The Last Chinese Chef

5

The classics tell us that the mysterious powers of fall create dryness ingent. heaven and metal on the earth. Of the flavors they create the pungent. Among the emotions they create grief. Grief can neither be walled away nor be held close too long. Either will lead to obsession. For someone grieving, cook with chives, ginger, coriander, and rosemary. Theirs is the pungent flavor, which draws grief up and out of the body and releases it into the air.

– LIAN G WEI, The Last Chinese Chef

Maggie had called Sam Liang to say she would be late, but even so she had only a half-hour from the time she stumbled out of Carey’s office to the time she was due to present herself smiling at the chef ’s front gate. She got in a taxi and lashed herself into a humiliated state. She’d been made a fool of. Matt had been with this woman, Gao Lan, and he’d been with her at the right time. And she never had a clue. She loved him unflaggingly, until the very last day of his life. Loved him still. Or did she?

This is boxed away, she was telling herself when she came to the chef ’s front gate, for now she had to work. This will be sealed until later. His gate was ajar. So she stepped in, called out a greeting, and followed the pot-clanging sounds to the kitchen.

His back made a curve into the refrigerator. When he stood up and turned around he was holding a whole poached chicken on a plate, its skin a buttery yellow. “How are you?” he said.

That, you don’t want to know. I am the last stop on the bottom of creation. “Fine.” She dropped her bag on the same stretch of counter she had claimed the day before. “How about you?”

“Stressed. I need a better source of live and fresh fish, for one thing, and I need it fast. And I’m cooking until all hours.”

“Trying dishes for the banquet?”

“Trying to conceive the meal.” He leaned against the counter in a brief exhaustion.

“When did you go to sleep last night?”

“Two.” He amended. “Three.”

“We don’t have to do this today.” One hand still rested on her bag. She could turn and leave. She had her own problems, from which, she knew, this would barely distract her anyway. “It’s no problem for me.”

“Not at all,” he said. “Stay. Sit down. I made this for you.”

She glanced at the whole chicken, plump, tender-looking. “You shouldn’t be making anything for me, with all you have to do.”

“I did, though.”

She inhaled. “It smells good.”

“It’s not finished.”

She leaned closer. “But it’s not whole. I thought it was. It’s cut up.” And so precisely reassembled.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s in kuai, bite-sized pieces.”

“How’d you cook it?”

“It’s in The Last Chinese Chef. You put the chicken in boiling water – ”

“How much water?”

“That’s in proportion to the chicken. After you do it once or twice you know. Bring it back to a boil and turn it off. Cover it. Let the chicken sit until it cools. Perfect every time.”

“Just water?”

“Oh, no. Salt. And different things. Today ginger and chives. They are always good for chicken – they correct the metallic undertone in its flavor.” He paused. “They do many things.”

“So flavors correct other flavors.”

“All foods affect each other in some way. We have a specific system.”

“For example?”

“There are techniques. Breaking marrow bones before cooking to enrich flavor. Cooking fish heads at a rapid boil to extract the rich taste. Whole set of techniques for texture, too, ways of cutting and brining and soaking.

“Then, at the next level, you use things to modify each other. There is a long list of flavors that modify other flavors – things like sugar and vinegar. Then there are just as many flavors used for their controlling or suppressing qualities, like ginger and wine. Then we have a bunch of things we use to affect texture. That’s where our starches and root powders come in.”

While he talked he set a wok on one of the rings and whuffed up the flame. “I’m going to finish the chicken,” he told her. He let the wok sit for a minute, heating, and then added the oil.

“First you heat the pan?”

“Hot pan, warm oil.” He dropped in ginger to hiss and rumble, then added chives. The fragrance flowered instantly. He shut down the flame and poured this boiling, crackling oil over the chicken. Then he sprinkled cilantro leaves on top. “Now it’s ready.”

She took the chopsticks. The smell of chicken had bloomed to a warm profundity. It smelled like home to her. Her childhood may have been narrow, just her and her mother, but wherever they lived, the aroma of chicken was there with them. And this smelled as good as anything she could remember. Better.

