Dream of the Blue Room

by Michelle Richmond

  Minutes later, I find myself in his cabin. He clears a few things from the chair, which is upholstered in stiff pink fabric. I sit, unsure what to do with my hands, my legs. I cross my feet, uncross them, look around the room. A print of London Bridge at nightfall hangs above the bed. The lamp on the table bears a British military insignia. The dressing table is covered with brown pharmaceutical bottles, their labels inscribed with unpronounceable names. There is a jar of individually wrapped syringes, another of cotton swabs. The room smells medicinal and stale.

  We sit for a minute or two in silence before he says, “How did Amanda Ruth die?”

  “I told you. It was murder.”

  “Yes, but how?”

  I am surprised by this preoccupation with details, his desire to know the intimate facts. I turn and glance out the porthole. The whole world is obscured by rain. I want to see the world outside this ship, outside this suffocating room, but there is more light inside than outside, and all I see is my own tired face and the blurred reflection of Graham’s navy blue shirt, which is hanging on the doorknob.

  “She was strangled.”

  “By whom?”

  A long silence. The rain comes down, the ship sways, and everything is gray. I turn to face him. “It’s difficult to talk about.”

  “Where did they find her?”

  “Behind the skating rink, across the street from her parents’ church.”

  When we were in junior high we went to the skating rink every weekend. I close my eyes and for a moment I can hear the clunk of wheels against the floor, rubber stoppers scudding, someone falling, a skinny referee in tight pants leading the limbo. I remember the purple pom-poms Amanda Ruth’s mother gave her for her twelfth birthday, which she tied to the laces of her roller skates. The skates had glitter in the wheels. I can see her there, gliding over the smooth surface as she jiggles her hips and sings along to the song booming from the speakers, Earth Wind, and Fire—“a shining star for you to see what your life can truly be.” She puts one slender leg in front of the other and leans in toward the center of the rink. The strobe light reflects thousands of multicolored stars onto the floor, and she follows them, whirling around the room with a dancer’s ease, her brown ponytail flying behind her.

  This is how I want to remember her, but the other image always cuts in: Amanda Ruth clad in jeans and white T-shirt, lying haphazardly on the pavement, one arm flung wide, her right leg bent at an awkward angle, the yellow scarf tied tightly around her neck. In another photo, after the detective had untied the scarf, there was a slim purple bruise around her neck that seemed too insignificant to kill her. Three days after she’d been found, the detective slid the photos out of a manila envelope. “Is there anything in the picture you recognize?”

  “The scarf,” I said.

  The detective ran his thick fingers over his beard. “Where did the scarf come from?”

  “I gave it to her.”

  “Why? Was it her birthday?”

  “No, just a gift.”

  “A gift for no reason?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s odd.”

  “She was my friend.”

  “What kind of friend?”

  “My best friend.”

  “Was there anything unusual about your relationship?”

  “What do you mean?” I was not being uncooperative. I simply couldn’t understand what he was asking. As he put one photo after another in front of me, forcing me to look, asking a series of questions that seemed to lead no closer to a definitive answer, I realized that this man considered me a suspect.

  He repeated his question, more forcefully this time. “Was there anything unusual about your relationship?” The way he said unusual made me feel dirty. The word had the ring of seedy nightclubs and dark street corners, transactions between desperate people involving quick sex and small wads of sweaty cash.

  “No.”

  There was a long pause. He leaned over the table and put his face so close to mine that I could feel his breath on my mouth. He smelled like cigarettes and breath mints, and like the bean burritos at Taco Bell. “Amanda Ruth’s dad thinks different, doesn’t he?”

  I shrugged. The detective paced the room, like a backwoods cop in a made-for-TV movie. “Mr. Lee told us you had a little thing going with his daughter. Tell me something, are you a lesbian?”

  By this point I was crying and shaking. He came up behind me, put one hand on either side of me on the table, so that I was surrounded by his bulk, his fast food smell. He put his face right beside mine and whispered in my ear, “Do you go with girls?”

