I wanted to get out of China. If I can get out of China, the rest will fall in place. Besides, I’m through with Chinese men.”
“Are you so sure?” The man shrugged in his shoulders as though to say, “Are you kidding me?” When he smiled, his eyebrows writhed like pennants in the wind.
“I want a family. I just don’t want a Chinese husband. They’re too vain...they’re too fickle. They’re too immature. They complain about everything. They complain about everything and don’t do the least to change things. They’re just not men. At least not the man my father was. He was a true man.”
“Sounds like you have some fairly strong opinions on the subject. Sounds like you’ve had a couple of bad experiences.” He smiled, but this time didn’t laugh. “You must have been close to your father.”
She nodded her head. “I was close to him. I was as close to him as a daughter can be to her father. He saw me through a lot. He saw the family through a lot. Most men these days can’t even keep the promises they make. I remember my father holding my hand, walking me to school. I remember him lifting me up the steps of the train that carried my family to Xinjiang when I was a little girl.”
“Sounds like he was quite a man.”
“He was. In his own way he was a very great man.” The waitress returned with her glass of Merlot. She took a sip.
“He still alive.”
“No, he passed away a couple of years ago. He had cancer. Liver cancer.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Levinson, now with all the probity of a small town judge. “Must of been very hard on you.”
“It was. It was hard on all the family.” Heng opened the menu going through it page by page, the dishes in photographs with their names in both Mandarin and English.
“But you don’t want to settle down with a Chinese boyfriend?”
“No,” she replied sharply. “I already told you that. I just know that I don’t want to marry a Chinese man. Besides if I marry one, I’ll never get away from this place.”
“You’re sure about all this?” His hands, which had been balled up into two small fists on the table, he spread out on the tablecloth. Again, he seemed to be setting her up for some sort of card trick.
“These days, I’m not sure of anything,” she replied. “I’d just like it to be that way...Certainly there are more interesting things to talk about.” She paused and looked down at the menu.
“Sounds like you need a boyfriend, a Westerner. A Lao Wei.” He smiled from ear-to- ear.
“Fuwuyuan,” she said abruptly to the waitress. She was beginning to regret that she ever accepted the dinner invitation. “What do you want to eat?”
“The Gung Pao Chicken is always good.”
“That’s all you foreigners eat. Let’s try something a little different. Do you mind spicy food?”
“Do you mean, do I like it. I love it. I love it.” He chuckled. “Go ahead and order. The spicier the better.” He set his menu on the table.
Zhang Heng continued to peruse the menu. Taking her time, she knew that the questions would abate until she had finished ordering. Telling the waitress that they wanted hot, diced chicken as the main course, she ordered some cold dishes and one hot dish of vegetables. All the while she was ordering their dinner, Levinson just nodded his head as if he knew what she was saying. When she’d finished and the waitress had headed off to the kitchen with their order, she told him what she had requested for their dinner. “Sounds good to me,” he said laughing softly. “Now, where were we?”
“We were talking about boyfriends,” she said.
“Oh, yes. About your boyfriends.” He chuckled.
“I don’t want to talk about them again tonight. They’re all ancient history. Besides, I don’t know you that well. Okay?”
“Okay, I’ll give you all the time in the world to know me better” he insisted, finishing his martini. “Would you ask the waitress to bring another one for me?” When Heng got the waitress’s attention, Rosenthal waved the empty martini glass in the air, as though he needed another one.
Moments passed. Heng watched couples come and go into the restaurant. She could feel the warm flush of the wine by now. Changing the subject, she said, “Tell me, what sort of things do you promote? All the expats I meet here, especially the ones at the clinic, say they promote one thing or another.” This, she thought, was safe territory. All the expats she had met in Shanghai, particularly in the clinic expounded on their exploits in the East to make money. To make money and obtain power.
“I suppose they do. I suppose they do...Like I told you in the clinic, I promote oil and gas leases here in Asia. Right now, I’ve been going to Kazakhstan, Turkestan, Uzbekistan...all the Stans. They’ve been discovering big gas fields all around China. I do a little business in China, but most of it is just outside the country. Most of the oil and gas isn’t in China, but China is in the middle of all the places I do business. Right now, business is hopping. Couldn’t be better...So where is it you’d like to go when you leave China?” This time, he managed to get out a couple of sentences without laughing. He managed to impress her with a certain amount of enthusiasm when he talked about his business. While he was expanding on his business ventures, the waitress had come out with plates of steaming food. He stopped talking long enough to ease the chopsticks into position in his left hand.
“Just about anywhere. Anywhere, but the Middle East.” She felt herself opening up to this odd man who seemed so optimistic and jovial, like a beloved uncle or a wily politician in the Party. “I’ve already been there. But I’ve told you that.” The few years working in Riyadh had consumed a lot of the conversation that she had had with him in the clinic. “I’d like to go to England,” she said, “but I’d prefer to go to the United States.”
“You think that that’s the land of milk and honey?”
“Yeah, the land of milk and honey” The land of all your dreams?” Levinson was fidgeted with his chopsticks. He ate with more grace than the average foreigner, but he still had not mastered the fine art of eating with chopsticks. The large pieces of chicken he managed to snare with his chopsticks, but he was hopeless with the smaller, greasier morsels of meat. Rosenthal was a finicky eater. Perhaps that was why he was so slender for a man his age.
“I don’t know. I do know it would be a damn sight better than here. I’m tired of being overworked and underpaid,” she added. What she just told him surprised her: she never swore and she had only told one or two of the nurses in the clinic of her desire to leave China. Rosenthal continued nodding; he continued listening attentively. Seemingly tired of struggling with his chopsticks trying to pick up some of the smaller pieces of chicken, he set them down on the table and returned to his martini.
“Could be as bad there as it is here,” Rosenthal replied. “Lot of people back home in Canada and the States are complaining about the wages and hours.” He took another drink from his martini and then spread his hands with his fingers splayed out on the table one more time. This was a man who couldn’t seem to talk without laughing or moving his hands in the most peculiar of gestures. “I think that if the economy continues on like it is in the States those same people will be grateful to just have jobs. That’s
