“Tell me what you like.”
I love you, is what I meant.
“I don’t know,” she answered, and then: “I like you.”
I believed her. Everything I did made her moan or gasp or whisper “fuck” in my ear. She pulled down on my shoulders as we kissed, carved shapes in the mattress with the moon-shaped heels of her feet as my tongue traced new stories on her inner thighs, as my fingers curved inside her like a comma. I felt her pulse inside my mouth. After she came, her breath still ragged and her hands covering her face, I said, “I’m going to make you do that again.” And I did.
Afterward, we lay in bed beside each other, dozing, still not speaking. An hour passed, or maybe two—enough time for the sweat to dry, for new sleep to form in the corners of our eyes.
Liz took a deep breath. “I think I’m going to be fired.”
I laughed, laughed and laughed, my face still buried under covers. Finally I peeked out and saw the look on her face. “Wait, you’re serious?”
“Can I still live here if I don’t have a job?”
“You’re not going to be fired. Why would you be fired?”
She sighed and got out of bed, walked naked and without any shyness out of the room and returned with her stack of green envelopes. She set them down in front of me and climbed back into bed, only then looking embarrassed as she buried herself under the covers.
I didn’t need to read the notes, but I pretended, allowing my eyes to glance over the carefully chosen quotes and series of deadlines to hand in the lesson plans—all of which had passed.
And then I shredded them: a grand gesture of their meaninglessness, of my power. I was surprised by how long Liz had kept them a secret. Long before I fell in love with her, before I learned her contours with my tongue, I expected the notes to bring us closer.
It was too late to tell her that I wrote them. Maybe after we’d been together for years I’d tell her of my first clumsy attempts to become part of her life. For now I only promised that I’d take care of it.
The next day—the first day that Liz and I woke up in the same bed—I waited until the principal went to lunch and crossed his empty office, to the tall metal cabinets in the back where the archived lesson plans were filed. Ms. Felisha’s plans only went back a year, but there were plenty of them (she’d been fired, but not for insufficient planning).
I stared at the thick folders, one for each month, wondering how many to take. I wasn’t sure I’d have time to photocopy the entire year’s worth of plans before the principal returned from his lunch. There was always the possibility, too, that Liz would use these plans as a jumping off point and begin writing her own lessons. I settled for three months, knowing I could always come back if I needed to.
Folders in hand, I rushed to the photocopier, and only as I stood there, listening to the whir and whoosh of pages through its gears did I realize the risk I was taking. It occurred to me, as I imagined the principal bursting back into the office, demanding an explanation, that I might have simply helped Liz to write some original plans. But then the humming of the photocopier ceased, and I stood in the empty office holding the warm stack of new copies in my hand, smiling and thinking how much easier this was. It made no sense that the school demanded that speech teachers reinvent the class each year; Liz deserved the plans.
Later that day I set the stack of paper down proudly beside her tray of shredded pork and rice. Our table was in the corner, equally removed from the screeching students and the other teachers huddled together, their backs to us—the two Americans. It used to bother me, but not anymore.
Liz stared at the papers for a moment. I waited, not wanting to have to say aloud what I’d done. Finally, she seemed to realize what she was looking at. “Are there—oh my God, are these what I think they are?”
I only nodded.
“Where did you…How did you…? Never mind. I don’t even want to know. Are these for me?”
“Of course they are.”
“So I can hand these in? I’m not going to be fired?” Liz looked as though she might burst into tears.
“You’re not going to get fired,” I laughed, pleased that I could offer her such relief. The cafeteria echoed with the clanging plates and bowls, the shouting of students.
Liz picked up the stack of papers, flipping through them, her mouth hanging slightly open. “I’ll hand them in right after lunch. Who do I give them to?”
“Well, wait—you can hand them in, but you’re going to have to re-type them, and you know, change them around a little bit.”
“Oh. Really?” She looked disappointed.
“Liz, they have another teacher’s name at the bottom of them!” I pointed at the bottom of the first page, and then the second.
“Oh, okay. Right. So…what do I need to do exactly?” She asked like she’d been given extra homework assignment.
“You know—make them your own. Change the dates, and the formatting. Rearrange the order, maybe. Or change a few of the activities.” I leaned forward then and lowered my voice. “I took these out of last year’s files for you. I don’t think anyone will remember them, but I can’t be sure. You have to at least make them look different.”
Liz nodded her head, tucking the papers into her bag at her feet. “Thank you so much.” She sounded significantly less enthusiastic than she had moments ago.
“You’re welcome. So you’ll get to them this afternoon? I know it’s a little tedious, but we want to make sure you get them in as soon as possible. You’re way behind on the due dates.” I didn’t really think Liz would be fired, or at least not without me knowing about it first. But there was a point at which I knew it would be too late for me to save her. If she continued to miss deadlines to turn in her plans, Madeline would eventually notice and say something to Principal Wu, who would in turn say something to me. I looked at Liz, thinking of the nights we’d had together, and became increasingly nervous. What would I do if she was fired, if she had to go home?
