She thought he was in his room. It was early morning; he’d be getting ready for work. She knocked.
“I knew it was you,” he said when he opened the door.
It seemed to her that he stood over her, but actually they were the same height. “I know you have to go to work,” she said.
He drew her in and shut the door. “I do have to go to work. I’m also glad you came.”
“I was going to ask if you wanted to walk out and have breakfast in the hutong.” Usually she didn’t eat in the morning, but today she felt alive, she felt hungry, and with her smile she challenged him. “It’s wild. I know.”
“I love wild.” He looked at his watch. “Even if only on principle. I have time too. I have to get to work, but I have time. Let me get my things.”
She watched him move around, collecting papers, making a wedge of his hand and tucking his shirt in, all the way around. She looked at his things. A man’s things were always, for her, a glimpse of who he was.
But he didn’t have much. A desk, a bed, and an old wooden wardrobe. A TV. The white walls were bare. There was a table with rows of Polaroids on it. “What’s this?” she said. All Chinese children.
“Those are the kids in my study,” he said.
She saw that each child was posed the same way, in the same spot, yet each was a universe of uniqueness. “You took these?”
“I did. Lia?”
She turned and in that questing instant, her eyes alight and the beginning of a smile on her face, he took her picture. The little motor ground and the print shot out in its tray.
“Here.” He tore it off. They leaned closer. First it was a pale, ghostly square, then her face emerged, looking over her shoulder. She looked pretty. He took a loop of tape and stuck it to the door frame, just above another instant photo, of a small Chinese girl. “You can stay there,” he said, “with her.”
“Honored.” She liked it. She liked his room too, in a way. “I admire your room. It’s so plain it’s aggressive. You said something the other day, that you wanted to forget everything. This is the room for it.”
“It’s true. Here I like to forget.”
“Great thinkers have preceded you. You know that? You’re like Themistocles.”
He turned around slowly, the smile in his eyes canny, awaiting the joke.
“No,” she said, “I mean it. Everybody in his era was doing memory work. It was the thing. Memory feats were much admired.”
“But not by Themistocles.”
“No. He was famous for saying he preferred the science of forgetting to the art of memory.” She touched on the plain surroundings with her eyes. “Like you.”
“Like me,” he said.
“And then these,” she said, looking down at the rows of photographs. “They’re beautiful in a strange way.” She picked one up. “Who is this?”
“Hu Meiru. She lives over in the western district, near the zoo. Seven and a half.”
She looked at him. “Does she have lead poisoning?”
“Yes. They all have elevated levels.”
“All of them? That’s terrible.”
“All I’ve gotten back,” he corrected himself. “I haven’t collected teeth from all of them yet.”
“It’s awful.” She picked up another one. “Who’s this?”
He stepped closer to the table. “Zhang Yeh.”
“Him too?”
“Him too.”
“And what about you?” she said, because in his eyes she was sure she saw an accumulation of sadness. “You think about it all day long.”
“It’s different for me.” He straightened one of the pictures. She saw his hands were careful, precise.
“You care for what you’re doing.”
“I can’t care for them.”
“Look at this.” She swept a hand above the table.
“I just record them.” He picked up one of the pictures and balanced it in his palm.
She took it from him. “What’s his name?”
“That’s Little Chen.”
She looked at him over the top of the picture. “Special,” she said. “He’s special to you.”
He smiled, caught. “Yes. He’s one I’ve gotten to know. He’s been in and out of the hospital, though for other reasons.”
She looked down at the picture as if it were animate, as if it had a soul, and to his surprise pressed it to her cheek. Then she handed it back. “This one’s good to care about,” she said. “I think you’re doing the right thing.”
He put the picture back in its spot. “I just record them.”
“That’s right,” she said, and he could hear the grin in her voice. “The whole world knows that’s all you do.”
He pushed the fine sandy-gray hair off his forehead and swallowed a smile of his own. She turned away from him, looking down at the pictures, and there was something about her long back, bent over a table, interested, distracted, that made him see her in other rooms in other places. He could imagine her in a room that belonged to them. It was a strange feeling, indistinct, powerful. An involuntary glimpse. He hardly knew her. Yet it felt real. He walked over next to her, as close as he could. “Ready, Lia?” he said, and now she turned to him, happy, looking the same way she looked in the picture on the wall, and they went out together into the hutong.
They walked on the side to stay out of the way of the cars bouncing and honking down the uneven pavement, the bicyclists and pedestrians separating in a constant tide for them, people going to work, and other people, old people and small children, out for the early air, sauntering, talking, sitting. Along the way people were opening their shops and rattling out their metal awnings.
They walked down the hutong to his favorite vendor, an old lady with a starched white cap behind an iron griddle. “She’s very particular,” he said. “She only comes in the morning, and just for a few hours.” He smiled at the lady. “Zaoshang hao,” he said to her, Good morning.
“Zao,” she boomed back, and then looked at Lia. “You’re now bringing your wife! Very good.”
They both ignored this. “Two with egg,” he said, and paid.
“Two with egg.” She reached into the warmer and pulled out a pair of sesame bing, palm-sized disc-shaped flatbreads crusted with seeds. She split them, and little clouds of steam puffed out. Eggs were frying on the griddle. She turned them a few more times, until the yolk was almost set and the whites flecked with brown, and then dropped an egg into each of the pockets. She folded them in twists of paper and passed them across the counter. “Man man chi,” she said.
“It’s hot,” Michael warned Lia, but then immediately took a bite of his anyway.
She took a bite of hers too, and thought it might have been the best thing she’d ever eaten. Just a fried egg, with salt, in split chewy bread, but it made her feel for a minute like she belonged on earth. “Michael,” she said. “Can we come here every morning and eat for the rest of our lives?”
He laughed. “I will if you will.”
She couldn’t believe she had just said that. “I was kidding,” she said.
He touched her foot with his. “I know. Let’s go sit down.” And they took a few steps to a low stone wall and perched, eating. “How’s the job?” he said.
“Done, almost done. But I can’t quite let go of it.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’ve found fakes, you know. I think I’m right about everything. But what if I’m wrong?”
He looked at her, chewing, thinking. When he had swallowed he said, “Let’s consider it, then. What if you are?”
“Well-“”
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
“It could mean a lot of money.”
“I guess that would be bad.” He dropped in the last piece of bing and smiled, his round mouth making an amused bow. “But that’s just money. Do we really think it would be all that bad?”
She smiled at his saying “we,” at the warm sense that someone stood in the ring with her. It was not real, she knew, just a transient kindness, but it felt good. “I guess not. It’s just money. Then there’s reputation.”