A Cup of Light (22 page)

She touched her hearing aids. “Taking these out.”

“And what happens then?”

Instead of answering, she moved against him.

“Really.” He was fascinated by her. “That's what you like?” He parted her legs. “Take them out, then.”

“If I do I can't hear you. We can't talk.”

“Take them out.”

Lia lifted them out and put them aside, felt the inflating bliss of belonging. She let herself fall open, looking at him up over her on one elbow, his chest and shoulders, straight falling hair, the rhythm of his arm, the calm acceptance in his eyes. He bent to kiss her ears, in the tender part where her little amplifiers sat. Here, he seemed to say with his mouth, what else can I love about you?

18

At the border, Bai waited in the number-twelve inspection bay. He was dying inside. He would not show it.

Three men walked over out of the gatehouse.
“Xia che,”
one of them barked, Get out. Bai complied. He snapped open the big shiny door, lighted on the ground, and held out his paperwork.

The head man took it, read through it. He was studying every word. Time fell away from them, grinding seconds that felt like hours to Bai.

“Destination?” the man said at length, even though there was only one possible destination from this checkpoint.

“Hong Kong.”

“Cargo?”

“Chickens.”

The man folded the paperwork and secreted it in a pocket instead of giving it back to Bai.

Oh, that is
not
good, Bai thought in misery. That is very not good. You should not be keeping my paperwork.

The man turned to the other two.
“Kan kan yixia,”
he instructed sharply, Take a look. He turned to Bai. “You, rest over there a moment.”

Bai felt his whole body tingling with fear as he stepped back. Rest, right. But he obeyed and went to stand under the lit-up roof of the guardhouse.

From here he watched the men gather behind the truck. If they found it, would they kill him? He calculated how much money he had stitched into the hem of his shirt. Not enough, maybe, for all of them. Better if he could get the head man alone.

And then if that didn't work . . .

Anguish choked up in him as he watched the men yank open the truck's great rear doors. Dry clouds of smoke billowed from the freezer.

Here was Bai's genius, come to life: two thousand pounds of cleaned, raw, frozen chickens, skins nubbly and rock-hard. He could see the men standing around looking at them, halfheartedly moving a few icy birds to one side or the other. The chicken feet were death talons, extended in clawlike despair, thousands of them. Their heads and sightless eyes were all frozen in mid-scream. Who would want to touch them? The men were talking back and forth. He could hear the elastic pinging of their Cantonese.

Things had changed so much. Just ten years before, most goods were still being moved by sea. China's porous coastline, and the near-infinite range of beaching possibilities in Hong Kong's archipelago, had long made this the main modus of discreet shippers. But then there were the pirates to be dealt with. They were a nest of poison vipers on the sea. They murdered any who crossed them. And one had to pay them outrageously, no matter what.

Modernization had altered the smuggling patterns. Now there were busy roads, and convoys of trucks bearing all manner of goods roaring back and forth, and a big, efficient machine for processing goods and people across this densely populated, heavily traversed border. Bai stood smoking, using his cigarette to control the tremblings in his hand—good, good, now they were arguing with each other. They seemed to be only moving the top layer of chickens around. They had no gloves. It was a job that became uncomfortable quickly, as he knew. As he had calculated.

He drew on his cigarette. Now the voices of the two men had turned sharp. They were arguing. The third man walked back over. For a while he had just been listening. Bai was able to follow Cantonese only sketchily, but it sounded as if the odds were in his favor. He smiled, a small smile but a real smile that came up from inside him. His biggest test, his greatest portal. This took the ultimate in face and wits. To say nothing of power of mind.

The third man opened the packet of papers he'd been holding and read through them again, scanning, checking. Bai held his cigarette tight. In time the third man finished reading and spoke peremptorily. He had a higher rank. Bai strained to follow them.

Finally the man turned. He handed Bai the papers. “You can go,” he said in Mandarin. The men were locking the rear freezer doors.

“Good.” Bai accepted the papers and folded them into his pocket, as if the matter were casual, insignificant. Silently, he was screaming in jubilation and gratitude. He would make so many offerings and spend many hours on his knees when he got back home.

