Last Days in Shanghai

by Casey Walker

  “The project is very early,” she said. “It was not so interesting.”

  Her first try at the wine was a gulp, like she was thirsty. She made a sour face. I left aside the matter of the airport for a moment and asked Li-Li to describe her impressions of my hometown.

  “The people in your town,” she said. “They live a very simple life.”

  “Simple is good?” I asked.

  “California is not what I imagined,” she said. “I thought I would see mansions everywhere.”

  “Not there, you won’t,” I said.

  She lifted her hands from her lap, gestured like she was pulling a length of string.

  “Your streets were long,” she said. “Clean. The buildings were interesting to me. Everyone was very kind. They took me to American buffet. They took me to Mexican food. They even took me to eat Chinese foods. I could accept this . . .”

  “But you missed Shanghai,” I said.

  “I did not like driving.”

  “Do you drive here?”

  “Never,” she said. “In America I learned. In two weeks. My boss said I should drive anyway, it does not matter. Californians are very ‘laid back,’ he said. You understand?”

  “I know the phrase,” I said.

  “It was not even the heat,” she said. “It was the isolation.”

  Li-Li described the toll it took on her boss as they surveyed the desert, and I felt deeply sympathetic. At the end of nearly every workday, she said, he would get screaming drunk on a bottle of the closest liquor to hand. She shook her head as she related this nightly wallowing. I wanted to tell her, in Mr. Hu’s defense, that as far as my hometown went, he was basically honoring a local custom.

  “Two times a week he made me drive him to a casino built by Indians,” Li-Li said. “I did not know that the Indians of America were such big gamblers.”

  I started to correct her but felt the history was too complicated to explain.

  “There’s a lot of empty desert between you and that casino,” I said. On bad nights, she told me, Mr. Hu would lose her whole year’s salary at the craps and roulette tables. She would sit in plush chairs near the entrance, reading simple books in English.

  “My favorite to read was Ernest Hemingway,” she said. “I always understand him.”

  Three strong gulps made short work of her wine. She started to lose her formal bearing, slouching in her chair like a teenager. She told me how she’d finished The Old Man and the Sea one evening while Mr. Hu was at the roulette wheel chasing his money down the deep hole it had disappeared into hours and hours back. She fed her nickels into the slots and won ten dollars and quit. At the end of each night, her boss threw his arms around her, less from lust than from drunkenness. Her candor surprised me. She told me she’d help her boss lurch to the car where they’d blow back through the desert, Mr. Hu demanding all the time that she drive faster, placing a hand on her thigh to force down the pedal. Along the way he had to get out of the car several times, because he was sick or because of his bladder, and once Li-Li sat at the side of the road near tears, too petrified to move, feeling the car shudder at the big rigs passing a few feet away. In his looser moments, with Li-Li behind the wheel ranging across these sand-strewn highways, Mr. Hu despaired at what he was so hard at work on—what he was killing himself for, in exile, in this wasteland, happy only when he was drunk and dreaming, or the moment before the ball on the roulette wheel stopped.

  “I make it sound terrible,” Li-Li said. She brought her hand to her mouth and sat up straight again. She’d startled herself by talking so long. “It is good to have a job.”

  “This probably isn’t what you dreamed of doing with your life.”

  “Did you say ‘dreams’?” she said.

  “Goals,” I said. “Ambitions.”

  “I have been saving,” she said quietly. “To leave this work and start a business of my own.”

  “In real estate?”

  “Skin cream,” she said, breathing her words over her empty glass, “to keep girls pale. To keep them young. I see tiny bottles women buy for hundreds of yuan.”

  She tapped her fingernail on the wine glass. The passing waitress heard the tinkling and brought her another.

  “What has been your feeling of this development project for your town?” she asked.

  “If Leo thinks he can get us an airport, I suppose I can see the benefits,” I said. “It’d bring jobs. A flood of government money. It’s not impossible.”

