It’s twelve-thirty. In an hour I’ll be home. I tell myself that, in an hour I’ll be home.
We walk and my heels click. We don’t take the subway. My hair is wet, but it’s not too cold, and I’m not cold. I’m tired, but I don’t want Bobby to know because I’m afraid he’ll give me another icepick and I don’t want that.
The place where he is staying doesn’t even have an elevator. We have to go up stairs. It’s on the third floor and my legs are tired. I have that tired feeling you get after you’ve been swimming, my knees are all trembly and I’m a little hungry but mostly I’m just tired.
He unlocks three locks. The flat smells musty. He switches on the light and it’s just two tiny rooms, one room really, because there’s not even a door, just like an archway between the two. The bed is in the back half and it’s not made, the apartment is full of man smell. Like a man’s laundry.
“Sit on the couch,” he says, “I’ll make some tea.”
I sit down. I’m so sleepy. Mama is going to be worried. The kitchen is really tiny, like the bathroom. I can see into the bathroom and the floor is dirty. It’s worse than Zhang’s apartment. I remember when I stayed at Zhang’s apartment I had hoped that we would become lovers. Not that I was sure I wanted to have sex
with him, but I thought that after I did I would learn to want to. And then I could leave home and live with Zhang and maybe we would fall in love. Except I was so ugly he never really liked me.
I wonder if he would like me now. It doesn’t matter, right now I don’t want to be anyone’s lover. I want to be home in my own bed. I glance at my watch. It’s almost one. I’ll be home by two.
Bobby comes back in with the tea. He makes me nervous, but there’s no reason. I’m just going to have a cup of tea and then go home, we talked about that.
He hands me the tea and sits down on the couch next to me. “You are really beautiful,” he says.
I don’t know what to say. “Thank you,” I say.
“Really,” he says. “Like a princess. A goddamn Chinese princess. Looking at you makes me want to touch you. When I saw you in that bar last night I just had to touch you.”
I sip my tea. Maybe if I don’t say anything he’ll stop. But he doesn’t, he keeps talking. “When I saw you all cool and golden in that white suit, I thought you were an ice princess, but I knew you were just looking for a man to melt you, all creamy golden.” He touches my cheek and I start. His voice is soft, but it doesn’t sound gentle. “My very own ice princess. You don’t know a thing, do you sweetheart? San-xiang. Three Fragrances.”
He touches my breast and I pull away. “Don’t,” I say.
“Three Fragrances,” he repeats, like I haven’t said anything, and uses one finger like he was drawing a line down my arm.
I start talking, too fast, but it’s like I can’t help it. “Bobby, I really have to go, it’s late and I’m sure you’re really tired. I mean, I’m sure you’re really busy, and I have to go, I really have to go, my mama will be waiting up and she’ll be wondering where I am because I never stay out this late—” I scoot over away from his finger as I am talking and I put the cup down on an end table with a clatter. “She’s not accustomed to me going out and she’ll worry because I’m on the subway so late and you never know what will happen on the subway this late”—and he grabs my arm and pulls
me towards him and I hear myself whispering, “Bobby, don’t, Bobby, don’t, Bobby, don’t,” and he kisses me and sticks his tongue way in my mouth. He kisses me a long time, holding me tightly by one arm with his other hand touching my breasts and pinching them so they hurt and he kisses me and kisses me and he finally stops, I try to get up, and he pulls me back, and then I try real hard to get up and he lets me and then pushes me hard so I stumble back against the bed and sit on it, except he still has my arm and he tries to make me lie down on the bed and I say,
“I won’t, I won’t, I WON’T,” and then I scream except while I am screaming he slaps me real hard and I bite my tongue and I stop because of the hurt and he says, “Don’t make a sound, sweetheart.”
Everything in my head stops then, because I know I am going to die. So I let him kiss me, even though my tongue is bleeding a little bit and it hurts. I lie still while he touches my breasts and then he raises my skirt and makes me lift up so he can take off my panties. I feel the cold air on me and while he stands up and takes off his pants I hear this noise, kind of like a puppy or something whining, going “unnn, unnn,” like it’s hurt. It’s me, I’m making this strange noise. But it doesn’t matter. And then he climbs on top of me with his thing with its bald head sticking up and shoves it into me. It hurts, it hurts, and I start to cry.
When it is over I am afraid to move, but he doesn’t pay any attention to me. He gets up without his pants and his thing is just hanging now, all shriveled, and he goes into the bathroom. Then I hear the shower.
