The Last Chinese Chef

4

Let us return for a moment to the popular view that poverty, specifically scarce food and fuel, stimulated China’s culinary greatness. Certainly it is true in the case of cooking methods, and when it comes to the unsurpassed ingenuity of Chinese cooks in making delicious dishes out of everything under heaven, all the plants of the earth and sea, all the creatures, all their parts. These are the legacies of scarcity. Yet truly great cuisine, food as high art, did not arise here; it arose from wealth. It was the province and the passion of the elite. Throughout history, gourmets and chefs tended to reach their heights in conditions of plenty, not need.

– LIAN G WEI, The Last Chinese Chef

The following morning Sam Liang came back home from delivering some birds to his poultry farm outside the city. It was not his farm, exactly; he leased space there for his fowl before slaughtering them. He followed Liang Wei’s dictum, which was that a bird one wished to eat must spend at least the last few weeks of its life running and exercising in the fresh air. This made for better meat, according to The Last Chinese Chef. It was a brutal way of looking at it, a Chinese way: care for the creature, love it, pamper it, then eat it. Of course anywhere one went one found eating to be a cruel business. Here, though, there was no pretense. You knew a healthy animal tasted best, and so you raised it or at least fostered it. You knew fresh meat and fish were the most delectable, and so you did the slaughtering yourself. There were even dishes with live ingredients. In drunken prawns in the Shanghai style, for example, the prawns were not quite dead when eaten but so inebriated from being soaked in wine that they lay perfectly still for your chopsticks. No Chinese diner would flinch at the faint flutter of movement in the mouth. On the contrary. To the meishijia, the gourmet, this was the summit of freshness.

At first, Sam had been a bit disturbed by this. It seemed to echo the faint streak of sadism he saw in China’s past. Every country had its dark history, but in China there were certain convulsions, like the famine and the Cultural Revolution, that seemed needlessly cruel. And the privatized Chinese business world, right now, in the twenty-first century, was cruel too. Things ran on opportunity, not principle. No one thought in terms of win-win dealings but only about who would win and who would lose. Every man watched his back at all times. In the America of Sam’s youth, he had heard people say they lived in a “dog-eat-dog” society. Here in China, they said “man-eat-man.” That was the economic boom.

With each passing year in China, though, he saw that the true situation was more subtle. It was not so much that China was crueler than the West, only more honest. The frankness of life, even of death, was always in front of him here – certainly when it came to food. It was more honest to take home an animal and slaughter it than to buy its meat in a square, shrink-wrapped package, more honest to keep a fish alive and swimming until the moment you wished to devour it. His appetite stirred at the thought. He so loved the xian of fresh fish.

As for the business world, it had its treacheries but also a massive and marvelous saving grace: guanxi. Guanxi was connection, relationship, mutual indebtedness. It was the safety net of obligation and mutuality that held up society. The best opportunities and connections were kept for the family, the clan, the friends, in an outwardly rippling circle. You gave one thing to the world; you gave something higher to your own group. As an American, Sam had been put off at first by this, for all he could see in it was cronyism. Later, when he came to know it as a way of life, he saw its mercies as well.

He saw too that it was food – people eating together, whether at banquets or daily meals – that kept the engine of guanxi going. Perhaps this was why chefs in China had always been so important.

As he walked the last stretch from the subway stop and came to the early-morning edge of the lake, he was also thinking about texture. On his way back he had stopped by a dealer who sold all kinds of dried mushrooms and fungi and water weeds and flowers, just as the man was opening up. Sam had bought several varieties of mu-er, wood ear, so called because of the way it grew on trees. One bag was the delicate white ruffles called cloud ear; the others were the more common crisp brown flaps. When reconstituted they had a robust vegetarian crunch, one that no amount of cooking could soften. No taste beyond the faintest metallic sense, easily corrected by other ingredients. All texture. Whether added in slivers or pieces, they could transform many dishes.

