Chang-Rae Lee - On Such A Full Sea

Betty had to greet the next guests and the helper ushered Vik and Fan into the rest of the house, pointing them forward to where the party was before she peeled off to the kitchen with the pie. Vik had not brought up with Fan beforehand how he would explain her presence and they did not discuss it now, this being his style. But he had also grasped what everyone who met Fan clearly sensed about her, that among her numerous capacities there was her ready ability to acclimate to any temperature. She certainly wasn’t the kind to query him about the particulars of his relationship with Betty, despite how curious she was and what she was beginning to think. Of course, none of that mattered to Fan. It was Vik’s life to do with as he pleased, to follow as he pleased. She had come along to enjoy one final day’s outing with him, and she wondered when he left for the hospital tomorrow morning whether she would leave a good-bye note and resume her path, too.

The interior of the house was an open plan, dominated by a long central living room with an exceedingly high ceiling and an exposed, intricately engineered steel catwalk offering access to the five bedrooms, two on each side and the master at the far head. The main level felt like a chapel that had been cleared of its pews and filled with multiple conversational sets of furniture, though all the sofas and armchairs were empty now with everyone gathered in the rear under an immense full-height conservatory with operable glass panels that were darkened when needed. The conservatory was essentially the backyard but a backyard screened and lighted and plumbed and under complete climate control, the size, it seemed to Fan, of one of the natural-light B-Mor grow nurseries where they didn’t also raise fish.

Some people caught sight of Vik and waved him over, drinks in their hands. They were a group of younger doctors like Vik, both women and men, perhaps a bit more ruffled and unkempt in the hair and clothes than the other guests, who were mostly in their thirties and forties, and children, seemingly scores of very young ones, each being held or closely trailed by a nanny wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt. Vik’s colleagues hardly acknowledged the niece-of-a-friend Fan, partly for her presumed age, but mostly because of how focused they were on the subject of the Cheungs’ windfall, reportedly worth not only cash and stock but also offered a contract for Oliver to continue directing the development of his therapy for the next five years at twice his current salary at the medical center. He hadn’t decided what to do yet, naturally torn between wanting to guide the research on his brainchild and doing absolutely nothing, at least as far as working was concerned.

I know what I’d do, one of the women said, swirling her glass of white wine. She was gangly and sallow with frizzy dirty-blond hair, her dark brown roots grown out too long. I would have gone in and quit this morning and then chartered my own global for a six-month tour of vineyards. Vineyards in every continent. But I wouldn’t care if it was just one. I haven’t been anywhere!

None of us has! the other woman responded. How could we? We’ve all been in school forever and then went right to work!

And will do so forever! an unshaven man piped in. He wore a funny little brimmed hat that seemed too small for his big swarthy head.

I took a global to Fiji in the spring, another of the men offered.

I think I remember that, the second woman said. Wasn’t that just for a long weekend?

A regular weekend, actually. But it was really great.

What’d you do?

Swam some. Mostly slept.

Solid.

The first woman said, Do they have vineyards in Fiji?

The Fiji fellow said he thought not but couldn’t be sure.

Would you go on your trip all by yourself? the funny-hatted man asked the woman with the wineglass. She thought about it.

I’d bring a man with me, maybe even several men, for the company but also so I would be sure to get pregnant.

You could get pregnant now.

But I don’t have the time. I don’t yet have the money. And when I finally have both, I’ll be too old even to take drastic measures.

You can keep.

Don’t be icky.

I think we’ll all change our minds about that.

Not me.

I’d go on your global, the Fiji man said. I like those flights. But you can’t get something for nothing. You’d have to buy my loving.

Maybe I would.

They all laughed nervously, though maybe not Vik. Being nudged by their huddle, Fan had drifted a few steps away and now stood among some children who were picking at the many rectangular platters of delicious-looking food on the catering tables, though to Fan it all tasted invisibly misted with the same half-stale sauce.

And what about you, Vik, would you ride my global? I’d pay lots for you. I’d pay twice your salary.

I wouldn’t let you, Vik told her, accepting a beer from a roving waiter. Love should be free.

You’re terribly wise, Vik, the funny-hatted man said.

It’s because I’m much older than all of you.

What, by four or five years? You’re the same age as Oliver, aren’t you?

From eleventh year on, we were in the same form and section.

Wow, the man said. Must have been a drag to have all that brilliance with you the whole way through. I’d have gone blind.

We all did, Vik said, subscribing to the mood. But Oliver is too charming to despise.

And Oliver knows it, someone said brightly from behind Vik.

It was Oliver.

Hail Caesar! the group quickly roared.

Ditch the rotgut, he told them. With him were three waiters, one of them cradling an inordinately large bottle of Champagne — a double magnum — by its bottom and neck, the other two ready with flutes. Oliver gave hugs to the two women and chest-and-shoulder bumps to the men, with maybe an extra-heavy bump for Vik. Oliver was the shortest person among them and a bit stocky, though, as with his wife, there was something highly crafted about him, plus in his case also unmistakably, irrefutably, clean, as though he had showered twice, a third time, then gone back and fine-scrubbed himself again. He scanned Fan as Vik repeated what he’d already said about her, though to Fan it was clear that Oliver wasn’t in the least believing him. But he didn’t say anything, simply shaking her hand, or rather giving her his to shake, not exerting the slightest bit of pressure.

This just got delivered and I want you guys to have the first taste.

He took the bottle and propped it on his thigh, thumbing at the cork. It shot out and hit a panel of the glass ceiling hard enough that they all winced, though it didn’t appear to have cracked it. But now wine was fountaining over Oliver’s hand onto the tiled floor, and he pivoted to the waiters so they could catch as much as they could in the glasses they extended.

My God, Oliver, the second woman gasped. Is that real Champagne? You could have bought a car instead!

Maybe a used one! he said, pouring out the glasses, the foam overflowing the rims. But I don’t care. I love you guys. I want to share everything I’ve got. The other guests were looking over jealously at them, but what made Oliver the master of such potentially awkward situations was how obliviously enthused he was (though he could never be oblivious) with those he engaged, so that one couldn’t help but be awed by his attentions, even when they were directed at someone else. It was like watching the turn of the Earth from a global, the continents getting lit by the Sun. You could not feel too bereft.

The Fiji man began making an odd, lame toast to used cars, which was snuffing the moment until Vik saved it by proposing they drink to the stunning new house, the design and construction of which Betty had so skillfully overseen. They hear-heared to that, though the Fiji man joked as to what the proper waiting period was for redoing the place altogether.