Night in Shanghai (39 page)

As soon as he saw it, he knew. It was about two feet across, seven or eight inches thick, still ringed with bark, everything finished to a dull gleam. A heavy metal ring was embedded in one side, for hanging, as such a block should be stored vertically when not in use. He could imagine it ten years from now, twenty, its cutting surface worn to a gentle suggestion of concavity, changing with him, with his cooking, under his hands. He wanted it.

“I could pay you cash for it,” he said. “I’d be so happy to do that.”

“Do you cook?” She was eyeing him. “Yes?” she said at his emphatic nod. “Then just give me a moment. I’ll think of a price.”

“Please take your time,” he said softly, but inside he was overflowing. He reached out a practiced hand to feel the chopping surface. “And sister, if you happen to know, this is what sort of wood?”

“That?” she said. “That is the old kind. Soapwood.”

Maggie stood in the airport in front of the candy counter. Matt had always given her candy corn. It was their signature candy, something she used to say every relationship should have. For them it was more of a sacrament than a food. The first time he brought it home he’d had in mind a joke on her American food specialty, but that was soon forgotten and it became his parting token. He would present her with a little bag before leaving on a trip. She could still picture how he’d looked one morning in their bedroom, in the slow-seeping dawn light, packed, dressed, ready to go. When? A year and a half ago? They both traveled so often that they rarely rose for each other’s early departures. That particular morning she was half-awake, drifting; she could hear the rustle of his pants and the crinkle of plastic as he dug in his pocket for the little bag of corn. She heard him settle it by her bedside lamp and lean down to kiss the frizz of her hair. Just that. Too nice to wake her. Then the click of the door. Remorse bubbled in Maggie now. So many times she had let him go like that.

She walked over to the plexiglass tube filled with orange-and-white kernels and opened a plastic bag underneath. On the day he left for San Francisco, the last day she saw him, he did not give her any candy corn, because he was coming back that night.

In the year since, she had not eaten a kernel. She pulled the lever now and they gushed into her bag, a hundred, a thousand. She got on the plane and ate steadily, sneaking the sugar-soft kernels into her mouth one by one and letting them dissolve until her teeth ached and her head felt as if it would balloon up and float away. Queasy, full, she refused the meals when they came. She started a movie and turned it off. She sat washed by waves of guilt, guilt she’d felt many times this past year as she remembered that she and her husband, in truth, had always loved each other best when they were apart. And now it was for always. She closed her eyes.

She felt her computer bag between her feet. She hadn’t even thought yet about the job. What with getting her visa, collecting a sample for Matt from the hospital where he had banked blood, delivering it to the DNA lab, getting the collection kit, packing, speeding to the airport—with all this she had not given the first thought to her interview with the chef. Actually it had been a relief to have to move so fast. Grief, which had become half-comforting to her, almost a companion, had seemed finally to take a step back. She felt like a person again, even if she barely made it to the gate on time with her carry-on.

Then she was strapped in, with her candy corn. She attempted to face the situation. Was it possible? Could the claim be true? She let her mind roll back once again. She lingered over every bump, every moment of discord; she knew where each one was located. They were all inside her, arranged since his death alongside love, rue, and affection. She threaded through them now. Another woman? A child? It just wasn’t possible to believe he could have kept it from her. He was such a confessor. It was a
joke
among people who knew him. This was the kind of thing he could never, ever have kept to himself.

Especially since the question of children was one that came up between the two of them. Originally they were both in agreement. They did not want children. Halfway through their decade together, though, Matt changed his mind.

At first, when it started, she reminded him of the ways in which parenthood did not suit them. She traveled every month, and so did he. If they had a child, someone would have to stop. That would have be her, clearly; he earned most of the money. The thing was, she didn’t want to stop, not for a while. She loved her column. Let me work another year, she would say. Matt was patient. He was the one, after all, who had changed his mind. But always the subject came back.

He could never have hidden a child
. This thought seemed clear to her in the humming silence of the plane. The other passengers were sleeping. After a long time of shifting uncomfortably in her seat she got up and went to the back of the plane, to the hollow where there is always a tiny window. She looked out through the trapped streaks of moisture to the deep darkness, thinking. Finally she crept back to her seat and fell asleep.

When they landed in Beijing she felt a little sick from the sugar, and she dragged her feet past entry agents who stamped her passport and waved her ahead. She stopped at a currency booth to change a few hundred dollars and, thus fortified, stepped out of security into the crowded public area.

Touts swarmed. “Hello?” said one. “You want taxi?”

“No, thank you.”

“Taxi. This way.”

“
No
.” She rolled her bag toward the glass doors, outside of which she could see people in line for taxis. On her right she passed a European man. “How much into Beijing?” she heard him say to one of the men.

“Three hundred,” the man replied, and the European agreed. She kept walking.

Meanwhile the first man was still following her. “Taxi,” he said, and then to her shock actually wrapped his fingers around her arm.

“Get away from me,” she said, and shook him off with such force that even she was surprised. He stepped back, the loser, his smile derisive. She strolled to her place in the taxi line and felt herself stand a little taller.

Her turn came and she showed the driver the firm’s Beijing business card, which bore the apartment address, then let herself melt in the back seat. She had done it; she was here. A freeway sailed along outside, dotted by lit-up billboards in Chinese and English for software, metals, chemicals, aircraft, coffee, logistics. What was logistics? Not knowing made her feel old.

She still had a few loved ones, at least. She flipped open her phone. It chirped to life. The first number was her mother’s. Maggie didn’t call her often, but every time she got a new phone she put her number first, at the top of the list, anyway. Her mother had raised her alone and done it well, even if she hadn’t been able to make much of a home for Maggie. She deserved to hold the top slot.

