China Mountain Zhang Read Free Page B

coveralls, he is dressed exactly as he is every day at work. But San-xiang and her mother are dressed in tunics with mandarin collars over tights, very casual. The clothes might even be from China. I am overdressed and conservative, wearing a long black shirt to mid-thigh, but I thought this would be more formal. It is too late to worry. I wish I was brave enough to do something truly rude.
    After a moment San-xiang gets up and goes back into the kitchen and returns with a plate full of peanuts, candied walnuts
and ersatz quail eggs. I hate ersatz quail eggs, but I carefully taste everything.
    I am relieved that I have to get up early tomorrow, it will provide me with an excuse to leave early.
    Dinner progresses pretty much as the rest of the evening has, that is to say, laboriously. The food is good; pork stuffed with hard-cooked eggs, dumplings, a fresh salad, and lastly, soup. Foreman Qian and I talk business and in the course of the evening San-xiang says hardly anything to me. I keep waiting to hear her speak. Her voice, when she does speak, is high and soft, a little girl’s voice. I know she is in her early twenties. A very sheltered girl, I think.
    At nine I apologize and say I must be at work early the next day, I have a strict boss. Foreman Qian laughs. “It has been good to have you, we don’t have guests often.”
    I am not surprised, considering that they seem to have little social grace. “I have had a wonderful evening,” I lie.
    “I realize that you two have not had much chance to get to know each other,” Foreman Qian says. “Next you must spend some time together.”
    San-xiang glances sideways at her mother. I feel the color start to rise in my face. Why does his suggestion sound somehow illicit? Not sexual, but I feel compromised. “Yes,” I agree. “Perhaps next time we will have more chance to talk.”
    “Perhaps on Saturday, you two might take the time to get to know each other.”
    Lenin and Mao Zedong. But I beam like an idiot. “That would be very nice,” I say. “Saturday.”
    “Fine,” Foreman Qian says, “you decide what you should do. And I will see you tomorrow.”
    The door closes and I am standing in the hall. I stare at the closed door.
    Oh shit.

     
     
    “Perhaps,” I suggest to Foreman Qian, “your daughter would like to go to a vid with me.” This is a nasty comedy we play, one of Shakespeare’s problem comedies, like Measure for Measure. A tragedy that has lost its nerve and is trying desperately to pair principals who have no business with each other.
    He nods, he is doing accounts. After he has finished whatever he is writing he looks up at me. “I think you with her to kite race go. Often you tell me you to kite race go. Hao buhao?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe kite race have no interest,” I say, falling into Chinglish.
    “This time, first time my daughter to kite race go. She tell me it have interest.”
    “Ah, good,” I say. “We to kite race will go.”
    I don’t want to take her to the kite races, they don’t start until nine-thirty and if I took her to a vid I could take her at seven-thirty and have her home by eleven-thirty, midnight at the latest. If she’s as charming as she was at dinner it’s going to be a night that will feel like six months anyway.
    So Saturday I again present myself at flat sixteen at the building on Bay Shore. The door is opened by Liu Su-ping, San-xiang’s mother, and I am forced to make small talk while San-xiang finishes getting ready. She finally appears in tights and a long red jacket. She has nice taste in clothes but the night already has the same out-of-synch quality as all those times in middle school when I took a girl out. At least now I am not hoping that something will arouse some sort of latent heterosexuality.
    We are told to have a good time and then we leave. She watches the floor, and then the numbers in the elevator. I resist the impulse to say, “Nice weather.”
    We walk towards the subway and