He saw his own gray stone wall ahead, set back slightly from the sidewalk. It was noisy here on the street, busy, but inside his place it was quiet. Perfect for a restaurant. And out front was the long, thin tendril of lake. It was classic feng shui, and not in any obscure sense either, for no one could arrive or leave without taking pleasure in the sight of the lake.

This district had changed even just in the last few years. Once characterized by graceful, crumbling residences, moody water, and a few far-off shapes of pagodas and skyscrapers above the willows on the opposite shore, it had become a theatrical sightseeing spot. Young men pedaled tourists in rickshaws. For blocks at a time the sidewalks were crowded with cafés and bars, their doors flung open, Chinese pop blaring.

Nowhere else on this strip was there a restaurant like the one he was going to open, but that didn’t matter. Fate had put his family in this neighborhood. And he loved it. He loved the summer, with its repeating cicadas and hot, hazy air; the winter, when the sky was bright and cold and itinerant vendors sold hot meat skewers and char-fragrant roasted sweet potatoes. In fall the light turned golden and men sang their way along the lake’s edge, under the trees, offering fanned sticks of candied crab apple.

He unlocked his gate and brought the big brass joins together again behind him, carried his bags to the kitchen. He needed to put the food away and leave. It was time to go meet Jiang and Tan.

That morning Zinnia called and asked Maggie to meet her at a Shanghainese restaurant near the Calder Hayes office, even though it was too early for lunch. Maggie hurried there, hoping Zinnia would have the tickets. It had been almost two days. After leaving the chef ’s house on the lake the day before, she hadn’t done much except sit in the apartment thinking about Matt. She had been in the same apartment with him three years before, in the same rooms; he came easily to mind. Yes, they had liked being apart. And yes, they were happiest of all when they were first reunited again, in the golden space before questions and qualifiers started, once again, to resurface.

So they specialized in reunions, and in separations; that was all right. They came and went, living on takeout containers, his and hers, one side of the refrigerator and the other, experiencing their joy in cycles. Even on the downslope, when they’d started contracting back into their own agendas and dropping seeds of irritation, they were honest. She always felt she knew what was in his heart, good or bad.

And that was the problem that had kept her up late the night before, looking out at the still, shimmering city. Now there was this claim. So maybe she had no idea what was in his heart. Did you do it?

No.

Do you know this woman?

No.

Then how did this happen?

She sat on the couch throwing silent questions, imagining answers. She visualized his kind, big-jawed face and felt sure he was saying no: no, it was not true. She decided she believed him, as she always had; then she changed her mind and threw him out of her heart and ceased to accept his denial; then some hours later she took him back again. By the time the deep night had come and the street below had gone silent she was exhausted. She slept as if unconscious, without dreams, and when she awakened she felt tired, as if she’d barely slept at all.

She pushed open the door to the Shanghainese restaurant. Inside, the world changed. She felt pushed back in time. Around her were dark-wood walls and brass lamps, waitresses in old-fashioned side-slit gowns. Only the diners were modern, with their crisp clothes and multiple, faintly chiming electronic devices. Among them she saw Zinnia, who waved her over.

“Sit!” she commanded when Maggie reached the table. “How are you? Are you well?”

“Well enough. Did you hear anything about the tickets?”

Zinnia’s earnest smile evaporated for a second.

Maggie saw she had been abrupt. “I’m sorry – I guess I thought maybe that was why you asked me here.”

Zinnia nodded. “I don’t have the tickets yet. Unfortunately I did not receive your file until I was assigned to help you, and that was the morning you arrived. So I have just started. But I will do my best. You should not worry.”

“You are determined,” Maggie said admiringly. “I believe you’ll do it.”

“I will. Ni fang xin hao. That means you should put your heart at ease. The day we met I had a lunch. The person couldn’t help me. But then last night I had dinner with a friend from China Northern. It is one of the biggest domestic airlines. We had ten courses and wine. Very good. Long talk. Now I am waiting for his call.”

