I approach one of the servers, who’s rearranging the glasses on her tray.
“Xiaojie.”
She starts a bit, rattling the little crystal glasses. Turns toward me, the friendly smile mask already in place. Another pretty one. Big brown eyes and plump painted lips.
“Nimende xishoujian zai nar?” I continue. Like I told Marsh, I’m looking for a bathroom.
“That way, miss.” She points toward the north end of the hall. “Go out.”
At the back corner of the room, there’s a screen, this carved, lacquered thing with white birds painted on it-cranes? I spent some time at a bird sanctuary not very long ago, but I still suck at identifying them.
Behind that a hallway.
I go out.
I’m guessing it was added on, even with the aged grey on the outside wall. Plenty of places that got knocked down in these neighborhoods to salvage it from. Little lights in the ceiling cast yellowish circles on the worn stones. There’s a door made of wood and frosted glass at the end.
Just as I get there, the door’s flung open. I jump. Out comes a woman, one of the thirty-, forty-somethings, in a black sheath dress and fancy heels. Louboutins, which I know only because of Lucy Wu. Polished more than pretty, with a designer bobbed haircut. Her face is redder than the soles of her shoes. I can’t tell if she’s been crying, is furious, or has been slapped.
“Duibuqi,” I say. Excuse me.
She looks at me like, What the fuck are you doing here?
Good question.
With barely a nod, she storms down the hall, her heels clicking on the stone like taps from a hammer.
I go into the bathroom-fancy, of course, more stone and rustic wood, with a shower off to one side. Do my business. There’s another door on the other side, and I decide to go out that way, just because. I’m thinking about a Percocet. I’m thinking about a beer. I’m thinking, What do I have to do here before I can leave?
Find Tiantian, I guess. He wasn’t in the first hall, so maybe he’s in this one up ahead: the north hall, the main house. I mean, that’s where the lord of the manor is likely to hang out, right?
The second door opens onto the side courtyard, a narrow rectangle between the west house and the north house. The smaller wing of the north house is closed up, though I can see lights inside. I’ll have to go over to the main entrance if I want to go in and check it out.
“Hello!”
I flinch a little, but everything has me jumpy tonight. A young woman with pigtails, wearing a sort of designer baby-doll outfit. She looks familiar, but I can’t quite place her.
“From Gugu’s party,” she supplies. “I am Celine.”
“Right. You have a website.” The one she said I should read to learn something about modern Chinese culture. I think she was giving me shit, but I’d actually meant to check it out.
“Yes. And I hear some things about you.” She gives me a look. I think she’s amused, but I’m not sure why. Just ’cause I’m funny, I guess. “I hear you work with artists,” she says. “Some interesting ones.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Are you interested in art?”
“Recently I become more and more interested. I even work in a gallery sometimes. Artists say fascinating things about society. Don’t you think?”
“I do,” I say. I have to admit, not what I expected from a twenty-something club kid. Is she talking about Lao Zhang?
I try to think of something to say, something to ask about what artists she finds particularly fascinating, but she beats me to the next question.
“Do you like this house?” she asks.
“Sure. It’s pretty. I mean, it’s traditional Chinese, right?”
“Yes. Tiantian likes such styles. He always says China culture is over five thousand years old-what does rest of the world have to compare?” She giggles. “But he likes some modern things, too.”
Am I supposed to ask? Ever since I started hanging out around the younger Caos, I feel like everyone’s speaking in some kind of code all the time and I’m not really deciphering it.
“Like what?” I ask. “Fancy cars? New plumbing?”
She leans forward. “Modern girls,” she says, peering at me through her eyelashes. “Did you see Mrs. Cao just now?”
“Tiantian’s wife?” I think about it. The only person I’ve seen just now was the angry and/or crying woman in the bathroom. “Maybe.”
“She is unhappy with Tiantian, because he has this modern taste,” she says, fumbling a cigarette pack out of her tiny purse. “And she is hong er dai, so it is better if she is happy.”
Hong er dai. Second-generation red. The sons and daughters of the revolution, born into privilege.
She taps out a cigarette. “Smoke?”
I shake my head. I haven’t smoked since the Sandbox. Though I still get the itch sometimes.
“They are Panda.” She shows me the pack. Two pandas on a sea-foam green background. “Deng Xiaoping’s favorite.”
“Is that why you smoke them?”
“No. It’s because I like pandas. Zhen ke ai.” She flicks her lighter and inhales, then blows out a dainty cloud. “Very cute.”
I don’t really want to make small talk with this girl, but it’s not clear to me what else I should be doing, other than organizing a museum or something.
“You’re here with Gugu?” I ask.
She lifts one shoulder. “He is here, and I am here.”
“Oh. I haven’t seen him yet.”
“So is Betty. My friend you meet before.”
Rhinestone baseball cap. “Right.”
Then it occurs to me that I could actually do something productive. “And Marsh is here.”
She chuckles, a little belly laugh bottled up behind her closed lips. “Yes. I saw you talk to him.”
“Yeah. He’s… I don’t know. Interesting.”
“Yes. Interesting.” She takes a draw on her cigarette. “Sexy, I think. Don’t you?”
“Not really my type.” Which is true and not true. He’s nobody I want to get anywhere near, but he’s got that kind of creepy charisma that some bad boys have, in part because you don’t know what they’ll do. It’s the kind of thrill you get in your gut going up a roller coaster that might actually be nausea.
“He likes to think he is dangerous,” Celine says suddenly.
“Oh, yeah?”
Come up with something smart to say, dipshit, I tell myself.
“So is he?” I manage.
She blows a few smoke rings into the dark. “I think he is just acting. But maybe he forgets this sometimes.”
Okay, I tell myself. You need to go meet Tiantian. Pitch the museum or whatever and then get out. No reason to waste a lot of time. Because it’s not actually going to happen, right?-the kids all getting together to support Dad’s ego monument.
I’m here to evaluate Marsh, download to Sidney, and di di mao the fuck out. I tell myself this as I limp up the shallow, broad steps that lead to the entrance of the main house.
Two qipao-wearing serving girls stand by the entrance with trays holding glasses of wine. I take a red. One Moutai, one glass of wine. Doing okay, I tell myself. Even though my leg’s throbbing, this pulsing nerve in the middle of my thigh that feels like an electrical fire, and I really want a Percocet.
After I meet Tiantian, I tell myself.
It’s going to suck when I run out of Percocet.