My kungfu teacher, Sit, gave me the idea for this. Basically he gave me the whole plot, although I deviated from his original ideal slightly. Sit has a natural understanding of story but I wanted a more concrete ending than the one he provided.
I like this story. I was reading a lot of old Alfred Hitchcock anthologies at the time and I think this story has the flavor of that old noir-suspence. I haven't tried to sell this one; frankly I don't have a clue who is publishing stuff like this these days.
Tom Barrett stood before the half-body mirror beside his tie rack, chin lifted as he secured the collar button. "You've got your feng shui class tonight," he said to Jen, not questioning. He no longer asked about her schedule, he only made statements about where she would go and what she would do, as if his will made it so.
"Yes," Jen said, watching him in her dressing-table mirror. Her back was to him, his to her; they saw each other only in reflections. His was tall, American brawn and rough-hewn despite the three-hundred dollar haircut and Wall Street manicure. Her own reflection was small, slim, pale---his China doll, he said when he got a little drunk, and his friends concealed their winces.
"So you'll be out this evening. I'll have dinner in town and stay at the office late." He looped his tie around, pushed it through, pulled it snug. It was the gray silk, the one his secretary had given him for Christmas. Even though he'd repeatedly sneered at Versace as the designer of street-thugs.
"I won't be very late," she said. "I could meet you at the office and we can come home together."
"No. I have to call Hong Kong tonight." He turned, bent to kiss her cheek, his hand gripping her upper arm possessively. "Don't worry, I won't try to speak Cantonese."
***
There were twelve women in Gerald Wong's White Wing Feng Shui seminar, and Jen Barrett was the only non-white among them. However in all other respects she was one of them---wives of stockbrokers and investment bankers: chairwomen of charity fundraisers, CEO's of high-powered households. They wore the same designers, drove similar cars, and patronized the same decorators. Their husbands belonged to the same clubs, where presumably they all took their secretaries while their wives were all in the same feng shui seminar.
Jen wondered when exactly she'd crossed the line into cliché. It was a badge of honor, she supposed, that she was American enough, integrated enough into Tom's nouveau-riche world, to see herself as a cliché. Her parents would be so proud.
Being ever-sensitive to her own status in the eyes of others, she was quick to notice that the other seminar-attendees afforded her a certain measure of respect, equal parts admiration and resentment, because they were dabbling in a cultural superstition not their own. Some of them might have guessed that she knew no more about feng shui than they did, but they couldn't be sure and they were too sophisticated to risk giving offense.
Jen remembered some rules of feng shui from her childhood, but they were elemental things like avoiding sharp corners and not putting black in the kitchen. This mathematical business with the pa'qua and the five elements was just silly, as far as she could tell. Moving the beds away from windows made sense, it kept the drafts out, but who really supposed it made a difference if the head of the household slept in the northwest or the southwest bedroom, whether his bedstead was made of metal or wood?
Still, tabulating star charts was not much of a challenge to a woman with a PhD in theoretical math. She was finished long before anyone else, and began helping the women at her table, and they cooed and aaahhed and exclaimed at how clever she was. Had she taken this class before? they asked, because they were too politically correct to ask Did you learn this from your parents?
Jen just smiled. She'd learned long ago that people interpreted her reticence---her mother called it sullenness---as Asian mystique. She knew that was one of the things that had attracted Tom to her, that air of graciousness and demure restraint. He didn't want a wife whose conversation was likely to interrupt his own monologues.
"You finished?"
Jen was jarred out of her thoughts by a light touch on her shoulder and the only masculine voice in the room. Gerald Wong bent over her shoulder, fingertips landing on her workbook and drawing it closer. The other woman at her table fell quiet, watching in commingled speculation and envy. Jen had read surveys that claimed American women were not attracted to Asian men, but you could smell the lust in one of Gerald Wong's seminars, and it wasn't just Chanel No. 5.
"This looks good," he said. His voice was dark honey, with just a hint of clipping on the consonants. He'd learned English from a British elocution teacher, he'd told them once, but the Chinese phrases that rolled off his tongue had the velvet rasp of a tiger's purr.
Gerald Wong had also heard the theory that American women weren't interested in Asian men---he'd been told that once by the development producer of the local cable network that was considering giving him a show---and it was one reason he hadn't fucked a woman of his own race in five years.
The other reason was because he didn't get many Chinese in his seminars. "Empty," they said about his style. "Too simplistic. No respect for tradition. Corrupted for Western students."
