1
Apprentices have asked me, what is the most
exalted peak of cuisine? Is it the freshest ingredients, the most
complex flavors? Is it the rustic, or the rare? It is none of
these. The peak is neither eating nor cooking, but the giving and
sharing of food. Great food should never be taken alone. What
pleasure can a man take in fine cuisine unless he invites cherished
friends, counts the days until the banquet, and composes an
anticipatory poem for his letter of invitation?
— LIAN G WEI, The Last Chinese Chef, pub.
Peking, 1925
Maggie McElroy felt her soul spiral away
from her in the year following her husband’s death; she felt
strange wherever she was. She needed walls to hold her. She could
not seem to find an apartment small enough. In the end, she moved
to a boat.
First she sold their house. It was understandable.
Her friends agreed it was the right thing to do. She scaled down to
an apartment, and quickly found it too big; she needed a cell. She
found an even smaller place and reduced her possessions further to
move into it. Each cycle of obliteration vented a bit of her grief,
but underneath she was propelled by the additional belief,
springing not from knowledge but from stubborn instinct, that some
part of her soul could be called back if she could only clear the
way.
At last she found the little boat in its slip in
the Marina. As soon as she stepped aboard she knew she wanted to
stay there, below, watching the light change, finding peace in the
clinking of the lines, ignoring the messages on her cell
phone.
There was a purity to the vessel. When she wasn’t
working she lay on the bunk. She watched the gangs of sneakered
feet flutter by on the dock. She listened to the thrum of wind on
canvas, the suck of water against the hulls. She slept on the boat,
really slept for the first time since Matt died. She recognized
that nothing was left. Looking back later, she saw that if she had
not come to this point she would never have been ready for the
change that was even then on its way. At the time, though, it
seemed foregone, a thing she would have to accept: she would never
be connected again.
She stayed by herself. Let’s have dinner. Join us
at the movie. Come to this party. Even when she didn’t answer,
people forgave her. Strange things were expected from the grieving.
Allowances were made. When she did have to give an excuse, she said
she was out of town, which was fine, for she often was. She was a
food writer. She traveled each month to a different American
community for her column. She loved her job, needed it, and had no
intention of losing it. Everybody knew this, so she could say
sorry, she was gone, goodbye, and then lie back down on her little
bunk and continue remembering. People cared for her and she for
them — that hadn’t changed. She just didn’t want to see them right
now. Her life was different. She had gone away to a far-off
country, one they didn’t know about, where all the work was the
work of grieving. It was too hard to talk to them. So she stayed
alone, her life shrunk to a pinpoint, and slowly, day by day, she
found she felt better.
On the September evening that marked the beginning
of these events, she was leaving the boat to go out and find a
place to eat dinner. It was a few days after her fortieth birthday,
which she’d slid past with careful avoidance. She found the parking
lot empty, punctuated only by the cries of gulls. As she reached
her car she heard her phone ringing.
The sound was muffled. It was deep in her bag.
Living on the boat kept her bag overloaded — a small price to pay.
She dug, following the green light that shimmered with each ring.
She didn’t answer her phone that often, but she always checked it.
There were some calls, from work, from her best friend, Sunny, from
her mother, which she never failed to pick up.
When she looked at the screen she felt her brows
draw together. This was not a caller she recognized. It was a long
string of numbers. She clicked it. “Hello?”
“Maggie? This is Carey James, from Beijing. Do you
remember me?”
“Yes.” She went slack with surprise. Matt’s law
firm kept an office in Beijing, and Carey was one of its full-time
attorneys. Matt had flown over there more than a few times, on
business. Maggie’d even gone with him once, three years before.
She’d met Carey — tall, elegant, faintly dissipated. Matt had said
he was a gifted negotiator. “I remember.”
“Some year,” he said, his manner disintegrating
slightly.
“You’re telling me.” She unlocked the car and
climbed in.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m surviving.” What was this about? Everything
had been over months ago with the firm, even the kindness calls,
even the check-ins from Matt’s closest friends here in the L.A.
office. She hadn’t heard from any of them lately.