  “The vision is very large. Airport. Shopping. Hotels,” she said. “But Mr. Hu is not optimistic. His experience tells him America will soon fall far behind. Projects are impossible there. He said every problem is easier to deal with in China. Problems with permits. Problems with workers.”

  “Or problems with officials,” I offered. She didn’t react, but I felt a confidence had begun to develop between us.

  “Do you know Mr. Lightborn?” Li-Li asked.

  “I’ve met him,” I said. “I wouldn’t say I know him. His wife probably didn’t know him, back when he had a wife.”

  “What is he like?”

  “In what way?” I said. “In the cocktail-party sense, he’s a charming guy.”

  I wondered what else I could tell her. I could point to a few magazine profiles, but they were all toothless. Lightborn’s lawyers would descend like creatures of hell on articles that ventured into why he didn’t speak to his father, why he’d been thrown out of boarding school, why his first wife had filed a restraining order against him.

  “I am only curious because Mr. Hu feels so much stress about any meeting with Mr. Lightborn,” Li-Li said.

  “Leo turns into a teenage boy around Lightborn,” I said. Our customary currency, as assistants, were these stories about the fears and failings of the people who controlled us like marionettes.

  “Mr. Hu says Mr. Lightborn is very excited about the potential of this project with your boss,” she said.

  “Well, this is what I would say about Mr. Lightborn,” I said. “He has a habit of knowing the future.”

  “What does he know?” Li-Li asked. She handled her second glass of wine like the first, a full mouthful to start.

  I realized I wanted to hear this out loud for myself—three days in China had forced me to face up to more about Leo and Lightborn than two years of work in Leo’s office had. The tentacular structure of Lightborn’s projects was foremost in my mind—the link between the airport plans and Bund’s grandiose construction in Kaifeng and the briefcase nestled near my unpolished wingtips. Lightborn had Chinese partners with limitless visions, Leo’s district had empty land a few hours from Pacific ports and cities, and I had the briefcase that forged another link in that chain. A congressman runs on money the way a power plant runs on coal.

  I leaned forward to Li-Li. “I’ll put it this way. Lightborn is one of those guys who can buy an abandoned farm property for pennies right before the state just happens to need that land to run a highway extension.”

  “A good businessman?” Li-Li said.

  “Lightborn’s more than good,” I said. “And much more than lucky.”

  I leaned back, and what I felt, to my own surprise, was pride—like I had untied myself by explaining what I knew, or could surmise. It occurred to me that all I had to do at dinner was tell Leo I quit, and I could be flying free to New York City the very next morning. I waited for Li-Li to see what I was seeing, new vistas of sunlight with no glare of shame.

  She looked me up and down carefully. “You seem to have stress. Does your head hurt? I have medicine.”

  I told her my bulging head was just lack of sleep, and anyway I had spent two miserable years like this.

  Loosened from the beer, I asked her a favor I’d had on my mind for an hour. I’d been too ashamed to voice it. I held out the mayor’s briefcase between us.

  “Would you mind taking this home with you?” I said. “I have papers in here that I don’t trust in a hotel. I’ll arrange to get it tomorro
w before our flight.”

  Li-Li returned to her officious posture, happy to be of assistance. I told myself that in the best version of events, simple logistics would force Leo to leave the mayor’s gift behind. Li-Li would have it all to herself. She could use it to start her dreamed-of business, expensive creams for pale faces. But mostly I was relieved to be rid of a burden, even at the cost of deceiving her.

  A TAXI DROPPED me at the Shanghai riverfront for which Lightborn’s venture was named—the Bund. I stood in front of a looming Beaux Arts building that occupied an entire corner, with arched windows mounting to a cupola. It wouldn’t have been out of place in a better-preserved part of New York City, a formerly public or municipal building turned into luxury apartments. Standing in front of it gave me a sense that it was detached from a more romantic time, though even I knew the architectural legacy of Old Shanghai was pretty only if you were capable of forgetting the colonial depredations it rested on.

  I’d pulled out my last unworn shirt, French-cuffed, trying to look less obviously discomposed. A pair of my father’s silver cuff links poked out from under my rumpled blazer. I felt ready to offer Leo my resignation.

