said Maggie. “I made you come in because you were sleeping on the floor. Besides,” she added, as they stared out the window side by side, “I would never do that lightly either.”
“Okay,” he said. The subject was closed. There was a Chinese comic monologue on the radio, punctuated by laughter from a studio audience overlaid by chuckles from the front seat and even, once, a small chortle from Sam. Maggie was getting used to this world she could see around her, the Chinese world, one she could float across like a cloud. It was strange to sense it, to begin to recognize it, but she felt free here. She felt good.
Then they were at the station, and they piled out and hiked the straps of their bags up on their shoulders. Emotional goodbyes went back and forth, and Sam and Maggie exchanged quick embraces with Songling and Songzhao. When she hugged Songling the woman delivered a musical stream of Chinese in her ear, and Maggie gave her an extra squeeze of assent in reply. Whatever Songling said, she agreed with it. Sisterly support. Part of her wanted never to leave, wanted to stay here forever in this place where she couldn’t even understand anyone. The car was running. Sam was behind her. She turned away, reluctantly, and followed him up the steps and through the doors that led into the station.
10
Chinese cooking accumulates greatness in the pursuit of artifice. Although we say our goal is xian, the untouched natural flavor of a thing, in fact we often concoct that flavor by adding many things which then must become invisible. Thus flavor is part quality of ingredients and part sleight of hand. The latter can go to extremes. The gourmet loves nothing more than to see a glazed duck come to the table, heady and strong with what must be the aromatic nong of meat juices, only to find the “duck” composed entirely of vegetables. The superior cook strives to please the mind as well as the appetite.
— LIAN G WEI, The Last Chinese Chef
They landed and shared a cab into town and pulled up in front of her building. “Well,” he said. A bubble of silence rose between them. They shifted in their seats. Neither had thought of what to say at this moment.
“Okay,” she said. She pulled her bag into her lap, ready to get out.
“Look, I’m going to be working like mad now, but if you have any questions — ”
“Please,” she said, “go ahead, good luck. Don’t worry about me.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m going to start writing.”
“You have enough?”
She laughed. “I’ll say.” She knew perfectly well she didn’t need to interview him or even see him again; all she needed was to know the outcome of the contest. She had enough now for three articles. One of her little books was filled almost to capacity with her notes on what she had seen and observed and heard him say; another book held the obsessively careful printed list she always made of everything she had eaten. Never in fact had she accumulated a list so heavily annotated with descriptors, explanations, anecdotes, as this one was. She had enough. Too much. The hardest thing was going to be sorting through it and choosing where to place the spine of her piece. She turned to him. “Do call me, please, after it’s over, and let me know how it went. To say I’ll be waiting to hear would be a monumental understatement. Five days, right? Saturday night? I’ll be burning candles.”
“Do some voodoo for me.”
“I will, the best voodoo of all. I’ll write your story.”
He laughed, the open, unexpected laugh that she knew somehow, every time she heard it, was the laugh he had brought with him from home. This was the boy part of him. She liked it. She had liked a lot of things about him these last two days. “Good luck,” she said. She took his hands and pressed them between hers, then climbed out of the cab.
Inside the apartment nothing had changed. There was her computer, her suitcase, which she had left behind these last days in favor of a tote. Down the hall was the bedroom where she’d slept with Matt three years before and which she had — admit it — avoided on this trip, staying at night in the living room until she could barely stand, then feeling her way down the hall in the dark and toppling into bed. In the bathroom hung her