by Jess Row
I was beginning to feel the tremors again, for the first time in two years. I felt my eyes wanting to close. The world tilted sideways, slightly, to the right, then the left.
On the wall directly over Pearl’s shoulder hung an enormous Art Nouveau poster of a woman bicycling down a gravel path beneath a canopy of trees, her long skirts tucked under her. Probably in the Bois de Boulogne, I thought. The legend underneath: Cyclos Le Monde. What does it mean, I thought, to hate yourself, not for what you are but for what you aren’t? To hate yourself as a kind of double negative, a self-canceling equation? I had the urge to steal something. I felt myself retiring from ambition. Enough, I thought, to simply live. To cultivate your own garden. You’re asking the world to be something it’s not. Was this the end of my dreamtime?
I feel like none of this is really happening, I said. Like Zhuangzi and the butterfly.
Her face clouded for a moment. Oh, yes, she said, brightening. The famous parable. Zhuangzi awoke from dreaming that he was a butterfly.
And didn’t know whether he was a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi.
We all can’t have it so easy, she said. Some of us are constantly reminded we’re not dreaming. But perhaps having it easy in that way isn’t so easy, either. Is that what you’re saying?
I don’t know what I’m saying. Other than I’m out of prospects.
You’ll land on your feet, she said. People like you always do. You’re well prepared. You’re—what’s the word? Wholesome.
How can you judge a thing like that?
It appeared she hadn’t heard me. When I look into your face, you know what I see? she asked. It’s that you’ve been so carefully and thoughtfully raised. With such good intentions. Like one of those cows from Japan everyone goes on about these days. It makes one wonder if you children these days have any inner resources at all. That’s what I mean when I say you’ll land on your feet. Not because you deserve anything at all, but because, I mean, you’re like little mascots, all of you. Little fetishes. Your whole generation. We’ve been propping you up. For God’s sake, we’ve been propping your parents up, too, in some cases. I mean, the world has to go on, doesn’t it, even if a little more feebly than we would have liked? Even by halfway measures? So someone will give you a job. Something that involves using a computer and writing reports and making forms for the rest of us to fill in. One of those jobs with a title that doesn’t actually mean anything. Vice President of Assessment Priorities! Do you know that one of my former students came here and took me to lunch last month, and that’s what was on his card! God forbid, of course, that there might be, say, a global financial collapse. I mean a real one. Bread lines and all. But I’m getting off track here. Listen, Kelly. Your self-loathing is just a little mental vacation. It’s as if you look at this other world and you can’t quite accept that you’re not in. You want to push your way in. I belong there! you insist. But you don’t. Good heavens me, you just don’t. You’re like one of those missionaries who insisted on staying on after the Boxer Rebellion. Some people can’t take the hint, I suppose. Decapitation’s not a strong enough warning. Want more of the Chablis?
I waved off the bottle and wiped my mouth. I’ll be going, I said.
My love to Wendy, Pearl said. And that darling baby.
Reaching for the bill, rummaging in her purse, she looked as if she might start humming a tune.
7.
Outside Martin’s room, at the top of the stairs, a large framed print leans against a marigold-yellow wall, like an unwanted party guest, too fusty, too uncool, to be allowed past the velvet rope. Ioan. Picvs Mirandvla, reads the painted legend at the top. Galleria degli Uffizi Firenze. A profile portrait, with Pico facing left, luxuriant red bangs covering all but a sliver of his face. Puffy cheeks, a bubble chin, a long haughty nose. Lose the felt cap, I’m thinking, add a little acne, and he could be in an Iron Maiden cover band.
Oh, that, Martin says, when he opens the door and sees me staring at it. Silpa gave it to me. Of course. Pico della Mirandola, our patron saint. Couldn’t figure out where to put it. Doesn’t exactly go with the decor.
Whose patron saint?
