“San-xiang,” he says, “I love your name. Three Fragrances. Come with me now, okay?”
“Okay,” I whisper.
But first he has to go back to the party to meet the Tomas person. He takes me to a restaurant and buys me a cup of tea. “You don’t have to go back, I’ll be back as soon as I can. Okay sweetheart?” He gives me his little-boy smile, “That’s the perfect thing to call you, ‘sweetheart.’ Like a sweet fragrance. Wait right here for me, sweetheart. Promise you won’t go anywhere?”
“I promise,” I say.
He is gone for thirty-five minutes while I have three cups of tea and read a newspaper. This isn’t what I expected at all. This isn’t like a date with Zhang, he picked me up, we went to the kite races, then we had something to eat and went home. We didn’t do all
this running around. Of course, Bobby has all these friends. My headache goes away but then I feel tired. It’s only ten-thirty but it feels as if it’s later. In the bathroom I look in the mirror. My face is still there, but I don’t care. I try to think of how nice it looks, but it’s like a dress I have worn all day, it is just there.
In the restaurant they are playing sweet old people versions of popular songs. A cup of tea is expensive, and the sandwiches and samosas are as much as a dinner in Brooklyn. Each place is laid, as if they are expecting two hundred people to come in during the middle of the night, and each table has its canister of chopsticks.
Bobby comes back and whisks me out of the restaurant into the night. I am sleepy again. I’ll go to whatever this place is he wants to take me to and then I’ll go home, and I don’t care if he ever calls me again. Up and down, up and down, all evening, and now I’m tired.
“Here,” Bobby pulls out another of those pieces of paper.
I shake my head.
“It’ll make you feel better,” Bobby says.
“They give me a headache.”
“Don’t breathe quite so deep,” he says.
So I don’t and it still gives me a headache, but not as bad, the coldness rising into my head and white little sparkles in my eyes and then everything clear. Bobby is looking at me, not smiling, and I don’t know what that means. “Come on,” he says.
We get on the nearly empty subway and ride, swaying and nodding, for two stops, then get off. Bobby’s face is green-white under the old lights of the station, his burgundy sweater is the brown-red of bloodstains. While traveling he does not look at me. He is angry at me. Maybe he is tired, too. I hope he is tired, although I’m not anymore. I can’t keep a train of thought in my head, many thoughts just skitter around, my head is a cricket cage.
He will be angry when he finds out that I don’t know how to dance. The new San-xiang should know how to dance, but I just
don’t. I can’t help it, I don’t. When he gets mad, then I’ll go home. In the subway station there are mosaics of beavers in the tiles. I wonder if beavers used to live in New York City.
We walk and I try to piece together an outline of the evening. The bar, the party, waiting in the restaurant, riding in the subway. When Mama says tomorrow, “What did you do?”, what will I answer?
“Do you like to swim?” Bobby asks.
“Yeah,” I say. I haven’t been swimming in a long time, but I used to go to the health club when I was a teenager. When I was six we went to Hainandao, in China. It is an island, like Hawaii, only bigger. We stayed in a huge hotel and went down to the beach. I remember the big hotel. I remember getting lost on the beach. I remember there were steps into the blue pool, the first step and the second step were fine, the third step was pretty deep and everything after that was over my head.
We go through dark glass doors into something like the lobby of a hotel. Bobby smiles at the girl behind the counter. “Hey sweetheart,” he says and for a moment I think he is talking to me, but then I realize he is talking to the girl, who smiles back at him. He pays her money in cash and she has to have somebody come out and take it and put it in an envelope with a lock. I don’t know many people who use cash. I wonder why Bobby has it. Whatever we are going to do is very expensive, I wonder how Bobby can afford it.
Then we go through another glass door and I smell pool chemicals. I look at Bobby but he isn’t looking at me. He has his arm through my arm but he is looking at some windows up above us.
