He listened carefully to Gao Yideng, but at the same time he also made a decision about betting on a race at Saratoga. One hundred U.S. dollars on number three in the fifth. An amusement, an intriguing moment he would set up for himself, later when the results of the race came in. “And the Americans and I will arrange air shipment.”
“Yes.”
“And none of the pieces will be sold in Hong Kong?”
“No.”
The elder man allowed himself a long and thoughtful sigh of disappointment. “Regrettable,” he said. Pots of truly celestial quality were so impossible to find.
He himself swept Hong Kong for imperial pots constantly. Daily. He spent a lot of time on Hollywood Road, that narrow looping curve on the hill above Central where the dealers in art and antiquities strung along in constant competition with one another.
When Stanley walked down Hollywood Road, his first clue that a shipment had come through was the sight of Unloader Ma-a big, beefy Chinese who wore balloon-shaped shorts and a billowing T-shirt the year round. He was the man who took the crates off the trucks. He went up and down the street freelancing.
When Unloader Ma had things down and stacked on the sidewalk, Uncrater Leung would take over. Leung was the opposite of Ma. He was a wiry, well-muscled man, older, gray-headed, with attentive, long-fingered hands. In his trademark cargo vest with innumerable pockets, he’d go through the mountains of rough-textured pink paper in the packing crates, removing the pieces in their bubble wrap but also checking every inch, never missing any separated handles or lids or loose pieces. While he worked, the pink paper would twist and wave in the wind down the street. Often this would be the first sign Stanley Pao would see-a skinny, wind-skipping banner of pink paper. And then Pao would walk faster, because he would know Uncrater Leung was working up ahead. And that meant something new was in town.
And with any luck, it might be something good.
There was one other way to find out if something choice had come into Hong Kong, and that was to go down and eat at the Luk Yu. Not at dawn, when the venerable four-story teahouse was packed with Chinese stockbrokers. Not at eight or nine, when the people who kept birds came in. Not at ten or eleven, when the art dealers showed up. The best way to find out was to go at noon, when the ah chans came for breakfast. They always ate at the Luk Yu. They hated for their rivals to see them and know whether they were in town or not, but at the same time they couldn’t resist seeing which of their rivals was there. So they all went to the Luk Yu.
And when they celebrated, it was special.
They always did it the same way. There’d be abalone spilling over platters, big steaks, baat-tow or eight-head, eight to a catty, smothered in oyster gravy. And then there’d be the pig’s lung soup with soaked almonds and stewed pomelo skin. Roast squab with Yunnan ham. Then shark’s fin. The victorious ah chan, the one who had scored, would treat all his friends. And two thousand Hong Kong dollars would be stuffed in his favorite waiter’s pocket on the way out.
“All right,” Stanley said to Gao Yideng. “Until our next meeting.” As soon as he clicked off, he dialed his chauffeur. He had an itch to go to Central and sniff his luck on the humid air, see how his destiny hung around him, open his senses to the bracing aromas of portent. “Ah Yip,” he said in his customary drawl when the second ring clicked over to his driver’s voice. “Bring up the car.” He looked at his watch. It was quarter to twelve. “I am of a mind to lunch at the Luk Yu.”
“I’ll take this one,” Lia said to the woman behind the counter, and pointed to a tabletop box of fake Peking enamel, topped with a large brass knob shaped like two mandarin ducks. Her mother would love it. She might even give it a spot on the sideboard in her little dining room, where the cream of her animal canisters from around the world was displayed. This was by no means Anita’s only collection but one of her longest-running, and it gave Lia real pleasure to unearth something that would make an addition to it. Her mother had spent years acquiring animal canisters, figurines of Depression glass, geometric trivets, and antique photographs of men in military uniform, to name only a few of her obsessions. Anita had been buying these, scheming over them, placing them and rearranging them for years.
It was always a great moment when she presented a new find to Anita. She could feel the glow between herself and her mother, the light of pleasure that could not be faked. Lia sensed at those moments that she was fulfilling her mother’s truest desire, for Anita lived through the lines of her collections and wanted Lia to live there too.
Lia smiled to herself, watching the clerk in the Beijing shop wrap up the faux-enamel box. She loved her mother, even though the constant half-giddy improvisation that was Anita’s parenting had included some terrible mistakes.
As a small child Lia had only one annual link with her father, a Christmas card. These cards were among her first treasures. She had whole myth systems around them. He existed; these were his relics. One day she’d find him.
And then when she was nine she learned that all the cards had been written and mailed by her mother. Every year her mother had sat down and invented a message to her daughter, faked another person’s handwriting, and gone out and mailed it to her. Anita so needed everything to be right-at least, on the surface, to look right-that this for her was a nurturing act. Years later Lia understood. But then, on that day, she felt only rage.
She locked herself in her room. To her waves of tears and her kicking of the wall, Anita kept coming back with her sweet, half-reasonable protests. She’d lost track of him, she’d wanted to lose track of him, it had been best, she hadn’t wanted Lia to be hurt. Anything to keep her from being hurt. Yet Lia felt at that moment as if she were being more than hurt, worse than hurt, maimed actually, killed by love. “But it’s because I love you!” Anita kept calling to her through the door.
Lia threw all the cards, one for each year of her life, into her metal wastebasket. Fakes. They were fakes. She lit a match to them. She knew she would pay for this later, but for once in her life she did not care. They went up in a quick whuff of flames. Only then would she open her door and stand defiantly in front of the little fire, the backs of her legs smarting and tingling from the jumping heat.
Now she was a mature woman and she saw that her mother had done the best she could. Of course she could not remake the world for her daughter. Why would she even try? And yet Lia herself tried, she knew she did; she tried all the time. Her system was just a little different. Better too. She fit the package into her purse and stepped out of the shop into the roaring street.
At the same time in the south, in Jingdezhen, the ah chan answered his phone. “Wei.”
“Old Bai.” It was Zhou.
“Ei,” Bai answered companionably. In all the loose-knit society of ah chans, there were many who called themselves Bai’s friends, but Zhou was one he really trusted. It was Zhou’s help he had asked with this job.