Last Days in Shanghai. Casey Walker

sleep anymore, so I walked down to see if Leo had managed to drown himself in the indoor pool. I thought it was smart policy to get away from my room’s phone—the easier it is to get in touch with people, the easier it is to forget how often you shouldn’t. At the pool, they wouldn’t let me in: the young woman was very apologetic, but she pointed emphatically to a sign specifying the seven a.m. opening hour.

      I searched, and Leo wasn’t sacked out in the lobby, which I took as a good sign. The attractive planters of decorative ferns were no worse for wear—vases of floating cherry blossoms were unspilled and unbroken, so perhaps Leo had just gone quietly to bed. I wished him luck sleeping off Bund’s hospitality. In the hotel business center, I found my work email inaccessible, for reasons no one could or would explain, but this felt less like something I needed to correct than like the momentary lifting of a burden. I went out into the Beijing morning, where old limber men stretched at their apartment windows and women unhooked the hanging laundry. It was six thirty, so with twelve hours’ time difference, Alex would be just leaving work, maybe as restless as I was.

      I was obsessed for a time with how Alex kept my memory, what she told herself about how we’d ended. But now I tried not to think about it. You can’t control posterity. When Alex moved away, I felt that all that was left in DC that I cared about were myself and the Jefferson Memorial. But a little sadness at least made the city feel like a more complete place to me: to live there and miss her was evidence that life had transpired, that I was more than my job.

      OUT OF THE breakfast-room speakers, woodwind instruments played an Orientalized rendition of a Simon and Garfunkel song. An erhu accompanied, doleful. I picked at the buffet, dragon fruit and rice congee, espresso and an omelet bar.

      “Someone to see you in the lobby,” a hotel clerk said, touching my shoulder. I wasn’t yet feeling suitable for company.

      Thursday morning in a business hotel. The lobby bustled with anxious men hoping to close deals before the weekend. A young woman wandered out from the other side of a pilaster.

      “I work for Bund International. My name is Li-Li. You remember?” she said.

      There was a mechanical kind of lag as she spoke, as though she pronounced everything to herself in Mandarin, translated it to English, and made sure it was clear before she ventured it out of her mouth.

      “I hope your sleep was pleasant?” she said.

      “Wonderful,” I said. “We are very pleased.”

      There was nothing to add—and nothing was said—about my misjudgment last night in trying to pull her into my confidence at the roast duck restaurant. I hoped for my own sake that I’d mumbled and she hadn’t really heard me.

      “And your boss?” she said.

      “I’m sorry?”

      “The partners in Kaifeng will be very disappointed not to see him,” she said.

      “This is what was arranged last night,” I said, perhaps too severely.

      “Did I say something wrong?” Li-Li asked. She went red. “I apologize for my English. Did you receive my phone messages?”

      “The phones are another problem,” I said. “All of these difficulties are entirely my fault.”

      “This is not a problem,” Li-Li said hurriedly, though I knew she meant the opposite. “The car is waiting. You are ready?”

      She certainly was, in defiance of the hour. Her hair swept tightly across the arch of her forehead, held back with pins, the rest short to her chin. She had faint sideburns bleached white and skin one shade toward olive. Nervous and sober, Li-Li wasn’t my copy, but she was my counterpart—a fraternal twin in this assistant’s life. She held herself together in a way I already envied. Her white blouse was without wrinkle or stain, her skirt and gray jacket right out of a dry-cleaning bag.

      “I promise everything will be easier from here,” I said.

      “I understand,” Li-Li said. And maybe she did, if she was as well-trained as I was at telling lies.

DAY 2

       KAIFENG