Lost in Translation Page 0,31

in his life. When she was young, and living with him, she was the one who’d made sure he ate right, who told him it was time to stop working and go to bed. No one else ever told him he needed rest, or he was drinking too much, or he ought to cancel a meeting or an airplane trip because he was sick. She did. And he showered her with most everything she wanted in return. Everything except the freedom to be what she wanted to be—whatever that was. She had to break away. Whether he liked it or not. She had to.

Tell him. "Horace, I’m going to China."

"Where?"

"China."

"China! Why?"

"Please, Horace! You are aware, aren’t you, that for the last four years I’ve been earning a degree in Chinese?"

"Yes, but—"

"And that I visited there last summer? And loved it?"

"Yes, but—you don’t mean you really want to live over there? In China?"

He had gone silent, and she had started to cry herself, because after all she was leaving him. And it hurt him. Despite all her tangled emotions she didn’t want to cause him pain like this, him, her own—she could barely form the word in her mind—father. But she knew she had to go. And finally he had said all right, if it was what she wanted, he would go along with it.

And he had. He had bombarded her with love, and sent her regular checks every month, for the past fourteen years. The only time he had gone to war with her was over Jian. And he’d won. She hadn’t fallen in love since.

Ah. Alice lay back on the bed, feeling the knotted silk strings under her backbone, the scratchy chenille bedspread against her bare skin. Love. The love of her father. Love of her mother, which she’d never known. And grown-up love, or what passed for it, in whose arms she could always briefly forget before moving on.

She shifted on the bed. Mother Meng was right. She was getting too old now. Soon, she was going to have to make some kind of change.

Her eyes wandered to the dark crack of the Beijing night barely showing along the edge of the curtain. She reached down and fingered the soft embroidered silk of the stomach-protector.

Should she go out?

A few hours later, at the shift change down in the hotel lobby, Second Night Clerk Huang told First Morning Clerk Shen that the foreigner Mo Ai-li had left on her bicycle just before midnight.

"Ah, then I’ll watch for her return."

"Around dawn."

"Yes, around dawn." First Morning Clerk Shen smiled to himself. That was the time Mo Ai-li always came back. Her face would be soft and her yin would be satisfied—for a while. Aiya, the outside people! So strange and secretive about their coupling. So entertaining to watch.

"I’m sorry we could not accept your invitation for dinner," Vice Director Han said as he ushered them into his office. "You understand, we are so busy."

"Yes," Alice said politely, "we understand." She glanced quickly at Adam. She had explained to him that this refusal was not a good sign.

"Nevertheless I am trying to make some arrangements for Dr. Spencer to do his research in the Northwest. Why did I ask you here today? I want you to meet two of our scientists." He pressed the button on the side of his desk and his secretary put her head into the room. "Show them in."

She nodded and opened the door wider for two Chinese men.

"Professor Kong Zhen of Huabei University." Vice Director Han indicated one of them.

"Interpreter Mo Ai-li," Alice responded, and handed the man her name card. He looked to her like one of those too-thin Chinese men who seemed vaguely unkempt in Western clothes and really belonged in the loose robes of a feudal Chinese gentleman. Instead he wore Western suit pants with a cell phone clipped to his belt. His face was long, narrow, and flat. "And this is Dr. Adam Spencer, from America," she said.

"Spencer Boshi," Professor Kong said to Adam. He smiled, showing less-than-perfect teeth. "I confess I’m relieved," he told Alice. "At least there’s one of you who can talk!"

Typical, Alice thought. Not speak Chinese, just talk.

"And this is my colleague," Dr. Kong said. "Dr. Lin."

The other man stepped forward. He was the opposite of Kong, a hulking man with a broad face, small intelligent eyes, and a full, eggplant-colored Asian mouth. He was tall for a Chinese, over six feet, but he gave the impression that he