Saving Fish From Drowning (10 page)
His plantation was intentionally situated near the Laguna Seca Raceway in Salinas, and that was where he took his dates—a factor in a man’s favor if a woman’s idea of a good time was smelling crankcase oil and getting her eardrums blown out by the rpms of Le Mans prototypes. Inexplicably, there was no shortage of women in that category.
Perhaps, Harry thought, he should just be direct with Moff, inform him straightaway that he was interested in Marlena, strongly so. “Old chum, I hope you don’t mind, but you know . . .” and Harry would indicate with a nod that the lady in favor was Marlena. He imagined Moff would reply with a “Ho-ho,” then clap his hand firmly on Harry’s back, thus sealing their understanding. Marlena, 5 5
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while unaware of the pact, would subconsciously sense the respect these two men shared and never violate it by bedding both of them.
“Have you noticed the trees along the roadside?” Marlena now said to him. Harry peered out the window and in doing so leaned his chest against her arm, his cheek hovering close to hers. The tree trunks were painted white halfway up.
“It’s been that way mile after mile,” she continued, “like a white picket fence.”
My God, Harry thought, her voice was liquid amber, light and mysterious. “An insecticide,” he concluded.
She frowned. “Really? I thought it was so the drivers could see the road at night.”
He backpedaled: “Brilliant deduction. Dual-purpose white. Kills bugs, saves lives.”
“Watching the trees can be hypnotic, though,” she added. “Not great for drivers.”
“Is that why I’m feeling dazed?” He stared into her eyes.
Out of protective instinct, she did a quick deflect. “Probably jet lag.”
He wished he could see her eyes more clearly, but the light was too dim. He could tell how responsive a woman was from the way her pupils reacted. If they pulsed into superdilation, that meant she was open to flirtation, and sex within hours if not minutes was a strong possibility.
Marlena smiled, then yawned. “I can’t wait to fall into my bed.”
“Funny,” Harry quipped, “I’m looking forward to the
exact
same thing.” He gave his best version of a puppy panting.
She raised one eyebrow, acknowledging the naughty ambiguity of his response. He grinned, and she returned a small smile that was neither rebuke nor acceptance. “The trees,” she ventured again, her voice a little higher, “are they poplars? It’s hard to see the shape of the leaves. Most of them have already fallen off.”
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Cheek to cheek, they stared into the darkness, at the blur of whitened trees.
TO HELP MY FRIENDS find the right sensibilities for viewing Lijiang, I included in their itinerary the translated sentiments of a local amateur archivist: “Throughout the last eight centuries, the frequent earthquakes of this region, some measuring to a greatness of 7.0, have rattled the teeth of its citizens, and shaken a few foodstuffs from the cupboards, but not our determination to stay. Because of its beauty, Lijiang is a place no one can ever leave willingly. But if you must go, by peaceful old age or by tourist jet, look down from the sky, and you will notice that Lijiang resembles an ancient ink stone used for centuries to write poetry celebrating its antiquities and self-replenishing virtues.”
This tribute to his hometown was quaint, and perfectly expressed.
But of course, most of my friends did not bother to read it.
As I had planned, the group checked into the best hotel Lijiang had to offer. The Glorious View Villa was in the newer, rebuilt section of town, directly across the street from the historic old town with its ramble of lanes, small canals, and aging courtyard homes with their snaky gray tiles and sun-dried mud bricks. The newer hotels of Lijiang were bland but provided one essential tourist attraction: private toilets and baths. The Glorious View had other markings of luxury: a marble-floored lobby lined with uniformed staff, who had received extensive training in greeting customers with happy faces and cheerful phrases: “Welcome!” “You’re welcome!” “You’re most welcome!”
The rooms themselves were small, dull, and dimly lit by energy-saving fluorescent bulbs. The twin beds, sheets, and towels were newer and cleaner than those of any other hotel in the city. The car5 7
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pets had only a few watermelon stains. A small amount of toilet paper was doled out each day, adequate if one had intestinal fortitude.
More was available on request or by theft from the supplies cart in the hall that was monitored by a surveillance camera. The Glorious View Villa was, in fact, the best hotel in the whole of the Naxi Autonomous Region, but for a group used to staying at a chain no worse than the Four Seasons, “best” should have been thought of as a restricted comparative term, not a fixed standard of excellence.
