“Maggie, it’s me.” It was Carey, his familiar voice sounding aged right now, even though he was only a few years past her.
“Are you okay?” she said.
“Yes. Look, I’m standing outside. I need to talk to you.”
“Outside here? Did something happen?”
“Can I come in?” he said.
“Of course.”
“You have to buzz me.”
“Oh.” This was the first time she’d had a visitor. She had to look around the living room wall for a second or two until she found the button. He came up the elevator, and by the time his tall steps whispered down the hall she had the door open. “Sorry,” she said when he walked in. “I didn’t know how to do it.”
He waved this away. “How are you, Maggie?”
“Energized,” she admitted. “We leave in a few hours.”
“I know. That’s what I came to talk to you about.”
She felt the black bolt of an all-too-familiar fear, that things would come apart. “Tell me,” she said.
He walked over and looked out the window, as if it was easier without facing her. “I feel bad about this. It happened suddenly. We have a big presentation tomorrow. The client I went to see in Bangkok? He’s coming. Bad timing – I’ll be working all weekend. We have to do the whole show.”
“Is it that you need our tickets?” she said, not understanding.
“Tickets?” He stared. “No. I need Zinnia.”
“Oh.”
“I know I promised her to you. And she’s great, isn’t she? Whatever it is, she does it. But that’s why the firm needs her tomorrow. I’m sorry. It’s not easy for her either. Most people have the whole week off for National Day.”
“I understand,” Maggie said, but still, now what? Carey was right about Zinnia – she had the steady power of a rolling train.
“Now look, you’ll still leave, same schedule. I’ll get you another translator. I’ll have someone within the hour – not Zinnia, no one can be her, I can’t promise that. But someone good.”
“Someone from your office?”
“No. From a service. But they’re excellent. We use them all the time.”
“Carey?” She waited until he turned from the window. She wanted his clear attention. “I can’t say I’m happy about this – I was counting on Zinnia – but I understand. I really do. And I do appreciate your coming over here to tell me in person.”
“I had to come in person,” he said. “I feel awful about it.”
“I know. But this is out of your hands.”
“Yes,” he said, looking grateful.
“Look, you have a lot to do. I don’t want to keep you. But there’s one thing I’m going to ask.”
“Anything,” said Carey.
“Hold off on getting this person. Twenty minutes. Maybe half an hour, tops. Just until I call you.”
“Why?” he said.
“Because I might have my own person.”
His eyes bored into her. “Your own person?”
“Just give me a few minutes to check something.”
And he raised his hands, acquiescing, gracious. It was the least he could do.
She waited until she’d heard the elevator doors close behind him before she picked up the phone. Calling Sam Liang was not something she wanted to do in front of Carey.
And once she picked up the phone she found herself dialing Zinnia first, quickly, just to make sure she knew everything she’d need to know.
“Duibuqi,” Zinnia said as soon as she picked up the phone, “I’m sorry. Carey called me. Now I have to be in the office tomorrow.”
“I know. But do you have anything else about the situation that might help me?”
“Let me think,” said Zinnia.
“What were they like when you called to make the appointment?”
“For one thing, they did not sound like country people or uneducated, no, the opposite. Right away they agreed to your visit. They said you can see the little girl. They seemed sure she is your husband’s daughter.”
“Hm,” said Maggie.
“So I suggest, when you go, see yourself as their relation. That is not something you say but the feeling you will carry underneath. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” Maggie said, though she wasn’t sure she did at all.
“Also hope.” Zinnia gave her short, no-frills laugh. “Pray. I think that is the best thing, yes. Pray.”
“Okay,” said Maggie, “I can do that.” Even though she had no idea which way she would even direct a prayer, were she to try to make one, having been raised in a world of people who prayed only if they were something exotic, like Buddhist or Muslim. “I’ll pray.”
From the other end Maggie heard the persistent high pitch of a child. “Is that your little boy?”
“It is. Naughty boy! His ayi says he knows I am going. Now I am not, but he doesn’t understand that yet.” She hushed him with a quiet stream of Chinese and then returned to the phone. “As for while you are gone, I will return to looking for Gao Lan as soon as the presentation is done. She is in Beijing. We will find her.”
“I believe you’re right,” said Maggie.
“Now, this person…”
“How could you know so fast?”
“I told you, Carey called me.”
“He can do a great job.”
“He’s Chinese?”
“Half.”
“He can talk?”
“Definitely.”
“A friend of yours?”
“Not really. A business acquaintance, through my regular job. Someone I am interviewing for a story.” She backed off from it and formalized it, naturally, since she was talking to Zinnia, but she knew there was a little more, and this was why she wanted him, she knew, and not some translator from a service. She and Sam seemed to be in the first stages of alliance people pass through while deciding whether or not to become friends. Already they seemed to be looking out for each other, at least a little. She would do better with him, she felt. He would try. “But actually, Zinnia, I think we’re getting ahead here. I haven’t asked him yet. I need to call him, in fact, right now.”
“Oh. You haven’t asked him. Why do you think he would want to go?”
“He has his own reason. A family matter. His uncle is dying in Hangzhou and he needs very much to get there.”
“Oh! A family matter. That is different. Quick, let us hang up. Call him,” said Zinnia. “Right now.”
Sam had come back to his place, ecstatic with the quality of the fish he was going to get. The first sampling would not arrive for a few days, though, so for the moment he had turned his attention to the tender transformations that were possible with beef shank and tendon. Right now he was steaming a dozen beef shanks in two stacked baths of complementary broths.
As soon as the beef was on the boil he turned to his laptop, which he had carried to the kitchen, and checked for tickets again. The first one he could get was seven days away; that was the night of the banquet. He had to go and come back much sooner. He put his name on several more notification lists for cancellations. Right now this was all he could do.
Now it was up to the Gods. He didn’t keep an altar in his kitchen – that would have been going too far into the Chinese past for his hybrid self – but he had slowly come to sense that his Gods were there. There were times, like now, when he asked them to intercede, but he knew they were capricious and had minds of their own. Sometimes they granted what he wanted and sometimes they did not.
His cell rang. He looked; it was Maggie. “Hi,” he said, leaning close in and smelling the steam from the beef. “Aren’t you leaving?”
“I am. First I need to ask you something. My law firm had a rush come up. The woman I’ve been working with, the one I mentioned who was going with me – now they need her to stay here. It’s not a huge problem for me, they’re going to get someone else from a service, but I just thought – I mean, Sam, you did sort of give me the feeling you might consider it. So I’m throwing it out there. If you’re willing to do what she was going to do, go to this meeting and translate and help me and all, then you’re welcome to the other ticket. You have to tell me now, though. They need to get someone in the next half-hour.”