That night I study engineering and think of questions to ask Haibao. I want to catch on quickly, be brilliant. After an hour and a half of study I'm drawn back to Xiansheng. I study the clothes, but more closely I study the ads. The regular features show some sort of fashionable ideal, but the ads, they show something that has to pass for everyday life. A different ideal.
I wish I had someone to talk to, someone to compare notes with. Not Xiao Chen, who dresses like a tech; coveralls that he could have worn twenty years ago, and will probably be wearing twenty years from now, all in grays and navy blues. Peter. But Peter is in Brooklyn and I am in China.
I write him a letter that begins, "I'm in love again." It's ten here in Nanjing, so it's morning in Brooklyn and he's at work. Well, the letter will be waiting for him when he gets home. "Love from the Middle Kingdom, Zhang." And then I hit transmit.
Does he take in my new clothes when his eyes flicker over me? It is hard to tell. Maybe the rust coveralls are wrong? "Hello," he says. His room is all the color of a sunset until he rather absently waves his hand and then the only sunset is outside his window. And himself, dressed in a thigh-length tunic that shifts from red at the neck to indigo at the hem. The same brushed gray tights and calf-high boots.
He is distant and pre-occupied this evening. I don't know how to act, so I open my book and feign diligence.
"You teach well," I say after awhile.
"Thank you," he says. "I was a teacher."
"Of engineering?" I say, surprised. I though he was a student.
"No, I taught physics in middle school."
I had thought him younger than me. "What made you quit?" I ask, wondering, are those wrinkles at the corners of his eyes? Is he older than I am? He is an engineering marvel, full of suggested cables and supports, tense under his easiness.
He shrugs. "No money in teaching. No guanxi, either. Fifteen-year-olds aren't very good people to make connections with."
"How did you get reassigned?" I ask without thinking.
"A friend," he says vaguely. "How did you get to school?"
"I was a construction tech on an island in the Arctic circle for a year. I got special placement." I shouldn't have asked him how he got to school. Teaching is an assigned job, a work unit job, cradle to grave security but the drawback is that it's hard to change. Like the army. Not like my job, which is a free market job, but has no health care, no security, almost no protection. I get a housing allowance, but except for the Baffin Island job I've never had assigned housing until Nanjing. But I can quit any time I want to, go to employment and get on the job assignment list.
How did he get permission to leave his work unit to come to school? Maybe he has a lover with connections?
I smile to myself, I don't even know if he's gay and already I think he's got a lover in the army or something.
"That's a secret smile," he remarks.
"Thinking about how different it is here," I say.
"What's the biggest difference?" he asks.
I think for a moment. Everything is different. In New York I ride a subway system built sometime in the 1900's, here buses segment and flow off in different directions. There's a city above the city, a lace work super-structure that supports thousands of four tower living units and work complexes like the University complex we live in; what they call the xin gongshe, new communes. And there's the constant assault of Chinese, I get hungry for someone to speak English with. The food. I ate Chinese and Thai food at home, but not all the time. And there's food here I've never seen or heard of, from Australia and South America and Africa, at outrageous prices. Everyone here seems rich.
I laugh. "At home, I knew what was going on, and if I had something to talk about, I called somebody and talked to them. Here," it is my turn to shrug, "I am not quite sure what will happen, what things mean, and I don't have anyone to talk to about it." I glance at him, to see how he takes it.
He looks thoughtful.
It's time to leave, I stand. "I am sure you are tired," I say politely.
"Oh, no," he says, equally as polite.
We go through the ritual of leaving. I realize I am taller than he is, although not by much. This is important to me in some secret way.
"Saturday," he says, "perhaps you would like some extra tutoring? Not suggesting that you aren't picking it up fast," he adds, smiling.
"I'd like that," I say.
"Of course, the class is most important," he says, "but it never hurts to have a little left-handed help."
Left-handed. My heart starts to hammer. It is all code, he is testing me. Or perhaps it's an accident, he just used the phrase, unaware that it can have any other meaning. Back home, straights are right-handed, we are left. Not really, of course, just slang.
"Thanks," I say, "I'm grateful, and I always appreciate a little left-handed help."
"Oh," he says, politely delighted, "I wasn't sure you would."
"More than you know," I say. "It's very lonely here for a huaqiao."
"I think a huaqiao like yourself should make very many friends quickly. You do not really have to go yet, do you?"
I am filled with terror and joy. "Well, perhaps if you are not too busy," I say. I am all desire, and I see he is, as well. My knees are loosened, I feel as if I am seventeen again, waiting in the dark on Coney Island beach for someone to come along, while the smell of ash rolls off the burning harbor.
"Wait," he says, and does something swiftly with the room. The lights darken towards rose and then the sunset is inside the room, and the world is dark outside. Nanjing is lights that go on up the Yangtze River to the horizon; the river is marked by a curving road of lightlessness.
"I cannot believe this," I whisper.
"What can't you believe?" he asks, laughing softly.
"That you are here," I say, cliche, I know, but things become cliche because they express truths. And I cannot believe he is here.
We are waiting for something, I don't know what but we wait. I am shaking and aroused, he doesn't know what it is like to be alone in a foreign country. He doesn't know. And if he knew how badly I want him, would he want me at all?
"Lai, lai," he says, 'Come here.'
So for a few hours I can pretend that I'm not alone.
If to come is the petit mort, the little death-and it seems to me it is because everything is burned away for that brief, explosive time-then waking up in someone's bed is resurrection. It's only a little death and a correspondingly sordid resurrection. It is not life that falls on me so much as obligation. I have engineering at 9:00 a.m. and I am in Haibao's bed. At the hour before dawn I'm rarely in love.
I sit up, Haibao stirs and opens his eyes. His hair is a mess and he is naked and ordinary, as am I.
"I must go," I tell him.
"Weishemma"? 'Why?'
"I have engineering and I have to study."
He sits up, "Wait," he says, "I'll make tea."
Rituals, the same here as at home. You never let the coney go without making him breakfast, even though by that time you often can't stand the sight of each other. "Bei-keqi," I murmur, 'Do not be polite.'
He protests a little, but I dress and apologize for my rudeness in leaving so abruptly and asking him to understand. "I'll see you Saturday," I promise, not particularly wanting to at this moment, but knowing that by tonight I'll be thinking about nothing else. I press him gently back to the bed, and leave him going to sleep.
My eyes are thick, I'm slow. The hall is silent and dark and the lift opens with a sigh. I cross the empty arcade and stop to watch the sunrise. A sunrise is a special thing, I've lived north of the Arctic circle, where night lasts for months. Then up to the suite where I shower and make coffee, and sit down to study my engineering.