  “No!”

  Immediately I regretted saying it, but I was too afraid to take it back. That denial, expressed as a single word in a gloomy interrogation room in a dusty old police station, has haunted me ever since—my ultimate betrayal of Amanda Ruth.

  He kept at me for an hour. I watched the minutes tick off on the big metal clock on the wall. “You best stay in town,” he said before unlocking the door. “We might want to talk to you again.” He stood in front of the door with his hand on the knob, so that the only way for me to get out was to press past him. He slid his hand over my back and leaned down to whisper in my ear, “I bet I could make you like men.” His breath was wet and smoky; my stomach turned. When I came out, the secretary handed me a Diet Coke. The can was so cold it hurt my fingers. I recognized her from the video store near my house. She was always in there with several kids, renting Disney pictures. Once, at the check-out, we had talked about the Star Wars movies. I could tell she’d heard everything. “It’s just standard procedure, hon,” she said, handing me a Kleenex. “You need a ride home?”

  The skating rink is right across the street from First Baptist Church of Greenbrook. The church is huge and white, with a steeple so high it seems as if it is punching a hole in the sky. When I was a child the steeple terrified me, the way it reached so high above the telephone lines and traffic lights, so high above the skating rink. Everything around the church looked insignificant in comparison. On clear nights when the moon shone brightly, the steeple cast its long, pointed shadow over the parking lot. The girls going into the skating rink, in their tight jeans and soft, pastel-colored sweaters, made a game of walking straight down the middle of the shadow.

  The skating rink was a rectangular building with aluminum siding, alternating yellow and blue panels. Behind it there was a Dumpster that always stank of Sunday supper. After dinner on the ground, which followed church every Sunday night, people would dump their garbage there—big plates of potato salad, fried chicken remnants, the pink cloud they made for dessert, a too-sweet concoction of Cool Whip and maraschino cherries.

  The police said that the person who did it had planned to put her in the Dumpster, to conceal her body in the rubble, but had apparently been scared away “before disposing of the body in the intended fashion.” They said that Amanda Ruth had not been killed behind the skating rink; “the perpetrator committed the crime at another premises and brought the victim to the site.” This information was repeated several times in the papers, as if everyone had a right to know, as if the details of this death belonged to anyone who cared to read about it, anyone who wanted to tell Amanda Ruth’s gruesome story over beers at The Watering Hole. Diane Shelby on Channel 5 wore bright pink lipstick and smiled an impeccable smile when she said, “The body was transported to the skating rink following Miss Lee’s death.”

  Graham wants to know what was used to kill her.

  “A scarf.” Even now I can’t believe that a flimsy piece of fabric, a pretty length of silk, could end a life.

  “Who did it?”

  “Do we have to talk about this?”

  He sits down on the bed and stares at me for a long time. There is something desperate in his face I haven’t noticed before. “What?” I say. He doesn’t speak. He won’t take his eyes off me. “What?” I say again.

  “If you had to kill someone,” he says, “could you?”

&n
bsp; “What kind of question is that?”

  “I’m just asking. Could you?”

  “No.”

  “You can’t imagine any situation in which you might be able to?”

  “I’ve never considered it.”

  “What if the person asked you to do it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Say they had a very good reason.”

  I go to him, straddle him where he is sitting on the bed. I squeeze his hips hard between my knees, take his face in my hands, and stare hard into his eyes. “Tell me,” I say. “What do you want from me?”

  He looks away, and his arms lie limp at his sides. I’m almost glad he doesn’t respond; I’m terrified of his answer.

  “Well,” I say, releasing his face. “Could you?”

  He lies back on the bed, stares up at the ceiling. “It would depend on the circumstances.” He pauses, then says, “Yes. I suppose I could.”

  NINETEEN

  Just after noon the following day, we dock at Shashi. Dave is nowhere to be seen. He didn’t even come to the cabin last night. He has stopped keeping up appearances. Perhaps I should be angry or depressed, but I can no longer muster the proper emotions. He has already begun to recede into the past, something dreamlike and faded, while Graham feels increasingly like the real and solid present. We go into town together and have a delicious lunch of vegetables, beef, and strong tea at a small restaurant near the entrance to a park.