“I’m calling, actually, because I’ve come across
something. I really should have seen it before. Unfortunately I
didn’t. It’s a legal filing, here in China. It concerns
Matt.”
“Matt?”
“Yes,” Carey said. “It’s a claim.”
“What do you mean? What kind?”
Carey drew a breath. She could feel him teetering.
“I was hoping there was a chance you might know,” he said.
“Know what? Carey. What kind of
claim?”
“Paternity,” he said.
She sat for a long moment. A bell seemed to drop
around her, cutting out all sound. She stared through her
sea-scummed windshield at the line of palms, the bike path, the
mottled sand. “So this person is saying — ”
“She has his child. So I guess you didn’t know
anything about this.”
She swallowed. “No. I did not. Did you? Did you
know about a child?”
“No,” he said firmly. “Nothing.”
“So what do you think this is?”
“I don’t know, honestly. But I do know one thing:
you can’t ignore it. It’s serious. A claim has been filed. Under
the new Children’s Rights Treaty, it can be decided right here in
China, in a way that’s binding on you. And it is going to be
decided, soon.” She heard him turning pages. “In — a little less
than three weeks.”
“Then what?”
“Then if the person who filed the claim wins, they
get a share of his estate. Excluding the house, of course — the
principal residence.”
To this she said nothing. She had sold the house.
“Just tell me, Carey. What should I do?”
“There’s only one option. Get a test and prove
whether it’s true or false. If it’s false, we can take care of it.
If it turns out the other way, that will be different.”
“If it’s true, you mean? How can it be true?”
“You can’t expect me to answer that,” he
said.
She was silent.
“The important thing is to get a lab test, now. If
I have that in hand before the ruling, I can head it off. Without
that, nothing.”
“So go ahead. Get one. I’ll pay the firm to do
it.”
“That won’t work,” said Carey. “This matter is
already on the calendar with the Ministry of Families, and we’re a
law firm. We’d have to do it by bureaucracy — file papers to
request permission from the girl’s family, for instance. It would
never happen by the deadline. It won’t work for us to do it. But
somebody else could get the family’s permission and get the test
and let us act on the results. That would be all right.”
“You mean me,” she said.
“I don’t know who else. It’s important, Maggie.
We’ll help you. Give you a translator. You can use the company
apartment. You still have Matt’s key?”
“I think so.”
“Then get a flight. Come in to the office when you
arrive.” He paused. “I’m sorry, Maggie,” he said. “About
everything, about Matt. It’s terrible.”
“I know.”
“None of this was supposed to happen.”
She took a long breath. He means Matt, hit by a
car on the sidewalk. Killed along with two other people.
Random. “I’ve wrestled with that one,” she said. “So this child
— ”
“A little girl.”
She closed her eyes. “This girl is how old?”
“Five.”
That meant something would have to have happened
six years ago. Maggie scrolled back frantically. It didn’t make
sense. They were happy then. “If you’ll give me the months involved
I’ll go back through my diaries and see if he was even in China
then. I mean, maybe it isn’t even possible. If he wasn’t there —
”
This time Carey cut her off. “Winter of 2002,” he
said softly. “I already checked. He was.”
The next morning she was waiting in the hallway
when Sarah, her editor, stepped from the elevator.
“What are you doing here?” Sarah said. “You look
terrible.”
“I was up all night.”
“Why?”
“Bad news about Matt.”
“Matt?” Sarah’s eyes widened. Matt was dead. There
could be no more bad news.
“Someone filed a claim.”
Sarah’s mouth fell open, and then she closed
it.
“A paternity claim.”
Sarah went pale. “Paternity! Let’s go inside.” She
unlocked the door and steered Maggie to the comfortable chair
across from her desk. “Now what is this?”
“A woman filed a claim against him in China, saying
she has his child.”
“Are you serious? In China?”
“Yes, and because of the agreements between our two
countries, this claim can be ruled on in China and collected from
there.”
“Collected,” repeated Sarah.
“Generously,” said Maggie.
“What are you going to do?”
“Go there, right away. I have no choice. I’ve never
asked you, in twelve years, not even when Matt died, but now I’m
going to need a month off.”
