occupied with another patient, she would oblige him. He would laugh as he rolled his sleeve up; he would laugh as she swabbed down his arm with alcohol; and, he would laugh as she stuck the needle in. If he felt any discomfort as she poked him with the Vacutainer needle, he didn’t show it. Unlike the first time she drew his blood, she was unfailingly successful on getting blood on her first try wit him in the future. Throughout the blood drawing procedure, he would talk, the talk usually centering around questions he had about Heng. Guessing he was an American, she was surprised when he told her he was from Toronto. When she told him that she didn’t know if she could take the cold weather, he said that he couldn’t either and that was one of the reasons he came to Shanghai. When she asked him what he did for a living, he told her, “I’m in promotions. Oil and gas promotions.” To Zhang Heng, all the foreigners seemed to be promoting something, so she wasn’t surprised. Each time she drew his blood, he had more and more questions for her. Where was she from? Where else had she worked? When she told him that she had been to Saudi Arabia, he asked her how she liked it? Did they make her wear a burka? Did it feel funny wearing one? How did she like Shanghai? How did she learn to speak English so well? Not only did he seem as jovial as a young boy, he seemed as curious as one, too.
Every time she drew his blood, he asked her out to dinner. Every time, she declined. Each time, she had a new excuse. In spite of herself, she enjoyed talking to Joshua Rosenthal. Unlike the other expats, he seemed to listen to her when she talked. Unlike the other expats, he didn’t seem to take himself too seriously. Finally, a few months after she had first drawn his blood, she accepted his invitation. He had flat out worn her down. There was no regulation that a nurse could not go out with a patient. Besides it was just dinner. Dinner was just dinner. That was all that it was.
Late on a fall night, after she’d finished in the clinic, she met Joshua Rosenthal at an expensive Sichuan restaurant that she had always wanted to try, but was beyond her means. As she had tried to explain to the man, the only real differences between an expensive Chinese restaurant and a cheap one was that the more expensive restaurants were cleaner. They were also more likely to cheat you when the bill came.
Driving by bus, which deposited her a few blocks from the restaurant, she felt the breeze that was stirring the leaves that had not yet fallen from the branches of the willows that lined the sidewalks. The breeze, coming off the ocean, had cleared the air of any haze. Gazing up, she could see the evening stars poking through the sky. It reminded her of seeing the stars when she was a little girl in Kashgar. Then, as tonight, they appeared so clear and so near that it looked as though one could reach out and touch them. Not wanting to seem to eager to him, she was ten minutes late in getting to the restaurant. Not wanting to seem too wanton, she wore a modest blue dress. Waiting at the entrance of the restaurant, he held a single red rose for her. Taking it in her hand, she held it up to her nose and smelled it. Nodding her head, she thanked him for the gesture. He took her hand and kissed it. He had made her blush a second time. Wearing slacks, a polo shirt, and top-siders, he was dressed casually.
Inside the restaurant, most of the tables were packed with well-healed Shanghai residents. The hostess, wearing a scarlet silk dress, ushered them to the back of the restaurant where Rosenthal had reserved a booth. Before the hostess even had time to summon a waitress, Rosenthal ordered a dry martini. “What are you having?” he asked Heng. Like most Chinese women, Heng rarely drank alcohol. Tonight, she felt like something stronger than non-alcoholic drink, but she didn’t think she dared, this being her first time out with Levinson. Heng ordered a concoction of orange and pineapple juice.
“What are your plans?” he asked congenially once they were seated. With his elbows on the table, he rubbed his hands together. He rubbed his hands together as though he was about to conjure a magic trick.
“What plans?” Heng had only been half paying attention. She was trying to take in all the ornate decorations of the expensive restaurant. Still, the question seemed confusing. “What plans do you mean?”
“I mean what are your plans. What’s the overall picture. What do you want to do with your life? Just what do you want out of life. You have to want something.” Before she could answer, the waitress brought them their drinks, setting them down on leather coasters on the red tablecloths. When the waitress asked them if they knew what they wanted to eat, Joshua Levinson replied in broken Chinese to “give them a few minutes.” Not a word he’d said in Chinese had the waitress understood. Heng told the woman in Mandarin to give them a few minutes. “So what are your plans?” Levinson repeated.
“I want to get out of China.” Her own frankness amazed her. Normally, she would show more discretion. Only a few of the nurses in the clinic were aware of Heng’s desire to leave China. “I want to make a life for myself somewhere outside of China.”
Sitting across from her, the palm of his right hand cupped, supporting his chin. At that precise moment, she wished she had ordered something stronger, something with a little alcohol, to take the edge off her feelings. Levinson could be disarmingly charming, but he always seemed to come around to things she didn’t want to talk about.
“I thought you’d be more concerned about getting married,” he said, smiling. His smile was definitely a little crooked, rising higher on the left side than the right. His smile was crooked like a huckster’s proffering items of questionable quality or integrity.
Refusing to be completely frank with him, she said, “I’m not that concerned about getting married.” Zhang Heng’s candor was only going to go so far.
“You’re not,” he said, beaming. He began rubbing his hands together again. He rubbed his hands and then took a deep gulp of his martini. “That’s something of a revelation. You’re not married. Do you have a boyfriend?”
“You ask a lot of questions.” She looked down at her lap. Seeing that the pleats of her skirt were askew, she straightened them out with her hands.
“But you still have not told me whether you had a boyfriend or not? You told me that you weren’t married, but you didn’t mention anything about a boyfriend. I mean you’re an attractive woman. You must have a boyfriend. I’m dying to find out. What would it take for you to tell me?” Rosenthal plucked one of the olives from his martini, popping it into his mouth. He washed it down with another sip of his martini.
“Not right now. We broke up a couple of months ago. He went back to his old girlfriend...I’d like to talk about something else, something more interesting.” She tried smiling at Rosenthal, but it was a thin, nervous smile. She suspected that Rosenthal could tell how tense she was.
“Now, I find that fascinating. Absolutely fascinating.” His arms shot out, palms up. He began waving his arms like a young chick attempting to take flight. Then he placed the the palms of both hands back on the table. “I find you absolutely fascinating. Why would any hot-blooded Chinese man let you go. Certainly, there are a lot of men asking you out to dinner?” He chortled as though she had said something very clever and amusing. “There’s nothing more interesting to me right now than that.”
“There are more interesting things in life than boyfriends.” She turned to the waitress. “Fuwuyuan,” she said. The woman came over to the table. “I’ll take some red wine.”
“Is there something wrong with your juice?” inquired the waitress.
“No. I just feel like a glass of red wine,” she stammered.
“We have a red house wine. It’s a Merlot.”
“Anything will do.”
When the waitress had retreated, he said, “Most of the Chinese women that I’ve known just care about boyfriends and getting married and having a family.” For a brief moment