“Good,” said Maggie.

Their business clarified, Zinnia looked back at what she’d been studying when Maggie walked in, which was the menu. “I want to have the jellyfish. It reminds me of my childhood. My son likes it too. Have you had it?”

“Yes,” said Maggie. “You have a son?”

“Yes. Two years old. He’s a good boy,” she said proudly, still looking at the menu. “When you had jellyfish, did you like it?”

“It didn’t have much taste.”

“You are right! Actually jellyfish is not taste food. It is texture food.”

“Fine.” Sam Liang had told her all about texture. “Let’s have some.”

“Hao-de. Then some other dishes.”

“What exactly did you ask him?” said Maggie. “The guy from China Northern.”

“I didn’t ask him. I only mentioned the facts in passing.”

“I thought you meant you had dinner to ask him for tickets.”

“Yes. But that was the request, the dinner. The only thing left was to mention the matter in passing. I did. Now I must wait.”

“I see.” The jellyfish arrived, handed off by a waitress on her way to another table. “So do you think it’s possible we could leave today?”

“Maybe tonight, more likely tomorrow.” Zinnia reached out and snagged Maggie a pale, translucent heap of gelatinous curls. “Try,” she said.

Maggie took a curl up on her chopsticks and ate it. The flavor was mild, barely discernible, but Zinnia was right about the texture: it was the mouth-feel of the food that snapped her to attention, crunchy and spongy at the same time. “Hey,” she said. “Not bad.”

The younger woman grinned. “That’s what we say! Bu cuo. Not bad. It means so-so in English, doesn’t it? But it’s a sincere compliment in Chinese. Did you know that? It means you like it. Good.” Zinnia took some on her own plate. “Are you free after we eat?” she asked.

“I have a meeting.” She looked at her watch. She was going to see Sam Liang again.

“Can you stop at the office first? Carey James is back from Bangkok. He asked to see you.”

“Yes,” Maggie said immediately. For this she would call the chef and see if she could be a little late. Carey had memories of Matt, memories she hadn’t tapped. He’d have images or nuances still new to her – events, jokes, snippets of remembered conversations. She may have had this new blade of uncertainty about her husband buried in her side, but she still knew that she would take anything. Anything about Matt. Even just the chance to talk about him a little bit with someone who remembered him. “Of course,” she said.

“Good,” said Zinnia. “Now come.” She pointed with her chopsticks at the food. “Every person needs to eat.”

“You have to decide what manner of menu you want,” Second Uncle Tan told Sam. They were in a restaurant having midmorning snacks, restaurants being far and away the best places to meet in China at any time of day. Homes were small, while the world outside was filled with public places where people could eat or even just sip tea.

“There are three kinds of menus,” Tan said, “the extravagant, the rustic, and the elegant.”

“And within the elegant there is the recherché,” Jiang said, breaking his Chinese only for the French word. “This is another possibility: nostalgia. There are certain great classics still remembered by the people.”

“Jiu shi,” Tan agreed, It’s so.

“You could make crisp spiced duck,” said Jiang. “Carp in lamb broth. And old-fashioned hors d’oeuvres – dipped snails, fried sparrows.”

Tan looked over with a snort. “Too intellectual. Such dishes are only for true aficionados.”

“Afraid I’m with Second Uncle,” said Sam. “That’s not for this panel. And a rustic menu wouldn’t work for them either. You and I know, to cook plain food brilliantly is one of the hardest things of all. But they won’t see it.”

“Just two hundred years ago Yuan Mei himself said that the most sophisticated thing of all was to use the cheapest bowls and plates,” Jiang said.

“But today?” Sam said. “Now that everything is about money? Suicide. Impossible. However,” he added, “we could go with the elegant. For instance – what about tofu in the shape of a lute, stuffed with minced pork, flash-fried? And a chicken’s skin removed whole, intact, then stuffed with minced ham and vegetables and slivered chicken meat and roasted at high heat until fragrant – ”

“Impressive,” said Jiang.

