Dream of the Blue Room (3 page)

FIVE

“Is it just me or are we sleeping in a discotheque?” Dave says, sitting up in bed and eyeing the room. The décor is late-seventies Euro-chic: shiny black plastic headboard and matching dresser, faded red satin sheets and black velour coverlet. On the wall above the bed, a faded print of Big Ben hangs in a scratched plastic frame.

“Back in the seventies this ship belonged to a British cruise line,” I explain, reciting the information I received from the travel agent in New York. “In the eighties, they sold the ship to China, and the
Victoria
then became the
Red Victoria.”

“God save the Queen,” Dave says, shaking the covers off. He runs his hands through his hair. I want to tell him to stop. I want to tell him that it isn’t fair for him to do these ordinary things. I can’t stop staring at his hands. I remember sitting with him at John’s Pizza on Sixty-fifth Street in New York City, not long after we met. We had just ordered a large pepperoni and two Cokes. His hands were on top of the table, one folded inside the other, as if he were readying himself for prayer. There was something disconcertingly feminine about his hands, some gentleness that seemed at odds with his exceptional height and deep voice. Months later, he lay breathing heavily in my bed. He slept on his back, hands resting on his stomach; they seemed to be perfectly alert and precisely posed, while the rest of his body sighed and shifted in his masculine and ungraceful sleep. Sometimes, even now, I will catch a glimpse of his hands and I will feel as undone as if we had just met, and we’d yet to share intimacies.

He gets out of bed. “How’d you sleep?”

“I didn’t.”

“Why don’t you take those pills I gave you?” He heads for the shower, not waiting for an answer. His stomach looks firmer than it did when he moved out, almost too firm, like one of those guys who sell exercise equipment on Sunday morning infomercials.

“You look different,” I say.

“Do I?” He shuts the door behind him. The shower begins to hum.

For the next half hour we maneuver around each other in the small cabin. I emerge from the shower, wrapped in a towel, and am looking through my suitcase when I feel Dave watching me. “What’s that?” he says, eyeing a red scratch that stretches from thigh to knee.

“Rollerblading accident in the park.”

“Since when do you Rollerblade?”

“Since you left.” I almost wish he’d ask who I was skating with. If he did, I wouldn’t let on that I’d been alone. Instead, I’d try to make up some story about a guy I met at a dinner party, someone athletic, witty, and well-paid.

“Hey,” he says, reaching out and touching the upper tip of the scratch. My heart lifts.

“Yes?”

“You should put some iodine on that.” Dave sits on the edge of the bed and begins lacing his boots.

“It almost feels normal,” I say.

“What does?”

“This. The routine. Getting up. Dressing. Like we used to.”

“Hmmn.”

“It’s nice,” I say. Dave looks away, feigning great interest in his bootlaces, and I immediately feel stupid for opening myself up to him.

He stands, tucks in his shirt, straightens his collar. “What’s it been? Two months?”

“And four days.”

He turns on the television and finds the English-language news. I know what that means: end of subject. “Look at that,” he says. “An earthquake in Japan. Big one. Massive damage. What I’d give.”

He doesn’t finish his sentence, but I know what he means: what he’d give to be there, aiding in the rescue, saving people. Not here, with me. “They say there’s flooding upriver,” I offer. “Could get bad.”

“Yeah?” He brightens, but only for a moment. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

At 6:45 we go down to breakfast. The tables have been set with white china and gleaming silverware, linen napkins in bright blues and greens. “Table seven,” the hostess says when Dave shows her our room key. She leads us to our table, where a thin girl in red-framed eyeglasses is sipping Diet Coke from a can. “Very pleasant company,” the hostess says. “I trust you all have happy together.”

Our pleasant company wears a white blouse that slouches off her bony shoulders. She is young, pale, and unhealthy looking, with dark circles under her eyes and fake blonde streaks in her hair. “Morning,” she says, grinning. Before we can introduce ourselves, a waiter appears with menus and two large cups of steaming coffee. There’s no sign of anything Chinese in the restaurant: no chopsticks or steaming noodles, no pots of green tea. All of the crew members have adopted western names. Our server’s name tag says Matt Dillon in bright yellow letters.

