Dream of the Blue Room

by Michelle Richmond

  “Very nice,” I say.

  “Now we will have lunch in our comfortable dining room,” Yuk Ming says. She leads me through the kitchen into a small room, also closed off by a sliding glass door. On the table is an impressive spread: dishes of pork, fish, chicken, steamed rice, several kinds of dumplings, an array of vegetables arranged expertly on dishes with delicate floral patterns. A carved white bowl in the center of the table contains shark fin soup. Yuk Ming pours tea and adds something to my plate from each dish, before she and Wang help themselves.

  “This is delicious,” I say, relaxing. “Where did you get it?”

  “Wang made it,” Yuk Ming says.

  This is impossible, as the kitchen is spotless and I’m sure, if I were to open the door of the refrigerator, I would find it empty. Over lunch they ask me about my family, my job, my husband. They want to know if I’m enjoying my journey, and I please them by saying that China is fascinating. When they ask why I decided to come here, I lie. “I’ve always wanted to see China.”

  After lunch we retire to the den. Yuk Ming brings in a bowl of translucent white lichees for dessert. After I’ve eaten several, she asks, “What do you think of our wonderful Three Gorges Dam?”

  The question catches me by surprise; I weigh my words carefully. “Many well-known Chinese scientists and engineers are worried about this dam.”

  Yuk Ming and Wang look at each other and laugh nervously. Wang takes the lichee bowl into the kitchen. When he returns, he pulls a chair right in front of the sofa where I’m sitting. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and says, “There are very few true scientists and engineers in China who feel this way. Those who speak out against the dam want to frighten the people and undermine the government. The dam is very good for China. China produces many products for your country and the rest of the world. We need electricity to make these products. And too many people die each year in the floods. The dam will save lives.”

  “Maybe,” I say, “but what about the farmers who rely on the floodplain for their living?”

  “The government is building clean new villages for them,” Yuk Ming says. As if to prove her point, she hands me a brochure that is sitting rather conveniently on a small table beside the sofa. The brochure shows photographs of children playing happily in front of modern apartment buildings. In one photograph, behind the bright clean building that the photographer obviously meant to capture, is another building, also modern, but already falling apart. Yuk Ming explains that this is Ling Bau, a model resettlement village thirty kilometers from Yichang. “The government built enough new homes for all of the families of Yichang. Every apartment has a television. It is very good for the people.”

  Flipping through the brochure, I am reminded of an afternoon at my studio apartment in New York City during my freshman year of college. It was four months after Amanda Ruth’s murder, and I’d been struggling through the spring semester in a daze, unable to complete my assignments, often missing class, going for days at a time without seeing anyone other than Dave, who would arrive at my door with John’s pizza or takeout Chinese and persuade me to eat. It was 2:00 on a Thursday afternoon and I was still in bed. Dave had been gone since the previous Saturday, down in Florida for some seminar, and in his absence I’d lost all sense of time. There was hardly any food in the apartment, the phone had been disconnected, and my textbooks sat unread in a backpack I hadn’t touched in a week. The doorbell rang, but I ignored it. It rang again, and I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling, wondering who it could be. A couple of minutes passed in silence, followed by a knock at the door. I got up and put on the only thing I could find, a blue T-shirt that skimmed the tops of my thighs. I tiptoed to the door, hoping the visitor wouldn’t hear me, and peered out the peephole. There was a young man standing there—no one I recognized. He was wearing a white button-down and dark tie. His hair was blond and perfectly combed.

  He knocked again. “Hello? I know you’re in there.”

  “What do you want?”

  “May I have five minutes of your time?” I was looking out the peephole, and he was staring directly into it, as if he had some psychic power that alerted him to the fact that I was watching him.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “I’d just like to speak with you for five minutes, ma’am.”

  “How do I know you’re not some psycho?”

  He slid a card under the door that identified him as John Slattery, member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After the identification card came a pamphlet entitled Sharing the Good Word. “I won’t hurt you, ma’am. I’m here to talk to you about the love of Christ.”