This must be something illegal, but I don’t know what it is. Maybe gambling? It is a little scary, but exciting. Ginny, my friend from my political study group, has gambled. She told me about it, the dealers with no sleeves so you can be sure they’re not cheating, the men in suits who are managers and who carry guns, the cards and tiles. You would have to have real money to
gamble, because the gambling place wouldn’t want a record of debits and credits on your account, unless you were in Monaco, where it is still legal. And if you gambled in Monaco, your boss at your job could find out.
“Is this a gambling place?” I ask.
“No,” Bobby says, “it’s a bath house.”
“What’s a bath house?” I ask.
Bobby laughs, the sound bounces off the tile. “This.” He points towards a pink door. “Go on and get a suit and get changed, I’ll meet you on the other side.”
He lets go of my arm and turns. He walks through a blue door, waving to me. I don’t know what to do. Maybe I should go home. But he spent a lot of money on me. So I go through the pink door. On the other side, everything is pink. The floor is pink carpeting, the walls are pink, there is a girl in a pink bathing suit. “Do you need a suit?” she asks, smiling.
She lets me choose which color I want, I pick white. Then she shows me how to open the packet. “Put it on quick,” she says, “before it sets.”
Through another door. There is a locker room, with pink tile and pink lockers. I sit on a pink bench and read the instructions on the suit packet. It’s from China. I peel it open, and peel out the suit. I step into the leg holes, pull it up. It’s soft, like gelatin and I tear it pulling on it, but I close the tear with my fingers and it seals together. Using the pictures on the back of the instructions I pull it and stretch it until it has straps and it isn’t too tight. By the time I have gotten it pretty much the way I want, and torn off the bits that I don’t like, it is getting tougher. The back isn’t quite even, but I hope that it looks okay. I brush my hair and freshen my makeup, then I go back to the girl in the pink room.
“Everything okay?” she asks, smiling.
“I think so,” I say.
“Well, just go on through the locker room and out to the lounge. Do you want a robe?”
“Yes please.”
She hands me a white robe with angel sleeves, the kind that could fit anyone, and I put that on and go out looking for Bobby.
He is standing in the lounge, holding a drink. His bathing suit is black and very tight. Bobby looks pretty nice in a black bathing suit, except that he has a little bit of a belly. But I can see him, I can see
it
kind of next to his leg, his suit is that tight. I look up, glad that he didn’t see me looking. There are other people in the lounge. Most of the women are young and a few of them are very pretty. One girl, a Eurasian, has a spray of what looks like stars in her hair. They are so pretty. I have seen them in Mama’s Chinese magazines, but I have never seen anyone wear one. I wish I had one, but where would I wear it? Out with Bobby?
Some of the men are our age, some are older. A lot are very handsome, but some aren’t and they look foolish in their bathing suits. Why are men never worried about how they look when they are with a woman who is pretty?
Through an archway by the bar is the pool, and I can see a few people swimming, their heads sleek above the water, but Bobby takes my arm and walks me over to the bar. He orders me another Chrysanthemum without asking me and I take it even though I really don’t want it, then we go the other way, away from the pool. “You look nice,” he says, “let me see your suit.”
I take off my robe although I would really prefer to keep it on.
“What are you wearing that thing for?” he asks, “you’re too pretty to hide under a sheet. San-xiang,” he says, kind of singing my name, “Saaan-xi-aaang.” He says “Xiang” like a
waiguoren,
“she-ung” but it still sounds nice.
I want to put it back on but I don’t.
We sit down at a little table and there are jacks. The room is dark, each table has a light above it. Bobby jacks in, so I do too, and there’s a show. It’s a comedian, but she uses all sorts of swear words, English and Chinese, and says all sorts of things that should be censored. I am embarrassed at first, and I’m afraid to
laugh, because I don’t want Bobby to think I am the kind of girl who likes this kind of talk, but Bobby is laughing, and some of the things are really funny, so I start laughing a little, too.
