As he spoke he watched her face. First he saw the trace of insult. She understood now why he had called her. Then in her eyes he saw caution and calculation. Good. That meant she knew her.
Still, she took her time before she answered. “I have not seen her in quite a while. Maybe a year or two. I don’t know where she is right now.”
The waiter came with the check, which Carey took.
“So I’m not too clear,” Yuan Li continued.
“I’d appreciate your telling me if you do hear.”
“I can ask.”
“Thank you,” he said, and then returned smoothly to their previous topic, which was the leasing of a building on which she had been a project manager. Altogether he sat with her for more than two hours that night. They consumed three appetizer cold plates and three entrée dishes, plus a small forest of beers, most of which, admittedly, were drunk by him. They observed every nicety and parted as friends, even trading warm and potentially meaningful embraces. And all of it was for those few sentences uttered in the middle, cast lightly on the table – Do you know where she is? No. Will you find out? I’ll try. Thank you.
Carey steered Yuan Li out to the sidewalk and saw her into a taxi, waved warmly from the sidewalk as she pulled into the street. Ah, it was a nice life here, in its way; the gravity of history, the traces of gentility, and the pleasure of now. He liked the freedom and the forthrightness, which had their own way of coexisting with the oppressions of the government. It wasn’t so much that people liked the government or approved of it, such questions being irrelevant anyway; it was that they were good at living with it. Against all odds, despite its severe gray undertone, Carey found China a joyous place.
He sighed. Had he stayed too long, had he let things go sour, was he trapped? Maybe he should have been more like the other lawyers in the firm, like Matt; he should have based himself in Los Angeles and just made sojourns here. But he had been seduced by China. It felt so exquisitely good here. Once he arrived, he had really never wanted to leave.
He held up his hand for a taxi. It was not his world, though, and no matter how long he stayed here, it never would be. He would always be an outsider, and despite a marvelously warm mix of etiquette, kindness, and convention the Chinese did not truly welcome outsiders.
So if he went home – but who was he kidding? It was too late to go home. He was too old. And he climbed into a car and drove off into the Beijing night, thinking instead about where he would go to drink, to hear music, to run into old friends and maybe, with any luck, meet new ones. He named a club to the driver, an address in a hutong off Sanlitun, and lay back to watch his adopted city pass him in a pleasant procession of lights, skyscrapers mixed with the old-fashioned red lanterns that still hung outside restaurants as they had for centuries, wherever people gathered to eat and cement their relationships.
Maybe he would have to stay.
The next morning was Friday. Maggie went by Sam’s house to drop off a good-luck gift. The taxi waited with its engine idling while she knocked on the gate. It was a polite, preemptive knock; she didn’t expect him to be there, intending, if he was not, to leave her gift outside. Where it belonged.
But his footsteps came across the court, a little impatient. He was working. Then he unlatched the gate and saw her, and his face changed. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi.” She smiled a little. He was glad to see her. “I brought you something. I can’t come inside or anything, I know you have to work, I just want you to have this. For luck.”
“You’re so kind,” he said.
“You’ll have to give me a hand.” She stepped back toward the taxi and he followed her out over the sill. As they approached the trunk the driver released the catch and she showed Sam what was inside, a potted evergreen tree that filled the entire space.
He stared. It was the last thing he had expected.
“I brought it for your court,” she said. “It will get tall.” They hauled it out together, and he set it by the gate. It had a shape like a spiral column.
“Of course, if you don’t like it, hey,” she said. “If I ever come back to Beijing and dine in your restaurant and it’s not in evidence, I won’t be hurt. I promise.”
“It’ll be here,” he said, and she could tell by the way he was smiling that it was true. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” she said. It had been easy, with Zinnia powering her through the city flower market and subjecting vendors to penetrating inquisitions on the suitability of various potted shrubs and trees to a Beijing courtyard, to choose one. The whole idea, Zinnia confided to Maggie on the side, was almost quaint now, for no one had courtyards. It was a way of life which had vanished. Nevertheless they settled on the spiral tree, and Zinnia had the young vendor’s assistant carry it outside. When it was in the taxi Zinnia said suddenly that she would take the next one; her lunch hour was over. Maggie could see her busy eyes already thinking ahead to the work that waited on her desk. Maggie hugged her. “Thanks,” she said.
And now the tree was on the ground, outside Sam’s gate, with him looking at it. He did like it. “I loved your father’s memoir, by the way. It was beautiful,” said Maggie. The taxi was still there, engine running.
He looked up slowly. “He came. He’s here.”
“Your father?”
“He got a visa, bought a ticket. He did it. He’s here.”
“You said he’d never come.”
“I said wrong,” said Sam. “It was Xie that got him here. I don’t think anything else could have.”
“That’s where he is?”
“In Hangzhou.”
The news, and the look on his face, gave her a flush of happiness. “That’s wonderful. Good for you. Good.” She looked at the taxi. “I’ve got to go.”
He nodded. “Thanks for the tree.”
“That’s for luck,” she said.
And he said, “I’ll take it.”
That afternoon Maggie worked on her story. She didn’t yet know the ending, but there was no reason not to go all the way up to that point.
As she often did when she started a piece, she began by just writing, following her spine, which in this case was connectedness. She spent some hours re-creating scenes, conversations, and explanations, weaving them in and around her notion, which was her sense of what he had shown her.
Then there was the question of the piece’s forward propulsion. She took a fresh sheet of paper and wrote six words in block letters on three lines:
TEN CANDIDATES.
TEN BANQUETS.
TWO SLOTS.
This was the logical forward movement – the announcement, the whirlwind preparation, the banquet itself. She would write to this. She taped the page up on the wall in front of her. Now she could go back to the beginning. She turned back to her computer and opened a new file. Like any blank page it was filled with possibility. She typed the words Sam Liang and then jumped so hard she almost broke her chair. Someone was knocking at the door.
She pressed her eye to the peephole. It was Zinnia, leaning toward the tiny glass circle with that hurried look in her eye. Maggie pulled back the door. “Hi.”
Zinnia pumped past her, glasses flashing in triumph. “Sorry! So sorry to come without calling, but I just found out, and I was near here.”
“You can come without calling anytime. Found out what?”
“I know where Gao Lan is.”
“Sit.” Maggie steered her to the couch. “Where?”
“Here. Not far. She lives at the Dongfang Yinzuo. The Oriental Kenzo. It’s a big residential and commercial development downtown.”
“How’d you find out?”
“Carey found out.”
“That’s where she lives, or where she works?”