“ – and the skin is snapping-crisp, cui – ”

“Texture!” said Tan. “Yes. You should make this point clearly. What other cuisine controls texture as ours does?”

“He is right,” Jiang said.

Sam understood the implication. Be Chinese. Let the other, native-born cooks take chances and improvise. He would be what his grandfather had been, what his father would have been, a cook of tradition. Beijing might be wide open, aggressive – profane, even – in its run for the future, but people still longed for the past.

That was one reason he and his uncles liked this restaurant; it was old-fashioned and therefore restful. While they talked they picked at a few dishes. One plate was heaped with braised soybeans mixed with the musky chopped leaves of the Chinese toon tree; another held rosy-thin slices of watermelon radish in a delicate vinaigrette. Uncle Tan had proposed ordering wine, but had been overruled with a sharp reproof from Jiang. Sam agreed. It was not even lunchtime. Too early.

“For texture you could consider silver fungus, or your stir-fried prawns,” said Jiang. “Ah, yes! Those prawns. First crunchy, then inside, soft as mist.”

“I made those prawns just yesterday,” said Sam. He thought of the American writer in his kitchen, her ease as she watched him cook, her careful eyes, her perception that never lagged no matter how much he told her. The inflection of her speech, which was sunny and American and sounded like home to him. Even though what she told him just before she left, about her husband’s death, fell like a heavy weight. “I made them for the woman writing the article.”

“Ah, the woman!” They leaned forward.

“Forget it,” Sam said. “She’s in a bad situation. Her husband died – ”

“A widow,” clucked Tan.

“ – and there is some matter here in China over his estate.” He stopped at the sound of an American voice behind him.

“What are you guys talking about? That’s some fast Chinese.”

“Hi,” said Sam, turning. It was David Renfrew, one of the shifting crowd of foreigners he had met here. He had thought he would find friends among them, as they, like him, were outsiders, but so far he had not. “We were actually talking about prawns,” he said. “Have you eaten?” It was a traditional Chinese greeting, but said in English, from one American to another, it had an agreeable irony.

“Just did,” David said. “I heard you were on TV last night. You’re up for the cooking games.”

“Auditioning for the team,” Sam said.

“Good luck.”

“Thanks. Meet my uncles.” Sam circled a hand around the table. “We were just going over what I should cook. David Renfrew, Jiang Wanli, Tan Jingfu. Jiang is a retired food scholar, Tan a retired chef. David is a banker.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said David.

“Pleased,” they both murmured back in English.

“So.” David turned back to Sam. He still spoke little Chinese after all his time here, and didn’t really try. That was typical. David had been here a bit longer than most, the average expatriate stay being only about two years, but he still lived the laowai life. With occasional excursions for variation, this generally meant shuttling between the office and the circuit of clubs and hotels and gyms and restaurants that were aimed at foreigners.

“When was the last time I saw you?” David said. “Hold it, I know. That party at the Loft. Right?”

“I think so.” That had been one of those nights when Sam had gone out even though he hadn’t really wanted to.

“You know who else was at that party?” said David. “Her.” He trained his eyes on someone across the room. “I saw her that night. She was a friend of someone I used to know. Damn, what’s her name?”

Sam leaned to the side in his chair to follow David’s gaze. “Where?” he said to David, and then, “Oh, I know her.” He recognized her short, tentative posture, her straight fall of hair. She worked in the Sun Building. He’d met her through a Dutchman who knew her there, a guy who managed a shipping company. Piet. What had happened to Piet? Gone back to Europe. Then he had seen this girl occasionally at parties. She seemed young, maybe a little naïve, but nothing about her had really caught his attention. “That’s Xiao Yu,” he said.

“Xiao Yu! That’s it. Thanks.”

“Do you know her?”

