China Mountain Zhang

'All right, Alexi,' she agrees. Disappointment in her voice, in her body language. We're still holding hands, but I'm sure she doesn't realize it.

'I didn't ask you to marry me,' I say, defending myself.

'Son of a bitch,' she says, not particularly at me, it has the sound of a general expletive. I'm taken aback, Martine doesn't swear much.

'I should have known. Okay. You want a divorce, we'll divorce.'

There it is, proof of how badly I've failed her, failed this whole thing. 'I don't want a divorce,' I say, 'but I'm willing to do whatever you want.' I never saw myself sitting on the counter in the kitchen, our feet disappearing into a sea of goats, holding Martine's hand while we discussed divorce. Cleo shoves at the barricade. 'Damn it,' I leap off the counter and haul the nanny away, shove Theresa-the-goat down. When I turn around, Martine is watching me, and she looks so sad, so, what is the word I am looking for? So devastated. Martine has great huge dark eyes, funny how I never thought of how big her eyes are until this moment, in her pale long face.

'Alexi,' she says, forlornly, and to my great consternation she starts to cry.

You have to understand, Martine doesn't cry. At least not in my experience. Martine is iron. She's Army. Discipline. For a moment I don't have any idea what to do. So I wade back through goats and climb up onto the counter and put my arms around her.

'It's all right,' I say, and other, soothing things, things you say when someone is crying.

'I know I'm old,' she says, sniffling. 'I know it wasn't fair, using the holding as a bribe. I thought, though, it would work out.' Martine's strong, rather prominent nose gets red, and she looks older when she cries. Certainly not prettier.

'You're not old,' I say.

'I'm forty-four,' she says, 'I'm ten years older than you-'

'Eight,' I correct.

'Men like younger women.'

'I never felt worthy of you,' I say, deeply, from the bottom of my heart.

That makes her cry harder. 'I don't want you to feel worthy,' she says, 'I want you to like me!' She pulls away and gets down among the sea of goats and shoves Lilith out of the way so she can open a drawer and pull out a dish towel.

'I do like you,' I say, perplexed. 'I like you, I even love you.'

'But you're always worrying about pulling your own weight,' she says. 'You're always going to feel like this was my farm first, so you owe me. Everything is debt, debt, debt. You owe Theresa because her mother died. You owe me because of the holding. You owe the commune because of the new yard so you take this class and try to figure out how to make it useful. Nobody gives a damn if you ever use this class or not, it's politics Alexi. It looks good on the report to New Arizona!'

I don't know what to say. After a minute I say, 'You make it sound as if it's a crime to be grateful.'

'It's not being grateful,' she says. 'The flip side of grateful is resentment. You're not my slave, I don't want you to be my slave.'

'Hold it,' I say. Goats bleat. We are getting loud and Theresa is going to hear this. I grab her arm, 'Come on,' and haul her out into the garden. 'You've exaggerated this all out of proportion. I'm not your slave, I don't feel like your slave, maybe I do worry about keeping up my end. But I never know what you think! You never tell me if you like the way things are or you don't like the way things are. I don't know how you feel about me. I don't know if you like being my wife. Hell, I don't even know if you like sex with me!'

'You don't have to talk so loud,' Martine says.

'A minute ago you were complaining I didn't talk loud enough!'

Martine starts to laugh. It runs through my mind that she's hysterical, after all it's between 2:30 and 3:00 in the morning.

'What's wrong?' I say.

'It's funny,' she says, laughing.

'What?'

'Here we are with a kitchen full of goats, having our first married argument.'

'Is this our first argument?' I ask, trying to remember previous arguments.

'Our first real one,' she says.

'We argue about Theresa, you're always telling me not to remind her to feed the goats.'

'That's not an argument. I say it, you say she's eight-years-old and then we don't say anymore.' She grins at me, red nosed from crying.

'If this is our first argument,' I say thoughtfully-

'And we've even brought up,' she drops her voice, 'the 'D' word, so it qualifies.'

'-then we must really be married. Like people who don't get married so one of them doesn't have to go to the South Pole.'

'Which would normally mean that right now we should make up,' she says,

'except-'

'Yes?' I say.

'We have a kitchen full of goats, Mr. Dormov. But I do like,' her voice quavers a bit, 'sex with you.'

'And I like sex with you. And I don't think you're old,' I say. 'Ms. Jansch,' I put my arms around her and give her a hug, 'how about if we go back into the kitchen and sit on the counter and smooch.'

'As long as the goats don't start chewing on the furniture,' she says.

DAOIST ENGINEERING (Zhang)

The train rests heavily on track 3, long gleaming and white. White is the color of death in the east and dawn is the time of burial. My breath is white. The platform is lined with people waiting to get on the train. I have a soft seat ticket and stand near the end of the platform in a cluster of people waiting for soft seat and sleeper berths. By sheer foolish luck I am privileged, Engineer Zhang on his way to the site. I am not yet really an engineer, I have to co-op first, but the co-op company has paid for this.

My fellow passengers are business travelers-men dressed as I am in black suits with red shirts, the uniform of the bailing jieceng de, the white collar class (so why, if they are called 'white collar' do they wear red?)-and qingderen, 'green men', except that of course the army wears silver-gray trimmed in red. The business men hunch their shoulders a bit and read their flimsies, straddling their briefcases. The officers, there are three, stand in a small group, shoulders thrown back, oblivious to the weight of the early hour, talking quietly to one another.

I find a fax and pick up the day's news and carry it back so as to blend in. World news first, in America there is a drought in the corridor, families along the fringes are being evacuated. In related news, the world CO2 level has fallen for the third straight year and science predicts that if the trend continues that in fifty years we'll see more rain across northern Africa, Australia, the middle of China and western America. In Paris a structural failure caused a wall to collapse in an apartment complex and 32 people are missing, believed killed.

I turn the pages until I find an article on a commune in Hubei which is celebrating it's 150th year of existence. Imagine that, 150 years. Haibao couldn't even make it to 35.

The doors sigh open. Further down the platform the people press forward trying to push on before all of the hard seats are taken. Above us huge smiling conductors hang in the air saying gently but firmly, 'Do Not Push To Get On The Train.' At soft seat, we wait in line, our seat numbers already guaranteed.

The air in the train smells new and unused. The seats are pale gray, the soft music is about the same color. The officers fit the decor. I find my seat which is next to a window, shove my bag in the overhead and hope they start soon. Trains serve coffee as well as tea and I'm looking forward to a cup. Finally I feel the sudden suspense as the mag-lev comes on, and then we begin to slide smoothly out of the station. Pale faces upturned watch us go. A dispenser hung off the ceiling comes down the aisle and I get my cup of coffee, peal off the top and wait for it to heat. I bow my head, wreathed in the aroma and somewhere deep in my head some primitive portion of my brain is momentarily lulled into believing I am home. For a breath I feel ease. Home.