Authors: Andy Oakes
“I have to go. Till now I’ve always put meetings, primaries, lecture tours, elections first. But this time I can’t wait …”
She leaned even further forward. Her cheek almost bruising his. A whisper.
“… this time I can’t let him wait.”
“But the groundwork for the next round of the Beijing negotiations, they’re critical. The concessions that you want us to make, they’ve only just been approved. And what about the UN position? There will have to be some tough talking and private arrangements made.”
Political words. Diplomatic words. Words for reports. Perfumed, preened words.
The reality. Tough talking … threats, pressure, intimidation, blackmail.
The reality. Private arrangements … bribes, backhanders, hookers, holidays, cars.
She pulled away, smiling that smile.
“And who better when it comes to tough talking, and even better when it comes to private arrangements, than you.”
“Uh-uh … no way. No way.”
Hearing them so often over the years, Carmichael’s ‘noes’. But hearing them now for what they really were … not so much ‘no’, as, ‘so what do I get out of it?’ Raising her hand, pale and crimson tipped. Always reminding him of Five Little Fishes.
“Whoa. Whoa. I’ll owe you big. Very big. Do the groundwork and fixing of the concessions for the next round of talks, plus, cover my arse for me while I’m away, and we’ll talk about it.”
He removed his glasses, cleaning them. Delicately. Precisely. Eyes, a third of the size that they seemed to be when he was actually wearing the thick lenses. Tiny eyes. She had often wondered how he managed to see anything with such tiny eyes.
“You’ll owe me?”
“And you’ll have to fix my travel plans and documentation for Beijing. Their Embassy is giving me a really lousy time …”
“You’ll owe me big?”
“… keep it at a really low level. Call it just a personal trip. Play it down. Preferably, don’t play it at all …”
“And we’ll talk about it?”
“… certainly will, especially if you can get me that shopping list of concessions that have been approved by the Whitehouse.”
Carmichael replaced his glasses. Eyes instantly expanding by two thirds, his gaze averted from hers.
“You realise that this could all be connected, don’t you? The talks. Bobby disappearing …”
She picked up her attaché case, ignoring his words. Forcing her attentions beyond the glazed confines of the office to the concrete and glass horizon melting to apricot.
“… connected. Linked. How can you separate them? If the worst came to the worst, how could you ever separate them? Being a government official. Being a mother …”
The horizon, glinting like smashed safety glass.
“When it comes to it, if it comes to it, I’ll know how to do the right thing …” she replied through cigarette smoke.
“… I’ll always do the right thing …”
She stubbed the butt out in the heavy glass ashtray. A single band of smoke rising, unbroken, like a sword blade across her face.
“… now just do the shopping and leave the balance between politics and motherhood to me.”
Carmichael adjusted his spectacles, his mouth as tight as a crack.
“Consider your shopping done, Barbara.”
He was already dialling an out of state number as she moved to the door. A New York code … a contact at the UN. His next call would be to the People’s Republic’s Embassy for a visa and internal travel documents. The call after that, to fix her flight. He was efficient. She had better start packing her case. She left his office, caffeine, nicotine, alcohol … calling her. None of which would have interested Carmichael; he was only a perrier on the rocks and waldorf salad sort of a guy. Hitting the interstate running, in a full flowing growl of confined and velour caged road rage. Tapping the steering wheel to an anonymous rhythm … its Morse posing her questions that she didn’t want asked and couldn’t answer. Didn’t want to answer.
… I’ll always do the right thing …
The right thing … but for whom?
*
Within two days she would be in the People’s Republic of China. A visa … a bleeding red-inked sore at the very heart of her passport. On an unofficial visit. A personal visit. The most personal of visits to the only goddamn thing in her life that lay distanced, untouched by slur and backroom dealings. Untainted by the wash from fast-track political careers and dirt-digging. Family. Blood. Her son … Bobby. It was all that she had that was truly hers. Only recently understanding how her own needs and career had robbed Bobby of her for so long. How he had always been secondary to her driving ambition. Second, always coming second. A long way from home, but now he was first. Her son Bobby had her all to himself. At last, she was doing the right thing.
HONGQIAO AIRPORT, SHANGHAI.
THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA.
She was surprised, expecting her first nibbles of China to be flavoured with rows of ordered queues and a sea of faded bluey-grey Mao jackets. She was wrong. Hongqiao Airport had the liveliness, the chaotic bustle of Kennedy on a snow-bound Saturday. The terminal throwing wave after wave of faces at her … all seeming to have been peeled from the same mould. Tight-eyed. High cheekboned. She suddenly felt very tall. Very blonde. Very female. Struggling with her cases. Tugging at her too short skirt to lower it. Buttoning her blouse higher. Aware of her legs. Her hair. Her breasts. Her skin. Reminding herself of Marilyn in … ‘Some Like It Hot.’ Lazy glances. Studied stares. Without exception, every eye examining her. In D.C, New York, Dallas … she relished it. But here she felt as if every eye was a pin, and she the pincushion. She moved out of the terminal. A row of taxis jockeying for position in the periphery of her vision. Fat, angry meat-flies staking their portion of the action. She joined the queue, ushered to the front of it by a flurry of flapping hands. The air heavy with the smell of aviation fuel, old people, and rain about to fall. Stuttering into the taxi, manhandling the cases in front of her.
Damn it, I’ve brought too much. I always bring too much.
Skirt riding high above her knees. Lines of eyes with permanent questions riveted to their irises, following her every move as if she were a new and exotic spectator sport. “The Jing Jiang Hotel please.”
The taxi pulled away. She settled into the plastic covered seat for the journey into the city’s heart. Fifteen kilometres. The banner over the driver’s head proclaiming the name of the company whose taxi it was that she was driving in … the
‘FRIENDSHIP TAXI SERVICE.’
It didn’t feel very friendly. The driver’s stare into the rear-view mirror not leaving her for the whole of the fifteen kilometres.
*
The main entrance of the Jing Jiang Hotel sits opposite a row of shops, the most exclusive in China. Amongst these is a supermarket that sells some rare treats … chocolate, cheeses, biscuits. Day and night there is a permanent queue at the checkout … such is the hunger.
*
It took all of her strength not to go over the same territory again. Not to grab the demure white bloused receptionist and haul her over the desk …
Where’s my goddamn son, you bitch. What have you done to him?
And if an answer had not been forthcoming, which it would not have been, to do the same to the deputy manager. Then the general manager. And then the fucking shit of an owner, if she had thought that it would have done any good. But that had already been done verbally from many thousands of miles away; and on several occasions since the night when Bobby’s name had javelined into the depths of her sleep … splitting her life away from all that it had previously been anchored to. She and Carmichael, bombarding the hotel with calls. Prodding. Probing. Slicing away at every polite response to their questions. Digging for an inaccuracy. Words … pinned. Sentences … dissected. Silences … analysed. Pressure, and a contact of Carmichael’s at the China International Travel Service, resulting in the faxing of the Jing Jiang’s guest registration book. Pages. Pages. Fifteen months of recordings. Room 201 had been busy, it was located in the prestigious north block, the preferred area of the hotel by those in the know; often frequented by dignitaries. Nixon in February of ‘72. Reagan, some twelve years later. But no Bobby Hayes. His name not appearing on the registration pages for room 201. His name not appearing next to any room number in the hotel. He had never stayed at the Jing Jiang, but Barbara could recall almost every telephone call that she had made to Bobby at that very same hotel. 53–42–42. Knowing the number by heart.
Approaching the desk, hand deep inside her raincoat pocket, fingers drumming against the thick wad of letters, postcards. Some written on headed hotel notepaper. Some bearing the hotel’s name, its logo, stamped, black inked across dismal postage stamps. Words. Sentences. Descriptions of the Jing Jiang. His room. His view from the room. Flows of frantic scrawl. And still they said that Bobby had not stayed at the hotel whose lobby she was now standing in.
*
“Welcome to the Shanghai Jing Jiang Hotel, madam. How may I help you?”
Her English too perfect, as it had been over the telephone. Clipped. Polished. Cold. Perfect words, leaving her mouth as ice cubes.
“A reservation was made for me under the name of Hayes.”
“Yes, madam, I will call a porter to carry your cases.”