Pleasant company points to the name tag. “Like the actor?”

Matt Dillon beams. “Yes! I like very much
The Flamingo Kid
. Also
Rumblefish.”
He takes our orders, promising to be back soon. The girl turns to us. “I’m Stacy. Just graduated from Michigan State with an art degree. My parents sent me here to paint landscapes. What’s your story?”

Dave reaches out to shake her hand. “I’m Dave. This is Jenny. We’re on vacation from New York.”

“What do you two do?”

“Right now I manage a clothing boutique in Manhattan,” I say, unfolding my napkin and placing it in my lap, trying to avoid further conversation on the subject.

“That’s nice,” Stacy says. “You must meet a lot of interesting people.”

I want to tell her that I once had ambitions. I want to tell her that I too am an artist at heart, although I don’t know what kind. It never ceases to amaze me that I ended up in retail, considering how much I hate to shop. “It’s just temporary,” I say, then add, laughing, “if you can call eight years temporary.”

Stacy turns to Dave. “And you?”

“I’m an EMT.”

“EMT?” Stacy adjusts her glasses. They look slightly off, as if they’re a fashion statement rather than a necessity.

“Emergency medical technician.”

“That’s fascinating. Must be something, to actually go out there and make a difference.”

Soon after we married, Dave left his lucrative position as a bond trader to pursue his dream job, and eleven years later he still loves it—the danger and adrenaline, the possibility, each shift, of going out into the world and saving someone’s life. My own work offers no such excitement. The women who shop at the boutique on Seventy-fourth and Columbus rarely surprise. They are the sort who somehow manage to stay cool and fragrant in their silk suits when the rest of New York is sweating. They treat me with a snobbish politeness, as if to say that they admire my taste in clothes but would never invite me to their dinner parties. Dave, on the other hand, plays the hero to junkies and heart attack victims. His is the last hand some people cling to before they die, the first face others see as they reenter the world of the living. Though he would never say it, I know that he was always a little disappointed, upon coming home after a shift, to enter the safe and mundane world of our Upper West Side apartment, to find the dishes clean and the sofa cushions straight, his wife cheerful and in good health.

Matt Dillon returns with three orders of World Famous Yangtze River Flapjacks. Stacy douses her plate with syrup and says, “What a relief. I was afraid they’d be serving monkeys or something.”

Throughout breakfast I watch the door. We’ve almost finished our meal when Graham appears alone in the doorway of the dining room. He spots me and comes over to our table. “Morning.” His face and voice betray no sign of the intimacy we shared, and I wonder if the bond I felt with him was one-sided. Perhaps I’ve been married so long that I’m no longer capable of judging a man’s intentions.

“You two know each other?” Dave asks.

“I imposed myself on your wife last night while you were in your cabin counting sheep. I’m Graham.”

“Dave.” Dave has his palm up and is gripping Graham’s hand lightly. He has always shaken hands this way—quick to assert the fact that he is not prone to combat, not interested in one-upmanship. That’s one of the things that attracted me to him when we first began dating. He was so unlike the boys I knew from home, the macho types with their big voices and firm handshakes, their need to always be in control.

“We’re stopping in Nanjing this evening,” Graham says. “I know a great spot for dinner. Why don’t you two join me?”

Dave puts an arm around my shoulder, as if we’re best buddies, as if this whole trip was his idea. “Sounds great.”

Dave and I have been assigned to the green group, which is led by Elvis Paris. Stacy, a sketch pad and pencil box in hand, sidles up to us. “Mind a third wheel?”

