Maureen McHugh - China Mountain Zhang

All day long people have been saying to me, "How beautiful." "Come out for a drink," Celia says. "Come celebrate, we won't stay late."

So after work we all troop to The In-Between, the place where everybody goes after work to get a drink and I order a beer. Celia and Carol get those neon looking drinks with sprays of those plastic fibers with glowing ends sticking out of them. I only see them in drinks, where do bars get them? Tim and Qing Yang get baijiu , man-type drinks, no-nonsense drinks. I only drink beer. I didn't even used to like beer but I learned to like it.

"Such a good Chinese girl," Tim says, teasing, "sipping your beer."

" Baijiu makes me dizzy," I say and he and Qing Yang laugh although it's the truth. They laugh at a lot of things I say and at first it makes me nervous, but then I think that they're just being nice. They act as if I am clever. They laugh when I say that I have to call my mother and tell her I'll be late.

"Mama," I say in Mandarin, "Tonight I will be late. I'm at a bar with some people from work."

" Hao, hao, " she says, nodding complacently. Looking at her double chin I think with surprise, I am prettier than my mother.

" Qing ni gaosu baba ," I say. "Please tell papa."

" Meishi ," she says, " ni gen nide pengyou, wanba. " "Don't worry, have a good time with your friends."

It's a funny thing to say, Chinese words in an English way. She does not seem to care at all that I am sitting in a bar. I go back to my seat. There is the bar, then the space for the bartenders, then a counter with rows of bottles and rising above the bottles is a pretty Chinese woman in a business suit.

She looks a little nervous, but she is still having a good time, you can tell.

Qing Yang asks me to The In-Between on Thursday. I have my political study meeting but I say yes. Then I call Gu and tell him that I can't make it, I have to work late.

Qing Yang is an ABC. I would like him to ask me out. He is not too handsome, he has a round bald spot, like a monk, only small. He is not as handsome as Zhang, another ABC I went out with a couple of times. Zhang is the only other person I have ever dated and he only went out with me because he worked for my father and my father asked him to. I wonder what he would think if he saw me?

Qing Yang is nice. Handsome men are usually not very nice, they usually can't be bothered. So we go to the In-Between and I have a beer. I don't know what to say to him. At first we smile a lot and things are very uncomfortable, but then we get talking about his job and he starts telling me about all the people he meets and the people he tries to sell systems to. I never really knew what Qing Yang did. I suppose I thought that people who needed systems came to Cuo, I never realized that some people in Cuo actually sold them. Which is pretty naïve of me, I realize.

Qing Yang sounds like he's a pretty good salesman, all his stories are about how he found some trick that would make the person who bought the system like him, like the woman who didn't like ABC and didn't like Qing Yang, of course, until she found out that he grew up in West Virginia, just like she did. "We were neighbors then, you see?" he says. "It's that personal identification, you have to draw the client in to you."

I'm sure I could never do it, I mean, what if he hadn't been from West Virginia? I've never even been to West Virginia.

Qing Yang goes to the bathroom and I look at my watch. It's an hour after work. I don't know when I should go home, actually I'm getting hungry. He comes back. "Want to get something to eat?"

"Okay," I say.

We go to an Indian restaurant on Seventh Avenue. The sign says that it's been there over one hundred years. "Have you ever had Indian food?" Qing Yang asks.

"Is it like Thai?" I ask.

"Sort of." Inside is old-fashioned brick walls and tables with silver and white linen tableclothes. It doesn't seem very Indian. It's one of those antiquey places that has two glasses and three forks at every place; it doesn't look like there would be enough space on the table to put our dinner. Qing Yang orders for me, something called tandoori chicken. It's chicken baked with a yogurt covering, but it doesn't seem very yogurty. It's all right. I tell him it's very good. The bread is called poori, it puffs up like a pillow. We use it to scoop up red and green spicy sauces from a server in the middle of the table. I really like the bread.

I have a beer with my dinner, too. It's an Indian beer called Golden Eagle, but it just tastes like beer to me. Beer is beer is beer. I can't tell much difference.

After the restaurant he takes me to this place he knows where we can listen to music, "Just for an hour or so." At the place they are pattern dancing. Qing Yang tries to get me to dance, but I don't know any patterns. Finally he shows me a simple one. It's only twelve steps, well really fourteen if you count the curtsey/bow at the end and then he kisses my hand. When I curtsey, the tails of my suit brush the ground. If I start to go wrong, Qing Yang kind of pulls my hand to show me the correct way. "I'll teach you the quad," he promises. "What those people are doing."

The man holds the woman's hand in the air, she is wearing a ring that sparkles blue and white. They take two steps together, and make this kind of slithery glide, then a turn so that somehow she ends up in front of him, then he puts his hands on her hips and they lean sideways, bending away from each other like graceful trees, like tall courting birds. It seems to be very complicated, there's more after that. I don't think I could ever learn it. But it's so pretty. Pattern dancing music just seems to ripple along, at first I can't really tell the beat in it, but after a bit I realize it's very easy.

At nine Qing Yang says he'll be right back, and then he'll walk me to the subway station. I wait by the bar.

"Excuse me, what time is it?"

I don't realize that the man is talking to me until he repeats himself. "Excuse me, miss? Do you have the time?"

"Oh," I say, flustered. I look at my watch, although I just did. "It's a little after nine."

He is a waiguoren. He smiles at me and I smile back. He has light brown hair, very thick, that he wears in a queue. He reminds me a little of Zhang, the ABC I dated. He is wearing a burgundy sweater with a little cape, not a suit like he came from work.

"Your boyfriend?" he asks, gesturing towards the bathroom.

"No," I say, "just a friend." How casual it sounds. I like the sound of it. Qing Yang could be my boyfriend, but he is not, he is just a friend.

"What's your name?"

"Qian San-xiang," I say.

"San-xiang," he says, "that's a pretty name. What's it mean?"

"It means 'three fragrances'."

"My name's Bobby." He shrugs, "Unfortunately, it doesn't mean anything."

I giggle, he's funny.

"Are you from around here? I've never seen you here before." He has very nice, big eyes. Like a puppy. He isn't comparing my new face to my old face.

"No," I say, "I work for Cuo, down on Water Street. I live in Brooklyn." Just then I see Qing Yang coming back from the bathroom and I wonder if I'm supposed to be talking to Bobby if I'm with Qing Yang. But Bobby just smiles and turns back around, understanding. Just goes to show that all handsome guys aren't jerks.

I can feel my new life opening, like one of those paper pills you put in water that open out into flowers.

At work I have a letter from Aron Fahey. Aron Fahey is a Martian Settler, I contacted him because of an interview I saw in Xin Gongshe, a political theory magazine I subscribe to. The interview was about commune management and he was talking about political infrastructure in his commune. My political study group hopes to eventually establish an urban commune, and he had some interesting things to say about a community's politics versus a larger society's politics, and he also talked about the difference between a small commune's politics and a larger commune's politics. His commune has over 200 families, our commune might have only sixteen or so, so I wrote him a letter.