How to Be Single (33 page)

So. The next time you want to make fun of some Chinese person's inability to speak English, just keep in mind that that person, even if he or she is just a short-order cook at your local Chinese restaurant, can kick your ass at one of the hardest languages in the world. And think of this: when it takes that much discipline and determination simply to speak your own language, you could easily end up with a work ethic that just might help you take over the world.
I'm just saying.

After two rounds of Long Island iced teas, I was able to move them from Mandarin to the language of love.

“So tell me, is it true because of China's recent history, that there aren't enough women for the men?”

The two men started laughing immediately. Jin said, “No, where did you hear that?”

I thought for a moment. “Um, I think the
New York Times
? And maybe
60 Minutes
?”

Dong shook his head. “Maybe in the country, but here? This is not true at all. This is a very good time to be a single man in Beijing. A very good time.”

Jin nodded in agreement. “It's not difficult to find women to date. But frankly, I prefer Western women.”

I perked up a bit at that. “Really? Why?”

“The Chinese women have become very materialistic. All they care about is how much money the man makes.”

I turned and looked at Dong. “Do you agree?”

Dong nodded. “I had a girlfriend who when we broke up after two years, asked me to pay her seventy thousand yuan.”

“For what?” I asked, confused.

Dong shrugged. “I don't know. For her time?”

“Were you the one that ended it?” Thomas interjected. “Was she angry?”

Dong hit his hand to the table, his voice raised. “This is what was so crazy. She broke up with me!” He shook his head at the memory of it. “Western women, they're better. More independent. Less materialistic.”

In terms of dating and China, it seems the grass is always greener on the other side of the world.

After the full effects of our drinks took hold, Thomas and I made our way down to the dance floor. There were some Westerners here and there, but this was a place where trendy locals came to mingle.

Wei was on the dance floor with a few of her beautiful, chic friends. She saw me and waved us over.

“These are my friends, Yu and Miao. They want to talk to you about being single here in Beijing.”

“Wow, great,” I said loudly over the music. “What do you want to tell me?”

Yu's English wasn't that great, but she made her point. “We are so lucky, to be able to be free. To be independent. To travel, to work. I love it so much!”

Her other friend, Miao, agreed. “I can have sex with whoever I want. It's very exciting to me!”

Just then I saw Thomas take out his cell phone, which must have been vibrating in his pocket. He looked at the number and his expression became quite serious. He made a motion to me that he was going outside to take the call.

We all started dancing to Shakira's “Hips Don't Lie.” I was jealous of these women, in a way. They were experiencing the joy of newfound independence. The world had opened up for them only a few years ago, and now they had options, from what shoes to buy to what kind of man to sleep with. I wish I could see singlehood in that way again, with that kind of excitement and delight. I looked at all these made-up, miniskirted, and writhing cuties and I was envious. They were young, they were single, and they were having the time of their lives.

After a few songs, Thomas was still nowhere to be seen. I excused myself and walked outside. Thomas was leaning against the wall of the neighboring building, still on the phone, talking intimately, emotionally. My stomach tied into a little knot. Again, my French was limited, but I knew that there was some kind of negotiation going on. There was arguing and explaining and cajoling.

I knew she was calling him right now and demanding that he come back home. And I knew that she knew he would ultimately listen to her—because he was hers. I was just borrowing him and everyone knew that.

“Okay. Je comprends. Oui.” He hung up.

I decided to just be brave and say it first.

“You can leave tomorrow if you need to. I don't want to keep you…”

Thomas wrapped his arms around me. “But I don't want to leave you; this is the problem.” He kissed me on the forehead. He gently said, “She is threatening to come here and drag me back home.” I must have looked quite alarmed, because he added, “I've never done this before. She understands this is different.”

I said quickly, “Well, then you have to go home. That's it.” I felt myself get choked up but I swallowed hard and continued. “This has been very nice, but you're married.
You're married.
” I took a quick, deep breath to control myself. It worked. I looked up at him, calmly. “We knew it had to end. So. This is it. It's okay. It's been fantastic. It will be a beautiful memory.” I then looked down at the sidewalk and took another deep breath. I was proud, I didn't fall apart. Thomas nodded.

Thomas wrapped his arms around me again. “So, in three days I must go back to France.” It was now official. There was a bottom line.

“This agreement my wife and I had, it has worked very well up to now. Very well.”

I buried my head into his chest.

“You are a very exciting woman, Julie. So funny, so filled with life. I had no idea this would happen.”

He kissed me on my forehead. “But that is life, I guess. This is what happens when you keep yourself open.” He tightened his grip around me. “I am very sorry for all this drama.”

We stood there for what seemed like forever. He was going to go back to her. This would be just another story in their crazy life together. She would win. Of course she would win; she should win, she is his wife, his history, his promise to the world.

“I love you very much, Julie. I hope you know that.”

It was merely a consolation prize, that admission, but it was nice to hear anyway. We went back to our hotel and lay on the bed together, our arms wrapped around each other until we went to sleep. It was too sad to do much else.

Back in the States

Serena had always, deep down—and maybe not so deep down—resented them all. Let me phrase that better. It wasn't resentment; that's too strong a word. It was a little touch of envy. It's the hazard of any job where one is being paid to take care of someone who is wealthy enough to hire someone to take care of them. At first Serena chalked it up to being in such proximity to wealth. And it wasn't ostentatious, wasteful, stomach-turning wealth. Theirs was something much, much more enviable. For the three years that Serena was the cook to a famous movie star, his lovely former-model wife, and their one young son, Serena got to see firsthand that money does indeed buy happiness. Don't let anyone tell you differently, because the equation is simple: Money buys you the freedom to do more of the things you want to do, and less of the things you don't want to do. Thus, you are spending more of your time happy, less of your time unhappy. Therefore, money buys happiness.