But the Americans loved him. He was introspective enough to find this ironic; all his adult life he'd been drawn to American culture---its disregard for convention, its conspicuous consumption, its disposable trendiness---but however much he'd tried to be an American, he had never felt fully accepted by Americans until he started teaching feng shui. And even then, his reputation hadn't taken off until he started wearing Mandarin jackets and speaking in vaguely mystical aphorisms. Part of him knew his success was another fad, but he meant to ride it as far as it would take him.
In the meantime, his twice-weekly classes had six-month waiting lists, he had three bestselling videos and their accompanying workbooks in print, and his seminars filled up as fast as his publicist could book them. Filled up with women, naturally---mostly white, although there were a few African-Americans (a stupid, meaningless term his publicist had made him adopt). Generally they were married women, from white-collar households, but occasionally there were some well-off college students, or the rare single professional woman who had enough time to take a class. That type invariably wanted to strengthen the Love and Marriage corner of her apartment.
Gerald was always happy to give in-home consultations.
Jen Barrett was the first Chinese he'd had in his classes since---well, it had been quite a while---and he couldn't decide if he was fascinated or contemptuous. Her English was flawless, but the cadence of her speech was Cantonese, left over from childhood. Her husband was an architectural developer (Gerald's secretary ran background checks on all his new students ever since that incident in Kansas) and she had a doctorate in math. Typical traditional Chinese daughter's degree. Typical traditional Chinese daughter's retiring demeanor, soft voice and downturned gaze. Gerald marveled; he hadn't thought there were any traditional Chinese daughters left in America.
After a few classes, however, he began to suspect that her reticence wasn't shyness or culturally imposed self-restraint. It was depression. Everything about the woman broadcast unhappiness, from her melancholy far-gazing during his presentations, to her sardonic glances at the other women as they were fawning over him, to her barely concealed scorn whenever he gave his customary glance-over of her person. He'd perfected the technique, knew just where to rest his eyes, and how long, to make it flattering instead of sleazy. He considered it part of the enrollment price, what his clients were paying for.
Jen Barrett was not even interested. And that interested him.
"I see you are the Year of the Monkey," Gerald said, looking at her pa'qua chart. "And your husband is a Cock?"
There was a smothered giggle from the blond at Mrs. Barrett's left, and Gerald gave her a warm smile, pretending he didn't understand the double entendre. Mrs. Barrett ignored it as well, but the corners of her mouth tightened. "I know," she said. "My mother said we were incompatible. What's worse is he's a wood sign and I'm fire."
"Ah, that can be a combustible combination," Gerald said lightly. "But that passion can fuel a relationship, each can challenge the other. Still, it is best to temper the difference with balancing energy. The biggest challenge is to slow the flow of chi in the home, to make sure outside yin does not intrude and allow the husband's yang to drain away."
Jen Barrett looked directly at him, and her eyes were deep and black, open to the pits of her soul. For just a second.
Bingo, he thought.
Then she looked down. "So I'd need to deflect the flow from this bedroom door to the foyer. Maybe put a fishtank here?"
"That's one way, but there are other methods that won't clutter your floorplan so much. I'd be happy to schedule a home consultation," he offered, and the pent-up breath of the women around the table escaped in a sigh of envy.
***
Jen's hands were shaking so badly she dropped the car keys onto the driveway and had to stoop to retrieve them, as Gerald Wong's BMW pulled up behind her Lexus in front of the house. She smiled rigidly at him as he got out of the car, but he did not even look at her, his eyes were on the house. He took off his sleek black sunglasses and scanned the roofline, the second-story windows, and the portico.
"Fantastic," he said, "Really good energy here, good lines. I like the carport extended over the front door, rather than an American porch. It slows the flow in and out. Did your architect study feng shui?"
"No," Jen said, clipped. "My husband designed it himself."
"Oh right, that's what he does---you mentioned it, didn't you?" He didn't know if she had, but his assistant had told him that Tom Barrett was a very successful developer of upscale houses and condos.
She didn't answer, just gave him a stricken look and moved for the front door. He was careful not to crowd her as she unlocked it, punched in the alarm code, and stood aside for him to enter. He could tell she was badly nervous. He never knew what to expect from these home consultations, and so he had learned not to expect anything. Sometimes the wives who were most flirtatious and bold wanted nothing more than a personalized color chart. Sometimes the businesslike and aloof ones jumped him before he took his coat off. So he pretended not to notice her cowering against the door, and walked thoughtfully into her living room, scanning the place, making mental notes. He was practiced enough to take in a room at a glance and offer some pat recommendations, which could then be parlayed into more detailed advice or adultery, as his hostess preferred.
