Though he'd already downed a few glasses of wine at dinner, Dan-ning ordered a shot of bourbon and a mug of lager. Nan asked for a Molson. He was afraid his friend might have had a drop too much, but he said nothing. Among the tables several topless girls were doing lap dances. In a corner, a girl in a blue bikini raised her bony rear end, swaying it at a stocky Mexican man, who, holding a tall can of beer, seemed intimidated but couldn't retreat further, his back already against the wall. On the string of her briefs several dollar bills were flapping as she thrust her backside at him. She was so thin that her ribs showed. Unlike the standing Mexicans, the white men sitting at the tables seemed at ease, though naked girls were wriggling in front of them or gyrating on their laps. None of them looked excited, and at most some were amused.
With a twang the metallic music resumed, and two young women wearing high heels went onto the central platform and began dancing. One of them jumped up and gripped a chrome pole and with one leg spread out revolved around it. The din was so deafening that Nan 's eardrums itched.
He was giddy, never having been to such a place before. He had passed this club every Monday morning on his way to the World Bookstore to buy the Sunday newspaper and had thought that it must be stylish in here and that at most the girls would be topless when they stripped. Now he was astonished to see that some of them didn't have a stitch on, and that a few women, already over thirty, wagged their wide, ungainly bottoms tagged with a bunny's tail as they walked around bartending. He looked at Danning, who was ecstatic, grinning, his eyes aglitter. Danning tapped the table gently with both palms as if playing a drum to accompany the music. The room looked so hazy and so crowded that Nan felt as if he were in a ship's cabin.
A tall brunette came and asked them while batting her dark eyes, "Would yuh care for a lap dance?" Her accent betrayed that she must be a recent Eastern European immigrant.
Nan lowered his head and saw a tattooed butterfly on her inner thigh. "How much?" he mumbled, and felt his cheeks flushing.
"Ten bucks."
Before Nan could say another word, Danning banged the greasy tabletop with the heel of his palm and crowed, "Yes, dance for us."
The girl turned around, swaying her hips, and began slipping out of her bra little by little. Nan lifted his eyes and saw her youthful breasts, the nipples erect and the areolas pink, flecked with a few pimples; he forced his eyes farther up, to her face. She was affectedly ogling him, the tip of her tongue wiping her teeth and lips, while she raised her rump at Danning, wagging it from side to side. She craned her neck, gently kissed Nan below his ear. He wondered if she'd left a smudge there. She groaned in a whisper, "Don't you want me?" Smiling, she opened her mouth, a tiny pearl sitting at the center of her tongue. Nan was breathing hard, his mouth dry, and he had no idea how to answer. He wondered whether the pearl had been fixed to her tongue permanently. How could she eat with that thing in her mouth? It wouldn't be easy for her to brush her teeth either. What did it stand for? Why did it have to be kept in there? As he was speculating, she lifted her upper body a little and began grinding her behind against Danning's lap. The music went faster and noisier while her gyration turned wilder. Danning's laughter grew louder and louder as her bottom kept revolving.
"Ouch!" she cried, and straightened up. "No tarching!"
Danning laughed, baring his buckteeth. "Keep going!" he grunted.
She resumed lap dancing, but a moment later stopped again. She looked annoyed and sputtered out at Danning, "If you tarch me again I'm gonna tell security."
Danning grinned and kissed the tips of his plump fingers. "You're delicious," he said.
Nan glanced at the front entrance, where a big hulk of a man, wearing a flattop, was looking in their direction, flexing his corded arms and bulging pectorals; the top of his right ear was missing. But Danning was already too befuddled to care. He said in Chinese to the girl, who refused to dance anymore, "You, little whore, you want to throw me out? Do you know who I am? Look at this face." He pointed at his nose. "Don't you know me? I'm a major novelist, an award winner, famous in the whole country. Give us a good dance. We want the same service for our money. You danced for that man longer and better just now. Why don't you smile at us like you smiled at him?" He pointed at a hairless white man, whose eyes were half closed while a girl leaned supine over him with her arms raised backward, hooked around his neck.
