Finally the pilot made a long announcement in Chinese, which was followed by a confusingly brief translation into English. “Because of the crash of China International Flight Sixty-eight, all the flights now are frozen for a new list of safety checks.” Michael rearranged the scrambled words in his head. How many safety checks? How long would it take? All planes? He sank. The crew got up and moved around. The lights flickered up. The passengers sat belted in, and the jet did not move.
An hour ticked by, every minute digging at him. He tagged a stewardess. “Would I be able to use a cell phone?”
“No!” She looked at him sternly. “No cell phone now.”
He had to laugh. Fate always displayed such incredible irony. Belted upright, head back, eyes closed, he laughed silently until his body shook and his seatmate inched away from him.
In Jingdezhen, Bai walked along Jinhua Lu at the bottom of the park with its small, picturesque bridges and gazebos. He passed men hauling back empty carts, old women taking slow, duck-footed steps, clots of children giggling, racing home for the night.
Though it was getting dark, the day was early for him. He had just come from his bed. What was more, he had an obscene amount of money in his pocket.
He was holding himself differently. Was it not obvious? People were looking at him with respect. He was a new man now. He didn’t feel like Old Bai anymore.
He covered the winding sidewalk along the bottom of the hill, marked by a stone wall. Up there, somewhere above all that lush foliage, was the Research Institute, where they dispensed with the history of porcelain in a series of desultory cases. Down here, the cars and trucks and buses honked through the street. Exhaust smoked up and joined the kiln grit, in the air for a thousand years. Bai swung his arms with his stride, happy to be walking.
And then he was at the Perfect Garden. He pushed open the double doors and walked into the dim-lit dining room, to his friends, at their usual table. Beer, tea, and food were piled up in front of them. They raised their hands to him. “Emperor Bai!” he heard, Bai Huangdi. “Emperor Bai!” And he shook his own hands back to them, and let his smile of triumph light his face like the sun.
They had sat on the runway for almost two hours when the pilot finally crackled on and said, with no explanation, that safety checks were complete and that they were tenth in line for takeoff.
Michael sensed a light sweat break out all over him as he looked at his watch. He felt like he could melt in his seat. He could make it.
By the time Lia was down to the last few hours, her heart was burning. She hadn’t heard from him. Apparently he didn’t even think he ought to say good-bye. She wanted to kick a hole in the wall, throw something out the window. Instead, she folded all her clothes in tight little squares and stuffed them in her suitcase. She couldn’t believe it. She had been so sure he’d call her. But why? Just because she felt something real with him and she wanted to go on with it, at least try, she couldn’t expect him to want the same. So he didn’t. He had a right to make that choice. That’s what memory rooms were for. They had doors that could be closed. Still. She looked at her silent phone and felt everything well up again. It wouldn’t have been so very hard to say good-bye with love.
Despite him, outside of him, the irony was… she was changed. She felt like a different person, not quite newly minted but restirred. The composition of her cells was altered. She could see it in the mirror. It had been more than two days since she’d been with him, and still she was luminous, perversely so, tragically. Now here was the dress in her hands, the sleeveless, box-necked dress in sage silk.
She dropped her clothes and zipped into it. Made for her, it hugged her all the way down. Oh, she was beautiful in it, with her hair only caught back, and if she wore high-heeled sandals-she looked at herself over her shoulder. She could see the truth and the anguish, the shimmering cloth against her body. Trying to be beautiful was just another form of forgery. The feeling of her and him was a forgery. Admit it. He didn’t want it. So I do need my tired old world, she thought, my maze, my rooms; I do. I’ll put him there. She took the dress off and told herself, let go of hope. Let it go now. But she felt the same, pulled by wanting. Delirious with it. It overwhelmed even her anger. She folded the dress on top of everything else and closed the suitcase.
Then there was a knock on the door, polite, soft, insistent. First shock wiped every thought from her mind, then a smile formed inside her, deep down. That’s why he didn’t call, because he came. Hope was a river, bringing back optimism and acceptance and forgiveness. Thought could not begin to contain her. She yanked the dress out again, hurried back into it. The knock sounded again. “Just a minute!”
She pulled the silk down over her hips and opened the door.
Facing her was the concierge. “Miss Frank?”
She thought she might sink all the way to the ocean floor. “Yes,” she said.
“A package.” He handed her a small box. “From Mr. Stanley Pao.”
“Thank you,” she said. He was gone.
She went inside and opened it. When she lifted the lid her mouth went soft in surprise. It was Stanley’s copy of the chicken cup, the one she had watched Bai buy from Potter Yu. Ah, what genius. She held it up. It gave off a world of grace all its own. For you, read the card, with my regards. So sweet, she thought, her heart running out to Stanley. So kind. As if somehow the elder man knew.
Because it wasn’t him at her door, the American man she couldn’t stop thinking about. It was this perfect little object. It was easy, profound, hoi moon, just like what she’d had with Michael. Had. Past tense. Let it go, she thought. She balanced the cup on the desk and curled up on the couch looking at it, eye level. It was immortal, whether six hundred years or six days old, the same. A thing perfect and still.
Unlike her. She stood up and pressed her face to the window. The harbor below was a late-night dream of lights, the water glassy and reflective. She had a vision of herself floating down there, alone, safe, spread-eagled on a raft in calm water. Surrounded by lights. It was peaceful and water-silent. She remembered all the good of being alone, the opportunity. She thought of all her fakes back in New York.
And here was the greatest of them all. She picked up her little consolation prize, the cup, her treasure, and packed it safe away in its box. There was kindness in the world after all.
It wasn’t so many hours now until her flight. She clicked the room into darkness and crawled into bed, spreading her loose hair over the pillow behind her. She had given the thought of him all of herself that she could-though she left one hearing aid in, just in case the phone still rang. Now she had to try and sleep.
Stanley prepared the documents. He would send them to San Francisco the next morning, via personal courier. He had a man he could trust. Not an ah chan; an employee. He paged through the documents one last time before putting them in the package. For some reason he stopped to look at the special visa issued by China. He had seen a few of these before. Usually it meant the government was selling off something it owned. Often, as in this case, there was an intermediary.
Yet just as there were famed and noted fang gu artists in the world of pots, each of whom turned out his own distinctive style of reproduction, so there were known masters in the world of forged documents. One did not know their names, of course. They were known by the names of their quirks-the same way he had heard Miss Frank call the maker of that marvelous chicken cup the Master of the Ruffled Feather. Just as these document copiers became known by their peculiarities of lettering, shading, and border.