Snakehead

I

From the twin torches that marked the angle in the stairs leading up the outside of the building to the restaurant, flames danced and dipped in the warm evening breeze. A terrace ran around the semicircular frontage of the Canyon Café and was open to the night, looking out over a panoply of lights on Westheimer toward the sparkling finger of the Transco Tower rising into a black sky.

Margaret felt the night air like silk on her face and was glad that they had managed to get a table on the terrace, away from the noisy crowds in the dark interior and the Mexican band music that blared out over the speaker system. She sipped on her coyote margarita and enjoyed the sweetness of it passing over the savoury salt crust around the rim of her glass.

But she had mixed feelings. She had still heard nothing further from Li and was wondering if perhaps he had already returned to Washington. She was flattered by Steve’s unmistakable interest in her — it was a long time since a man had asked her out — but their night was overshadowed by the apprehension that hung over him following his accident in the hangar. She had watched him closely, and he was doing a good job of hiding his anxiety. But occasionally she caught him succumbing to a momentary lapse, and she would have a fleeting glimpse into the deep, dark chasm of his uncertainty.

Their shared starter arrived. Grilled turkey skewers basted in a rich, smoky barbecue sauce, served with papaya fruit salsa and cucumber-mint dipping sauce over a tossed salad. Steve waggled his eyebrows at her. ‘This is good stuff. I don’t get to eat much Mexican in Maryland.’

‘Is that where you live? Maryland?’

‘The Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner is just outside of DC in Maryland, so I rent up in a little town called Gaithersburg.’

‘On your own?’

‘Only since my wife took my little girl and ran off to live with a banker down in Alexandria.’ He scratched his head thoughtfully. ‘Did I say banker? Usually I get it wrong. Easy mistake to make.’ Margaret grinned. ‘Anyway, she told me he wore nice aftershave and didn’t come home each night smelling of dead people. Did I mention that he also makes ten times as much money as I do?’

‘No competition.’ Margaret smiled.

‘None at all.’ Then Steve’s grin faded. ‘Only thing I regret’s my little girl. Don’t get to see much of her these days.’ But he wasn’t about to dwell on it. ‘So how about you?’ he asked quickly.

‘What you see is what you get,’ Margaret said.

‘Oh, I doubt that. Chief medical examiner of the third largest county in the United States? That’s no mean achievement for a thirty-four-year-old woman. Not to mention two and a half years living in China, working with the Chinese police on some pretty hair-raising stuff.’

Margaret cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘You’ve been doing your homework.’

‘The Internet’s a wonderful thing.’ He waved a finger at her. ‘And I’m sorry about that.’

‘About what?’ she asked, taken aback.

‘Oh, the eyebrow thing. It’s catching, you know. I never realised I did it myself until I saw an interview I did on TV once.’ He waggled his eyebrows around his forehead. ‘Like two demented hairy caterpillars every time I opened my mouth. After that I took them to eyebrow training, but they still won’t lie down when I tell them.’

Margaret laughed, and felt a marvellous release of tension in the laughter. She liked Steve a lot. And in the twinkling of his orange-green eyes she could see that he was pleased he had made her laugh.

‘So tell me about you and Li Yan.’ He killed her laughter as effectively as he had created it.

‘What makes you think there’s anything to tell?’ She was on the defensive now.

‘Anyone who’s done their homework would know that you and he had some kind of relationship in China.’ He paused, gauging her reaction carefully. ‘Was it just professional, or…’ He let the ‘or’ hang.

Margaret hesitated only briefly. It was not something she had discussed with anyone, and there was a whole dam inside her waiting to burst. ‘We were lovers,’ she said and wondered if it was disappointment or disapproval she detected in Steve’s eyes. She knew that in China it was considered a cachet for a Chinese man to have an American lover, but that a Chinese woman who had a relationship with a white man was thought to be a whore. She suspected that Americans might view her in the same light.

Steve said, ‘But it’s over.’ He didn’t couch it as a question, but that’s what it was.

‘Yes.’

He sat back, watching her carefully. ‘Why don’t I believe you?’

She smiled. ‘Maybe because it’s only over in my head, and not in my heart.’

‘I don’t think I understand.’

