The Mandarin Club (26 page)

It all came back to him—the night Barry had been winning big at cards and offered to take clothes as markers. The forced grin on Rachel’s face, as she and Mickey’s date played along uncomfortably with the boys. The deceit inherent in Barry’s playing to the crowd. The way Barry used Mickey as the jovial pulling guard for his maneuvers. Barry held all the chips—all the power. He was the one exploiting his position of strength while the much younger Rachel followed along, all too eager to please.

“How are you doing with the whole separation thing?” Alexander asked as they rolled into open roads past Centerville.

“OK, I guess. I mean, I’ve tried on guilt. I’ve mourned—but not too long. I still feel like a failure.”

“I can understand that.”

“I feel out of sorts at the office, in a way I never did before. I get these flashes that being Ms. Professional with the great career is somehow, well. . . shallow.”

“You should feel proud of what you’ve accomplished.”

“I manage to fall just short in every single thing I do. Never got that Ph. D. Never had those four kids. Never had that perfect marriage. Then there’s work. It all seems incredibly banal these days. Some export license. Some earmarked appropriation. Big frickin’ deal.”

“So what interests you most?”

“Besides parenting? Well. . . I’m embarrassed to say.”

“What?”

“China. I still read everything I can get my hands on about it. One point three billion people, and we really don’t have a clue how they think.

Why is it so hard for us to understand them?”

“China. Goddamn China again. Why?”

She thought for a minute, gazing at the fields of corn, rising strong now after the recent rain. “Because it’s so elusive, yet so alluring. Maybe I just like the pursuit—trying to solve the riddle.”

“Makes sense.”

“Hey, that’s what my marriage was about, chasing the inaccessible. I mean, here we are, working on China more than twenty-five years. Studying it. Getting rich off it. Writing about it. Working for it. Spying on it. Building careers around it. But you know what? I think the joke’s on us. China has changed us more than we’ve affected China.”

“Whoa, you been drinking a lot of coffee?”

“Like three cups.” She tapped the gas up another five miles per hour. “Watch out for me today, boy. You’ve been warned.”

Then she continued. “I blew it somewhere. I had that perfect family feeling in Wyoming. I had it again with you guys at college—that same bond of belonging, as if we’d always find a way to cover for each other.”

“Why’d you ever leave Wyoming in the first place?”

“Oh, Alexander, I was just a kid from the sticks who wanted to see the world. My first boyfriend was a wrangler, for crissake. Rode bulls at the Cody Rodeo. I wanted something bigger. I thought a guy like Barry would take me places. I probably used him, too. I just figured if the intimate stuff was awkward, it must have been my fault, that maybe I was too much of a tomboy or something.”

“You’re anything but. So stop beating yourself up over it already.”

“You’ve dealt with losing Anita so remarkably well. How did you manage?”

“It’s taken some time.”

The silence hung between them as white rail fences flew by, cows gazing impassively. In the distance, the line of the Blue Ridge was just breaking the horizon to the west. It was several minutes before he continued.

“When Anita was first diagnosed, we went to Hawaii. We’d just sit on the beach and look at the stars. We didn’t have a lot of money and we didn’t have a lot of time. So we blew a wad staying at the Mauna Kea; it’s a beautiful old hotel on the dry side of the Big Island. When she was healthier, we’d always done national parks—wilderness places like Glacier and Zion—and did some amateur geology stuff.”

Alexander was looking off in the distance again, pausing to gather strength. “In Hawaii, we’d catch every dawn and sunset. Anita said it centered her. Made her appreciate the cyclical nature of life and death—the basics. She just turned to me one day and made me promise not to mourn too long. She dug out that old poem we’d use for our toasts—that British utopian Spender: ‘Never forget those who wore their hearts at the fire’s center. . .’”

“I remember. . . ‘Born of the sun, they traveled a short while towards the sun.’”

“It was brutal, Rachel. We were both angry with the gods. But she said that after she died, I had to live fully, that her horrid disease wouldn’t win if I defied it. She made me promise.

“I did a pretty lousy job of it at first. I was bitter. I missed having Anita to talk with, to laugh with about something stupid that happened that day. It made me crazy! I actually forgot about twenty times a day that she was gone. The agony of it would surface all over when I confronted the fact again.

“About six months after she died, I tried my first solo vacation, hiking in the Sierra desert.”

“Didn’t you go to Death Valley—of all places?”

“Yeah,” he laughed, “Bizarre place to pick. I was staying in the Furnace Creek Inn. It was about a hundred and ten degrees each day. I’d sleep in the afternoon, and start with the beers at dusk. I stayed sober one night and hiked out to the sand dunes for a sunrise. It was unbelievably cold. The desert got down to about forty at night, even in July. But there was this remarkable glow coming over the hills. It was as if I was present at the dawn of creation. There were all these layers of geology exposed around me—an incredible, ancient, dried-up inland seabed. I was sitting on this enormous pile of sand, sobbing, when I remembered my promise to Anita, that the only way I could triumph over the forces of despair was to revere life, to live fully.”

She reached over and gripped his shoulder. “You’re doing pretty damn good, Alexander.”

His tension was drained. When they arrived in Upperville at Rachel’s aunt’s place, he was refreshed by the distance they had covered. They rode horses—fast—through the woods on western saddles. They dove in the pool, Alexander feeling a bit sheepish as he checked out Rachel in her red bikini. They talked about local history and theatre with Rachel’s aunt, who seemed nonplussed to have Alexander there. When it came time to leave, Alexander wished they did not have to return so quickly to the battles of the big city.