I put my feet in my shoes and grab my purse and run, leaving my underwear. I run down the steps. I keep expecting him to come after me, to hear the sound of the door. I run down the street to the empty subway and I stand on the platform begging the train to come in, because I am afraid that he’ll come down the steps. So I cry, and the train doesn’t come, and the train doesn’t come,
but neither does he, and then finally there is a train and I am on it. I am sitting on the train with no underwear. I hurt.
People get on, and get off, and I am afraid of all of them. None of them look at me because I am crying. Then I have to change trains at Atlantic and I have to stop there. I have this terrible smell, I can smell it. And I am not wearing underwear. There are three people on the platform, two of them are men, and I am afraid one of them will touch me, because he will know, because of the smell. But my train comes.
It is two-fifteen when I get home and Mama and Baba are asleep. I keep hoping Mama will hear me, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t come to the door, she just sleeps. So I close my door and I take off my clothes and then I run to the shower and wash myself off. But the dirt doesn’t come off. I climb into my clean nightgown, into my clean bed, but there is still the smell, like a man, like a man’s dirty laundry. And I cry and cry until I go to sleep and no one ever comes.
I keep meaning to look for a new job, but I never see exactly what I am looking for in the paper. I do apply for a transfer at Cuo, but it turns out that a lot of people want that job so I don’t get it. I never tell anybody about Bobby. Celia asks me how my date went and I say it was boring.
On Friday he calls. I am sitting there working. I’m really not thinking about him, sometimes I do, but when he calls I’m really not thinking about him at all. I don’t expect his face. When I see it I don’t know what to do.
He smiles and says, “Hi, are you busy?” His hair is down and with it down he looks kind of, well, cheap. I just stare at him for a minute.
“San-xiang?” he says.
I cut him off. Then I shunt my calls to Celia. As an excuse I
go to the bathroom. I sit there and feel sick but after awhile I feel okay. If nobody knows it’s as if it didn’t happen.
So I go back to work. I expect Celia to tell me that he called back, but she doesn’t. But he can call at any time. It occurs to me that he could come and see me at work. He knows where I work. Or he could be waiting in the subway when I get off.
I watch for him in the subway. Once I think I see him when I am shopping. I wish I could have my old face back to wear on the subways. But we can never go back.
(Zhang)
“I’m sorry, the only housing we have available is in upstate Pennsylvania.” The clerk looks over my yellow tunic and gray tights, my Chinese boots. “Where are you staying now, comrade?”
“I am staying with a friend in the city,” I say.
“Welt”—the young man leans forward and lowers his voice—“if I were you that’s where I’d stay. We’ve been getting a lot of complaints about the buildings.”
I nod. “Put them up too fast?”
“Overextended the water table. The water pressure is so low that only the first five stories get water.”
“How many stories are there?”
He pulls out a brochure, white buildings off in the middle distance, trees. “Nine,” he says, showing me the brochure.
“What do you do for water if you’re on the ninth floor?”
“There are taps in the yard. You take a bucket downstairs and fill it up.” He shakes his head. “It’s crazy.”
“Ah,” I say, nodding. “Can I have this?”
“Sure,” he says, handing me the brochure.
Back in New York. All I wanted was to get home and here I am, standing in line in the housing office so I can be offered a flat without running water. I turned down job offers in Wuxi for this. This is my second office this morning, I’ve already waited an hour and fifteen minutes to see an Employment Counselor at the Bureau of Employment, only to be told that since I was specialized labor I needed to make an appointment with the Office of Occupational Resources. And now I’ve waited in line for twenty-five mintues to be told the only thing available is a frigging flat in Pennsylvania without running water. I wonder if the architect that designed this office designed Pennsylvania housing. It’s institutional green and needs painting. The floor is concrete, once painted green. Behind the counter hangs a fly strip, curled into a helix by age.
There had to be flies in China, I think, climbing a narrow stairway surfaced in black, industrial no-slip material, I just never noticed them. (Right, flies in the Wuxi Complex. A fly in Wuxi would have realized its hubris and died of embarrassment.) Every public stairwell in New York seems to be surfaced in that squishy no-slip stuff. I don’t use it when I design because disposing of it cleanly is difficult and besides, it’s ugly. New York has gotten around the disposal problem by never disposing of it. It’s nearly indestructible, but going into the subway it’s worn to holes. The holes provide slippery spots and heel catches, which contradicts the only reason for using it, that is, to provide a non-slip surface.