She said, ‘You have to realise that life in China is very different, Steve. While they like to say that women hold up half the sky, it is still a society dominated by men. Women are second-class citizens. Even professionals like me.’ She paused. ‘Li Yan never treated me that way, but he was a senior police officer. He was having a relationship with a foreigner. It was frowned on by his superiors. We could not even live together officially without being married. Life was not easy.’ She flicked her hair back over her shoulders, a little self-conscious mannerism. ‘And then there were all the linguistic and cultural differences. Every time a Chinese woman even glanced at Li Yan I would feel vulnerable. How could I compete? There was so much that he couldn’t share with me that he could with a Chinese lover. And then there was the question of commitment. Was I really prepared to spend the rest of my life in China?’ She gave a tiny, sad shrug. ‘I couldn’t. I knew I couldn’t. Just as I knew I couldn’t ask him to give up his country and come to America with me. Whichever way it went, one of us would be a fish out of water.’ She drained her margarita. ‘So I told him it was over, and I came home.’

The waiter came to take away their starter. With all their talking, they had eaten less than half of it. A waitress brought their entrées. In front of Margaret she placed a plate of flame-grilled shrimp rubbed with chili spices and skewered with vegetables. Steve was having fresh chili tuna topped with an avocado fan and smooth chipotle sauce. The food smelled great, but somehow neither of them had any appetite. The waiter filled their wine glasses. ‘Enjoy,’ he said.

They picked in silence at their food for a few minutes before Steve took a mouthful of wine and asked, ‘Any regrets?’

She met his eye. ‘Every minute of every day,’ she said, and his disappointment this time was clear, almost tangible.

‘So now he’s in America, you’ll get back together?’

‘Not a chance.’ Her voice was strained by hurt and anger.

Steve looked perplexed, but also relieved. ‘Why not?’

‘Because he’s been in Washington for nearly a year, Steve. Because he’s never once tried to contact me. I read about his appointment in January, and I spent every night for weeks sitting by the phone waiting for him to call. He never did. Obviously he no longer feels about me the way I feel about him. He got a hell of a shock today. I don’t think for a minute he expected to see me in that hangar at Ellington Field.’

It seemed extraordinary to her that she was saying these things out loud. Things she had been keeping bottled up inside all this time. And here she was unburdening herself to a man she had only just met. But there was something in his eyes, an empathy there that was drawing her out of herself, allowing her to release the mental toxins that had been poisoning her for so long. She felt better, even as she spoke.

‘I’ve been wondering about that ring on your wedding finger,’ he said.

‘Jesus!’ She laughed out loud. ‘You like picking at sores, Steve, don’t you?’

‘Oh, yeah, especially when you pick off that itching scab and make it sore all over again. The good bit is that it stops being itchy for a while.’

‘The point being that the raw pain is better than the itch?’

‘Exactly.’

She drained her wine glass and held it out for him to refill. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Here’s the raw pain. I married a guy when I was too young to know any better. A lecturer in genetics at Chicago. Good-looking, smart as hell, great future. He hanged himself after being convicted of raping and murdering one of his students.’ She took a large mouthful from her refilled glass.

Steve was stunned to silence and took a moment or two to recover. ‘Jees, Margaret, that’s one scab maybe I should have left unpicked.’

‘But you’re right,’ Margaret said, hanging on to control by the merest thread, ‘the raw pain is better than the itch.’ She turned the gold band around the base of her wedding finger. ‘Actually, I only started wearing this again to keep guys like you at a distance — and to keep them from asking awkward questions.’

He reached out and took her hand in his. It was firm and cool and held her gently. His eyes looked into hers with an almost unbearable directness. ‘No more questions,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

She laughed. ‘Bit late now.’

But he didn’t laugh with her. ‘Never too late,’ he said very seriously. ‘For any of us.’

They walked side by side in the dark toward the three arches of the Waterwall. Through them, illuminated by concealed lighting, water poured in a constant stream down a high wall shaped like a horseshoe around an artificial pool. They could see the silhouettes of people against the water, moving between the arches, lovers hand in hand, a woman with a long shawl dancing in the fine spray, a slow elegant dance of the night. Behind them, two tree-lined pedestrian walkways ran along either side of a long, manicured lawn, toward the rising shadow of the Transco Tower, lights still shining in every window.

Couples sat on benches under the trees, locked in embrace, kissing in the darkness. Shadowy figures moved about on the lawn below. As they neared the wall, Margaret felt the cool spray in the warm air. They had walked this way in silence since leaving the restaurant, and now, finally, Margaret put her arm through Steve’s. She felt his warmth and his strength through his shirt. But she was also aware at once of his uncertainty when at length he said, ‘I was told this afternoon that Li Yan was being officially attached to this investigation.’

