Was Mr. Fancy Pants that disappointing?
Danny Ocean had just gotten out of prison. It was a strange amount of time to have passed for Dorian’s response: too short if he’d moved on with his evening, too long if he’d still been hoping to hear from me. Just long enough, though, for him to overthink his reply.
I could spend all night engaged in the banter, texting with Dorian until Liz stumbled home, or didn’t. But I didn’t want to banter.
Meet me in an hour?
3.
Shanghai glittered at night, a sparkle you stopped noticing if you lived here long enough. Or you understood that it was only the tiny particles of smog and soot in the air, refracting the neon light.
Liz knew Guandii the way we went to Guandii: fretting about the cover and ordering the strongest cheapest drinks we could: shots of Jäger, cheap tequila, well vodka on ice. It wasn’t that we couldn’t afford to be there, but we both liked the narrative of living cheaply in China. Plus we went to Guandii a lot.
Li Qin paid for the bottle service. Top shelf vodka and a pitcher of green tea as a mixer, a tower of pint glasses atop the table. The table—the whole point. The ones in the back of Guandii were like a miniature version of the Shanghai real estate market. You paid for your location.
They weren’t hard to spot: five Chinese men being loud, two women and a Chinese man who turned out to be Sam sitting in the corner, talking seriously, and Liz, the only American, standing with a straw in her mouth slurping at her drink. That sounds like a cliché or an insult, but I thought she looked amazing.
Not hard to spot if you were looking, but Dorian didn’t notice them. “Let’s get a drink.” I spoke close to his ear to be heard over the bass. But he was already moving in that direction, tugging on my fingers to follow.
We drank shots of Jägermeister, the bottles hanging from the back of the bar like bats.
Sam asked Liz to dance. Or she asked him. Who can hear anything in that place? The point is they were dancing and I saw them. I finished my second shot. When I ordered three more, Dorian was either intrigued or impressed, then deflated when I handed one to him and walked away from the bar.
“I just saw Liz,” I explained as though it was all just a big coincidence. “I’ll be right back.”
The alcohol had made me brave. I tapped on her shoulder, trying to ignore Sam’s hand on her waist, and when she turned I handed her the shot, a fake smile attempting to mask the accusatory raise of my eyebrows.
“Turns out this is a public club and not a private party,” I said.
“Sasha,” she answered slowly, sounding confused rather than angry. “What are you doing here?”
“Dorian invited me. He’s here with some people.” I gestured vaguely over my shoulder to the crowds at the bar, any number of whom might have been Dorian’s friends. None of them were, but that wasn’t the point. I leaned past her before she could answer. “I’m Sasha,” I said to Sam, offering my hand.
“I’ve heard so much about you,” he answered, bending toward me and shouting into my ear.
“I’m glad.” I smiled, unsure myself whether I was trying to be friendly or somehow intimidating. “Anyway, I just came over to say hi. I’ll leave you two to your party.” I kissed my shot glass against Liz’s, as though a forced toast would convey that things between us were just fine. She stared at me while I drank my shot, her own hand unmoving.
“Give it to the birthday boy if you don’t want it.” I shrugged as though I didn’t care and left the dance floor. She followed me, but not immediately.
I felt her hand on my shoulder before I heard her voice. “Was coming here really necessary, Sasha?”
Echoes of my father. “Was running away in the middle of the night really necessary, Sasha?” His voice, crossing half the globe to reach me, crackled. Or it was just the sound of disappointment.
I was being overly dramatic, but it was my way and I didn’t care.
“Is there some kind of fun my presence is preventing you from having?”
A night club is a good place to have a fight. Liz shouted at me and no one noticed. “You’re the one who showed up here with a guy who spends all his time hitting on you! What does Dorian think you’re doing here? I know you didn’t tell him you came for me.”
“Don’t be stupid,” I said. “I didn’t come for you.”
“Why did we come?”
I hadn’t seen Dorian approach, but there he was, handing us each another shot. I noticed for the first time that Liz didn’t have the one I’d given her. She’d given it to Sam. His drinks distributed, Dorian rested his hand on my waist. Liz’s gaze followed it there.
“Obviously some place where you could be alone would be better.”
My mouth opened then closed. Dorian looked as though he was about to thank Liz for the helpful suggestion.
The first time, only time, I tried to kiss Alice when we were alone—in my dorm room getting ready for a party—she giggled and asked me what I was doing.
“I’m kissing you.”
“I know. But…why?”
I could think of too many ways to answer that. None of them were right, I’m sure, but the one I chose was most wrong.
Alice left because she believed me when I told her I loved her; Heather because she didn’t.
Love was skittish. Love was skeptical.
My father was wrong. I hadn’t run away to Shanghai in the middle of the night. The move took months of planning. True, I’d packed my bags after he and my stepmother had gone to sleep, had left a note on the kitchen counter, and stepped silently out of the house at 4:15 a.m. when the headlights of my cab had illuminated the darkened driveway. But that was just what time I needed to leave to catch my flight. I walked calmly to the curb. I never ran.
It was the only thing I could think to do after he’d driven away my girlfriend with all his talk about how he didn’t care about what kind of lifestyle I chose, but he was worried what other people might think. He was only thinking of me. My future.
