Year of the Goose

by Carly J. Hallman

  In the late 1990s, Witchy Wu sold her shares of the company to Papa Hui and retired with her many-decades-younger boyfriend, a former Australian soap opera actor, to Canada, where the happy couple still resides today.

  Thanks to that fateful encounter with that bashful goose, Papa Hui is now the richest man in China. And to this day, the goose who led him to his fortune continues to follow him everywhere he goes…

  ENOUGH ABOUT THAT DAMN GOOSE!

  WHAT CUTESY, QUAINT LORE, BUT THAT WASN’T THE GOOSE KELLY knew. In the backseat and now just mere kilometers from headquarters, hyperventilation seized her.

  This “bashful” goose had brazenly tormented her throughout her childhood—pecking at her armpits, biting the backs of her knees, yanking out her hair, shitting in her bed, tearing her homework to shreds, and cleverly framing her for a variety of devious acts (including but not limited to: smashing a precious Ming dynasty antique vase and clogging the toilet with the jagged pieces, eating four tins of expensive caviar that had been given to Papa Hui by Boris Yeltsin, leaking information to the press about possible insider trading committed by some of Papa Hui’s New York friends, scratching Dr. Dre lyrics into the paint of Mama Hui’s Lamborghini, and purchasing marijuana from a Nigerian drug dealer [how the goose pulled that one off, she still wasn’t sure]).

  Trying to explain to her parents that none of this was actually her doing had proved an impossible task. Any time she even so much as hinted that the goose might not be a perfect angel, Papa Hui burned red in the face and shouted about what a spoiled girl she was, and how things were different when he was growing up, and how they wouldn’t have any of this—not the cars, not the apartments, not the vacations, not the hired help, not the electronics, not any of it—if it weren’t for that goose, and “Don’t you dare blame the goose!”

  Frankly, Kelly had been relieved when, following the marijuana incident, her fed-up father made the decision to send her to Los Angeles for high school. She lived there in a big, empty house in Culver City with a nanny who spent most of her time either on the phone yapping in a baby voice with her boyfriend back in China or working to improve her English by watching endless episodes of Law and Order; attended a snooty school for rich troubled girls who found her dull and called her “Slanty-Eyes McGee” and “Sucky-Sucky Blow Job Five Dollar,” among other charming names; slouched on city buses beside men who reeked of urine and women who muttered incoherently to themselves—and these were the moments that comprised the best years of her life. This was her era of safety, of stability, of freedom, and then when she went on to USC and ditched the nanny and moved into an off-campus condo, she felt even freer still.

  Why she’d chosen to leave that paradise of palm trees and traffic jams, and why she thought there would be anything here in China for her, she still didn’t fully understand, but she inhaled deeply, got out of the car, and began the long but pleasant enough journey through the headquarters grounds, passing fountains, multiple goldfish ponds, a bamboo forest, and then, at the front of the building, a gigantic gold-coated statue of enemy number one.

  From behind the mahogany desk he’d had custom crafted in Sweden, Papa Hui greeted his daughter with a terse, “In a moment.” Kelly shut the door and stepped inside. The old man was hard at work on a Sudoku puzzle haphazardly torn from a newspaper—a sizable corner of the puzzle was missing, rendering the thing unsolvable. Kelly shook her head. Why on earth did he not just buy a book of them? Or get an iPad and download an app? Or at least hire someone with better ripping skills, or perhaps, you know, just employ a pair of scissors to properly remove the puzzle in its entirety?

  Principle, that’s why. Here was a man whose net worth was in the billions, but who often humble-bragged to the media about spending less than one hundred renminbi a day. Fifteen bucks. Yeah, sure. She always shook her head when she skimmed such articles—such a limited budget was easy to adhere to for someone whose meals were provided for him at the office by the country’s top chef, and who had a driver so therefore never had to pay cab fare, and who had already purchased everything he could possibly need, and—

  Kelly jumped involuntary, her legs jelly. A familiar honking sound snipped its way into her thoughts. The goose waddled up from behind her and nipped at her calf. She swatted its beak away, shouted, “Off!” The goose ducked and lunged for her fingers. She threw her hands up in surrender, took a few careful steps back, and lowered herself to sit on a chair, the goose standing its ground, watching her with unblinking eyes.