  “Just a minute,” I said. I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, combed my hair, and put on lipstick. When I came back and looked out the peephole again, he was still standing there. Out of curiosity, possibly boredom, I opened the door and stepped back. He glanced down at my bare legs, blushed, and looked away. I shut the door behind him. “Would you like something to drink?” I asked. “Coffee?”

  “No, thank you,” he said, straightening his tie. He clutched a briefcase in one hand. He tried to occupy himself by looking around the room, but the room was small and there was nothing to see—a thrift-store dresser with the drawers hanging open, a big white paper lantern, a few crates crammed with books.

  “I’m sorry. I forgot. Mormons don’t drink coffee, do you? I have bottled water, Sprite. Can you drink Sprite?” I slid past him into the kitchen, just four square feet of space with a tiny refrigerator tucked under the sink.

  “Tap water would be good.”

  He was looking at the bed. The covers were turned down, the pillow dented, and I was certain he could tell I’d been sleeping. I rinsed a cup, ran water from the tap, and handed it to him. Our fingers touched. He blushed. “Thank you.”

  “I don’t always sleep this late,” I said. “I was up past midnight, studying.” I wondered if he could tell I was lying. Maybe lie detection was part of his religious training. “Have a seat.” He looked around the room, as if a sofa might materialize out of thin air. “On the bed,” I said. “I haven’t really decorated yet.”

  He sat carefully on the edge of the mattress, put his water glass on the floor, and glanced again at my bare legs. “There’s an IKEA bus,” he said. “You catch it at Penn Station and take it out to Jersey. They sell chairs pretty cheap. Me and my friend Joseph took it once.”

  As I sat down beside him, the bed sank with our combined weight. His face went deep red. “They have plates too, napkins, picture frames, you name it.” And then, as if he remembered what he was there for, “Do you know about Jesus Christ?”

  I nodded. “I grew up in Alabama. I was raised on Jesus and football.” He didn’t laugh. “Sorry,” I said. “I guess that’s sacrilegious or something.”

  “It’s okay. God forgives.” He pulled at his collar, as if he suddenly feared being choked by it. He smelled good, like bread. I wondered if he had ever had sex before. Probably not. He opened his briefcase, pulled out The Book of Mormon, then closed the briefcase and placed it on the floor. “I’d like to share a very special book with you. This is the Word of God.”

  “No offense, but how do you know?”

  “On September twenty-first, 1823, the resurrected prophet Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith and instructed him on the ancient record and its destined translation into the English language.” As if to prove the veracity of this statement, he held the book up in front of my face, studied my expression. I could tell he wanted me to be enticed, he wanted me to snatch that book out of his hands in a desperate show of desire for the Word of God. It occurred to me at that moment that I wanted to seduce him—not only because he was attractive, but also because I needed to know if I could. Dave and I had only been going out for four months, and we had an unspoken agreement that we could both see other people, although I hadn’t b
een with anyone else since we returned from Alabama. I knew, though, that Dave and I were rapidly moving toward something permanent, and I think I may have been looking for one last hurrah before I committed to him for good.

  I moved closer to John Slattery, so that his shirtsleeve brushed against my arm. He quickly opened the book and mumbled, “I’d like to share some verses with you.”

  “Have you ever been on a bed with a girl before?”

  “I.” He swallowed. “Well.”

  I took the book out of his hands and laid it on the pillow, rested my hand on his thigh. He glanced over at the book, but in order to get to it he would have had to reach across my body. He looked utterly helpless. I pressed my bare leg against his corduroy one and rubbed my hand slowly up and down his thigh. He let out a surprised sigh. I pushed him back on the bed, expecting him to resist, but he didn’t. He lay back stiffly and stared up at me with his mouth shut tightly, his eyes wide. I loosened his tie, unbuttoned his shirt, following each button with a kiss on his chest. He began breathing heavily. “I can’t do this,” he said, but he made no effort to stop me. I unzipped his pants. “No,” he said. I knelt before him and took off his shoes, then made him lift his hips so I could slide his pants off. “We’re not allowed to go out alone,” he said. “It’s against regulation. But my partner was sick and I didn’t want to miss a day, so I came anyway. I shouldn’t have.”

