As if pulled by some magnetic force, I found myself shifting closer to her. She asked our “waitress” for another round of drinks.
Delicately she sipped her fresh martini, leaving a ring of her silvery lipstick on the glass. “Michael must be very fond of you.”
I nodded.
“Wonderful,” Lisa said, then she took a deep gulp of her drink and soundlessly laid down her glass. Next she picked up a few nuts and popped them into her mouth, chewing noisily with lips closed.
Suddenly the warmth in her eyes was gone and her voice was cold. “So when are you getting married?”
“He wants to soon, but I’m not sure I want it so quickly.”
“So you’re still not sure whether you want to marry him?”
“Not that-I love Michael. But I’ve spent most of my life hanging around nuns, so theirs is the world I’m comfortable in. Also, when you’re told over and over for fifteen years how human passion is illusory and how men are untrustworthy, it’s confusing. And I’m even more confused since I don’t feel that way with Michael. He seems as centered as a rock, and never bothered-”
“Nobody is not bothered by anything, Meng Ning.”
She sipped more of her martini and inhaled deeply her cigarette. “Now let me tell you another story. It’s Japanese, about a lighthouse watchman living on an island. He fell in love with a beautiful pearl diver who lived on the island opposite his. Every evening he turned on the light so his lover could see the way when she swam across the sea to meet him. Then he fell in love with another girl. One stormy night, when the pearl diver was swimming toward his lighthouse, he put out the light-”
“So what happened?”
“She drowned. Of course.” Lisa squashed her cigarette in the ash tray.
“Why do you tell such a terrible story?”
“That man was my fiancé.”
“Oh…”
Lisa seemed to wrestle with her emotions. “I use the story as a metaphor.” She paused, then said, “He dumped me…for someone else.” She bit her lips, her eyes darting around. “But I’m still in love with him.” She paused to stare into her glass, now quite empty. “You can’t analyze love, can you?”
Yi Kong could. Love is illusory. It’s the cause of suffering.
Lisa’s voice, mingled with the tobacco, wafted bittersweet toward me. “That fiancé was Michael. We were engaged.”
Back home, I felt dizzy and had a terrible headache. I paced back and forth in Michael’s apartment, waiting for the click of the door to bring his face.
Michael finally came home at 11:00 PM. Before he even had a chance to take off his jacket, I told him that I had spent the evening with Lisa and that we needed to talk-right here and now.
“All right. I’ll explain. Let’s sit down.” He led me to sit on the sofa. “Meng Ning, yes, Lisa and I were engaged-a few years ago.”
“For how long?”
He hesitated, then said, “Five.”
“Five years? You were engaged for so many years and didn’t marry her?”
Michael didn’t answer my question. He continued on a different track. “After I’d become Professor Fulton’s student and gotten to know Lisa, he’d take us together to museums and concerts. In the beginning I did feel affection for her…she seemed interesting and intelligent.” He paused. “But then it turned out she has a personality disorder-”
“What do you mean?”
“She has frequent nervous breakdowns. When I told her I was going to break the engagement, she tried to slash her wrists… Meng Ning, this was all in the past-can we just not talk about it now?”
Then the fortune-teller’s reading poured into my mind:
Some of his relatives, like his mother, father, or even son, will sacrifice their lives for him so that he can live a good life in this incarnation…his love life will not be smooth. In fact, it’s rather troubled. He might have more than one marriage.
I blurted, “So you also have a son with Lisa?”
Michael looked stunned. “Did she tell you that?”
“No. Remember, the Master of Living Buddha said you’ll have two marriages, and your son-” Now I understood Michael’s nervousness about his reading.
“Did you have a son with her?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, heavens, then where is he now?”
“He never lived. She aborted him during her fourth month of pregnancy.”
“You didn’t try to stop her?”
“She only told me after the abortion.”
“Is it because of your guilt that you stayed with her for so long?”
“Meng Ning, I’m too exhausted to go into this and I have another very hectic day tomorrow. Can we talk about this some other time?”
Through the night, though Michael slept as if comatose, I flipped and tossed by his side, imagining his wild past with Lisa. I also couldn’t help but imagine how he’d done it with her. Had he cupped her breasts as tenderly as he cupped mine? Had he whispered into her ears the same endearing phrases he whispered into mine? Had he slipped his tongue into her mouth and let it indulge itself in all kinds of decadent pleasures as it did in mine?
20. Philip Noble
Michael’s busy schedule kept him at the hospital for long hours and we didn’t have much chance to talk. Two days later, before I could bring up the issue of Lisa again, he had to go to Boston for two days, to attend a meeting about one of his research projects. He’d already told me about this and apologized when he’d invited me to visit him in the States.
Although I was still very upset by what had happened, without Michael’s presence the apartment suddenly seemed quiet, as if a veil had fallen over it. Pangs stabbed my chest as I saw the empty space by my side in the foyer mirror. I went to lie on the sofa, but the fabric felt cold under me.
Finally I went to the study, flipped on the desk lamp, and braced myself to do some reading. When I was picking my books, I noticed a folded card leaning against the lamp. On the side of the card was a gold phoenix, and next to it was Michael’s handwriting: “To Meng Ning.” I snatched it up and opened it. It read:
Dearest Meng Ning,
I’m so sorry I have to leave you on your own during your stay here. In case you need cash, there is some in the top desk drawer. The fridge is still stocked, but please also go out and have some nice meals. In case there is any problem, call Philip Noble, or for small matters, ask Frank the doorman. Take care. Sorry that we quarreled. I’ll talk more after I’ve come back. I love you.
Michael
I pulled out the drawer and found a pile of bills-fifties, twenties, tens, and ones. I counted; there was about five hundred dollars altogether. A surge of warmth rose inside me as I dropped the money back into the drawer, muttering, “Hai, Michael, I love you, too. But…”
Still feeling very confused and upset, I went to the kitchen and imitated a Cantonese café in Hong Kong by fixing myself a “fatty jumps into the sea”-a raw egg dropped into sugared hot water. Stirring the water and looking at the egg dissolve into surrealistic yellow-orange ribbons soothed my nerves. I nursed the glass to warm my hand, then sipped the scalding liquid and let out a sigh.
The phone startled me. I almost knocked over “fatty” as I reached to grab the receiver.
Steadying the glass, I said into the phone in a loving tone, “Hi, Michael, you miss me?”
To my shock, what came from the other end of the line was a vaguely familiar male voice. “Of course I miss you, Meng Ning.”
“Who is it?”
“Philip. Philip Noble.”
“Oh, Philip, how are you?” Michael’s glamorous buddy’s achingly handsome face quickly crept its way into my mind.