Ha Jin - A Good Fall

Several times Dan had urged her to steer clear of Fooming, but she always assured him that there was nothing unusual between them and that she kept up her acquaintance with Fooming only because they were both from Jinhua, a medium-size city in Zhejiang Province. “You should have a larger heart,” she told Dan.

Whenever he ran into Fooming, the man would grin and narrow his eyes at him. His knowing smile unsettled Dan, as if Fooming meant to say, “I know more about your wife than you do, from head to toe. I’ve made you wear horns, but what can you do about me, dumb ass?”

Before Jasmine was born, Dan had never given much thought to Fooming. Dan used to view him as a no-account loser who, though four or five years his junior and just promoted to foreman in charge of three staffers, perhaps made no more than twelve dollars an hour. By contrast, Dan owned a real estate company and had a team of agents working for him. Almost thirty-seven, he was mature and steady. Experience and maturity, if not as magical as a sense of humor, could work to an older man’s advantage. From the very beginning, Dan believed there’d be no chance for Fooming, and several others, to win Gina’s heart as long as he himself was a competitor. Yet the scene at the bar an hour earlier had unnerved and enraged him. If only he hadn’t rushed to marry Gina after she told him she was pregnant with his child. She may have lied to him.

A tubby man came into the pool room with a hand towel over his shoulder. He boomed, “Would you like to have your feet scraped and massaged, sir?”

Startled, Dan sat up. “What time is it?”

“A quarter to five.”

“I need to go. Sorry, no pedicure today.”

“That’s all right.” The man puttered to the next room to ask others.

Dan climbed out of the pool and went to take a rinsing shower. On his way back to the locker room, passing by the massage area, he heard a male voice moaning in one of the small rooms whose doors were all shut. “Oh yes, oh yes!” the man kept saying.

Then came a sugary female voice. “Feel good, right? Hmmm … nice …”

Dan wondered if the woman was giving more than a massage in there. Probably she’d also given the guy a hand job for a bigger tip. Dan glanced at the sign standing before the entrance, which said, “For massage, please make an appointment beforehand!”

He threw on his clothes and parka and left the bathhouse. He had to pick up his daughter at five.

That evening, after their baby fell asleep, Dan and Gina sat down in the living room and talked. He put his tea mug on the glass coffee table and said, “I saw you playing a doggy game with Fooming Yu in the Sheraton bar this afternoon. ‘Another nut, please, before I go.’ I heard him say that and saw you feed nuts to him.”

Gina blushed, pursing her lips. “It wasn’t even a game. There’s nothing between him and me. You shouldn’t make too much of it.”

“How many times have I told you to avoid that man?”

“I can’t just snub him. We’ve known each other for many years.”

“Listen, I understand you had a number of boyfriends before we married. I don’t mind that as long as you remain a faithful wife.”

“Are you implying I’m cheating on you?”

“Why do you still carry on with Fooming Yu? Tell me, does he have something to do with Jasmine?”

“He doesn’t know her. What are you getting at?”

“That doesn’t mean he couldn’t father her.”

“For heaven’s sake, she’s yours! If you don’t believe me, you can give her a DNA test.”

“That I won’t do. It wouldn’t be fair to the baby. I can accept her as my child, all right, but you mustn’t humiliate me further.”

“When did I ever humiliate you?”

“You keep seeing Fooming Yu.”

“To be honest, I’m not interested in him, but he often drops into my store. I can’t just shoo him away.”

“Why not?”

“I told you over and over again, he’s my townsman. This is getting nowhere.” She stood up. “I have to go to bed. I’m so tired. Jasmine will wake up soon, and I’d better catch a bit of sleep when I can. Good night.” She moved toward the bedroom in which their baby was sleeping.

“Night,” he said blandly.

He sighed and refilled his mug with tea from a clay pot. Seated on his rattan chair, he resumed skimming some articles on a Web site where people had been arguing about whether it was appropriate for a seventy-five-year-old celebrity, a Nobel laureate in chemistry, to marry a woman of twenty-eight. Dan’s mind couldn’t focus on the writings. Deep down he felt unable to trust his wife, who still seemed interested in other men. She must be one of those women who couldn’t enjoy life without having a few men dangling around. If only he’d kept her home. He regretted having helped her set up the jewelry store, which had cost him more than forty thousand dollars.

Most of the articles on the Web site condemned the scientist as an irresponsible old man who set a bad example for the younger generations, but some praised him for being romantic and having a youthful spirit. The two sides, somehow knowing most of the authors’ real names despite the pseudonyms they used, argued furiously and dished out muck that should have remained undisturbed in the cellars of their opponents’ past. Dan was not interested in their wrangling. He couldn’t stop thinking about his wife. He reasoned with himself, You asked for trouble. You were too foolish, running after her like a rutting animal. Sure, you won the beauty like a trophy, but it came with a price, with endless headaches and other men’s envy. Now you’ve lost peace of mind, just like the Nobel laureate whose fame has robbed him of his privacy.

Dan yawned and rubbed his eyes. He shut off the computer, went to brush his teeth in the bathroom, and then turned into the other bedroom. He and his wife slept separately because he often worked deep into the night and because she wanted to sleep with their baby.

The next day Dan made an appointment with Sherlock Holmes, Inc., on Fortieth Road. On the phone the agent sounded eager, saying they handled all kinds of investigations, like private property, spousal infidelity, personal histories, family backgrounds. Dan agreed to go to the office after showing a town house to an old Taiwanese couple who planned to move to Flushing from Switzerland because they could find genuine Chinese food here.

The detective agency’s office was above a hair salon and photo studio. A slight, bespectacled man received him, saying, “Well, my friend, what can I do for you?”

Dan explained the purpose of his visit. Though dubious about the scantily bearded man and his one-horse firm, he didn’t know another place in Queens offering this sort of service. “How many hands do you have here, Mr. Kwan?”

“We have people all over the world. We do investigations in America, Asia, Europe, Australia, and parts of Africa, basically on every continent except for the Arctic and the Antarctic.”

“Really?” Dan pulled an index card out of his hip pocket and handed it to the agent. “I want to know these two people’s personal histories. They were both from Jinhua City.”

Mr. Kwan looked at the card while his small hand twisted a felt-tip pen. “This shouldn’t be difficult. We have connections all over China, and I can get them to look into this. Let’s see, we have their names, ages, and education, but do you know their families’ current addresses in Jinhua?”

“No. Gina said all her folks were dead. I doubt it, though.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll look it up. Anything else you want to know besides their personal histories?”

“I suspect the two might be having an affair. Can you keep an eye on them? Also, get some concrete evidence if they cross the line.”