“So tell me something, Charlie, are you finished talking yet?”
“Probably.”
“Then tell me something else: Would you like to hear first about Nick’s heart… or about his sleeve?”
I laughed. “Both,” I said and, as if to apologize for the way I’d reacted to what she’d said about Nick, I told her that Nick had talked to me, and with feeling, about factories in China where he’d worked, and about how seeing the way children lived had gotten to him.
“That is not what I am talking about,” Jin-gen said. “You should listen more carefully. Nick did not save children. He saved women, but if you are too jealous to want to know about this, and of his kindness to me, I will say nothing else.”
“Talk to me,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “But we should eat while I talk,” and saying this, she got out of bed and ordered me to stay put. When I protested, she told me again to stay where I was, and gave me her assurances that all her services had been well paid for in advance.”
I did what she said—in the moment, I felt too defeated somehow to do anything else—and about twenty minutes later, when we were eating breakfast on the terrace, she began telling me about Nick, and about how, when he was in Hong Kong and not long before he began working for the palm oil company we both worked for now, he’d had many girlfriends.
They were often college-age women, generally Chinese but not only Chinese, she said, who were in Hong Kong to work or to study. Sometimes he went out with older women who were in the city on business. He met them in bars of fancy hotels—married woman usually, because, he said, they came with the fewest complications, and were always grateful. Mostly, though, he preferred the daughters of wealthy Chinese or Japanese entrepreneurs and businessmen. But occasionally, when he didn’t want to become involved with a woman—or with her family, as one had to when it came to going out with the daughters of wealthy Chinese and Japanese—he’d pay elite escort services that employed women like Jin-gen.
The night she met Nick, he was with one of these women—a friend of hers, Cai-yu—at the men’s club where she worked. This happened about two weeks before Joe Wancyzk was scheduled to leave for the States. It was past eleven in the evening, the bar was empty, and Joe was ragging on Jin-gen about complaints he’d been getting from clients, and warning her that she’d better not disappoint him with the guy she’d be meeting later in the evening.
While Joe was going at her—they were sitting at a table near the bar—she glanced at Cai-yu, who smiled brightly and pointed to Nick, making Jin-gen understand that this was the man she’d been telling Jin-gen about—the man who was going to help Cai-yu get to America. The man was watching her and Joe, but without expression, and when Joe went at her again—calling her a two-bit, bad-weather cunt, and shaking a finger in her face—and when, lowering her head, she glanced toward Cai-yu, she saw, to her amazement, that Nick was smiling at her and nodding slightly—looking at her in a way that encouraged her to go ahead and do what she wanted to do.
So she did. She pushed Joe’s finger aside, told him she expected him to talk to her with respect, and that if he didn’t, she would leave.
Joe stared at his finger as if he couldn’t believe she’d touched it, and then he reached across the table to slap her. Fortunately, he was drunk, and she was quick. Joe missed, then stared at his open palm as if trying to understand why it had not done what he’d told it to do.
Jin-gen giggled, and said she had giggled that night too, and that when she looked up, there was Nick, who put out his hand to her, and gave her his name—Domenic Falzetti—and said that he understood she was a friend of Cai-yu and was looking for a sponsor so she could become an au pair in the United States.
Nick did not look at Joe, or offer to shake Joe’s hand, and Joe told him to leave—to get the fuck out of there and mind his own business.
“And who are you?” Nick asked.
“I’m your worst nightmare,” Joe said, and grabbed Jin-gen’s arm. “She works for me,” he announced. “Got it? So get lost, mister.”
“Do you own this club too?” Nick asked.
“I said to do yourself a favor and get lost,” Joe said.
“That was when Nick sat down next to me,” Jin-gen said. “Joe stood and again ordered Nick to leave, but Nick kept smiling at him, which made Joe even crazier. He grabbed me and tried to pull me from my seat, but Nick put his hand on Joe’s and told him to be polite to ladies, and I will never ever forget what he said to Joe next: ‘Be kind,’ he said, ‘for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.’