“Please! Doll! We run old columns all the time when
someone has an emergency. You’re the only one who’s never asked for
that. Don’t even worry about it. And a year ago” — Sarah looked at
her, eyes soft with unspent empathy — “I told you to take off.
Remember? I practically begged you.”
“I know.” Maggie reached over and clasped her
friend’s hand. “The truth is, work kept me going. I needed it. I’ve
always been like that. I’m stronger when I’m working. I don’t know
how I’d ever have made it through without it.” She looked up. “I’m
better lately. Just so you know.”
“Good. By the way, your last check came back.”
Sarah showed her the envelope. “Do you have a new address?”
“I got a new P.O. box, one closer to where I’m
living.”
“Where are you living?”
“In the Marina,” she said, and left it at
that.
Sarah wrote down the new mailing address. “Thanks.
Anyway, of course you can go, take a month off, we’ll use an old
piece. Don’t even think about it. Maybe it’ll be good for you,
actually. You should make the best of it. Recharge.”
Maggie spoke carefully. “Do you feel I need to
recharge?”
“No. No, it’s not that, it’s just . . .” Sarah
paused, caught between friendship and responsibility. “Lately you
don’t seem that excited about food. You must have noticed it too. I
don’t get the old sense of wonder.”
I don’t either, Maggie thought sadly. “In which
stories did that bother you?”
“Well. The one on the Pennsylvania Dutch. Couldn’t
you have found anything charming about them?”
“You’re talking about people whose principal
contribution to cuisine is the pretzel. Who make perfect strangers
sit at a table and share fried chicken. Whose idea of a vegetable
is a sliced tomato. And don’t get me started on their pie!”
Sarah smiled. “See, you’re as wonderful as ever.
Just go off like that. Let yourself go.”
Maggie laughed.
“And don’t forget that part, too. You always found
the happiness in food.”
“I’ll try.”
But now Sarah’s small smile melted, and concern
took its place. “Do you think — there’s no possibility this is
true, is there?”
“You mean Matt? I have no idea. Did he tell me
anything or lead me in any way to think anything? No. He went to
China on business sometimes, but so did all the lawyers in his
office.”
“You went there with him.”
“I did, once, for a week. Three years ago. Nothing.
And you know me. I am watchful. Being attentive is the way I write,
and it spills over. I sensed nothing. But this, if it happened,
would have been a few years before that. I can’t think like this,
Sarah, is the truth; I’ll go crazy. I have to go and get a lab
test, and that’s that. Then on from there.”
“It’s going to be a difficult trip,” Sarah said,
now as her friend.
Maggie nodded. “And just when I was getting the guy
kind of settled in my mind, you know? And in my heart. Plus, to be
honest, Sarah, even though it’s necessary and all, it’s not really
a good thing for me not to be working, even for one month. I
perform better at everything when I’m working.”
“Are you saying you’d rather work?” said
Sarah.
“Of course I’d rather work, but I can’t. I have to
go there and see to this.”
Now a new smile, different, the impish smile of an
idea, was playing on Sarah’s face. “Would you like to work while
you’re in China?”
Maggie stared. She wrote only about American food.
“How?”
“File a column from there. We can run an old one —
I already told you, it’s no problem, you have some classics I’d
love to see again — but we also have an assignment in China. It
just came in. I can give it to anyone, in which case I’d have to
send someone. Or I can give it to you, since you are going, and it
can be one of your columns.”
“You don’t think I’m an odd fit?” said Maggie. She
did do ethnic food, of course. From the Basque country-style
platters of the San Joaquin Valley to the German sausages of
central Texas, it was impossible not to. American cuisine had so
many incoming tributary tastes. She knew them all. What she never
did was foreign food.
“It’s a chef profile. American guy, born and raised
here, but half Chinese.”
“Hmm. That’s a little closer.”