When I called him from the airport in Shanghai I told him not to bother coming after me. There was a long pause while I prepared for what was coming next. Who do you think you are and what do you think you’re doing and you don’t just get to…whose money do you think it is anyway…you’re not prepared to deal with this and you need to come home you need to come home you need to come home. Home. I would laugh. I would tell my father just how little he understood about that word. That would be the end.
But instead of reciting the lines I’d scripted for him in my head, my father had sighed. “Please don’t be so dramatic. Nobody’s coming after you. You’re an adult, Sasha. If you want to live in China, I can’t stop you. I know you weren’t happy here. I hope you’re happy there. I hope you’re taking care of yourself.”
“Okay,” I’d sputtered.
“Do you have a job? A place to live?”
“Yes.” My last chance to lie to him.
“Good. Please stay in touch. And keep the credit card for emergencies.”
Keep the credit card—my father’s idea of “I love you.”
I didn’t want to fight with Liz. I wanted to be home in bed with her, curled around each other like a set of commas, each of us a pause for the other one to breathe through. Or I wanted to be home alone watching Ocean’s Eleven, waiting for her to come back to me. Instead I was here on the edge of a crowded dance floor. The music was loud, the lights dizzying. I took the shot Dorian handed me because what else was I supposed to do with it? Liz took hers so she could cross her arms over her chest and glare at me. Sam stood beside her with no shot, his hands in his pockets.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Her face softened and she brought her hand to my cheek, touching it lightly with her forefinger, middle finger, holding her thumb on my jawline. Dorian watched us. Dorian saw.
I kissed her. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.
Love is skittish. Love is skeptical.
When we
parted she tipped her forehead down again, resting it against my own.
I closed my eyes. Sam watched us, and so did his friends. They all saw. I kissed her again.
She reached behind her neck then and unclasped the necklace that—she’d been right—looked somehow more stylish than pearls should’ve in a night club. Putting her arms around my neck, she fastened the clasp without needing to look.
“I love you,” she said, and I sucked in a breath in a panic, afraid the words had come from me. But Liz was soft and open and looking at me.
“I love you, too,” I answered. Our voices were hushed, but not because it was a secret.
4.
I pulled her to dance. Her smile was broad, a funhouse mirror reflection of my own nervous grin. I kept my eyes down as I wrapped my arms around her waist and pressed my nose into her collarbone. Our hips drew closer, moving in time to the music, and I pretended I didn’t know we were being watched—by Dorian, by Sam and his friends, the other small clusters of strangers around the dance floor. Women danced together all the time in clubs, but not like this. Liz kissed me again and I breathed my anxiety into her open mouth.
The song ended. “Let’s get a drink,” she suggested. I turned toward the bar, preparing myself to meet Dorian’s eye, to answer with the crease in my eyebrows and a firm jut of my lip whatever questions he had. But he wasn’t looking at us. He was leaning, elbow up on the bar, talking to two Western men. I’d lied about him having friends here, but it turned out to be true.
Liz tugged at my sleeve. “We have drinks at the table. Come talk to Sam. I want you to get to know him.”
Sam and his friends watched us approach. There were the ones who were smirking, the ones who were looking at the ground, and Sam, who was doing neither but was instead looking at Liz, or just beyond her head, his lips pursed and his head cocked as though he were solving complicated equations.
Liz, a better date than friend, handed me a drink. Her hand left my glass and traveled up my arm, caressing my shoulder. I forced myself not to flinch, reminding myself these smirking men were nothing to me. But to Liz, Sam was someone. Was she ignoring the defiant cross of his arms, the blush creeping up his neck? Or did she not notice?
Liz reached past me with another pint glass of vodka and green tea, as though it was her party to host, a wide smirk on her face. Dorian reached out, a surprised recipient of Liz’s generosity.
“So…” he rocked on his heels and took a long sip of his drink, holding the straw Liz had given him against the back of glass and letting the ice cubes rest on his top lip as he sipped. “You ladies having fun?”
Are you ladies going out? I heard my father ask.
But Liz laughed. “Great time. You?”
Dorian’s face told me he’d been expecting me to answer, but my attention was split in too many different ways, Dorian’s only one of a handful of voices in my head. Underneath all of them was my father’s, speaking disappointment. Loudest at that moment, though, were Sam’s friends.
“You didn’t tell us your date was a lala, Sam,” Li Qin said. He thought speaking Mandarin kept him safe from the lăowài.
I came close to asking him whether we were the first lala he’d met. Proper pronunciation would prevent me from heaping the question with scorn, but I trusted the power of a well-timed smile. I stopped myself, though. I have, over the years, pretended to be so many things. On that night I pretended to be an American who didn’t speak Chinese.
I could tell from his expression—like a child sucking hard candy—that Dorian had made the same decision. We listened together as they talked like we weren’t there, while Liz grinned and drank her vodka.
“Sam brought you a birthday present, Li Qin. Too bad he had to sacrifice his own date to do it.”
“No, he has two dates and neither of them want him!”
“You should’ve let Li Qin set you up.”
“Or even your mother.”
