For a few minutes I feel pleased with myself. I haven't felt adrift all day, and sitting in this apartment I now have a place where I can escape the oppressive shabbiness of everything.
But hell, there's not a lot to do. Watch my little vid. I have a kitchen table and two chairs, and a bed. Nothing to do but think about the interview and all the questions I should have asked. Why did I even bother to redo the place? I'm not going to live here. I've done it all for a stranger, who will probably hate it because there's no bedroom. Time to get out, otherwise I'm going to brood myself into catatonia.
I wander downstairs to see if Peter is in. To talk, to tell him about the interview.
"Zhang," Peter says when he opens the door, surprised. He doesn't usually call me that. "Come in. How's the place?"
"Bucuo." Not bad. "Mostly finished, you should come up and see it sometime when I have beer in the cooler. You busy?"
"No, a friend just stopped by," he gestures to come in.
It's the one who calls. He is short, short and tiny. Stringy. Definitely a flyer. "Hi," I say, "I'm Zhang, or Rafael."
"I met you once a couple of years ago," the he says, "Cinnabar Chavez." He stands and offers his hand. "You and Peter were at Commemorative."
"I remember," I lie. There were a lot of nights at Commemorative, a lot of flyers. But this time I connect, maybe it's the last name. I guess the reason I didn't connect before was that I had it in my head that he died. Obviously not.
"Pijiu?" Peter says, elaborately casual.
"Sure," I say. It occurs to me that I'm not going to talk to Peter about what to do with my life. At least not tonight. "So you are Peter's secret," I say.
Peter pops out of the kitchen, looking irritated. Somehow this delights me, makes me feel wicked. Peter ducks back in the kitchen.
"I've heard a lot about you," Cinnabar says. "You and Peter have been friends a long time. Which do you prefer, Zhang or Rafael?"
"Which does Peter call me?"
"Mostly Rafael."
"Rafael is fine. Peter's a good guy," I say, "a good friend. The best."
"I can see that," Cinnabar says softly.
From the kitchen Peter calls, "What is this, my eulogy?"
"Except, of course," I add, "he thinks he's everybody's mother."
This strikes some cord in Cinnabar, he starts laughing. Peter comes out of the kitchen scarlet with embarrassment, silently hands me my beer, and glares at Cinnabar when he gives him his.
"Don't look at me!" Cinnabar protests, "I didn't make him say it! I didn't say a word!"
I am in trouble. This job thing, I have too much time to think about it.
I read and watch the vid. In the evening I walk on the boardwalk, sometimes late at night go back out and on Friday night I even end up underneath the boardwalk with a kid who looks seventeen but says he's twenty. We're at a stretch where the stands are boarded up for the night and there aren't as many couples, but still, above my head there are the click-click-click of heels. The act is fast and depressing, sordid without being thrilling.
I remember being a coney. Hawks seemed old.
White time. Baffin Island time. Two weeks of my life slide by. A couple of evenings I go downstairs and talk to Peter and Cinnabar. Cinnabar is having a party, I agree to go to make Peter happy. Instead, the Friday of Cinnabar's party becomes a landmark, a navigation point, something happening. It's like a white out, where the wind is blowing the snow sideways, and the windows of the observation station might as well have been painted white. We came back from Halsey Station in one, using instruments to navigate. I got so disoriented I had trouble standing up when we got inside, I'd lost all sense of right and left, up and down.
Then Cecily Hester from The Office of Occupational Resources calls. "I have lots of news," she says. She is excited. "Western Technologies in California. They're offering ninety-two hundred, but I think that's low. It's only to get you to come and talk to them anyway. And I think I've got you something to tide you over."
"In California?" I say stupidly. Ninety-two hundred? I made eleven hundred a year as a construction tech. Thirty-two in my year of 'hazardous duty' on Baffin Island. My father lives somewhere in California.
"Right, Western Technologies. But the place that's really going to be interested in you is New Mexico-Texas. That's where you're going to get the real offers. They're both multinationals, with headquarters in the free economic zone in Hainandao. That's why they can afford to offer the salaries. Of course, when your salary is paid by a free market corporation, you're taxed. I imagine you've never been taxed. It's a lot of money, thirty, forty percent, but that's still a very good salary." Comrade Cecily Hester smiles at me, "I've learned a great deal about Organic Engineers in the last three days, Engineer Zhang. There aren't very many of you outside of China. It's nice to see that you came back."
The braindrain to China. All the brightest and best go there. How funny that she lumps me in with molecular biologists who go to China to do grad work and never return.
"Also," she says, "Brooklyn College would like to have you teach an Engineering course. They were very excited when I told them you were in the city." She looks thoughtful, "It's a pity they don't pay much, that would allow you to stay in the city. But they're not going to be able to come anywhere sixty."
So much money. "Thank you," I say.
Cinnabar's Party. I'm not sure I'm in a party mood. I'd really like to talk to Peter about this New Mexico-Texas thing, but I probably won't get much chance. I have a bad feeling about this party.
I decide to wear the black suit Haibao said was so conservative it wasn't. I wonder if Liu Wen still plays jiaqiu, I never found out if he was arrested or if he escaped that night when the club was raided. If he did escape, I don't know if he ever found out that Haibao was dead. What would they think of Liu Wen at Cinnabar's party? Would they understand how decadent it was to be beautiful and appear to throw it all away?
I take the train down to Brooklyn Heights where Cinnabar lives. Peter is helping to host so he's been there all day. I carry beer, my contribution.
Cinnabar lives in an old building, it was probably once a single family residence, now apartments. Cinnabar has the top two floors. The hallway is cluttered with kite frames, a bicycle, a couple of chairs turned on their sides. He's a consultant for one of the companies that supplies kite frames. The door is open. Cinnabar's place is pretty big, rather dark and cool. I haven't been to many places the size of this, Cinnabar Chavez obviously does pretty well, but I've been to a lot of places that looked much the same, if smaller.
It's an old building, built strong and decaying slowly. Inside seems shabby and cheap. It's not, not by New York standards, I know. (I think of the Wuxi complex, beautiful red tile roofs.) On one wall is a short vid loop. It's a flyer hooking into a kite harness, talking to a kid on his crew. The flyer isn't Cinnabar, although he's hispanic. After a moment I realize the kid is, a young Cinnabar. There's no sound, just this flyer jacking in, a real short clip of him taking off in an old looking kite with bright blue and violet silk. Then a clip of another flyer, probably Cinnabar, touching down in a kite with red silk. Then repeat.