Janice Lee - The Expatriates

“What?” Charlie says.

She tries to suppress her irritation and fails. She pops a piece of bread in her mouth.

“It’s funny,” she says. “It’s funny that it says that the salmon is harmoniously raised.” I’m being didactic, she thinks, and then thinks, Charlie doesn’t know what that word means.

He looks at her, shrugs his shoulders.

“You wanted to come here,” he says, but he’s not bothered.

“Because it’s ridiculous, you know? Like when they say the tuna is line-caught? Do you know what that is about?”

“No,” he says, buttering a roll.

“Because all these people are crazy, and they want to know where their food came from, or how it was raised, in what kind of environment. Like when they say the tuna is line-caught, it means that they didn’t fish with nets, because dolphins get caught in the nets and die, and people don’t want to think that there is collateral damage or side effects from when they eat their seared yellowfin with cilantro mustard.”

He never picks up the thought and runs with it.

“Like Portlandia . Have you ever seen it? The whole locavore, crazy liberal thing? And this salmon. It’s such bullshit. Have you ever heard of the salmon farms and the color wheels? The people who raise salmon have special feed that will dye the flesh, and the supermarkets and buyers can choose the color they want on a color wheel, and the fish farmers tweak the feed. It’s like our idea of what color salmon should be, that orange with white stripes, or the idea that tuna should be that dark red. It’s like a giant conspiracy of our own stupidity.”

She might as well be speaking Greek.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says.

“Because you don’t read the New Yorker , or the blogs that I do,” she says. “You are not interested at all in the same things. How can you not know anything about this stuff?”

She hates hearing herself even as she speaks.

“I do have a job,” he says.

Here is a man who is buying her dinner at an expensive restaurant she chose, who is kind to her, who is good in bed. And yet she is the one who feels annoyed. Oh, and here is a man who has no idea she is carrying another man’s baby.

When that thought comes to her, she folds the menu and puts it down. She was starving, but now her appetite collapses.

“You know, you are so American,” he says. It is a neutral statement, she thinks, but he says it in such a way that she doesn’t know what he is talking about.

“I have no idea what that means,” she says, trying not to sound combative.

“Americans are so involved in small, meaningless details. Asians are practical. I thought you were more practical, but when I hear you talking about organic salmon and stuff like that, I see you are a lot more American than I thought.”

“Oh,” she says. Of course he said organic salmon, which was missing the entire point. “Does it bother you? Do you like it or not like it?”

He throws his hands up. “I don’t like it or not like it. I prefer not to spend time thinking about such stupid things!”

Stung, she asks, “What do you prefer to think about?”

He sips his drink. “Things like work, if I’m doing well. Whether I should stay in this field or whether I should do something else. I’d like to find a girlfriend who could become a wife”—his gaze is steady on hers—“stuff like that, which is important, which will impact my life. Not whether the salmon is the organic or not.”

“Do you think about stuff like that all the time?” she asks, wonderingly. “You have to have some moments of silly thoughts.”

“I guess,” he says, in a tone that means he doesn’t.

“You live in a world without irony,” she says.

“You are always bringing up that word,” he says with exasperation. “Irony. Or meta. You are always saying things are meta. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

This is not going the way she planned. She thought that tonight she would tell him about G. Not about the baby yet. Baby steps. Ha ha.

“Sorry,” she says. Time to reset.

He is exasperated, she can see. Not the best way to start.

They order. He orders the salmon, without any apparent irony. She orders the pesto pasta. He gets a bottle of wine, although she says she will just sip at her glass.

“You don’t drink much,” he says.

“No,” she says.

Silence.

“How is work?” she asks.

“I had two almost all-nighters this week,” he says. “One for a Chinese electronics company that’s about to IPO and also a Malaysian food company. I got home at four in the morning and had to be back at the office by eight.”

“Ouch,” she says.

“It’s like this for everyone when they start,” he says. “You work hard and pay your dues.”

“So I hear,” she says.

“Are you looking for a new job?” he asks.

“Yes, and my mom is too,” she jokes.

He smiles. “That must be difficult,” he says. “I can’t imagine living with my mother, although a lot of people here live with family until they’re married. That doesn’t work for me. Not with my parents. We’re too different.”

Mercy is reminded of those marriage manuals from the 1950s that get passed around via e-mail or Facebook every once in a while: “When your husband gets home from work, don’t nag him. Ask him about his day while bringing him a drink and his slippers.” The slippers part always reminded her of a dog.

“So I wanted to say,” she starts, then thinks she should wait a bit, maybe until the appetizers come, so stops.

“Yeah?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

“Oh, come on. You can say what you want to say,” he says. “You should feel comfortable with me.”

“Except we just had a quite uncomfortable exchange.”

“That?” He looks surprised. “You think that is uncomfortable? That’s just us talking and figuring out who we are in relation to each other.”

Sometimes he is surprisingly fluent in English and in emotions.

“Oh, well, I’m glad you think that.”

His appetizer comes, asparagus spears drizzled with a reddish oil.

“Do you want some?” He pushes the plate to the center of the table and asks the waiter for two small plates so they can share. This small generosity makes her eyes fill.

“You are crying?” he says, incredulous. “What is going on?”

“I’m just… emotional,” she says. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” he says.

“ ’Cause there’s something I want to tell you.” I’m pregnant.

“Okay.”

“I don’t know if you heard what happened to me a year ago. Something bad happened. And it was my fault, and I’ve been trying to deal with it this whole time. Which is why I’m not working, and why I haven’t gone out or seen people in so long. But you probably don’t know, because we didn’t know each other back then, so you wouldn’t have noticed…” She’s blabbering out of nervousness.

He reaches over, takes her hand. “I know,” he says. “It’s a small world, and everyone hears about awful things like what happened to you with the child. In Hong Kong especially. It must be very hard.”

“Yes,” she says, relieved. “It’s so hard, and everyone is focused on Margaret and her family, as they should be, of course, but I feel like my life has been ruined too, and I’m not allowed to say anything or do anything, except be sorry and fade away. I don’t know why I haven’t moved back to the U.S., but I feel like that would be running away and I should suffer and… I don’t know.”

“I’m glad you told me,” he says. “I’ve been waiting for you to tell me, but I didn’t want to ask.”