by Temple Drake
She took off her clothes, then walked into the living room and used a remote to drop the blackout blinds. Back in the bedroom, she lay down on the bed of earth that she had shipped at great expense from North Karelia.
The earth of her homeland.
Turning onto her left side, the side where her heart was still beating, even after six or seven lifetimes, she slowed her breathing. Let her eyelids close.
DURING THE WEEK THAT FOLLOWED, it rained every morning, from dawn until midday. In the afternoons, the sun came out. The city steamed. Zhang worked late every night. Shanghai’s economy was booming, with foreign direct investment up 21 percent year-over-year and annual growth in the double digits. There were business opportunities everywhere you looked. Sitting in his office with his chair turned to face some of the tallest buildings in the world, he realized he was waiting for Naemi to contact him, but the days went by and he heard nothing. I found you tonight. I’ll find you again. How would she do that exactly?
When he called Beijing on Wednesday and spoke to Xuan Xuan, his wife, she asked if something was wrong. He told her he was fine. He was just calling to see how she was. But she insisted that he sounded different.
“Different?” he said. “How?”
“Impatient,” she said. “Like you’re standing in a queue and it’s not moving.”
On Thursday he spoke to a friend of his father’s, a man who happened to be the director of the Shanghai Museum. He asked if a brief after-hours visit could be arranged.
“Twice in a month,” the director said. “You’re addicted.”
“There are worse addictions,” Zhang said.
The director laughed. “That’s true.”
It was just after six in the evening when Zhang’s Jaguar stopped on the south side of People’s Square. He told Chun Tao he would be about forty-five minutes, then he walked round to the side entrance of the museum and pressed the bell. A security guard buzzed him in. The deserted interior had an air of peace and dignity it never had during the day, when it was crowded with schoolchildren and tour parties. It was as if the whole building had breathed a huge sigh of relief. His footsteps echoed as he climbed the marble stairs to the second floor. Otherwise, the only sound was the deep, hushed roar of the climate control.
He was drawn, time and again, by the Yue ceramics that had been made during the T’ang dynasty. Some of them were celebrated for their moon-white glaze, which experts likened to snow or silver. Others were a grayish shade of green known as “celadon,” a color whose secret had died with the craftsmen working in the Gangyao kilns at Shanglinhu. To stand before a white Yue vase, with its simple lines, its smooth texture, and its calm but eerie lack of pigment, was to be taken far away from yourself. It was like looking at a blank face, and yet he always felt there was something to be learned. The emptiness seemed charged with wisdom. The director was right. He was addicted. Though created by men, the ceramics existed in a realm beyond man’s understanding. He might, if he spent long enough in contemplation, be afforded some small epiphany, but he would never fool himself into thinking it wasn’t limited or partial. There were other layers, hidden meanings. Infinite possibilities. The fact that the mystery couldn’t be exhausted was a source of comfort to him. Not everything could be known.
For almost a quarter of an hour he gazed at a white oblate pot with a subtle or veiled design, two delicate handles protruding from the neck, and when he left the museum his mind felt depthless, unencumbered. Those moments on the second floor had given him sufficient equilibrium, he felt, to last for days. As he crossed the paved area in front of the museum, a gust of wind lifted his jacket away from his body, as if to search him, and it was then that he became aware of someone standing to the west of the main entrance, under the trees. Naemi. He knew her by the darkness of her clothes, and by her air of attentiveness, as if she was listening to music she had heard before but couldn’t quite identify. He knew her by the gold of her hair, that twisted and gleaming gold—like happiness, if happiness were visible. Strange thoughts. She was just a girl he had run into in a club, a girl he had taken for a drink…
As he continued to look at her, she moved towards him slowly, haltingly, as if the distance between them was hard to negotiate, or perilous. Time spilled sideways, like a river that had burst its banks, the flow no longer linear, but vague, diffuse. It took her two minutes to close the gap from fifty feet to five, then half a second to close it to nothing. Suddenly she was up against him, and her mouth was on his mouth, even before a word was spoken, her hands under his jacket, pulling him against her, the black trees above their heads, the dull brown sky.
“I wondered how long it would take,” he murmured.
“How long what would take?” She spoke in the same low register.
“For you to find me.”
“I could have done it quicker.” Her phone rang, but she ignored it. “I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. Even now, I’m not sure.”
“But you’re here.”
“Perhaps it was a mistake.” She leaned back and looked at him, her face all ivory and shadows, like the moon. She was more beautiful than he remembered.
“It doesn’t feel like a mistake,” he said.
“Where’s your car?”
“Over there.” He moved his eyes beyond her, to the row of parked cars on the south side of the square.
“Can we go somewhere?”
“Not right now. I have a dinner.”
“You can’t cancel it?”
“No. But I could meet you later.” The wind circled them, and the dark trees stirred, a sound that was like someone with a hosepipe watering a lawn. “Shall I tell you where,” he said, “or do you already know?”
She curled a strand of hair behind her ear, the faintest of smiles at one corner of her mouth.