“He’s not cooking American,” Sarah said. “The
opposite — back to the old traditions. He’s descended from a chef
who cooked for the Emperor and in 1925 wrote a book that became a
big food classic, The Last Chinese Chef. Liang Wei was his
name. The grandson’s name is Liang too, Sam Liang; he’s translating
the book into English. He’s a cook. Everything he does is orthodox,
it’s all according to his grandfather, even though Beijing seems to
be spinning the opposite way, new, global.”
“I like it,” Maggie said.
“He’s about to open a restaurant. It’s going to be
a big launch. That’s the assignment, the restaurant.”
“Look, I won’t lie, for me it would be ideal. I
would love to write it,” said Maggie. “Not to mention that it would
keep me sane. It’s just — I don’t know how you can give it to me.
I’m the American queen.”
“Sometimes it’s good to mix things up. Anyway,
you’re going. When are you leaving?”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight! You must have a ticket.”
“I do. And I’ll have a rush visa by midday. Tell
you what, Sarah, if you just reimburse me for the ticket, I’ll take
care of all the other expenses. I do have to go there anyway.” And
she did have the company apartment.
“I can sell that,” said Sarah. She shone with
satisfaction. She loved to solve a problem. “Are we there yet?” she
said. “Is that a yes?”
They knew each other well. Maggie had only to allow
the small lift of a smile into her gaze for her friend to read her
agreement.
“Good,” said Sarah. “So.” She handed Maggie the
file. “Sam Liang.”
In Beijing it was late evening. Yet people were
still out, for the autumn night was fine and cool, faintly sharp
with the scent of the chrysanthemums along the sidewalk. It was the
local life in his adopted city that Sam Liang loved the best, like
here, the people shopping and strolling on Gulou, the street that
went right up to the dark, silent drum tower for which it was
named. Sam barely glanced at the fifteenth-century tower, which
rose in the center of the street up ahead. He didn’t look into the
brightly arranged shop windows, or the faces of the migrant vendors
who had set up here and there on the curb. He searched ahead. There
was a cooking-supply store on this block. His Third Uncle Xie had
told him about it. Xie lived in Hangzhou; when he came north to
Beijing he always stopped there.
Sam was hoping to find a chopping block, heavy,
round, a straight-through slice of tree trunk, the kind that
Chinese chefs had always used. He had two for his restaurant and he
needed a third; a busy restaurant really needed three. Every place
he’d tried had cutting boards, but they were the plastic ones — the
new, modern alternative that had taken hold all over the capital.
Plastic was cleaner, people said, safer; it was the future.
Sam didn’t agree. He hadn’t come all the way to
China to switch from the traditional tree slab to plastic. Plastic
ruined a fine blade. Besides, it was true what his grandfather had
said, that wood was a living thing beneath a man’s knife. It had
its own spring.
Ah, he spotted the store ahead — its lights were
on, it was open. If any place still had the old-style chopping
blocks, it would be this one.
More than once Xie had explained how to choose one.
“Never buy from a young tree, only an old one. Make sure its rings
are tight with age. See that the block’s been conditioned properly
with oil, that it has a sheen. Don’t bring home the wrong
one.”
“And what kind of wood?”
“When I was young all chefs used soapwood. Now most
chefs use ironwood, though some like the wood of the tamarind tree
from Vietnam. Listen to Third Uncle. Choose the wood that feels
best under your hands. Forget the rest.”
Sam opened the door to the shop. In one hopeful
sweep he took in the long shelves with their stacked woks and racks
and sieves and steamers. He saw the cutting boards, white plastic,
in their own section. He saw only plastic; no wood, no tree
trunks.
“Ni zhao shenmo?” said a woman’s voice, What
are you looking for?
It was the proprietress, a white-haired woman Sam
recognized from Xie’s description. “Elder Sister,” Sam said
politely, “I seek a chopping block, but the old kind, wood.”
“We no longer have them.”
“But why?”
“They are not as hygienic as the plastic.
Especially now, you know how it is, everything is supposed to be
clean.”
He knew what she meant — the Games. “But if I may
ask, when you stopped selling them, did you have any left?”
“No,” she said.
His hope was sliding. “Zhen kelian.”
Pitiable. “My Uncle Xie told me he thought I could find one here.
Do you know him? Your old customer? Xie Er?”