It was nearly sunset as they crossed the Beltway and headed the last few miles back into D.C.. A dread began to creep over him, a familiar Sunday evening anxiety, like the night before a big school exam. But Rachel was next to him, driving, talking, gesturing like an Italian cabbie. She would squeeze his hand to emphasize a point. Somewhere along the last few blocks, she didn’t let go. When she pulled up and parked in front of his townhouse, his hand was firmly in her grip.

As they walked into the darkened entryway, Alexander went first to the living room. Out the bay window to the west was the glowing dome of the Capitol, the sun gone just beyond. As he turned, tentative in the room’s grayness, there was Rachel. He reached out to her, placing his hands on her face. She looked at him brightly, greeting him. Then he kissed her, eyes open, grinning expectantly after all those years.

They moved in an unhurried dance, kissing eagerly, repeatedly, as their clothes began to peel away. They swam in their kisses, moving through the same restorative sea, washing, drinking, refreshing. Alexander’s lips explored behind her neck, down the small of her back. He was strong and hungry, seeking her out with determination. Together, they reached and they sank in their lovemaking, creating a new rhythm, touching secret places, sharing simple pleasures. At some point, they settled together into Alexander’s bed and fell into a deep sleep. Alexander snored. Then Rachel was whispering to him in the heart of the night, awakening him with her lips, urging him onward as they played once more.

Rachel dreamt rich dreams, filled with memories of the mountains, of hiking with the guys. Shortly before dawn, she awoke and began to pace the apartment in a rumpled button-down shirt of his. She ate an apple, then returned and began massaging his feet as she sat at the edge of the bed awaiting the sunrise.

The thump of the morning paper on the porch startled her. She headed down the stairs on tip-toe, modestly reaching an arm out the front door to collect the news. Alexander was awake when she returned to the bedroom.

“You look like a drunken sailor, kiddo,” she said, greeting him with a kiss as she dropped the newspaper in his lap. “Special delivery.”

“Cute paper boy.”

“I’m a girl.”

“I noticed,” he said, craning his neck just a bit to peek through a buttonhole she had missed.

“What the hell is that?” she asked, pointing to his paper: a plain manila envelope had slipped out of the
Post
’s front section.

Alexander sat up, looking confused. He tore the envelope open. Inside was a sheaf of eight-by-ten photographs and three typewritten pages.

“What the hell is this?” Alexander whispered as he squinted at the documents, like an orthopedist evaluating an x-ray. He regarded the photos from several different angles, then began to study the written analysis.

“These are satellite photos.” He looked up sharply before he was done. “Some Chinese missile base.”

“And who, exactly, delivers your newspaper?”

“Well, I was going to ask you.”

“Me? I’m just the paper girl. Hey—wait a minute.” She was glaring as she stood over him. “What the hell are you implying?”

“I’m not implying anything. It’s just, I don’t know. Damn it. I’m getting a little paranoid here. I wonder if I’m getting set up all over again.”

She looked at him sternly. “You actually think I’m part of the problem? Because if you—”

“No, Rachel. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just. . . somebody is doing a number on me.”

“Do you think your apartment is miked? Maybe they even have cameras.” She eyed him warily, then leaned over to whisper. “I’d say we gave them some pretty hot stuff last night.”

“These are satellite photos and intelligence analysis of that Chinese missile base in Fujian Province—the one the State Department denies the Chinese are building up. These pictures prove they’re lying.”

“Who in God’s name gave them to you?”

“Probably somebody who wants to screw up the summit. I mean, it could be anybody from right-wingers in D.C. to some faction in Beijing that hopes to mess up ties with Washington.”

“Hey, wait a minute. Aren’t satellite photos rather
passé
these days? Can’t some commercial outfits also shoot this kind of stuff?”

“I don’t think commercial satellites can take such high-resolution stuff. These seem like the real McCoy: much more detail. Plus, they’ve been so kind as to give me some intelligence analyst’s conclusions. It’s Fujian.”

“Somebody just dumps this stuff on your doorstep on Sunday mornings?”

“It’s Monday, my dear.”

“They probably saw me half naked picking it up. Now
that
will be interesting to explain. The summit gets screwed up, my clients get screwed—and I’m walking around using some reporter’s shirt for a nightgown.”

“Which clients are getting screwed?”

“Like Telstar, for starters.”

“Sweetheart,” said Alexander, laughing now, “you’ve got to savor the irony. All these pictures were probably taken with a Telstar system.”

T
hey had been leaning against an enormous oak, fallen at the edge of the field, dry California brown grass thigh high before them. It was somewhere off the Bear Valley trail, halfway between the riding stables at the Point Reyes ranger station and their seaside destination of Arch Rock.

It was the long Veteran’s Day weekend of 1978, and the air was surprisingly mild beneath the morning cloak of fog. The group had seen no one else since dawn. There was a deep silence all about them, broken only by the profusion of birds calling from within the forest canopy bordering the meadow.

They were in a clearing that Mickey, their designated scoutmaster, called Divine Meadow. It was right around midday, the warm overcast now frosted by a penetrating sun. Branko and Lee were walking ahead with their backpacks, the two in the lead disappearing into the fog that obscured the foot of the rise.