Orchid’s, of course. The whole enterprise. Didn’t you know we had a motto? It’s up on the website somewhere. Sculpt your own statue. It comes from the—what is it? “Oration on the Dignity of Man.” Of course, Silpa knows it in Latin. Not my thing, exactly. I mean, what are we, an Episcopal day school? But every company has to have a genius loci. There, I’m doing it again. He gets to me, the guy does. Anyway, how are you feeling? Phran told me you’re back to eating regular food.
I’m fine, I say. Actually, since Julie-nah left at dawn, I’ve been better than fine; I had two brioche, a mango, and an avocado shake for breakfast, read the Bangkok Post, checked my email—nothing but entreaties to rejoin, resubscribe, renew, redonate—and read the real estate listings at Shanghai Ribao. It’s been a while since I’ve looked at a Chinese newspaper; I’m not up on all the slang.
Can I come in? I ask him.
If you don’t mind the mess. Should I get him to bring us some coffee?
As he opens the door the morning sun catches me full in the face; the eaves are cut through with rows of long skylights, like mercilessly bright, oversized lamps. Squinting, I see a self-contained apartment, a white leather couch in the sitting area, a kitchenette with two barstools, a long, scarred, mahogany table at the far end, an open bathroom with a glass-fronted shower. At the table a young Thai woman—a teenager, I’m guessing, no older than eighteen—is hunched over a magazine in a pink dressing gown, drinking from a can of Diet Coke and eating chunks of papaya from a bowl.
Martin follows my eyes—how can he not? I’ve never learned suavity, not in these situations.
That’s Mai, he says. Mai waves and gives me a wide, practiced smile. Someone has instructed her on the importance of smiling to Americans.
I would introduce you more properly, he says, but she doesn’t speak English at all. She’s from the south. Half-Malay family. Terribly shy around people she doesn’t know.
It’s been six days since I’ve been in Bangkok, I calculate, allowing my eyes to wander diplomatically, and I’ve become used to these little bursts of silence, little concussions, like the drawn breaths in the room after a loud fart or a child blurting out a secret—where you can feel the data itself in the air, stirred up and settling. There must have been part of Martin, I’m thinking, that thought I would have left by now. That expected and wanted as much. And I’m depriving him, with a definite thrill, of that satisfaction. I’m learning what it means to take a meeting.
So, I say, sitting down in a chair that flanks the couch. There’s something I wanted to go over with you. A point of clarification. Silpa asked me a question yesterday, and I’ve been pondering it ever since.
See? he says. I told you he’s like that. Always cuts to the bone. What was it?
I pinch the bridge of my nose, hoping the headache won’t come back.
My dissertation—you know, when I was at Harvard, my graduate work? It was on two Chinese poets in the Song dynasty. Wu Kaiqin and Meng—
I know. I know.
You know?
Silpa gave me the rundown.
A tinny beat, a ringtone, erupts on the other side of the room. I’ve heard that song, I realize after a moment: Party in the U.S.A. Mai rummages in her tiny green purse, squints at the screen, and turns it off. Martin makes a show of stifling a yawn and indiscreetly checks his watch.
So why am I telling you this? Why do you think, Martin?
Don’t be hostile, Kelly. It’s not your strong suit.
He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and through the loose drapery of his clothes I can see the tensed arch of his back, his swimmer’s body, the thin and efficient muscles.
I like it, he says. Miao. The universal solvent. It has a ring to it. We can use that somewhere. Trademark it.
That wasn’t my point.
Everyone’s got
to have a story, right? he says. So this is yours. Silpa dragged it out of you: good for him. I don’t buy it, though. This is why you want to become Chinese? For life? Because of something in an old poem? A footnote? What, you think miao is some kind of cure-all? You want to bottle it?
What makes you think that it was my idea?
I’m not saying it was. I’m saying you’re amenable to the suggestion. Right? I mean, isn’t that what we’re talking about? Silpa gave you the straight sales pitch. Okay. I mean, I would have waited.
What’s the sales pitch?
For the first time since we’ve been in Bangkok, he aligns his face with mine. His eyes, if such a thing were possible, have become more wide-set. Softer, filmier. I’m beginning to see eyes differently: as independent entities, as matter, as material.
