“Ask your tutor about lăowài versus Shanghailanders,” he instructed her, referring to the term for Westerners living in the city before the communists took power. “Get a native perspective on the role of foreigners and how it’s changed.” Dorian liked to give homework assignments.
“How do you know I got a tutor?”
“You’re a smart girl.” Dorian winked. He was always winking.
Liz imagined not for the first time what it would be like to sleep with him. It wasn’t Dorian specifically, though. Just someone different from what she’d known. She came to China for something different.
“His name is Sam. So far he’s been great.”
“Wait, he’s a guy?”
“Yeah. So?”
Around them conversation swelled. At each of the white Formica table tops with their centerpieces of boiling broth, diners sat hunchbacked, their knees too close to their tables and their chests, the chairs the wrong height for the tables. Or they were all leaning forward to dip their shaved beef, their tofu and mushrooms, watercress and snow peas. The chatter sounded angry to Liz, the way Mandarin can if you don’t understand it.
“How’s his English?”
“Surprisingly good, actually. I don’t feel like I’m teaching him much.”
“Has he taken you to the mall yet?”
“You mean like shopping lessons?”
“No, I mean has he tried to buy you a dress? Or a new cell phone?”
“Why would he do that?” Liz asked with food in her mouth. She did that sometimes, but only when she was comfortable with someone, when she wasn’t paying attention.
“Because he wants to date you, and that’s how Shanghainese guys date.”
“He doesn’t want to date me! Why would you say that?”
“He speaks perfectly good English and still wants to do a language exchange. What else could he want?”
Liz shrugged. “He told me he wanted to learn more about America.”
Dorian laughed, loudly and for a long time. Then he took a sip of beer. He didn’t say anything else.
Liz crossed her arms, pretending to pout. “That doesn’t mean he wants to date me!”
Dorian raised his eyebrows.
Liz laughed. “Fine. Maybe he wants to date me. But so what? He’s still a good language partner.” She pretended to be annoyed by the suggestion, but really was flattered. Didn’t it mean Dorian thought she was datable? Could it mean he wanted to date her?
She spent the rest of dinner and her cab ride home wondering about Dorian and Sam, what they might want from her and when she’d find out, what she would do when she did.
12.
I finished cleaning up, because there’s nothing more pathetic than a woman sitting amongst the detritus of a ruined dinner. I left the wine out, though, because drinking seemed my only option. Sipping wine and staring at the front door, I rehearsed my opening lines:
“I was worried about you.”
Or, “I thought you’d be home for dinner.”
Or, “How was your night?”
Or, “Well, well, well…”
Or, “Howdy.”
As it turned out, I had a mouthful of wine when the door finally opened; I swallowed quickly, then hiccupped, and coughed.
Liz gave me a funny look. “Hi,” she said slowly, looking as though she expected me to pull a weapon from under the table.
I tried for nonthreatening, wishing I had a book beside me, or at least my phone: anything to disguise the blatant desperation that shrouded me.
“Wine?”
She looked relieved. It was, I guessed, a normal thing for me to have said. I poured a glass as she sat down beside me.
“Long day?” she asked.
“Weird one,” I answered, and then, after a sip for courage, “Weird few weeks, actually.”
“I was wondering. Have you cooked everything in China yet?” She laughed, and I realized she was drunk. This was probably a good thing, but I couldn’t help but feel jealous.
“What did you do tonight?”
“I had dinner with Dorian,” she answered after a long pause, and I heard in her voice an apology.
“Oh.” It was the only hint of disappointment I allowed myself.
There was silence while we both looked into our wine glasses.
“What did you do?” she looked around the room, as though there might be evidence of something.
“Just hung out for a while. Read a bit. Cooked some dinner.” Cooked you dinner, I wanted to say, but stopped myself.
“Are you boycotting restaurants now?”
I laughed nervously. It was time to talk about it. “No. I’m sorry…” My voice trailed off while I had another sip of wine. I wished I’d had more to drink while I’d been waiting. “I had this crazy idea.” Even as I started the sentence, I wasn’t sure which crazy idea I was going to admit to: that Liz maybe was also in love with me; that if she wasn’t already in love with me, she would fall in love after tasting my efforts in the kitchen; that love was just a matter of proving certain skills—cooking just a kind of elaborate mating dance.
“I wanted to make things homier around here, you know, so you wouldn’t get homesick and leave.” It was plausible enough.
She laughed. For what seemed like hours. “Don’t you think you should have asked me what I missed from home before you started trying to recreate it?”
It might have sounded chastising, or mocking, but she was smiling and sipping wine so I chose to think she felt touched.
“Okay, so what do you miss?”
“I don’t know…”
Say snuggling, I willed. Say secrets in the dark.
Liz’s long brown hair fell over her face as she stared down at the table, and I longed to grasp it between my fingers, pull it toward me, and tickle my own chin with it. Her fingers tapped against the stem of her wine glass, and I longed to lick them, imagining they would taste like honey.
“There isn’t much I miss,” Liz answered. She didn’t look up at me. If she had she would have known. “I don’t really feel homesick, at least not yet. Just really disoriented, I guess.”
