Somehow things would work out, he was confident of that. Their love was based on understanding, on overlooking their small defects and seeing what was most important. Love with companionship. He wanted to slap himself for having been so blind to it. He had sought women in the past as a way to reflect himself. The women’s eyes, their pulsating irises, had been a mirror of what he wanted them to adore. His strength. His knowledge. His social ease. His confidence. His well-timed words. All the qualities of a man above men. He had presented a parody of the male god, rather like his televised self. Well, banish that, at least after hours. And at home with Marlena he would simply be himself. He might have to learn what that was, which was frightening, but he was ready.
His show was doing superbly. Ratings were higher than ever. He won another Emmy. All that criticism he received for being a stooge to the Burmese military regime dissipated once he had a chance to explain how he used the limelight to make people aware of the plight of his friends and of all those who lived in Burma under fear. After all, hadn’t things turned out well for everyone?
Harry continued working on his book, Come. Sit. Stay. His chapter on adaptability included real-life examples from his friends’ stint in the jungle. It was the perfect opportunity to look at attributes of human behavior in groups under stress and pack behavior among dogs. He had interviewed his friends about the alliances they forged for the good of the group. Who became the leader? How were decisions made? Were there any problems in making decisions? My friends, however, were circumspect, which is a trait that dogs do not possess. They lied for the sake of the group. They said Bennie was the leader from start to finish. He received input from the group, conferred with Black Spot, the leader of the other group, and together they reached consensus. So what if these reports were not reliable? In some instances, lying is admirable.
Marlena wished Harry would change his mind and stay at her place every now and then. She had a lovely home in Parnassus Heights, but she moved into Harry’s apartment on Russian Hill when he declared it their love nest. It was smaller than her place, and made even smaller by serving as a kennel to several dogs, including an Italian spinone and a briard, which were the size of ponies. Because Harry was an expert on dog training, she had expected his dogs would know all kinds of useful tricks, like fetching the newspaper. She didn’t expect their wagging tails would knock over valuable pieces of art on the coffee table. She found them sprawled on the floor in the most inconvenient places. And lounging on the best spots were two little furry foot slippers, Pup-pup and my sweet Poochini, who, I was glad to see, had settled in comfortably. He no longer sat by the door waiting for me to come and take him home.
After a month of living together, Marlena worked up the reasons that she and Harry should alternate homes. She had a big fenced-in yard for the dogs, she pointed out, and a view of the city almost as nice as his overlooking the Bay. Plus it was roomier, with extra space for an office for each of them, as well as a future media room. He said it sounded heavenly. If only his damn schedule were not so demanding and unpredictable—the early-morning calls, last-minute glitches, and unforeseen disasters. That very morning at the studio, a chow dog had eaten a whole box of chocolates that his cretin-brained owner left on the table as a gift to the crew. They had to call Doggie 911 and then work late to make up for that fiasco. Marlena right away agreed that her place was too far from the studio, another fifteen minutes, twenty if traffic was bad. She understood completely. She and Esmé would continue to stay at her home every now and then, especially when he was immersed in the writing of his book and needed solitude. Dear Harry responded, “Darling, if you really want me to stay at your house from time to time . . .” No! She wouldn’t hear of it. But it was sweet of him to offer. Later, she wondered whether he really had offered.
While the sex continued to be fantastic, sometimes Harry was too plastered to make love. Marlena had been having twinges of worry. The plain truth was, Harry drank too much. It took a while to let this enter her consciousness. But there was no denying it. He lived from cocktail to cocktail, with meetings, lunches, dinners, and parties accompanied by social lubricants. She enjoyed, at most, the occasional half-glass of a bold and expensive French burgundy. He enjoyed bold and expensive as well, a couple of bottles’ worth. She once tried to hint that “they” should drink less—and he joked that her less would take her down to dribbles. But he was responsive. He heard the hint, and that night he had only one martini before dinner, but after dinner his math and memory were not working properly, and he increased the postprandial refreshments by several additional nightcaps.
