“Do your paintings mean many different things?” Neal asked. His voice sounded funny to him, thin and hollow.
She laughed. “No, they are merely pictures.”
“Of real places?”
“To me.” She smiled shyly and then turned stone-serious and looked down at the floor.
No wonder he loves her, Neal thought. Run away, Doctor Bob, run away. Take her with you or follow her where she goes, but don’t let her go.
Suddenly he was desperate to keep the conversation going. “Are you speaking about the reality of the mind?”
She looked up at him and said, “It is the
only
reality, truly.”
“You two have so much to discuss,” Olivia said. It was one of those unspoken questions women are so good at asking each other. Do you want to invite this guy to the dinner? Would Bob mind? It’s okay with me if it’s okay with you.
“I think then he must join us for dinner,” Li Lan said. “Is that all right?”
“What a good idea!” Olivia said, as if the thought had never occurred to her or to Neal, even though all three of them knew exactly what had transpired.
“I must warn you,
I
do the cooking. Is it still all right?”
“It sounds wonderful.”
“It is not, but I would be delighted.”
“Eight o’clock?” Olivia asked them both.
“Great,” Neal said.
“Very good,” said Li Lan. “Now I better be going, get busy.”
“I’ll call Tom.”
“No, please. I can walk.” “The bags look heavy,” Neal said. “Not very heavy.”
Olivia shook her head and said to Neal, “She’s a tough lady.” Li Lan flexed her biceps and made a ferocious face. “Oh, yes. Very tough.” Then she dissolved into seemingly helpless laughter. Neal knew all about helpless right then.
So he did something he knew how to do. He went to the library. Maybe it would settle him down, and God only knew he needed to bone up on Chinese art. Jesus, he thought, why did I have to come up with that stupid lie? I know better than to overreach like that.
Settle down, he told himself. So Li Lan is beautiful, so what? You knew that coming in. So she’s an artist instead of a hooker? So what? You know some nasty artists and some pretty nice hookers, so don’t jump to conclusions. So she did a painting that sucked your soul into a vortex, so what? It’s not much of a soul to begin with.
So why are you so obsessed with Li Lan? Pendleton is the subject. So shake it off. Cool out. This is just another job, another gig, and the endgame is to send Pendleton home, stop his California dreaming, and get him back to the lab. Then you can go back to your own desk. So do it.
So do what? What now? You can’t hand her two K and tell her to dump him. That plan is out the old window. Maybe she’d like to go to North Carolina with him. Yeah, right. Maybe he’d like to go to Hong Kong with her. Maybe … maybe you should actually talk to them before forming any opinions. Just lay it out to Pendleton and see what happens. Keep your head and do your goddamn job.
He found the Asian arts section in the subject card catalog, then went to the stacks and tried to concentrate on Qing Dynasty landscape painting. That’s what he started with, anyway. He ended up staring at the photo of Li Lan in the brochure.
He grabbed a cab at Terminal Square and gave the driver Kendall’s address.
Olivia answered the door. She had changed into a white silk brocade jacket over black silk trousers. “In honor of the occasion,” she said, brushing the backs of her fingers across the jacket.
“Stunning,” Neal said.
“A gift from Li Lan. Please come in.”
The house seemed built for magic evenings. The large, open living room was dominated by windows that stretched from the floor to the cathedral ceilings. The floors were made of wide hardwood planks brought to a high polyurethane shine. Broad cedar crossbeams spanned the width of the room. The eggshell-white walls highlighted black-and-white photographs as well as prints and paintings.
Outside the window a pine deck wrapped itself around a steep slope. Steps led from the deck onto a flagstone patio surrounded by a cedar fence that provided privacy from the scattered houses on the facing hills. Potted shrubs, flowers, and bonsai trees sat on the deck around a sunken hot tub.
A large jute sofa sat in front of a glass coffee table and faced the picture window. Two cushioned chairs were set off at angles to the sofa to create a sitting area. To the left of that was a dining-room table, and farther to the left, behind a breakfast bar, was a spacious kitchen centered by a large butcher’s block.
The table was set with black dishes, glasses, and a black tea set. A large white lily in a black vase was the centerpiece.
Li Lan was standing in the kitchen, carefully stirring something in a sizzling electric wok. Dr. Robert Pendleton stood beside her, holding a platter full of diced tofu.