He told you that you were one of us. That the rest of your life has been leading up to this point. What you couldn’t find in literature—look, didn’t he say it well enough? I can be a good salesman. I am a good salesman. But not with you. I said I wouldn’t do it with you. It’s too close. I have principles. I said to him, if you want this, you have to pursue it. He has to make up his own mind.
He gives a big snort and touches each eye with the heel of his palm, as if to drive it further into its socket. And I almost want to, almost am capable of, believing him.
To be honest, he says, I never thought you were such a strong candidate in the first place. Too cerebral. Too equivocal. Not broken enough.
What does that mean?
What do you think it means? It means, fundamentally, that this is just an episode for you. Just a chapter in a long and fulfilling life. Look, I won’t deny the trauma. It’s a horrible, unimaginable thing. But you’ve already landed on your feet. You’re not a wreck. You’re trying to be a wreck. But that’s the way it always was, right? You felt these things, but it didn’t stop you from going on and living the life you were supposed to have. Amherst. China. A Ph.D. A wife. A family. The pendulum swings, but it just comes back to normal in the end, doesn’t it? People like you always find something to do.
Who are you to speak for me? I should ask him. Why do you get to decide? I should be all heated and blustery, my face an angry pimple, indignant, pacing, hands on hips. What I didn’t say to Pearl Chen—I have that in me now. But he’s right, he’s absolutely right: I was that person. I was that Kelly Thorndike. And now, unbelievably, I’m not.
I can already stand outside of this argument, I’m thinking. All I need is a new name. Wang. I’ve always wanted to be a Wang. Four strokes, , meaning king, the second or third commonest of the old hundred names. In my freshman year Chinese 1 class it was the first character in the workbook. I practiced writing it a hundred times over; when the spaces ran out I used pages of my spiral notebook. I didn’t want to go on to the next one. Wang, like an E that faces both ways. It made me shiver. It makes me shiver. Wo xing Wang. My name is Wang. I am the third person in this room.
I look over my shoulder at Mai, licking papaya juice from her fingers.
The fourth person in the room.
I mean, he says, this book about me, whatever you’re going to write, it’s just writing. Isn’t that true? You already churned out five hundred pages on Wu this and Fong that. Who gives a shit? But no, that’s what people like you do. They just keep on producing, whether the world wants it or not. And then find a way to make the world pay for it.
White people.
White people. No doubt. You know what I’m saying. I mean, you feel like you had to work hard for what you’ve got, but not that hard, in the end, right? So there’s a little guilt in there as well? And what do you do with guilt, except write another book about it?
So that’s the standard? Mai looks up from her magazine, alarmed by the break, the misfire, in my voice box. I mean, I say, Martin, seriously. Who are you looking for, then? Do you have a cutoff point for total liquid assets? Or certain admissible careers only? Isn’t there some business maxim about not second-guessing the customer’s motivations?
You’re not a customer. You’re an investor. And anyway, look at Julie-nah. We’ve already made one huge mistake. After that I promised myself: no more intellectuals. They ruin everything.
Too ambivalent? Too conceptual?
Too motherfucking in love with their own algorithms! With all due respect, Kelly, you don’t understand wealth. Nobody understands wealth less than people like you. People so far down the line of inheritance that they think they don’t even have to care about it. I’m looking for people who can’t live without money. The self-made. And, of course, the outright hedonists. Okay, of course, Silpa has his criteria. He does a psychological workup. There’s always a narrative attached to that. But eventually all that stuff has to take a backseat to the forces of the market. That’s why I keep saying: we have to be entrepreneurial. We have to be change agents. Leave the theorizing for later. I can recognize the people who really need it. The ones who have the bug. The early adopters. You’re not it. Count yourself lucky.
And you hired me for—
For the American market. Because, look, Americans care about the backstory. They want to be spoon-fed. It has to be inspirational; it has to warm those little fat-clogged hearts. That’s what I want from you. And believe me, that’s all. I expect you to hold up your end of the bargain, take your money and walk away. Anything else is your own business. I’m on the record now saying this wasn’t my idea.