We disembark at Yangzhou in an oppressive drizzle. As we step off the gangplank onto the floating dock, Elvis Paris distributes parkas. “Follow me!” he shouts, waving the green flag over his head. We pass through narrow streets crowded with commerce. Everything is for sale: glass medicine bottles, plastic sandals, colorful shirts, porcelain bowls, combs, teacups, cameras, jade trinkets, fake leather purses, batteries, chopsticks, jewelry, toothpaste, lamps, socks, radios, pencils, postcards.

An elderly woman gives haircuts on the sidewalk. Her salon consists of a rusted metal chair, a yellow comb, a bowl of water, a pair of scissors, a hand-held mirror, and a tin can in which she collects payment. Nearby, a young boy in red shorts squats on the ground, selling ears of corn from a plastic bucket wedged between his legs. Every few yards, another group of old men crouch around a table beneath an awning, the slap of mahjong tiles echoing through the street. A toddler in split-crotch pants stops and pees on the sidewalk while his mother holds him by the underarms; the child chatters at us as we pass. A wheelbarrow loaded with watermelons stands right next to a modern ice cream freezer, which is decorated with pictures of Popsicles, drumsticks, and a smiling Chairman Mao. A young woman in a blue dress passes out freshly pressed white linens from a steaming basket. A legless man sells incense sticks from the back of a rickshaw.

Traipsing behind Elvis Paris, handbags and heavy cameras clutched beneath our rain gear, we resemble a herd of dumb and graceless cattle. Locals stare and point. Shouts of “Hal-loooh!” come at us from every direction. A woman in an old-style Mao suit tugs at my sleeve and tries to sell me a pack of postcards. “Twenty yuan,” she says, “twenty yuan.” When I shake my head she brings the price down to fifteen, and when I refuse again she goes on to Dave, then works her way through the group.

Roadside snack stalls and restaurants fill the air with fragrance: steamed buns, bowls of rice and beef, spicy soups, green vegetables, pork wrapped in shining banana leaves. We pay two yuan each to enter a park filled with elderly people practicing tai chi in orderly groups. The air is hot despite the rain, alive with the sound of music playing on portable cassette decks—Chinese opera and a few rousing songs of patriotism. There is other music, too, the chatter of birds. A man walks past holding a small bamboo cage; inside, a tiny nightingale pecks the bars. The limbs of the trees are draped with hundreds of similar cages. Each cage holds two tiny porcelain dishes, intricately painted, and a single captive bird, singing for its master.

Outside the park, Elvis Paris takes us to a string of brightly decorated stalls and urges us to shop. Dave buys a linen tablecloth for his mother. I choose a hand-painted barrette for my niece. “May I borrow Dave for a minute?” Stacy asks. “He’s the same size as my brother.” Dave models for her, arms held out to the side, while she holds up one shirt after another. She looks at me. “What do you think?”

“I like the yellow one.”

“Me too.” She pays for the shirt, an oxford with tiny dolphins printed on the fabric.

Half an hour later, Elvis Paris waves the green flag over his head and herds us back to the ship for lunch. My mouth is still watering from the rich smells of food in the city, but on the ship we are served a decidedly un-Chinese meal: salad with heavy dressing, creamed corn, and rubbery chicken drenched in salt.

Stacy swishes her fork around in the corn. “Just like Luby’s Cafeteria,” she says.

Dave laughs. “You could drink it through a straw.”

“So, how’d you decide to be an EMT?” she asks.

“By accident. I was a bond trader with an amateur interest in photography. One weekend I went out with an ambulance to shoot a day-in-the-life piece for a free weekly. The first call we took was a crash scene on the West Side Highway. Blood everywhere, smoke, people screaming. There was this one kid, couldn’t have been older than six or seven, and his legs had been crushed below the knee. I bent down to take his picture, and through the lens I could see that his face was totally blank. He didn’t look scared, or like he was in pain, just blank. I took a few shots, and then I heard the kid say, ‘Hey mister.’ I was so surprised I almost dropped the camera. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Can I have some water?’ I gave him some. Right then, I was hooked. Suddenly, bond trading seemed like a huge sham.”