This was the one thing she was good at in Chinese, reading. Her spoken Chinese suffered not just from insufficient use but from her imperfect hearing. Pronouncing the tones never felt natural, and as a result she tried too hard, she always tried to fill in when she didn’t feel sure by letting the sound of the language slide a little. It was sloppy, especially for her. She didn’t like it. On the other hand, she was not on the Mainland very often.
Just then she caught a glimpse of herself in a shop window and for an unfortunate second looked older and harder than her thirty-two years. Her body was too long, with too many angles. And she seemed to be missing some pliant, feminine element of invitation. Other women had it. In the glass she saw Chinese women passing behind her. They had it. They were softer-faced, more quietly built; their arms were rounded and their eyes gentle.
She turned right into a venerable alley called Dashanlan, or Dazhalar, as the word was locally pronounced. It meant “great wicker barrier” street, and the name came from the screen that had once been there to shield its entertainments of the night from the eyes of the respectable passersby on Qianmen. Lia smiled at the memory. It was still a stretch stuffed with thronging commerce, the gray overhanging buildings dark with age and looped with phone and electrical wires. She stopped in front of a window displaying bolts of iridescent silk-satin, electric blue, scarlet, jade. She could never wear anything like that. She reached around and took her long plume of loose hair and brought it around to the front, smoothed it with her hands. It was dark copper, long, like her face. She had her palette. She looked again at the brilliant row of silks. Well, something in here might suit me, she thought, and she pushed open the door and went in.
“I’m thinking of having a dress made,” she said to the salesgirl.
“Hao-de,” the girl said crisply, and gave her a clipboard of styles from which to choose.
Lia flipped through the pages. All the models were Chinese, and the lines and shapes of the dresses were those that flattered the Asian body.
It must have shown in her face. “Ni kan qipao zenmoyang?” the clerk said, What about the qipao?
Lia looked at the old-fashioned high-necked garment, slit up the leg. It was a cliché. She’d never wear it. “Too Chinese for me,” she said.
“But change to a square-cut neckline,” the woman said, tracing what she meant with her finger. “No cross-button.”
Lia looked at it.
“Side slit. Good for long legs.”
Lia did have long legs; this was one reason she wore clinging, close-cut skirts and pants. “Shorter length,” she said, pointing to a spot a few inches above her knee. “No slit.”
The woman raised her eyebrows at first, then stepped back and eyed Lia critically. “Not qipao anymore, no relationship, but you’re right.” Her expression had migrated to one of interest. She went down the row and picked a sage-green silk, soft, not shiny, with a design of falling leaves in gold and russet.
Lia was amazed at the vitality that suffused her face when she held the fabric up against her. Things might be possible in this dress. “I love it,” she said, surprised at herself.
In the fitting room the girl reached out and plucked the clinging vest away from Lia’s body. “Shirt off,” she said. “Skirt off.”
Lia stood up in her underwear while the Chinese woman pinned muslin pieces expertly against her. The clerk’s hands were forthright, professional, remote. “What’s your name?” Lia asked the clerk.
“Xieli.” The word was slid around a mouthful of pins. “You?”
“Luo Na.”
“Pleasure’s mine,” the woman said, and the politeness was jangled by the pins, which made them both laugh. “Enough!” Xieli said, and slapped Lia’s leg lightly. “Stand still.”
She found she liked the feeling of the muslin soft as air on her. This dress would make her lighter and kinder, more female. That was how she wanted to be.
Xieli finished around the hem at the bottom. She took a long look under the fitting-room light, then picked up a charcoal pencil and drew a clean line on the muslin across Lia’s chest. “Where do you think?” she said. “Here?” She drew another line lower down. “Or here?”
Lia looked. The second was about as low as her comfort level went. But she had seen the American man looking at her. “This one,” she said, and touched it with her finger.
They finished the fitting and Lia paid a deposit. “Wednesday,” the woman said. “Don’t worry. I think he will love it.”
Lia let out a surprised laugh. “Thanks,” she said.
And Xieli waved her away.
Jack Yuan awoke to the sounds of movement in the bathroom, to the rush of water, to Anna stepping into the shower and the muffled clank of its glass door closing behind her. He knew what she looked like. He could see her in his mind’s eye, her black hair plastered flat to her head, her skin streaming. He had seen her like that so many times.
Jack knew what day it was. He had known it deep in his cells before he even opened his eyes. He turned to the left, to the bedside table gleaming in Balinese teak beside him. There it was, the flat white stick. They had a deal, he and Anna. She left it here, on these days. She brought it out of the bathroom and put it here and did not return to look at it. He took care of it. If he had anything to tell her, he would tell her. They both knew that. It seemed better this way than always to hope, to discuss. If nothing came of it he would tuck it into the garbage can and say nothing. That was what he did every month. She was a little irregular and, always, she hoped for the possibilities.
After a while he heard the water go off. It had to be gone when she came out. She would come out naked, or maybe with a towel; the damp heat would make tendrils of hair cling around her nape and the intelligent dome of her forehead. She would look, only once, at the bedside table to see that it was gone, then walk into her dressing room. He would watch her lucid beauty from behind. She was his ideal. He rolled over and picked up the stick.
Nothing.
He heard the bathroom door opening. He slipped it under the pillow and closed his eyes. Anna came out.
The next day she found another fake. It was a putative pair of Daoguang wine cups, beautifully painted, thin-walled, but with one giveaway-an overly calibrated texture along the base rims. Of course, these were copies of much less valuable originals. If actually from the Daoguang reign, 1821-1850, the real pair would be worth only twenty thousand U.S. dollars. That was a far cry from more expensive pieces like the chicken cup, worth millions. But its very modesty set off alarm bells of its own. There was a certain class of fakes that seemed to pass muster by appearing more common, inviting less scrutiny. The forger counted on the appraiser to look at such a piece quickly.
She packed them up and moved on. Every additional fake was a greater disturbance in the pattern. She didn’t like it. The game board wasn’t supposed to shift.
But she had to go ahead. She went on to the next piece, which was real, and the next one after that, and a string of others. No more fakes that day. But the fear didn’t leave her. This was different. This was a pattern of fakes. When the car dropped her off in the evening at the guesthouse, she didn’t even go out to eat. She went right inside and set her computer up and returned to work, scrolling back over the inventory.