Jess Row - Your Face in Mine

What makes you think that it was my idea?

I’m not saying it was. I’m saying you’re amenable to the suggestion. Right? I mean, isn’t that what we’re talking about? Silpa gave you the straight sales pitch. Okay. I mean, I would have waited.

What’s the sales pitch?

For the first time since we’ve been in Bangkok, he aligns his face with mine. His eyes, if such a thing were possible, have become more wide-set. Softer, filmier. I’m beginning to see eyes differently: as independent entities, as matter, as material.

He told you that you were one of us. That the rest of your life has been leading up to this point. What you couldn’t find in literature — look, didn’t he say it well enough? I can be a good salesman. I am a good salesman. But not with you. I said I wouldn’t do it with you. It’s too close. I have principles. I said to him, if you want this, you have to pursue it. He has to make up his own mind.

He gives a big snort and touches each eye with the heel of his palm, as if to drive it further into its socket. And I almost want to, almost am capable of, believing him.

To be honest, he says, I never thought you were such a strong candidate in the first place. Too cerebral. Too equivocal. Not broken enough.

What does that mean?

What do you think it means? It means, fundamentally, that this is just an episode for you. Just a chapter in a long and fulfilling life. Look, I won’t deny the trauma. It’s a horrible, unimaginable thing. But you’ve already landed on your feet. You’re not a wreck. You’re trying to be a wreck. But that’s the way it always was, right? You felt these things, but it didn’t stop you from going on and living the life you were supposed to have. Amherst. China. A Ph.D. A wife. A family. The pendulum swings, but it just comes back to normal in the end, doesn’t it? People like you always find something to do.

Who are you to speak for me? I should ask him. Why do you get to decide? I should be all heated and blustery, my face an angry pimple, indignant, pacing, hands on hips. What I didn’t say to Pearl Chen — I have that in me now. But he’s right, he’s absolutely right: I was that person. I was that Kelly Thorndike. And now, unbelievably, I’m not.

I can already stand outside of this argument, I’m thinking. All I need is a new name. Wang. I’ve always wanted to be a Wang. Four strokes, , meaning king , the second or third commonest of the old hundred names. In my freshman year Chinese 1 class it was the first character in the workbook. I practiced writing it a hundred times over; when the spaces ran out I used pages of my spiral notebook. I didn’t want to go on to the next one. Wang , like an E that faces both ways. It made me shiver. It makes me shiver. Wo xing Wang. My name is Wang. I am the third person in this room.

I look over my shoulder at Mai, licking papaya juice from her fingers.

The fourth person in the room.

I mean, he says, this book about me, whatever you’re going to write, it’s just writing . Isn’t that true? You already churned out five hundred pages on Wu this and Fong that. Who gives a shit? But no, that’s what people like you do. They just keep on producing , whether the world wants it or not. And then find a way to make the world pay for it.

White people.

White people. No doubt. You know what I’m saying. I mean, you feel like you had to work hard for what you’ve got, but not that hard, in the end, right? So there’s a little guilt in there as well? And what do you do with guilt, except write another book about it?

So that’s the standard? Mai looks up from her magazine, alarmed by the break, the misfire, in my voice box. I mean, I say, Martin, seriously. Who are you looking for, then? Do you have a cutoff point for total liquid assets? Or certain admissible careers only? Isn’t there some business maxim about not second-guessing the customer’s motivations?

You’re not a customer. You’re an investor . And anyway, look at Julie-nah. We’ve already made one huge mistake. After that I promised myself: no more intellectuals. They ruin everything.

Too ambivalent? Too conceptual?

Too motherfucking in love with their own algorithms! With all due respect, Kelly, you don’t understand wealth. Nobody understands wealth less than people like you. People so far down the line of inheritance that they think they don’t even have to care about it. I’m looking for people who can’t live without money. The self-made. And, of course, the outright hedonists. Okay, of course, Silpa has his criteria. He does a psychological workup. There’s always a narrative attached to that. But eventually all that stuff has to take a backseat to the forces of the market. That’s why I keep saying: we have to be entrepreneurial. We have to be change agents. Leave the theorizing for later. I can recognize the people who really need it. The ones who have the bug. The early adopters. You’re not it. Count yourself lucky.

And you hired me for—

For the American market. Because, look, Americans care about the backstory. They want to be spoon-fed. It has to be inspirational; it has to warm those little fat-clogged hearts. That’s what I want from you. And believe me, that’s all. I expect you to hold up your end of the bargain, take your money and walk away. Anything else is your own business. I’m on the record now saying this wasn’t my idea.

And if I don’t go through with it — if I stay as I am — you’re saying I’m safe? I can go back to the United States? To Baltimore, even? No dropping a dime on me? No manila envelopes to the Sun ?

You’re still worried about that?

Wouldn’t you be?

He takes a deep breath.

Okay. Okay. I can see why you don’t trust me right now. I get that. But I hope you can see, too, why all this was necessary. It’s a process. It’s a — okay, if you want to use that word, it’s a recruitment. All in the service of a larger goal. Tell me, just using common sense, using everything you know about me, knew about me, am I into pointless revenge? Do I hold grudges? I’m telling you to go home. What good does it do me to hold this over your head? In any case, I’d have to expose myself. For them to reopen the case. I’d have to testify.

So you’ve thought about it.

I haven’t thought about it . I’m improvising. You brought it up, remember?

We’re having a staring contest, a don’t-blink contest.

One thing is clear to me, I’m thinking, with a kind of creeping horror. Who was it that said, just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you ? I lived with the knowledge of what happened to Alan, correction, what I did to Alan , alone for so long that it turned into a dream. Yes, okay, I talked to Cox about it. At the brink of adulthood, fatherhood, I tried to buy some certainty, some quiet skeleton-in-the-closet insurance, under the curtain of attorney-client privilege. But it wasn’t a dream. Someone else has been thinking about it. The parallel life, the worst-case-scenario life, in which I do five in Jessup, maybe three with good behavior, plus five more on parole, and then try to find a job that hires felons with Ph.D.’s. Driving a school bus, maybe. Living in my parents’ basement. Someone else has had that bad dream, too. Planning, waiting, watching. Or not. It almost doesn’t matter. My life, my life , the life I thought I was living privately, was always, all the time, dangling on that string.