  In all this commotion, her father, still concentrating on that unsolvable puzzle, never once looked up.

  HAIR EXTENSION APPOINTMENT—KELLY HUI—THREE P.M.

  “SO YEAH, MY DAD AGREED TO GIVE THE MONEY. AND I THINK THIS IS going to catapult me to fame. It could, I mean.” Kelly studied the way her face moved in the salon mirror as she spoke. Her eyes appeared dead and dull as she delivered this information, very unlike those glitzy girls on TV—so she wasn’t quite ready for her close-up. Oh, well. She would get there. There was always something new to work on, a million yet-untraveled roads to self-improvement.

  Stefan smiled and nodded.

  Kelly continued: “Imagine, I could host a weight-loss TV show. Help children shape up in front of a live studio audience. You could come to the studio and do my hair. Maybe the network would hire you on full-time as, like, a staff stylist. I don’t know. Maybe your job now is better. I’m just throwing out ideas.”

  Stefan smiled, snapped a cape around her neck, and pumped up her chair—a comforting routine. Her once-thick mane had never fully recovered from a goose-related “accident” many years before, and instead of struggling through life a victim of partial baldness, she relied on Stefan, who in his docility had also become a close friend and confidant, to add both length and volume with top-notch extensions. These babies today were from the Lulu batch—much coveted and cut from the head of the girl with the loveliest locks in all of China. As the old saying goes, a woman’s power resides in her hair. And if you can’t make your own power, make do. Yes, Kelly was soon to be set. The best of the best.

  “And all of those losers I grew up with, they’re going to be so sorry. I mean, what are they doing now? Crashing their Ferraris into over-passes? Snorting horse tranquilizers? Dancing the night away in the same clubs they’ve been dancing all their nights away in since high school? Oh, and that Jenny Tao—her dad is the CEO of Happy Mart—all she’s doing is directing dumb art films that her parents fund and no one goes to see. I heard her dad tried to pay Spielberg to meet with her to give her career advice, but Spielberg refused, even though he was going to pay him, like, ten million dollars just to have coffee with her.”

  Stefan raised an eyebrow, lifted the corners of his mouth, and then ran his fingers through her hair. “So, let’s get these old ones out first, and then we’ll see what we have to work with.” His whispery voice tickled her ear canals. She nodded in response, shut her oversharing trap and her eyes, and let him begin his work in peace.

  A pair of tiny scissors slicing through elastic string. Fingers untwisting, tugging. An MGMT song from her hooked-up iPod played softly on the speakers. Stefan’s was a totally private salon, owned by China’s number one hair extension company and catering to those who sought and/or required total privacy: film stars, pop stars, national icons. She belonged here. The best of the best.

  She relaxed. Relaxed, relaxed, relaxed.

  Until that meditation track began to echo through the blankness of her mind—breathe in, breathe out—and then a goose honking in rhythm in the background, and anxiety shot up from her fingertips and from her toes, and she opened her eyes and grabbed for the distraction of her iPhone to run a few research-related searches. Childhood obesity. Risk factors. Basics of nutrition. Fitness for beginners. She read and read, scrolled and scrolled, and she wouldn’t let herself stop reading and scrolling until a phone call came through. She picked up, and the person on the other end answered before she could say a word. “He
llo? Is this Kelly Hui?”

  “It is.”

  “This is Government Official Fang. Were you able to meet with your father?”

  “Yes,” she said, looking at herself in the mirror. Her old extensions were all out. Stefan was examining her natural roots. “And I think we have a deal.”

  The official inhaled sharply, excitedly.

  “On one simple condition,” she added.

  The official cleared his throat. “What’s that?”

  “I want a hands-on role in running the camp.”

  Silence.

  “Hello?”

  “While we appreciate your generous financial contribution, Ms. Hui, the actual administration of the camp is a very gritty and difficult job, and one that I’m not sure somebody like you would actually be interested in.”

  Stefan met her eyes in the mirror.

  “What does that even mean?” Kelly rolled her eyes, making her best are-you-kidding-me? face for Stefan’s benefit. He winked back at her, cheerfully humming softly along to the one guilty-pleasure Lady Gaga song she’d loaded on her iPod. Fucking shuffle. “Somebody like me?”