This distinction was lost on Roxanne and Dwight, who tried the knobs on the bedside consoles, the ubiquitous fixture of Chinese hotels. They duly clicked to appropriate notches marked “Lights,”
“TV,” “Stereo.” The lights remained lit, the television stayed black, the radio silent. “How can this be a first-class hotel?” Roxanne groused. “This place is the pits.”
Because Lijiang had been described as “historic,” “remote,” and
“near the Tibetan foothills,” Roxanne had imagined they would be staying in a nomadic tent–style villa. The floors should have been beaten earth covered with yak hides, the walls adorned with colorful tapestries. She wanted saddled and snorting camels waiting outside, in lieu of battle-scarred taxis and tens of thousands of tourists, most of whom were Chinese. But it was only Dwight who was snorting. He nuzzled his wife’s breasts, his usual sign that he wished to mate. I use the word “mate” deliberately. They were both desperate to have a baby before it was too late. For this trip, she told him, she had brought along the thermometer, and the last reading indicated it was prime time. She wasn’t in the mood, but this was not about lust.
“I can’t believe they make beds even smaller than twins,” Roxanne said. She pointed disparagingly at the twin bed with its headboard permanently nailed to the wall, a good six feet apart from its match.
“Honey, see if you can get us a room with a king-sized bed. If we have to pay more, so be it.” And Dwight dashed down four flights of 5 8
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stairs—no slow elevators for him—in pursuit of this mission. A baby was at stake, his scion, a cross between two future Nobel laureates.
By the time he returned to inform his wife that king- and queen-sized beds were deemed imperialist, Roxanne was sonorously asleep.
Across the hall, Harry Bailley, alone in his hotel room, replayed the conversation he had had with Marlena. She was flirting with him, he was damn sure of it. So what should he do to step things up a bit? And what about that midge of a daughter of hers? What a surprise to learn Esmé was already twelve. She looked like an eight-yearold, an elfin sylph with her pixie haircut, pink T-shirt, and jeans. She still had a child’s body, not a hint of adolescence on the horizon. But at twelve, the girl could take care of herself and would be less of an obstacle to his gaining Marlena’s solitary affections. In any case, three weeks lay ahead of them, plenty of time to figure out logistics and ways that a prepubescent could amuse herself without the company of her delightful mother. Esmé, love, here’s ten dollars. Why don’t you run off into the jungle and give a dollar to each monkey you find?
Harry peered into his wallet. There they were: two condoms. He briefly considered the other attractive single woman in the group, Heidi, younger half sister to Roxanne. She had a certain beguiling quality: big wondering eyes, limber legs, tumbling bunches of blond hair. And those breasts on such a tiny rib cage—they could not possibly be real. (In fact, they were.) Harry, an expert in animal structure, had convinced himself he knew better. They pointed and didn’t sway; he had noticed that many times. What’s more, the nipples sat too high, as if they were doilies floating on balloons. No doubt about it, they were not the bona fide mouthable chew toys. He had slept with a half-dozen women with artificial bosoms, so he should know.
His friend Moff had also slept with many of the same type of inflated woman—a few, in fact,
were
the same, not surprising since the two vacationed at the same Club Meds—and Bamboo Boy swore he 5 9
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could not tell the difference. Tut, tut. That was more telling of Moff, Harry secretly opined. A superior lover, such as he, knew instantly.
Naturally endowed women reacted with intense shivers when their nipples were caressed with a feather, an edge of silk, a silky tongue.
The reactions of women with implants were a second or two off, or sometimes, to Harry’s horror, entirely absent, especially if their eyes were closed so they could not gauge when to pretend. This left Harry feeling as if he had fondled a corpse.
Two demerits to Heidi for the implants, Harry decided. Marlena’s breasts were smaller, but they would react lusciously to his touch, and these days, that was far sexier than size. Also in Marlena’s favor, she was relaxed, older than Heidi to be sure, but with a confident maturity he was ready for. Heidi was young, cute, and a little neurotic, a combination that would become in a short time less young, less cute, and more neurotic. She was always so worried about things going wrong—was it clean, was it safe? If she’s on the lookout for problems, Harry thought, she’s going to find them. The best thing for her to do is be on the lookout for good things. It’s how they train people to train dogs. If you’re keen to spot bad behavior that you must punish, you will see only bad behavior. Catch the dog doing something good and reward him, and you’ll start seeing good behavior all the time. God, if only more people knew the principles of dog behavior. Wouldn’t the whole world be great?