  On the fourth floor, in a lantern-lit entryway, I mentioned Mr. Hu’s name to the restaurant hostess, and she led me to his table. As I approached, with his face in silhouette, I saw a gaunt man who had enormous hands. I started to introduce myself, only to find that I had already met with those birdlike eyes.

  “You’re Mr. Hu?”

  “A pleasure again,” Shoes said.

  It was Bund’s project manager from Kaifeng. “You’re Li-Li’s boss?” I said. Another encounter with melancholy Shoes wasn’t what I had prayed for in my private moments. I was dragging all of Kaifeng behind me.

  “She is very formal, that one. Even away from the office,” Mr. Hu said. “Please sit?”

  In contrast to the banquet seating of my other formal meals in China, we faced each other across a table for four. The intimacy of it made me long for the enormity of the glass lazy Susan and the dispersal of eye contact that comes with a table of twenty. I pumped my legs under the table. We sat together waiting for our superiors to arrive.

  “You enjoyed Kaifeng?” Shoes said. “So much to learn there. China has a very long history.”

  “I’ve studied some of it,” I said weakly.

  “So you know the Tang dynasty? The Song? The Ming? The Qing?” he said. “You know Qin Shi Huang?”

  “He’s the one who built the Terracotta Army,” I said. “He ordered it built, I mean.”

  He grunted and looked toward the ceiling. I preferred talking history to calculating what to say to him about the mayor’s money or Bund or the shaky state of my boss.

  “And so the Kaifeng Hi-Tech project,” Shoes said, ducking his head nearer to mine. “Do you believe in the success of a business venture with Kaifeng? For example, now that Bund is interested to take their Chinese success to partners in the United States?”

  He was so eager to hear what I would say that his lips started forming words, like he was trying to kiss them over to me. One fact about my job in Washington: I didn’t speak until I’d first learned what people wanted to hear. With Mr. Hu, I couldn’t establish the ground beneath us.

  “What is most important in business is to be absolutely forthright,” Shoes said.

  “I’m happy for us to be as honest as possible,” I said.

  He scratched at a lemon wedge on a small plate near his water glass. The waiters stood off at a distance, in black tuxedos, against the flower-print walls, straight as the bright orange columns that separated diners from one another. Wine glasses reflected on every table like a deconstructed chandelier, and our conversation was accompanied by the xylophonic tinkle of bused water glasses and heavy silver forks tapping stoneware plates. I affected not to notice the drawn silence between us. I stared above Mr. Hu’s head trying to make Leo and Lightborn materialize behind him. My breath was high and shallow in my chest.

  “Perhaps it is best we order a dinner?” he said.

  He was less manic than the hopeless man Li-Li had described, but when he hung his head, I could see all the worry burrowed under his conversation.

  “I’m fine to wait,” I said.

  “Why is that?”

  “For Mr. Fillmore and Mr. Lightborn.”

  Shoes shook his head. Never had stiff manners seemed to conceal more despondency.

  “Mr. Lightborn will not be with us this evening, I’m sorry to say to you,” he said. “I have word that his meetings continue in Hong Kong. About your boss, you can say better than I.”

  “Are you sure about that?” I asked. I tried not to show him he’d knocked the wind out of me.

  “Order yourself a dinner,” he said. “This is, as you might say, ‘my treat.’”

  I stretched my napkin with numb hands.

  “Is there any way you could put me in touch with Mr. Lightborn?” I said.

  “We can talk, you and I.”

  “I appreciate that, Shoes,” I said. “But it’s more of a personal matter, if you don’t mind.”

  My spastic movements, shoulders shaking, and my voice rising a tone, drew askance looks from neighboring tables. The double take of two businessmen eating soup, ties tucked neatly into crevices between their shirt buttons, made me counsel myself to keep my nerves down.

  “Let’s be honest now, please,” he said. “Where is Mr. Fillmore?”

  It was like he’d reached across the table and slapped me in the face. With his long arms, he could stay seated and knock me to the floor.