  After lunch, Graham says he wants to visit an old friend in town. “You can explore the park. I’ll meet you at the entrance in three hours.”

  It’s raining softly when he leaves me at a pavilion near a small pond flickering with koi. The columns of the pavilion are decorated with colorful tiles in intricate designs. In another pavilion on the opposite side of the pond, a man in a pinstriped suit sits meditating. I take out my journal and begin to scribble, thinking that one day I’ll want to remember this. When I get home I’ll try to locate Amanda Ruth’s mother and share my impressions of China. I remember her face the day she gave me her daughter’s ashes, the way she showed up at my door in big sunglasses and wrinkled slacks, her hair tied up in a green bandana. She looked unkempt and somehow younger, like a lost and frightened teenager.

  Rain spatters the pavement. I’ve been sitting here for about ten minutes when an attractive young woman approaches me. She is wearing a yellow sundress and an expensive-looking pair of leather sandals, and her toenails are painted pale pink. She sits in the middle of the bench, right next to me, though there is plenty of room on the other end.

  “Hello,” she says. “I am Yuk Ming. You speak English?”

  “Yes. My name is Jenny.”

  She’s wearing tiny gold hoop earrings and a diamond ring. My first guess is that the ring must be costume jewelry. Most Chinese workers would never be able to afford such an extravagance. “You are American?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “I meet much Americans,” she says eagerly. “I try study English. My English very poor. I want one day visit New York City.”

  “Your pronunciation is extremely good,” I tell her. It’s true. Although her English is broken, each word is spoken precisely, with perfect inflection.

  She points to my journal. “You write for newspaper?”

  “No, it’s just a diary to help me remember the trip.”

  “You are in China for vacation?”

  “Yes, taking a cruise up the Yangtze.”

  “Oh! Is very beautiful. Longest river in the world!”

  “Third longest,” I correct her, though I immediately wish I hadn’t.

  “No, I am certain it is the longest.” I change the subject. “What kind of work do you do?”

  “I am administrator in hospital.”

  “Do you enjoy it?”

  “In China today all people like their work, not like America. In America everyone hates their work. Isn’t this true?”

  “Some people do. Mine’s okay.”

  “How much they pay?”

  “Enough.”

  “Here, workers treated very well,” she says. “Pay is not too high, but is okay, because employer pays medical expense, housing, everything. No homeless people in China.”

  “Do you have children?” I ask, hoping to urge the conversation in a more personal direction.

  “I have one son. He is seven years old. Very bright!” And then Yuk Ming is suddenly praising the attributes of the one-child policy. “To have one child is best. More is too many. If one child, you have time to spend with him, you can be perfect mother.”

  If I wanted to be inundated with propaganda, I’d be touring the city with Elvis Paris. I smile and stand to leave. “It was very nice meeting you.”

  “Don’t go!” she says, smiling. She stands and touches my arm. “I am very interested in talking to you and sharing a cultural exchange. Please come to my home for lunch.”

  The abrupt change in my new acquaintance’s English is startling. Maybe she’s reciting these last sentences from a textbook on getting to know foreigners.

  “We will have a nice walk,” she says. “I will show you some pretty spots.” More perfect phrases. It must be a very good textbook. I accept her invitation, excited by the opportunity to see a real Chinese home, not the tourist attractions that Elvis Paris is so intent on dragging us to.

  “I just have to make one telephone call,” she says, pulling a slender red cellphone out of her purse. She turns it on, dials, waits for a voice on the other end, and then says something quickly in Mandarin. She slips the phone into her purse. “Let’s go. You can share my umbrella.” Rain patters the leaves of trees lining the street. As we walk, Yuk Ming hums softly. The floral pattern of her umbrella is reflected in the wetness of the street. Our own reflections bob side by side—mine slightly taller, hers slightly thinner. “What music do you like?” she asks.

