The Emperor of Shoes

by Spencer Wise

  * * *

  It was evening. No human sound, just the cicadas fiddling, frogs lowing in the rain gutters, and Ivy and I sat in my little kitchen eating frozen durian, chopped in half, and we dug into the smooth and sweet and funky meat with a spoon. She had one half, I had the other.

  We were silent for a while. Looking at each other. The spikes of the rind pressed into my palm. The adrenaline only now starting to settle. But I still felt my skin tingle and my legs were all rubbery.

  I put my durian back in the freezer and I stood for a long time in front of the open door, feeling the cold on my face. Then I went and sat back down beside Ivy, who kept taking one more spoonful and saying, “No more,” and she licked the back of the spoon and pushed the frozen fruit away, but then taking one last bite, and sighing, and pushing it again, farther each time, until finally it was out of arm’s reach. When she couldn’t push it away any farther, she drew her feet up onto the seat of the chair, knees to her chest.

  “The others told me,” she said, pausing. “Zhang wanted violence.”

  “He would’ve gotten you run over.”

  “I trusted him,” she said. “And he betrayed me.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “It was his plan all along.”

  “You won’t work with Zhang,” I said. “Right?”

  She laughed. “No. Never. He only wants a military coup. This is not a good answer to our problems.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Thank you,” she said. And I could tell she wanted to say more or clarify what she was thanking me for. Instead, she said, “The speech you made. You mean all this? A real Chinese national product here. At this plant. Do you really believe this can work?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  She looked off for a moment. A crease of worry on her forehead.

  “What about the rest of China?” she said. “What you suggest works for this plant only.”

  “I don’t know. I can’t do anything about the rest of China. Isn’t it enough to start here?”

  She nodded.

  “Your way means China depends on outsiders. Outsiders to invent product to make the plant profitable. This won’t work. Do you see? We need this for ourselves.”

  “The brand is for them, the workers, as much as for me.” I was irritated. She’d called me an outsider twice. Drawing some sort of line. “But it has to be from the top down. At first.” I shook my head. “What’s going on here?”

  “Zhang failed me and your vision is more outsiders coming in. Between that, no place for me.”

  Her eyes strained, but her voice was flat, calm.

  I sensed what she meant, but I didn’t dare say it. Or ask.

  And we said no more.

  She went off to bed.

  17

  BUT I DON’T sleep. It’s almost over. All of it. I go to the window to look outside and the whole night nearly passes. I rode that houseboat on the Pearl River all the way here, and now it is very late and the air is thick and tight, and I’m looking at the tattered banners swinging from the factory windows, and what people will see on YouTube tomorrow will maybe lead to the next protest, and the next one. And one of these times the Chinese won’t lower their guns. They’ll shoot. Rubber bullets the first time; real ones the second. This started way before me.

  And us?

  I love her. But I keep hearing Ivy’s words, You’re not home in the revolution. You’re not home here. You’re still an outsider.

  But she hadn’t said that. No, she never said that. I’m saying it. Of course I don’t belong there.

  What’s so bad about being a Jew?

  Once we were so powerful we had to be expelled, imprisoned, burned to ash. Marked for murder because we were too big to live.

  But in America I was just another white person. Born into bland nothingness. We all were. Look, act the same as the rest.

  Incinerated by sameness.

  So maybe I came to China to be hated. Important enough to be loathed again. To make a name. A brand. In his own way, a shoe man can stand out.

  I turn around and Ivy is sitting up in bed watching me. Her face is in the shadow but the rest of her I can see, the outline of her body under the white sheet and her one leg twisted outside of it.

  “Come to bed,” she says.

  “How long have you been up?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  I get into bed under the cool sheets. She hooks her leg between mine. Her feet are cold. She stares at me. Our heads on the pillow and the smell of the clean linens and with the blue light from the moon behind me, her face in shadow, I can’t tell if she’s smiling or not, even though we’re inches away. Our noses almost touching.

  “You will talk to him?” she asks. “Your father.”

  “I have to. In the morning.”

  She kisses me slow and sweet. She draws me near. The ceiling fan thumps softly overhead. No, she is smiling for sure. Running her hand through my hair.

  Then I feel a shift in her.

  She gently places her palm flat against my chest.

  “You are going to tell him?” she says.

  “Tell what?”

  “Tell him you’re the Emperor. This is the silly name he calls himself, right?”

  I shake my head. “No more empires.”

  She smiles. “You must speak to him.”

  “You’d make a much better Emperor anyhow.”

  “Maybe,” she says. “But not here. This is your place.”

  I feel my heart sink.

  “I need you here,” I say.

  “The goal is much bigger.”

  “Why are you saying this?”

  “Because it is true.” A sadness in her tone. “Here is not enough.”

  Her eyes widen. It takes me a moment to understand.

  Then it’s quiet and we both are realizing that we are in bed for the last time together.

  I lift my hand to her cheek and my palm is burning.

  She smiles. “It’s okay. You know your job is here. If you want to help, this is your small corner of the revolution. This is how it starts. Small. What other way is there? A coup? Another dictator?”