  The official cleared his throat. “My meaning is that you seem like a very busy and very classy woman. Based on our research and the experience of some of my colleagues, fat camps can be very ugly, very stressful places.” Perhaps sensing skepticism in her silence, he added, “Let me put it this way. Have you ever had a two-hundred-pound child bite your ankle because you wouldn’t allow him an extra ration of dressing with his lettuce?”

  “No,” Kelly said. “But one of my classmates in Los Angeles had her arm licked by a crazy guy on the subway and—”

  “Well,” the official interrupted, as though he hadn’t even heard her, “this very thing happened to a man my colleagues met in their research. Let’s call him Mr. Li. This Mr. Li served as a first-time fat camp administrator at a private camp in Shanghai—he was hired with experience as a hospital dietitian. On only the fifth day of the camp, when Mr. Li refused to allow one of the children to add extra salt to his boiled vegetables—”

  It was Kelly’s turn to interrupt: “I thought you said it was dressing on lettuce.”

  “Look, what it was is irrelevant. The point is the child became belligerent, falling to the floor, kicking, screaming, carrying on, before savagely sinking his teeth into Mr. Li’s ankle. The child’s jaw had such a hold on him that it took four counselors to unhinge it. Mr. Li was then rushed to the hospital where he had to undergo rabies vaccination, which, as you may know, is a series of shots that takes two weeks to complete. And he still has the incisor marks on his ankle, and, ahh, don’t even get me started on how much the hospital bills came to—”

  “Oh,” Kelly grunted, adjusting her posture in the mirror. She eyed Stefan’s extension handiwork, which was coming along quite beautifully if she did say so herself. “Well, rest assured that if I am savagely bitten by a rabid little rascal, I can certainly cover my own medical expenses. As you may be aware, in addition to being ‘busy’ and ‘classy,’ I am also very ‘wealthy.’”

  “Indeed,” the official said flatly. He audibly yawned. Kelly thought she could make out the sounds of an action movie playing in the background. Was he speaking to her from a cinema? No wonder they didn’t care what their offices looked like—they didn’t actually work there. Or anywhere.

  Kelly sighed. Her scalp was uncomfortable. Her ear was getting sweaty. “So, how about we arrange for transfer of funds and then you send me all the details about date and location and so forth.”

  “Ms. Hui, look, what I’m trying to tell you is—”

  “No address, no money.” Kelly hung up to the muffled boom of an explosion.

  KINDHEARTED BOY LOOKING FOR NICE GIRL! ENJOYS SURFING THE WEB, CHATTING WITH FRIENDS, AND COLLECTING SEASHELLS…

  A COUPLE WEEKS LATER, ACROSS TOWN, ZHAO, THE TWENTY-NINE-YEAR-OLD son of a cleaning woman and a late construction worker, sat at his bedroom desk, opened a web browser, and entered the address of the dating website he frequented. He’d not yet sent any messages to any girls, but he felt confident that he might soon work up the courage, or cowardice—whichever it may be—to do so. He browsed a few profiles, all pretty and therefore all out of his league, and then stood up and smoothed out his shirt. Oh, well. It wasn’t the day for finding a girlfriend anyway. Today was the day of his big interview.

  He’d been matched to the position by an online agency he’d registered with out of desperation a few weeks before. Sure, it was paying for a job (the agency guaranteed placement within three months), but wasn’t it true that everyone had to pay for his job in one way or another? Money was at least a clean way of doing so—this method didn’t involve unethical acts or shady dealings, just a simple online escrow payment.

  And anyway, he needed this: two months before, he’d walked out on his job as an assistant at a fitness equipment sales company. He was far too old to still be a mere assistant—all the other assistants were girls fresh out of college. He’d been promised promotion eight years before when he was hired; however, he was overlooked time and time again. He was a good worker, efficient if not sharp, and therefore attributed his lack of upward mobility primarily to his appearance—deep acne scars pocked his face, his front teeth were turned in at an odd angle, and no matter how hard he washed he always gave off the impression of being deeply unclean. Regardless, it was humiliating being left behind, and on a day like any other, a Tuesday, the absurdity of it all hit him. Very suddenly and for no instigating reason, he snapped. He walked into his boss’s office and issued a firm “I quit.” That was all he said. His boss, young and handsome and therefore valued by the world, didn’t ask why or any other questions. He offered a pleasant, “Okay,” and that was that.

