“Meng Ning, let me-”
“Maybe later,” I said, disentangling from his grasp, then swiftly jumping into bed and pulling the sheet over me.
Michael’s eyes never left me while he was unbuttoning his shirt, pulling off his pants, and slipping off his underpants. Though fully covered, I felt completely exposed by his stare.
It was the first time I had seen him, or any other man, totally naked. I almost let out a cry-he had so much hair! Like a teenager scrutinizing the painting of a nude for the first time, I anxiously studied his body. My gaze consumed his profile, his broad chest, the long stretch of his thighs and legs, the pleasing curve of his hips, until it finally fell on that which I’d been avoiding looking at. Did he feel pain that it swelled so much? What would happen if it kept ballooning? I remembered the unspeakable sensation I’d experienced from this swelling under the watchful moon on the remote island of Cheung Chau. I felt my color rising and pulled my eyes away.
Bathed in the moonlight streaming in from the window, Michael’s skin appeared ivory, while his face glowed. He came toward me as if his movements were connected to roots deep under the earth. Then, swiftly, he slipped into bed next to me. I felt his cologne and body warmth filling up the air underneath the bedsheet when the honking of a car slashed the air outside the window.
I immediately turned my back to him.
“Meng Ning…” Michael’s voice was filled with desire as he again reached to unhook my bra.
A vortex of heat stirred inside me. It grew as his large hand slowly peeled off my panties.
I was now completely naked, lying in bed with my body cupping against a man’s. His hair pricked my skin while his hand sent nervous impulses from my shoulders down my hips. As he nibbled me, I could feel his lashes tickling my neck.
If Mother touched my forehead now, she’d certainly scream, “Watch out, Meng Ning! You have a high fever!”
Michael tried to pull down the bedsheet; I immediately pulled it back. “No, Michael-”
“Please.” Slowly he turned me over to face him, his voice painfully pleading and seductive, his eyes glowing like emeralds under a search light. “Let me see your body.”
“Then you have to close the blinds.”
“No. I want to see you under the moon.”
Neither did I want to keep out the moon, but I felt too shy. I begged repeatedly until he unwillingly slipped out of bed and went to the window. While my eyes traced the curves of his back and hips outlined against the moonlight, my body was subsumed with a burning sensation-almost as I’d felt when watching the fire in the Fragrant Spirit Temple.
He swiftly climbed back in. Now in the dark, with his strong body curling against mine, his invisible hands and lips went free in their adventures. I felt him cup and caress my breasts, hold my lips with his, kiss, suck, and tease my nipples. His lips were soft yet burning. His hands made me feel beautiful and sexy under their touch. Seemingly understanding well the desire of my body, they made me moan and squirm. I felt flustered, scared, pained, happy, and fascinated all at once. My mother’s comment about my father’s poems arose in my mind:
With good poems you never quite know how you feel. Sometimes sad, sometimes happy, sometimes sweet, sometimes sour, sometimes bitter, sometimes generous. Sometimes you feel and sometimes you don’t… When your heart is like a knocked-over shelf of condiments spilling a hundred different flavors and feelings, then the poem is a very good poem. Your father’s poems can do just that.
This was exactly how I felt now. If this lovemaking could be translated into a poem, I was sure it would surpass those put together by Father.
Now, while my body descended into agony from the overwhelming sensations, Michael seemed not the least in a hurry to further satisfy me. He savored every bit of my body, including the small area covered by black hair that I had been scared of and avoided looking at before.
“You,” he whispered while kissing ardently, “my moon enchantress.”
He took my hand, spread it open, laid himself in my small palm, then gently closed my fingers one by one. I felt it keep growing under my touch like a fluffy chick, until suddenly it fell from my hand and, as effortlessly as a fish, slipped inside me-shattering my world of nuns and goddesses and sutras and temples.
The sunlight was sprinkling in the room when I woke up. Lying comfortably under the covers of Michael’s bed, I watched him as he still slept. His lashes trembled slightly and his eyes fidgeted under his lids. Was he having a sweet dream or an erotic one? As I listened to him breathe and watched his chest rise and fall, my heart was filled with a tenderness and warmth I’d never felt.
I tried to touch him, but my hand stopped in midair. Let him sleep more, a voice at the back of my mind said. Right then, a shaft of sunlight broke through the cracks of the blind and splashed his face. Slowly he opened his eyes and reached for me; I felt my body melt like a burning candle.
Later, I sat on a stool in Michael’s small kitchen and watched his practiced fingers stir-fry eggs with mushrooms, butter toast, squeeze oranges, boil water. Many men’s hands seemed hideous and unfeeling to me, but Michael’s were graceful, like fish in water. I felt something stir inside-perhaps a sort of recognition. Surely we had met somewhere before. In a past life. Or lives. Was he the fish, and I the water?
Michael carefully planned out our first two days together in New York: today we’d go to the Asia Society, the Metropolitan Museum, walk for a while, and have dinner in Chinatown. Later in the week he’d take me to a reception at the Met and I would at last meet Professor Fulton, who, Michael told me, was recovering rapidly from his stroke.
We started by appreciating the Buddhist art at the Asia Society, but I suddenly felt very hungry from the jet lag and suggested to Michael that we skip the Met and go straight to Chinatown for dinner. When the taxi pulled to a stop at Canal Street, the distinctive Chinese cooking smells began to waft into my nostrils. After less than five minutes’ walking, I spotted a sign in Chinese: DUMPLING HOUSE-ALL THE DUMPLINGS YOU WANT. A poster in the window listed them all: mixed vegetable, pork and vegetable, shrimp and cabbage, shredded beef and scallion. Steamed, panfried, in soup, in all kinds of sauce…Feeling an irresistible pull, I grabbed Michael’s elbow and steered him inside.
