” And then slink out onto the site.
Long terrible day, with Foreman Qian smiling at me as prospective son-in-law. The crew knows something is up, and with Foreman Qian lurking around the site, nothing gets done. I do not ever reprimand them directly, it is not the way to get them to work, instead I find small ways to express my displeasure. But my heart is not in it. At noon I lie in the sun on a sack of cement—it’s not comfortable but I only mean to sit a minute. I put my forearm over my eyes and fall asleep, jerk awake and drink more coffee. We finally finish at four. As I pass out pay chits I look at each one, “Your hard-earned pay,” I say.
I hear Kevin from Queens mutter, “Qian been bustin’ the bastard’s ass again.”
Little do you know.
Friday evening I sleep for about five hours and then meet Peter at eleven to drop in on a friend’s party. I fully intend to be home by two o‘clock, three o’clock at the latest. When I get home it’s eight in the morning and I sleep the day away. Saturday I promise myself I will stay home that evening, but I end up meeting a couple of guys for a vid. Sunday morning finds me, as always, tired, broke and with a flat that desperately needs cleaning. It’s not a big flat, it doesn’t take any time to straighten up, I just don’t get around to it for weeks on end.
At six I present myself at apartment sixteen, in a complex on Bay Shore. I am carrying a carefully wrapped copy of Sun-zi’s classic on strategy. Not that I think Foreman Qian is such a fan of military strategy but because I think he will be flattered by the insinuation he reads the classics.
Foreman Qian’s daughter answers the door, “You are Engineer Zhang?” she says. “I am Qian San-xiang.”
She is astonishingly ugly. More than ugly, there is something wrong with the bones of her face.
She is a flat-faced southern-looking Chinese girl of twenty or twenty-two. She has a little square face like a monkey and small eyes even by Chinese standards. Her little wizened face is so unexpected I blink. I think instantly of some sort of bone defect that would create that almost nonexistent chin. She looks at me expressionlessly and then drops her eyes and glances sideways at her mother. Her mother is a matronly-looking woman clasping her hands together and smiling at me; Foreman Qian comes into the doorway to the little foyer and says hello and there we all are, four of us crowded into this little space. San-xiang slides between her mother and father and disappears into the next room.
“Let me take your jacket,” her mother says. “I am Liu Su-ping.” Chinese women do not take their husband’s names, and it is evident that I have left the West in the hall.
I shrug out of my jacket and casually leave my package on the little table by the door. As a polite person I do not call attention to the gift; as polite people the Qians pretend not to have noticed it. We go into the living room, full of heavy wooden furniture clearly brought over from China. The elaborately paned window faces the harbor. The apartment is pretty but extraordinarily cramped. I sit and am offered something to drink, which I decline.
“No, please have something,” Liu Su-ping insists. She has small soft-looking hands which she keeps clasped tightly together. I decline respectfully. Am I certain I would not like some tea? “San-xiang,” she calls, “bring Engineer Zhang some tea.”
“No, do not bother yourself,” I say. I am not an engineer, I’m an engineering
tech.
A technician. Two-year degree, not four. I hate when people call me an engineer.
“It is sent by my sister, Dragon Well tea, from Huangzhou,” she says.
Having politely declined three times I can now say yes, I would be pleased to have some tea. It is always easier to let people give
you something than to convince them that you are not being polite, that you really just don’t want it.
Now, however, while San-xiang makes tea, silence falls.
“So,” I say in Mandarin, “I have always meant to ask you, Foreman Qian, where is your family from?” There is a little burst of conversation. His family is from Chengde, in the west. Her family is from Wenzhou, in the south. They met when he was on a two-year assignment in her province. Where is my family from?
I can only say I don’t know. Elder Zhang was born and raised in the States. I have a grandfather on the West Coast but I haven’t seen him in twenty years. And there is no need to discuss my mother so I don’t mention her.
“You speak Mandarin very well,” Liu Su-ping says. “Where did you learn it?”