He waited a few minutes in the entrance lane and then finally pulled onto the expressway, winding down through the new territories. It was suddenly greener, more rural, its grass-and-shrub–covered crags dotted with electric towers. His numb happiness was giving way to excitement. The pointed, emerald hills, the blue sea and dome of sky, all of it fairly pulsated with money. His now, success.

He sailed through a tunnel, a dark hurtling cocoon around his white truck, and then exploded out again into the light. The brilliant light of day. The road unrolled before him. He flew over a massive white suspension bridge with the sea far below. Container ships streamed silent on the blue horizon. Bai felt a part of life at last, here, in Hong Kong. He was at the center of the world.

Lia lay completely at rest. He slept next to her. She felt she was floating outside time and memory, no different than the light on the tile roofs, the lacy pattern of the leaves. She wanted to remember this feeling.

Because soon she would have to get up and go to the airport.

He stirred, opened his eyes, lit up at the sight of her. His hands came down and scooped her up from below, squeezed her. “I feel so good,” she said, and wrapped her body around his, hard and tight. He curved around her in return, and they lay, and slept, and woke and talked again.

Finally they got up and climbed in the shower. They were quiet. They washed each other, then stood together under the hot jets of water. Her hair was loose, streaming down. She wanted to stand there forever.

But finally she stepped back from him and moved him under the water until his back was comfortable against the shower wall. She took him in her right hand. He protested, but she touched the middle finger of her other hand to his lips. “Just my hand,” she said, taking the soap. “Let me watch you.”

She held his gaze the whole time. With a flash of shame she saw herself claiming him, just to show him she could, just to take him—there, she thought, watching his eyes lose their focus under the hot water, that's it. But when he overflowed, her excitement was hot-crossed with the raw wound of her leaving, so that when he doubled over against her she burst into tears—hot, indecently vulnerable tears. And it was he, still gasping, who had to hold her and comfort her as she cried. “It's all right.” He wrapped himself around her.

“I don't want to go.”

“I know.”

She leaned against him, she let herself go, all her weight, and he stood still as a tree and held her until she'd quieted. Then he turned her under the water and rinsed her face of tears.

They went out and dressed and she put her suitcase by the door. The sun was setting. “Lia?” he said. He walked over to her and touched her ears, to see if her hearing aids were in, to see if she'd heard him. They weren't. She hadn't.

He knows me already, she thought. She caught his hand and kissed it and pointed to the little plastic buttons, which still lay on the table. He brought them and pressed them in. “Is that right?”

“Not quite.” She twisted them into place. “But thank you.”

He smoothed back her damp-braided hair. She smiled at him, but there was something resolute in her now. She was leaving.

They found a cab on Jiaodaokou. “We're early now,” Michael said. “We have time. Let's stop at the place on Houhai Lake. You'll see, your pots are gone. You'll feel better.” His fingers were twined through hers.

“Thanks,” she said softly, and gave directions to the driver. When they pulled into the outer court, the sight of them brought the guard to his feet, crackling down the pages of his newspaper.

“We just want to go in for a minute,” she called to him.

He looked at her, still blinking surprise.

She knew she wasn't supposed to be here anymore. “I just want to look,” she said.

He waved them past and went back to his paper.

The two of them ran across the footbridge into the house, through the rooms, and across the back court. Up the steps on the other side, she clicked open the glass-paned doors and flipped on the lights.

The room looked so vast in its emptiness, nothing but scraps, bits of brown paper, wood shavings, and the dust outlines of the crates. This she would also remember. A person could have so much in front of her one moment, and nothing the next.

“Are you ready?” he said.

“Ready.” She gave him her hand.

In his apartment over the racecourse in Happy Valley, Stanley Pao took the call on his cell phone. He was sitting in his back room, the door closed against the humid air and his adored Pekingese dogs. In here the air-conditioning was precisely calibrated. Grouped around him, on the floor, covering the shelves and every available surface, were priceless porcelains and reproductions of priceless porcelains—indistinguishable from each other.
“Wei,”
he said calmly, one hand resting on his protuberant midsection.

