Besotted

by Melissa Duclos

“Dude! Did you know Sasha and Liz were fucking? I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

  Dorian’s sigh was soft. “You’re a jackass, Frank.”

  “What?”

  “They’re not fucking. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Oh, excuse me. I didn’t realize they were saving themselves for marriage. Dating, then. Did you know they were dating?”

  “They’re not fucking dating either. They got drunk and made out once. Which—how do you even know about? And why do you care?”

  “I don’t care. I just thought you were into her. But when did they make out? You saw them? How did I fucking miss that?”

  Dorian needed another drink. A stronger drink. “Why did you say they were fucking if you didn’t hear about them making out?” He spoke slowly, as though Frank were a much larger audience Dorian needed to enunciate for.

  “They just told me.”

  For a long time Dorian had been seeing what he wanted to see, as architects do. Even as Frank stood in front of him giggling and imagining Liz and I naked together, Dorian still didn’t understand: I wasn’t a building he could shade into his sketchbook, or tattoo on his forearm.

  He didn’t believe Frank, not entirely. Not that he thought Frank was being deliberately misleading, but he was likely very confused. He had to be.

  He found me outside the bathroom.

  “Frank seems to think you and Liz are lesbians.”

  I’d come to China to escape the three syllables that would otherwise define my whole life.

  I don’t care if you’re a lesbian, Sasha. But other people you meet in life certainly will. You have to think about the impact of just being open with something like that.

  Lesbian. Something like that. There was scorn in my father’s voice, masquerading as concern.

  I didn’t want to live in the closet or pretend to be someone I wasn’t. But I’d come to China where I knew no one, so that there would be no one to whom I owed any explanations. But then I got to know people, and they wanted me to account for myself.

  “I am,” I sighed. “Why do you care? Are you a homophobe?”

  “What? No, of course not.”

  “Great. Then we don’t need to talk about it.” I just wanted to get back to Liz, who was waiting at the bar.

  Dorian touched my wrist as I walked past him, not grabbing or pulling, but holding on to me in a way I found hard to brush off.

  “What?” I turned back, and immediately felt that we were standing too close. I observed our proximity, though, like an objective fact that couldn’t be changed.

  “I didn’t imagine it.”

  “Imagine what?”

  “That there’s something between us. We have chemistry. I know we do.”

  “Fine. Yes. We have friendly chemistry. I’m glad that we’re friends.”

  “It’s more than that.”

  He tightened his fingers around my wrist and I wondered what it was like to be so confident. I thought about pulling away, but small acts of decisiveness like that were nearly impossible for me. Leaving the country would have been easier for me than asking Dorian to stop touching me.

  Because I stood without moving, because I was looking up at him wondering what I should tell him to avoid causing a scene or hurting his feelings, he kissed me.

  “What the fuck?”

  I should’ve been the one to say it, but instead it was Liz.

  There were so many things I should’ve said to him. But I could either yell at Dorian or go after Liz. I chose her. She turned and left, walking as quickly as anyone could without running, parting the crowds in the bar with her hands, with her elbows when necessary, refusing to deviate from her straight path to the exit. She was faster than I was.

  When I got outside I saw her getting into a cab. Then she was gone.

  That isn’t how things ended between us, but maybe it would have been better if they had.

  As I stood looking at the space where the car had been, Dorian came up beside me.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I screamed.

  “I’m sorry! I don’t know why I did that. It was way out of line.”

  “It was sexual assault.”

  “I didn’t assault you, Sasha! That’s not what I meant.”

  He looked to me like a child being scolded for something he’d never explicitly been told not to do, waiting for me to be reasonable, or teach him something. I didn’t have the energy.

  “Just leave me alone,” I said quietly.

  “Do you want me to text Liz? I’ll tell her it was nothing.”

  It wasn’t nothing, I said in my head. Aloud I just said no.

  2.

  The next morning, I sat at the dining table, drinking jasmine tea. The dried buds blossomed in the boiling water and then floated there, bobbing against my lip with each sip. I alternated my gaze from the bottom of my cup to the door of the second bedroom, closed since I’d come home last night. I couldn’t remember the last time Liz had slept there.

  I’d thought about knocking, had several times even approached the door on quiet feet. But I was scared of making things worse. I imagined her packing, booking a flight.

  I peed with the bathroom door open, afraid if I didn’t that she would leave without saying goodbye. I imagined she was waiting for her chance.

  None of the thoughts circling around my head were rational but telling myself that only amplified them. Anxiety is a bully.

  Liz and I had been together seven or eight months—I couldn’t be sure exactly. I spurned anniversary dates, feeling as I did that they were cursed, though in truth I’d never celebrated one so couldn’t say with any certainty. But then we’d been public for only a couple weeks, or maybe just one night, depending on which audience mattered more.

  I thought about all those dates, those half-starts and do-overs and wondered what they all meant. Whenever it started, the relationship was the longest I’d ever had up to that point. Which meant, of course, that I expected it to wither and die at any moment. Alternatively, it might have expired months ago, choked on some dumplings and died at our dinner table, while I simply looked on, too stupid to perform the Heimlich. Or, it was just now coming to life.