“Um…yeah, I should have some time this afternoon, I think. I have a free period later. I could go to the computer lab.”
There was nothing in her tone to reassure me. “You know what?” I held out my hand to her. “Why don’t you give them back to me. I have tons of free time this afternoon. I’ll take care of it.”
“Really?” Her face brightened once again. “Thank you so much. I just can’t believe you’d do all this for me. I really appreciate it.” She handed the papers back to me, seeming relieved to be rid of them.
I was even more relieved to have them back in my hands, their weight a comfort to me. I never should have brought them to Liz. “I’ll hand them in for you. I’ll just give them to Madeline. Just ignore any more notes asking for them. I’ll take care of it.”
Liz smiled and thanked me again, tapping her foot against mine underneath the table, sending sparks up my leg.
At the time I felt in control.
3.
Love doesn’t sleep, but instead at night blinks more slowly, head tipped back, looking for fresh air. She can spend 12 hours like this, picking up the scent of the only flower for miles. November in Shanghai could still feel like Spring. Love could be forgiven, squinting as she did as the sun cracked the horizon, for mistaking the intent of the breezes, for expecting new life to burst from the ground at any moment. I was tricked in those days as well, remembering how morning used to feel: like I was lying under a thick concrete slab, only my head, fingertips, and toes sticking out the sides, just enough room in my chest for gasping, shallow breaths, and not enough strength to move. That November, though, with Liz lying beside me, there was lightness and space. It was Love, after all, that had cured me. Liz-Love. It was magical.
In her sleep, Liz’s lips parted slightly, not in a disgusting, drooling kind of way, but in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “I’ve just taken a sip of this nectar and am waiting for you to kiss me,” kind of way. As she woke, she sighed and wiggled her butt back and forth, as though chasing
after something, or preparing herself for something new. I always wondered what she dreamt about. Liz could never remember or was horrible in the retelling: “You were there,” she would say. “Everything was blue. And sort of fuzzy. We were somewhere different.” What did it feel like, I wanted to know. What was it like when I touched you?
At that point, I hadn’t had a single dream about Liz, which told me that our relationship was the first real thing I’d ever experienced. That I was always in Liz’s dreams, however, didn’t concern me. I felt like a conquering army: triumphant.
On school mornings we woke like roommates who happened to share a bed. We learned quickly that a joint shower would cause us to miss the bus, so we agreed to take turns, and as we brushed our teeth, I stopped grasping at her waist from behind, pressing just hard enough on the sensitive space below her hip bones to make her gasp and catch herself on the sink as her knees buckled slightly. I stopped hinting in the morning at what my hands could do.
“You look pretty today,” I would say instead.
“Thanks.” That was it. Liz didn’t say “you, too,” because I’d explained to her how I hated that—the reciprocal compliment—for the sense of duty it dragged along with it.
Work days were easier—for the rules, the map of decorum we had to follow—but also agonizing. The school bus especially. I never told Liz about the very first blowjob I gave, in the back row of a school bus, 15 years old and on a dare, while the boys in the seat in front of me pretended not to look but did and I pretended not to know that they looked but did. Here we were again on a school bus every day and I just wanted Liz to run her fingers through my hair some mornings, make reassuring sshhhhing sounds. But she didn’t know any of that and I thought it was for the best.
Liz hadn’t gotten any better at her job. I repeatedly offered her copies of the lesson plans I reformatted and adjusted each week, but she always refused, happy to continue talking with her students about their favorite foods, favorite places, favorite books, ideas she always came up with on the bus on the way to school, or sometimes in the hallway before class. I never wished that she were a better, more passionate teacher; she was passionate about me, and that was enough. The job, though, was important to our lives together, a necessary piece of our puzzle. My careful work on the lesson plans was one way to keep it safe, but I knew it also needed to be protected against Liz’s whims, understanding as I did her hatred for it.
A year ago, January in New York, she was trudging to work through the slushy streets of Brooklyn, trying not to wonder what Bryan would be doing later that evening, without her, once he got off work, trying not to wonder when he might propose, trying not to think about how much of her life revolved around waiting: waiting tables, waiting to get engaged, waiting for something to happen to her. A year ago, she couldn’t look directly at any of it, for fear that she would crumble under the weight of waiting.
And then. January in Shanghai: it was cold but had not snowed. Likely it wouldn’t, I told her. In January only the wind howled, racing through skyscraper-edged tunnels. In January the tourists haggled for knock-off pashminas that they wrapped once, twice, three times around their necks, feeling exotic though the wool was cheap and scratched at their chins. In January the space heaters got turned way up, or they didn’t get turned up quite enough, and everywhere people were either warm and dry and chapped, or shivering in their bones as they sat in restaurants and bars. Liz and I burrowed, like everyone else, but I was the only one who didn’t want to come out.
In January the new year lay ahead—12 months of promise and prosperity—its luck guarded by the loud popping of fireworks, the jingle of cymbals on the dancing feet of dragons and lions. I insisted we clean the apartment: the wisps of dust swirling behind the couch, the grime on the windowpanes, all the corners and crevices that would have been easier just to ignore. Liz seemed glad for it.