New York, in fact, the States seems to suffer from a serious lack of follow-through. I understand that maintenance is expensive, but what about the apartments out in Pennsylvania? When they found there was insufficient water pressure, why did they keep building? (Because where else are they going to put people.)
The subway station smells, a familiar, reassuring stink. Home again, home again. People talk all around me, their voices rise and fall, get to the end of the sentence and sing a bit, falling to say
this is the end, rising to ask a question. Not like Mandarin, the staccato clatter of tones. I lean against the door, under the sign that says “Do not lean against doors” in English, Spanish and Chinese. Like the warnings in Chinese stations not to push, some things are meant to be ignored.
A woman sits under one of the signs that tell you where to call for information about resettlement on Mars, she is reading a textbook on med tech. She’s very serious. She wears a waitress uniform, all day she flash heats cheap food. I imagine her on fire in her class, going into work the next day and watching the elaborate physics of the bodies around her, the balancing act of a woman leaning down to get something off a shelf, her whole body flexing and relaxing in symphony. The waitress amazed, her whole world expanding outward, suddenly complex and fascinating.
I know she’s studying to be a med tech, a job not really different from flash heating food in terms of intellectual stimulation. She’s doing it so she can get her certificate and get out of her free market job, get real benefits. The train stops at De Kalb, she gets out and crosses the platform to wait for the M train. The Mystery train we used to call it when we were kids, because we didn’t know anything about the places it went.
I get out too, and upstairs to cross to the Atlantic station, connected by tunnel to De Kalb. At Atlantic Avenue someone says, “Zhong Shan?”
It’s a young woman I don’t recognize, an ABC, I think. Short hair in the style that all the girls in New York seem to be wearing, shaved high at the temples and glossily varnished everywhere else.
“You don’t know me, do you,” she says. “It’s San-xiang. Qian San-xiang.”
For a moment I can’t place her, the face doesn’t go with anyone and then I remember San-xiang. Ugly little San-xiang. She has had her face fixed. She looks normal.
“San-xiang,” I say, “you’re very pretty! How are you?”
“Okay,” she says. “How are you?”
“All right. What are you doing, still working at Cuo?” I remember the place where she worked, that’s good.
She nods, “For now. I’ll be leaving in March.”
“Transferring?” I ask.
“No,” she says, “I’m going to Mars. I’m going to join a commune called
Jingshen.”
She says it flatly, without excitement, watching my reaction.
“Shentong de shen?”
I ask. Which meaning of
jingshen?
It can mean “essence” or “profound” or a host of other things.
“Vigor,” she says, which sounds like a Cleansing Winds name.
“I remember you were always interested in communes,” I say lamely, wondering why anyone would go to Mars, wondering if she has any idea what it will be like. Of course, she has moved before, when she was a girl and her family came from China, but surely she doesn’t realize how wrenching it will be to exile herself from home.
“You look like you are doing well,” she says.
“I’ve been studying in China, I’ve only been back a week.”
She asks the usual questions, where in China, what did I study. She’s changed, she seems older. She is older, it’s been four years since I saw San-xiang, she must be, what, twenty-six?
“Let’s go get coffee,” I suggest.
She hesitates a moment then shrugs. “All right.”
We find a place to get coffee on the concourse between the Atlantic and Pacific stops. It’s a depressing little place that, like most places in the subway, never sees sunlight. We sit down at metal tables with pressed simulated wood grain. “How is your father?” I ask.
She smiles. “About the same. Still believes he has the right to run everybody’s life.”
We don’t talk about the last time we saw each other, when her
father came to collect her at my apartment, but we do talk a little about kite racing. The conversation lags.
“Why are you going to Mars?” I ask.
“I’ve been corresponding with someone there for years,” she says. “I admire the philosophy of the commune, it is a good compromise between the ideal and the practical. I think it would be a good thing to start over in a place where people pay attention to what is important.”
It’s a set speech, she must say this a lot. “So you’ll go alone?”
“Yes,” she says, a little defiantly, “they’ll be my community.”
“What does your family think?” I am sure Foreman Qian has not taken this quietly.
“They’re adjusting to the idea,” she says, evasively.
The conversation sputters again, we both sip our drinks. We were strangers when we met, strangers when we parted, we are strangers now.
“What are you doing,” she asks, “now that you are back from China?”
“I don’t know. Waiting until I get my life in order. I have to go to the Office of Occupational Resources and see about getting a job.”
“Here in New York?” she says.
