the water, and she shivered. I asked if she would like to put on my tuxedo jacket. She said, “No.” The line of her mouth tightened, and with a sudden movement, she looked away from me, half-turning her upper body. I thought I must have done something to annoy her, and this so unnerved me, I didn’t immediately notice that she was unbuttoning her shirt. She shrugged out of it, held it balled against her chest for a moment, then set it aside; she glanced at me over her shoulder, engaging my eyes. I could tell her usual calm was returning-I could almost see her filling with it-and I realized then that this calmness of hers was not hers alone, it was ours, a byproduct of our trust in one another, and what had happened in the main tent had not been a case of her controlling me, saving me from panic, but had been the two of us channeling each other’s strength, converting nervousness and fear to certainty and precision. Just as we were doing now.
I kissed her mouth, her small breasts, exulting in their salty aftertaste of brine and dried sweat. Then I drew her down onto the blanket, and what followed, despite clumsiness and flashes of insecurity, was somehow both fierce and chaste, the natural culmination of two years of longing, of unspoken treaties and accommodations. Afterward, pressed together, wrapped in the silk and warmth of spent splendor, whispering the old yet never less than astonishing secrets and promises, saying things that had long gone unsaid, I remember thinking that I would do anything for her. This was not an abstract thought, not simply the atavistic reaction of a man new to a feeling of mastery, though I can’t deny that was in me-the sexual and the violent break from the same spring-but was an understanding founded on a considered appreciation of the trials I might have to overcome and the blood I might have to shed in order to keep her safe in a world where wife-murder was a crime for profit and patricide an act of self-defense. It’s strange to recall with what a profound sense of reverence I accepted the idea that I was now willing to engage in every sort of human behavior, ranging from the self-sacrificial to the self-gratifying to the perpetration of acts so abhorrent that, once committed, they would harrow me until the end of my days.
At dawn the clouds closed in, the wind died, and the sea lay flat. Now and again a weak sun penetrated the overcast, causing the water to glisten like an expanse of freshly applied gray paint. We climbed to the top of the dune and sat with our arms around each other, not wanting to return to the circus, to break the elastic of the long moment stretching backward into night. The unstirring grass, the energyless water and dead sky, made it appear that time itself had been becalmed. The beach in front of the pink hotel was littered with debris, deserted. You might have thought that our lovemaking had succeeded in emptying the world. But soon we caught sight of Tranh and Mei walking toward us across the dune, Kim and Kai skipping along behind. All were dressed in shorts and shirts, and Tranh carried a net shopping bag that-I saw as he lurched up, stumbling in the sand-contained mineral water and sandwiches.
“What have you kids been up to?” he asked, displaying an exaggerated degree of concern.
Mei punched him on the arm, and, after glancing back and forth between us, as if he suddenly understood the situation, Tranh put on a shocked face and covered his mouth with a hand. Giggling, Kai and Kim went scampering down onto the beach. Mei tugged at Tranh’s shirt, but he ignored her and sank onto his knees beside me. “I bet you’re hungry,” he said, and his round face was split by a gaptoothed grin. He thrust a sandwich wrapped in a paper napkin at me. “Better eat! You’re probably going to need your strength.”
With an apologetic look in Tan’s direction, Mei kneeled beside him; she unwrapped sandwiches and opened two bottles of water. She caught my eye, frowned, pointed to her arm, and shook her forefinger as she might have done with a mischievous child. “Next time don’t dance around so much,” she said, and pretended to sprinkle something on one of the sandwiches. “Or else one night I’ll put special herbs in your dinner.” Tranh kept peering at Tan, then at me, grinning, nodding, and finally, with a laugh, Tan pushed him onto his back. Down by the water Kai and Kim were tossing pebbles into the sea with girlish ineptitude. Mei called to them and they came running, their braids bouncing; they threw themselves bellyfirst onto the sand, squirmed up to sitting positions, and began gobbling sandwiches.
“Don’t eat so fast!” Mei cautioned. “You’ll get sick.”
Kim, the younger of the sisters, squinched her face at Mei and shoved half the sandwich into her mouth.
Tranh contorted his features so his lips nearly touched his nose, and Kim laughed so hard she sprayed bits of bread and fried fish. Tan told her that this was not ladylike. Both girls sat up straight, nibbled their sandwiches-they took it to heart whenever Tan spoke to them about being ladies.