  On that Tuesday like any other, Zhao gathered his belongings from his desk, shoved them inside his bag, and left without saying good-bye to anyone, not even the mousy accountant whom he’d had a crush on for over a year and who earned three times his salary. He spent the subsequent weeks “sorting things out.” He locked himself in his room for days at a time, reading the news on the Internet and following with interest a great number of microbloggers who spewed on the topics of politics, social issues, and cute animals. He became deeply engaged in a few TV series set in various dynasties. He bought a potted plant and tended to it daily. He quit smoking. He got back in touch with his mother, whom he had begun officially totally ignoring a couple years before because she nagged him to an annoying degree about why he hadn’t bought an apartment, why he hadn’t found a wife, why he wasn’t a top-level executive, and so on. He called her up (not at all surprised that she had the same phone number all these years later—she never let things go) and told her he’d quit his job, and that he was still renting that crappy room in that crappy shared apartment, and that the future still looked uncertain, and that the only women he’d ever slept with were prostitutes or otherwise irreversibly ugly and/or deformed. Oddly enough, his mother hadn’t seemed to mind all of these highly inappropriate confessions. In fact, she only grunted in response, told him to take care of himself, hung up, and then picked up their relationship right where it had left off—sending snapshots of eligible bachelorettes in the post, calling to gossip about the nouveau riche whose houses she cleaned, e-mailing links to travel agency websites (she’d developed a fondness for spaghetti and dreamed of being sent on a senior citizens tour to Italy), and so forth. Three weeks after he’d first called, she even made a trek into the city to stay with him a weekend. She scrubbed and reorganized his room, cooked hearty meals for him and the surprisingly friendly flatmates he’d never really spoken to before, and told him, albeit in a vague way, that she was proud that he was her son and happy to have him back in her lonely life.

  And then she was gone again. His plant grew. His TV series turned to reruns. This two-month period of his life had been nice, had been necessary, but he knew it couldn’t last forever.

  Dressed in his crispest button-down sh
irt, a Playboy bunny belt buckle, and navy-blue slacks, Zhao lumbered down the dusty stairwell to the street, planted himself on the sidewalk, and flagged down a taxi. He arrived at his destination twenty minutes early, paid the driver, and got out. He paced before the bleak white structure, Communist-era architecture at its finest.

  So there was the job, this tangible possibility here before him, but there was also the feeling of wanting to be somebody, a sense of this being a last chance, and there was the weight of guilt at the pit of his stomach and the desperation of wanting to be rid of this weight, unburdened. To be employed at all wasn’t ideal; employment meant setting an alarm and getting properly dressed every morning and spending less time surfing the Internet, and it meant letting go of all the tiny freedoms that he had so recently fallen in love with. But he could waste his whole life away floating in ideals, freedoms. He could wake up a ninety-year-old man, unmarried and unaccomplished—with nothing to show for himself and no one there to love him—and say, “Well, at least I stayed true to my ideals.” But where was the freedom in that?

  The very next week, the government officials who would be overseeing his position invited Zhao to a restaurant to make their formal employment offer. His eyes skimmed the contents of the contract. Hereby referred to as the employee. Can do. Can do. If this contract is broken, a penalty of 100,000 yuan will be assessed. Boring. Boring. Over the course of the summer, the employee must rehabilitate a minimum of two fat kids.

  He glanced up from the printed pages and into the stale eyes of the government officials sitting around the white-clothed table. The waitress, a dark-skinned country girl with shapely legs, brought a plate of salted duck’s feet and set it before the men.

  “If my wife would allow it,” one of the officials said, eyeballing the waitress, “I would take that one home and keep her.” The men laughed collectively. The waitress blushed and scurried away. Another of the officials, an older fellow with crinkly skin and beady black eyes, poured Zhao’s cup full of rice wine. Zhao nodded, acknowledging this act, and then felt his phone vibrate against his leg. He slipped it out under the table as the old man filled the others’ cups. His mother. He rejected her call and shoved the phone back into his pocket.