“No. Well, I met her. At my friend’s place. That was a while ago. Forgot her name.” A possibility ticked across his precisely edged Teutonic features. “I’m not stepping on toes, am I?”

“You mean her and me?” said Sam. “No.”

“Just asking.”

“We’re barely acquainted.” Sam sent a glance to Xiao Yu. “I mean, feel free,” he said to David.

“Thanks,” the American said. “I will. Hey. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? We should catch up.”

“We should,” Sam said.

“Call me. We’ll have coffee. I’m at work all the time.” David turned his smile on the uncles. “Nice to meet you,” he said. Then he left.

“Your friend?” inquired Uncle Jiang, and Sam nodded.

“Did he want you to make an introduction to that girl?”

“No,” said Sam, watching David move away through the tables. “He met her before. He just forgot her name.”

Jiang raised one white eyebrow.

But Sam had his gaze beyond his uncles, still on David. Now he was coming up behind her. She didn’t see him. He reached a hand out to her shoulder. She started, and turned, and all the way across the room Sam could see the gladness in her eyes. She was so open to him. It made Sam sad. Why? She was no child. It was none of his business. He looked away. Maybe the feeling arose in him because of the American woman. He felt sorry for her too.

“Let’s go back to texture,” Jiang prodded.

“Good.” Sam turned.

“So far we have been talking about things that are cui, crunchy. Consider the spongy quality of intestines. Take the Nine Twists, the way they make the intestines into soup in Sichuan. And in Amoy they stuff them with glutinous rice and cook them and slice them cold with soy sauce.”

“Don’t forget Hangzhou!” Tan put in. “There they stuff the intestine not only with rice but also with smaller and smaller intestines, so it slices into concentric rings. So clever.”

“Flavor rich, texture delicate,” Jiang said with a sigh.

Sam rolled his eyes. “Intestines are out.”

“You should consider,” said Tan. “At least you should learn to make them. Hangzhou style. No cuisine has more richness behind it. Or more literary history. Of all the times you have visited Little Xie there, did he not show you?”

“Not that dish,” said Sam. He was in some ways closest of all to Uncle Xie, his Third Uncle – so called because he was the youngest of them. The best part of Sam’s apprenticeship had been sweated through in Hangzhou, under the old man’s displeasure and his tantrums and his praise. Xie had taught him many dishes, but not the intestines.

“Xie could really make that dish,” said Tan. “But your father did it best. Even better than Xie. Don’t tell me he didn’t show you.”

“He didn’t,” said Sam. Jiang and Tan still didn’t grasp the fact that his father had taught him nothing. When Sam was small, Liang Yeh had gone to work and come home every day and then sat alone in his little study. He would read and let himself wander, staring at the wall while unspooling scenes from paintings and operas, movies, and the classics of art and philosophy. In his mind men fought with swords, leapt and floated in the air. He was often far away when the young Sam would walk into the room looking for him. His mouth would be loose and his hand a light flutter on his book. “Hey,” Sam would say, and his father’s eyes would bounce to him, surprised.

To Sam as a child, this seemed merely like his father. But by the time he reached high school he understood that Liang Yeh was different. At games and other obligatory events, his mother, who had enough vitality for three people, managed to anchor all the interactions. Liang Yeh would stand apart, remote, attentive, his hands jammed for warmth into his layers of jackets and shirts. “How is it you Americans do not feel the cold?” he would say to the other parents – and that was if he spoke to them at all.

But Sam was in China now. Heaven had given him the gift of his uncles. “I have been thinking,” he said. “I am allowed to have three assistants at the banquet. What about the two of you and – you don’t think Xie will be well enough to come, do you? I worry that he’s not over his illness.” For illness Sam used the word maobing, which literally meant “hair of an illness,” showing his optimism that any indisposition would soon be over. “In which case I will just have two,” he finished, “the two of you.”