I nodded. You’re dizzy and I can catch you. Maybe we should go lie down. Instead I refilled her glass.
“You’ll get used to it.”
“Right. Of course.”
We sat in silence. I hated roommate small talk.
“Why did you move here?”
She laughed. Her laugh. God. Like glass shattered in ecstasy. “I was wondering when you were going to ask me that.”
“It’s such a boring question. I usually try to avoid it. But it’s weird, I guess, that I have no idea.”
“Yeah. It’s weird that I have no idea either.”
I shook my head. “I don’t buy that. You’re not the type to move across the world on a whim.”
“Right. So what type am I?”
“You’re more thoughtful than that,” I answered slowly. I wanted my words to stick, to have a hand in shaping her. “You have plans.”
She looked at me then like she was finally seeing me for the first time. “It was more of anti-plan, I think. Everything in my life had been so predictable, you know? Graduate from high school and go to a mediocre college near the really good college where my high school boyfriend was going. Date for four years and then follow him to New York. Let him pay for dinners because he’s making tons of money working in finance while all I can find is a waitressing job at a shitty diner because what the hell do you do with a degree in English anyway, if you don’t want to teach, and I really didn’t want to teach.”
“But you’re teaching now.”
“Right. But teaching isn’t really my job here.”
“Living in China is your job.”
“Exactly. I wasn’t doing anything in Brooklyn. I’d left my town, but my life wasn’t really any different than it would’ve been if I’d stayed.”
It was the most I’d ever heard her say. I got up and opened another bottle of
wine.
“What happened with Mr. Finance Boyfriend?”
Liz shrugged. “Bryan and I started dating when we were 15. It didn’t seem possible that we’d end up together.”
“That must have been really hard. Did he end it, or did you?” I wanted to hear her heartbreak, or her defiance.
She gave me neither. “It was mutual. I wanted some kind of new experience and he was committed to his job, so this just made sense. It wasn’t some kind of big emotional thing. It was just a logical decision.”
Love didn’t solve equations and while she did occasionally deal in absolutes she felt much more comfortable ensconced in cotton, her outer edges blurred, her center held fast but difficult to find. Bryan and Liz didn’t know this, but I did.
“So, you and Bryan broke up, and the next obvious step was move to China?”
She laughed. “Yeah, that’s the part where the logic gets fuzzy. I knew I wanted to get out of New York, but I didn’t know where to go. Going home would have been defeat. Anywhere else in the States, I’d need a reason, a plan. It seemed like moving abroad was a plan in itself. I took the first job offer I got.”
“Cheers to that,” I clinked my glass against hers. “I’m glad you’re here.” This time we did make eye contact, and I made the most of it, shooting sparks.
“Thanks. Me too.”
I love you, too, is what I heard. I wanted to lunge across the table, but somehow managed to restrain myself. “We should have more wine,” I said instead. “And sit on the couch.” I felt like a teenaged boy waiting to yawn and stretch my arm across my date’s shoulder. Ridiculous, but somehow it was working. Liz sat down first, and I sat close beside her, leaving almost an entire cushion of the couch empty. She didn’t fidget, though. She didn’t look uncomfortable.
We kept talking and I looked for reasons to touch her.
“Your hair is really beautiful.” I actually said that, and then waited for Liz to cringe and slink off the couch, back to her own bed, away from me and my creepy compliments. But she didn’t move. Or, she didn’t move away from me; instead she turned and leaned back, flinging her hair across my lap.
“Oh, do you like it?” she laughed, shaking it.
“Yes, very much,” I whispered, but she didn’t hear. She was drunk and laughing, had collapsed completely onto my lap. I was afraid to move, afraid to ruin it. I did run my fingers through her hair, though; I couldn’t resist. Liz closed her eyes and purred like a cat. I closed my own eyes, too, focusing on the feel of those strands.
It may seem that Love gets lost easily, wandering off after the aroma of pork dumplings, pan-fried and served steaming, or running frightened from the crash and pop of fireworks meant to scatter only old ghosts. Most of the time, though, Love stays put; if she seems lost it is only because she can be hard to recognize.
“Have you ever been in love?” Liz asked.
I could’ve told her about Alice, whose gloss-coated lips turned me into a child with the sticky remnants of elicit candy around my mouth. After Alice there was Heather, who tasted of mushrooms sometimes, other times grapefruit; who rubbed peppermint lotion into my feet, up my calves; whose metallic green car reflected the sunlight off its trunk as she drove away.
“No,” I answered, because the truth was too complicated to explain.
“I have,” she replied, and I shrugged.
“Have you ever had sex with a stranger?”
I snorted. “I mean, not a complete and total stranger, ‘I don’t even know your name’ kind of thing. But definitely ‘I just met you tonight and we’ve talked for an hour, and I’ll never see you again’.”
“I haven’t.” She wasn’t pausing for stories. “Have you ever had sex in public?”
I blushed, but Liz’s eyes were still closed, so it was okay. “Are we playing this game now?”
“Yes.”
“Fair enough. Semi-public, I guess. Have you?”
“Yes. Your turn.”
I knew exactly what I wanted to ask. Two more questions and I’d do it.