Dinner was wonderful. We finished everything, scraping clean our plates until they looked like round, wisdom-reflecting mirrors. After he’d paid and we’d stepped out of the little restaurant, cool air rushed to greet us. With my satisfied stomach, all looked appealing to me: housewives bargaining with potbellied shop owners; round-cheeked children begging for Chinese pastries; girls flipping through trinkets piled into small mountains in front of a sign, EVERYTHING HAS TO GO; open street stalls whose crates spilled over with herbs, dried scallops, preserved fruits, candies, vegetables.
As Michael and I walked along the bustling street heading toward the subway station, I spotted a signboard in Chinese hanging from a dingy building:
INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED MASTER LIVING BUDDHA
ALL REQUESTS GRANTED
PHYSIOGNOMY, PALMISTRY, NUMEROLOGY, ASTROLOGY,
NAMING AND NAME CHANGING, WORD ANALYSIS,
FENG SHUI, I CHING
I told Michael what it was and asked him to come with me to have our fortunes told. To my surprise, he suddenly looked tense and uncomfortable, his earlier humor gone. “No, Meng Ning. I’m a scientist and I’m not going to let some charlatan tell me about my fate.”
“Why not try it? It’ll be fun.”
“No, let’s go.” He tried to steer me past the building.
But I didn’t budge. “Michael, in China, fortune-tellers are considered doctors, too. That’s why Chinese rarely need to see psychiatrists. Besides, they charge only one-tenth of what psychiatrists do.”
“Meng Ning, fortune-telling is superstition.”
“No, it’s five thousand years of Chinese wisdom!” I paused. “What about your buying the coin sword to drive away evil spirits? Wasn’t that superstition? Come on, Michael! Stop being rational for a few minutes!” Without losing a beat, I dragged him into the building-past the curious stares of several old women sitting and fanning themselves in front of a discount clothing store.
The long, steep staircase was lit only by a bare, grimy bulb swinging shakily on its thin wire. I heard my high heels clicking eerily on the scuffed wooden surface, syncopating with Michael’s heavy footsteps dragging behind. After a long climb and some twists and turns, we finally reached the third floor, found the Master Living Buddha’s office, and rang the bell.
From within, a saccharine voice piped in Cantonese, “Please come in.”
Michael yanked my sleeve. “Meng Ning, let’s go now!”
“No, let’s face our fate.”
I pushed and the door swung open with a long squeak, like a bird crunched underneath a slow truck. The unexpected blast of chilled air made me shiver as the pungent smell of Chinese medicinal soup choked my nose.
A very young and voluptuous Chinese girl came up to us and asked whether we had an appointment. When I told her no, she flashed an obsequious grin. “It’s all right,” she said, sizing up Michael and me from head to toe and then back from toe to head. “Since you’re tourists, Master will squeeze you in. Please wait.” After she’d asked our dates of birth and I’d told her that we wanted kanxiang, physiognomy, she went toward a corner and disappeared.
I looked around. There were no other people in the room, but its four walls were cluttered with photographs. Michael and I stepped close to look. A shriveled, sixtyish man wearing a goatee and a loose Chinese robe appeared in every picture: painting the eyes of a lion to bring the beast to life before its dance performance; making offerings to a huge Buddha; performing feng shui for the Hong Kong Bank in Chinatown.
Michael said, “Meng Ning, do you trust these people?”
“Michael, relax-”
Just then the voluptuous girl appeared again and asked us to follow her. My heart thudded as we passed rooms and turned corners. What would our fates be-Michael’s? Mine? Ours?
The master looked older, yet handsomer, than in the pictures. He waved the white-cuffed sleeve of his Chinese suit to signal Michael and me to sit in the chairs across from his large desk. Then, like a connoisseur examining rare art objects with a magnifying glass, he carefully studied us through his thick, tortoiseshell glasses. Michael turned to smile at me nervously and squeezed my hand underneath the desk. I smiled back, feeling the moistness of his palm.
The master asked me in Chinese who’d go first. After I told him I would, he plunged right in. “You were a nun in your past life.”
That startled me. Yet before I had the chance to say anything, he went on. “But because you hadn’t meditated enough to extinguish your worldly desires and pacify your six senses, you fell in love with a man and broke the monastic rule. That’s why you were cast out from the religious order and become a lay person in this life.” He paused to look me in the eyes. “Since you have to pay back this love debt you owed in your previous life, your love life in this incarnation will not be smooth.”
As I opened my mouth, he waved his bony, jade-bangled hand to stop me from talking. “You have a smooth and high forehead, which shows you’re very intelligent. Your big, glistening eyes are considered beautiful, but they’re not a good sign for your love life.”
“What do you mean?”
“You attract men, but…”
When I asked him to explain more, he said, stroking his white beard with his long-nailed fingers, “There’s some confusion along your path of romance, but it’s a mystery that heaven will not divulge to me.” Then he smiled. “Don’t worry too much, miss, just remember the Chinese saying: ‘With absolute sincerity of the heart, even stone and metal can be opened.’” I knew this old Chinese saying that means lovers will break any barriers and overcome any obstacles to be together if their love is sincere and undying.