“‘What are you—some kind of nut?’ Joe said, and he pulled on me even harder, and this was when—but so quickly I hardly saw his hand move—Nick did something to Joe’s chest—like a Karate chop where you attempt to break a board with a single blow, but with the flat of his hand instead of the side—and Joe’s head snapped back, and he fell face first onto the table.
“His nose started to bleed, and he gurgled and choked for a while. Nick took my arm and helped me up, and I stood between him and Cai-yu, and my legs were shaking terribly. The owner of the club stood next to us, and he had two security men with him, but it was clear they were not going to keep Nick from doing whatever he wanted. When Joe got his breath back, and put an ice pack over his nose that a security man gave him, Nick leaned down and whispered to Joe that he hoped there was no next time, because if there was, they would have to crack Joe’s chest open in order to fix the damage. Then Nick put a business card on the table and told Joe to have my things sent to the address on the card, along with what he owed me, and a bonus to cover my air fare to the States.
“This was when the owner of the club offered to call an ambulance. Joe, one hand on his chest as if to make sure his heart was still beating, shook his head sideways, but he didn’t speak. ‘We will have somebody escort you home,’ the owner said, ‘and since you are a good customer, I would also give to you a friendly suggestion, which is that, in order to avoid unfortunate accidents and stay healthy for leaving to America, you do as Mister Falzetti wishes.’
“I stayed with Nick and Cai-yu for three weeks while Nick arranged things,” Jin-gen said, “and then I left for America, with all my papers in order, and I arrived in Boston, where the Gottlieb family—Anne and David and their two young children, both Chinese—met me at the airport. They had an enormous house in Newton—a mansion—and I lived there with them on a work visa for thirteen months.”
“Then we were probably both living in Massachusetts at the same time,” I said. “Less than a hundred miles apart.”
“Yes,” Jin-gen said. “I have realized that this was a possibility.”
“And you didn’t call me?”
“An oversight,” she said, and then: “You are quite wonderful, you know.”
“And you are too,” I said. And then, a moment later: “But did Nick really say that—about being kind?”
“Yes,” Jin-gen said. “It was something he said several times, and not just to me, because I have heard it from other women he helped.”
“My father used to say the same thing,” I said.
“Did he learn it from Nick?”
I laughed. “I think it was the other way around—or, more probably, that Nick heard me say it.”
“Then we have, as you might put it, come full circle, have we not?”
Jin-gen stayed with me again on Sunday night, and at the office the next morning I said nothing to Nick about what she’d been telling me. At The Sling Shot after work, the first thing I did, even before ordering a drink, was to ask the maître d’ for the book—The Good Book, Nick called it—and to begin looking through it.
“You won’t find Jin-gen there, if that’s who you’re looking for,” Nick said.
“Does she work for you?”
“For me? Not at all. Why would you think so?”
“She said she was busy tonight,” I said, “but that she hoped she’d see me again sometime soon.”
“That’s true,” Nick said.
“But if she’s not in the book, and if she doesn’t work for you…”
Nick shrugged. “Hey, enjoy what you can while you can, Charlie. Isn’t that what it’s all about?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“You like it here?”
“I like it here,” I said. “And oh, I meant to tell you—I got a call—I can move into my apartment tomorrow.”
“Furniture?”
“They said it will be there, all set up.”
“That means you have one more night of palm oil perks, you lucky bastard.”
“But J in-gen?”
“Play the field, buddy—sample the wares while you can. I know you well, Charlie, and my advice—forgive the figure of speech—is not to get stuck in old ruts.”
“Jin-gen says you’ve helped a lot of women.”
“Did she?”
“Come on, Nick—don’t fuck with me—she said you saved their lives—other women—the way you saved hers. True?”
“Can’t say yet,” Nick said. “Who knows? What was the saying you liked to quote—from your dad…?”
