The Mandarin Club (6 page)

He lived in dread of the day they would all inevitably collide, when his separate lives would merge and he would be carried away in the flood of contradictions. At that fateful hour, he told himself, he would bear his cross stoically. In the interim, he managed the balancing act deftly. Only in rare moments of solitude would he peer into himself to examine the mess he had made of his life, a candor best treated with a heavy dose of scotch.

Tanned and a bit heavy, he sat motionless in his terrycloth robe bearing the hotel’s “SF” script. Today, he would indulge himself. He would rally his spirits and reward his many successes as a man of international business.

He deserved it, he assured himself. It was hard-earned comp time, a reward to self for his latest deal-making wizardry, an international soldier’s R&R, just like Dad’s Army pals always used to laugh about into their beers. There would be no burdensome Catholic guilt to restrain him. He had left behind his religious indoctrination—and all those years of his father’s stern drilling—the day he left Albuquerque for Palo Alto.

He had finally slept after the third whiskey. It had been an ugly, drunken sleep, though. His dreams were black and twisted. Mei Mei’s father, the air force general, had been hollering at him in Mandarin about his tardiness in delivering some gizmo to the old man’s comrades in the Chinese rocketry business. The patriarch was squinting and angry, his lecture rambling on, seemingly for hours. “You make yourself suspect,” his father-in-law seethed. “Maybe you are working for CIA to sabotage the people!” He blathered on, quoting Chinese fables and expressing disappointment that his little princess had married such a heathen slouch.

When awake, at home, in the Beijing neighborhood of the foreign compound, Mickey could speak better Chinese than most. His language skills had aided his ascendancy in the China business. But “Dream Mickey” was flustered, a failing kid back in New Mexico, shuddering under his father’s glare. Mickey felt better to be alert, safe from the hectoring Chinese voices.

Mickey gazed about his suite as he cleared his brain, anticipating the day to come. He made a habit of requesting the ’09-numbered rooms, especially 1009 and 1109 near the top of the old St. Francis tower. The corner suites in the original brick-faced portion of the hotel looked over Union Square. Mickey could stand at the windows and see the Berkeley hills, the Bay Bridge, and the old San Francisco industrial waterfront. He watched in the Square below as the sidewalks were hosed down, the sprinklers misting beds of yellow and orange tulips. The pleasant racket from the cable cars rolling down Powell Street was softened by distance. The Bear Republic flag on the façade fluttered in the morning breeze.

He strained to summon the old rhythms of Mickey the Ringleader, the guy who always brought the party with him. He searched for the taproot of energy that had driven him to overcome so many challenges. He missed the States and hungered for the familiar, the carefree.

His life as an expatriate in the People’s Republic of China was the ultimate paradox of fulfillment and fear. He labored to maintain his public image amidst the emptiness of marriage to a frigid foreigner. Mickey played the homespun cowboy role to the hilt—even wore his alligator-skin boots to most of his business meetings. He was the master of the import-export game in Beijing, a leader of the American community in town, the garrulous go-to-guy for his corporate allies. He had just engineered another lucrative satellite deal, providing the Chinese access to a new generation of U.S. space launch technology, Telstar’s finest. All the execs back at Houston headquarters thought Mickey was a brilliant success.

His career was a credit to his cleverness—and his connections. With the help of his powerful father-in-law, he got it all done for Telstar in an intensely competitive market. He had just finished serving a term on the board of the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing, the consummate wheeler-dealer who could fix any nettlesome trade problem.

In darker moments of introspection, he came to bear his professional success as a private shame, peddling satellite cargoes and high-performance supercomputers like so many knock-off watches. He ran errands for the Defense Ministry and worked a shopping list pushed by Mei Mei’s father. He saw to it that the Customs guys and mid-level bureaucrats were covered with generous bribes. In the process, he hoarded tidbits of information with which to someday entice Branko, hoping that Branko might overcome his disdain and favor him in a pinch. Like a poker shark, he built mental files on all parties to his games, tucking away little insights for the reckoning day when he might need them.