"Stick to English," the lap dancer fired back. "I don't know Korean."
Nan was frightened. He stood up and handed a twenty-dollar bill to her. "Take zis, miss. Keep zer change. I'm sawrry, he's drunk. I'm taking him away."
The girl stretched out her right leg and pulled open the elastic string around her thigh, with which some singles and fives were already attached. Nan inserted the twenty, but a bill fell on the floor.
He picked it up and put that in as well. She smiled and gave him a peck on the cheek, whispering, "Thank you, sweetie." Then she went away to the bar counter to join the girls perching on the mushroom seats.
Danning took out a business card that bore his official titles as a committee member of the Beijing Writers' Association and an adjunct professor at Peking University. "Let me give her this, all right?" he said to Nan, grinning, then turned to the girl.
"Please, let's go!" Nan grabbed his upper arm.
The hulky bouncer came and helped Nan support Danning toward the door. The business card dropped on the floor, faceup.
19
IT WAS Sunday the next day, and Danning wanted to go to the morning service. The request puzzled Nan, but he drove his friend to the Chinese church in Duluth where Mr. Shiming Bian had been a pastor. There was little traffic on the street, and most of the shops weren't open yet except Dunkin' Donuts. A shower had poured down the night before, so the trees and roofs looked cleaner, their colors fresh and sharp. Nan pulled into the church's hedge-bordered parking lot, which was partly filled, and backed into a space. Walking toward the front entrance, he chaffed Danning, saying, "Are you going to the confessional box?"
" No, just to attend the service. I feel awful. I was out of my head yesterday evening."
Nan made no comment, still troubled by the scene at the strip club. Together they entered the foyer of the church, but to Nan's surprise, the schedule had changed-the service in Mandarin wouldn't start until eleven and they were one hour early. However, the English service was about to begin in a chapel next to the nave, so they decided to go to that. In the chapel there were rows of chairs in lieu of pews, and in a corner was a black organ at which sat a small woman. On the chancel, which was just a regular platform below a large cross on the wall, stood a soft-faced young woman wearing a bob, as well as two young men, one holding an electric guitar and the other, the bespectacled one, a sheaf of paper. As soon as Nan and Danning sat down in the last row, the nearsighted man invited the congregation to rise and the three young people at the chancel started a hymn, the words projected on the front wall for the worshippers to follow. The three singers sang into the microphones with their eyes half closed. From the front ceiling hung a pair of Yamaha amplifiers. The music was expansive and uplifting, played by both the organist and the guitarist, while the entire room sang: "Come, now is the time to worship, / Come, now is the time to meet God…"
The song moved Nan. Danning, caught by the music, was singing loudly with the others. His baritone voice was as distinct as if he were leading a choir. Nan was amazed that his friend could sing the hymn with such abandon. Danning shook his head from side to side as he was chanting. After the song, they belted out another one. Then Mr. Bian went to the front and read out his prayer in English. He spoke haltingly as if his tongue were stiff and his nose blocked, but his voice was charged with feeling. He begged God to bless the parish, to forgive the sinners among them, to console a family who had just lost a child in a traffic accident, to provide strength for everyone in this community so that they could fight evil and do more good. Mr. Bian was thinner than he had been two years earlier, but his face was radiant and his manner more dignified, as if he were no longer a dissident but a pure clergyman. He looked energetic and even his hair seemed thicker than before. Unlike the others, who all bowed their heads, Nan lifted his eyes from time to time to observe the pastor. Mr. Bian had published several articles in the past two years to revise his political views and urge people always to differentiate China from the Chinese government. He argued that with such a distinction in mind one could resist the Communist propaganda and avoid letting patriotism dominate one's life, because there were values higher than a country or nation.