He heard a sound to his right and turned to see a figure step out of the shadows – no, not one figure, two. Who?
Sam made a silent mental shriek. It was Jiang. And Tan. Their mouths dropped in recognition too.
The long stare devolved into suppressed laughter, and in a second all three of them were heaving and holding their sides. They hushed one another, which only made it worse.
“Shh!” Sam sent a look to the back windows of Yao’s restaurant, which were open.
“Come!” Jiang croaked, wiping his eyes. “Why should we stand here? Let us walk over to the Uighur night market. It’s just a few blocks. Have you eaten? I have not. I may faint from starvation! I may die! Come.” And the three made their way down the hutong.
In the market, cheap lights were strung across the alley and vendors shouted behind great wok rings with lids that lifted off to stately puffs of steam. Row after row of Uighur men with dark Eurasian faces ran charcoal grills, where they produced lamb in every form, from skewers to the tender minced meat that was marinated, griddle-fried, and stuffed in split sesame flat cakes.
No doubt Yao’s meal had been brilliant, Sam thought as they walked through the people and the tables and the hot smoky aromas. But what was that to him? His meal would be brilliant too. He felt confident when his uncles were beside him.
After much surveying, they settled on thick hand-cut noodles with green vegetables in broth and a huge platter of dense, chewy, cumin-encrusted lamb ribs. They ate in the companionable silence of relatives assigned to one another long before any of them were even born.
As Sam ate, his eyes roved the crowd. After a minute he saw a distinctive curtain of black hair coming toward him – Xiao Yu, the girl he had seen David Renfrew approach that day in a restaurant. “Hi,” he called out when she came close.
She looked over, surprised. “Oh, Liang Cheng,” she said, using his Chinese name. “I read the article in the paper about the competition. I hoped for the best. How was your banquet? Was it successful?”
“I haven’t gone yet,” he said. “Saturday night.”
“Wish you success.”
“Thank you. And you? How are you?”
“Very well. Hao jiu bu jian.” I haven’t seen you in a long time.
“Actually,” Sam said, “I saw you a week ago, but I don’t think you knew. It was in a restaurant. I was on the other side. I saw David Renfrew go over and talk with you.” They were speaking Chinese, but to say David’s name he dropped back into English. The sound of it made her mouth tense. “Sorry,” said Sam, seeing it.
“Don’t be sorry.” But abruptly she looked at her watch. He had touched a sore spot. Something had happened. Sam remembered the odd trepidation he had felt when he saw Xiao Yu and David together. He felt it the minute David asked him for her name. He couldn’t have said why. Sometimes it was not necessary to know, only to feel.
“I should go,” she said.
Looking at her, he saw he had not imagined it. She wore the proud, taut chin of a woman slighted. “Please take care of yourself.”
“You too,” she said. “Success to you.”
“Man man zou,” he said, Walk slow, as he watched her wave and turn and disappear in the close-pressed night crowd. People moved by, under the lights, jostling, their talk and their laughter borne along with them. She was gone.
Jiang and Tan were speaking, and he turned back to them, away from the crowd. He belonged with them. He ate the choice lamb ribs they deposited with love on his plate, and he picked out succulent pieces to place on theirs. Before leaving work for the day, Zinnia stopped off in Carey’s office. “Have you made any calls yet?”
“No.” He felt irritated. “I’ll get to it.”
She sent him her look of prim displeasure, which he knew to be one of her most insufferable and therefore effective weapons. “But you must do it soon. Quickly.”
“Why?”
“It’s Thursday. Tomorrow people will leave for the weekend.”
Carey pursed his lips. “I hate mixing business and pleasure.”
“Really! Is that what you believe?”
“Yes.”
“It’s your philosophy?”
“Yes.”
“Who took Matt out, those nights, when he met Gao Lan?”
Carey sighed. “I did.”
“Look what happened then.”
“All right, Zinnia, Jesus. Okay. I’ll do it.” Defeated once again by a Chinese woman. He was no match for them. Waving her off with one hand, he reached for the phone with the other. “I’ll call.”
Carey got lucky with the fourth call, and within an hour was on his way to a restaurant to meet a woman he had dated a few years before. Still unattached, was what he’d heard. As soon as he called and she answered the phone he knew it was true, for she jumped. Yes, of course she would meet him. Tonight? Certainly. She would be disappointed when she realized Carey had not called her for any personal reason. So be it. Zinnia was right, he needed to help. So he made the call.
The restaurant was on the capital’s northeast end, in a quarter that had once been home to diplomatic offices and hotels but had now been swallowed by the relentless swell of commercial buildings. Inside, the place preserved some semblance of the old décor, with stone stools and wood-scrolled tables. He arrived first and sat drinking tea, watching the door for her to come in.
It was romantic, living in China. There was beauty in it. He heard parrots screeching in cages on the other side of the dining hall, caught the happy tide of dinnertime Chinese as it rose and fell. Always there was something to please him. Wonderful food. Gorgeous women. They never stopped attracting him, even if he had yet to meet one he wanted to stay with.
He knew that staying here was a sort of delaying tactic, a way of stretching out his youth. It was at home he’d be much more likely to find a woman. Laowai men, even the ones most flat-out crazy about Chinese girls, generally went home to marry. They chose one of their own. Girls they knew from high school. Girls from their hometowns. Girls who looked like their mothers, like the men themselves. But not Carey. He reached for his small, thick cup of aromatic tea and sipped it, listening to the ambient well of Mandarin conversation. He would not go home that way.
It was probably moot – the time to go home had come and gone. He had passed the golden point sometime in his late thirties. Now he was forty-five. If he went back he’d step down – on the job, in society, among friends, and with everything having to do with women. Here he was like royalty. Just being a foreigner gave him unassailable value, but it was value he couldn’t take with him. Either go home and retire that part of himself forever which had grown to love his position, or stay here in China. Grow old here. Choose a woman. Just choose one. Die here. He stared gloomily out the window at the blue-bowl October sky.
The door opened and Yuan Li came in, ultra-chic in leopard heels and a fashionable fringe of black hair. She was glorious, in her thirties now, confident. Perhaps he should look at her again. Carey toyed with the idea. She was kind, supportive, lovely. She had bored him, though, as he recalled, and he had ended it. No doubt he would end it again, in time, if they were to restart, which was why he would not. It was clear that she was willing. He could tell by the way she looked at him. No, he told himself, don’t act interested, not that way. Be friendly.
For the first hour of their meeting he engaged her in a sweet, solicitous conversation that traded all kinds of news: about jobs, relatives, travels, hobbies, vacations. He had been in China long enough to know how a meal should be done, with a long exchange of pleasantries and moods preceding any hint of a disclosure or request.
Finally, after they had talked long and the food he’d ordered had arrived and been eaten, he spoke casually. “It happens I am looking for someone. Gao Lan. Am I correct in recalling that you knew her?”