Joss and Gold

Six

Six It w"' like when he went scuba diving for the fir" time, off the quiet western reefs in Bali. One minute he was in a world of air, with a sky as blue as in calendar covers, absorbed by the slip-slap-slap of the waves against the boat hull; the next minute, he was in water, green-and-gray light shimmering through in blurred refraction, then becoming grayer and grayer, with his heart thumping steadily against the glug-glug of his breathing, and the constant gurgling of water reminding him that he was where he shouldn't be. He wasn't a fish, a ray propelling backwards fast like a popped cork, a curious green-headed coral stinger investigating this loosely floating protoplasmic mass. He was an oxygen-eater, a creature of terra firma, whose blood approximated the salty density of the ocean, but who was nonetheless fated to drown in salt H20 if the oxygen tank strapped to his back emptied too quickly, broke loose, or failed. In the same way, Chester thought, he had been a man for years-married, propertied, tax-paying, all the social rituals fulfilled, basking in the sunshine of Meryl's attention, his students ' awe, women's glances, the talk of colleagues. He had been a man for as long as he had had the Volkswagen, stashed away in his parents' garage while he was in the Peace Corps in Malaysia; as long as he had had his driver's license, leading the way to kegs of beer at Brewley's. But now, this very moment, finding himself diving into a new element, more LANDING dangerous than being a man-being a father-he breathed shallowly, nervously. The air-conditioning in Li An's office was very cold. From the basement garage, sticky with clinging humidity, through the vestibule, into the elevator where the polished mirrored walls showed his face sweaty and his chin and throat bluish shadowed, up without a stop to the twenty-fifth floor, past the gold-lettered sign for BioSyn on the frosted glass door, Chester had traveled from summer to winter in under five minutes. It took barely a second to recognize her-the short nose, eyes like bright raisins. Her hair was shorter, sleeker. She looked like she had been through a fashion course. She had on pink-colored lipstick and makeup of some kind-brown and darker brown. Her dress was white linen. Funny how he had always remembered her in crumpled dungarees and T-shirt. It hadn't occurred to him she would change. She looked the way Meryl had wanted to look when she went on that shopping spree last year after her promotion. It must be an international phenomenon, this women's fashionsome kind of world feminist movement that had them all in pressed jackets and skirts. And stockings! But then of course with that frigid air-conditioning she would have to wear stockings. He wondered if she took them off before heading to that parking basement, as hot as the original equator. But that's the kind of thought he was not supposed to have. Her secretary showed him in. The two women looked at each other as if they had agreed on something. Li An didn't look friendly. He didn't know what he was expecting: a handshake, a hug? "Hello, Chester," she said coolly. That couldn't be all. She was standing behind an imposing desk, an expanse of polished blond wood, egg-shaped. Behind her were lots ofblownup magazine covers in Plexiglas frames. On the floor was industrial ash-gray carpeting, not the ugly speckled kind of carpeting in his college office. As suddenly as he had recognized her, she appeared unrecognizable, a stranger. She gestured to the chair in front of the desk. 199 JOSS and GOLD When he hesitated he saw the broody expression fall on her face. That he recognized. Her cigarette melancholy. His eyes scanned the room-no ashtrays. He looked for photographs or other signs of the girl. Abdullah had told him her full name when he dropped Chester off by the garage. Suyin Yeh. A very Chinese name. He didn't think he could say it right. Singapore used to be British. It had been full ofEnglish words when he stopped over in 1969: Raffles Hotel, Stamford and Mountbatten Roads, Clark Quay, Elizabeth Walk, Newton Circus, Somerset and Orchard...