“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said and turned around on my stool.
Then it was eight o’clock and my ex-husband walked in. He spoke to the maître d’ and nodded in my direction and followed a girl to a table by the window and just waved me over. I took my drink.
“Thank you for meeting me,” he said, removing his jacket.
I lit a cigarette and opened the wine list. My ex cleared his throat but said nothing for a while. Then he did his usual hem and haw about the restaurant, how he’d read about the chef in whatever magazine, how the food on the plane was awful, the hotel, how the city had changed, the menu was interesting, the weather here, the weather there, and so on. “You look tired,” he said. “Order whatever you want,” he told me, as though I were his niece, some babysitter character.
“I will, thank you,” I said.
A waitress came over and told us the specials. My ex charmed her. He was always kinder to the waitress than he was to me. “Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. You’re the best. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
I made up my mind to order, then pretend to go to the bathroom and walk out. I took off my dangly earrings and put them in my purse. I uncrossed my legs. I looked at him. He didn’t smile or do anything. He just sat there with his elbows on the table. I missed the boyfriend. He’d been so easy. He’d been very respectful.
“And how’s Vivian?” I asked.
“She’s fine. She got a promotion, busy. She’s okay. Sends her regards.”
“I’m sure. Send her my regards, too.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
The waitress came back with another drink and took our order. I ordered a bottle of wine. I thought, I’ll stay for the wine. The whiskey was wearing off. The waitress went away and my ex got up to use the men’s room, and when he got back he asked me to stop calling him.
“No, I think I’ll keep calling,” I said.
“I’ll pay you,” he said.
“How much money are we talking?”
He told me.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll take the deal.”
Our food came. We ate in silence. And then I couldn’t eat anymore. I got up. I didn’t say anything. I went home. I went back and forth to the bodega. My bank called. I wrote a letter to the Ukrainian Catholic school.
“Dear Principal Kishka,” I wrote. “Thank you for letting me teach at your school. Please throw away the sleeping bag in the cardboard box in the back of my classroom. I have to resign for personal reasons. Just so you know, I’ve been fudging the state exams. Thanks again. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
• • •
There was a church attached to the back of the school—a cathedral with great big mosaics of people holding up a finger as though to say, Be quiet. I thought I’d go in there and leave my letter of resignation with one of the priests. Also, I wanted a little tenderness, I think, and I imagined the priest putting his hand on my head and calling me something like “my dear,” or “my sweet,” or “little one.” I don’t know what I was thinking. “My pet.”
I’d been up on bad cocaine and drinking for days. I’d roped a few men back to my apartment and showed them all my belongings, stretched out flesh-colored tights and proposed we take turns hanging each other. Nobody lasted more than a few hours. The letter to Principal Kishka sat on the bedside table. It was time. I checked my reflection in the bathroom mirror before I left the house. I thought I looked pretty normal. That couldn’t be possible. I put the last of the stuff up my nose. I put on a baseball cap. I put on some more ChapStick.
On the way to church I stopped at McDonald’s for a Diet Coke. I hadn’t been around people in weeks. There were whole families sitting down together, sipping on straws, sedate, mulling with their fries like broken horses at hay. A homeless person, man or woman I couldn’t tell, had gotten into the trash by the entrance. At least I wasn’t completely alone, I thought. It was hot out. I wanted that Diet Coke. But the lines to order made no sense. Most people were huddled in random patterns, gazing up at the menu boards, eyes glazed over, touching their chins, pointing, nodding.
“Are you in line?” I kept asking them. Nobody would answer me.
Finally I just approached a young black boy in a visor behind the counter. I ordered my Diet Coke.
“What size?” he asked me.
He pulled out four cups in ascending order of size. The largest size stood about a foot high off the counter.
“I’ll take that one,” I said.
This felt like a great occasion. I can’t explain it. I felt immediately endowed with great power. I plunked my straw in and sucked. It was good. It was the best thing I’d ever tasted. I thought of ordering another one, for when I’d finished that one. But that would be exploitive, I thought. Better let this one have its day. Okay, I thought. One at a time. One Diet Coke at a time. Now off to the priest.
The last time I’d been in that church was for some Catholic holiday. I’d sat in the back and done my best to kneel, cross myself, move my mouth at the Latin sayings, and so forth. I had no idea what any of it meant, but it had some effect on me. It was cold in there. My nipples stood on end, my hands were swollen, my back hurt. I must have stunk of alcohol. I watched the students in their uniforms line up for the Eucharist. The ones who genuflected at the altar did it so deeply, wholly, they broke my heart. Most of the liturgy was in Ukrainian. I saw Popliasti play with the padded bar you knelt on, lifting it up and letting it slam down. There were beautiful stained-glass windows, a lot of gold.
But when I got there that day with the letter, the church was locked. I sat down on the damp stone steps and finished my Diet Coke. A shirtless bum walked by.
“Pray for rain,” he said.
“Okay.”
I went to McSorley’s and ate a bowl of pickled onions. I tore the letter up. The sun shone on.
