And I reach. For a moment there is no perspective and I am on the edge of panic, but instead I give in, I let myself be swallowed by the emptiness and instead I expand, the system becomes my own memory. I fall through. I feel my mind's boundaries, I know how little I can think about at one time, and then those boundaries become unimaginably huge and I am myself, myself, but able to think and have the thing I think in my mind without holding it, without concentrating, because I am using the system to concentrate for me. The system is there for me, a part of me. To modify the house I only have to think it and it is so, it hangs there. I am outside it, seeing the long portion of the house that is the kitchen and great room, off the kitchen the steps down to the beach (and at the landing, there I use my paper screen, although I have to come up with some substitute for paper that has the lucent qualities but is not so fragile.) The bedrooms are beyond the kitchen, higher to take advantage of the uneven terrain (also in memory) and I think that this western building needs a tile roof. Blue chinese tile. Soften the variation in the roof height and the roof becomes a wave.
I stop, and look around the room. The printer sighs and there is the flimsie. I pick it up. The things I have designed (little more than a shell, not real finish yet) are all there. 14 minutes.
I begin to shake. What if I can't do it again? I close my eyes, tap in, look for the beach house, expand-
It is there.
I drop out and look at the flimsie I am holding. I feel limited, I miss the system. I close my eyes, expand-
And even sitting there, the shell of my beach house just hanging there, I can feel that I am crying. Because I have done it, I have done it.
I feel whole, and now it is time to go home.
THREE FRAGRANCES (San-xiang)
It is a terrible thing to go to work with a new face. I finger my new jawline and chin. Do I wear make-up? Is it right to try to look prettier? But now that I have a nice face, isn't it right that I try to do something with it? To not wear make-up, isn't that saying that I think I don't need it?
Everyone at Cuo knows that I have a new face. All those cards, 'San-xiang! A sweet girl! May your new face match your heart!' I mean I should have had my face fixed a long time ago. I would have if my father hadn't spent my face money trying to make guanxi, connections, so that we could get back to China. As if there was any chance when America went crazy during the Great Cleansing Winds Campaign. If we had been in China we would have been safe from that, too. China is too old, too well established to have indulged in anything like the Great Cleansing Winds.
When I look in the mirror I think of all those weeks, while the virus told my bone cells to divide. I was so frightened. They told me everything that would happen, but I would be awake at night and I would think, what if it doesn't stop? Long lines of jaw grew down from my ears like curving ridges, and my teeth ached and shifted like old stones in a mountain. I would imagine my jaw grown long and heavy until my head resembled a long-faced baboon, a praying mantis. And then they injected another virus, carrying it's cargo of RNA strings materials, it's molecules to tell my bone cells to turn off, and it all stopped.
I think it is a beautiful face. Really, Mama says I am pretty now. I am normal, she says, not a vid star, but when I look in the mirror I can't believe it is there. My eyes are bigger-not waiguoren big, of course, but bigger. I have such a nice oval chin. This won't be the first time I've been out, Mama and I have gone shopping and people are so different. Sometimes they aren't as nice; it's wonderful, no pity.
At Cuo, everyone will stare at me. And even though I know I'm not ugly anymore I'm afraid to have them all look at me. They'll be thinking about my old face and comparing it to my new one. I don't want to be the old San-xiang anymore. Poor, ugly San-xiang who had no jaw and had little squinty eyes and who looked like she was congenitally stupid. This is it, my chance. I'm going to change my life. I'm going to look for a new job, have new friends, be a new person.
I'm going to put on make-up. When I get a new job no one will ever know that I was ugly and I'll wear make-up there, so I might as well start now. Practice, so when I change jobs, I'll be accustomed to my new face, and no one will ever suspect that I once looked ugly and stupid. I put on new clothes, I have a new haircut to match the shape of my new face. My temples are shaved back and my bangs fall like a horse's forelock. Very how can, as they say.
The world is new.
All day long people have been saying to me, "How beautiful." "Come out for a drink," Celia says. "Come celebrate, we won't stay late."
So after work we all troop to The In-Between, the place where everybody goes after work to get a drink and I order a beer. Celia and Carol get those neon looking drinks with sprays of those plastic fibers with glowing ends sticking out of them. I only see them in drinks, where do bars get them? Tim and Qing Yang get baijiu, man-type drinks, no-nonsense drinks. I only drink beer. I didn't even used to like beer but I learned to like it.
"Such a good Chinese girl," Tim says, teasing, "sipping your beer."
"Baijiu makes me dizzy," I say and he and Qing Yang laugh although it's the truth. They laugh at a lot of things I say and at first it makes me nervous, but then I think that they're just being nice. They act as if I am clever. They laugh when I say that I have to call my mother and tell her I'll be late.
"Mama," I say in Mandarin, "Tonight I will be late. I'm at a bar with some people from work."
"Hao, hao," she says, nodding complacently. Looking at her double chin I think with surprise, I am prettier than my mother.
"Qing ni gaosu baba," I say. "Please tell papa."
"Meishi," she says, "ni gen nide pengyou, wanba." "Don't worry, have a good time with your friends."
It's a funny thing to say, Chinese words in an English way. She does not seem to care at all that I am sitting in a bar. I go back to my seat. There is the bar, then the space for the bartenders, then a counter with rows of bottles and rising above the bottles is a pretty Chinese woman in a business suit.
She looks a little nervous, but she is still having a good time, you can tell.
Qing Yang asks me to The In-Between on Thursday. I have my political study meeting but I say yes. Then I call Gu and tell him that I can't make it, I have to work late.
Qing Yang is an ABC. I would like him to ask me out. He is not too handsome, he has a round bald spot, like a monk, only small. He is not as handsome as Zhang, another ABC I went out with a couple of times. Zhang is the only other person I have ever dated and he only went out with me because he worked for my father and my father asked him to. I wonder what he would think if he saw me?
Qing Yang is nice. Handsome men are usually not very nice, they usually can't be bothered. So we go to the In-Between and I have a beer. I don't know what to say to him. At first we smile a lot and things are very uncomfortable, but then we get talking about his job and he starts telling me about all the people he meets and the people he tries to sell systems to. I never really knew what Qing Yang did. I suppose I thought that people who needed systems came to Cuo, I never realized that some people in Cuo actually sold them. Which is pretty naïve of me, I realize.