“Try it,” he said. “It’s cut bone-in. Chinese style. Can’t get the flavor without the marrow. Just spit the bones out. You okay with that?”

“I am.”

He laughed. “You’re so serious.”

If you only knew what I was trying to hold down. She plucked a morsel from the side of the bird, low on the breast where the moistness of the thigh came in, and tasted it. It was as soft as velvet, chicken times three, shot through with ginger and the note of onion. Small sticks of bone, their essence exhausted, crumbled in her mouth. She passed them into her hand and dropped them on the plate. “But it’s perfect,” she said. “All chicken should be cooked that way, all the time. I may never have tasted anything so good.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean it.” She bit into another piece, succulent, soft, perfected. It made her melt with comfort. It put a roof over her head and a patterned warmth around her so that even though all her anguish was still with her it became, for a moment, something she could bear. She closed her eyes in the bliss of relief. She finished and passed out the bones. “Are you going to make this for the banquet?”

“No,” he said. “This I made for you.”

She looked up quickly.

“These are flavors for you, right now,” he explained, “to benefit you. Ginger and cilantro and chives; they’re very powerful. Very healing.”

“Healing of what?” she said, and put her chopsticks down. She felt his human force suddenly, as if he were standing quite close to her instead of sitting across the counter, and she sat up in apprehension.

“Grief,” he said.

“Grief?” The unpleasant nest of everything she felt pressed up against the surface, sadness, shame, anger at Matt. Anger at Sam for presuming, for intruding; gratitude to Sam for those same things. Her voice, when it came out, sounded bewildered. “You’re treating me for grief?”

“No,” he insisted. “I’m cooking for you. There’s a difference.”

She tried to master the upheavals inside her. She would not cry in front of him. “Maybe you should have asked me first.”

“Really?”

“It’s a bit difficult for me.”

“Well, for that I’m sorry. Forgive me. You’re American and I should have thought of that. Here, this is how we’re trained – to know the diner, perceive the diner, and cook accordingly. Feed the body, but that’s only the beginning. Also feed the mind and the soul.”

Maggie thought about this. “A chef in a restaurant can’t do that,” she protested. “They don’t know the diners.”

“Right. That would happen only with their friends or frequent customers – who were many, by the way. But restaurants through history were only one part of things. There were also the chefs who cooked for the wealthy families and knew their diners intimately. There were the famous gourmets who left behind their influential writings; they too had long relationships with their cooks. The cooking relationship is a bond like family. Supporting the soul is naturally a part of it.” He scanned her face. “Look. I didn’t mean to offend you. This is how I was trained by my uncles. It’s also how my mother raised me, to do things for people. She called it a mitzvah. I’m sorry if it felt too close for comfort.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said. She still felt invaded, a little; now she also felt guilty for it.

“It’s only food,” he said more gently.

“I know.” She put a hand up to shield her eyes. No. Not in front of him. “I probably shouldn’t have come today. I should have canceled.” A tear rolled out. She couldn’t stop it. Quickly she wiped it away.

“It’s all right,” he said.

That led to another. And another.

“It is,” he said. “Really.”

He was looking at her as if he really didn’t mind, as if he wanted her to cry. But I don’t want to. “Sam, I can’t,” she said.

But she did anyway. It came out faster, until she was gulping. She covered her cheeks, her eyes, but was unable to shield it. He sat across from her, watching her, rapt. He didn’t move. He accepted her raw outpouring like a man at the pump on a hot day, as if he’d once known something like this, and he missed it. Why? she wondered, even as he passed her a towel and she accepted it. Most of the men she knew did not like to see a woman cry.

“You okay?” he said after a time.

She nodded, and handed it back.

“Why did you say you should have canceled today? Is everything all right?”

“It’s just – I got disturbing news. Remember I told you I was here because of something related to my husband’s estate?” She sighed. I never wanted to tell you. I wanted to interview you and do this article without your ever finding out. “Here’s the truth about that something: it’s a paternity claim. There’s a woman here who says she has my husband’s child, and her family has filed a claim.”