  “Louis Armstrong. Nina Simone. Ella Fitzgerald. I don’t admit it to many people, but I also have an addiction to eighties bands like Culture Club and Simple Minds. Have you heard of them?”

  “No, but I like some American singers—Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson.” She begins humming “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”

  “Perfect,” I say.

  “Oh!” She seems pleased. “I do not know the words, though.” I sing them for her, badly off-key, and she laughs. We turn left and through a narrow alley. A dozen shirtless young men work atop a pile of rubble, breaking bricks with pickaxes, while a group of elderly women pick through the charred remains of a gutted building. They all stop to stare as we walk past. Then, in the midst of all this destruction, a brand-new building appears, a ten-story high-rise covered, like so many of the new buildings in China, with gleaming white tile that looks like it won’t survive the year. I imagine it is a new Chinese invention, the disposable building: use once and then discard, no cleaning necessary.

  “Here we are,” Yuk Ming says, folding her umbrella and shaking the excess water onto the building’s tiny patio. She punches a series of numbers on a keypad, and the door clicks open.

  We take an immaculate elevator to the tenth floor and walk down a long hallway. When we’re about a foot from her apartment, the door opens, as if choreographed, and a handsome young man in pressed khakis and a checked button-down appears. Yuk Ming introduces him as her husband, Wang. “We are very pleased to have your company,” he says, shaking my hand.

  Everything in the apartment smells new: paint, carpet, furniture. Yuk Ming proudly gives me the tour. The apartment has two ample bedrooms; one has a queen-sized bed with a black satin coverlet and a small chest of drawers. A framed picture of badly painted flowers hangs on the wall beside a small window. “And this is my son’s room,” she says, sweeping her hand in the direction of the second bedroom. In another life, she could have been Vanna White. The miniature mattress in the corner is covered in Mickey Mouse sheets; something about Mickey Mouse looks not quite right, although I can’t put my finger on it. And then I reali
ze that his ears, instead of the signature black, are crimson.

  “Here is our comfortable and efficient study,” Yuk Ming says, opening a sliding glass door to a third and smaller room. The desk is of the same shiny black material as the chest of drawers in the bedroom, and on top of the desk is a brand-new computer. Like Mickey Mouse, there’s something not quite right about the computer. It takes me a moment to realize that it isn’t plugged in. There are no cords, no printer, not even a keyboard, just a huge monitor and a CD-ROM tower. On the wall are three photos in identical black plastic frames: one of Mao Zedong, one of Jiang Xemin, and another of a small boy standing in front of a fountain, arms straight at his sides, looking surprised and slightly frightened. “My son!” Yuk Ming says. “He is in school right now.”

  “He’s very handsome.” I lean in closer and see that the photograph of the boy is actually a postcard.

  Yuk Ming grabs my shoulder and pulls me back. “Why don’t we have a seat in the den and get to know one another!” I feel as though I’ve stepped onto the set of an American television show, circa 1970. I half expect Yuk Ming to whip up a tuna casserole and show me her Tupperware collection.

  The sofa, which is upholstered in black velour, looks as though it has never been used. The entire apartment, in fact, is strangely devoid of life. It bears no resemblance to the dozens of Chinese-owned flats I saw in New York’s Chinatown while apartment-hunting with a friend. Those apartments possessed the comforting air of having been lived in. They were filled with the fragrance of food, with potted plants in varying degrees of health, crowded with chairs and couches and beds and tables that had clearly been put to good use. There is something decidedly un-Chinese about this apartment, as if Yuk Ming and her husband are trying to present to me a sanitized version of Chinese life, minus the dirt and hardship, the jumble of friends and relatives, the noises and odors and small disasters of daily life. This is Communism Chic, the New China, the goods they want me to deliver to the folks back home.

  “Well,” Yuk Ming says, flashing a Marcia Brady smile, teeth so white she could be the poster girl for Sparkling Baiji Toothpaste, “this is a typical modern Chinese apartment.”