Jen, for her part, had a sensation of hurtling down a steep hill, the bottom of which was obscured by fog. She didn't know what she was doing. She was incapable of making a decision. She had only been able to make a move---more like a flail, a desperate limb flung out from her morass of numbness and depression---and the potential for disaster, stemming from that random movement, was exhilarating.
"Terrific showpiece," he called over his shoulder. "Do you do a lot of entertaining?" He swept his hand across the beige-and-white living room. "It's neutral, but rich. It invites people in. I bet you bring in flowers when you have parties. Flowers and food to give it color."
"Mostly just business associates of Tom's," Jen said, following him. "I thought of putting in a fountain, but…" she didn't finish the sentence, which was to say that Tom felt fountains were too effeminate. Although that wasn't the word he'd used.
"The kitchen is potentially a problem," he said, walking through the open columns into that room. "This is---" he paused to glance through the windows "---the southwest corner, right?"
"Is that bad?" she asked.
"Some old-school practitioners believe having the kitchen in that corner encourages infidelity," he said solemnly, although his eyes were teasing. "On both sides."
"Maybe that's why my husband put it there," she said testily, and then hated herself. It sounded petty, pitiful. She took a deep breath and crossed the foyer to the stairs, started up. "The bedroom and dressing room are what I was mostly concerned about," she called over the railing, not looking to see if he was following her. "Tom's been wanting to open the upstairs floorplan to make more space so we'll each have our own dressing area, but I've always thought it felt oppressive up here." She heard his footsteps crossing the slate tile in the foyer, then scuffing on the carpet risers. "I'm wondering if I should put in a skylight or if a more open plan would be enough."
"An open plan in a dressing room?" Gerald said, admiring the way her hips swung as she climbed ahead of him. "Sounds---er, revealing."
She laughed. "Wait until you see the shower."
He did, and he could see what she meant. It was one of those multi-directional showers, with spray heads at several levels and compass points. The walls were clear glass. It stood like an ice floe in the middle of the silver-and-white bathroom.
"It is rather cold," Gerald said. "All this white will have to go---white is the color of death."
Her smile was brittle. "Tom picked it out. But then he hardly ever uses it. He showers at the gym or at his office, if he works late."
"But he likes to see you use it," Gerald guessed.
The brief lowering of her eyes was affirmation. "Tom doesn't believe there should be secrets between a married couple."
"At least not on your part."
"No." She turned to face him fully. Gerald had moved rather close to her when they stopped to admire the shower, and he did not move away now. He stood with hands in pockets, relaxed, head cocked slightly to one side as he considered her tight, unhappy, but still lovely face.
"What do you believe?" he asked, looking into her eyes.
"I think too much honesty is hurtful," she said. Her arms were loose at her sides. She did not smile, or step away from him, either.
"So you keep secrets from your husband?"
Her gaze fell to his mouth. "If I say I do, will you stop talking and fuck me?"
They did it on the floor, next to the transparent shower. The white bathmat was a lot warmer and softer than it looked.
***
Tom was being more attentive lately. He'd brought her flowers twice in the last two weeks, taken her out to lunch, and went out of his way to compliment the remodel of the master suite.
"But I knew you'd do it beautifully," he said. "You always have such good taste."
Jen did not point out all the instances where he'd returned gifts she'd bought him, or sneered at the wallpaper she'd picked out. "It's mostly Gerald Wong's influence," she said. "He showed me how to do the color charts. And his assistant is a genius when it comes to space management."
"Well, it's a helluva lot nicer than the last decorator you hired. That woman with the obsession with puce… I guess it takes a man's influence not to make it look all namby-pamby. Though I guess this Gerald Wong is gay, isn't he?"
"No, he's not gay," Jen laughed. "At least, I don't think he is. I never thought about it, honestly."
She'd found a receipt on the floor of Tom's dressing room this morning, while they were moving the clothes out. It must've fallen out of his gray jacket pocket, because she remembered he'd worn it the day before, the same date as on the receipt. Receipt for drinks and oysters, at the Rockefeller club, around ten. At a time when Tom had claimed to be at the office. Probably about the same time she'd been sucking off Gerald in the front of his BMW. Why did they bother? she wondered. She was almost sure that Tom knew: she had been gone too frequently, too suddenly, with too much deviation from her normal schedule to account for. The other morning she had come out from the shower to find him putting things back into her purse; he claimed he had knocked it off the table. Meanwhile he had become ridiculously interested in, and positive toward, Gerald Wong and her feng shui class. As if he were tacitly approving her infidelity. Maybe he thought that if she was doing it too, that let him off the hook.