She saw the instinctive flutter of distance cross his face – no one liked to stand too close to something like this – before compassion took over. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Right. Well, I have a very tight window in which to get a lab test, and I’m on it, of course, but all this time, until today, to tell you the truth, I didn’t believe it.”

“And this was your news,” he guessed.

She closed her eyes. She needed to do anything that might calm her. “Today I found out that he did have an affair with the woman who had the child, and at exactly the right time, too.”

He stared at her for a second and then said, “Here.” He plucked tender pieces from the rich underside of the bird to arrange upon her plate. “You need these.”

She made a half-smile and brought one to her mouth. It tasted so good, so necessary to her, that she quickly ate all the pieces on her plate, while he sat across from her, also eating chicken, watching her.

“How did your husband die?” he asked, putting more on her plate. “Was he ill?”

“No. He was standing on a street corner in San Francisco, that was all. Waiting for a light. A car veered into him and two other people.”

“Oh,” he said slowly, and put down his chopsticks. “That’s bad.”

“It was,” she agreed. She ate another piece. The chicken was soft, sublime; it cushioned her against these things that were hard to say.

“So have you met the other woman?”

“Not yet. Actually the child lives with the grandparents. They are her guardians, the ones who will have to give their permission. Unfortunately they don’t live here. They live in the south. We are trying to get tickets. That’s the holdup.”

“It’s impossible to get tickets now,” he said. “It’s almost National Day. Everybody has a week off and they go places. I’m trying to get a ticket too. I’ve been trying all afternoon, in fact.”

She sat up. “Ticket to where?”

“Hangzhou. I have this uncle there. Remember the uncles who taught me to cook – two here, and one in Hangzhou? Uncle Xie, the one in Hangzhou – he is dying. I don’t think he can make it even until my banquet. So that’s what I’m trying to do. Get down there to see him, just for a day, before the end. But I can’t get a ticket.”

“I’m sorry, Sam,” she said simply. “That’s very sad. We haven’t been able to get tickets yet either.”

“And where are you trying to go?” he said.

“Shaoxing.”

He jumped.

“That’s where they live,” she added.

“But that’s incredible. Shaoxing is right next to Hangzhou. Literally. A half-hour drive.”

“Really?” she said, and then shrugged, because it didn’t matter. “Anyway. Good luck to both of us on the tickets.”

“Good luck,” he echoed. “I hope you feel better. And I hope what I did was okay. The chicken, I mean.”

“The chicken was great. I wish I could eat it every day.” She lifted her bag onto her shoulder. She knew her eyes were probably puffy and her skin streaked. The strange thing was that she was starting to feel better. “It’s just that now is not the best time for us to sit and talk. I hope you understand.”

“I do,” he said. His kindness was cut by a drift in his attention. It was subtle, but she could feel it. He had to get back to work.

“Thanks.”

Instead of answering he rose and turned, snaked his hand to the back of a shelf, and came back with a simple, lightweight box of lacquer. He wiped it with a clean towel and started to pack the chicken in it. She thought he couldn’t possibly be giving her this box. It was too nice a container. She’d have to clean it and bring it back. But maybe that was what he wanted her to do – come back. “Here,” she heard him say, atop another soft slice of sound as he slid the box across the counter. “Don’t forget to take the chicken.”

The minute she was gone Sam left the kitchen and went back to his east-facing room, where he lived, where his computer glowed on the desk and his books were turning into uneven pillars against the wall. He sank onto his unmade bed with the cell phone pressed to his ear, listening to the far-off ring that sounded in Uncle Xie’s house, a thousand kilometers to the south. He had tried calling before Maggie arrived, and no one had answered.

At last he heard a click, and then, “Wei.”

Relief washed him when he heard the whispery voice of Wang Ling, Uncle Xie’s wife. “Auntie. It’s me. How is he?”