“Mr. Pao,” the voice said. Stanley made an instantaneous shift to full attention. This was not a voice he knew. “A shipment consigned to you has arrived.”

“Ah, is that so? And the address?” He reached for a pen and paper, wrote it down. “I'll be there—” He stopped, looked at his computer monitor on the side table; the racing finals were scrolling down. All today's bets had summed up adequately. “I'll be there in half an hour,” he said. “Accepted?”

“Accepted,” the man answered.

Pao hung up. He dialed a number he had been given.
“Wei,”
he heard. It was Gao Yideng. This was the tycoon's direct line.

“Wei,”
Pao answered politely. “Your stray dog has come home.”

“Ah, good,” he heard the man say softly, and they both hung up.

In the back of the taxi, they leaned against each other. She felt she had exhausted every possible human feeling with him. All she could do was rest on his shoulder. She would remember it just like this, she thought, the quiet at the end of it. The silence before saying good-bye.

They crossed the north end of Beijing and turned onto the Jichang Expressway, which soared through the high-rise forest to the airport. It wasn't until they were almost to the terminal, right outside the departure gate, that she pulled back and looked at him. His eyes were soft. She had never seen him look so defenseless.

“Okay,” she said. She gathered up her bags. He moved to get out but she stopped him. She leaned over everything, her satchel, her suitcase, and her computer, and kissed him one more time, final. “Stay here,” she said. “Keep the cab.”

He nodded. They both knew it was better. She got out, shouldered her stuff, turned around, and walked in. He watched her. He waited until she was all the way in, then asked the driver to go back to town. They wheeled onto Jichang. Twilight had faded. The expressway unrolled out in front of them. He felt empty and dense, a dark star, as if he could sink right through the seat. His right hand moved to the empty leather where she had been a few minutes ago. After a while he put his head back and closed his eyes. It was hard to believe that a couple of weeks ago he had not even met her.

In the airport, she went straight to the women's rest room. She squeezed into a toilet stall with all her things and threw the latch. Then she leaned her forehead against the painted metal divider and cried as long and as hard as she had ever cried in her life.

When she came out she winced at how awful she looked: Her eyes were puffy, her nose red, her hair undone. Errant strands flew past her waist. She covered her eyes with her big German sunglasses and left everything else. It was all she could do to walk out of there.

She made it first to the Immigration line. But she didn't want to leave the country, that was the problem. She wanted a parallel world in which she would not get on the plane but would turn around and go directly back to his room, and knock, and tell him that she wasn't willing to leave. She wouldn't go. And if he did not care for her he would have to tell her so right to her face. This started tears again. Her turn came and she pushed her sunglasses tight against her nose and walked up to the booth.

The Immigration agent took her passport, entered a few strokes, and then stared at the computer. He hit another key. “Step to the side, please,” he said calmly.

What
is
this, she thought, but she did it.

Instantly a uniformed woman was there. “Miss Frank?” she said in good English. “This way please.”

Lia, almost a head taller, followed the woman off the concourse and into a small side office. She felt half out of her body. In the office, behind the desk, sat a flat-headed man with a short neck but quick, penetrating eyes. She was seated across from him.

“I'm Curator Li of the First Beijing Antiquities Museum.” He slid a card across the wood tabletop toward her. He also looked hard at her. No wonder, she thought, with her face swollen and her hair bedraggled. “Your name came up in the computer. You entered the country to look at art. Correct?”

“Relatively,” she said. “Relatively correct.”

He looked at her. “You are a high-level porcelain expert.”

“Not really—“”

“What have you been doing in China?”

“Looking at art.” She knew to stick to the script.

“Where?”

Where? she thought. Where? “In museums.”

He let his eyes rest speculatively on her, then dropped them to some papers in front of him. “I see you are booked on a flight departing in an hour. I would hate for you to miss it.”

“Me too.” Inside, time and the world stopped while she screened rapidly for her best card. Gao, of course. She needed a private minute to use her phone.

She pulled her sunglasses off and laid them on the table. Tears still oozed from her eyes.

He started. “Miss Frank, are you all right?”

“No. I received bad news today.”