Next came Sunny, her best friend and most frequently called number. Then Sarah; her other friends. And Matt’s parents. Her heart tightened, as always, at the thought of them. Their suffering had been like hers.

She closed her phone as the car swooped down off the ring road and into the city. Right away she saw this was not the Beijing she remembered from three years ago. The boulevards were widened, the office buildings filled in, the street lighting redone. Maybe it was the coming of the Games. Or maybe it was just the way Beijing was growing. She remembered Matt saying it had been under construction all the time, going back more than a decade. Always building, investing, expanding, earning.

The driver turned down a side street and stopped in front of the building she remembered. She paid the fare—ninety-five
kuai
. She smiled at the thought of the man in the airport agreeing to pay three hundred. It was like being her old self for a minute; she’d always loved to be the better tourist.

Inside and up the elevator, she let herself into apartment 426 and clicked on the overhead lights. It was the same. The couch, the television, the windows that faced the city.

She rolled her suitcase to the wall. Her steps were loud in the silence. There was an envelope on the coffee table.
To Mrs. Mason
, it said. From the law firm. She opened it.
Welcome you to China. Please come to the office in the morning
.

Only someone who didn’t know her would call her Mrs. Mason. She had never changed her name. No doubt they didn’t know her; Carey was likely to be the only one still in the office who had been there three years before, when she came. She remembered Matt telling her that, aside from Carey, the Beijing office was never able to hold on to foreigners for long. That was one reason the lawyers in the L.A. office, like Matt, had to go there. Then in the last few years they’d hired two Chinese attorneys who had gone to university and law school in the States and then returned, and the pressure eased. Matt didn’t go at all the last year and a half before he died. In any case—she checked her phone again—it was too late to call the office now. Calder Hayes would be closed.

It was early enough to call the chef still, but first she had to do some reading. She slid out the file with Sarah’s writing on the tab,
Sam Liang
, and made herself into a curl with it on the couch.

The first thing she saw was that he was a chef of national rank, which had to be near the top in the Chinese system, and there was a list of prizes and awards. That was fast, she thought. He’d been here only four years. Then she came to an excerpt from his grandfather’s book,
The Last Chinese Chef
.

Chinese food has characteristics that set it apart from all other foods of the world. First, its conceptual balance. Dominance is held by
fan
, grain food, either rice or wheat made into noodles and breads and dumplings.
Song
or
cai
is the flavored food that accompanies it, seasoned vegetables, sometimes meat. Of the latter, pork is first, and then aquatic life in all its variety. The soybean is used in many products, fresh and fermented.
Dian xin
are snacks, which include all that is known under the Cantonese
dim sum
, but also nuts and fruits. Boiling, steaming, or stir-frying are preferred, in that order, stacking food when possible to conserve fuel. Chopsticks are used. Of the world’s cuisines, only Japanese and Korean share these characteristics, and everyone knows they have drawn their influence from the Chinese.

She looked up and out the window at Beijing. The urban shapes of progress gleamed back at her, the cranes with their twinkling lights, the tall, half-built skeletons. Clearly a city on the move. And yet this chef seemed to be reaching back into the past.

Fine, she decided. Contradictions were promising. They gave depth. She reached for her cell phone and punched in his number.

It rang twice, then clicked. “
Wei
,” she heard.

“Hello, I’m looking for Sam Liang.”

At once he turned American. “That’s me.”

“I’m Maggie McElroy.
Table
magazine?”

“Oh yes,” he said, “the restaurant article. Wait. You’re not here already? In Beijing?”

“Yes—”

“I didn’t send the e-mail yet, or call. I should have.”

“What do you mean?”

He fumbled the phone and then came back. “I hope you didn’t fly here just to talk to me.”

“What?” Wasn’t that the idea? Wasn’t she supposed to do that? Sarah had told her he was ready to go. “Only partly,” she said to him now on the phone. “I did have some other business.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “Because right now, as of this morning, my restaurant’s not going to open.”

“Why?”

“I’m afraid I have lost my investor.”

“But you can get another, surely—can’t you?”

“I hope I can. I’m going to try. But until that happens and while it’s all up in the air, I’m sorry, I can’t do the story.”

Maggie didn’t think well on her feet. She always came up with the right response later, when it was too late. Writing worked better, allowing her time to sort things out; hence her choice of profession.

But she had to try to come up with something now. “The piece doesn’t have to be about the restaurant. A profile of you would be fine.”

“A profile of me? Whose restaurant is not opening?”

“Not like that—”

“With what just happened I can’t say it seems like a good idea. I hope you understand.”

“That could be a mistake.” Her mind was whirling, looking for strategies, finding none. “Really.”

“Please—Miss McElroy, is it?”

“Maggie.”

“Accept my apology. And please tell your editor too, I’m very sorry. I had no idea this was going to happen.”

“I know,” Maggie said. “Do you want to at least think it over? Because I’m going to be here for a few days.”

“I’ll think if you like. But I don’t see how I can give you an interview about a restaurant that is not going to open. Or how I can do a profile when something like this has just happened.”

“I understand,” she said. She was disappointed, but she also felt for him. A lot of attention had been trained on this opening.

“Enjoy your trip.”

It was an American thing to say, polite, faintly strained, distancing.
He wants to get rid of me
. “Take my number in case.”

“Okay,” he said. He took it down dutifully, and thanked her when she wished him good luck. Then they said goodbye, smiled into the phone, and hung up.

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