I see Aron's face tighten and I close my eyes. Cord has effectively ruined my chance of introducing the concept diplomatically. And when Cord says it I see Aron's face tighten and I know he'll stop this.
"Cord," he says, "the water reclamation project is hazardous duty. This commune will not send children."
I look back at the door in time to see Alexi leave.
The meeting ends fifteen minutes later with the question of who is going to the water reclamation project still unanswered. The feeling at the end of the meeting is ugly.
I leave the cafeteria and turn left towards the dorms instead of right towards home.
I haven't been in the dorms in six years, and I've forgotten how sparse they were; two bunk beds, a couple of dressers and a closet. Bathrooms down the hall. They're mostly empty, when I first came they were full. The commune had just started giving out private holdings-during the Cleansing Winds Campaign the desire for a private holding had been seen as a desire to own more than other people, to have for oneself. Now they hold mostly newcomers and a few single men who for one reason or another live there. Most people live one or two to a room that used to hold four or more.
"Alexi Dormov?" I say a couple of times, and people point. I finally knock on a door. There's no answer. I knock again and say, "Alexi?"
After a moment I hear a rustle, a foot hitting the floor. Then the door opens and Alexi is standing there.
"Martine?" he says.
"I saw you at the meeting."
He nods, "Yeah. Congratulations. You look nice."
I'm a little dressed up, a cotton blouse and slacks. I look past him into the room.
"Come in," he says.
It's painfully bare. He lives alone, there's nothing on the walls. The bottom bunk of one of the bunkbeds has sheets and a blanket on it, but it's unmade. Everything else is neat as a pin.
I sit down on the bare mattress. He sits down on the bed. "I don't have coffee or anything to offer," he says.
"I didn't expect anything," I say. "Alexi-"
"Don't worry about it," he says, "I appreciate what you've done already. I was there, I saw what it was like. They're not likely to be interested in my problems, not when the alternative is sending their own children. And I'd be the same way, if it were Theresa who was involved."
"There might be-"
"It's all right," he insists, "it's only two years. It's not going to be as bad as the army, at least they won't be shooting at me."
"There's another way," I say.
"There is no other way," Alexi says.
"We could get married," I say. I mean to present it as a business proposition, but instead my voice comes out small, a bit pleading.
"What?" he says mildly.
"We could get married. If we were married, you'd be a landholder."
"I can't ask you to do that," he says.
"It wouldn't be a real marriage, of course," I say. "There are two bedrooms, we can add a third for Theresa. And if you wanted to end it, after a couple of years, of course, that would be fine."
He shakes his head.
"Why not?" I say, in that little pleading voice I find so absurd.
"I can't," he says, "I can't. Martine, your beautiful house, all you've worked for. You're so, so self-sufficient. I'm nothing, just some refugee. Lenin and Mao Zedong, I can't believe this."
"It's getting to be a bit much for one person," I say. "And you could establish a side business, we don't have much in the way of technicians here, you'd have more work than you knew what to do with."
"This wasn't what I had in mind," he says. "Not at all."
I shrug. "Things happen. Think about it. Don't make up your mind, we'll talk about it tomorrow. But remember, we should have decided before next council meeting."
"That's only a month," he says.
I know.
"Marriage is a big thing," he adds.
"I've been married before," I say.
"I know. I asked everybody everything about you." I must look non-plussed because he explains, "I know you were a Captain. I know you're from West Virginia, I know you hated the commune when you were first here, I know you're almost never sick, you never had any children and that you're ex-husband is still in the Army and that he's stationed in California. People respect you, a lot of people came to the meeting tonight just to vote for you."
"How did you know Evan's in California?" I ask.
"Claire, one of the newcomers from two years ago, she works in transmissions. She told me you got mail forwarded from an E. Jansch from some base in Southern California."
I occasionally get stuff from Evan, not much, not often, and I usually pitch it.
"I admire you a lot," he says. "I don't want your charity, I want, well to start, I want your respect."
"It wouldn't be charity, Dormov," I say. "I get up some mornings at 3:30, 4:00 a.m., and I'd expect you to do the same."
He doesn't say anything.
"You checked up on me?" I'm not sure if I like this or not.
"Well, not exactly, I just remembered what people said about you, and then because people knew we were friends, it's a small place, people like to talk."
"I find this all a little unnerving, and I find the way Alexi is looking at me, well, I'm not sure what it means.
"Think about it," I say briskly, "I'd like to have you and Theresa." I find as I say it, I mean it. Oh, I know that the moment Theresa throws a tantrum I'm going to wonder how I ever got into this, but for right now, I really feel it. I need not to be alone, and Alexi is someone I could live with.
"We could try it," I add, "at least for Theresa's sake. If it doesn't work out, I throw you out. It's not an irrevocable decision."
He nods slowly.
I know well enough when to leave, I stand up and he stands up, too.
He opens the door and then says, "Well, how about," shyly, "I mean if we're thinking about getting married, if you wouldn't mind, a good night kiss?"
And after that he says, "How about if I walk you home?"
GHOST (Zhang)
"Ni hao ma?" the nurse says, smiling at me. Mandarin 'How are you,' literally translates as 'You good, huh?'
"Hao," I answer, 'good.' Actually I feel dreadful. I have finally decided that it's not adjustment to a different time zone, I have been sick the entire week since I got here. I am running a fever and I have the backache to end all backaches and if I throw up one more time I will hang myself in despair.
I catalogue my complaints for the nurse who frowns and tells me that I am not in the system. "Ni gang lai-le ma?"
I went to a special secondary school where we spoke nothing but Mandarin, I can dream in Mandarin, so how come my fever be-fogged brain has to translate laboriously to recognize, "You just got here?"
"Dui," I manage. Right.
"Huaqiao ma?" 'Are you overseas Chinese?'
"Dui." I think for a moment before I add, "Can I sit down?"
He checks me with a monitor and informs me brightly that I have a fever, apparently an infection, and slaps a tab on my arm. I'm not sure how long he says to leave it on, I'm not really paying much attention. I have decided it would be altogether too impolite to put my head down on the table. He comes back, peels the tab off and tells me to come back in three days.
Then I'm out on the street again. So much for the most advanced medical system in the world. I want to be home in New York. Instead I wait for a bus. I have to ask three times about where to sit. I keep getting up and down confused in Mandarin. I walk to the back muttering loushang, houbiar, upstairs back, like it is my mantra. It doesn't really bother me when the front separates from the back of the bus, but when the top separates and we cut up into the overcity there's this moment where the thing rises as if cresting a hill and my stomach rises with it. I am not violently ill, but it is purely a matter of will.