“Okay … now,” Li Lan told him, and he dumped the tofu into the wok.
“Two more minutes,” she said.
“That will give you time to meet our guest,” Olivia said. “Neal, this is Bob Pendleton.”
“Nice to meet you,” Neal said. Yeah, right.
Pendleton wiped his hands on a towel, pushed his glasses back up on his nose, then reached across the breakfast counter and shook Neal’s hand.
“Pleasure,” he said.
Not so fast, Doc.
“Now, where did Tom get to?” Olivia asked no one in particular.
“He went to fire up the hot tub,” Pendleton said. “Can I offer you a drink, Neal?”
“A beer?”
“Dos Equis or Bud?”
“Bud, please.”
“Bud it is.”
Neal watched him as he went to the refrigerator and looked for the beer. He was even thinner than he looked in his photograph, with a body that looked like it had never met a quart of chocolate ice cream. He was wearing a bright green chamois shirt and baggy khaki trousers, with a pair of brown moccasins that someone must have bought for him; they were much too laid back for a biochemist. His hair was a trace longer than it had been in the photo, and he looked older. Neal was surprised at his voice—it was low and gravelly—but didn’t know why he should be. Preconceptions again, he guessed.
Pendleton set a bottle of beer on the counter.
“Do you want a mug?” he asked.
“The bottle is great, thanks.”
“Get ready with sauce,” Li said. “Hello, Neal.”
She was preoccupied with preparing the meal, which was okay with Neal because it gave him a chance to stare at her. Her hair hung long and straight—the blue cloisonné comb had only a decorative function. She had put on light eyeshadow and red lipstick. Her black western shirt had red piping and red roses on the shoulders, and her black, pointed-toe cowboy boots were etched with blue designs. It was one of those outfits that could look either ridiculous or wonderful. It looked wonderful.
Neal was in the midst of this observation when Tom Kendall came in. He was short and plump, with prematurely white hair and a white beard. He was sporting a green chamois shirt that looked identical to Pendleton’s, and jeans with sandals. He had light blue eyes and a ruddy complexion.
What’s the bit with the lookalike shirts? Neal wondered. Who is Pendleton supposed to be in love with, anyway? Li Lan or Tom Kendall?
“The tub,” Kendall said in a soft, reedy voice, “will be
hot
by the time we’re ready. Neal—I assume you are Neal—when you are a Marin County shrink married to a woman who owns an art gallery, you are expected to have a hot tub. It wouldn’t do to violate an archetype.”
He smiled broadly and shook Neal’s hand. “I’m Tom Kendall.”
“Neal Carey.”
“I see you have a beer, which prompts the question: why don’t
I
have a beer? Why don’t I have a beer, Olivia?”
“I don’t know, sweetie.”
“You’ll have to get it yourself,” Pendleton said. “I’m in big trouble if I miss my sauce cue.”
“Big
trouble,” Lan said.
“Some bartender. Bob and Lan are the official host and hostess tonight,” Kendall explained to Neal. “Bob can’t cook, so the deal was he would tend the bar.”
“Now with the sauce,” Li Lan said, and Pendleton poured a small bowl of red sauce into the wok. The sizzling stopped with a whoosh.
Olivia said, “Neal, please have a seat.” She gestured toward the sofa.
“Actually, I’d rather watch the cooking.”
“No, please sit,” said Li Lan. “Dinner should be surprises.”
Dinner was surprises.
The first round of drinks was a surprise. Having consumed his share of straight scotch in his time, Neal didn’t figure any little Chinese wine in a tiny black cup could get to him, but the clear, fiery liquid scorched his throat and smoked his brain. He didn’t quite manage to utter the salutation,
“Yi lu shun feng,”
offered by the rest of the party. Instead he choked out, “Jesus, what the hell is this?”
“Ludao shaojiu,”
Lan said. “White wine, very strong.”
“Uh-huh,” Neal answered.
Then she set a plate of appetizers on the table. They were pastries—translucently thin dough filled with red bean paste. The pastries were very sweet, which was just fine with Neal as they put out the flames in his mouth.
“These are
won
derful!” Olivia said.
“Xie xie ni,”
Li Lan answered. Thank you.
“So good they deserve a toast,” Tom Kendall said, and he filled everyone’s cup with more wine. “What’s a good toast in Chinese?”
