Her eyes seize mine for an instant. “My husband make all the papers our daughter American citizen and this make me worry something, maybe he just take her. American men do this. I tell Hah-row something so true: ‘You do this me, you take our daughter I know some people and they find you, some people Beijing find you make you so sorry you do this to me.’”
I gaze at my beef and noodles. I’m so in the mood for a wedding.
Phoebe has, at least, promised an interview with an uncle of the bride. He was a famous conductor before the Red Guard imprisoned him for playing Western music. Which if it was Schoenberg I can understand.
Outside is a loud karump followed by howls of laughter. Phoebe and I look through the front window to see the underside of a three-wheel taxi, its wheels spinning. The driver must have whipped the steering wheel too quickly, and now his buggy is upside down in the middle of the street. Several four-wheel cabbies, standing and smoking nearby, are in hysterics, pointing and applauding. After a moment the driver crawls out and rubs his head. Now a passenger emerges from the other end of the taxi and does the same.
“Why don’t those men help?” I ask Phoebe.
She shakes her head in disgust. “So many Chinese act like this, just make me crazy.” She checks for messages on her phone, and I watch the driver and his fare try to right the taxi.
There’s an old story about a naughty little boy whose family lived near a ferry landing. The boy passed his time jeering at travelers as they struggled to load their donkeys and cargo onto the unstable ferry. One day the boy’s mother fell into the cooking fire and four days later died. Following the funeral, the boy’s family packed their belongings to start over in another province. At the landing, their donkey balked at stepping onto the ferry, and the boy was enlisted to help. As he did so, he peered at the empty spot where he’d so often stood laughing.
That story is the origin of the saying, “He who loves his mother laughs not at his neighbor’s ass.”
Phoebe switches off her phone, and we watch the driver and his passenger climb into the righted mini-taxi and putter away. Now she looks down at her soup bowl and mutters something in street Cantonese as the drunkest of the four Japanese men wobbles toward our table with a bottle of maotai and a grin.
“A drink for friends,” the man says to me.
I gesture toward my half-full cellophane teacup. “Thanks just the same.”
Unfazed, the stranger lifts my cup and dumps my remaining tea into Phoebe’s. At this, Phoebe rises and stalks toward the restrooms. The man’s friends shouting encouragement, he all but fills my cup with Chinese jet fuel and pushes the drink on me before spreading his feet, lifting his glass, and announcing a toast in Japanese.
Oh what the hell.
“May your seventh generation have facial hair,” I say.
We bottoms-up as the other Japanese cheer loudly. The shudder is five seconds in coming but it registers on the Richter scale.
Pleased, the man pours us a second drink while proposing a toast having something to do, I think, with baseball, four-stroke engines, and seaweed soup.
I lift my cup. “To international incompetence.”
We down the maotai, to more cheers and laughter. At this delicate moment, Phoebe steps out of the restroom and walks straight for the door.
Oops.
I fumble for my wallet and my last hundred-yuan note. The Japanese man meanwhile grabs my wrists and says, loudly enough for Phoebe to hear, “Yellow Fever very good, hah?”
I yank free, drop the note on the table, and barely manage to throw myself inside the Buick before it backs out of the parking space.
Neither Phoebe nor I speak for quite some time. I contemplate spending a long day in the company of yet another woman who understands me rather too well. Hopefully, after the theft of the bride, wine will flow like water and maotai like wine.
Guangzhou falling behind us, I’m left with one indelible image of the city once called Canton: downtown traffic at a standstill, a sandaled man weaving through twelve lanes of idling cars on a flat-bed tricycle bearing a Queen Anne chair and a stack of cardboard boxes topped by a Shi Tzu in a bird cage. Steadying the load is an older man, seated in the Queen Anne chair, his legs crossed, placidly smoking a cigarette.
Phoebe breaks the silence listlessly, as though no one is listening. “Hah-row tell me he want divorce go back America with girlfriend take our daughter, just give me some money. I say no.”
I say nothing.
“I don’t care this,” says Phoebe. “I go my aerobics class every morning, do my oil painting, play with my daughter, I don’t care Hah-row.”
