Pao eased back the lid with his wrinkled, age-blotched hands. His first reaction was to gasp, for it was a chicken cup, a shockingly good one, and his first impression was all visceral-It can’t be! But it is. Then he looked closer. Of course it wasn’t. But it was almost identical to the chicken cup in today’s cargo! Naturally, he’d gone directly to that one the minute he’d seen it on the manifest, as soon as Bai had walked out of the warehouse. He knew it was fake, for there was a small notation at the end of the document referring back to it-Modern fang gu, included at buyer’s request-and yet it was so hoi moon he himself had been almost swayed by it. And he was never, never fooled.
This was also a fake, but so very good. He turned it in his hand, held it to the light. Even the color of the clay was correct, the warm off-white of the Chenghua reign, so rare to see it done right. Oh, it was fine. “It’s a wonderful piece,” he told Bai. “One of the best reproductions I’ve ever seen. How much do you want for it?”
Bai snapped his head around a little too fast.
Ah! Pao watched him, fascinated. He hadn’t known. He’d thought it was real. Interesting. Now Pao saw it. The ah chan had switched one fake for another, thinking he was taking out a real, Ming Dynasty cup and not a fang gu at all. “Ask another dealer if you don’t believe me. It’s a copy. But fine. Very fine.”
But the ah chan had believed him. It was as if he had known, underneath, that the cup was too good to be true, too much to expect after all the money he’d made. So he shrugged it off with a gambler’s resignation. He accepted a thousand U.S. dollars for the reproduction, protesting that this wasn’t his line of work but taking the money, folding it, and putting it in his pocket. “I hope we meet again,” he told Pao. “Maybe we can work together.”
“Of course, of course,” Stanley answered unhurriedly. “Let us keep in touch.” Stanley was always polite. But in fact he was too careful to ever do business with this ah chan again.
“So then he came back, and brought me the cup-your fang gu from the collection,” Stanley Pao said to Lia Frank later that afternoon. She had arrived in Hong Kong the night before. Now they were in his back room, looking at pots, having taken an instant liking to each other. “He’d switched them. I realized it as soon as I saw the one he brought me here, for I had read your most excellent description in the inventory. I switched them back. This is his copy. Yours is in the collection.” He peered at her eyes. “Am I right? This is his copy?”
“It is,” she said, noting a softer, more translucent quality to the glaze in this cup. No less perfect-only different. This was the one she’d seen Bai purchase from Potter Yu.
So this meant Bai had transported her collection. It was strange, but not unheard of. Ah chans were experts at shipping, after all.
“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?” She held it up to the light and felt a full smile form on her lips for the first time since she had left Michael behind in Beijing. Don’t think about that. She couldn’t control the future. This was happiness, this cup. “Stanley.” Her eyes shone. “Will you sell it to me?”
“Not on your grandmother! How could I let go of this?”
“Oh.” She looked down. “So I don’t even get to say that I’d double whatever you paid? I understand, though. I do. I’d never let go of it either.” And she smiled at him through her hair, which she had decided to leave down today. It felt strange. She had it tucked behind her ears but it kept slipping out.
“What do you say, Lia?” Stanley asked. He gave her a thoughtful look as if he’d been considering the subject for some time. “The repacking will take hours and hours. Shouldn’t we go to Central and look at some pots?”
“Absolutely,” she said.
Another pair of colleagues would have repaired to a restaurant to enjoy a leisurely meal, but Lia and Stanley went instead to Hollywood Road. They started at the top, where the road twisted most tortuously and where the most discriminating, most exclusive shops held court, and worked their way down to the bottom where the shadows were deeper and the deals more murky.
In most of the galleries the owner would lock up, if they were alone, and take them to some back chamber, through a side door or up some narrow set of stairs. In this world there was always the interior room, the private admittance, the exclusivity shared by friends. There were small sofas grouped around a low table specially designed for handling porcelain-felt-padded, with a low lip shielding its edge all the way around. There were hours of shared enjoyment over the perfections that man, in his finest moments, had made of clay. It was a balm to Lia’s heart. It made whole stretches of minutes go by in which she felt the glory of pots, the shared pleasure of connoisseurship, and managed to forget that a part of her felt like it had been torn away.
That night he called her, not knowing quite what to say to her but not able to go any longer without connecting. He went back to his room after work, where it was quiet, and dialed her cell.
“This is Lia,” she said when she picked up.
“It’s me.”
“Hi.” Her voice changed for him, opened, softened.
“How are you?” Already he felt back in her nexus.
“Okay. And you?”
“Not good. I don’t like it here without you.”
“I know,” she said. “I feel the same here in Hong Kong. It'd be better if you were here.”
He felt a wave of pleasure inside him when he heard this. “Then come back,” he said, simple, quick, straight out.
“But I can’t. I have to see the pots off.”
“And then?”
“Then I have to go to New York. Immediately. They’re all waiting for me. This was a big thing for us, this deal.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.
“I know. Me too.”
He felt his longing start to skid. While she was in Hong Kong they were still close, or it seemed that way. They could talk and things could shift in a moment; she could turn around. Going back to New York would change things. Then they’d have to go to lengths. Then if they were going to see each other again they’d have to start climbing that long and arduous ladder of intention.
This was what he’d said he wouldn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t do. But he kept thinking about her. She was always in his mind. “I have to admit I was hoping it would be easy, it would just happen. You’d come back.”
“I could,” she said. “Not right away, but I could. Michael. What happened meant a lot to me. I would really like to get to know you. I mean that.” She was enunciating. He could tell she was speaking from her center. “I really, really would.”
“I was hoping that too,” he said. “I’m sorry it took so long for things to happen.”
“Never mind that now,” she said.
He knew it was his turn. It was time for him to say, let’s try it. Let’s meet again and see. It was up to him.
But he couldn’t walk out on the plank just like that. He had to have a little time to think. And so he hesitated. He held the silence.
On her end, she felt hope draining away from her as he said nothing. While she waited, she unlatched the sliding glass door and stepped out on her balcony. The damp, briny air made her feel clearer. “Think about what I told you,” she said softly. “Let me know if you feel the same. If you want to see me again, you know, I’ll figure something out. Call me. If that’s what you want, call me.” She was putting the ball firmly in his court. “I’m not leaving for a day and a half.”
She closed her eyes. Had she done right, or wrong? She had opened her heart and shown her willingness. She couldn’t do any more. She waited.
“You know all about me,” he said.