Perhaps she was fretting for nothing. Harry wasn’t exactly in the gutter. He never drove when he was tipsy, or rather, he didn’t seem tipsy when he was driving. Furthermore, he was a successful and respected man, and she was lucky that he loved her. He was a playful and resourceful lover, always trying new adventures, open to every intimacy. He loved every freckle and mole, not that she had many of those. But he named the ones he found. And he spoke of love in all the ways she had dreamed of—of knowing each other’s foibles and laughing about them, of growing old and holding hands, of giving each other secret looks that were part of their language. And he promised they would still do this when they were senile and too aged to lock loins without throwing out their backs or artificial hips. He vowed they would remember it all, and they would be more in love than ever as the years rolled by. He said all those remarkable things to her. If only he remembered the next morning that he had.
Would it last until they were senile? Hard to say. They had been through trial by fire, and it would either forge them like iron or break them apart like untempered glass. But there was this: They both desired the same thing. They wanted to be loved for who they were. They just had to discover who they were beneath the habits of foray and retreat.
There was also Esmé to consider. If anything, she might become the force that kept them together.
ESMÉ ADORED the little bedroom Harry gave her in his apartment. It was on its own level and was very private. She was now thirteen. A girl needed her privacy. The room had a bed built into an alcove with round windows on three sides, and when she looked at the Bay waters, she imagined she was on a flying boat. There was also a low doorway that led to a glassed-in balcony with a view of Alcatraz Island. At night she could hear the sea lions at Pier 31 barking their heads off. Pup-pup liked to bark back, but stopped as soon as Esmé told her to shush.
Sometimes Rupert came over with his father. He and Esmé no longer played those baby games about naming foods they missed most. That was so long ago. She was also not her mother’s “wawa,” thanks to a growth spurt, and was a few inches taller. She now had breasts and wore a bra and tight low-slung jeans. Her breasts were noticeable, she knew, because she caught Rupert glancing down at them many times. One day he touched them. He asked, sort of. He stared at them a long time, then looked up at her and said, “Hey.” Right away, she gave a little cock of her head, then shrugged and smiled at the same time. He touched them, the tips. He didn’t kiss her, like she wanted. He squeezed her breasts through her clothes. His hand was crawling under her jeans, and she would have let him go farther if only her mother hadn’t yelled, “Esmé! Rupert! Dinner!” They heard her clanking halfway down the metal spiral staircase to call out again. Rupert jumped up like a person who had burned his hand, then lost his balance, hit the wall, and slid down. (Of course, this moment of embarrassment reminded me of the night Harry and Marlena’s passion got a good dousing.) Esmé knew right away she shouldn’t have laughed so hard. She should have pretended she didn’t even see it. But once the giggles came, she couldn’t stop them. She was still giggling as he made his way up the stairs.
When he next came over, they were too embarrassed to say anything about the breasts, or the hand in her pants, or her laughing at him. They sat on her bed together, and hardly said anything. They watched anime movies on her computer. Her mother found reasons to call down, it seemed, every fifte
en minutes. Esmé thought about “it.” If he wanted to do it again, she would let him. Not that she would take off her clothes and do the other “it.” That would be too weird. She was curious, though, what she would feel when a boy touched her. Would she go insane with something she never felt before? Would she become a different person?
The other thing Esmé liked about her room was the carpeted staircase to her bed that Harry made so that Pup-pup could go up and down as she pleased. Esmé appreciated that Harry thought of these things. He knew all about dogs. She often went to the TV studio when they filmed on weekends. She would be “on set”—she knew not to call it a stage anymore. And she sometimes went “on location,” whenever Harry did the show at people’s homes. She noticed that he called out a lot, “People! Shush!” And everyone immediately shut up. He was very important on the show, the most respected person there, and everyone tried to get his attention and please him. But all she had to say was “I’m hungry” or “I’m cold,” and he bossed people around and told them to get her a sandwich or a blanket. She thought her mom should come to the set more often and see how people treated Harry there. If she did, she wouldn’t argue with him so much. Her mother was never satisfied with anything he did.