  I finished my tea. Love paced the apartment, Anxiety trailing her like a shadow.

  The bedroom door opened and I held my breath. I didn’t see any full suitcases over her shoulder, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. She wasn’t dressed for travel, though, wearing pajama shorts and a t-shirt. My t-shirt. Love exhaled.

  Liz looked at me blankly and then went into the bathroom, closing that door behind her, leaving the one to the bedroom ajar. Her silence gave a clue to the kind of fight this would be: she’d sulk, I’d grovel. I rehearsed my lines to the muffled sound of her brushing her teeth.

  “Do you want some tea?” I asked when she finally came out. She was standing with her arms crossed outside the bathroom, as though unsure whether she wanted to come into the living room or retreat to her bed.

  “No thank you,” she answered, her tone formal.

  I wished I had thought to go out for a coffee for her.

  “Can we talk about last night?”

  “I have nothing to say.” Petulant. But that was her role. She sat down on the far end of the couch, though, at least willing to be petulant in the same space as me.

  “I am so, so sorry. I had no idea Dorian was going to do that. I was talking to him about you, telling him we were together, and out of nowhere he just kissed me.”

  “Out of nowhere? Sasha, you’ve been flirting with him for months. What am I supposed to think?”

  “You’re supposed to trust me.”

  “I can’t trust you if you don’t tell me what the hell’s been going on.”

  “I don’t know what to say. Dorian’s been my friend for a few years. I don’t why he suddenly decided he wanted me. All I wanted was to keep being his friend.”

  “Are you attracted to him?”

  “Liz,
I’m gay!”

  She looked at me like that hadn’t occurred to her before.

  Anxiety sat close, making me sweat, until she laughed.

  “God, I’m being fucking ridiculous, aren’t I?”

  “A little bit,” I smiled.

  “And Jesus, what an entitled asshole he is.”

  I shrugged. “He’s been a good friend for a little while now. Honestly I think the condo thing is just getting to him.”

  Liz rolled her eyes.

  I didn’t know how fights were supposed to end. “I really am sorry.”

  “I know,” she said. “It’s okay.”

  I wanted to move to the other end of the couch, her end, to curl my body around hers like a corkscrew. But she stood up before I had the chance. “Let’s go to brunch.”

  The ease of it made me nervous, but I agreed. I wasn’t sure I had a choice.

  At Element Fresh, the white faces vastly outnumbered the Chinese, unless you counted the waiters. I waved and nodded at many of the people at other tables as Liz and I took our seats.

  “It’s like you know every expat in Shanghai.”

  I brought the large menu up in front of my face. “You know them all too. Or the ones who come here anyway.” French toast or eggs, I thought, willing myself not to hear accusations in Liz’s voice. French toast or eggs.

  “I don’t know any of them.”

  “What are you talking about? You know everyone I do.” I began naming the people I’d waved to, reminding Liz of the happy hour where we’d last run into each other, the conversations we’d had.

  Our waiter came over, interrupting my list of all the friends Liz supposedly had to take our order, forcing me to make a decision. Liz ordered an omelet and a mimosa. I chose the French toast.

  “No mimosa?” she asked me before the waiter put away his pen.

  “I wasn’t going to drink.”

  “What’s the point of brunch, then?” She laughed but I thought I heard an edge. I missed the menu; my fingertips clutched at the white table top. Everything in the restaurant seemed smooth and white and healthy and slippery, an antidote to the grime and humidity of the streets outside. I felt like I might slide off my plastic chair into a puddle beneath our table.

  I nodded my head at the waiter and he added a second mimosa to our order. When he came back with them, I sat looking at the champagne flute, wishing instead for the solidity of a Bloody Mary: a glass I could wrap my entire hand around, a straw to slurp through, a vegetable garden of garnishes bobbing on tiny spears—something I could organize on my bread plate, something I could control.

  “Are you meeting Sam today?” I forced myself to attempt normal conversation. Things were fine. It was only my head that was spinning.

  “Oh. I haven’t heard from him.” She sounded like it was only now occurring to her. “That’s kind of weird.” She took out her phone, ready to text him.

  “Do you think he’s upset?”

  “What would he be upset about?”

  “The birthday party. We were…I mean…we probably took him by surprise, don’t you think?” I’d never told her what I overheard his friends saying that night before we left.

  She shrugged. “He already knew we were dating. I’m sure it’s fine. I’ll see if he wants to have coffee sometime this week.”

  I could’ve told her.

  She sent the text and put her phone back in her bag. We finished our drinks and ordered two more. Our food arrived and then my mouth was too full of food, my head still too full of worry, to say anything. We were fine and Dorian was fine and Sam was fine. Liz’s job was fine. Things were only wrong in my head.

  3.

  We stepped off the school bus on Monday morning, with the sun shining and the air surprisingly crisp, feeling more like the beginning of the school year than the end. We had only a few more weeks to go.