“The bar in the Park Hyatt,” he said. “Ten o’clock.”
He didn’t kiss her again, though he wanted to. Instead, he touched the side of her face, once, gently, then turned and walked away. The calmness was still with him, the calmness of all that ancient porcelain. Only when he was in the Jaguar did he look back. She was standing where he had left her, and she was looking in his direction. She wouldn’t be able to see him, though, not through the tinted windows.
Chun Tao glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “Straight to the restaurant, Mr. Zhang?”
“Yes.”
He was scheduled to meet two commodity brokers from London, and he would have to drink more wine than he was used to, but at least there was the thought of Naemi at the end of it.
If she turned up, that is.
* * *
—
At a quarter to ten, Zhang’s Jaguar pulled up at the foot of the Shanghai World Financial Center, also known as the “Vertical Complex City.” The Park Hyatt, which was the highest hotel in the world, occupied floors 79 to 93. The cloud cover had lowered, and the sheer, curving facade of the building, edged in light that was electric blue, seemed to sink bladelike into the soft mass of the sky. Chun Tao asked if he should wait.
Zhang shook his head. “You can go.”
“You’re sure?”
“Go home. Get some sleep.”
“What time tomorrow?”
“I’ll text you.”
Zhang stepped out of the car. The rain was fine and weightless, like face mist, and the air smelled of mustard seeds and soy sauce. Opening an umbrella, a valet hurried over and accompanied him to the hotel entrance.
Walking into the lobby, with its towering ceiling, its blind turnings, and its unadorned dark brown walls, he felt he was passing through some kind of portal, entering a new dimension. The lighting was dim, the atmosphere mysterious, subversive. By the lifts was a Gao Xiao Wu sculpture of three old men standing side by side, and leaning out from the wall, as if to offer a service or a favor. Made from a shiny white ceramic, they were t
he size of children, with eyes that looked sightless and expressions that were obsequious or craven. As he placed a hand on top of one of their smooth bald heads, a lift arrived, its door sliding open to reveal the deceptively affable, pockmarked face of Wang Jun Wei.
“Guo Xing!” A smile bubbled under Jun Wei’s skin, like soup under a lid. “Still as handsome as ever.”
Zhang smiled back. “My brother.”
The two men shook hands.
“Nice suit,” Zhang said.
Jun Wei’s eyes widened, as if Zhang had just insulted him, then he grinned. “I’m off to a new KTV place. Like to join me?”
“I can’t. I’m meeting someone.”
“A woman, I suppose.”
Zhang held Jun Wei’s gaze, but said nothing.
“All right.” Jun Wei looked off to one side, then back again. “Call me tomorrow. There’s something I need your help with.”
Zhang stepped into a waiting lift and pressed 87.
On reaching the hotel’s reception desk, he picked up a key to the suite he had reserved, then he transferred to the lift that would take him to the bar. A jazz band was playing when he walked in. The singer was a young black woman in a yellow dress. He scanned the people sitting at the tables. Naemi had not arrived as yet. In his mind he saw her passing Wang Jun Wei in the dim, clandestine lobby, ninety-two floors down.
He found a table for two and ordered a glass of champagne. There’s something I need your help with. He knew what that meant. Jun Wei wanted to rope him into some business deal or other. At school, they had been in the same class. Jun Wei was lazy and delinquent, and Zhang used to help him with his homework. When Jun Wei was suspected of cheating, Zhang had vouched for him. Without Zhang, Jun Wei would never have graduated. Brothers, Jun Wei had said at the time, draping one heavy arm round Zhang’s shoulders. Brothers for life. Even back then, Zhang wondered what he had let himself in for. When he went to Canada to study, he lost touch with Jun Wei. In the early 2000s, though, after a gap of many years, the two men met up again in Shanghai. Now a wealthy and successful property developer, Jun Wei had consulted Zhang on various construction projects that he was pushing through. These days, he was in charge of a whole platform of companies, not all of which were necessarily legitimate, and Zhang had been careful to minimize his involvement.
“Have you been waiting long?”
Zhang glanced up.
Naemi was standing in front of him. She had changed, though she was still dressed in black. On her feet she wore a pair of chrome-colored Converse All Stars.
“I just arrived.” He gestured at his drink, which he had yet to touch. “Have a seat. What can I get you?”
“Whatever you’re having.”
He stopped a passing waitress and ordered another glass of champagne. Turning back to Naemi, he watched her slip her phone into her pocket. He found that he couldn’t conceive of who her contacts might be, or what her browsing history might look like. When he imagined accessing her phone, it was empty, blank. Nothing there at all. That was a quality she seemed to have, of being brand-new, as if she had come into being at that very moment, fully formed.
“How was dinner?” she asked.
“It was just business,” he told her. “If I hadn’t known I was meeting you afterwards, I might never have got through it.”
Her champagne arrived, and they touched glasses.
“You don’t seem like the kind of man who would go in for compliments,” she said.
“I don’t?”
She shook her head.