  “Relax,” I said. He was wearing white Hanes briefs that were so bright and stiff they must have just come out of the package that morning. I slid my hand under the waistband, cupped my hand under his balls. His mouth opened and his eyes rolled back. I pulled his underwear off, arranged him on the bed, slid my mouth over his cock. He grabbed my shoulders, dug in hard with his fingers. “God.”

  I looked up. “I don’t think you’re supposed to say that.”

  “Sorry.”

  I slowly worked my mouth over him, ran my hand up his chest, slid my fingers around his throat. He was moving his hips, moaning, saying, “I have to go now.” I took off my shirt, lay on top of him, kissed him for a long time. He sucked at my tongue, kissed me so hard I was afraid he’d leave bruises on my lips. I knelt over him and touched my breasts, my legs, watching the effect this had on him, then went down again and let him come in my mouth. His come was thick, nearly tasteless. I went to the bathroom and rinsed my mouth, then came back and lay down beside him. He was crying.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “No one will know.”

  “God will,” he said. He was staring at the ceiling, at the miniature stickers of stars and moons the previous tenant had glued there.

  “But you told me five minutes ago that God forgives. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

  He cried for a little while longer, then rolled over and started sucking my breasts. After a while he looked up and said, “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Just lie on top of me.”

  He obeyed, and I opened my legs and guided him in. He moved very carefully. I held on to his back and pulled him in deeper. He stared at me, wide-eyed, as I came, then rolled off me. “That’s amazing,” he said. His skin was shimmering with sweat.

  “That’s why it’s called sex.”

  John Slattery studied my face as if something else might happen, like maybe he thought that was only Act One. Then he cleared his throat. “Do you do that very often?”

  “Not often enough.”

  We lay for a few minutes in silence. He stared at my naked body, ran his hands up and down the length of me. “Is this the first time you’ve seen a girl?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t have sisters or something?”

  “No. Two brothers. Hey.”

  “Hey what?”

  “Can we do this again?”

  “Sorry, buddy. This is a one time thing.”

  “Okay. You’re right. That’s probably better.” After a while he looked at his watch. “I’m sorry, but please, will you turn around while I dress?”

  I looked out the window at the brick wall five feet away. I could hear him zipping his pants, sliding on his shirt. When he was finished dressing, he touched me on the shoulder. I put my arms around him, feeling both pleased and guilty for what I’d done. He hugged me back, then kissed me on the cheek, a dry peck.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Please forgive me.” At the door, he pointed to the Book of Mormon that still rested on the pillow. “And please read that book. It will change your life.” He shut the door behind him and left me feeling oddly disappointed, empty. He had been too easily seduced, the armor of his religion too easily punctured. Something in me had wanted him to be heroic in his resistance. I wanted to see faith in action, firsthand evidence of a higher calling.

  After he left, I thumbed through Sharing the Good Word. There were illustrations of blond people praying, blond families having picnics, blond children smiling and playing jump rope with the Book of Mormon floating over their heads.

  Now, Yuk Ming flips through her own pamphlet, pointing out photographs of Chinese people smiling, Chinese families eating in their new kitchens, Chinese children playing on the cement grounds of their new apartment complexes. It occurs to me that the gist of propaganda is the same across the board, a universal language of determined and desperate persuasion, even if the politics are varied and the causes diverse.

  “See, it is a wonderful project,” Yuk Ming says. “It will bring fortune and progress to the people.”

  I smile and place the pamphlet on the table. “Ling Bau may be good, but it’s only one settlement. Time is running out. Do you really believe the government will keep its promise?”