The silent resignations of middle age were now weighing upon his life of compromise. The accumulated burden had gotten old—the settling for less, the entrapment in his warren of obligations. The China game had lost its charm and, during increasingly frequent moments of reflection, he saw the caricature his life was becoming as once noble goals were betrayed.

He peered out the window, across the west tower of the Bay Bridge. The sun was making its first appearance, a promise of pure light through purples and grays. The rays spread beyond the steel frames, catching windows of other high-rise hotels, illuminating the placid bay, and pointing silvery fingers at cargo ships stalled in the flat water below. For a moment, Mickey was transfixed. He ignored the paper in hand and the silent sports figures hurtling ghostlike across the television screen.

There was a stillness in which Mickey could sense the movement of the earth, exaggerating the arc of the first rays of sunlight. As he reflected on his heavy load, he saw a simple fact with a new clarity: he wanted out.

He yearned to confess his many sins against God and country. He yearned to confess and be done with it all, to be free of his tangled web of collaborations—all his “special friends” at Beijing’s Ministry of Defense, his two martini lunch pals from the political dumping ground in Washington’s Commerce Department.

He wished to be done with his Hong Kong mistress, the sharp-nailed German woman who demanded silks and liked to ride on top. He longed to be out from under the sheer weight of his deceits, from the serial maneuvering and stream of tales that made his brain ache. He was weary of sex without love, and love without sex. He wanted to quit the game—the
baksheesh
for trade licenses, the envelopes of cash for Port Authority guys, and all the petty misdemeanors and squirrelly crimes that marked his life of international salesmanship.

He began to construct a new vision. He imagined coming home to America, sipping scotch in a Barcalounger, snug inside a New Mexico rancher. His mom and pop, now mellowed with age, would live down the street. Grandma would bake and fuss over the kids. Grandpa would teach them to fish. Mickey would wrestle cheerfully with his boys, betting the over-under on the Lakers, socking away some cash for their college tuition. He’d clean up his act.

Never again would he miss a Little League game for some stupid staff meeting. Maybe he could even hook up with one of his old high school sweethearts who had stayed home in Albuquerque and long since divorced. They could make an American home for the boys. They could cruise beyond middle age and build a future together. He would hike the John Muir Trail along the Sierra ridge before he got too old. He’d find an inner calm. He’d begin to integrate his life into one coherent whole. He’d slow down and finish growing up. Maybe, just maybe, he could finally become the model citizen he had always aspired to be. Maybe he could do good instead of just living like some Gatsby swell. Noble deeds—that is what he aspired to—noble deeds and simple peace. He could realize his vision. He could be released.

But at this moment, he could see no escape from his own intricately designed Hell. He was a hostage, trapped in his web of Beijing favor-banking. He could see no hope of ever recreating some American Wonder Years for his boys. His two Chinese-American kids would not clear the Communists’ exit controls—not since he’d had the temerity to utter the word “divorce” in Mei Mei’s presence. Her father was viciously effective; he could surely block their departure.

So Mickey looked to San Francisco for a day of release. He was energized, recalling familiar scents that triggered memories from his college days. The eucalyptus harkened back to the slow drive up to Stanford’s Memorial Chapel. The dry fields of grass and laurel recalled drinking chardonnay on the headlands just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. The smell of hot dogs and java roast brought back cold nights at Candlestick, roaring the Giants on in air thick with cannabis. The salty ocean smells beckoned him back to Point Reyes and a bracing hike along the shoreline cliffs. His brain surfed through the sensual recollections as he tried to rally.

He had received a last-minute reprieve from the need to fly the red-eye back to Washington to take a meeting at the Talbott firm with Lee and Rachel. The Chinese Embassy trade guy was all worked up about a series of export licenses in the new satellite deal. But the meeting had been scrubbed. Now, miraculously, at the breakfast hour, he had nearly finished his work for the day.

He had risen at 5:30 a.m. to dispose of his calls—to Beijing, Taipei, New York, and Virginia, in that order. His last call was local, using a secure line to contact an export agent helping him complete his secondary business in San Francisco. It was his Singapore-based middleman’s peculiar request for krytrons—high-speed electrical switching devices of little use to his satellite customers. But he was beyond caring about such things. He was quite willing to follow the explicit instructions his Beijing contacts had given him. His buyer had secured the contract, and executed the peculiar routing, shipping via Vancouver, thence to Taipei, Taiwan, of all places.
Bizarre
, he thought. But Mickey had learned long ago not to ask too many questions. It was easier that way.