“I went to the Brooklyn Middle School of Theory and History and all of our classes were in Mandarin,” I say, “but I am afraid I was not so quick as my classmates. My Mandarin is very poor.”
Oh no, oh no, they say, it is very good, very smooth. Oh no, I say, they flatter me.
We lapse into silence. My only consolation is that I must not be making a good impression.
San-xiang brings in tea on a tray. The tea is served out of a pretty porcelain tea pot. It is nice tea, smoky and strong. I say so.
San-xiang serves tea and sits down, eyes on her lap. She is dressed nicely but more casually than I expected. Foreman Qian is in tailored coveralls, he is dressed exactly as he is every day at work. But San-xiang and her mother are dressed in tunics with mandarin collars over tights, very casual. The clothes might even be from China. I am overdressed and conservative, wearing a long black shirt to mid-thigh, but I thought this would be more formal. It is too late to worry. I wish I was brave enough to do something truly rude.
After a moment San-xiang gets up and goes back into the kitchen and returns with a plate full of peanuts, candied walnuts
and ersatz quail eggs. I hate ersatz quail eggs, but I carefully taste everything.
I am relieved that I have to get up early tomorrow, it will provide me with an excuse to leave early.
Dinner progresses pretty much as the rest of the evening has, that is to say, laboriously. The food is good; pork stuffed with hard-cooked eggs, dumplings, a fresh salad, and lastly, soup. Foreman Qian and I talk business and in the course of the evening San-xiang says hardly anything to me. I keep waiting to hear her speak. Her voice, when she does speak, is high and soft, a little girl’s voice. I know she is in her early twenties. A very sheltered girl, I think.
At nine I apologize and say I must be at work early the next day, I have a strict boss. Foreman Qian laughs. “It has been good to have you, we don’t have guests often.”
I am not surprised, considering that they seem to have little social grace. “I have had a wonderful evening,” I lie.
“I realize that you two have not had much chance to get to know each other,” Foreman Qian says. “Next you must spend some time together.”
San-xiang glances sideways at her mother. I feel the color start to rise in my face. Why does his suggestion sound somehow illicit? Not sexual, but I feel compromised. “Yes,” I agree. “Perhaps next time we will have more chance to talk.”
“Perhaps on Saturday, you two might take the time to get to know each other.”
Lenin and Mao Zedong. But I beam like an idiot. “That would be very nice,” I say. “Saturday.”
“Fine,” Foreman Qian says, “you decide what you should do. And I will see you tomorrow.”
The door closes and I am standing in the hall. I stare at the closed door.
Oh shit.
“Perhaps,” I suggest to Foreman Qian, “your daughter would like to go to a vid with me.” This is a nasty comedy we play, one of Shakespeare’s problem comedies, like
Measure for Measure.
A tragedy that has lost its nerve and is trying desperately to pair principals who have no business with each other.
He nods, he is doing accounts. After he has finished whatever he is writing he looks up at me. “I think you with her to kite race go. Often you tell me you to kite race go.
Hao buhao?”
“I don’t know. Maybe kite race have no interest,” I say, falling into Chinglish.
“This time, first time my daughter to kite race go. She tell me it have interest.”
“Ah, good,” I say. “We to kite race will go.”
I don’t want to take her to the kite races, they don’t start until nine-thirty and if I took her to a vid I could take her at seven-thirty and have her home by eleven-thirty, midnight at the latest. If she’s as charming as she was at dinner it’s going to be a night that will feel like six months anyway.
So Saturday I again present myself at flat sixteen at the building on Bay Shore. The door is opened by Liu Su-ping, San-xiang’s mother, and I am forced to make small talk while San-xiang finishes getting ready. She finally appears in tights and a long red jacket. She has nice taste in clothes but the night already has the same out-of-synch quality as all those times in middle school when I took a girl out. At least now I am not hoping that something will arouse some sort of latent heterosexuality.