MR. WU
Every day at noon Mr. Wu walked through the back alley, past the stinking ravine and the firecracker salesman and the old temple now used as a kind of flophouse for the farmworkers who came in from the country to these outskirts to sell at the market, and down past the rows of little stores that were mostly barbershops and brothels and pharmacies and little clothing stores and cigarette shops, and found a seat at the little family restaurant, under the great, hard-whipping fan sticky with dust from the road, and ordered dishes of pork and potato and whatever fresh vegetable was on display, and sat and watched cartoons and smoked while the food cooked, and the dogs walked by, and the dust rose and fell behind the small trucks and bikes and scooters.
He was in love with the woman at the video-game arcade. She was about his age, in her midforties, and had a daughter in high school. He knew her both from the arcade and from around the neighborhood, as she and her daughter lived just a few doors down from him in an apartment with her sister and her sister’s retarded son. The woman ignored Mr. Wu when they passed each other on the busy road. But when he ran into her in the narrow pathways of the market, she’d smile politely and ask after his health. “Never better” was the answer he always mumbled. He knew his breath was bad, and because her eyes wandered away so quickly, he knew she had no interest in him.
Mr. Wu dared not visit the local prostitutes. He took a bus into the city and spent the extra money for that bit of privacy. Besides, he thought, it’s better not to know where these girls come from, who else they are working on, and so forth. He was bashful about sex and insisted on getting underneath the sheets to take off his clothes. During the act he kept his hands placed lightly on the girl’s shoulders and averted his eyes but did not close them. He had learned somewhere that closing your eyes meant that you were in love. He imagined closing his eyes with the woman from the arcade. He wondered if she had the same kind of body as these
prostitutes: soft, scentless, and wan. He thought it was quite standard to hate himself a little after visiting a prostitute, so he was never startled when the thought came to him: I am disgusting. On the bus home, he ate an ice cream and looked out the window and thought of his woman at the arcade and of what she might be doing at just that moment, and his heart hurt.
He lived alone in the tallest house in the neighborhood. The downstairs neighbors were a young couple with a big, fat baby and a pet sow. The husband made a living collecting bribes for a local councilman. The woman had one flaccid hand that reminded Mr. Wu of a large prawn. He shuddered and gagged whenever he saw it. He felt sorry for the child, held and fed by that twisted, thin, limp, and red-skinned tentacle. The woman from the arcade had small, gentle, bronze-colored hands. Strong and muscled, not bony and not fat. Just right, he thought. Perfect hands. He went to the arcade at least once a day and stayed for three to four hours at a time, usually in the late evenings. Sometimes he went in the mornings, too, when it was free of children. Days he did not go, he felt sick to his stomach, and his heart growled like a trapped animal, brooding and useless. So he went as often as he could.
The arcade was not really an arcade. It was a room full of computers with games loaded onto them and access to the Internet. He bought a daily pass from the woman. He handed her a large bill so that she would have to make change and he could stand there longer, watching her count the money, feeling her near to him across the counter.
“How are you today, Mr. Wu?” she said. She said this every day.
He mumbled something unintelligible. He never knew what to say around her. Everything he wanted to say was “You are beautiful” and “I’m in love with you.” There was, in his mind, nothing else for him to say.
“Thank you,” he said instead, taking his change and the little card with his log-in information on it.
“Enjoy,” said the woman.
He walked to the computer with the best view of her. He peered out from over the monitor all evening, watching her greet the teenage boys, take their money, hand them their cards. When there were no customers, she played games on her cell phone. She likes games, he thought. That’s wonderful, so light of heart, so free. He loved the stiff, thick shiftiness of her hair, which she most often wore down and boxy at her shoulders. Her face was tan and shiny, with big cheeks and a small, round nose. Her eyes were small and clear and bright. She wore lipstick and blue eye shadow. Every day she was more beautiful, he thought. He watched her look in her compact. He wondered what she thought when she looked in the mirror, if she knew her own beauty.
• • •
One day he got an idea. He would ask for her phone number so that they could be texting pals. He got the idea from a conversation he’d overheard at his lunch spot. Two men were talking about an article they’d read about technology and dating. He thought it was a risk to ask for her number and knew that asking straight out would give him away. He did not want her to know that he was in love with her. He wanted to divulge that information slowly, in increments, step by step as he wooed her into his arms. Or better yet, he would keep his love for her a secret their entire lives and allow her to think it was she who had seduced him. She the one hopelessly in love, so lucky to have him. He imagined himself across from her at the dinner table, years later. She gazes at him with almost nauseating devotion. He eats his rice straight backed, unconcerned, secretly enraged with happiness.