She tensed, and then immediately forced herself to relax again. ‘So?’ she asked.

He said, ‘I didn’t want to say anything during the meal. I figured I’d inflicted enough damage already.’

‘So you saved this one till you knew my guard was down, huh?’ He looked at her quickly, and saw in the reflected light of the streetlamps in the road, that she was smiling. He was relieved.

‘I didn’t know how you’d cope with it, that’s all,’ he said. Then added quickly, ‘Being in close contact with him again, you know, while this thing’s ongoing.’

She shrugged. ‘I’ll just have to, won’t I?’ She thought for a moment. ‘I’ll avoid him when I can, and ignore him when I can’t.’

They were right up at the Waterwall now, the spray falling on them like a light drizzle. The arches were formed in a free-standing wall which reached an apex centrally above them. Beyond was a cobbled area leading to the pool below the curve of the Waterwall itself. The woman with the shawl was still dancing, drifting light-footed over the cobbles, arms stretching her shawl out to either side like the wings of a butterfly.

Steve took Margaret’s hand and led her through one of the arches. ‘Hey, it’s wet,’ she protested.

‘Does it matter?’ he asked.

‘I guess not.’

Her hair always separated into curling strands when it was wet. She brushed it out of her face, and almost before she knew it, Steve had stooped to kiss her lightly on the lips. She drew back.

‘Hey, I gave you permission to call me Margaret, not to kiss me.’

‘Who’s asking?’ he said, and he pulled her toward him and kissed her again. This time she didn’t draw away, and she felt his arms slip around her waist, and she draped her arms over his shoulders and raised herself on tiptoe to kiss him back.

Their cab drew in past a Pizza Hut to the car park of the Holiday Inn. Across South Main, the floodlit heart of the Texas Medical Center filled the night sky. Margaret and Steve walked into the hotel foyer. As always it was busy. People in wheelchairs, others hobbling on crutches. Pale-looking Arab men whose wives were robed from head to toe leaving only the narrowest strip across the eyes. Eastern European children with large, dark-ringed eyes and a dreadful pallor. Sick people. Wealthy foreigners come to America to buy the best medical care available. A bunch of Steve’s pathologists and investigators was drinking at the bar of the Bristol Room restaurant. ‘Hey Steve,’ one of them called. ‘Where you been, man? Come and get a beer.’

Someone else shouted, ‘And bring the medical examiner with you. It’s not fair keeping her all to yourself.’

Steve grinned, embarrassed. ‘I’m having an early night, guys.’ There was a low murmur of suggestive ‘ooohs’. ‘And you should, too,’ he added. ‘Heavy day tomorrow.’

‘Yes, sir,’ someone else hollered, and they all saluted.

‘Down boys,’ Steve shouted. ‘Or I’ll set my eyebrows on you.’

They could still hear the laughter as the doors of the elevator slid shut, and then the silence between them was broken only by the hum of the motor.

‘I enjoyed tonight,’ Margaret said.

‘Me, too. We must do it again sometime.’ Steve paused for just a moment. ‘Like tomorrow.’

‘Before you leave, you mean?’ She didn’t really intend it, but there was a slight sting in her tone.

He looked at her seriously. ‘I get out of the Air Force in six months, Margaret. That was the deal. They pay me through med school, I give them three years of my life. I was doing great working out of the ME’s office in San Diego when they called in my contract. But I’m a free man in April.’

‘A lot can happen in six months.’ She knew it was way too early to make any kind of commitment.

‘A lot can happen in twenty-four hours,’ he said. ‘Live for the moment. We could be dead tomorrow.’

‘Yeah, or still alive and full of regrets.’

They got out on the fifth floor and started down the long hallway, walking slowly so as to delay the moment when they would stop at Margaret’s door. When eventually they got there, they stood for a long time not knowing what to say. Finally Margaret reached up and kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘See you tomorrow, then.’

‘Margaret…’

But she put a finger up to his lips to stop him. ‘We can’t run before we can walk, Steve. And I’m still learning how to walk again.’

He nodded solemnly. ‘I could lend you a bicycle.’

Which made her smile, and she kissed him again. On the lips this time. Then, ‘Good night,’ she said firmly, and she unlocked her door and stepped into the darkness of her room.