Her old eyes widened. “You know Xie Er?”
“He is my uncle.”
She looked hard at him. He could feel her weighing
the Eurasian mix in his face. Everyone did it. He was used to it.
It was the light above his head, the air in which he walked. She
wouldn’t find anything in his face anyway, for Xie Er was his uncle
not by blood but by other ties. “His father and my grandfather were
brothers in the palace.”
“You’re a Liang,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, surprised.
She slid off her stool, stiff, and opened a back
door behind her. Sam moved closer. She touched a switch, lighting a
storeroom of crowded shelves and boxes. “In here,” she said, and he
followed her. “This one.” She moved some papers to the side.
As soon as he saw it, he knew. It was about two
feet across, seven or eight inches thick, still ringed with bark,
everything finished to a dull gleam. A heavy metal ring was
embedded in one side, for hanging, as such a block should be stored
vertically when not in use. He could imagine it ten years from now,
twenty, its cutting surface worn to a gentle suggestion of
concavity, changing with him, with his cooking, under his hands. He
wanted it.
“I could pay you cash for it,” he said. “I’d be so
happy to do that.”
“Do you cook?” She was eyeing him. “Yes?” she said
at his emphatic nod. “Then just give me a moment. I’ll think of a
price.”
“Please take your time,” he said softly, but inside
he was overflowing. He reached out a practiced hand to feel the
chopping surface. “And sister, if you happen to know, this is what
sort of wood?”
“That?” she said. “That is the old kind.
Soapwood.”
Maggie stood in the airport in front of the candy
counter. Matt had always given her candy corn. It was their
signature candy, something she used to say every relationship
should have. For them it was more of a sacrament than a food. The
first time he brought it home he’d had in mind a joke on her
American food specialty, but that was soon forgotten and it became
his parting token. He would present her with a little bag before
leaving on a trip. She could still picture how he’d looked one
morning in their bedroom, in the slow-seeping dawn light, packed,
dressed, ready to go. When? A year and a half ago? They both
traveled so often that they rarely rose for each other’s early
departures. That particular morning she was half-awake, drifting;
she could hear the rustle of his pants and the crinkle of plastic
as he dug in his pocket for the little bag of corn. She heard him
settle it by her bedside lamp and lean down to kiss the frizz of
her hair. Just that. Too nice to wake her. Then the click of the
door. Remorse bubbled in Maggie now. So many times she had let him
go like that.
She walked over to the plexiglass tube filled with
orange-and-white kernels and opened a plastic bag underneath. On
the day he left for San Francisco, the last day she saw him, he did
not give her any candy corn, because he was coming back that
night.
In the year since, she had not eaten a kernel. She
pulled the lever now and they gushed into her bag, a hundred, a
thousand. She got on the plane and ate steadily, sneaking the
sugar-soft kernels into her mouth one by one and letting them
dissolve until her teeth ached and her head felt as if it would
balloon up and float away. Queasy, full, she refused the meals when
they came. She started a movie and turned it off. She sat washed by
waves of guilt, guilt she’d felt many times this past year as she
remembered that she and her husband, in truth, had always loved
each other best when they were apart. And now it was for always.
She closed her eyes.
She felt her computer bag between her feet. She
hadn’t even thought yet about the job. What with getting her visa,
collecting a sample for Matt from the hospital where he had banked
blood, delivering it to the DNA lab, getting the collection kit,
packing, speeding to the airport — with all this she had not given
the first thought to her interview with the chef. Actually it had
been a relief to have to move so fast. Grief, which had become
half-comforting to her, almost a companion, had seemed finally to
take a step back. She felt like a person again, even if she barely
made it to the gate on time with her carry-on.
Then she was strapped in, with her candy corn. She
attempted to face the situation. Was it possible? Could the claim
be true? She let her mind roll back once again. She lingered over
every bump, every moment of discord; she knew where each one was
located. They were all inside her, arranged since his death
alongside love, rue, and affection. She threaded through them now.
Another woman? A child? It just wasn’t possible to believe he could
have kept it from her. He was such a confessor. It was a
joke among people who knew him. This was the kind of thing
he could never, ever have kept to himself.