"Well, gay or not, he's got some kind of lucky mojo going on," Tom said, leaning to peer at the new wallpaper border that was being installed along the chair rail. "Did I tell you we finally got rezoning approved on the Triangle?"
"You did? That's great!" Jen had to think hard to remember which was the Triangle property. He always had four or five he was bitching about in a given season. She thought the Triangle was the one with an environmental holdup; he'd been certain that the rezoning wouldn't go through and he'd be stuck with this prime piece of condominium land that he couldn't develop.
"Yeah, it's finally going through---no thanks to those dirt-worshipping hippie freaks. Maybe you ought to tell your little karma buddy that his stuff worked."
"Karma buddy… you mean Gerald?"
"Yeah---didn't you just show me how he put those fish in our money corner?"
Jen laughed. "And you're going to give that credit?"
"Hell, it can't have been any common sense in City Hall," Tom had said. "So why not? You know---my architect is into this feng shui stuff. You think Wong might want to do some consulting work for us?"
The idea struck Jen as deliciously perverse. "Well, I'll give you his number. I'm sure he'd be glad to work with you. You could enhance each other's resumes."
***
Every Wednesday, Gerald took Sifu Po to lunch. Po was nearing ninety, and had had a small stroke three years ago so his walking required a cane. He still did his qi gong exercises every morning, however, which had enabled him to regain much of his former mobility, and his mind was as sharp as ever.
So were his eyes. "You are not sleeping enough," Po said when Gerald sat down across from him. "Your kidneys are depleted from too much sex."
"It's good to see you too, sifu," Gerald said tartly. He loved the old man like a father---perhaps the more because his own father had been a flitting, shadowy figure in his life---but as with many familial relationships, the affection was most noticeable at a distance.
Po slurped his tea. He drank that awful pu-erh, the "dirt tea" that many Chinese took as a digestive. He liked this dingy hole-in-the-wall restaurant because they served it and because he could order rabbit face. It wasn't on the menu, but the owners would make rabbit face for Po if he asked for it. Gerald didn't like to think about where the rabbits came from, or the preparations that got them from someone's fire escape to the kitchen.
"How is your teaching?" Po asked.
"Fine," Gerald said.
"You have many students?"
"It's always full."
"Any Chinese?"
"One," he said, inadvertently sounding surprised. "Now I have one."
Po looked at him. "Woman?" he said shrewdly.
"Nearly all my students are women, sifu," Gerald said.
Po slurped his tea. "You have more Chinese if you teach the traditional methods." If you teach the way I taught you, was the undertone of that accusation.
"But I wouldn't have as many students," Gerald said, the old refrain. "And I do teach the traditional theory, I just don't teach all of it. Americans are too impatient. They want quick answers. They want quick results."
"Laziness," Po declared, although whether he was describing the Americans or Gerald himself was a matter of conjecture.
Gerald drank his own oolong and said nothing. He was dead tired from being out late with Jen the last two nights, but he felt curiously exhilarated, too. He'd been seeing her for the better part of a month, and wasn't getting bored with her yet. Little things about her fascinated him, like her small soft hands and the way her upper lip was just a little too short to cover her teeth. She never spoke when they made love, never opened her eyes and looked at him. He wondered what, if anything, she thought about at such times. He wondered whether she was even attracted to him, or if she'd picked him out merely because of his reputation as a discreet stud-for-hire. Strange he was suddenly worrying about his reputation, and feeling like a gigolo.
"So this woman, this one Chinese in your class, she is married?"
"Why do you want to talk about this?" Gerald said defensively. "It's not important."
"Everything is important. Everything is connected. Cause and consequence. You sleeping with a married woman. You cannot see her regular times, only difficult times when her husband away. So you lose sleep and you are tired. Your work suffer. Cause and consequence." Po scraped the cheeks of the rabbit away from the skull with his teeth and Gerald grimaced. "You grow up in America, your mother feed you American junk, you have no taste for real food. Cause and consequence."
"I practiced feng shui the way you taught me and no one was interested," Gerald said. "The Chinese wouldn't hire me because I was too American and I didn't speak enough Mandarin. I made it simpler for the Americans and now I'm talking to producers about my own cable show. I've got ten times more clients, and more money, than I could have made in Chinatown. I can afford to take my sifu out for a nice lunch once a week. That's cause and consequence."