She knew immediately he was there. She could feel his presence almost as clearly as if she could see him. But her eyes had not yet adjusted, and all she could see, through net curtains, were the illuminated twin peaks of St Luke’s Medical Tower across the road in Medicine City. She fumbled for the light switch without finding it, and then the bedside lamp flickered on, and she saw Li perched on the edge of her bed, the strain of apprehension etched clearly on his face.

‘You bastard,’ she said, almost in a whisper. ‘Do you have any idea what you put me through these last ten months?’

He looked surprised. ‘You knew I was in Washington?’

‘Of course I knew you were there, for Chrissake! It was in all the papers. This isn’t China, Li Yan. It’s not a state secret when someone gets appointed to a new job.’

He appeared crestfallen. Unable to meet her eye. ‘You’re the only reason I took the job,’ he said.

It was both what she wanted and didn’t want to hear. ‘So it took you all this time not to find my phone number?’

Li stood up. He was like a giant in the room, both his size and his presence filling it. But it was in a small voice that he said, ‘I lost my nerve.’

Margaret had no patience with him. ‘Oh, gimme a break! You’re a big boy now, Li Yan.’ And then she remembered the red spots around his eyes earlier in the day. That he had wept over Wang. Big boys weren’t supposed to cry either.

‘It was you who walked out on me, remember,’ Li said.

‘You know why.’

But Li pressed on. ‘We hadn’t spoken in nearly six months. When I was still in China it all seemed like it would be easy. I would come to America, and I would pick up a phone and we would be together again.’

‘So why didn’t you?’

‘Because you were still half a continent away, Margaret. Because I had no idea whether you would want to be with me again.’

‘Oh, Jesus!’ She bit her lip and looked away from him. ‘How could you ever doubt it?’

‘Very easily,’ he said. ‘I loved you, Margaret. But whatever you say, you left me. Got on an airplane and flew back home. I couldn’t know that there was any way back for us. And I got scared to ask in case there was not.’ He held out his hands in front of him, a gesture of despair. ‘When I got here, the job just took over. It is twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Time passes. And it is easier to live in ignorance than with an unpalatable truth.’

But she wasn’t about to forgive him so easily. ‘Is that one of your Chinese proverbs, Li Yan? One of those little pieces of wisdom that just roll so easily off the tongue? Because, you know, there’s been nothing easy for me, any single day in fifteen months. We had no future in China, you know that. But I’ve spent every waking minute since I left wondering if I made a mistake, knowing that I was just as unhappy here on my own.’

She glared at him, hating him for making her love him. Hating herself for being so weak.

‘Margaret…’ Li took a step toward her.

She turned her back on him, moving off toward the window, looking sightlessly out on a semiderelict car lot and the lights of the traffic on South Main. ‘I don’t want to hear it, Li Yan,’ she said. ‘Just go away.’

Li stood helplessly looking at her. It was the rejection he had always feared. They had encountered each other by chance, but he had had to steel himself to come up here, to face her hostility, to try to explain himself. He wasn’t about to turn back now. He stepped up behind her and put a hand lightly on her shoulder. He was not expecting the speed with which she turned around and took her open palm across the side of his face. His cheek stung, and he stood smarting, waiting for the next blow. It came this time from the other side and he turned his face with the slap to take some of the force out of it. But still it hurt. She had strength in her hands and her arms. But now he caught them, and their strength was no match for his.

‘Are you done hurting me now?’ he asked her.

She made a vain attempt to free herself. ‘Not by a long way,’ she whispered. And his mouth was on hers, soft and moist and sweet, and she felt a strange falling sensation that travelled all the way through her to her loins.

He let go of her arms and lifted her in his, as if she weighed nothing at all, carrying her to the bed and dropping her on the bedspread. As she struggled to wriggle out of her jeans and pull off her tee-shirt, she saw the light from the window fall obliquely across his pectorals, his white shirt dropping to the floor. She felt guilty now, that she had been kissing another man only an hour before. Li fell on top of her, his smooth skin seeming to envelop her, his hands running over all her softness. His mouth pressed hard to hers. She had not been aware of him removing his pants, but she felt his nakedness hard against her like a rock. So much, she thought, for ignoring him when she couldn’t avoid him. His mouth slid down to her nipples and pulled them in, each in turn, and she moaned when eventually she felt him slip inside her, and all thoughts of Steve were finally banished.

‘Jesus! Sweet Jesus,’ she whispered. It had never been like this with anyone else.