Especially since the question of children was one
that came up between the two of them. Originally they were both in
agreement. They did not want children. Halfway through their decade
together, though, Matt changed his mind.
At first, when it started, she reminded him of the
ways in which parenthood did not suit them. She traveled every
month, and so did he. If they had a child, someone would have to
stop. That would have be her, clearly; he earned most of the money.
The thing was, she didn’t want to stop, not for a while. She loved
her column. Let me work another year, she would say. Matt was
patient. He was the one, after all, who had changed his mind. But
always the subject came back.
He could never have hidden a child. This
thought seemed clear to her in the humming silence of the plane.
The other passengers were sleeping. After a long time of shifting
uncomfortably in her seat she got up and went to the back of the
plane, to the hollow where there is always a tiny window. She
looked out through the trapped streaks of moisture to the deep
darkness, thinking. Finally she crept back to her seat and fell
asleep.
When they landed in Beijing she felt a little sick
from the sugar, and she dragged her feet past entry agents who
stamped her passport and waved her ahead. She stopped at a currency
booth to change a few hundred dollars and, thus fortified, stepped
out of security into the crowded public area.
Touts swarmed. “Hello?” said one. “You want
taxi?”
“No, thank you.”
“Taxi. This way.”
“No.” She rolled her bag toward the glass
doors, outside of which she could see people in line for taxis. On
her right she passed a European man. “How much into Beijing?” she
heard him say to one of the men.
“Three hundred,” the man replied, and the European
agreed. She kept walking.
Meanwhile the first man was still following her.
“Taxi,” he said, and then to her shock actually wrapped his fingers
around her arm.
“Get away from me,” she said, and shook him off
with such force that even she was surprised. He stepped back, the
loser, his smile derisive. She strolled to her place in the taxi
line and felt herself stand a little taller.
Her turn came and she showed the driver the firm’s
Beijing business card, which bore the apartment address, then let
herself melt in the back seat. She had done it; she was here. A
freeway sailed along outside, dotted by lit-up billboards in
Chinese and English for software, metals, chemicals, aircraft,
coffee, logistics. What was logistics? Not knowing made her feel
old.
She still had a few loved ones, at least. She
flipped open her phone. It chirped to life. The first number was
her mother’s. Maggie didn’t call her often, but every time she got
a new phone she put her number first, at the top of the list,
anyway. Her mother had raised her alone and done it well, even if
she hadn’t been able to make much of a home for Maggie. She
deserved to hold the top slot.
Next came Sunny, her best friend and most
frequently called number. Then Sarah; her other friends. And Matt’s
parents. Her heart tightened, as always, at the thought of them.
Their suffering had been like hers.
She closed her phone as the car swooped down off
the ring road and into the city. Right away she saw this was not
the Beijing she remembered from three years ago. The boulevards
were widened, the office buildings filled in, the street lighting
redone. Maybe it was the coming of the Games. Or maybe it was just
the way Beijing was growing. She remembered Matt saying it had been
under construction all the time, going back more than a decade.
Always building, investing, expanding, earning.
The driver turned down a side street and stopped in
front of the building she remembered. She paid the fare —
ninety-five kuai. She smiled at the thought of the man in
the airport agreeing to pay three hundred. It was like being her
old self for a minute; she’d always loved to be the better
tourist.
Inside and up the elevator, she let herself into
apartment 426 and clicked on the overhead lights. It was the same.
The couch, the television, the windows that faced the city.
She rolled her suitcase to the wall. Her steps were
loud in the silence. There was an envelope on the coffee table.
To Mrs. Mason, it said. From the law firm. She opened it.
Welcome you to China. Please come to the office in the
morning.
Only someone who didn’t know her would call her
Mrs. Mason. She had never changed her name. No doubt they didn’t
know her; Carey was likely to be the only one still in the office
who had been there three years before, when she came. She
remembered Matt telling her that, aside from Carey, the Beijing
office was never able to hold on to foreigners for long. That was
one reason the lawyers in the L.A. office, like Matt, had to go
there. Then in the last few years they’d hired two Chinese
attorneys who had gone to university and law school in the States
and then returned, and the pressure eased. Matt didn’t go at all
the last year and a half before he died. In any case — she checked
her phone again — it was too late to call the office now. Calder
Hayes would be closed.