Po pointed at Gerald with his chopsticks. "You say that because you don't believe. You think these rules, these practices are pretend. I have some clients for thirty years. You think they come to me if I have the power, or not? You know the rules but you don't believe it, you don't practice, you have no control. You make things happen by accident. You poison somebody one day."
Gerald sighed. "Sifu.... you've said yourself it's just a superstition. A very scientific superstition, you said."
"May be, but Tao is truth. You send out bad energy, it come back to you. You give bad chi to somebody else it come back to you, sooner or later."
Gerald shrugged. "Maybe next year I'll be broke. Then I won't be able to take you to lunch any more."
Po looked sad. "That my consequence, then, because I not teach you good."
***
Cause and consequence, Gerald thought sourly, watching the workmen frame in the mirrors in Tom Barrett's dressing room. Cause and consequence, my ass. It's just a superstition, for Chrissakes. It's interior decorating crossed with astrology.
All the same, he felt a little uneasy, eyeing the changes he'd made to the master suite. A king-sized bed, with the row of springs down the center to divide the married couple. The bed positioned in the northeast corner of the room, which was neutral to Jen's chi but allowed Tom's to drain out the door. Most damaging of all, the mirrors were being installed just a little too low. Gerald could see his whole body in them but Tom Barrett was a good four inches taller than he; the top of Barrett's head would be subtly cut off, when he stood at his tie rack. According to Sifu Po, that was a sure way to cut off a man's life prematurely.
How? Gerald's mind jeered. By tying his tie too tightly? Maybe he'll be buried under all these Italian suits.
Jen came into the room behind him and slipped her hand discreetly around his elbow. "Why are you frowning?"
"I've created a safety hazard in your bathroom," Gerald said, automatically falling into glibness. "The carpenter brought in your new bathmat but they haven't bolted it down yet."
"It's very handsome," Jen said, as they turned to admire it. It was a raised mat, a short bamboo platform on legs. "It brings warmth to the room."
"And luck, too. Bamboo is lucky. But don't step on the edges or it will buck up and whack you in the shins. That wouldn't be lucky at all." He smiled down teasingly at her, saw her bright, answering smile, and felt an odd little kick in his guts, a warmth of pleasure that became deeper and more acute every time he saw her. He felt generous toward her, a desire to protect her and wash away the sadness in her eyes. He had done a couple of surreptitious things to improve her Love and Happiness qi, but it was difficult to positively influence one half of the marriage when he was deliberately sabotaging the other half.
He opened his mouth to tell her how pretty she looked, but her face turned away toward the door and the smile was not for him. It was a mask of her own. A man had sauntered into the bathroom: tall, brutally handsome, familiar from the photographs in the bedroom.
"My husband wanted to meet you," Jen said, turning Gerald gracefully with the hand on his sleeve. "I hope you don't mind."
"No, not at all," Gerald said, reaching out a hand to Barrett. "Gerald Wong."
"Tom Barrett," the husband said with a smirk. He leaned into the handshake, really wrung from the elbow.
Asshole, Gerald observed, and felt pleasantly absolved. "I've spent so much time looking at your star charts I feel like I already know you."
"You believe in all that astrology stuff?" Barrett asked.
"I have to say yes, don't I?" Gerald said, with a smile. "But I find the charts are just a starting point. People like to get a nudge in the right direction, but most of us have a pretty good idea where we need to go."
Barrett grinned on one side of his mouth. It was a polite, charming, you're-full-of-shit kind of grin. "That's getting too deep for me. But listen, I build condominiums---in fact I'm working on one down on Twenty-third street."
"The Three Corners lofts."
"That's the one. Jen says the place has good karma, whatever you call it."
Gerald nodded. "It is a good location."
"So I thought we could make a selling point of it. Like you could meet with my architect and look at the plans, tell him if a wall needs to be moved or a bathroom's in the wrong place. And I'll have my decorators consult with you, to pick out lucky color schemes for each apartment. Things like that. We might even use your name in the advertising. You'll get the publicity, plus, say, a celebrity endorsement fee, and we get to hike our prices twenty percent above market. What do you say?"
Gerald's eyebrows went up. Jen was smiling at him brightly, falsely. He couldn't tell if this was her idea, but plainly she had known it was coming. It was a hell of an idea. It was terrific publicity, and could become the first in a lucrative series of celebrity endorsements.
Celebrity endorsements. Gerald savored the words, tip of his tongue touching his lip. "Well, I can't say a firm yes without my agent's okay… but since my agent gets a cut of everything she'd be pissed if I didn't at least have a look at the property."
"We can go there now, if you want," Barrett said. "The architect should be there, I'm supposed to meet him at four."
Gerald checked his watch. "I'm done here for the day… as long as you trust your wife to supervise the woodwork installation."
Barrett grinned and brushed a knuckle across Jen's cheek. "Oh, she wouldn't let me down… would you honey?"
***
The building on twenty-third was well-placed from a feng shui point of view. It was close to, but slightly off the highway, about equidistant from the overpass and the viaduct. Water nearby was auspicious. And because the building was unusually shaped, three-sided instead of square, all the streets leading toward it passed by at an angle, instead of directly at it. There were no "poison arrows" of other buildings pointing at it.
Inside was not bad, either. Americans had gone through an unfortunate architectural period of cramming the kitchen off in a corner, to keep the mess and heat out of the main body of the house, but in feng shui theory, the kitchen was the heart of the home. A clean, well-stocked kitchen contributed to health in every other aspect of life. Americans were very keen on food these days---not only eating it, but preparing it well, buying fresh ingredients and experimenting with designer recipes to go with their designer furniture. The kitchen was the heart of a lively household, people were doing their entertaining in the kitchen and wanted open floorplans to accommodate their guests.
Given these generous head-starts, Gerald found it easy to recommend lighting, window treatments and color schemes. Barrett's architect was reluctant to lose the trendy industrial ceilings, citing extra costs to enclose all the ductwork, but Gerald insisted: exposed beams were considered oppressive in feng shui.
"You wanna listen to this guy," Barrett said. "My wife swears by him. And you know women always make the decisions about these things."
The architect, Gerald was interested to note, plainly thought Barrett was an asshole, too. Barrett kept excusing himself to answer his cell phone, and the third or fourth time it happened he broke off in the middle of explaining how he wanted the building's lobby laid out. "Ms. Roark," he said heartily into the handset. "You just caught me. No, go ahead, I've got a minute." He strode briskly out of the room into the hall, where his voice dropped to a low mutter.
The architect gave him a sour look and glanced back to catch Gerald's eye. "The penthouse buyer," he explained. "His number-one customer."
Gerald lifted an eyebrow. "I take it she's getting a discount."
The architect snorted. "Well she isn't paying cash . . . but you didn't hear it from me." He looked at Gerald consideringly. "Didn't you used to teach feng shui at the community college?"
Gerald groaned. "God, don't remind me. That was a hundred years ago. And nobody in the Midwest had heard of feng shui back then, so I was calling it Interior Design on a Budget. How to remake your living room for five bucks, stuff like that."
The architect grinned. "I thought so. You actually came and did our place. My wife took your night class back when we were first married. I was still in architecture school. She was an Eastern Studies major, so she was already into qi. She told me she pestered you until you agreed to come give her tips on our tiny little apartment."
Gerald cocked his head as a vague memory surfaced; a bright, earnest young woman---not, thank God, one that he'd slept with. That was perhaps why he remembered her; she had been keen on his craft and sincere in her desire to learn. "Yeah, I think I do…. Linda?"
"Layla," the architect said. "Layla Robinson. I thought it was just a fad, you know, but we were just married and anything she wanted to do was cute to me. But she kept with it all these years. She's bought all your books and videos, and she's studied with other teachers, but she says you always seem to have the best recommendations." He chuckled. "All I can say is she must be doing something right, because I've got more business than I can handle. Hers isn't doing too bad, either. There's a glut of interior decorators in this city, and she's got a waiting list almost a year long."
"Is that right?" Gerald said.
"Yeah. And last year, when we found out we might have fertility problems? She just rearranged the flowers in the family corner, and three months later she's pregnant." He broke into a huge smile. "We're gonna have a baby boy in another month."
"That's great," Gerald said, smiling wryly as he thought of Po's voice saying, You do things by accident. He couldn't even take this example to the old man as a rebuttal; the sifu would only find a way to flog him with it. "Congratulations."
Barrett came back into the unit, tucking away his cell phone. "Gentlemen, I hate to break this up, but I've got another meeting to get to. Wong, you want to give me your agent's number, I can have my people get in touch with her?"
"Yeah, sure, I've got a card in my car," Gerald said.
The architect parted company with them in the backlot. Gerald exchanged business cards with the man, who gave a friendly two-finger salute as he pulled away in his shiny extended-cab pickup.