“If he wants a divorce,” I say, “give it to him. Make him pay through his big Jewish nose. It’s the American way.”
Her eyes flare. “American way buy my daughter? Chinese way the daughter stay with her mother until she marry.”
Again the car is silent. Gradually a featureless bank of grey overtakes the sun. The whole sky is overcast by the time the Buick enters the village of Fuling, a sagging sorrow of dirty masonry and parked motorcycles. We turn onto a narrow cobbled lane and stop in front of a modern apartment building where the groom’s party, each man white-shirted and neck-tied, is forming ranks beside five highly polished luxury cars. You can smell the money.
A somber young man notices our Buick and flings a just-lit cigarette as he hurries toward us. Phoebe motors down her window and introduces me to the best man—in China, it’s he who makes all the wedding arrangements—who smiles as he greets Phoebe, revealing a jumble of over-long teeth. As the two jabber, I see him check his watch three times.
The bride and groom, Phoebe has told me, are upscale professionals who share a trendy Beijing apartment. They decided to honor their families by marrying in the old way, even consulting a Taoist priest for an auspicious date.
After a moment the happy groom ambles over to the Buick. He is handsome and excited, two red roses in his lapel and a dozen more in his hand. In all, I count eighteen men here, each as young and winning as the next. Maybe I should have given my clothing a little more thought. I think I’ve slept in these two nights in a row.
Checking his watch again, the best man shouts a command and everyone dives into the highly polished cars. With a squealing of tires, the motorcade, our Buick last of all, begins to move along a narrow street littered with bits of red paper from spent fireworks. The sun peeks through the clouds then vanishes once more, and I gather my jacket a little closer to my throat.
Phoebe says cheerfully, “I think Hah-row just tell somebody kill me.”
Her eyes turn to meet mine for a moment. “So easy do this, you have money, make some connection, nobody care.”
“Has he threatened you?”
Phoebe doesn’t answer. A long minute later, the motorcade stops before a rust-streaked tenement overlooking the currentless Luxi River. Phoebe kills the engine and we both gaze at a lone fisherman standing and poling a flatboat. The groom’s party assembles along the sidewalk and gazes up at a third-floor balcony. One young man throws a pebble through the open balcony door and the others cheer.
Combing her hair with her fingers, Phoebe tells the windshield, “Hah-row girlfriend call me on the phone, not same girlfriend, some different girlfriend, say you give Hah-row divorce very quick or something bad happen.”
“Hire some protection,” I say. “You have access to Harold’s money. Use it.”
She shrugs. “I know some people Beijing. Maybe I go there.” She turns to me. “You want go there?”
I stiffen. “To Beijing? Now?”
“Never mind this,” she says curtly, turning away.
“Phoebe—”
“Never mind this.”
“Phoebe, I can’t just drop everything and—”
My voice trails off. Crap. I’d hoped this woman’s troubles might result in some kind of personal windfall. It’s looking more and more like a deadfall.
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I’m stopped b
y the sight of Phoebe Sternbaum, her thin fingers playing in her hair. A shaft of light has knifed through the clouds and now touches the edges of her features with the palest possible gold. Her black silk flowing, strong artist’s features set in a pout, this woman is as arresting a sight as I can presently recall.
With a raucous cry, the groom’s party assaults the stairs of the tenement. I’m still staring at Phoebe Sternbaum, who turns to look at me, the pout still in place. As I watch, her eyes take in all my admiration.
I do love a woman who can enjoy her own beauty.
Chapter Fifteen
I answer the phone on about the ninth ring, which is how long it takes for me to realize I am asleep amid my sister’s lavender-scented pillows and not being chased through a penis farm by Bo Diddley astride a camo-painted ATV. It’s a relief, actually, as Bo was wielding that X-shaped guitar like an M-16 and the cash crop was starting up with that one-eyed gape that most days of the week indicates one hell of a screwing. A bit blearily, I place the American Teacher’s Phone against my good left ear while Lillian’s voice explains why she once more won’t be making her flight from Memphis. It seems that Mom had a really rough night. Quite the coincidence. I myself stayed very late at that Triad bar Arnie’s been telling me about. They do teach macramé in the back. I made half a sock.