And if I don’t go through with it—if I stay as I am—you’re saying I’m safe? I can go back to the United States? To Baltimore, even? No dropping a dime on me? No manila envelopes to the Sun?
You’re still worried about that?
Wouldn’t you be?
He takes a deep breath.
Okay. Okay. I can see why you don’t trust me right now. I get that. But I hope you can see, too, why all this was necessary. It’s a process. It’s a—okay, if you want to use that word, it’s a recruitment. All in the service of a larger goal. Tell me, just using common sense, using everything you know about me, knew about me, am I into pointless revenge? Do I hold grudges? I’m telling you to go home. What good does it do me to hold this over your head? In any case, I’d have to expose myself. For them to reopen the case. I’d have to testify.
So you’ve thought about it.
I haven’t thought about it. I’m improvising. You brought it up, remember?
We’re having a staring contest, a don’t-blink contest.
One thing is clear to me, I’m thinking, with a kind of creeping horror. Who was it that said, just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you? I lived with the knowledge of what happened to Alan, correction, what I did to Alan, alone for so long that it turned into a dream. Yes, okay, I talked to Cox about it. At the brink of adulthood, fatherhood, I tried to buy some certainty, some quiet skeleton-in-the-closet insurance, under the curtain of attorney-client privilege. But it wasn’t a dream. Someone else has been thinking about it. The parallel life, the worst-case-scenario life, in which I do five in Jessup, maybe three with good behavior, plus five more on parole, and then try to find a job that hires felons with Ph.D.’s. Driving a school bus, maybe. Living in my parents’ basement. Someone else has had that bad dream, too. Planning, waiting, watching. Or not. It almost doesn’t matter. My life, my life, the life I thought I was living privately, was always, all the time, dangling on that string.
Martin, I say, sticking out my lower jaw, as if that will add a little extra rumble, a baritone undercurrent, for once. Will you answer a simple question? If I wanted to be completely safe, if I wanted to know I’d never be found out, if I wanted Kelly Thorndike to vanish off the face of the earth, case closed, no mention of Alan or an accidental—
You think you’re Pablo Escobar? That’s not what this is for.
Answer the question.
We’d never acknowledge you. It wouldn’t even help, for our purposes.
Answer the question.
You
want us to be in the Rolodex of every cartel leader, every norteño, every oligarch Putin’s sick of, every minor Al-Qaeda honcho, every spare yakuza and sick sub-Saharan dictator with a billion in IMF dollars in the bank? Because that’s going to be the result. Word gets out. Why would we agree to that? We’re trying to get out of the gray market.
Answer the question.
Yeah. okay. It’ll be easy. Silpa’s ready. The facial surgery—the epicanthus, the eye shaping, a little work on the lips—it’s pretty straightforward, actually. Even the pigmentation. He’s been doing experiments on mice for years. Carotenoids. You wouldn’t believe it. I mean, it really does turn yellow. But look. I’m telling you. Just because Einstein said it was possible doesn’t mean they should have built the atomic bomb. It’s not for you. I’m telling you it’s not for you. He should never have said anything.
Who are you, Martin? I wish I could ask him. And were the tears real? For a moment he seems to shimmer in the air in front of me, like a cheap hologram in a Seventies movie. Friend, comrade, nemesis, exploiter? He licks his lips and looks over his shoulder at Mai. What can money do if it can’t smooth over life’s little inconsistencies?
Martin, I say, Silpa didn’t say anything. Julie-nah did.
I’ve caught him at a pensive moment, looking over my shoulder, elbows on his knees, cradling an invisible globe in the webwork of his fingers. And there he stays. As still as a photograph. As wax. For the longest increment possible he doesn’t even blink, his nostrils don’t flare.
And now, he says finally, his eyes still raised beyond mine, still in the same disembodied position. Now what, Kelly? Now you get to call me a big fat liar?
Martin, I say, my tongue grown thick and dry, a foreign object, a giant’s fat digit resting in my throat. You’re still my friend. I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt.