The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(108)

Dorothy felt the gentle rocking of a cruise ship. Smelled a course of tobacco. She stepped out of the way as tuxedoed waiters and busboys breezed past, carrying armloads of empty wine bottles and trays of stemware and napkins.

“Could I trouble you for another dance?” a man’s familiar voice said.

Dorothy turned and saw John Garland in his finely pressed suit and emerald-green tie. He offered his arm with a hopeful smile and a raised eyebrow.

She let him lead her back to the center of the crowded dance floor as the band began to play the first wistful strains of “The Way You Look Tonight.”

“I’m afraid I wasn’t completely honest with you earlier,” he said.

She looked up at him, confused. “How so?”

“I actually know one more dance.” He smiled and twirled her away, her hand still resting in his as he brought her back with an underarm turn before returning her to his warm embrace. He placed his hand on her waist as they moved together, stepping forward, then around, hips swaying to the staccato beat of a rumba.

They danced and she recalled how her mother had once given her a set of watercolors. She was a little girl at the time and didn’t know what to paint, or how, so her mother simply said, “Paint the colors of happiness.” As Dorothy glided about the room, she marveled at the ornate leaded-glass windows exploding with the red-orange splendor of the setting sun melting into the sea. The horizon a ribbon of burgundy. The purple underbelly of the clouds cast their reflections in the ocean below.

Dorothy held on to him, not wanting to let go as they orbited the dance floor again and again and again. She looked up at him and at times wasn’t sure if they were moving or if they were frozen in the moment as the other elegant couples, the blurring lights, the crystal chandeliers, became a dreamlike carousel, whirling around them.

“I don’t want tonight to end,” she said.

“Who says it has to?”

I wish it were that simple.

More complete than strangers, she danced with him until they were the last ones on the floor. Then, as the song ended, the house lights flickered to life, brightening the room. A lone piano player took over. A lit cigarette hung from his mouth, his bowtie draped around his neck. Eyes closed, he began playing a soft, tinkling melody as members of the orchestra put their instruments away. Valets gathered coats and scarves left behind while servants collected drinking glasses and swept the dance floor.

“I suppose we should let these kind, hardworking folks have the room,” he said. “It’s getting late. I’d invite you to my stateroom, but I have three unruly roommates I’d have to kick out first. Besides…” He looked at her, searching. “I like the way you look at me—I’m not sure you’d look at me the same way in the morning.”

Dorothy rested her head on his chest. Don’t be so certain.

She closed her eyes and he held her. She couldn’t bear to let go, though she finally relented when she heard one of the servants clearing his throat. She opened her eyes, glanced about, and spotted a sign through the glass doors of the adjacent room.

“I have an idea,” she said as she took his hand and guided him into the drawing room, an elegant parlor adorned with porcelain statuary, Chinese vases filled with dried flowers, and silk paintings that hung from every wall. On the starboard side of the room was a door with a sign above it, painted with Chinese characters.

“What’s in there?” he asked.

“You’ll see.”

He let her lead him into the other room, where hardback books filled the shelves built into every wall, divided by Ionic columns that stretched to the ceiling of pressed copper, inlaid with a motif of flowers and the words Zi sik.

“It means knowledge,” Dorothy said, pointing to the characters.

“You brought me to the ship’s library.” He smiled.

“They call it a study.” She surveyed the rosewood furniture, a polished desk, tables and high-backed chairs upholstered in sea-green fabric. A matching chaise lounge with white silk brocade sat in front of a fireplace, embers still burning. Dorothy felt the warmth, inhaled the woodsy aroma of pipe tobacco, the essence of dried flora.

“It’s so peaceful in here,” he said as he walked along a bookcase, tracing his fingers across the spines of a collection of leather-bound volumes. “And so many books.”

“My people created paper, invented the printing press, we produced the first books six hundred years before Gutenberg printed his Bible,” Dorothy said. “The oldest known manuscript on Earth is the Diamond Sutra.”

He turned his attention to her. “You’ve read it?”

She shook her head. “Just a few verses in school, some lines of poetry about stages of enlightenment and the nature of reality. How we don’t have a stationary soul. That our existence is fluid and relational.”

His brow furrowed and he nodded as she spoke. He tried his best to understand what she was saying. “It sounds deep. Complicated. What else does it say?”

“I don’t remember very much,” she said. “Just a phrase written by some unknown, long-lost poet—that we’re all bubbles in a stream.”

He smiled again. “That reminds me, you owe me a glass of champagne.”

“Tomorrow?”

He held her hands. “I’m looking forward to it.”