Jess Row - Your Face in Mine

Why should I believe you? I wonder. Looking at him, for the last time, out of my own eyes. The dialectic is nothing to be afraid of. This could all be a bit of theater, custom-designed for my benefit, and it wouldn’t matter.

I don’t need a rationale, I should tell him, I don’t need a conceptual framework . I’ve had my entire life to come up with that. The switch has been flipped.

Thanks, I say. I mean, thank you. Sincerely. For doing this. For the opportunity.

He grins. Never thank a surgeon until you’re in recovery, he says. It’s bad luck. But okay. I appreciate it.

There’s really no way for me to express—

You don’t have to, he says. That’s the wonderful thing about my line of work. No words are necessary. I get to be the first one to hold up a mirror and see the look on your face. That’s my payment. That, and the cash. You’ve talked to your bank, yes?

It’s all set.

It’s a beautiful thing we’re doing, he says. Put that in your book. You’re still writing your book, aren’t you?

I’m not sure.

Because it’s no longer about Martin.

He gives me one of his blank smiles, his eyes receding into their creases, their laughing folds.

Among other things. There was the matter of an agreement.

Oh, he says, that money was more like seed capital. It’s the kind of thing you write off in an instant. Don’t let that worry you. We all work together as a unit now. Your energies may be better spent elsewhere. The field’s moving very fast these days. Books are a little slow.

He glances at his watch and stands up. When I hold out my hand, he grasps it between his tiny palms, cradling it more than shaking it.

In any event, he says, staring not quite at my eyes, but slightly above them, you’re living your life now. How can you live a life, and write a book, simultaneously? I’ve never quite understood it. It seems to me you have to choose one or the other.

RLTP

Kelly Thorndike (GI: Curtis Wang, Wang Xiyun )

April 30, 2012

PATIENT STATEMENT

I was born in Tianjin in 1975 and left China in 1981 with my parents and younger brother, Xigang (Kevin). We lived in Hong Kong for a year while my parents negotiated our US visas, and then moved to Athens, Georgia. My father, Wang Geling, started on a research fellowship and eventually became a professor of biochemistry at the University of Georgia; he died of a stroke in 2008. My mother, Xi Tande, was a professional dancer in China who performed in traveling shows during the Cultural Revolution. In the United States, she worked first as a bank teller and later as a branch and regional manager at NationsBank. She died of liver cancer in 1998. Kevin converted to Catholicism while a student at Georgetown University and is now a brother in the Cistercian order at Abbaye Pont-Desrolliers, in Alsace, France. He observes a strict vow of silence, and my only contact with him has been on two visits, the last of which was three years ago.

My childhood was happy and mostly uneventful. I attended public schools in Athens and had a very close circle of friends from my neighborhood, though I now keep in touch with them only sporadically. In high school I played bass in a local band that was moderately successful and recorded two LPs. I attended Harvard and switched majors three times, from philosophy to East Asian Studies to English. Through my roommate I became involved in an Internet startup, Amoeba.com, in 1996, first writing content and later designing the first version of the website. Amoeba had its IPO in September 1999, and I sold my shares a week later, resulting in a net profit of seven million dollars. Though the company went bankrupt and liquidated in February 2000, during the first dot-com bust, I was left an accidental millionaire. Since then I have spent most of my time in Silicon Valley and Marin County, working in venture capital.

None of my projects have performed as well as Amoeba, but I’ve had some close calls, and my net worth has grown a bit over time. I was married to Sarah Duffy from 2004 to 2009, but divorced amicably without children. My father’s death prompted me to become more interested in my Chinese roots, and I have spent the last few years becoming familiar with venture capital markets in East Asia and the possibilities of new investment in high-tech startups in China.

Amazing, Martin says. It reads like a dating profile. Nearly put me to sleep. You’re really good at vanilla, you know that?

We’re having a working dinner alone at the kitchen table. Tariko is upstairs plinking away at his guitar; Julie-nah, having served us coconut rice, cold tofu with chili and lime, a tomato salad with edamame, and chicken sautéed with ginger and basil — it’s nothing, she said, as we watched her working, each hand doing four things at once, her mouth set in a rictus of bland anger — has now retired into the garden, where she sits with a pile of string beans in her lap, staring at nothing in particular.

Isn’t that the point? To be normal? I mean, not to arouse any suspicions? No reasonable doubt? I’m supposed to be passing, not doing a lion dance.

And the fifteen-minute rule?

This is the rule of thumb for a fake ID, he told me: your new identity has to survive fifteen minutes of Internet research by an intelligent amateur. Any more than that is just overkill. You think the world is full of investigative reporters and intelligence analysts who actually do their jobs ? They’re looking at kittens playing the piano on Facebook like everyone else.

Amoeba’s still listed in some databases, I say. Wang Geling and Xi Tande have obits in the Athens Banner-Herald. And there’s a memorial page on the University of Georgia website. Plus all his academic publications. And there’s a few hits in Chinese, too, from their hometown Party newspaper.

Listing the kids’ names?

Survived by two sons, Curtis and Kevin. And Curtis did go to Harvard. Or at least a Curtis Wang did.

You learn well, grasshopper.

It wasn’t difficult, though I won’t tell him that. It wrote itself. I left the names blank and filled them in at the end. It’s not hard, with a billion and a half people and only a hundred surnames: pick Wang, Chen, Li, and you can more or less write any life that suits your fancy. It’s not unlike doing algebra. Simple patterns and infinite variations.

This is the easy part, he says. The question is, are you ready to be Curtis Wang? Are you, Kelly? You heard what Silpa said. There’s no halfway point.

It’s already done, I say. Actually it happened a long time ago.

That’s what I hoped you’d say. And you know why I believe you? Because you had me fooled. You were in drag. I took you for a normal.

I took myself for one, too.

One more day, he says. It’s hard to wait, isn’t it? Don’t worry. Deciding is the worst part. The agony is already over. Now you just have to coast a little longer. Go downtown. Eat some great curry, get a massage, see the sights. Check your mind at the door. Can you do that? Can you relax, Kelly? Turn off those analytical faculties?

Julie turns and looks my way, chewing on a bean, shading her eyes against the blade of evening sun.

I am relaxed, I say. This is me, relaxed. Can’t you tell?