His thoughts were interrupted by the phone, ringing loudly in the high-ceilinged room. It was the scrambled cell line again, the secure one the Ministry had issued him in Beijing.

“Yes?” he answered, before adding, as a quick afterthought, “Baker here.”

“Good morning. This is Rashid. The check is in the mail.”

“Everything OK with the postman?”

“Everything went fine. You were right. The little station is looser than the big one.” They’d begun using the smaller San Jose airport instead of SFO for international shipments: fewer Customs personnel to hassle them for some of their more sensitive dual use cargoes. “It was even smoother than the satellite stuff we sent last month. The TSA boys still are more interested in people coming in than hardware headed out.”

“Any more hassles from the sellers—the guys up in the factory in Fairfield?”

“No, but I did not feel so comfortable with all these questions about end use.”

“No sweat.”

“Just rather strange having to answer three times these questions about destination.” The smuggler’s accent was rather precise, conjuring for Mickey the image of a South Asian clerk. “So, my friend, I am just as pleased to be taking my leave from all these questions about end use. I don’t think they entirely bought that business about timing strobes for music video shoots.”

“Hey,” said Mickey, “half of Hollywood has moved to Vancouver. Stupid unions drove ’em there.”

“Certainly.”

“So, where are you headed?”

“Caribbean, I think—maybe a Club Med. Some place warm and sleepy, until you call again.” Mickey chuckled under his breath. He could make better use of such a destination than his rather prim export man.

“Well, happy trails, my friend. And don’t forget to call in next month. I may have a components thing I need help moving out of Germany.”

“Certainly, Baker. So long for now.”

Mickey flipped the line dead, and tossed the phone back onto the rumpled bed. The transaction seemed too easy.

What’s the end use for this stuff?
he wondered.
What’s the deal with the Taipei routing? Somebody back in Beijing have a brother
-
in
-
law across the Strait he’s doing favors for?

He pushed the remainder of his meal aside as he reached for his yellow pad. Carefully, he checked his shopping list for the day, crossing off “ketchup shipment” for the krytrons, and lining over “rash ointment” for Rashid. He’d put in his call to his Albuquerque attorney to answer the immigration questions. But he still needed divine inspiration on how he might possibly get free of Mei Mei’s clutches and bring his kids home to America. Booth might have some insights there—righteous Booth, the straight arrow who wore his conscience on his sleeve.

Mickey added Booth’s name to the phone list. He’d already put in a call to Rachel’s secretary at TPB with yesterday’s good news from Beijing that they could cancel their ten o’clock meeting.

Good old Rachel—his Stanford comrade who had become Telstar’s Girl Friday in Washington, staffing their every American need. Talbott’s firm had covered it all, from lobbying for China’s trade agenda to convincing the Commerce Department to waive satellite export license restrictions. Rachel had been the best of them all; he saw that now. She had the truest heart, and was a far better person than he. He missed her—that grinding determination, the sparkle, the reverence for the small kindnesses in life, no birthday ever forgotten. He wished he had been the one to marry her years ago. Too bad her husband Barry had turned out to be such a flake.
How had they all misjudged him?

His work done, Mickey reminded himself that the day now held considerable promise. He was headed to the fitness center to lift and jog on the treadmill, day one of his new resolution to firm up. Then he would head over to Berkeley to hook up with a favorite Swedish masseuse, beatific Bettina. She worked in the nude, her modest artist’s studio filled with incense and meditative sitar music. Invariably, she restored him with the perfect blend of Nordic firmness and sensual release, delightfully free of entangling words and complications. There was a simplicity in the shallow exchange he rarely found wanting.

He’d have a drink on Telegraph Avenue—or maybe just a caramel latté today, if his resolve held. Then, after a little souvenir shopping for the boys in Union Square, back to the hotel for a book and a nap. Finally, the Giants’ Opening Day game: from her clients at Coke, Rachel had secured him a box seat on the third base line.