  I knew she was right. I didn’t want to know it. I wanted to unknow the whole thing and make her stay.

  “I’ll tell him,” I say. It catches in my throat.

  I ache for her. To make this last. But it starts to sink in. No more. She senses it too. She’s pinching me tighter with her legs.

  When the sun rises, I’ll have to put one foot in front of the other for the rest of my life.

  And I’m already crying.

  She swipes at her eyes with the back of her wrist. “I wanted your father to like me.”

  “Impossible,” I say. “I don’t think he even likes me.”

  She laughs. Shaking a few tears loose. She wipes them off.

  I’m aching for her even as she’s an inch away. I’m nearly blind from it. From looking so hard into the shadow of her face. And she knows me, which is why she can say these things. And I know her. I do. In this moment I am sure of it. Sure that this is the closest I’ve ever felt to another human being. Complete.

  “What if something happens to you?” I say.

  “I explained before. Everything for China.”

  “I’m no Emperor,” I say.

  “You are the rabbi, yes? The rabbi of shoes.”

  “Ha. No, not that either. Something different.”

  “You will think of it. I am confident.”

  “You won’t sleep, will you?” I ask. “Tonight.” It’s a teenage thing to say. Like falling asleep with the phones against our ears.

  “No. Will you?”

  “No.”

  But we do. Both of us. Our eyes get heavy and we try to
fight it but that makes us fall asleep even faster.

  When I wake in the morning, I open my eyes and she’s not here. What is here? She’s put a mint from the Intercontinental Hotel on the crisp white pillow where her head had lain.

  I smile. I sit up and say her name. Ivy. I say it again. I listen for the shower. I say it again. Louder. In Chinese this time. Even though I know. And then I stop. She’s gone.

  That is it. She’s vanished into the plant. Into me. And she’s gone on to do bigger work.

  * * *

  I cross the yard and head inside the admin building, a quick scent of incense from the altar table in the lobby, and I decide I want to run up the stairs. I pull open the door to the stairwell, and take the stairs two at a time, this tightness growing in my chest as I push forward against the thick heavy air, and then I’m jogging over the terrazzo floor in the corridor and there’s Dad’s office up ahead and I grab the doorjamb with my hand and swing myself square in the center of the frame, breathless. Dad’s facing the window, hands folded behind his back, like he’s still listening to the crowd cheer, and the noise quiets and my breathing with it.

  Without turning around, Dad says, “You ruined us. I hope you’re happy. No one will touch us now. We’re dead.”

  “We’re not dead,” I say. “We’re changing. They’re telling us what they want.”

  Then he turns around slowly and holds the back of his chair.

  “Help me understand what kind of moron stands in front of a truck,” he says.

  When I don’t answer he sighs and starts walking toward me and we meet at the center of his office.

  “All these years I put into you—for you to throw spite, throw shit at me, after I made you. Trained. Invested. What did I tell you after you signed? The one rule. In the van. One rule.”

  “Don’t fuck your own family.”

  “That’s right. And what did you do?”

  “You know you lied to me the whole time,” I say. “You could’ve told me. Any of it.”

  He pushes me away. “Lied? I protected you. When it’s time to tell, I tell. Oh, wipe that look off your face. You’re going to judge me? Because I got my hands dirty. This is the world. We do things we don’t like. You think I liked going to shul every Friday with the hardest seats in the world, so my tuchus hurt three days after. No. But I went. You do what it takes.”

  “That’s what I’m doing,” I say.

  His eyes widen.

  “Let me say something,” I say. “And I want you to listen. Really try and listen.”

  “Look what you did,” he says, pointing out the window to the courtyard.

  “Look at me when I say this, please. You won’t like it. But let me talk. I’m going to make this brand. I won’t do it private label. We’re going to make it here as a brand at no profit for the first few seasons.”

  “Are you fucking nuts? You’ll ruin us.”

  “It’s for them,” I say. “They risked everything to be out there.”

  “Who gives a fuck?” he says. “This isn’t about them.”

  “But it is.”

  His face goes slack. Uncomprehending. What can I say to him to make it clear? Gang’s path is profit by any means; Zhang’s is bloody revolution, but this is the third way, and I was doing it for all of us.

  It’s something Dad will never understand. That’s why he tried to steal it. It was the very thing separating me from my father, so of course he had to steal it. Possess it. All that was between us.

  “You’re going to make the brand?” Dad asks.

  “That’s right. I’m going to make Alex & Ivy—” and that just slips out. I’d meant to finesse it. Wait for the right time, pick my spot, but it’s out now.

  “What is—” he asks, slow and strained. “Is that the name of the brand? What kind of farshtunken name is that? For her? You did all this for the farmer?”

  I stare at him cold.

  “Jesus fucking Christ, Alex.” He takes a breath and speaks in a low, confiding voice. “Alex, tell me, am I supposed to give all my money away to beggars and we live homeless so everyone can be happy? This you want? I should give it away. Out of the kindness of my heart. You want me to give Ivy money?”

  “I never said that.”