  “Mr. Fillmore is here in Shanghai,” I said. “That’s the best of my knowledge.”

  He grimaced.

  “I cannot be any help,” Shoes said, like it pained him to be told such obvious lies, “without knowing the truth of the situation I am asked to assist.”

  “Leo must be with Mr. Lightborn,” I said. I rolled my shoulders, though it felt like even the smallest adjustment would rip my jacket in two.

  “This is not true as I know it,” Shoes said. “As I say, Mr. Lightborn is yet to return from Hong Kong.”

  “You know that for sure?” I asked.

  “I do not know anything for sure,” Shoes said.

  The waiter buzzed near, and Shoes flicked his wrist to wave him away and never took his eyes away from mine.

  I leaned in hard on the edge of the table.

  “My boss started drinking again, okay? With your people, in Beijing,” I said. “He got drunk, and he’s probably kept on drinking. So maybe Lightborn got held up with other business, but that means Leo’s alone. That’s not good for anyone. He’s done this before. He’s a wandering goddamn soul. Eventually what’s going to happen is someone is going to find him.”

  “Where would you find such a man?” Shoes asked.

  “How do I know where?” I came close to shouting. Shoes raised his hand and lowered it slowly like settling a lid on a pot.

  “Maybe he found a nice hotel,” I said, more steadily. “Maybe he’s in a whorehouse. Maybe he’s out of his mind and dancing in a cabaret calling himself ‘Louise’ . . . I wouldn’t rule much out. The point is he needs to be on a plane to New York City tomorrow morning.”

  Beyond the stress and fear, what I felt was resentful—like many whose fortunes have depended entirely on a benefactor’s heartbeat.

  “Let me ask you.” I put one finger on the table, like I was about to trace a route. “If the police were to pick him up before tomorrow, then what?”

  “The circumstances will depend. I know people in public security. They can be reasonable men.”

  “I’m afraid of someone getting the idea that they can score points if Leo turns up somewhere he shouldn’t be. And the optics won’t be good for Bund or Mr. Lightborn, either. Nothing about your project will be helped by Leo being caught in some scandal.”

  “Optics?” he said, confused. “Points?”

  “Political points,” I said.

  I
was holding fists and punching the air between us for emphasis. Sometime between the beginning and the end, I had let fury suppressed for days flood out to my limbs.

  “Let me make some calls,” Shoes said. “It is as important to me to speak with him as it must be to you.”

  “Call who?” I asked, lowering my voice so far that it barely registered as a question.

  “There is not anything you can do,” Shoes said. “What will you do?”

  “I have to think of how it looks,” I said. “Attention is the worst thing possible.”

  I watched two young men flip through a legal pad between them while a waiter bussed their plates. It seemed darkly possible a negotiation like mine was happening at every table.

  Shoes held his thought for a second. “You’re sure of this. His drinking?”

  “It’s happened before,” I said.

  He took this under advisement. His next question was unexpectedly gentle.

  “Can I ask you details of your business here?” Shoes said. “Your knowledge of your visit?”

  I tried to face him. But what was I willing to admit? It was clear that Lightborn, with Chinese partners, was angling for Leo’s assistance building a vast new project in our district. And I understood that the mayor of Kaifeng wanted to partner with Bund in the effort, though Mr. Hu despised him. Where Leo actually stood, what he might have promised or overpromised to Lightborn and Bund, I could only guess, but we were here, after all, and there was money. I held the first of it. Beyond that, I thought any further explanation I could get for the events of the last few days would only reflect the interests of the person I asked to cut the knot. Shoes waited on an answer I never gave him.

  “I have a classmate from university,” Shoes said. He spoke as though musing sadly to himself. “An excellent friend. Very smart. A good athlete, too. A very all-around man. He rose to the head of a ministry quickly—State Food and Drug Administration. I was always envious of him, during our friendship. He was a very flexible man, I would say. I studied him very closely. Flexibility is a necessity. He knew which way to bend, do you understand?”