“Not well, my son. He is asking for Liang. He means your father.”

“Can I talk to him?” said Sam.

“Right now he is sleeping.”

“Oh, let him sleep.”

“Yes.” Then she said, “Are you coming?”

“Aunt, I am determined. Zhi feng mu yu,” he said. Whether combed by the wind or washed by the rain. “But I cannot get a ticket! Not yet anyway. It’s the holiday.”

“You must try, my son.”

“I will,” he swore. He could tell that Uncle didn’t have long, maybe only a matter of days. Sam’s father should come to China. He could do it, easily. It would mean so much. But he wouldn’t, and Sam already knew it was probably useless to try to convince him. All the more reason why he himself had to find a way to go.

As soon as they hung up Sam went back on the computer with one hand and used the other to press his cell to his ear and call every person he could think of who had any possible connection to travel. He didn’t get a ticket, but he kept trying. As he did he watched the clock advance. Soon he’d have to leave; Uncle Jiang was taking him to meet the man who was, without dispute, the city’s greatest fish purveyor. If this man were to take him on, what an advantage he would have, what exquisite quality! The trouble was, he never took new clients. It had been years since he had done so. In fact, it was whispered that the only time he would take a new one was when one of the old ones died. But Jiang knew him, and had arranged the meeting.

No ticket. Nothing. Third Uncle, stay alive for me. He closed the computer program, locked the gate, and took the subway one stop to An Ding Men.

Just as he came up aboveground his cell phone rang. It was her.

“Wei,” he said, joking. “How are you?”

“Much better,” she said.

“Did you eat your chicken?”

“I ate all my chicken,” she admitted. “I ate it right away. I couldn’t even wait for the next meal. And then I got my tickets.”

“No wonder you feel better.” He felt a covetous pang. “When are you leaving?”

“Tonight. I won’t see you for a few days.”

“Hopefully when you get back I’ll be gone. I’m still trying to get a ticket to Hangzhou. It’s just National Day, you know, and Chinese New Year. The rest of the year it’s normal, go anywhere, whenever you want. It’s just these few weeks that are impossible.”

“I’m sorry, Sam.” Her voice seemed full of feeling. “I hope you get your ticket.”

“I will,” he said. And then, into the pool of silence, he took a risky plunge. “Who’s going with you?”

“Zinnia. She works in the local office of my husband’s law firm. She set up the meeting with the grandparents – called them and got them to agree to meet with us.” She paused and he could almost hear her mind ticking. “Sam,” she said, “you’re not asking me if you can take her place, are you?”

“Of course not,” he said. He was sincere, even if he protested too much. “I want to make sure you have what you need.”

“Thanks. I’ll muddle through.”

“Try me when you get back. Maggie? I’m in the lobby of a building now, about to get on an elevator. I’ll have to go.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Have a good trip.”

“Thanks.”

He clicked off and the doors whooshed shut behind him. The car rose twenty stories at the kind of showoff speed that always left a barometric drop in his midsection. Well, he was high up in a building now, at least, close to heaven, so he sent off a small prayer to any deities who might happen to be nearby. Help Third Uncle live until I can get there. Let me see him one more time before he goes.

Sam stepped into a plush waiting room lined with refrigerated cabinets and one wall of bubbling crystal aquariums. After he sat he refocused his thinking and sent out a new set of prayers, these concerning fresh fish. First Uncle would be here soon. And they had to make the most of this meeting.

While Sam was rising in the elevator and stretching out to half close his eyes in the quiet of the waiting room, Jiang walked up An Ding Men Boulevard toward the Century Center. At first he had liked all the new modern buildings. They were a relief to him after the square stone mantle Beijing had worn for so long. But they had quickly grown too numerous. A good many were not aging well, either, and already showed signs of disrepair.

Yet life for the food lover was fine. Restaurants were booming. Cuisine was back. With good food everywhere and top cooks in agreeable competition, the art form was riding another curve. And the gourmet, the meishijia, was back in the equation, for once again there was an army of diners. As in the past, they were passionate. They had money to spend and discernment to spare.