Li lifted her cup.
“Gan bei
—empty cup.”
“Gan bei!”
they responded.
Neal managed the toast this time and threw back the wine. He was surprised that it went down easily. Something like fighting fire with fire, he thought.
Li had gone back into the kitchen, and she came back with the next course, individual bowls of cold noodles in sesame sauce. She noticed Neal’s discomfiture as everyone started to dig in with their chopsticks. Smiling at him, she said, “Put bowl to mouth, use chopsticks to push in.
“Slurp,” Pendleton said. “Just get them up near your mouth and slurp.”
Neal slurped, and the noodles seemed to jump out of the bowl into his mouth. He wiped a drop of sesame sauce off his chin and felt a twinge of guilt. What are you waiting for? he asked himself. Pull the trigger. Pendleton’s sitting right across the table from you, so just say something like, “Dr. Bob, the folks at AgriTech want you to punch in now, so what are you going to do?” Why don’t you say that, Neal? Tell him you’re here to hound him until he goes home? Because you’re not ready to have them despise you yet. Because you like these people. Because Li Lan is smiling at you. He opened his mouth to speak and then filled it with more noodles. There’d be time for betrayal later. Maybe after the next course.
The next course was pot stickers, small, pan-fried dumplings. Li Lan had made three for each of them. “One shrimp, one pork, one vegetable,” she said, and then laid three small bowls in the center of the table. “Mustard, sweet sauce, peppercorn sauce, very hot,” she said.
She walked around the table, stood behind Neal, picked up his pair of the black enamel chopsticks, and put them in his right hand. Then she laid one of the sticks between his thumb and index finger, and the other under his forefinger. Then she lifted his hand, squeezed so that the sticks seized one of the pot stickers, and then guided his hand to dip the pastry into the mustard. Then she brought the food to his mouth. “See?” she asked. “Easy.”
Neal could barely swallow.
“Lan,” Olivia scolded, “you’ve hardly eaten a thing!”
Lan sat down, effortlessly stabbed a pot sticker, swished it in a generous amount of peppercorn sauce, and popped it into her mouth.
“It is very bad,” she said, and then devoured another one.
“Is very good,” Pendleton told her. “Uhhh …
hen hao.”
“Very good!” she said. “You are learning Chinese.”
Neal watched Pendleton blush—actually blush—with pleasure. This guy is in love, he thought, major league.
“More beer,” Pendleton said awkwardly, aware that the Kendalls were beaming at him. He brought back two handfuls of Tsingtao bottles and passed them around.
The beer was ice cold and tasted great along with the hot mustard and the hotter peppercorn. Neal drank it in long draughts and practiced with his chopsticks as Tom Kendall and Bob Pendleton talked about feeding the roses in the garden out back. Li Lan popped back into the kitchen and emerged with another dish: a whole smoked sea bass on a platter. She showed them how to use their chopsticks to pry the white flesh off the bones, and it took a long time, another beer, and another round of
ludao
to finish off the fish.
As they were celebrating their conquest with more cups of wine, Olivia Kendall said, “So, Neal, tell us about your work.”
Well, Olivia, I’m a rent-a-rat who has lied his way into your house in order to threaten your friends.
“It’s very boring, really,” he said.
“Not at all.”
“Well,” he said, reaching through the haze of wine, beer and food to try to recall his notes, “primarily I’m interested in the political subtext contained in Qing Dynasty paintings as an effort to subvert the ruling foreign Manchus.”
Okay?
“And how do you pursue this research? What are the sources?” Tom Kendall asked.
Et tu,
Tom?
“Museums mostly,” he said. “Some books, doctoral dissertations … the usual.”
He wondered if he sounded as stupid to them as he did to himself. Come on, Neal, end this. Just tell them that you wouldn’t know a Qing Dynasty painting if it was tattooed on your left testicle. Get it over with.
“You have looked at the pictures at the De Young Museum?” Lan asked.
The De Young Museum … San Francisco.
“Oh, yes,” he answered. “Superb.”
He looked at Pendleton and asked, “Now, what do you do?”
A pathetic desperation effort, Neal thought.
“I’m a biochemist,” Pendleton said.
“Where?”
Pendleton pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. His lips edged into a small smile as he answered, “I’m between jobs right now. So I’m abusing the hospitality of these good people.”