“Oh yeah.” I say. “I found out in China, I’m really a New Yorker.” I laugh. “Even if it is a dump.”
She doesn’t say anything to that and I remember again that San-xiang is Chinese. I don’t think of her that way, she’s been here so long. If she could, would she go back to China? I wonder if she’d find it foreign, she’s been here for longer than she lived there.
I try to think of something to say, the only thing I can think of is to tell her how nice she looks, and I’m not sure whether I should say that or not.
“I’m sure you’re very busy,” San-xiang says.
“Oh,” I say, “not so busy, but I know you’re working and you don’t have much free time.”
Politely we dance through the formulas of ending, of parting. We walk back to the platform and say things like, “It was really good to see you again.”
The trains, of course, don’t come and we are left hanging there gracelessly.
“You know,” San-xiang says suddenly, “I’m sorry about the way it worked out, but I’m glad we went out together.”
“I enjoyed your company,” I say.
“Was it because of my face?” she asks.
“Was what because of your face?” I say, knowing I don’t want to hear her question.
“That you couldn’t really like me?”
I could say that I did like her, but that isn’t what she means. I look up, the board says her train is coming in. I want to explain, but I don’t know how she will react, if she’ll be disgusted. It is hard to break silence, it’s a habit not to.
“Was it because you’re only part Chinese?” she asks.
Her train slams into the station, cushions to a stop. “Good luck on Mars,” I say, as people push around us. I am unable to think of how to answer her, of what to say. She has pretty eyes, now, turned up at me, asking, what is so wrong with her that I wouldn’t do the dance, the dance that men and women are supposed to do? She starts to duck her head, to get on the train.
I touch her arm, “San-xiang,” I say, “it didn’t have anything to do with you.”
Her face is closed. It sounds like everything else I have said to her, a polite lie to escape feelings. The doors will close any time now. “San-xiang, I’m gay,” I say, and gently push her on.
She stops in the door and looks back at me, looking in my face, while her mouth shapes the word. She doesn’t understand right away. Then as the doors close I see a look of wonder as she begins to realize. The train starts up, accelerates away. I hope that in this
moment she feels some sort of absolution, some understanding that it was not her lack.
I am relieved that I didn’t have to see if that look of wonder was followed by disgust. And now, I tell myself, it doesn’t matter anyway.
I get back to Peter’s flat and there’s a call. I barely catch it, slap the console. I am looking at the reason that I have to find another place to live.
“Hello,” says the reason, “is Peter there?”
I glance at the clock. “He’s running a little late, probably stopped for something,” I say.
“Tell him Cinnabar called,” he says.
“Sure,” I say and he cuts the connection. So now I know his name. Peter is involved, a fact he keeps secret from me. It is hard to come back and find that Peter is in love. I’ve been gone on and off for four years, and I had thought, maybe, when I came back, that Peter and I could try again, that we’ve matured and now maybe it will work. But I never said anything to him, and he never said anything to me. It probably wouldn’t have worked for all of the same reasons it didn’t before. And now we’re good friends.
This Cinnabar, he seems, well, short. I don’t know how to explain how someone looks short on a monitor, but he does. I think he’s a flier. Peter always had a thing about fliers. He’s not very good-looking, I’m a lot better looking than he is. He seems nice. If he seemed like a son of a bitch it would be different. (Different from what, Zhang?)
I’ve hardly been home a week, and my life is so complicated already. Peter’s flat is so small; tiny kitchen, main room, bedroom. I’m sleeping on the couch, which isn’t very comfortable (I wake up some mornings without having the slightest idea where I am). I should stay here, save my little bit of money left over from my Wuxi salary, wait until I get a job placement, but I don’t know
how long I can stand living here. I have to get out. I can’t stand Peter pretending I don’t complicate his life, I can’t stand any of this.
“Hey, Rafael.” Peter is at the door, balancing the canvas bag he uses for groceries. “Did you clean the flat?”
“And painted.”
He looks around. “And you matched the old color exactly, down to the smudges.”
“Hey,” I call as he disappears into the kitchen, “I’m an
engineer
.”
“Pijiu?”
He tosses me a beer. “There, shook it for you.”
“Cinnabar called,” I say.
He comes back around the door again. “Oh yeah?” Not knowing what to say or how to act. Even though it’s July, he’s wearing the yellow jacket I sent him from China, shining with silk thread, embroidered with long-life medallions and stylized phoenix. Everybody wears jackets all the time. Fashion.