  “I can’t understand,” he stammers. “The name. Not Bernie? Not Fedor and Alex? Which would fucking make sense by the way. Since I am your father. You and me. Not even us? Listen, honey—” he actually says honey, like I’m five. “Alex, honey, we’ve got to understand each other to make this thing work. We have to be on the same page.”

  “Maybe we don’t,” I say.

  He shakes his head like I slapped him. “What does that mean?”

  “I’m going to do this my way.”

  “Your way—” he says. His lip trembles.

  “I want my name on this. You’re happy to sit here and fuck Karri and ignore everything that’s happening right under your nose in China and have other people’s labels on your work. So, fine. But that’s not the future for me or for this factory.”

  “What’s going on here?”

  I look at him hard. “Maybe we don’t need you.”

  He straightens up. His face bloodless, drained.

  “What?” he asks. Louder.

  I swallow hard. Feels like there’s a spike in my throat. “I said maybe we just don’t need you.”

  “Gonif!” he yells, pointing at me with a shaky finger. “Luftmensch! Shitbum!”

  Before I can make sense of anything, he’s driving me backward with his finger and big barrel chest, yelling, “You want to take it. Then take it. Really take it. You’re gonna have to take it. Punch me.”

  I stop backing up. There’s a burn in my chest where he keeps poking me.

  “Do it,” he says, steeling his voice. “You want it that bad. Hit me. Take it from me.”

  I hold my fists down by my hips. My breaths coming hard. His bushy white eyebrows all buckled up.

  “Either you hit me or I hit you. Got it? You choose.”

  I cock my arm. I tighten my grip. I watch his shoulder muscles move beneath his shirt, a heat in my wrists and at my throat and temples. This ripple across my shoulders ferreting its way down to my fingers. Just swing. Cuff him in the temple. Put your weight into it. Step in and swing.

  “See,” he says, “this is why I can’t leave you in charge. You’re a coward. Come on. Hit me. Take it from me.”

  “You’re pathetic,” I say, unclenching my fists.

  He wavers a little. Swaying on his feet.

  “Who are you?” he says in a wobbly thin voice. He takes a step back, chest heaving. “I don’t know you,” he says under his breath.

  Then he turns and walks around the corner of his desk and slumps into his chair. His shoulders pinch forward. Elbows on the desk. Hands up by his ears like he’s about to cover them.

  Then he makes a sound. A sob in the back of his throat that makes the hair on my neck stand up. A krechtz.

  He does it again and I wince.

  This krechtz—my grandfather explained—it’s a type of Yiddish klezmer note played on a violin. Sounds like warbling heartache. A real sorrow. One of them lurches out of Dad’s throat. It grabs me cold from behind and I shiver.

  His fists are balled up by his head and he sniffs hard and looks down at the desk.

  “I’m fine,” he says, trying to maintain his normally dignified stare. He looks straight at me. “I’m fine.”

  I don’t say anything. A long beat of silence.

  “I’m going now, Dad,” I say. “I have meetings.”

  No answer. I hold the door handle tight. I should say something to ease the awkwardness. Or the sadness.

  “You going to be all right?” I ask.

  No answer.

  I wait a moment. Then I turn and step into
the hallway.

  18

  IN THE BRIGHT lobby of the Intercontinental Foshan, Dad stops with his bags in his hand and turns to face me.

  Hong Kong, he said earlier at breakfast. A little R & R. There’s an Interconti with a hot tub on the roof looking out over the ships in the harbor. But I know it’s really because we’re starting production on my line this morning. Four link lines. Three hundred yards of conveyor belt. The perfect geometry of it. That’s where I’m headed once he’s gone. Straight to the factory.

  “You got your passport?” I say, meaning please stay.

  Of course, he says, but he pats the breast pocket of his new safari shirt anyway just to make sure. Then he holds out his sleeve.

  “Expedition grade,” he says. “One hundred thirty percent UV protection Australian bush shirt. Feel.”

  I reach out and rub it gently between my fingers—for a moment too long probably. I figure I ought to let him decide when it’s enough.

  “Soft,” I say, firm and clear, meaning I love you.

  “Durable,” Dad says low, meaning screw that but me too.

  “Quality,” I say, pitching my voice low like Dad’s, the two of us basically grunting like apes, somehow communicating perfectly.

  First me bush shirt, now you bush shirt.

  He pulls his arm away.

  He says, “You sure you don’t want to share the van?”

  “It’s the opposite direction,” I say. “I’ll catch a cab.”

  His face draws down. “Well,” he says. “Goodbye.”

  I have to fight off the old impulse to crumble. To give him what he wants. Smooth everything over.

  We stare at each other for a moment.

  “Goodbye,” I say to Dad.

  I hug him and he gets one clumsy forearm across my back and squeezes, a quick pulse, it lasts only a second and then I step back.

  He chews his lower lip for a second, like he’s got more to say. His hand comes up and pats my shoulder, then he turns and walks out of the lobby, avoiding the revolving doors as always, out into the pool of sunlight into the roundabout where Jianguo carries Dad’s bags to the van and helps him into the back seat facing backward as always.