They exchanged looks. “Nephew,” said Jiang, “Xie is far beyond helping you cook. He is worse; to speak truly, he is gravely ill. Bing ru gao huang.” The disease has attacked his vitals.

“What?” Sam said. Sometimes the little four-character sayings went right past him. Chinese was a living web of references and allusions, a language that was at its best with short verse and metaphorical sayings. So much of the web of civilization was out of his reach that plain conversation often eluded him.

Tan shook his head with a gravity that made the meaning clear.

“That bad?” said Sam.

“Yu shi chang ci,” Jiang said after a moment, He’s going to go away from this world for a long time.

“I thought he was better,” said Sam.

“A little,” Tan answered. “For a while.”

“Then I have to go to Hangzhou,” he said.

Jiang nodded. His face was pale.

“I was going to go after the audition.”

The interval of silence sent unwelcome recognition around the table. “Maybe that will be too late,” said Jiang.

“Then I’ll go now.”

“Nephew,” said Tan, “it is filial of you. But there is the contest. You must prepare. Xie would want you to do that.”

“True,” said Jiang. “And even if you try to go, you may not get a ticket. It is almost National Day.”

None of that changed anything.

“Stay and prepare,” Jiang repeated.

“Xie will understand,” added Tan.

Sam knew this was demurral and not truth. Jiang and Tan wanted him to go see Third Uncle. They expected it. But they had to counsel him not to, then later reluctantly agree when he insisted. “I’m going,” Sam said.

“Well,” said Jiang, as if resigning. “Then ask him to give you a dish for the banquet. One of his specialties.”

“The pork ribs,” said Tan. “Oh! Ruanyiruan,” So soft. “The meat falls away in your mouth. He marinates them, then rolls them in five-spice rice crumbles. They are wrapped in lotus leaves and steamed for hours.”

“Soft as a pillow,” said Jiang.

“I could eat that right now,” said Sam. “Okay. I’ll start working on the ticket right away.” His eyes wandered back to David and Xiao Yu. Where they had been talking was only a blank patch of wall. They were gone. Had they sat down? He scanned the tables, the waiters moving sideways through the aisles. No. They had left. He felt the twinge again inside him, the odd feeling he’d had before, the pleasantness of the hour with Maggie McElroy. Where had David and Xiao Yu gone? He kept thinking that the next time he glanced over he might find them standing there again, restored. But he did not.

On his way to the office Carey had tried to settle on what he would tell Maggie. Too little would disrespect her, while too much would hurt her unnecessarily. He fiddled with what to do. Tell her the truth, of course, but only when she asked and only that part of the truth which pertained.

He remembered, when he’d met her here in Beijing three years ago, being aware right away that she did not know. She has no idea, he remembered thinking. Matt never told her.

Carey was not surprised. He would not have told either. So Matt had gone a little wild; so what? He’d pulled his reins in quickly enough, and by himself, too. Let it be, was Carey’s feeling. He was a nice man, Maggie seemed like a nice woman, no need for them to suffer. Let them be as happy as they could. That’s what he had thought. Now of course he half wished Matt had told her himself, so he wouldn’t have to.

Not that it was what Matt would have intended. Matt was a steady man, a man of rules; this Carey had seen about him from the first moment. He could still see Matt at the airport, with his hyper-organized luggage, his smooth, clean face smelling of the shave-soap provided on the plane. The man had force. His legal work was like that too, meticulous, powerful, unbending. He stayed with the rules. He was, Carey knew, exactly the type who sometimes had to break out.

It was a pattern he had seen before. He guessed one in twenty were like Matt, good, hardworking guys who bolted their traces when they came to this place where everything was on offer, where a wild, clubby economy turned cartwheels around the power center of government, where any desire could be satisfied.

