After midnight, I’d drop her off in front of the restaurant. She lived in the rooftop apartment. Then I’d go home, which wasn’t far. It was the coolest part of the day and I felt fine. Things were better since Li was there.
I wouldn’t go straight to sleep. I’d put on music. Drink a glass of juice. Look for a notebook and write. For the first time in a long while I was content.
I’d get into bed and contemplate the shadows the trees made on the ceiling. I didn’t even know whether I wanted to sleep with Li, whether there was any need.
A couple of times I tried to get her out of her regular environment. She had been living in this country for more than twenty years and had hardly been outside of San Juan and Arecibo, the city on the north coast where she’d spent part of her childhood. It was difficult to believe, but she’d hardly ever gone swimming in the sea.
I took advantage of some of her Thursdays off to take her to Salinas or Cabo Rojo and eat fresh fish or to introduce her to a beach or a forest. I met with little success, as there were few people more urban than Li. For her, nature was to be found in a can of bamboo shoots or a large sack of rice. All the rest was a bad memory or something she had no intention of experiencing. She therefore preferred to go on short excursions where, instead of doing anything I might suggest, we’d wander around the city on foot or by car till very late, on more than one occasion getting to watch the sunrise from the sea shore in a park in El Condado.
We’d talk for hours, drinking a thermos of tea from the same cup, spinning the stories of our lives and of the books we’d read. For someone like her, culture wasn’t about privileges or entertainment. Instead, as she stole time from her sleep and work and put up with the incomprehension of those around her, she was using culture as a weapon for survival.
As the sun was rising, I’d rush her back to the restaurant, before the city’s avenues and express lanes became clogged with traffic. Li would sleep a few hours, work her shift, read in the afternoon if there were no diners in the restaurant, and wait for me to arrive every night.
During the day, I’d recall how she would speak with her face turned aside, eyes fixed on the horizon. I’d remember the stories she told in the nearly flawless Spanish that had earned her a promotion to waitress in the clan’s best restaurant and permitted her the rebellious act of going to college. Though an enormous gulf separated our origins, in the intonations of her voice and the stories behind them, I heard the deep rumbling of the city that had befallen us like a sickness.
On one occasion, Li had to sub for a fellow worker on a Thursday, so she got a rare Friday off.
— I’d like to show you something I’ve been working on, she told me over the phone. Take me out somewhere. Indoors, please.
— You want to have pizza, I suggested, knowing how much she liked it.
Friday night had just begun and a river of cars was slowly flowing out to the suburbs and shopping centers along Avenida Muñoz Rivera. When I got to the sushi bar, Li had been waiting on the corner for a while. She had her hair in a ponytail and wore a black skirt and a pale, vaguely Asian blouse. She carried her usual cloth bag on her shoulder.
I brought some bad news. I’d learned that afternoon that the editors of an anthology had decided to cut me from the project. I should have been brave enough to admit that there had always been a chance of my being cut, so I had nothing to gain from acting moody or listless. Still, I was irritated when they used the clumsy excuse of my books’ publication dates to justify excluding me. More likely they hadn’t even read my stuff. Once more, they’d rely on personal whims and the old boy’s network to bestow recognition. It wasn’t much of a consolation for me that Máximo Noreña was also spurned. In his case, the editors’ reasons had been even more awkward and baseless.
Creeping toward El Condado, trapped in traffic among hundreds of other cars, I found it hard to react to the enthusiasm with which Li was weaving her sentences. The bad news kept spinning in my mind and I couldn’t turn it off.
Streets and avenues were gridlocked, and there was no way to reach the highway entrance ramps. It took us more than half an hour to reach Santurce, and it was uncertain whether we could continue to El Condado on Avenida de Diego because of a concert being held in Bellas Artes. I remembered a pizzeria nearby where I’d eaten with Diego. A lucha libre star I’d seen on TV as a child used to hang out there. His forehead, much darker than the rest of his face, was covered by a scar that looked like tree bark.
I parked in front of an exquisite house, probably built in the 1930s, that had been abandoned for years and was up for sale. We walked one block to the pizzeria, full of families and couples, and sat down in the only free booth.
I tried using the noise level inside the place as a cover for my silence. I hardly ate, letting Li devour the anchovy pizza. To talk about something, trying to disguise my reticence, I told her about the wrestler who used to be a regular at the restaurant. I was surprised to learn she knew perfectly well who I was talking about. For the Chinese who barely understood Spanish (also true of her at the time), The Stars of Lucha Libre was one of the few programs they could follow. The twenty inhabitants of the rooftop apartment would sit down in front of the TV set every Saturday, with a passion comparable only to what they felt watching martial arts films from Hong Kong.
Li knew what was going on with me since I had told her about it on the slow drive to the restaurant. I supposed my bad mood would dry up like a puddle, leaving a dry, brittle scab like the wrestler’s forehead. That’s how I was treating Li’s first Friday off, overwhelmed by negativity, no desire to do anything.
— Here, she said. It’s for you.
She had pulled from her bag a roll of paper no more than eight inches wide. I took it and started unrolling it. I soon realized it would be almost impossible to finish the job there since it was more than six feet long.
— I used up three ballpoint pens making it, she said when she saw in my face that my mood had lifted.
From top to bottom, except for the narrow natural margins, Li had covered the long sheet in one labyrinthine line, creating a black mass that looked alive, as if it might be vibrating a millimeter above the surface. It was an epic feat of determination and patience, both the tireless cycling of a machine and the unique mark of a hand.
— Do you like it? she asked.
— It’s the best thing I’ve seen in a long time.
I wasn’t lying. Her drawing stood out against the works of many artists that were nothing but parodies of international fashions.
— But it’s ridiculous, she said. Three ballpoint pens’ worth of ink, on two meters of the paper that comes on rolls for the restrooms in the restaurant, drawn by a Chinese woman with no title who works like a dog in a country where chinitos aren’t supposed to be good for anything but selling egg drop soup and egg rolls. In other words, the work of a nobody. I suppose I ought to do like you, spoil the night and cry in a corner.
— But it’s so good, I said. You should use better paper. And not ballpoints.
— That wouldn’t change anything. It would even reduce its impact. You don’t realize, you’re looking at an anonymous work. Li Chao doesn’t exist. She’s just one Chinese woman from among 1,300,000,00 °Chinese, not counting those who’ve emigrated and are living overseas, and from among 4,000,000 Puerto Ricans who don’t even look at themselves. A lesbian who took to using the words of others to pursue a writer whose failure is eating away at him today.