“What kind of man am I, then, do you think?”
“You’re asking me to guess?”
“Why not?”
She put down her glass. “I detect a sense of entitlement,” she said. “As if you were—how do you say it in Chinese?—born with a golden key in your mouth.”
He smiled. “Very good.”
“You’re used to getting what you want,” she went on. “You’re not spoiled, though.” Sitting back, she looked at him steadily. “Your job doesn’t fulfill you. There’s more to you than that.”
“I didn’t realize I was so transparent.” He drank a little champagne. “I have something for you.” Taking out the key to the hotel suite, he placed it on the table in front of her.
“What’s that?” she said.
“Who knows? Maybe it’s the golden key.”
Still watching him, she reached for her drink again.
“I booked you a room,” he said. “I thought you might find it relaxing. It might make a change—from where you live.”
“You don’t know where I live.”
He cast a light, theatrical look around the bar. “Is it like this?”
“I didn’t bring my toothbrush,” she said.
“Call room service,” he said. “Housekeeping.”
Leaving the key where it was, she looked away from him. For a while, she watched the band, who were playing a cover of the Sarah Vaughan classic “Whatever Lola Wants.” When the song ended, she turned back to him.
“You were in the museum,” she said, “even though it was closed.”
“That’s right.”
“You don’t work there, do you?” He laughed. “No. But I might be more fulfilled, as you put it, if I did.”
“So what were you doing?”
“I can’t tell you.” He finished his champagne. “I’ve never told anyone. Secrets lose their power if you share them.”
In that moment, there was a dark and oddly covetous aspect to the look she gave him. Perhaps, without knowing it, he had passed some sort of test. She reached for the key.
“It’s not a room, actually,” he said. “It’s a suite.”
“Would you show me?”
“Of course.” He signaled for the check.
Once he had paid, he followed her between the tables. Her black skirt clung to her hips. Her legs were bare. Something fizzed and crackled through him, a fork of lightning that zigzagged from his heart down to his belly. The set had ended, and everyone was clapping.
Near the lifts that were reserved for hotel guests was a wall of soft white lights, like snowflakes trapped under glass. She stood against it, backlit and in shadow, her hands behind her.
“I’m so glad you came,” he said.
She looked down and smiled, her hair falling across her face. She used the spread fingers of one hand to push it back.
Once inside the lift, he pressed 88. He was aware of the shaft beneath them—the tall column of dark air, the smell of oil and warm dust, the long drop to the ground.
The lift door opened.
They walked along a dimly lit taupe-colored corridor, a huge red abstract painting on the left-hand wall. There was no noise from the other rooms. It was as if they were under a bell jar, or in a vacuum. Cut off from the world. He thought this was something she might appreciate.
When she unlocked the double doors that led to 8801, they opened onto a small rectangular area of artificial grass. Arranged on this fake lawn were three gray-and-white ceramic animals with big, pointed ears. The sculptures resembled rabbits crossed with cats. All three had their eyes turned soulfully towards the ceiling.
“Oh.” She laughed softly.
To the right was a living room with chrome-and-leather furniture that looked Milanese and a long window framing neon-tinted clouds. There was a kitchen too, he had been told. Even a dining area. He followed her into the bedroom, choosing to leave the lights off. Two king-sized beds faced another long window. As they entered, the clouds swirled and thinned, revealing the top of the Jinmao Tower. It was closer than he had imagined it would be, its steel-gray turrets and crenellations tapering to a long needle, like part of some immense and dangerous machine.
She went and stood by the window.
“It feels strange to be looking dow
n on it,” he said. “It’s still one of the tallest buildings in the world.”
She turned to face him. While they were kissing, she let the key drop to the floor. As always, he was aware of the heat of her mouth, a sensation so at odds with the coolness of her appearance that he doubted himself each time he noticed it. Their clothes coming away, they moved to the nearest bed. The aliveness of every inch of his skin. The beat of his blood in the dark. He had never been with anyone like her. What was so different? It was her elusiveness, perhaps. Her unapproachability. He had thought that if they made love she would become less of a mystery, but he was touching her, and then inside her, and she still escaped him. Her head tipped over the edge of the bed, as if she had abandoned her body. Her throat silvered by the neon that filtered through the window. He felt drawn into a void, swallowed up by it. He felt he might cease to exist. He didn’t care. The sex was so vivid that he forgot where he was.
Later, as he lay back, the air vibrated above him, seemingly made up of thousands of tiny moving particles. She was pressed close to him, her head against his shoulder, her body dark against the crisp white sheet. The world came back to him. The room came back. Not all at once, but gradually, like water soaking up into a paper towel. The air con’s exhalations, the low-level buzz of the flat-screen TV. The muted squawk and rumble of traffic eighty-eight floors below.
“I knew it would be good,” she said.
“When did you know?”
“When I first saw you, in the club.”
“You knew right away?”
“Before you even noticed me.” She turned to face him, her head propped on one hand. “I saw you first.”
“What was I doing?”
“Watching people dance.”