Jess Row - Your Face in Mine

I feel like none of this is really happening, I said. Like Zhuangzi and the butterfly.

Her face clouded for a moment. Oh, yes, she said, brightening. The famous parable. Zhuangzi awoke from dreaming that he was a butterfly.

And didn’t know whether he was a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi.

We all can’t have it so easy, she said. Some of us are constantly reminded we’re not dreaming. But perhaps having it easy in that way isn’t so easy, either. Is that what you’re saying?

I don’t know what I’m saying. Other than I’m out of prospects.

You’ll land on your feet, she said. People like you always do. You’re well prepared. You’re — what’s the word? Wholesome.

How can you judge a thing like that?

It appeared she hadn’t heard me. When I look into your face, you know what I see? she asked. It’s that you’ve been so carefully and thoughtfully raised . With such good intentions . Like one of those cows from Japan everyone goes on about these days. It makes one wonder if you children these days have any inner resources at all. That’s what I mean when I say you’ll land on your feet. Not because you deserve anything at all, but because, I mean, you’re like little mascots, all of you. Little fetishes. Your whole generation. We’ve been propping you up. For God’s sake, we’ve been propping your parents up, too, in some cases. I mean, the world has to go on , doesn’t it, even if a little more feebly than we would have liked? Even by halfway measures? So someone will give you a job. Something that involves using a computer and writing reports and making forms for the rest of us to fill in. One of those jobs with a title that doesn’t actually mean anything. Vice President of Assessment Priorities! Do you know that one of my former students came here and took me to lunch last month, and that’s what was on his card! God forbid, of course, that there might be, say, a global financial collapse. I mean a real one. Bread lines and all. But I’m getting off track here. Listen, Kelly. Your self-loathing is just a little mental vacation. It’s as if you look at this other world and you can’t quite accept that you’re not in . You want to push your way in. I belong there! you insist. But you don’t. Good heavens me, you just don’t. You’re like one of those missionaries who insisted on staying on after the Boxer Rebellion. Some people can’t take the hint, I suppose. Decapitation’s not a strong enough warning. Want more of the Chablis?

I waved off the bottle and wiped my mouth. I’ll be going, I said.

My love to Wendy, Pearl said. And that darling baby.

Reaching for the bill, rummaging in her purse, she looked as if she might start humming a tune.

Outside Martin’s room, at the top of the stairs, a large framed print leans against a marigold-yellow wall, like an unwanted party guest, too fusty, too uncool, to be allowed past the velvet rope. Ioan. Picvs Mirandvla, reads the painted legend at the top. Galleria degli Uffizi Firenze. A profile portrait, with Pico facing left, luxuriant red bangs covering all but a sliver of his face. Puffy cheeks, a bubble chin, a long haughty nose. Lose the felt cap, I’m thinking, add a little acne, and he could be in an Iron Maiden cover band.

Oh, that , Martin says, when he opens the door and sees me staring at it. Silpa gave it to me. Of course. Pico della Mirandola, our patron saint. Couldn’t figure out where to put it. Doesn’t exactly go with the decor.

Whose patron saint?

Orchid’s, of course. The whole enterprise. Didn’t you know we had a motto? It’s up on the website somewhere. Sculpt your own statue. It comes from the — what is it? “Oration on the Dignity of Man.” Of course, Silpa knows it in Latin. Not my thing, exactly. I mean, what are we, an Episcopal day school? But every company has to have a genius loci. There, I’m doing it again. He gets to me, the guy does. Anyway, how are you feeling? Phran told me you’re back to eating regular food.

I’m fine, I say. Actually, since Julie-nah left at dawn, I’ve been better than fine; I had two brioche, a mango, and an avocado shake for breakfast, read the Bangkok Post, checked my email — nothing but entreaties to rejoin, resubscribe, renew, redonate — and read the real estate listings at Shanghai Ribao . It’s been a while since I’ve looked at a Chinese newspaper; I’m not up on all the slang.

Can I come in? I ask him.

If you don’t mind the mess. Should I get him to bring us some coffee?

As he opens the door the morning sun catches me full in the face; the eaves are cut through with rows of long skylights, like mercilessly bright, oversized lamps. Squinting, I see a self-contained apartment, a white leather couch in the sitting area, a kitchenette with two barstools, a long, scarred, mahogany table at the far end, an open bathroom with a glass-fronted shower. At the table a young Thai woman — a teenager, I’m guessing, no older than eighteen — is hunched over a magazine in a pink dressing gown, drinking from a can of Diet Coke and eating chunks of papaya from a bowl.

Martin follows my eyes — how can he not? I’ve never learned suavity, not in these situations.

That’s Mai, he says. Mai waves and gives me a wide, practiced smile. Someone has instructed her on the importance of smiling to Americans.

I would introduce you more properly, he says, but she doesn’t speak English at all. She’s from the south. Half-Malay family. Terribly shy around people she doesn’t know.

It’s been six days since I’ve been in Bangkok, I calculate, allowing my eyes to wander diplomatically, and I’ve become used to these little bursts of silence, little concussions, like the drawn breaths in the room after a loud fart or a child blurting out a secret — where you can feel the data itself in the air, stirred up and settling. There must have been part of Martin, I’m thinking, that thought I would have left by now. That expected and wanted as much. And I’m depriving him, with a definite thrill, of that satisfaction. I’m learning what it means to take a meeting.

So, I say, sitting down in a chair that flanks the couch. There’s something I wanted to go over with you. A point of clarification. Silpa asked me a question yesterday, and I’ve been pondering it ever since.

See? he says. I told you he’s like that. Always cuts to the bone. What was it?

I pinch the bridge of my nose, hoping the headache won’t come back.

My dissertation — you know, when I was at Harvard, my graduate work? It was on two Chinese poets in the Song dynasty. Wu Kaiqin and Meng—

I know. I know.

You know?

Silpa gave me the rundown.

A tinny beat, a ringtone, erupts on the other side of the room. I’ve heard that song, I realize after a moment: Party in the U.S.A. Mai rummages in her tiny green purse, squints at the screen, and turns it off. Martin makes a show of stifling a yawn and indiscreetly checks his watch.

So why am I telling you this? Why do you think, Martin?

Don’t be hostile, Kelly. It’s not your strong suit.

He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and through the loose drapery of his clothes I can see the tensed arch of his back, his swimmer’s body, the thin and efficient muscles.

I like it, he says. Miao. The universal solvent. It has a ring to it. We can use that somewhere. Trademark it.

That wasn’t my point.

Everyone’s got to have a story, right? he says. So this is yours. Silpa dragged it out of you: good for him. I don’t buy it, though. This is why you want to become Chinese? For life? Because of something in an old poem? A footnote? What, you think miao is some kind of cure-all? You want to bottle it?