Yes, they were in a high cycle now, a flowering – surely one the food historians would remember. Perhaps he could develop a future lecture out of this idea.

Though retired, he still came back to the university annually to speak on restaurant and food culture. This past year his topic had been a single phrase: xia guanzi, to eat out, to go down to a restaurant. In an elegant sixty-minute loop he conjured all of xia guanzi’s meanings over the last eighty years. At first it meant something positive and exciting – pleasure and company, good food. There was the embroidered charm of teahouses and pavilions, the urgency of urban bistros where men met to plan China’s future, and the magnificent clamor of great restaurants. Then came the mid-1950s. Xia guanzi became a forbidden phrase. It was counterrevolutionary, bourgeois, a hated reminder of decadence. There followed a long, gray era of enforced indifference and even, during some stretches, communal kitchens. Finally there came a loosening, and then privatization, which hit restaurants almost before it came to any other industry. Eateries sprang open. People swarmed to them. To eat out was glorious! To go down to a restaurant was once again a wonderful thing. It was not just food – it was friends and family and togetherness. It was life coming full circle, a society learning to breathe again. When he was done the audience rose and applauded. Ah, he was a lucky man in his retirement, especially as he had lived to see this day when once again there was real cuisine, everywhere.

He crossed the lobby and rode the elevator up. He was here to introduce Nephew to a seafood purveyor named Wang Shi, whom they all delighted in calling the Master of the Nets, after Wangshi Yuan, the Garden of the Master of the Nets, which was a famous place in Suzhou. Homophonous humor – Wang Shi being close in sound to Wangshi, though the characters were different – was one of Mandarin’s little pleasures. Wang had heard the nickname and approved. Association with such a sublime and enduring work of art as this garden was a compliment, and he knew it.

Jiang was here to ask Wang to take Nephew as a customer. For success, the boy needed a peerless purveyor of fresh fish. Yuan Mei himself said that the credit for a great dinner went forty percent to the steward and only sixty percent to the cook. A mackerel is a mackerel, but in point of excellence two mackerel will differ as much as ice and live coals. So the great man had written, two hundred and twelve years before. Yes, Jiang knew how vital it was to help the boy get the right source for fish.

Nephew already had a source who did preserved seafood, top-grade dried shrimp and squid and cuttlefish from all over China. This man sold the best miniature smoke-dried fish from Hunan and the subtlest, most musky freshwater river moss from the Yangtze delta, so beloved for mincing with dried tofu in a cold plate, and adding a complex marine taste to the batter for fried fish… Perhaps, Jiang thought with a dart of excitement, this could be next year’s lecture. Preserved seafood and aquatic vegetables.

Seafood became prized very early in China’s history. Everyone demanded it, even the vast population in the interior. Preserved seafood – dried, salted, or smoked – was soon sought after and expensive, for it yielded powerful flavors all its own. It often cost more than fresh. Perhaps, thought Jiang, Nephew should prepare for this contest a tangle of tiny silver fish – crispy, slightly smoky, lightly salty, almost dry, with a touch of sauce and wafer-thin rings of bright-colored hot pepper…

But to fresh and live fish. This was what Nephew now needed. Unfortunately the Master of the Nets was much too exclusive to take new customers. Still, he was an old friend. Jiang had to try.

“Uncle,” the boy had said, “he doesn’t take anyone.”

“Speak reasonably,” Jiang had reproved him. “I’ve known him a long time.”

And so the boy had come, and waited here in Wang’s reception area, with its tanks and its refrigerators. It was smart to have the office this way. Fish was visceral. It had to be seen, smelled, observed. Ah! Jiang thought. It would be good to see his old friend again.

“Liang Cheng,” he said to Nephew with affection. “Have you eaten?”

“Yes, Uncle.” Sam rose. “You?”

“Yes. What about your travel? Did you get a ticket to see Third Uncle?”