Then let's just talk about where money can let you live in New York while you are spending more of your time being happy. You can live in a five-thousand-square-foot loft on West Street off Franklin, in Tribeca. The entire back wall of your huge loft can have windows facing the Hudson, so when you walk into the apartment you feel as if you've just boarded an ocean liner.

Money also made everyone look good. The wife, Joanna, was gorgeous and fit, Robert was gorgeous and fit, and their son, Kip, was adorable mainly due to winning the genetic lottery, but he also wore perfect cute boy outfits that made him look even more adorable than his DNA already did.

Since Serena had gone back to work for them, she would sometimes look at Joanna jetting off to some board meeting for some charity, going to the gym, taking her son to the park, or just sitting next to Robert on the couch reading the paper with him, and Serena couldn't help but just be envious. Joanna's DNA made her beautiful, which allowed her to be a model, which allowed her to meet Robert, who of course fell in love with her, and which then gave her this extraordinarily blessed life.

And when Serena was able to stop noticing all the important, profound things she could be jealous of, she could then move on to the more superficial things. And for Serena, that meant literally their things. They had the most amazing kitchen: a Viking stove, a Sub-Zero refrigerator, an overhanging pot rack, an entire cabinet just for their accompanying lids. Serena was able to go out and buy every type of olive oil infusion you could imagine: rosemary-infused olive oil, basil-infused olive oil, roasted-garlic-infused olive oil. And then there was the forty-five-dollar bottle of balsamic vinaigrette. And the appliances. The gorgeous KitchenAid mixer. The ice-cream maker. The panini-maker. It was Disneyland for cooks. Her favorite part of the kitchen was the long, narrow column of shelves that housed all the CDs in the house, as well as a CD player and an iPod and speakers. Because you must have music when you cook and dine. Money = happiness, see?

Now the truly wonderful part of this story is that this very fortunate, wealthy, happy family happened to love Serena. Because for all the people who could have worked for them, learned their habits and their little eccentricities, and have been around when their son was misbehaving and they didn't feel like being charming parents, Serena was the one you'd want to be there pretending to be invisible.

And she's a damn fine cook. They say the turnover for private cooks is two years, because every chef, no matter how hard they try, has a style of cooking that after two years people naturally get tired of. So when Serena quit her job with them and went to the yoga center, she had already outlived her shelf life by a year. That's because Serena could cook anything. And one of her favorite things was to find a new recipe and try it out for fun. And one of this family's favorite things to do was to eat the new recipes that Serena made. And she had no idea how much they appreciated her. When Serena told Joanna she was leaving, Joanna was gracious and wished her good luck and hoped she would be happy. Serena had no idea that after she walked out of their apartment, Robert laughed and said, “Well. I guess I won't be having another decent meal in this house ever again.”

When Serena began working for them the second time, something was different. She realized that there were a lot of things she really liked about this family that she didn't even notice until they were missing. For one thing: Robert. He was actually an enormously likable, down-to-earth guy who might lumber around the kitchen in a spare moment and start joking with Serena.

“What are we having for dinner, See?” he'd ask. “See” was his nickname for her. Serena assumed it was less an endearment and more because he was a movie star, and don't all movie stars like to call people by nicknames?

“Chicken with a mustard sauce and broccoli rabe,” Serena might say, which is when he would invariably make a face and say, “That's disgusting, I won't eat that, you're fired.” Like clockwork. It's not very funny the first thirty times it's done, but by the thirty-fifth, well, it makes things kind of feel like home.

It's not that Robert was no longer there; he was. But he seemed different. More subdued. Joanna seemed a little distracted, and everything Serena did for them, from organizing the pantry to giving the pots and pans a good cleaning, was met with such an enormous amount of gratitude that it confused her. She knew something was going on, but she didn't ask, because as I mentioned before, the main job of a household employee is to go as unnoticed as possible.

But one day, while Serena was preparing broiled salmon and a big green salad for lunch, Joanna and Robert walked into the loft after being out at an appointment. Robert smiled and clapped his big hand on Serena's shoulder.

“How ya doing, Eagle?” he said. That became his new nickname for Serena the first day she walked into their home with her new head of no hair. Robert put his hand on Serena's scalp and told her she looked like an eagle. As in bald. But this time, he could barely get out a smile when he said it. He just walked away down to his bedroom. Joanna looked like she was about to cry, or explode, or collapse onto the floor. She smiled a tight smile and tried to remain professional. She cleared her throat and began to talk.

“I know this is a complete change in what you're used to, and I know this is absolutely not in your area of expertise, but I was wondering if from now on, if you would be interested in starting to cook a raw food diet for us.”

Serena was startled. A raw food diet is incredibly complicated and time-consuming and she had no experience with it whatsoever.

“I know it's an extreme diet, but there'll be a doctor consulting with you on a daily basis, and we have all the cookbooks you'll need, and a list of things for you to shop for.” Joanna took a deep breath. Her voice was trembling a bit. “Would you be willing to try? I know you can make that awful food taste delicious for us,” she added, trying to make a joke.