Maureen McHugh - China Mountain Zhang

Is that ABC synched with me tonight?

In the darkness. I climb a bit, maybe twenty-five meters. Kites are diving in the dark, and when we flash over Washington Square the second time, I'm third, and the field is a disaster. People are strung out shanglou to xialou and Orchid is first. Her kite is pearlized silver. She's in trouble because I know I can out power her. I'm above her, she'd down around bottoming out.

We go back into the dark. I'm pushing, I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. But I've made this goddamn race my way. I'm still third when we come out over Union Square, but three people dive in front of me including Cinnabar. I dive into the middle, still not as low as Orchid. She tries to dolphin up and rises into Medicine. We go into darkness.

It's the worst point of the race under the best of circumstances because one is half blind and acclimating, and the next floater is too far to see and I don't know what the hell is going on, but I know things are a mess. I feel someone over me, and Medicine and Orchid have to be tangled in front of me. The disaster lights go on and I have just time to see Orchid's kite waffle into Cinnabar and see the silk shred away from the left front strut. Polaris is above me coming down outside. Israel is coming fast inside me. I take the space in front of me, nose first and start a screaming, too deep dive.

I know I'm below two hundred meters, but I'm more worried about pulling the kite out. My bones/frame are screaming with strain and the cross strut breaks away. I drop out of the harness to provide drag, and come into Washington Square too low, too fast. At twenty meters I try to throw the nose up, no longer trying to save the frame and the silk, and the frame distorts as easily as an umbrella turned inside-out by a high wind. But the silk holds like a slack sail taking up air. I try to land on my feet, the ground makes my foot skip off it, I can't get far enough in front of the kite, the balls of my feet keep skipping off the pavement as I try to run, I tumble and the ground comes up hard…

I come to when they're cutting the harness off. They cut off the sharkskin jacket, too, because I've dislocated my left shoulder. "What happened," I keep saying, "what happened?"

"An accident," Georgia says, "you're okay, honey."

They've given me something, because I'm way out to the vacuum, and I can't think of the questions I want to ask, so I keep saying, "What happened?"

"Orchid got in. Almost everybody's in," Georgia says.

"Who's not in?"

"Cinnabar," she says, "he went down in The Swath."

Well, of course, you probably remember everything else since it was all over the media. How Cinnabar Chavez broke his spine. That they did surgery, and that it was awhile before they were sure he would live.

He was in bad shape for a long time but he's okay now. He lives in Brooklyn with his lover, I still see him a lot. He doesn't fly anymore. Surgery is wonderful, so is therapy, and he's still a sweet dancer, but he couldn't trust his reflexes in a race. He has a job as a consultant for Cuo, the company that makes the big kites, and he does commentary for one of the big vid organizations. His income is steady these days.

Mine is pretty good these days, too. I fly a big black and red kite for Citinet; a Chiyue, the new one. My synch numbers are in the 50's, and my picture's on the front of Passion next month. I'm wearing the red sharkskin jacket-I had it fixed-and the article is titled "Gargoyle's an Angel!" which is kind of cute.

I fly better these days. Cinnabar bitches about it, he says I'm too far out in front of myself. Sometimes when he says that I think of bringing that Siyue in and trying to get in front of it to stop it. But that's what the people want, right?

Besides, I can't say it to him, but I'd rather be dead than not able to fly.

I am unemployed.

The man who hands me the application says, "Filled out one before." It's supposed to be a question. He doesn't look up to see my answer so I don't say anything. I hope my interviewer will be waiguoren -not Chinese. Or if Chinese, at least huaqiao , like me. Perhaps an overseas person will be more sympathetic to another overseas person, unless, perhaps they have to prove that they're as tough as a Chinese with citizenship. You can never tell, but I always feel Chinese are the worst.

I sit at the karal. Surname: Zhang. Given name: Zhong Shan. China Mountain Zhang. My foolish mother. It's so clearly a huaqiao name, like naming someone Nikolai Lenin Smith or Karl Marx Johnson. Zhong Shan, better known in the west as Sun Yat-sen, one of the early leaders of the great revolution in China, back in the first days, the days of virtue. The man who held up the sky, like a mountain. Irony.

But better that than Rafael Luis.

I give my address, really Peter's address out in Coney Island as I'm Without Residence. When one has no job one cannot afford the decadent luxury of paying one's landlord, and one must accept government housing or stay with friends or family. I have been staying with Peter for almost six months. Soon I'll have to apply for government housing, I can't keep living with Peter. Living in Virginia won't be so bad, it is only ninety minutes to Journal Square Station in New Jersey, lots of people do it everyday. If one is unemployed, the train is free at off-peak hours.

IDEX: 415-64-4557-ZS816. Trade Designation: Construction Tech. Job Index: Comex Constr., 65997. Comex Constr. wants administrative experience I don't have, but I have three years experience in construction. In school, I wanted to be an Engineering Tech and my math scores were good, but there were no openings that year. I have an Assoc. Certificate instead of the full Bach. Sci.

I should study on the side, teach myself, take the exam. I should. Maybe when I get a job, have a place of my own again, I'll study in the evening after I get home from work, spend less time going out, waste less time and money. I've said it before, every time I was without a job.

I hand my application to the man at the desk, he glances up at me, his lips move while he keys into the network and puts my application on file, then he peels the contact off his wrist. "Have a seat," he says. I sit and read my paper. The waiting room is large, large enough to be a cafeteria or something. There are a lot of people, twenty or thirty, but that's not enough for the size of the room. While I'm reading more people hand in applications, people waiting are called for interviews. I want to check the time, but why? Time doesn't matter to me, I'm unemployed.

Still, I notice it is almost an hour before I'm called. My interviewer is a woman, a huaqiao I am sure. She looks too New York to be from China itself.

"Zhang," she says in English, "you have insufficient administrative experience for the job you are applying for." Her hair is pulled smoothly back from her face, shining as if lacquered. It is caught with a red cord, and the short ponytail curves under like a 'c'.

I nod.

She looks at the screen in front of her. "You have turned down two alternative offerings."

"I had hoped to stay in New York," I say. One job was in Maryland, the other was in Arizona. If I turn down another alternative it will go on my record. Perhaps she won't have an alternative.

She says to me in Mandarin, "You are from New York?" She is clearly huaqiao , she has a New York accent.

"I'm from Brooklyn," I say.

"I'm from Brooklyn, too," she says. "You like Coney Island?"

"I am staying with a friend, but I like it much better than I expected," I say. "When I get a job I expect to get a place there."

"I am thinking of joining a co-op group," she says.