“No. I’ve tried everything. I can’t get a seat anywhere. Not for a week.”

“I fear he will not last that long.”

“I know.”

The click of the door, and they stood as a solid man with a bull’s neck and white hair bobbled out. Wang Shi. He had a jovial mouth and small eyes that lifted happily when he saw Jiang.

Right behind Wang came another man, young, floppy-haired – it was Pan Jun. Sam knew him. He was one of the ten competitors, a young lion of Shandong cuisine. He was a customer of the Master? How was that possible? He was not so very famed for his skills. Indeed, he was one of the lesser-ranked chefs among the ten contestants. Sam was surprised he’d even been chosen.

“Good to see you!” Sam said, jumping to his feet. “How’s it going? Are you day and night working? I know I am.”

“Oh, yes.” Pan rolled his eyes. “I never sleep.”

Sam grinned in his frank Midwestern way, which worked to dissolve the whiff of rivalry. “I wish you luck,” said Sam.

“Same to you,” Pan said with a smile.

“But you will both prevail!” Mr. Wang cried. “There are two northern slots on the team – is it not so?”

Yes, yes, they all smiled at each other. But there were others, eight of them, and they were very good. Especially Yao. Pan Jun said his goodbyes and moved toward the door.

Finally all the warm wishes were finished and the door closed, and at that moment Wang changed abruptly. He burst with apologies. “Old Jiang! Esteemed friend! And your nephew, of whom so much has been heard – how miserable I am to have kept the two of you waiting! It could not be helped! When Pan stopped by, I was as a fish swimming in a cooking pot. I had to drop everything. And not because of his cuisine, for all say that you outshine him – you and Yao Weiguo both. That’s the real battle, isn’t it? You and Yao! But oh, there is no question, when Pan arrives I must jump.”

“Why is that?” Jiang asked.

“You do not know? He is the son of Pan Hongjia.”

This brought a gasp from First Uncle.

“Who’s Pan Hongjia?” Sam said.

First Uncle whispered to him in English, invoking a moment’s shield of privacy. “He is the vice minister of culture.”

Sam’s heart dropped. All the hidden parts of the pattern came suddenly into view. “I see.”

“And the Ministry of Culture is the danwei over this event.”

“Right.” Sam knew what that meant. It was more than just rank. He was cooked. Cronyism, for better or worse, was how China worked. The key was to always know it, to always be aware, be Chinese. Face the truth.

If Pan Jun was a vice minister’s son he would certainly be given one of the two northern spots on the team.

That meant one spot left. That one would be between himself and Yao.

“Fu shui nan shou,” First Uncle said softly now, in his ear, Spilled water is hard to gather. “You must go ahead.”

Sam nodded.

The old man turned to the Master of the Nets. “Old friend,” he said. “Dear friend. This will be a battle to the finish line; you can see that. You and I have known each other a long time. Young Liang needs the finest, the freshest fish.”

Wang Shi nodded. “Wo tongyi,” I agree. He hooked a puffy, inclusive hand around each. “Come inside.”

Sam felt a glad rush of surprise. “Zhen bang,” he said, Great. He walked with them into the rear office, the wide double entry open. This is the back door, the hou men, he thought, glancing up at the frame as it passed over his head. Right now I am walking through it. He watched First Uncle and Wang Shi exchange smiles. “My old friend,” he heard Wang Shi say. “How good it is to see you.”

Maggie’s cell phone rang. It was a long number, a phone in China. Not Sam’s, though. That one she already knew. “Hello?”

“Maggie, it’s me.” It was Carey, his familiar voice sounding aged right now, even though he was only a few years past her.

“Are you okay?” she said.

“Yes. Look, I’m standing outside. I need to talk to you.”

“Outside here? Did something happen?”

“Can I come in?” he said.

“Of course.”

“You have to buzz me.”

“Oh.” This was the first time she’d had a visitor. She had to look around the living room wall for a second or two until she found the button. He came up the elevator, and by the time his tall steps whispered down the hall she had the door open. “Sorry,” she said when he walked in. “I didn’t know how to do it.”