  “Did you keep the lesson plans I handed in last week?” I asked Liz quietly as we stood in the crowded hallway outside the main office.

  “Yes, of course.” Since the disastrous observation, Liz had been doing her best to follow the plans I gave her. She complained about the job more frequently, but I took that to mean she was working harder, and that her teaching was therefore better.

  “Okay, good. I’ll see you at lunch.” I touched her hand, gently squeezing her pinkie between my thumb and forefinger. And that was it. I ducked into the office and Liz went upstairs to the computer lab, where she wasted the 45 minutes before her first class.

  She arrived a few minutes early for Ms. Rose’s class and slowed her approach as she saw Madeline standing outside the door. She needs to speak with Ms. Rose, Liz thought. She’ll catch her on the way out of the class and the two women will disappear down the hall, never looking back.

  Madeline nodded to her as she neared the door but said nothing and Liz felt a wave of relief that she’d been correct. But then Ms. Rose came out of the room and Madeline only nodded again, and then held the door open for Liz, motioning her to enter first, clearly indicating that she would follow. Liz had no choice but to go in.

  She stopped at the back of the class, turning toward Madeline, still hoping there was perhaps something simple that her boss needed to tell her before she would leave.

  “Whenever you’re ready, dear. I’ll just be right back here.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  She clutched the lesson plan as she walked to the front of her room, knowing at least that it matched the one on Madeline’s clipboard. It didn’t matter. Liz’s classes that morning—three of them in a row—went exactly as they usually did: her students spoke without raising their hands, got up out of their seats without asking permission; they watched her write the focusing question on the board and then, after she read it aloud to them, they all began talking at once in response. Nothing that I wrote on a lesson plan could tell Liz how to manage 25 seven-year-olds. She’d mostly stopped noticing the chaos, telling herself it was just the nature of an unstructured class like speech. They were talking, after all. The look on Madeline’s face after the first class ended, though, suggested she disagreed.

  Two hours later, Liz tried to remain calm as she hurried through the crowds of students in the cafeteria. I was already sitting at our usual table.

  Liz sat down and spoke quietly. “Why did you ask me if I had my lesson plans?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I’m sure I sounded to Liz like I was playing dumb. “You asked if I had my lesson plans. Why? You never ask me that.”

  “How did it go?”

  “How did you know she was coming?” Liz countered.

  I bit on a hangnail, then picked at something under my fingernail. “I set it up,” I answered, finally looking up at her.

  She took a deep breath. I heard the clatter of silverware against the dishes, the shrieking of students at the surrounding tables. They were all excited for the end of the school year. Everyone wanted to get out.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I had to, Liz. I’m trying to save your job! They’re making staffing decisions for next year and I heard Madeline telling Principal Wu that she didn’t know if you used your lesson plans. I asked her to give you a second chance, as a favor.” I spoke quickly now, as though afraid Liz might walk away before I was finished. I hadn’t expected her to be angry with me.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Madeline told me she’d do another observation, but only if it was a surprise. She didn’t think it would be fair for you to have another chance you knew about, since none of the other teachers do. I couldn’t tell you.”

  “You could’ve told me and trusted me to not to let on! You could’ve helped me prepare.”

  “I’m helping you as much as I can, Liz.”

  I’d been expecting gushing gratitude, didn’t know what to do with the anger I was getting instead.

  “No one made you hire me, you know.” She looked deflated.

  No one made you apply, I wanted to s
ay, but thought better of it.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t warn you. I really was just trying to help.”

  “I know. It’s okay.”

  “So how did it go?”

  “It was fantastic,” she told me. “I did great.”

  I still don’t know whether she believed that herself or not.

  4.

  Shanghai makes promises: it will rocket the world’s fastest train levitating through a magnetic tube; will erect buildings that look like space shuttles, that make you believe you can fly; will increase production and earnings and the reach of its tentacled highways out into the surrounding country. Shanghai promises, promises and then forgets, moves on to the next. Shanghai will leave you behind.

  But not Dorian. He stared down at the piece of paper he’d received in the mail from the Office of Foreign Investment. It didn’t say very much, but still he had read it at least 10 times since opening it. The only thing to do was to call his real estate agent. He was stalling, though—washing his dishes, straightening the books on his coffee table, making his bed. When there was nothing left to do in his apartment, when he found himself simply walking in circles, touching some object or another on each rotation, he finally picked up his cell phone. He wondered as he dialed whether she would even remember him—it had been so long since their last meeting—and he thought briefly about hanging up, but then he heard her voice on the other end of the line.

  He said his name, adding “the American” in case she did in fact need a reminder as to who he was, though it was doubtful this identifier alone would help.

  She seemed to recognize him, or else was good at pretending she did. “Yes, hello,” she said in Chinese.

  “I have my foreign investor,” he said, looking down at the paper as he did, as though the information might have changed since the last time he read it.

  He wasn’t sure what kind of reaction he was expecting: a whoop and a shout perhaps, a congratulations, though of course he’d done nothing but wait months and months for the news. He heard no emotion in her voice, however. “Very good,” she said. “When can you come in?”