“Have you ever had sex in a car?” I said.
“Yes. You?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever had sex on a plane?”
“No.”
“Me neither. I almost did once.”
Don’t tell the story, I thought. Don’t say his name.
“Your turn,” she pressed, and I exhaled loudly.
“Have you ever kissed a woman?”
“No,” she answered, and I could tell from the pause at the top of her breath that it was a different kind of no. “Have you?”
“No, but I’ve always wanted to.” This was a lie I shouldn’t have told.
“Me too!” Liz squealed and sat up. She was so drunk I wondered for a moment if I should stop the game. But I believed because I wasn’t a man, I had nothing to force on her.
“So…should we?”
“I suppose we have to,” I answered.
“Okay, wait.” Liz adjusted her posture, pulled her hair away from her face, licked her lips. “Okay, I’m ready.”
I leaned forward; Liz met me halfway. We pressed our lips together, softly: top lip on top lip, bottom on bottom. At first we didn’t move. She was like a child, playing at something she didn’t understand. And then suddenly she understood. Our lips parted and I pushed my tongue through until I felt the gleam of Liz’s teeth.
We separated a moment later, the kiss that satisfied the constraints of our game complete. We looked at each other, for just a second, and then leaned in again. Have you ever kissed a woman a second time? Have you ever run your tongue along her jawline before pressing your mouth to the quick pulse in her neck?
I paid attention for signs of hesitation—a nervous laugh or a gasp that sounded more like terror than pleasure, a flinch or a pulling away—but noticed none. My fingers lifted her shirt slightly and touched her waist, tracing delicate patterns of curling ivy around her belly button. In response she ran her hand up the back of my neck, nestling long fingers around the roots of my hair and pulling, not so hard that it hurt, but it surprised me nonetheless. I was expecting more timidity from her. I raised my eyebrows in a question and she smiled, pleased with herself. She kissed me again, then crossed her arms around her waist, touching my fingers still resting on her stomach as she did. In one fluid motion she raised her arms over her head, uncrossing them as she did, and removed her shirt.
“You should take this off,” she whispered, tugging at the bottom of my shirt, surprising me again. It was the first either of us had spoken since the game had ended. Or maybe this was still part of the game.
I felt the sudden urge to retreat to my bedroom, where the curtains blocked out the neon twilight shining through the windows. I wanted to bury us under my thick comforter—never mind the sweat—so we could feel but not see our bare legs pressing against each other, our soft bellies, our breasts. I was afraid to pause, to give her any time to question what we were doing, but I was more afraid of staying where we were. Though our living room was entirely private, our front door locked, I felt too exposed.
I took her hand and stood up. It could be a test—a chance for her to giggle and hiccup and tell me she was getting sleepy. But she hooked her finger in my belt loop. She followed me to bed.
Love remained curled at the end of the couch, slicked with sweat and shivering.
The next morning when I woke up she was gone.
Such a thing is possible
爱
I wonder now about the wisdom of all this remembering. I snap the clasp of Liz’s necklace behind my neck, the weight of pearl on my collarbones both familiar and uncomfortable. Her parents had given it to her when she graduated from high school. It seemed an old-fashioned gift, and she hadn’t known what to say when she’d opened it. “You can wear it tomorrow,” her mother had chirped, “and then on your wedding day.” Liz somehow managed not to laugh. She left it in its box on the kitchen table that evening. Her mother knocked on her bedroom door
later that night, the necklace in her hand.
“I know it probably seems like a silly gift,” she said before she even sat down.
Liz shook her head. “No. It’s beautiful.”
“My parents gave me a pearl necklace for my high school graduation. And I really did think of it as the thing to wear whenever I did anything really important.” She undid the clasp, holding the end pearl in her fingertips and letting the strand dangle. “I started to think of it as keeping track of my life.”
Liz wasn’t sure what to say, but her mother seemed content to continue talking. “So, for you, here,” she pointed to the first pearl, “is the day you were born. Here,” grasping the second pearl, “is your first day of school. Do you remember I made you that little grey pinafore dress? With the scalloped edge?”
Liz nodded. Her first day of school was lost to her, but she remembered the pictures: the grey dress looked something like a school uniform, but it was hers alone. She suddenly remembered her backpack—purple—and the three multicolored folders she’d tucked inside, all of them empty. She smiled, and her mother continued counting off pearls: her first period, the day she started high school, her first job. She surprised Liz with the specificity of her memories. “And here is your graduation day, tomorrow,” her mother finished. “But you see there are so many pearls left.” She took Liz’s hand in hers and let the necklace fall into her palm, patted her thigh, and left.
Liz laughed when she told me the story, and I couldn’t tell at the time if she was laughing at her mother or herself. She brought the necklace to China, after all. Wore it on her first day of school.
And then she gave it to me.
Love is a storyteller. Creating new realities, giving substance to memories previously mere wisps of smoke, she talks and talks and talks. Some of what I said was even true.
“Once, when I was five years old…” I said.
“Once, when I was 17…”
“Many times in high school…”
Liz listened to everything. I got drunk on her attention, let myself believe I was safe.
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