Bobby takes my hand and kind of keeps rubbing my wrist with his thumb, back and forth. At first it’s okay, but after awhile, he keeps rubbing back and forth in the same place and it doesn’t feel so good. But the show is fun. I don’t drink very much of my drink, but Bobby drinks his.
Then we go swimming. It is so strange to be swimming in the middle of the night. We swim in one pool for awhile, and dive off the diving board. Then we go to another pool. The room is darker, and there is a light that reflects across the water, like the moon, Bobby says.
He holds my wrist as we walk down the steps into the water. I can see him, his skin is so white, and I can see my suit. There are other people here, I can hear them and barely see them. The water is warm, much warmer than the pool where it is light. I can smell plants, and there is a cricket. It must be a recording, but I can hear him, sawing away. A cricket is good luck. Maybe even if it’s a recording.
The water is up to my chest, and Bobby pulls me against him, hugs me. I don’t know what to do, he is not wearing very much and I can feel his skin and I can feel him kind of against my leg, even though he is wearing a suit, but I don’t want to pull away. “San-xiang,” he says in my ear and he strokes my back. I don’t do anything, I don’t pull away and I don’t move my hands. I just stand with my arms around him and hope that he stops. There are other people in the pool, they must be doing the same thing.
He kisses me. I don’t know what to do, so I kiss him back. If I don’t kiss him, he’ll think I don’t like him at all. After this I’ll go home and I’ll never see him again, so it doesn’t matter. Nothing else is going to happen.
He kisses me and kind of bends his knees—I have to, too—
until just our heads are above water. He pulls away, I’m relieved, but then he starts to touch my breast and I pull away.
He doesn’t do anything for a moment, then he says, “Okay.” I can’t really see his expression, so I don’t know if he’s angry or not, he just says, “okay.”
Then we go back to the other pool and swim some more.
We don’t swim very long, and then he asks me if I’m ready to go. He doesn’t act angry. I say that I’m ready. It must be late. I go back into the pink locker room and take off my suit. There’s a canister with a sign above it that says “Discard Suits.” I drop my suit in the clear liquid in the canister, mine is the only suit in there, and right away I see why because it starts to dissolve. By the time I am dressed, the liquid in the canister is clear.
“Good night, dear,” the pink girl says.
“Did you like it?” Bobby says as we are leaving.
“Yeah,” I say, “I did. I’ve never been any place like that.”
“I told you that you’d like it.” He keeps looking around him, all full of energy, I realize he has used another icepick. “Hey, why don’t you come back to my place, have a drink or a cup of tea or something. The place where I’m staying isn’t far from here.”
“I really can’t, Bobby,” I say, “it’s late, I’ve got to get home.” I almost say that my mother will be wondering where I am but I remember I told him that I have my own apartment.
“Just for a little while,” he says, “you don’t work on Saturday, do you? Or we could go to your place, except mine’s closer.”
“It’s really late,” I say.
He just keeps walking, doesn’t look at me.
“I mean, I worked all day,” I say, trying to make excuse.
“Fine,” he says, angry. “I spend all this money on you, and you just go home.”
I feel terrible. It’s true that he spent all that money, but he didn’t seem to care.
“All I ask,” he says, “is that you stop and have a cup of tea, a goddamn cup of tea.”
I look at the ground, watch our feet.
“I know I’m not Chinese, not like your boyfriend,” he says, nasty-sounding, “and I realize you’re doing a
waiguoren
a real favor, gracing me with your presence, but I just thought you weren’t like that. I thought you were nice, San-xiang.”
“That’s not true,” I whisper, “he’s not my boyfriend. I wasn’t being like that. I like you, you’re nice, I don’t care if you’re a
waiguoren.
”
“Well, just come and have a cup of tea,” he says, suddenly pleading.
“Okay,” I say. I won’t stay long. “Just a few minutes.”
“That’s okay,” he says, his voice normal again.