“‘Be kind, for everyone—’”
“Not that sentimental crap, but the other one—from a movie: ‘Live fast, die young, and have a good-looking corpse.’”
“‘Have a beautiful corpse,’” I corrected.
“James Dean, right?”
“Maybe—according to my father, it was John Derek.”
Nick pointed to the book. “So come on—who interests you for tonight?”
“I was hoping Jin-gen…”
“Look. The lady sends regrets. She told you, and now I told you, or don’t you get it? She really is busy tonight, and she asked me to tell you she thinks you’re a good guy and that she had a great time with you.”
“She’s really busy?” I said.
“That’s right. So come on,” Nick said, pushing the book my way. “It’s still on the tab. And tomorrow night we’ll celebrate you being in your own digs.”
“But if I want to see her, how do I get in touch—through you?”
“Never me,” Nick said. “But why would you want to see her again when…”
He touched the book, leaned back, looked toward the bar. I pushed the book away, saw that he was looking at two young women—Americans, by their voices—who were laughing and smoking cigarillos. As if she could sense his gaze, one of them turned his way—she was a drop-dead gorgeous blonde bombshell, and the coolness of her expression said that she knew it. She met Nick’s eyes for several seconds before turning back to her friend.
“She was a gift, wasn’t she?” I said. “Jin-gen, I mean. She was a kind of Welcome Wagon thing, Singapore-style, you arranged because she owed you big.”
“You’re talking a language I don’t understand, buddy. So let’s each pick a winner, and compare notes in the morning. How’s that sound?”
I ordered another drink, and another, and then another, and the room tilting this way and that, I opened the book and chose a woman who wasn’t wearing a Singapore Airlines uniform, and who wasn’t smiling. Nick chose a woman who was in a Fred Astaire pose—or maybe it was more like Marlene Dietrich. She was dressed, where she was dressed, in a partial tux—tails, with top hat and cane, and she was leaning against a pillar, and I got worried for a second they might send both women to my room, but Nick opened his envelope and showed me the number on his card, which was different from the number on mine.
“Not to worry,” he said, as if he’d been reading my mind. “We’re going solo tonight, one on one, the way you like it.”
“The way I like it?” I said. “I don’t follow.”
I blinked, looked past Nick to the bar, and saw that the other woman—she had wavy auburn hair and a wide, bright smile—was picking something from between her front teeth with what looked like a fishbone.
“You always liked it well enough with me and Trish,” Nick said, “but let’s face it, it took a lot of booze, or pot, or white magic for you to get into it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re basically straight, Charlie. We know that.”
“Sure. I mean, I…”
He slapped me on the shoulder. “Hey, like I said—not to worry, buddy. Your secret’s safe with me.”
I finished my drink and ordered another. The woman with the auburn hair smiled at me again, and I saw that the fishbone was a toothpick.
“Or we could invite those two young lovelies to join us.”
“Sure,” I said. “Whatever. But I don’t know what you’re getting at. We had lots of fun, the three of us. But—”
“But be open to possibility, right?” Nick said. “Isn’t that what you said your father taught you? Your old man had lots of good sayings, I remember. Be a Jew at home and a man on the street! Be one upon whom nothing is lost…!”
“Sure,” I said. “I mean, who knows?” I smiled, and sat up straight. “But I am a barrel!” I declared brightly, quoting a Chinese phrase I’d learned a few days before—the equivalent of our ‘I’ve-got-a-hollow-leg.’ “I am a barrel!” I said again, after which I rested my head on the table. Nick lifted my head, put The Good Book under it for a pillow, and then his mouth was at my ear, his breath damp. “What I think, with you, me, and Trish,” he whispered, “is that you always liked the idea more than the reality.”
“Whatever you say,” I said. “Because if I’m not a barrel, then what am I?”
“And if I’m not for myself, who will be for me? Wasn’t that another one of your father’s gems?”
“But if I’m only for myself, what am I?”