It was early enough to call the chef still, but
first she had to do some reading. She slid out the file with
Sarah’s writing on the tab, Sam Liang, and made herself into
a curl with it on the couch.
The first thing she saw was that he was a chef of
national rank, which had to be near the top in the Chinese system,
and there was a list of prizes and awards. That was fast, she
thought. He’d been here only four years. Then she came to an
excerpt from his grandfather’s book, The Last Chinese
Chef.
Chinese food has characteristics that set it apart
from all other foods of the world. First, its conceptual balance.
Dominance is held by fan, grain food, either rice or wheat
made into noodles and breads and dumplings. Song or
cai is the flavored food that accompanies it, seasoned
vegetables, sometimes meat. Of the latter, pork is first, and then
aquatic life in all its variety. The soybean is used in many
products, fresh and fermented. Dian xin are snacks, which
include all that is known under the Cantonese dim sum, but
also nuts and fruits. Boiling, steaming, or stir-frying are
preferred, in that order, stacking food when possible to conserve
fuel. Chopsticks are used. Of the world’s cuisines, only Japanese
and Korean share these characteristics, and everyone knows they
have drawn their influence from the Chinese.
She looked up and out the window at Beijing. The
urban shapes of progress gleamed back at her, the cranes with their
twinkling lights, the tall, half-built skeletons. Clearly a city on
the move. And yet this chef seemed to be reaching back into the
past.
Fine, she decided. Contradictions were promising.
They gave depth. She reached for her cell phone and punched in his
number.
It rang twice, then clicked. “Wei,” she
heard.
“Hello, I’m looking for Sam Liang.”
At once he turned American. “That’s me.”
“I’m Maggie McElroy. Table magazine?”
“Oh yes,” he said, “the restaurant article. Wait.
You’re not here already? In Beijing?”
“Yes — ”
“I didn’t send the e-mail yet, or call. I should
have.”
“What do you mean?”
He fumbled the phone and then came back. “I hope
you didn’t fly here just to talk to me.”
“What?” Wasn’t that the idea? Wasn’t she supposed
to do that? Sarah had told her he was ready to go. “Only partly,”
she said to him now on the phone. “I did have some other
business.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “Because right
now, as of this morning, my restaurant’s not going to open.”
“Why?”
“I’m afraid I have lost my investor.”
“But you can get another, surely — can’t
you?”
“I hope I can. I’m going to try. But until that
happens and while it’s all up in the air, I’m sorry, I can’t do the
story.”
Maggie didn’t think well on her feet. She always
came up with the right response later, when it was too late.
Writing worked better, allowing her time to sort things out; hence
her choice of profession.
But she had to try to come up with something now.
“The piece doesn’t have to be about the restaurant. A profile of
you would be fine.”
“A profile of me? Whose restaurant is not
opening?”
“Not like that — ”
“With what just happened I can’t say it seems like
a good idea. I hope you understand.”
“That could be a mistake.” Her mind was whirling,
looking for strategies, finding none. “Really.”
“Please — Miss McElroy, is it?”
“Maggie.”
“Accept my apology. And please tell your editor
too, I’m very sorry. I had no idea this was going to happen.”
“I know,” Maggie said. “Do you want to at least
think it over? Because I’m going to be here for a few days.”
“I’ll think if you like. But I don’t see how I can
give you an interview about a restaurant that is not going to open.
Or how I can do a profile when something like this has just
happened.”
“I understand,” she said. She was disappointed, but
she also felt for him. A lot of attention had been trained on this
opening.
“Enjoy your trip.”
It was an American thing to say, polite, faintly
strained, distancing. He wants to get rid of me. “Take my
number in case.”
“Okay,” he said. He took it down dutifully, and
thanked her when she wished him good luck. Then they said goodbye,
smiled into the phone, and hung up.