It was the middle of rush hour, and traffic was a constant roar from the overpass. The sun was sinking, low enough now that the tall security fence around the lot cast deep shadows, but the streetlights were not yet on. Gerald shuffled through his wallet and then through his glove box, but he could not find another of his agent's business cards.
"That's all right," Barrett said. "I'll get your number from my wife."
"That'll work," Gerald agreed. "I left one of my cards on your hall table."
"Or I could get it off her cell phone bill," Barrett said. "It's on there fifty or sixty times this month."
Something flat in Barrett's tone made Gerald stop and look at him, thinking surely this wasn't going to be the cliché, the big confrontation---but Barrett's jaw was set and his gaze was meaningful. He was making a Point.
Gerald shook his head, laughing a little. He managed to avoid scenes like this, generally, by avoiding the husbands and keeping things with the wife strictly casual. But he'd let his ego drag him out here with Barrett, and he was a little too fond of Jen. She was making him sentimental, and he knew he was going to do something noble and stupid instead of being his usual glib self. "Look," he said to Barrett. "Jen loves you. And she's desperately unhappy. She knows you're screwing around and it's killing her. So whatever thing you imagine is going on between her and me---it's you looking at your own reflection, man. You're putting your guilt on her. So just go home and forget about Miss Penthouse, huh?"
He saw momentary shock in Barrett's eyes. Shock and anger---but the anger had always been there. Gerald half-shrugged, apologetically, and turned to get into his car.
Hands landed on his shoulders and propelled him forward. The roof of the BMW rushed at him and bounced off his forehead. He felt his nose and cheekbone crunch and his legs went strangely boneless. He crumpled into the gravel, one leg bent awkwardly beneath him, but that was nothing compared to the huge blooming pain in his left eye. His vision seemed disconnected, the world retreated behind a thickening red fog. He stared up at his antagonist through a red and flat field of static and thought You've got to be kidding---
"You think you know my wife, asshole?" the husband screamed, punctuating the words with kicks. Gerald felt his ribs give, red-hot knives stabbing into his side. He doubled around himself, breath going out, tucking his head as Barrett's heel stomped down repeatedly on his arm and shoulder. His fingers snapped with a thin bright pain and he yelped, but it was a wheezy, unreal sound, the voice of a ghost. "Stop," he whispered. "Stop, stop, stop."
And Barrett did stop, eventually. He drew his foot up as if he'd stepped in something revolting. His suit jacket was rutched up on his shoulders, his eyes were wild but distant, like a man sleepwalking. Gerald's vision was hazy around the edges, his mouth full of bile and a ringing in his ears. The traffic on the overpass roared like a river.
Water dragons, Gerald thought distantly. He wanted to vomit. He did vomit, and the pain in his chest made his vision go black.
Barrett shuffled back from the spew with an exclamation of disgust. "Stupid fucking chink! Look what you did to my shoes!"
Gerald rolled his one functioning eye up at the man, and thought of the foreshortened mirrors in front of his tie rack. "Stupid American," he wheezed. "Shoes're the least of your problems."
He started to laugh. Barrett's teeth bared and he leapt up in the air and came down with both feet.
***
Tom was late getting home, but that wasn't unusual. What worried Jen was that Gerald hadn't called, either. He wasn't answering his cell phone, and she was afraid to keep calling in case he and Tom were together. She had a glass of wine and some slightly overripe pimento spread, pacing the kitchen restlessly, but by nine o'clock she knew she'd been abandoned for the night and got into bed with a book.
The sound of an unfamiliar car pulling up in the drive roused her from a near-doze. She eased out of bed and peeked out the front window. It was a cab, and Tom was getting out of the backseat.
Jen pulled on a robe and went to the head of the stairs. She moved quietly, avoiding the creaks in the floor. Tom came through the front door, slammed it behind him, and stood there a second, swaying on his feet.
Was he drunk? Tom was never drunk. But he looked like he'd been dragged down a gravel road. His tie was missing, his hair raked up, his shirt half-untucked. He swiped a hand over his face and headed for the back of the house.
Jen tiptoed downstairs and found him in the kitchen, knocking back Scotch. He jerked around at the sound of her footsteps as if startled by gunfire.
"Jesus, Jen," he said, faking a laugh. Under the fluorescent kitchen light his face was the color of cottage cheese, and his eyes were red, watery. "Are you still up?"
"Did you take a cab home?"
"Yeah, lost my damn keys." He raised the glass with a shaking hand. "Lucky if the damn Jag doesn't get stolen by morning."
"Where'd you leave it? At the jobsite?"