The best thing Harry did, Esmé thought, was to feature her and Pup-pup to show that kids can be excellent dog trainers. “Esmé here,” he said on that segment, “has patience, an observant eye, and perfect timing.” Pup-pup was almost a year old, and Esmé had demonstrated that her dog could follow her cues to sit, lie down, come, speak, shake hands, dance, retrieve a toy, and stay in one place even when Esmé left the room. She watched this Fido Files episode at least fifty times. She decided she would become an animal behaviorist like Harry. Only she didn’t want to be on a TV show. She wanted to go back to Burma and rescue dogs. If they treated people that bad over there, imagine what they did to dogs.
IT IS MY TURN. I now know how I died.
Yesterday, the police detective called Vera. She was trustee of my estate and, by the way, the one negotiating the addition of my name to a second new building of the Asian Art Museum—and no, not just a wing—the seed money for which would come from my twenty-million-dollar bequest.
The detective said he had a few items that belonged to me. They included the carpet I fell on, the Miao textile that covered me, and the things I broke when I fell: a wooden lattice screen, a Ming bowl, two Tang dynasty figurines of dancing maidens, which were replicas but very nicely done. And there were the two gruesome objects: the murderous metal comb and the tasseled tie-back that had gone around my throat. Did she want them?
No, Vera said, thank you.
He remembered one more thing: There was a personal letter.
Vera wanted to see the letter. She thought I might have written it, and would keep and treasure it if I had. She made an appointment to see the detective.
They sat at the detective’s desk. “Can you tell me anything else about the accident?” Vera said. “Why was that little rake thing in her throat? And what about the bloody shoe prints? I still can’t understand how you can call Bibi’s death an accident.” I was glad she asked these questions, for they were the same ones I had.
“We have a hypothesis,” the detective said, “but it’s only that. See, there was a small stool, close to the window. We believe Miss Chen mounted the stool, and was facing the window, about to put up some Christmas lights. Why she was doing this after midnight is anybody’s guess.”
“It was the first weekend in December,” Vera said, “and all the stores had their lights and decorations up. Bibi told me she’d have to stay up all night to get hers done.”
“The lights and decorations,” the detective continued, “were on a long wooden table—”
“An altar table,” Vera said. “She always put small items there for display.”
“I’m not a decorator,” the detective said. “Anyway, she must have reached back, lost her balance, and fallen. A haircomb was on the table and she fell straight on it. The comb is curved metal—silver, I think—and the top part broke off. I included it in the list of items. Maybe you’ll want to see it, since it may be valuable. Some of the decorations on it look like diamonds.” He slid over a box of things, most of them broken.
“Looks like costume jewelry to me,” Vera said. “You could never be sure what Bibi would come up with fashion-wise. She favored fun over jaw-dropping. This must have been one of her fun pieces.”
“I’m not a decorator,” the detective repeated. He looked at his file. “As to the bloody footprints, they were trickier to figure out, but we’re fairly confident we know what happened there. A man walking by probably saw Miss Chen bleeding in the display window. He broke open the door and jumped onto the platform. He knelt beside her—that accounts for the blood on the knees of the pants that were found elsewhere. In all likelihood, she was unconscious. In her fall to the floor, she hit the back of her head on a bronze Buddha statue. The autopsy showed trauma there. The man pulled out the comb from her throat, and in all likelihood, he was shocked by the amount of blood spurting out. So he grabbed a red tasseled cord from a curtain in the display window and wrapped that around her neck to stanch the flow. Despite these heroics, she died, drowned in her own blood.”
The detective let Vera absorb this news. She was crying a little, imagining the horror and the futility of the stranger’s actions.
