In Yinchuan, Alice gripped the phone. "Roger. Be straight with me. What’s wrong with Horace?"
"I don’t know if I should-"
"Come on, Roger, I’m in frigging Mongolia." Almost.
He sighed. "He had his routine physical. The bloodwork showed an elevated PSA. Prostate-specific antigen. It was, uh, rather sharply elevated. That can mean various things. It can mean the prostate is infected, in which case it’s a simple course of antibiotics. Or…"
"Or?"
"Or else it means prostate cancer."
"Oh, my God." She swallowed. "How bad is it?"
"They don’t know yet. It might be quite far along-or it might be the kind that advances very slowly. But, Alice, often the cause of the elevated reading is merely infection. So right now they have him on an antibiotic."
"Oh." Relief flooded her. Her father, her only family, her sole living ancestor-despite all he did that was barely forgivable. "So everything’s fine."
"Well, dear-we don’t know yet."
"But he’s on the antibiotic."
"Yes."
"Then he’ll be okay."
Silence.
"Roger?"
"Yes?"
"I’ll call in a few days."
"Do that. And, Alice-naturally-not a word to anyone, hmm?"
"Roger, please." She glanced through the glass booth-window at the unruly swarm of waiting Mongols. "If you could see where I’m calling from, you wouldn’t waste your breath."
"Heh, heh." He emitted his humorless cackle and hung up.
It’ll be okay, she told herself on the way out of the phone hall. It won’t be cancer. Horace will go on like he always has. Horace has always been there, he’ll never leave me. She held her breath. And I’ll never be free of him either.
She boxed it up in her mind, and within minutes managed to hide it away as she walked, fast and hard, away down the baking, dust-shimmering Yinchuan street.
She pulled her one pair of black underpants up slowly and then tied on the antique stomach-protector. Outside, the streets were vibrant with life, the evening warm and soft. The long, pleasantly yellow light, which she knew would linger till nearly eleven, streamed over the city.
She had drawn the sheer undercurtains and now watched herself in the mirror. The phoenix, its wings a riot of color, spread beautifully across her, its small, graceful head raised in an attitude of love. The female principle, enfolding. The phoenix which sought the dragon, the sign of the male.
She sighed at her reflection. Her hair was a neat, burnished wedge. Her makeup, invisible, the way she liked it. Nothing showing but copper lip gloss. She looked good.
But why look for a stranger?
She ran her hands through her hair, adjusting it.
Why not Lin?
She examined her high Irish cheekbones, her gold-flecked eyes, her freckles. Did Lin find her appealing? Did his thoughts drift to her? Was he thinking about her now?
She turned from the mirror. The only thing she knew for sure was that he was a man she couldn’t toy with. A closeness with Lin would not be for one night, for pleasure; it would pull in her real self. Only, what was her real self? Again the question hung over her.
This, she thought in a prepatterned flood of resignation, the makeup and the silk stomach-protector and a night out, looking. This is me. And if Lin knew who I really was, he wouldn’t have the least interest in me. He’d be repulsed.
She sighed and turned to her clothes. The black dress- no. Not in Yinchuan. Here in this tu provincial town she was conspicuous enough. It would be better to wear jeans. Her second pair of jeans, which were pleasingly tight. And a black T-shirt.
She tucked away her room key and money, renminbi. Checked her look one more time. Now. Where should she go?
There were bars in Yinchuan, only not the kind she wanted. She’d slipped into one a few evenings before, a karaoke bar, just to check it out. She’d known immediately she wouldn’t come back. It was full of Mongols, high flat faces staring sullenly into space, none of them willing to get up onstage and sing along with the blaring Madonna songs. She had heard other foreign women say that Mongol men were fabulously virile, but she had also heard that they all wore daggers at their belts, and though they approached women confidently, they tended to be dangerously possessive once the deed was done. It was a little too tu for her.
Anyway, maybe it was time to move forward. She should try to meet the type of man she could be herself with-not be Yulian. The very idea that her real life and her sexual life could come together seemed strange, yet ever since she met Lin she’d been thinking about it. To be all of herself, together, to feel as Lucile felt when she wrote in a private note: I am so happy andfeel so completely yours.
Yes, Alice thought. Tonight would be different. She would try the local college.
She took a pedicab to Xibei University. Normally she avoided pedicabs, there being something feudal and horrible about being pulled around in a cart by a sweating, brown, sinewy man. On this evening, though, Alice did not want to be observed. She pressed herself all the way to the back of the cracked leather seat, and the ancient awning made her all but invisible to those who passed by.
She got off at the campus, a forest of low concrete buildings. She had watched through the awning cracks as best she could while they crossed the city, and had not seen anyone tailing them. She glanced around quickly as the man pedaled away. Nothing unusual. She walked onto the campus.
Like most Chinese universities it was mainly a clump of buildings, with none of the academic-village atmosphere for which Western institutions strived. In China, of course, colleges did not have to please students. Violent competition raged for the privilege of attending at all. Once in, the lucky few took what they got. Because unless one had a key to the back door through family connections, it was the only way up and out.
And that’s how it’s been here for thousands of years, she thought, it’s just a new version of the imperial examination system. And today’s students, these pinch-chested, pimply-faced kids, here because they won the top scores on the national exams, were the new incarnations of the Ming and Qing mandarins.
But they’re all too young for me, she thought bitterly, too young and too awkward. Weren’t there any older men around -any professors?
She watched the girls and boys on foot, back and forth, carrying their books.
Somebody like Dr. Lin.
She parked herself on a bench and waited.
It was almost an hour before a man near her own age walked up and sat next to her. He was not like the men in the bars. He was faintly disheveled, with a high, sparsely fringed forehead and a bulging briefcase.
He looked at her sideways. "Dong Zhongwen-ma?" he asked softly, Do you understand Chinese?
"Dong, " she said simply, I do.
His eyes widened and a kindly chuckle bubbled up. "I never thought I’d sit here on a bench on this campus with an outside woman who was able to talk. I’m surnamed Wang." His grin was controlled, intelligent; it made his middle-aged face seem pleasantly companionable. "How are you called?"
"Yulian," she answered, Fragrant Lotus. She noted his slight confusion.
"But what are you surnamed?"
"Bai, " she lied. Usually the men in the bars didn’t ask for a surname. In China, to allow someone to call you by your given name was in itself an act of intimacy. When she introduced herself in these encounters with the name Fragrant Lotus, no surname, it was like honey in her mouth, and the men in the bars always understood. Their usual response was a sly smile. However, this was Yinchuan. The provinces.
"My wife was surnamed Bai," this man Wang said slowly.
Oh, no. "Is she-"
"She died in the Cultural Revolution."
"I’m sorry."
He shrugged. "Years pass like water."