He waved this away. “How are you, Maggie?”

“Energized,” she admitted. “We leave in a few hours.”

“I know. That’s what I came to talk to you about.”

She felt the black bolt of an all-too-familiar fear, that things would come apart. “Tell me,” she said.

He walked over and looked out the window, as if it was easier without facing her. “I feel bad about this. It happened suddenly. We have a big presentation tomorrow. The client I went to see in Bangkok? He’s coming. Bad timing – I’ll be working all weekend. We have to do the whole show.”

“Is it that you need our tickets?” she said, not understanding.

“Tickets?” He stared. “No. I need Zinnia.”

“Oh.”

“I know I promised her to you. And she’s great, isn’t she? Whatever it is, she does it. But that’s why the firm needs her tomorrow. I’m sorry. It’s not easy for her either. Most people have the whole week off for National Day.”

“I understand,” Maggie said, but still, now what? Carey was right about Zinnia – she had the steady power of a rolling train.

“Now look, you’ll still leave, same schedule. I’ll get you another translator. I’ll have someone within the hour – not Zinnia, no one can be her, I can’t promise that. But someone good.”

“Someone from your office?”

“No. From a service. But they’re excellent. We use them all the time.”

“Carey?” She waited until he turned from the window. She wanted his clear attention. “I can’t say I’m happy about this – I was counting on Zinnia – but I understand. I really do. And I do appreciate your coming over here to tell me in person.”

“I had to come in person,” he said. “I feel awful about it.”

“I know. But this is out of your hands.”

“Yes,” he said, looking grateful.

“Look, you have a lot to do. I don’t want to keep you. But there’s one thing I’m going to ask.”

“Anything,” said Carey.

“Hold off on getting this person. Twenty minutes. Maybe half an hour, tops. Just until I call you.”

“Why?” he said.

“Because I might have my own person.”

His eyes bored into her. “Your own person?”

“Just give me a few minutes to check something.”

And he raised his hands, acquiescing, gracious. It was the least he could do.

She waited until she’d heard the elevator doors close behind him before she picked up the phone. Calling Sam Liang was not something she wanted to do in front of Carey.

And once she picked up the phone she found herself dialing Zinnia first, quickly, just to make sure she knew everything she’d need to know.

“Duibuqi,” Zinnia said as soon as she picked up the phone, “I’m sorry. Carey called me. Now I have to be in the office tomorrow.”

“I know. But do you have anything else about the situation that might help me?”

“Let me think,” said Zinnia.

“What were they like when you called to make the appointment?”

“For one thing, they did not sound like country people or uneducated, no, the opposite. Right away they agreed to your visit. They said you can see the little girl. They seemed sure she is your husband’s daughter.”

“Hm,” said Maggie.

“So I suggest, when you go, see yourself as their relation. That is not something you say but the feeling you will carry underneath. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” Maggie said, though she wasn’t sure she did at all.

“Also hope.” Zinnia gave her short, no-frills laugh. “Pray. I think that is the best thing, yes. Pray.”

“Okay,” said Maggie, “I can do that.” Even though she had no idea which way she would even direct a prayer, were she to try to make one, having been raised in a world of people who prayed only if they were something exotic, like Buddhist or Muslim. “I’ll pray.”

From the other end Maggie heard the persistent high pitch of a child. “Is that your little boy?”

“It is. Naughty boy! His ayi says he knows I am going. Now I am not, but he doesn’t understand that yet.” She hushed him with a quiet stream of Chinese and then returned to the phone. “As for while you are gone, I will return to looking for Gao Lan as soon as the presentation is done. She is in Beijing. We will find her.”

“I believe you’re right,” said Maggie.

“Now, this person…”

“How could you know so fast?”

“I told you, Carey called me.”

“He can do a great job.”

“He’s Chinese?”

“Half.”

“He can talk?”

“Definitely.”

“A friend of yours?”