“Right on!” Nick said.
“Like you and all those ladies you saved, right?”
Nick helped me out of my chair. “If not now, when?” he said, and he walked me to the elevator, and then to my room. The woman I’d chosen was already there, and she wasn’t wearing a tuxedo. The room was spinning fast, and the instant I lay down on the bed it spun faster. The woman put an ice-cold washcloth on my forehead, lay down next to me, massaged my neck, and whispered to me in Chinese.
Shit-faced though I was, I was aware that I was royally pissed too, and not only because I wasn’t with Jin-gen, or because of the crap Nick had been throwing at me about him, me, and Trish, but because I had the distinct feeling—along with a phenomenally sick feeling in my head and stomach—that he was getting his rocks off seeing me get stuck on a woman the way I was. That the woman was a friend of his, that she believed he’d saved her life, and that he’d given her to me—chosen her for me—no matter how much he denied it, I was sure he had—made me even more pissed.
The woman with me—I never got her name—was kindness incarnate, but even while I was lost in the swirlings in my head and bowels, and, later on, in her, I couldn’t get shut of the feeling that Nick was messing with me in ways that were light years ahead of my ability to figure them out.
And I couldn’t help wondering about something else—something I vowed that night I’d never ever ask Nick about—whether Jin-gen had been telling me the truth about the two of them.
I went back to work in the morning—sober, but with small green men banging away inside my skull with large hammers—and I compared notes with Nick, and he teased me about how deep in the tank I’d been, and suggested I leave my car in the garage after work, that he’d drive me to my apartment so we could continue to celebrate. “You should never miss a chance to celebrate,” he said, “because you never know when they’ll be taking the set down, and the whole goddamn stage and building with it.”
So he’d think nothing had changed between us—that I was the same guy I was before my week with Jin-gen—I gave him something else from Max.
“And as my father would put it,” I said, “and this was usually when I’d be heading out on a date, or to meet some friends—‘Don’t forget to have a good time, son.’”
My apartment looked wonderful—hotel-like, for sure, but with
brighter, warmer colors in the carpets, furniture, and framed prints than I remembered Nick or me choosing—and there was a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice, a red bow around its neck, waiting on the coffee table, along with a half-dozen plates of small delights. We drank and ate and drank some more, and Nick got mildly loaded and kept reciting my father’s line—“‘Don’t forget to have a good time, son!’ I love it! ‘Don’t forget to have a good time, son! Don’t forget to have a good time…’”
A few minutes after he left, there was a knock on the door and when I opened it—hardly a surprise—a beautiful young woman was standing there. She was wearing a Boston Red Sox cap, which she doffed in greeting. She walked past me, turned, and asked if I’d found everything in the apartment to my satisfaction. As with Jin-gen, her English was impeccable. Was she another of the women Nick had saved?
“All is well,” I said.
“Well, your happiness is my responsibility,” she said, and added that she would be grateful if I would allow her to fulfill her responsibilities.
I did, and when I woke in the morning she was gone and the dishes were washed and put away. I never saw her again.
I never saw Jin-gen again either.
Six and a half weeks after I moved into my apartment, Nick and I landed in Borneo. We flew in a two-engine company plane—what Nick called a swamp-jumper—that offered exquisite views of the South China Sea, a sea that, in the early morning sun, was all silver-blue and rippling gold—and it didn’t take long before I was in love again. This time, though, I fell in love with a place, not a woman.
The first week at the hotel with Jin-gen, I began to see—along with my being able to leave the office every day before six—had, like Jin-gen, been a gift from Nick. After that week, I rarely left the office before nine or ten at night, using the hours when the rest of the staff was gone to catch up on paperwork, and to put in calls to people in Japan, Hawaii, Europe, and New York so I could catch them during their workdays. I spent a good part of my own regular workday, eight to six, talking to people in Borneo and Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, and China, and supervising the men and women who worked under me.
The Other Side of the World Page 12