Homesick for Another World(64)
“Sit down,” I said, pointing at the couch.
In the cab, he’d talked like this: “You know how many murdered bodies never get discovered? You know how to tell if a person’s soul has left its body? You know that guy back there outside the liquor store? I think he’s possessed or something.”
“I’m possessed,” I told him. “Many people often are.”
“What’s it like? Do you speak in tongues? Do you ever do things you regret but can’t take back?”
“It’s not like that,” I said. “It’s more of a medical issue.”
“Do you know that there are people in India, if you cut off their hands, they’ll just grow back new ones? Some people have special powers. I wish I could go to India. I like your apartment. Is your husband home? Is he down for whatever?”
I did not strip for the boy. I gave him what little I had in my fridge to eat: an apple, yogurt, chocolate-covered almonds, a frozen samosa. We sat together on the couch, discussing all the different ways to die. By sunup, I had my pants down, asking for his opinion on the situation, hoping he’d say he’d seen so much worse. But he had not.
“You should come to India with me,” he said. “Gurus, special doctors, chanting.”
“There’s always surgery,” I began to say.
“Yeah, but that won’t get to the root of the problem. The demons, right? You’re still really pretty, though,” he said. “You have that going for you.”
? ? ?
Life can be strange sometimes, and knowing it can be doesn’t seem to make it any less so. I know I don’t have any real wisdom. I don’t have any wonderful ideas. I am lucky to have found a few nice people here and there.
Lao Ting went swimming in the ocean one morning and never came back. They sent boats out there to try to find him, but he was gone. He was probably eaten up by sharks, the family said. There was no funeral or missing-person report. But there was a memorial service, just a family meeting in silence on the patio at sunset. I came for the last few hours. Robbie was away, filming an exercise video with his medicine man in Hawaii. When the sun went down, Gigi gave everyone a cup of special tea, and when I drank it, I fell asleep on the white leather love seat and dreamed of nothing, not a sound, just whirling gray air in an infinite space. In the morning, the children packed up all of Lao Ting’s belongings. A Goodwill truck came to collect the boxes. It broke my heart to see how tidy everything was, how neatly Lao Ting could be put away.
There were no more meetings, no more businessmen, no shrimp, no yams, no rice. Gigi ordered fried chicken and let it sit out in the dining room, orange oil seeping through the paper buckets and staining the white tablecloth. But she was strong. I never saw her shed a tear. The sons went down to the beach and lit paper documents on fire and stared out into the water and screamed out their sorrow. The daughter stayed in her room, listening to twinkling music on her computer. Without Lao Ting, the company could not function.
“It is the best thing,” Gigi said, signing my last paycheck. “We will sell the complex. We don’t need all this luxury. You know, Stephanie Reilly, when I met my husband, I was a teenage prostitute. I did things I hope my daughter never does, not for money, nor for free. When Lao Ting first saw me on the street, I was just a skinny Chinese tramp in a bikini top—can you imagine? All my dreams were nightmares back then. Nothing good. Nowhere safe to sleep. Lao Ting gave me this.” She unbuttoned the top of her black mourning gown and pulled out a tiny bloodred stone hanging from a gold chain around her neck. “He told me this stone would mend my broken heart. Fancy words, romance—I know how silly it sounds. But it worked. It made me strong. That is not the whole story. Just to say, Stephanie Reilly, we all need to have composure. We need some solid stuff to hold on to. When I look at you, I see fine loose threads, like a silk cushion that has been rubbed for a hundred years, poor girl.”
? ? ?
A few years later, when I was desperate and wanted to end my life, I called Robbie’s magician. By then I was living in a rented room in Van Nuys, taking the bus down to Tijuana every month to buy special hormones a doctor had said might balance the situation out a bit. It wasn’t working. On the phone with the magician, I explained my situation. I cried.
I said, “On a good day, every small thing is enchanting. Everything is a miracle. There is no emptiness. There is no need for forgiveness or escape or medicine. I hear only the wind in the trees, and my devils hatching their sacral plans, fusing all the shattered pieces together into a blanket of ice. I have found that it’s under that ice that I can feel I am just another normal person. In the dark and cold, I am at ‘peace.’”
“What is your name?” the magician asked.
So I moved here to Vacaville to be with him. It is good to have someone to turn to late at night, when the voices in my head are loud and there are no drugs to dull them. The magician doesn’t mind my swelling. He blossoms like a tree in front of my eyes, a man of seventy-five years, revitalized by my pain and sadness. It makes me feel good to see him thrive.
THE LOCKED ROOM
Takashi dressed in long black rags, ripped fishnet stockings, and big black boots with long, loose laces that splatted on the floor when he walked. He smelled strongly of old sweat and cigarette smoke, and his face was scabbed from tearing his pimples open and squeezing the pus out with dirty chewed-up fingernails. He covered the scabs with makeup that was too pale for his skin. He used scissors to cut off all his eyelashes. Sometimes he drew a French mustache on with black felt-tip pen. He was very intelligent and preoccupied with death and suffering. He had a way about him I really liked. His hair was long and bleached and dyed rainbow colors. Occasionally he bit into his lip and dribbled blood down his chin. Sometimes he vomited in public just to make a scene. Strangers would rush to his aid, offering handkerchiefs and bottles of water. People even stopped to take his picture when we walked down the street. Takashi’s taste in classical music was just like mine: Saint-Sa?ns, Debussy, Ravel. He was talented on the violin. He said his instrument was worth more than his father’s car. He chewed licorice gum sometimes, his favorite flavor, but his mouth still tasted like excrement when we kissed each other. Takashi was my first real boyfriend.