“Do they at least let you watch?”
“Leave him alone. Sam likes what he likes,” Li Qin said. Then, taking a shot from the bottle of vodka he’d paid for, “And I don’t think what he likes is watching women.”
Their laughter drowned out everything.
I pushed my straw to the side the way Dorian had done and emptied my drink. Dorian picked up the half-full bottle of vodka Li Qin had just set down, the second he’d paid for at ¥400 apiece. He shrugged his shoulders and walked away with it, taller than the crowd he waded into and still somehow disappearing from view. I followed him, pulling gently on Liz’s wrist but then letting it go, wanting only to fade away. If I thought he’d follow us, I would’ve tugged on Sam’s arm, too.
WE stand without moving
照片
Though I’m not sure how many more pictures I can stand, I don’t stop myself from looking. Liz used to call social media a pointless exercise in self-promotion. No longer pointless, I suppose, now that she had something worth promoting.
The album titles say nothing, but tell me a lot: “Bachelorette Shenanigans,” “Let’s Plan a Wedding,” “Engagement Photo Shoot.” Liz’s whole life, airbrushed and put on display.
She married Bryan. Their relationship wasn’t the mistake; ours was. I wonder what their reunion was like. But for now I stop myself from looking for the pictures because I don’t want to know how quickly she got over me.
The first album in her profile is simply called “Shanghai.” The cover image is a picture of Liz holding up a Blue Frog martini—I recognize the size of the glass—as though toasting the camera. Her hair is pulled back and she’s laughing, her mouth open wider than it is in any of her posed wedding shots. I took the picture, but I can’t remember what I said that she’d found so funny.
It’s been years since I felt like a tourist in Shanghai, since I carried a camera around with me everywhere, just in case. I wonder if I’ll have the urge again when I arrive in Berlin.
Liz took so many pictures that I stopped noticing the camera. Now my mind races, trying to remember what she’d captured.
1.
Love is not a builder and she cannot be built. Almost no one understands this. Love does not have strength or fortitude or courage, but she hopes for these things. She seeks them out. For two weeks I wore Liz’s necklace every day. Sam cancelled one coffee with Liz, then a second. The pearls cooled the flush that crept over my chest when I allowed myself to wonder why.
In the mornings that May the smog seemed to dissipate. The sunlight appeared to crack open the sky then, reflecting off the gleaming glass towers; and the older high-rises with their pea green façades glistened like wet bars of soap. The peach blossoms were withered, but still the air carried their scent, like a story almost forgotten. The paper-thin petals wafted to the ground where they were bruised easily, and then ground to nothing.
The crowd at Zapata’s was thick, and somewhere in the midst of it was Frank’s going away party. Likely other parties, too—it was the season. We recognized people we knew hovering around a table close to the door, and we squeezed in where there was room, deferring a trip to the bar in favor of standing close together with our fingers intertwined. I recalled the freedom I’d felt with Alice, before I understood the way sexuality could be a spectacle. Before I’d gotten scared.
Our expat acquaintances looked at us with eyebrows raised but said nothing as I pushed Liz’s hair behind her ear and kissed her bare shoulder lightly, quickly. Yes, I wanted to say to them, yes, it’s love you’re seeing, but smiled instead and suggested to Liz that we go find Frank. We left the table to a flurry of whispers that I could almost hear. “Did you just see…?” “So, are they…?” “I guess it makes sense…” The news of our love followed us like an electrified tail, snapping and hopping with a life of its own, through the bar.
We ordered margaritas and joined the crowd. Frank was drunk and wearing a crown on his head just a few feet away. We were approaching the party’s center of gravity.
“Sasha!” he shouted as his
orbit brought him closer. As though he and I were good friends.
“Hi, Frank! You remember my girlfriend, Liz.” She didn’t need to be introduced to him anymore than I did, but I said it anyway, enjoying the word girlfriend hovering in the air like an armed dirigible.
“I…do remember Liz. Hi. Thanks for coming.”
“So you’re headed back for grad school in the fall?” Liz asked.
He sighed loudly and shook his head. “Yeah, it looks that way,” as though he wasn’t sure how it’d happened.
“That’s so exciting!”
“Thanks. Yeah…” Frank’s voice trailed off as he put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m headed to the bar. I’ll see you later.” He stood for a moment longer than was necessary, his hand still pressing upon me, looking at me as though waiting for some final mystery to be revealed.
I willed myself not to think about my father and his disappointment. He wasn’t in that bar and never would be. He can’t reach me here.
Liz stared, from Frank to me and back to Frank again. She coughed briefly, as though clearing her throat.
He had not walked far before she began to laugh.
“Did you see his face?” she giggled into her cup. It was a rhetorical question, but I wanted to tell her no. No. I didn’t let myself look at his face.
Instead I laughed. “He looked like he swallowed a bug.” This was fun for Liz, and I was determined to make it fun for me too. I was free.
We continued to circle the bar. Dorian was there somewhere. I wasn’t looking but knew I’d find him. He’d gone home with Li Qin’s vodka after we left Guandii, “just tired” he’d said and I told myself I believed him.
At Zapata’s, Frank found him before we did.
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