Shake hands,
Danning Meng
Nan remembered the time when Danning had lived in Cambridge, but in reality his friend hadn't always had the kind of leisure described in the letter. Danning had once taken three days off from his lab, able to lounge around, but only because a tick had stuck to the top of his ear and given him a low fever and painful joints. After that letter, Nan and his friend kept up a correspondence, though they didn't write frequently, four or five exchanges of letters a year. Nan would follow the noise Danning went on making in China. Gradually Danning became a well-known author, though he never wrote anything better than his Alaskan cannery story.
Once Danning claimed that he was going to write his "great Chinese novel," which would exhaust the genre of the novel technically. Nan couldn't imagine such a monumental masterpiece and thought of asking him to define his vision, but he refrained, feeling that his friend had become a glib man, if not a blabbermouth. He mentioned Danning's ambition to Pingping, who smiled and said it might just be a boast. She simply couldn't enjoy that man's writings no matter how hard she tried.
7
WHEN it got cooler in late September, business began to come back at the Gold Wok, but Nan and Pingping couldn't feel relieved. Many people were still out of work, and about a third of the suites at Beaver Hill Plaza remained vacant, though the economy was reported to be improving. The large hall left by A amp;P had been filled by a Goodwill store, and the parking lot was again half full in the daytime.
One afternoon Nan sat slouching at the counter and reading his Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Beside his elbow, toward the wall, was a small aquarium in which a pair of angelfish was gliding. A string of bubbles kept spiraling up from the pebbles at the bottom of the water. As Nan was perusing the verbal idioms listed under the headword point, in came a tall man with dark hair; his ruddy face looked familiar, but Nan didn't recognize him. The man, wearing a black T-shirt, smiled and nodded at him, then stretched out his hand. "Hey, Nan Wu, don't you remember me? Dick Harrison," he said in a mellifluous voice.
Now Nan recognized him-the young poet, Sam Fisher's friend, whom he had met several times in New York. Delightedly Nan shook his hand. "What brought you here, Dick? I didn't recognize you because your hair is short now. You look so young zat I thought you were a student."
"Thanks. I took a job at Emory." Dick rested his elbows on the counter.
"What kind of jawb? Teaching?"
"Yes, poet in residence."
"You teach how to write poetry?"
"Yes, plus literature. Sam told me you had opened a restaurant in an eastern suburb of Atlanta, so whenever I saw a Chinese restaurant, I'd pop in to see if I could run into you."
"Sanks for looking for me."
"I'm so happy to find you."
After introducing Dick to Pingping, Nan led him to a booth and they both sat down. He asked his wife to make some appetizers and Tammie to bring over a pot of Dragon Well tea, a delicate green tea, not the red stuff offered to their customers. By now Pingping could cook as well as Nan, though she usually worked at the counter as the hostess and cashier. The two friends resumed conversing. Now and again they looked at each other and tipped their heads back laughing as if someone had cracked a joke nobody but they two had caught.
"How's Sam?" asked Nan.
"He's okay, but he drinks too much."
"I didn't know he was bibulous."
"Come again?"
"He's bibulous."
"Oh, yes, he's fond of alcohol."
"How about his boyfriend, Min Niu?"
"Min doesn't drink much. They had a big row the other day. Min moved out, then Sam apologized and Min went back." "So they're still a cahple?" "Of course, Sam depends on Min."
Nan was surprised that Min Niu had dared to quarrel with Sam Fisher, the famous poet.
"How about you?" Dick went on.
"I'm doing all right. We bought a house nearby and also zis business."
"This is impressive. I can see that you're becoming an American capitalist."
"Come on, I still have a mortgage to pay. How can you call me zat?" "Okay, you're not rich yet, but you're on your way to realizing your American dream, aren't you?" "I just want to be independent."
Tammie came and put the teapot and two cups on the table. Dick tilted his full head of hair and said to her in his one-toned Mandarin, "How do you do?"
She didn't reply and instead tittered. She stared at him, her round eyes intense and widened; her lips parted, then twitched a little. Still she didn't say a word. Dick lifted the cup of tea Nan had poured, and sipped. "Hmmm, excellent tea. Thank you!" he said to her.
She giggled and glanced at his pointy chin and hairy neck. "It's Dragon Well, this year's fresh leaves," she told him.
Pingping called to Tammie from the kitchen, so the waitress turned away. The two men went on talking about Emory, which Nan had heard was called "the Harvard of the South." Dick said the university had received a lot of funding from Coca-Cola and paid him well. He also mentioned that the previous year he'd had a book of poems published, his second, which had garnered numerous positive reviews. That was why another college had also made him a job offer. Nan was impressed, glad Dick had moved here.
Tammie came again with two plates, one loaded with spring and egg rolls and the other with fried fantail shrimp. The moment she placed them on the table, Dick picked up a spring roll and took a bite. "This is delicious, Nan. I've heard you're an excellent chef. I'll come and eat here every once in a while."
"You're always welcome. Bring your friends too."
Dick went on to tell him about his move to Atlanta. He had already settled down, having bought an apartment in the Buckhead area. Today he had gone to Lake Lanier, and on his way back got off the interstate and drove through the suburbs. He was lucky to come into the Gold Wok, though he didn't expect to find Nan so easily. He said, "What a miracle. I thought I'd be a total stranger in this redneck country."
"Now you have me here. In fact, Atlanta is not a bad place. Many people from southern China feel more at home here zan in New England."
"You're kidding me-why?"
"Zer climate is very similah to their home provinces, and houses are not expensive."
"I can see that. To be honest, this is the first time in my life that I can afford a condo. There are lots of restaurants and shops in Atlanta. Quite a convenient place to live."
"Have you been to a farmers' market yet? I never saw so many fruits and vegetables before."
"No, I haven't."
"Go to zer Dekalb Farmers' Market. It's absolutely fantastic."
"Oh, I love this shrimp. Thank you, Mrs. Wu." He waved at Ping-ping, who was clipping coupons at the counter.
She replied, "I'm glad you like it. Just call me Pingping. I didn't change last name after we marry."
"Sure. Thank you, Pingping," Dick said loudly.
They all laughed, Tammie included, and then the two friends resumed their conversation. They talked about Bao Yuan, the painter-poet and editor of the journal New Lines, which was defunct now. Dick said Bao was thinking of leaving New York, though his paintings had begun to sell. Actually, he had just held a one-man show in a gallery in Soho, which turned out quite successful and sold many pieces of his work. Still, Bao felt he couldn't continue living in New York and had been looking for a job elsewhere. Nan knew that would be difficult, since that fellow spoke little English and would make no effort to learn it. It was a shame that he had lived with Wendy for almost a year and still couldn't speak a correct sentence. As people believed, the best way to learn English was to do it in bed with a native speaker, but Bao had simply wasted the opportunity. If he refused to change, there would be no way he could survive in America. "He's too smart," Nan told Dick.