“Let’s go out,” Matt had said at the end of his first day in the Beijing office, on his first visit, seven years before. That was the beginning. He had left even Carey in the dust, and Carey was known far and wide as a king of the night. They roamed from one pulsing spot to another on Sanlitun. After the crowded bars and the costume raves Matt would walk away and negotiate with the women who worked the clubs. Carey tried to tell him there were finer women to be had elsewhere, only marginally more expensive, women with something close to beauty, even class. A phone call away, come, let’s go – No. Matt would go for the bargirl. And he would walk up to the African drug dealers too, relaxed, companionable. He’d ask them what was up, like they were in New York. Not a blink. They’d always tell him what they had, hashish, ecstasy, LSD. He bought hashish and rolled it with tobacco. That was where he drew the line. His restraint when it came to drugs fit with the other Matt, the married man, the one Carey had met at the airport. And that was the Matt who showed up at the office after their nights on the town – always on time, frayed but ready – and put in a full day’s work. This impressed Carey. The man was a rock.

But Matt started to feel guilty. On his second visit, later that same year, he came into Carey’s office one afternoon and said he’d decided he should just go ahead and call Maggie now and tell her everything.

“Have you lost your mind?” Carey remembered saying. “Why would you tell her?”

“Because I tell her everything.”

“Things like this?”

“I never did things like this before.”

“You tell her this and you’ll change everything. Ask yourself – are you going to do it again? Is this going to be your new lifestyle?”

“No! I feel bad already.”

“Then don’t do it anymore. And don’t tell your wife. She doesn’t need to suffer.” His hand strayed to the file he had been working on. The clock had been running on the client and he didn’t like to stop. “It’s okay, man,” he added gently. “Everybody slips a few times.”

Matt had thanked him, and agreed that yes, this was the thing to do. “You’ll have to find a new late-night companion,” he joked, and Carey told him that would be no problem. At the same time, he was not surprised Matt had climbed back into himself, red-faced, so quickly. This too he had seen before.

But two evenings after that, Matt buzzed him again, on his cell. It was late. The office was almost empty. Carey was ready to leave anyway. And there was Matt again, that same excited edge in his voice, saying, “I know what I said, but can’t help it. Let’s go out.”

“Okay,” Carey said, feeling his own smile form. At moments like these Matt was as willful and open as a child. He acted on his needs. There was something almost like purity about him, an up-rush from inside. Maybe it was because of this that Carey indulged Matt in those first few years, went out with him, shepherded him. They were two friends who knew each other only at this single crossing in their lives. The two men rarely spoke when Matt wasn’t in China. The last year before Matt died they had not talked at all. And then he was gone. Carey was well aware of the fact that he had other friends he knew better. Still, it was hard to think of Matt now, this past year, without a bolt of sorrow.

From outside his door he heard the tones of his secretary and beside her another voice – Maggie. The door opened and in came the widow, her walk slow, hyperconscious. She had changed in the three years. Her face, always too sharply arranged to be called pretty, had started its turn toward the elegant concavity of age. Her body looked ropier than he remembered, under loose, neutral clothes. Care and grief had her in a cage, leaving only her large eyes, which now burned with extra intensity, as if compensating for the rest of her. “How are you?” he said, uselessly, and rose to give her a hug.

“Had better years,” she said into his shoulder.

They sat a few minutes talking. Their words made circles around Matt, remembering him, trying to laugh about him, talking about the shock of his death – “Christ, that’s one phone call you never want to get,” said Carey. After they talked about Matt he inquired elaborately into the comfort of her flight, and the apartment. She told him about her assignment. And then she noticed the file, which he’d laid out on the table between them. “You’ve seen this already,” he said, “right?”

“Zinnia showed it to me.” She opened it. “Talk about being blindsided.”

“Me too,” he said.

She looked up abruptly. “You mean what you said before? You knew nothing about a child?”

“No,” he said, and repeated: “Nothing about a child.”

The way he said it hinted at more. “Then what about the woman who’s named here as the mother? Gao Lan?”