“Listen,” says Lil, “you have to call my boss, Joe, and tell him I can’t make the faculty meeting tomorrow but will absolutely be back Monday for the first day of classes. His number’s there by the phone.”
“Nnngh,” I mutter, groping for the ibuprofen. That was a really close call at the penis farm. I still don’t feel entirely safe so near Lillian’s sex toys, especially the long black one.
“No, this isn’t nnngh,” says Lillian. “This is my job. Call him.”
Nnngh.
“Don’t you even want to hear about Mom? You never ask about her.”
“How’s Mom?” I ask, locating the ibuprofen beside the bottle of ma huang. I dump an unknown quantity of each into my mouth. I think something went down a nostril.
“You never ask about me, either,” says Lil.
“How are you?”
“God, I don’t know,” she sighs. “Just being back in Memphis is weird enough. I’m still jet lagged and it never stops raining and Mom’s vital signs are all over the place. The doctor’s putting her on two new meds. He says—”
“What?” I say, reaching for my notes. “Our mother is already taking fourteen medications. Rush Limbaugh doesn’t take fourteen medications.”
“You sound hung over,” says Lil.
“I don’t yet qualify for hung over. Technically, I think I’m still drunk. I checked online, and the levothyroxine is probably screwing with the pioglitazone and the—”
“Levo-what?” she asks.
“Are you looking at the list? Levothyroxine. It’s her hormone replacement. Regis Labs, five hundred mils, morning and night.”
“Regis Labs,” says Lil. “That’s funny.”
“Why would Regis Labs be funny?”
“They’re a client,” says Lil. “Stuart has them on retainer. I don’t think he ever does a thing.”
“Ask the doctor about the celecoxib. The paroxetine, too. Both of those are way over-prescribed.”
“Celecoxib… and… paroxetine,” says Lil. “You know, this is bringing up all your Mom stuff.”
“This is not a good moment for discussing my Mom stuff.”
“Name me one moment that ever was.”
Falling back on the pillows, I toss the notebook, missing the table.
“Mom was an asshole,” I tell my sister. “Doesn’t make for much of a conversation, does it?”
She never did anything you could actually point to. The courts do not remove children from the home because of the plastic covers on the living-room furniture. You don’t go on SSI because your mother failed to make eye contact before your twenty-seventh birthday.
“I thought you were over it,” says Lil.
“I’m over it. I just don’t understand it.”
After a moment she says, “I understand it. I’m just not over it.”
There were plastic covers on our mattresses and pillows, too. I was a college senior before I could sleep on a bed that didn’t go crinkle-crinkle in the night. As an underclassman I kept a Wonder Bread wrapper under my pillow.
“How’s it going with that animal in my kitchen?” says Lil.
“I’m studying its habits.”
“You’re what?”
“Before you take an animal out,” I say, “you study its habits.”
“Doo, buy a goddamn trap.”
“What size? Baited with what? Placed where? And while you’re waxing eloquent on the subject of wild-game management, dearest dear, you might suggest a blunt object to place beside the bed with which to, stark naked, beat its brains out when the trap that you would have me buy catches it by a forepaw.”
Actually, everything I need to know was written in the flour I scattered on the kitchen floor that first night. I need to buy a goddamn trap.
“I’m going to come back there,” says Lil, “and you’re going to have a bound-and-indexed dissertation on the rat in my kitchen, and—”
“I’ll take care of it,” I tell her.
“Today?”
“Very, very soon.”
The soon whistles slightly because of my missing maxillary first premolar crown. I was eating at the school lunchroom yesterday—mistake number one—and chewing a mouthful of rice—mistake number two; no one chews rice in this country—when a small pebble turned my gold maxillary first premolar crown into a mortar round. Which is to say it come out. I now have an appointment with a dentist whose name sounds like something a xylophone would say. Let’s just hope that’s not mistake number three.
“I found that guy’s business card,” says Lil. “The debt-collector guy? He’s with a company in Kansas City called International Wholesale Distributors.”
“It’s taken care of,” I say. “Gotta go. Time to seize the day, or at least go hug the toilet for a while.”