“Not really. A business acquaintance, through my regular job. Someone I am interviewing for a story.” She backed off from it and formalized it, naturally, since she was talking to Zinnia, but she knew there was a little more, and this was why she wanted him, she knew, and not some translator from a service. She and Sam seemed to be in the first stages of alliance people pass through while deciding whether or not to become friends. Already they seemed to be looking out for each other, at least a little. She would do better with him, she felt. He would try. “But actually, Zinnia, I think we’re getting ahead here. I haven’t asked him yet. I need to call him, in fact, right now.”

“Oh. You haven’t asked him. Why do you think he would want to go?”

“He has his own reason. A family matter. His uncle is dying in Hangzhou and he needs very much to get there.”

“Oh! A family matter. That is different. Quick, let us hang up. Call him,” said Zinnia. “Right now.”

Sam had come back to his place, ecstatic with the quality of the fish he was going to get. The first sampling would not arrive for a few days, though, so for the moment he had turned his attention to the tender transformations that were possible with beef shank and tendon. Right now he was steaming a dozen beef shanks in two stacked baths of complementary broths.

As soon as the beef was on the boil he turned to his laptop, which he had carried to the kitchen, and checked for tickets again. The first one he could get was seven days away; that was the night of the banquet. He had to go and come back much sooner. He put his name on several more notification lists for cancellations. Right now this was all he could do.

Now it was up to the Gods. He didn’t keep an altar in his kitchen – that would have been going too far into the Chinese past for his hybrid self – but he had slowly come to sense that his Gods were there. There were times, like now, when he asked them to intercede, but he knew they were capricious and had minds of their own. Sometimes they granted what he wanted and sometimes they did not.

His cell rang. He looked; it was Maggie. “Hi,” he said, leaning close in and smelling the steam from the beef. “Aren’t you leaving?”

“I am. First I need to ask you something. My law firm had a rush come up. The woman I’ve been working with, the one I mentioned who was going with me – now they need her to stay here. It’s not a huge problem for me, they’re going to get someone else from a service, but I just thought – I mean, Sam, you did sort of give me the feeling you might consider it. So I’m throwing it out there. If you’re willing to do what she was going to do, go to this meeting and translate and help me and all, then you’re welcome to the other ticket. You have to tell me now, though. They need to get someone in the next half-hour.”

Sam was holding the phone to his ear in awe. “Are you serious? Are you even asking? Of course I will.”

“Just one problem. You’re in a huge hurry to get to Hangzhou. I understand. But I’m in a hurry too, that’s the thing – ”

“Of course,” he cut in. “Your thing first. We’ll go to your meeting. Then – what were you going to do with the sample?”

“I was going to come back here and express it.”

“No,” he said. “Express it from Hangzhou. It’s a hub. Save half a day.”

“Good,” she said, surprised.

“And then I’ll go to my uncle’s. Only then. How’s that?”

“It’s great.”

“How long are the tickets for?”

“Two nights. She booked one night in Shanghai, second night I thought in Shaoxing, but I guess now it will be Hangzhou. Then back here the next morning.”

Perfect, he thought. “Is this okay with your husband’s company, that I go?”

“I don’t know why they would care. Actually the woman I was going to go with, when I was just talking to her, she asked why an acquaintance of mine would be willing to do this. I explained about your uncle. She said since it was a family matter I should call you right away and make the arrangements. As if that trumped everything.”

China, he thought, loving the place. “Well, you know my answer already, don’t you? Yes. I will do it. Thank you.”

“No problem,” she said, and he heard the touch of relief in her voice, too.

“When are you leaving?”

“Flight takes off at seven-thirty. Can you pick me up at five?”

“I’ll pick you up at four. I’ll pick you up at three.”

“It’s past three now,” she told him.

“Is it?” He looked again at the double-steaming shanks.

“It’s three-thirty. You’d better get ready. Can you make it?”

“In my sleep,” he said, counting the pounds of meat in front of him and judging cooking times as he tried to remember where his suitcase was. “Don’t worry. I’ll be there.”