“Didn’t you bring anything beside fish?” I asked, inspecting the filling of my sandwich.
“I guess we should have brought oysters,” said Tranh. “Maybe some rhinoceros horn, some…”
“That stuff’s for old guys like you,” I told him. “Me, I just need peanut butter.”
After we had done eating, Tranh lay back with his head in Mei’s lap and told a story about a talking lizard that had convinced a farmer it was the Buddha. Kim and Kai cuddled together, sleepy from their feast. Tan leaned into the notch of my shoulder, and I put my arm around her. It came to me then, not suddenly, but gradually, as if I were being immersed in the knowledge like a man lowering his body into a warm bath, that for the first time in my life-all the life I could remember-I was at home. These people were my family, and the sense of dislocation that had burdened me all those years had evaporated. I closed my eyes and buried my face in Tan’s hair, trying to hold onto the feeling, to seal it inside my head so I would never forget it.
Two men in T-shirts and bathing suits came walking along the water’s edge in our direction. When they reached the dune they climbed up to where we were sitting. Both were not much older than I, and judging by their fleshiness and soft features, I presumed them to be Americans, a judgment confirmed when the taller of the two, a fellow with a heavy jaw and hundreds of white beads threaded on the strings of his long black hair, lending him a savage appearance, said, “You guys are with that tent show, right?”
Mei, who did not care for Americans, stared meanly at him, but Tranh, who habitually viewed them as potential sources of income, told him that we were, indeed, performers with the circus. Kai and Kim whispered and giggled, and Tranh asked the American what his friend-skinnier, beadless, dull-eyed and open-mouthed, with a complicated headset covering his scalp-was studying.
“Parasailing. We’re going parasailing…if there’s ever any wind and the program doesn’t screw up. I woulda left him at the house, but the program’s fucked. Didn’t want his ass convulsing.” He extracted a sectioned strip of plastic from his shirt pocket; each square of plastic held a gelatin capsule shaped like a cut gem and filled with blue fluid. “Wanna brighten your day?” He dangled the strip as if tempting us with a treat. When no one accepted his offer, he shrugged, returned the strip to his pocket; he glanced down at me. “Hey, that shit with the knives…that was part of the fucking plan! Especially when you went benihana on Little Plum Blossom.” He jerked his thumb at Mei and then stood nodding, gazing at the sea, as if receiving a transmission from that quarter. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. It could be the drugs, but the trusty inner voice is telling me my foreign ways seem ludicrous…perhaps even offensive. It well may be that I am somewhat ludicrous. And I’m pretty torched, so I have to assume I’ve been offensive.”
Tranh made to deny this, Mei grunted, Kim and Kai looked puzzled, and Tan asked the American if he was on vacation.
“Thank you,” he said to Tan. “Beautiful lady. I am always grateful for the gift of courtesy. No, my friend and I- and two others-are playing at the hotel. We’re musicians.” He took out his wallet, which had been hinged over the waist of his trunks, and removed from it a thin gold square the size of a postage stamp; he handed it to Tan. “Have you seen these? They’re new…souvenir things, like. They just play once, but it’ll give you a taste. Press your finger on it until it you hear the sound. Then don’t touch it again-they get extremely hot.”
Tan started to do as he instructed but he said, “No, wait till we’re gone. I want to imagine you enjoyed hearing it. If you do, come on down to the hotel after you’re finished tonight. You’ll be my guests.”
“Is it one of your songs?” I asked, curious about him now that he had turned out to be more complicated than he first appeared.
He said, yes, it was an original composition.
“What’s it called?” Tranh asked.
“We haven’t named it yet,” said the American; then, after a pause: “What’s the name of your circus?”
Almost as one we said, “Radiant Green Star.”
“Perfect,” said the American.
Once the two men were out of earshot, Tan pressed her fingertip to the gold square, and soon a throbbing music issued forth, simply structured yet intricately layered by synthesizers, horns, guitars, densely figured by theme and subtle counter-theme, both insinuating and urgent. Kai and Kim stood and danced with one another. Tranh bobbed his head, tapped his foot, and even Mei was charmed, swaying, her eyes closed. Tan kissed me, and we watched a thin white smoke trickle upward from the square, which itself began to shrink, and I thought how