He exhaled. “Yes,” he said. “Her I knew about.” He watched her eyes widen and almost instantly glaze over, as shock was followed by humiliation. Tell her the truth.

“What exactly do you know?” she said.

“Just that it did happen between them.”

“Her and Matt.”

“Yes.”

“Was it at the right time?”

“Yes. It was brief, though. I don’t want you to think it was a relationship.”

“Why?” she said, her voice sharpening. “Does it count for less if it wasn’t?”

“No,” he said.

“Especially when there’s a child.”

He raised his hands; she had him. But it did count for less. It would have been worse if Matt had actually loved this woman. He hadn’t, and that mattered. Right now, though, Maggie couldn’t see it. Understandably.

“Tell me what happened,” she said, and he did. He started with the night Matt met Gao Lan.

Nice girl, Carey remembered thinking when he first saw her under dancing, roving lights. Pretty. But there were endless girls who were pretty. He knew that. Matt, still somewhat green in China, did not. He saw Gao Lan across the room and begged and pestered Carey until the two of them went over to Gao Lan and her friend and bought them a drink. To Carey it was boring. They were such ordinary girls. There were better girls elsewhere. But he could not get Matt to leave that night and go somewhere else.

The way Carey told it to Maggie, he took his leave early and could only infer what had happened later. It was easier for him to convey it this way, even though it was not the truth. Actually Matt and Gao Lan had been the first to leave; they left together, and Carey saw them go. He could still see Gao Lan turning her perfect oval rice-grain face up to Matt as they walked to the door. She’d had a porcelain femininity that made her quite the opposite of Maggie, across from him now, angular, sad, intelligent.

“Was it just that one night?” she asked. “Or did it happen more times?”

“Only the one night.” Carey couldn’t be sure of that, of course, but it was what Matt had told him.

That winter Matt had come to China twice. On the second visit Gao Lan called him, and what Matt told Carey afterward was that he had broken it off with her then and there. He didn’t share any of the details, just said he didn’t want to see her. Didn’t want to talk to her.

At the time Carey had thought it unfeeling. Carey’s sympathies, if they lay anywhere, were snug in the lap of male prerogative – but there was no reason to hurt a woman, either. Matt had sheared Gao Lan away with one swipe. She didn’t like it. Carey had seen her only once since then, at a reception. She’d given him an icy stare and turned away.

“I felt sorry for her at first,” he admitted to Maggie now. “Bad about what happened. Not anymore. Not after I saw this.” He tapped the claim form. “I know he could be the father, I admit it, but at the same time I still don’t believe it. If she had his child, why would she keep quiet all this time? And – I know this sounds strange, but it’s hard to imagine a child coming from a liaison that meant so little to him.” Carey felt no need to tell Maggie that this had actually seemed to be a little more, emotionally, than the one-night stand it probably was. “A liaison that he regretted.”

“Nature doesn’t care about your feelings for someone,” she shot back. “And how do you know he regretted it? What makes you say that?”

“He told me,” Carey said, and closed his eyes. He could hear the clang of the metal door and see the bright fluorescent lights and see Matt, in the office men’s room, his head over the sink, guilty from the night before. “I shouldn’t have done it,” he said to Carey, raising his face, and Carey, who did not inhabit Matt’s universe of commitments and barely understood its layout, nevertheless read the wild mix of remorse and terror on his face. It was then he sensed that hearts had perhaps been open, along with the sex. “Do you think I could have screwed up my life?” Matt had asked from his well of misery over the sink.

“He loved you,” Carey told Maggie now. “He felt terrible after it happened because he was afraid he might lose you. He was abject. That’s why he cut it off with her. And it never happened again. One night only. I don’t know if it makes you feel any better, but he was in agony afterward.”

“How nice,” she said, voice going slightly flat. “But from what you’re telling me, the child could definitely be Matt’s.”

“I’d say there’s a good chance,” Carey said, “yes. But chances mean nothing. You need the absolute truth.”

“I need the test,” she said.