  They are both smiling so wide their faces must hurt. The smiles, like the computer and the Mickey Mouse sheets, have an inauthentic edge. “The government always keeps its promise,” Wang says. “You will see. The dam will be the eighth wonder of the modern world.”

  He gets up from his chair and settles into the sofa beside me. In my mind I see the evangelistic scenes of my youth, when the Van for the Lord would arrive at my door late on a Friday night, and the kids from Bay View Baptist Church would flood the house, sit me down, and make me pray with them. “The future is bright,” Wang says, inching closer. His breath smells of Flying Dragon Mints. “The future is filled with the promise of the Four Modernizations: Agriculture, Defense, Science, and Technology.”

  “Yes,” Yuk Ming says. Her voice becomes very soft as she squeezes my hand. “And of course, the five loves. Love Work, Love People, Love Neighbors, Love Science, and Love Public Property.”

  I’m having an Amway moment, realizing that I’ve been brought here under the guise of friendship when in fact these two have something to sell. I look at my watch. “Better get going.”

  “Of course,” Yuk Ming says. “I will walk with you.”

  “You must come visit us again!” Wang says. “Next time, bring a camera. You will take pictures of our apartment to take back to your friends in America!”

  The rain has stopped, and the air smells fresh. I’m grateful to be out of the apartment, away from Wang, walking with Yuk Ming, who is treating me as if we’ve known each other for a long time. She talks about American movies. “I loved Titanic, and also Gone With the Wind,” she says. I tell her that one of my favorite movies of the past decade was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

  “Yes!” she says, excited, looping her arm through mine. “This was a very good movie. I like your American actors. Brad Pitt is very handsome, and Tom Cruise.” We take a different route to return to the park, and when we arrive at the bench, Graham is already there.

  “I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” I say. “Just a couple of minutes,” he says, staring at Yuk Ming’s feet.

  “This is your husband?” Yuk Ming asks.

  “No, this is my friend from the ship. Graham, Yuk Ming.”

  “I’m very pleased to meet you,” Yuk Ming says, holding out her hand.

  Graham eyes her suspiciously, then turns to me. �
�Where have you been?”

  “Yuk Ming took me to her place for lunch.”

  Graham says something to Yuk Ming in Mandarin. His face is red, and he is talking louder than usual. Suddenly she starts yelling at him, gesturing toward me. A crowd gathers.

  “Let’s go,” Graham says, taking my arm.

  “What’s going on? What did you say to her?”

  “Just walk. Believe me, this woman is not your friend.”

  I try to say good-bye to her, but now she’s yelling at me. As we walk, Yuk Ming follows us, shouting, along with the crowd that has gathered. Gradually, they begin to drop back. Graham and I are walking, and the mob is still shouting behind us, and I’m thinking about this story my friend James recently told me about a trip he and his wife took to South America. They were on an eco-tour of the Amazon jungle, and they were walking along in their backpacks and Tevas, looking at all the flora and fauna, having a splendid time. His wife noticed a little golden monkey scampering around on the tree branches along the edge of the path, and she stopped to admire it. Suddenly, the monkey leapt from the tree onto my friend’s wife, grabbed the front of her poncho and wouldn’t let go. He wanted her gold hoop earrings. As the monkey tried to climb up the woman’s front, her poncho got tighter and tighter, and she couldn’t move her arms to defend herself. She was screaming for James to help her, but every time he tried to pull the monkey off, it bit him. Finally, he leaned back and slugged the monkey in the face. The monkey was momentarily stunned, but he still held on, his claws digging into the poncho, into James’s wife. James punched him again, but the monkey kept screaming and trying to grab the earrings. So, unable to think of anything better, James took off his shoe and started pummeling the monkey’s head.

  “So I’m standing there in the Amazon jungle,” he told me, “and I’m surrounded by all these super mellow, green-friendly tourists from places like Berkeley and Seattle, and we’ve been having a jolly good time communing with nature and taking snapshots, and all of the sudden things turn sour. There I am, beating the living shit out of this little vicious animal with my left shoe.”