Punctuating her sentence with the placing of a room key next to the registration book. Its fob, heavy, large, unattractive. Their logic in reducing the risk of it being stolen as a memento of a pleasant stay in Shanghai.
“Your room, 210, is on the tenth floor of the hotel.”
“201. I reserved room 201.”
The girl’s eyes fled fleetingly to the green scroll of the computer terminal as the porter approached with a trolley. She exchanged the key with another from the huge numbered board behind her and handed it to him. His uniform, pristine. But shoes scuffed, unpolished. Under his fingernails, black crescent moons of old engine oil. Hints of another life.
“Your room, 201, is also on the tenth floor of the hotel.”
Barbara filled in the registration book, finding herself thinking, not in a flow, but in separate stills … and all of the time praying that they wouldn’t zoom in on Bobby. Stills of his hand touching the same registration book. The same key fob. The same reception desk. And at the same time not wanting to push these feelings away either. Fighting, tooth and nail, against denying him. Needing so much to do nothing else but fill her every vacant second with his face.
The porter hauled her cases onto the trolley and moved toward the elevator. She hurriedly completed the registration details.
“Have a pleasant stay at the Jing Jiang Hotel, Madam Hayes.”
The receptionist’s words, snipped with steel shears. Barbara didn’t look back. The elevator doors were already closing as she entered it.
*
201. The room, just as Bobby had described it. The porter leaving her sitting on the edge of the bed. Raincoat slipped off. The wad of letters, cards, spreading across the bedcover. A scrambled mosaic of whites and creams. Gaudy, retouched picture postcards and eagerly ripped open envelopes. Walking to the window, reading from a page of one of his letters. Gripping the window ledge until it hurt. Letting the page drift from her fingers, onto the floor. Looking out across the city. His words in her head, her ears, her eyes.
… I’m not much good at descriptions … all those technical archaeological reports that I have to write, I guess. But I’m looking out of the window of the hotel right now and wanted to tell you about it. It seems a long way from D.C or Boston. I can see the river beyond the elegant buildings that line the ‘Bund’. String after string of junks tied up along its edges. Almost below me, next to the Sun Yaysen Museum (which is currently closed to those who do not have the right connections – but open to me, as I do) is Fuxing Park. I jog there every morning before breakfast. And by the way … they do a great western breakfast in the eighth floor restaurant of the hotel. Almost as good as ‘Ed’s’, back home. You’d like the park, everybody does. It’s a huge canopy of vegetation, a real oasis from the frantic city … especially on a hot day in the summer. It’s big, nearly twenty-one acres … but there’s no risk of getting lost. The old folks really seem to love this place … there’s a group of them at least every fifty metres and always only too eager to help a lost looking American boy. Remind me to take you there if you ever have the time to come over …
The green pool table foliage of Fuxing Park sat below her. She could not make out the tired knots of old folks gathered beneath it, but knew that they would be there. Perhaps some of them would have seen Bobby, spoken to him? Perhaps one or two of them had even wondered where the blond American boy, who always jogged in the park before breakfast, had gone?
She walked into the bathroom reading a postcard that he had sent on the 22nd; just two weeks ago. Creased … a view of the Huangpu labouring under a sluggish, scaly skin of junks and barges. Catching a glimpse of herself in the large mirror. The tussle of blonde hair, fall upon fall of slow twisting loose cascading waves. And the eyes … two dark blue sapphires that surprised even her. An old college boyfriend had once penned in a poem about her, that she ‘looked like an angel who was waiting impatiently in line for her wings to be repaired.’
It had been the only poem that he had ever written about her, out of many, that had managed to catch at least the shadow of a truth.
She filled the hand basin with water, bitter cold. Digging deeply into it. Splashing it onto her face, her neck. And then it was upon her, as if she had opened a trap door to it … loss, as deep as a well. Thumping at the sides of the hand basin. Ripples worrying across its surface.
Jesus, Bobby. Jesus. Did you do this too … run the water down your face? This room. This basin. This water.
On her knees. His letters. His cards. Falling around her. A snow storm of buff and scribbled ink. Inching her way across the deep piled carpet of the room. Blind with tears.
Damn. Damn. There must be something left of you Bobby. There must be something?