He decided he could not do it. Asking for the woman’s cell-phone number was like asking for her hand in marriage. He knew he would be rejected. He went to the arcade and stood in line and paid for his time and smelled her hair and watched her count the money and his heart ached. Her phone was lying on the counter. If only he could snatch it for a moment, he thought. But there was no chance. He took his seat behind the computer and pined. He watched her work. He watched her use her phone. On his way out he saw what he couldn’t believe he had missed before. The arcade had a flyer with a coupon for one free hour of playtime between midnight and six a.m. on weekdays. The arcade phone number was on it. He took a flyer. He would call the number later. If the woman didn’t answer, he’d know it wasn’t her cell-phone number. But he could pretend to be a policeman, or some higher-up statesperson demanding to speak to the arcade manager. He could say she was in violation of a code, and that he’d need to speak to her immediately. He could call when he knew she wasn’t there. He had a plan. He practiced over and over again what to say.
“This is Lieutenant Liu. Give me the manager.”
“Give me the manager’s direct number.”
But the next morning he went to the arcade and stood in line and paid for his time and watched her fiddle with her earring and make change and his heart nearly broke in half. He was impatient. He went and sat behind a computer in the far corner and called the number on the flyer.
“Wei?” answered the woman.
She had answered on her cell phone.
He nearly jumped for joy. He had her, he felt, in arm’s reach.
“Wei?” he heard again. She was behind the counter, scribbling on a pad, phone to her ear, undisturbed. He waited a few more seconds, then hung up. He quickly e-mailed his brother, who was a military man in Suizhou. He wrote that he’d met the most amazing woman in the world, and that he’d probably make her his wife within a year. Then he wrote, “She is old, and not very pretty.” He wrote that because he knew that it was bad luck to boast.
He left the arcade and made his way down the back alley, past the ravine, toward the restaurant where he would have a special lunch that day. Everything looked so beautiful. The sun, the sky, the dry brown brittle roads. A red banner announcing the opening of a new grocery store lit his heart on fire as he crossed the little footbridge. He bought a pack of the most expensive cigarettes. He bought a can of orange soda and a small bottle of baijiu. At the old temple flophouse he dropped to his knees and said a prayer of thanks for the woman’s cell-phone number.
Now that he had the woman’s cell-phone number, he would send her a text. But he didn’t know how to start off the exchange. “Who’s this?” he considered texting. “I just found your number saved in my phone. But I don’t know who you are.”
But that was no way to begin the romance of his life. He racked his brain for a good opener.
“I’ve seen you at the arcade.”
“I see you around and think you’re beautiful.”
“I think you’re beautiful and would like to get to know you better.”
“I find you attractive.”
“I like watching you count money.”
“You have nice hair and nice hands,” he thought of texting.
None of these were good openers. He decided to wait until the perfect line struck him, rather than to rush into a sloppy exchange that might trip him up. More than anything in the world, perhaps more than winning her heart, he did not want to appear awkward.
“I will go to the brothel,” said Wu to himself and went out and walked to the bus and waited.
• • •
Now, he knew full well that any normal man in his position would simply ask her out to dinner. But that seemed to him to be the worst possible tactic to employ. If he gave her an opportunity to reject him, he was sure she’d take it. “You have seen my face,” he considered texting.
His downstairs neighbor was also waiting for the bus.
“Brother Wu,” he called to him. “What’s your direction?”
“I am going into town to speak with some higher-ups,” lied Wu. “We are working on hiring a cleaning crew for Hu Long Road. It will take some real convincing to allocate more funds for this project. It is not my job, but someone has to speak up.”
“You’re an asset to our community,” said the neighbor. He looked despondent. His wife’s prawn claw must be getting him down, Wu thought, at once sympathetic and cruel.
“How is
the wife, the baby?” he asked.
“The baby is sick. My wife cannot nurse, and the baby food we give it makes it shit water. I’ve done something to anger the gods,” said the neighbor. He held up his hands, palms up to the sky. Wu hadn’t been around this sort of superstitious type for a while. He’d forgotten they existed. His own prayer earlier that morning had not really been one of gratitude, but like a child’s birthday wish. He’d wished to one day hold the woman naked in his arms and lay her across a moonlit bed.
“Where are you headed?” Wu asked his neighbor.
“To the doctor,” he said. “To buy more medicine.”
Wu had run out of things to say. He looked at his phone, as though already expecting a reply from the woman at the arcade. He still hadn’t thought of what to text her. He thought, Maybe the neighbor knows.
“Tell me, neighbor,” he began. “How did you get your wife to marry you?”
“We sat beside each other in grade school,” the neighbor said simply. “We lived nearby, and our mothers played mah-jongg at night, so we played together, we were friends. We were friends first. And then the rest,” he said. “She has a sick hand, you know.” He looked at Wu out of the corners of his eyes.
“I hadn’t noticed,” lied Wu.
“It made her desperate, I think, to settle for any man.”
This gave Wu an idea.
He turned to the neighbor. “I wish you both the best, and your little boy,” he said.
“The child is a girl,” said the neighbor.
But Wu was not listening. He was thinking of the woman at the arcade.
He thought hard on the bus and performed distractedly with the little prostitute. To stave off his shame, afterward he took himself to a Western restaurant for dinner, ordered steak, a fresh cabbage salad, a glass of red wine.
Homesick for Another World Page 2