"Went to have some drinks with your buddy Gerald. He drove us. Helluva guy, really. Not near as queer as he seems."
"You let Gerald drive?" Jen said. Tom hadn't ridden in a passenger seat in all the years she'd known him.
"I said I let Gerald fucking drive, didn't I?" he shouted, and she jumped, heart thudding in her chest.
I sent them off together, she thought, and dread began to close up her throat. I sent them off together….
He stopped, jaw clenched, rubbing the back of his hand against his brow. After a second he put the glass down and turned toward her. She steeled herself not to flinch as he reached for her, but his hands only closed over her shoulders and massaged, his eyes roaming over her hair and mouth and collarbone but never meeting her gaze. "You know I love you Jen, right? You know I'd never do anything to hurt you, right?"
She felt something inside retreat, hard and fast, to a wall behind her emotions. "Of course," she said, and was surprised at how normal and comforting her voice sounded.
He released her abruptly. "I gotta go take a shower."
Jen stood icy still as he trudged across the living room and up the stairs, then over her head, down the hall to the master suite. Oh God, Gerald, she thought faintly. There was a spreading sensation of loss, as if the floor were falling away around her, but she grabbed the counter's edge and steadied herself sternly. Men just didn't go around killing each other in real life. But God, Tom was so much bigger than Gerald, and clearly there had been some kind of confrontation---Tom could have hurt him very badly. Call the police, she thought, but she had no idea what she would tell them.
She crept up the stairs and into the bedroom. The shower was running, and Tom's clothes lay in a heap in his dressing room. She knelt and turned over the jacket gingerly, dipping into the breast pocket with two fingers.
A loud crash from the bathroom sent her bolt upright in terror. She dashed into the bedroom, staring at the bathroom door, but it remained closed. The shower was still running.
Jen clambered into the bed and under the covers, still in her robe, fists clenching the duvet.
She sat there for a very long time, listening to the water run. Gradually she realized that there were no sounds of movement in the bathroom---no feet shuffling in the shower or breaks in the stream of falling water. And after a longer time, she thought the water must be getting stone-cold. Tom was never a lengthy shower-taker.
The bathroom door was unlocked. The air that rolled out felt clammy and raised a scum of gooseflesh all over her body.
Tom lay in the floor of the transparent shower, naked and defenseless. One leg thrust out over the threshold of the shower basin, the heel supporting the up-cocked bamboo bath-step. Tom's head lay at a bad angle, propped against the lip of the marble. There was a fine crack in the glass behind his head, and a fine trickle of blood threading away in the water.
She rushed toward him, her breath sucking in, a scream in reverse, but the instant her hands touched the shower doorframe, a small cold voice in her head said quietly, Be careful.
Yes, she thought, gripping the slick glass; she had to be very careful now. She was a woman who had been having an affair, and now her husband was dead. Very likely her lover, too, but she couldn't allow herself to think about that right now. Everything had to be about Tom right now. Everything had always been about Tom, although she had thought it was about her and had honestly believed she was bringing Gerald into her home to shape her destiny.
She looked down at Tom with eyes that seemed to have been wiped clean---the slackness of his jaw made him look stupid and uncouth. She felt her hatred well up and out of her, leaving behind a relief so empty she swayed on her feet. But no---that was for later. Right now she had to be careful.
Police, she thought first, but that wasn't right---ambulance first. She should be concerned about Tom's health. She should be in denial. She thought carefully, then reached in and turned off the shower, letting the spray wet the shoulder and sleeve of her robe. She knelt in the shower basin and hefted up Tom's bulk as best she could. The police would come, eventually, and they would expect her to try to revive him. He was floppy and heavy in her arms and she let him down. She spread a towel over him, decorously. She did not touch the bathmat.
She went into the bedroom and picked up the phone on her nightstand. There was a vase of red chrysanthemums on the table and she ran her fingertips over their blooms while she listened to the ringing of the emergency line. Gerald had done his best to help her qi, she thought. She'd watched without comment while he put all the right colors in her Love and Happiness zones, and all the wrong elements in Tom's. She'd thought he was doing it out of jealousy, or perhaps childish perversity, but now she thought perhaps he'd understood her better than he had himself. Poor, sweet, conflicted Gerald, she thought, and surprised herself as a sob caught in her throat. Maybe it was easier for him to arrange other peoples' lives. Maybe it was easier to hire someone to arrange hers.
"Emergency dispatch, how can I help you?"
"Yes, hello?" Jen's voice quivered. "My husband is hurt. I need an ambulance right away."
She began to cry in earnest.