“We think the man was terrified he’d be caught there,” the detective went on. “His hands were covered with blood. We found fingerprints on the metal comb. He must have run out pretty fast. I’m guessing he ditched his pants and shoes close to where his car was parked. Now you know as much as we do.”
Vera dabbed her eyes and said she could see how this made sense. I could, too. Nonetheless, it was so unsatisfying. Clumsiness? That was the reason for so much drama and blood? And what about the stranger? I wished I could thank him for trying. And as I thought this, I saw in an instant who he was, a man I had known for twenty-seven years. I saw him nearly every few days, yet I hardly knew him. He was Najib, the Lebanese grocer around the corner from my apartment building. He had been on his way home from a late-night supper with friends. He, who never gave me any special discounts at his store, had tried to save my life.
“We don’t know who the man was,” the detective told Vera. “But if I did, I wouldn’t press charges.”
Vera stood up, and the detective reached into his file and gave her the letter. It was written in Chinese. He said that he’d found it near my body and had given it to a Chinese guy in the department, who looked at it quickly and determined it was a chatty letter from a female relative in China.
“Someone might want to send back a note to this person,” the detective said, “in case she doesn’t know. Here’s the address.” He handed Vera his colleague’s translation of the address.
If a soul can tremble, that was what I was doing. I remembered that letter. I had read it.
It was from my cousin Yuhang. She was my confidante in childhood, the one who told me the family gossip when she and her family came to visit us once a year. When the Communists were on the verge of taking over Shanghai, and our family left, hers stayed. This was one of her occasional letters, which arrived in a package of gifts the morning before I died. I was in the display window area, rearranging items, when the postman handed it to me. I put it on the altar table, and time flew by before I remembered it. As the detective guessed, I was indeed standing on a stool, hanging Christmas lights. I spotted my cousin’s package, reached down, and slipped out the letter. It began with the usual chitchat about weather and health. And then my cousin got to what she called “the interesting news.”
“The other day,” she wrote, “I was at the dirt market to find some things for my eBay business. You know how the foreigners like to buy all the old stuff still in worn condition. Sometimes I take the old junk, roll it in dirt to give it an antique look. Don’t tell anyone!
“You should go to the early-morning
market with me the next time you come to Shanghai. They always have good bargains, many imperialist things that families hid during the Cultural Revolution. I saw some mah jong sets with original boxes. Those are especially popular with foreigners. I also saw a woman who was selling a few pieces of jewelry. The gems were real, not what you’d expect to find with a woman that coarse, a downriver person—you know what I’m saying.
“I asked her, just to be friendly, ‘How is it that you came to have such fancy things?’ And she boasted back, ‘These belonged to my family. My father was a really rich man before the change. We had tons of servants, and lived in a great house with four floors and five Western toilets on Rue Massenet.’
“What? Massenet? You know what I was thinking! So next I asked her, ‘What did your father do?’ And she said with a proud smile: ‘He owned a big department store called Honesty, a very famous one. It doesn’t exist anymore, but in the old heydays it made money faster than you could stuff it in your pants.’
“I looked hard in her lying eyes, and I said, ‘What’s your father’s name?’ I knew that a person of her type wouldn’t lie about that for fear her ancestors would strike her dead. Sure enough, she said, ‘Luo.’ And I said, ‘So you’re the daughter of Gatekeeper Luo, the infected leech who stole our family’s gold and jewels!’ You should have seen how round her eyes and mouth grew. She began to wail and said her father had been killed because a few of those jewels were found in the lining of his jacket. (I wrote to you about this, do you remember?) She went on to say that the Red Army took him and the gold, and she next saw him in a cart being brought to the stadium field, with words of condemnation written on a board tied to his back, and a blindfold that had slipped down so that you could see his frightened eyes. After he was shot, the family buried the other valuables. But when the great famine came, they took their chances. One by one, they sold the pieces. One by one, a family member died for having the valuables. ‘No one cares what imperialist things we have now,’ the crying woman said, and she was selling the last few pieces, because she didn’t want the curse to get her son.