We nestled into the clean apartment, hibernating within the warmth we created around each other, coming up for air and food and work. I thought it was what we both wanted.
But I know she didn’t understand my dark moods: they came on suddenly, like a migraine, and required the same gloom, the same silence. Are you in pain? she might have wanted to ask, but she never did. She likely told herself she was respecting my space, but really she didn’t want to know the answer. She stayed quiet, bundled up.
Part of her had imagined a different kind of expat life, though, the China Famous kind. Expats were famous for opening popular bars and clubs—for stocking American beer and knowing how to cook a hamburger, for playing current music, for offering deals. The ones who did it with style were famous just for going to the bars. They were famous for karaoke. For their house parties. Two women like us could’ve been China Famous.
I had different fantasies, though.
“Can’t you just think of it as a treasure we are guarding?” I asked her one night.
“Treasure is meant to be squandered.”
“I don’t want this to be squandered,” I whispered.
“That was a joke.”
We didn’t talk about it often—only a handful of times, maybe—but when we did, there was always a punchline. Really we were having a two-month long fight, but my wit allowed us to laugh instead of cry.
During all this time Love sulked. She resented being treated like the comforter at the foot of the bed. Love didn’t shout though, didn’t rage. She didn’t even stamp her feet. Instead she sat in the chair in the corner of the living room—the white one with tassels hanging off the piping that edged its overstuffed cushion. There was a fake plant behind the chair, and a lamp that didn’t always work. Love sat there, tapping her fingers.
I appeased her with sex, trying to get to the point when she was no longer performing. Liz liked to have her back scratched, would sigh and rock her hips when I ran the flat of my fingernail from the base of her spine to the bend of her neck. She liked the crescent of her shoulder kissed. When she was drunk she’d dig her fingernails into my hands. She’d run around the bed and laugh. When she came she closed her eyes.
Outside the apartment we seemed like best friends, walking close to each other on the way to the bus stop, moving at the same pace, sometimes holding hands—if there were only Chinese around—because in Shanghai, girls held hands sometimes and no one thought anything of it. We sat with heads bowed on the bus, laughing, speaking our own language. Once at work we had jobs to do, but those barely interfered with our time together. Liz had all but abandoned her desk in the staffroom amongst the other first grade teachers who still glared at her and barely spoke. She spent her free periods sitting at a small table just behind my desk—no one in the office seemed to care. If I was busy she went to the computer lab.
There were still days when I could not get out of bed. It surprised me, assuming as I had that Love would cure me. But when I heard Liz on the phone, explaining to the principal how both she and I had come down with a terrible stomach flu, I realized that Love was with me after all. Liz left me alone to sleep, and then brought in lunch and a set of DVDs for us to watch together. In this way, winter wore on.
4.
Though I never accepted his invitations and sometimes didn’t even answer them, Dorian kept asking me out. Who knows when or why he’d become so thoroughly convinced that I was the one he wanted. Maybe only because it seemed he couldn’t have me. Clichés are often true. He didn’t know me well enough to fantasize about inviting me to live in his new condo with him, but still he pictured me there. At a barstool in his kitchen. In his steam shower. In his bed. In his mind they were all his, not ours. Dorian didn’t know how to share, which might have mattered if there weren’t so many other reasons we never would have worked.
He focused only on the fact that we were both still living in Shanghai after three years. We made it, he would tell me. This is what we get. As though we were contestants on some kind of reality game show: Who Wants to Live in China? We do! We do! Our living room would become a kind of expat salon
. We’d end up in the next edition of Let’s Go Shanghai: When traveling through the city, one must stop and visit Sasha and Dorian for tips on the best dumpling houses and a coupon for 50 percent off a martini at Blue Frog.
It’s hard to say if Dorian even wanted this, or if he just couldn’t imagine any other alternatives. A Chinese wife? An endless adolescence—years and years and years of happy hour and screwing the English teachers? He was past all that, he knew, but where did that put him, if not in a new condo with me?
He imagined, as he picked up his pace covering the last few blocks between his office and apartment, going back in time to the moment when his choices ceased to be limitless. Would he be able to spot it, if he knew what to look for? It was called adulthood, he guessed: that moment when the sum total of all the decisions he’d already made began to shape and define the available options. What had he been doing during that moment? Drinking a beer? Or sitting at his desk? Not realizing that there was no longer any room to move sideways. It was obvious to him that Liz hadn’t yet crossed this threshold, and he thought about befriending her, so he could watch for it, could jump out at just the right moment and tell her: Haha! There it was. That was the last decision. Everything else now is consequences. Enjoy! And he would bow with a flourish, as though he’d just performed some kind of magic trick.
Thoughts like this didn’t always depress him. On the day he’d first met with his real estate agent, he’d felt as though the pieces of his life were finally falling into place, building a path. But on walks home from work he realized a path is really no different than a wall. Same bricks, different placement. The real estate agent hadn’t taken him around to look at any properties, and in fact looked at him like he was crazy when he’d asked.
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