“Doo, when are you going to start taking care of yourself?”
“We have strong constitutions, Lillian. We don’t need to take care of ourselves.”
“Yes, we do,” says Lil. “You’ll call Joe for me? Without fail?”
“What does syzygy mean?” I ask.
“What?”
“Never mind,” I say. “I’ll call him.”
Making local calls from the American Teacher’s Apartment is straightforward enough, if I admitted it. Just pick up and dial. Two days ago I picked up and dialed Phoebe’s penthouse. She hasn’t returned my message. I suppose it would have been a small miracle if she had, though we may have achieved a small reconciliation during the wee hours of the wedding party. I think I blundered into her on the dance floor. What we did next seemed to be dancing. I was dancing anyway.
“This makes me so nuts,” says Lil, “trying to be on both sides of the world at the same time. There’s something, like, really important going on in China right now. It’s killing me. You know what I mean?”
I never know what she means. “Yeah.”
“Seriously,” says Lil.
“You’re talking about completion,” I say.
“How did you know that? That’s exactly what it is. The Three-three-three’s almost here. Tree says she doesn’t know if we’ll get a window. Do you feel like we’ll get a window? I’m not feeling like we’ll get a window.”
“Have a nice day, Lil.”
“Can’t. It’s night here.”
“Then have a nice one of those,” I say.
“Love you. Call Joe. And buy a trap.”
With a groan, I recover my notebook from the floor and shake off a couple of dust bunnies. Again I see the words: Regis Labs. I know I’ve seen that name before.
Shivering a little from the morning chill, I rise to switch on Lil’s computer, then the kitchen hot plate before
stumbling into the bathroom to hear the American Teacher’s Computer wheedle and squawk like some kind of rheumatic prehistoric bird. Not to say this computer is old, but the keyboard’s a manual. I swing back through the front room to hit the dial-up before returning to the kitchen to start tea and egg-drop oatmeal. No hurry. I could create an alcoholic beverage in the time it takes for Lil’s homepage to load.
So. International Wholesale Distributors, is it? That’s exactly the kind of name you’d choose for a business that fronts for narcotics, prostitution, and all-occasion nose-cropping. I still can’t believe I dropped forty-seven thousand dollars in less than three hours, let alone to a guy named Louie the Snail. That’s probably how he’s known in KC. He has two sons named Bugsy and Vinnie.
As I load the rice cooker, I replay my swaggering entrance to the party, the nearness of the gaming table clearly palpable and slightly salty on the tongue as I bore my wine goblet from room to room, pool to patio, overburdened white tablecloth to overstocked bar, noting as I strode through the blasé and over-tanned crowd the video surveillance cameras tucked into this nook and that fern; noting too on the faces of the minglers little glances that said who’s that? I held myself even taller than usual, towering above the torpid rich in their surrendering skin, their shedding scales. Isn’t that Julian Mancer? I flowed past them like a wind, black-out shades in place, magnificent platinum mane sailing around my ears as I followed the unmistakable scent of money.
Clearly there was a lot of it.
Gambling is a vice and an addiction and an abomination and a very Marxist institution for the redistribution of wealth. I felt a major wealth adjustment coming as I crossed yet another patio and entered a formal antechamber attended by more gym rats in black-out shades of their own, plus little wires in their ears. They mutely scanned the stream of people passing through the antechamber into a larger, dimly lit room emitting early Miles.
I sauntered through the antechamber as though I owned the place and immediately wished it were true, as the dimly lit room was adorned with eight tastefully posed women elevated on separate black rectangular boxes. They weren’t wearing clothes. For each, strategically placed spotlights illuminated this dangerous curve, that fine-pored meadow. Slowing my gait to observe, I found that each of the boxes rotated slowly on an unseen turntable, which effected an ever-changing landscape of warm light and dramatic shadow. Security guards stood quite nearby, there being no velvet restraining ropes, and I was happy to join the unruly gaggle, male and female alike, pressing close enough to the nearest model to, had we dared, lean ever so slightly and kiss her sainted thigh.
The Year of the Hydra Page 16