Marlena’s child, Esmé, was thinking of dogs as well, one in particular: a tiny Shih Tzu puppy with runny eyes and a cough, which she had seen in the hotel’s beauty parlor late at night. The beauty parlor with its pink lights had odd hours and even odder services. It provided not haircutting or styling but the companionship services of three beauties, who looked not much older than Esmé. One of the girls owned the puppy and said there were others—seven fingers’
worth. This puppy was maybe three months old, she guessed, and a
“very good dog.” As she said this, the puppy squatted and let out 6 0
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a stream. It was also for sale cheap, the girl went on without hesitation, only two hundred kwai, about twenty-five American dollars.
“Where’s the mother dog?” Esmé asked.
“Muzzer no here,” the girl replied.
“It’s an orphan?”
And the beauties were quick to assure her, “Fun, fun. Guarantee you money-back.”
Unlike Esmé, who still preferred T-shirts and jeans, the beauties were swathed in tight dresses and perched on chunky-heeled shoes.
They carried key chains slung on low-hipped belts, attesting that they owned cars, or at least had privileges to them. In their well-manicured hands, they gripped petite cell phones, always at the ready to offer their services. Harry had received just such an offer a half-hour after checking in. A voice cooed in a Texas twang and Chinese tones: “Hello, honey, you lonesome tonight?” And though Harry was tempted, he was also a veterinarian who was well aware of the precise opportunistic methods by which parasites and deadly viruses travel. Down, boy. Good boy.
Bennie Trueba y Cela had received a similar call and had laughed uproariously. “Sweetie, you’ve got the
wrong
number,” he said. He had the girth and robustness of his Texan mother, and the sensual lips and extravagant gestures of his Spanish father, who died a month after Bennie had announced to him by letter that he was gay.
This sent Bennie to a psychiatrist to examine his problems with other people’s anger, disappointment, and criticism. “My father’s death was like a complete rejection.” He said some variation of this at almost every session, making it sound each time as if it were a sudden epiphany.
Bennie’s room at the Glorious View Villa was the one that would have been mine, across from Vera’s at the end of the hall. The hotel liked to please tour leaders and gave them rooms with a mountain view, that of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. Its numerous jagged 6 1
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peaks did indeed recall a sleeping dragon with a ridged back. When I was last here and was told I had a mountain-view room, I was suspicious of what this meant, for I have been in hotels that claimed to have panoramas but had only the poetic hint of one. And on one unpleasant occasion, I snapped back the curtain to see that the view was indeed that of a mountain, only it was placed right against the window, the dark rock obscuring all light and emitting the dank smell of a cave.
Bennie took a deep breath and inhaled inspiration from the mountain. The group had originally hoped to secure Dr. Bill Wu as tour leader, and a wise choice that would have been. He was a dear friend from the days when he and I were teaching at Mills College. But he was busy leading another group on an intensive study of the thousand Buddha carvings of the Dunhuang caves. Bennie had a few years of docent experience, but unlike me, he had never been to Burma or China and knew little about either country or its art. He had cried with gratitude when told after my funeral that he had been chosen the new leader. (That was after several other possibilities had been ruled out.) Thus appointed, he vowed to help in any way he could—by organizing luggage collection for transport, confirming airline reservations and passport needs, doing the hotel check-ins, arranging matters with the local guides provided by China’s and Burma’s offices of tourism, anything that would ensure that everyone had a marvelous, first-class adventure.
Pleasing people was his greatest joy, he liked to say. Unfortunately, he often promised what was humanly impossible, and thus made himself the target of people’s ire when reality replaced intention. It was that way with his business. He was a graphic artist, and his lover, Timothy, was an art director. Bennie pledged impossibly fast turnarounds, special design elements and paper stock upgrades thrown in for free, a budget twenty percent lower than what any other firm had submitted, which later grew to be twenty-five percent higher 6 2
