seem rude. I drink my Grenade. It's milky white and tastes like bitter almonds. Or maybe bitter vanilla. Everything white, except the scuff marks on the walls. In the dim light the scuff marks almost look like characters. I find
It feels strange, but nice. His arm is heavy, in a good way. I can feel his fingers on my collar bone. Nobody notices. Maybe they assume that I am Bobby's new girlfriend. Maybe I am.
Bobby's girlfriend.
'Come on, baby,' Bobby says all the sudden, 'let's get some air.'
He pulls me to my feet and I look around, everybody is looking at us in a bemused sort of way.
Bobby smiles at me and brushes me off, straightens my suit. I feel wobbly. Not drunk exactly, but definitely wobbly. 'My head feels funny,' I say, my voice sounding very small.
'Come on,' he says. 'No more Grenades for you.'
I laugh, it sounds silly, 'no more Grenades for me.' 'Blew me up,' I say.
Bobby laughs, he sounds really pleased. 'Yes, darlin' it sure did. Come on.'
We leave the party, the middle and first room are very bright. 'Blew me up,' I whisper, glad to have said something clever, something that made Bobby laugh. I'm as clever as all these people. I could be Bobby's girlfriend if he wanted me to. Bobby has his arm around my waist and I lean against him. It is very nice and it is not my fault because I'm wobbly. I don't mean anything by it, I'm just wobbly.
We go down the lift and out on the street. The subway rumbles up through the grates and the trucks that make night deliveries in Manhattan growl by. A party in Manhattan. Well, it wasn't my fault that I didn't know anybody. When I am Bobby's girlfriend I'll know more people and then I'll have a good time. Bobby says we should walk and we do, left foot, right foot, both marching in step. I remember a Chinese marching song and I want to sing it but then I decide that I shouldn't because drunks sing.
We turn a corner and there is a doorway. We stop in the doorway and Bobby says, 'San-xiang, listen to me. Take a deep breath of this.'
He takes a piece of paper, but it is really two pieces of paper stuck together. He pulls them apart under my nose and I take a deep breath-
Sweet cold smell, like taking a fast drink of cold milk, hurts my head, bigger and whiter and bigger and whiter, I clutch my forehead and grit my teeth and it doesn't stop and then all of the sudden it's like a balloon that has been getting bigger and bigger and ready to explode, someone lets the air out and it gets small real fast and is gone.
Bobby is looking at me. 'Better baby?'
I nod. I feel better, even if I do have a little bit of a headache. I don't feel wobbly. 'What's that?' I ask.
'It's an icepick,' he says, which doesn't tell me anything. He crumples the paper up and throws it in the corner of the doorway. I hold my temples, watching him, but he doesn't pay any attention to me. He takes out another icepick and peels it apart with a rip, takes a breath and tosses it in the corner. I wait to see if it gives him a headache but it doesn't seem to. 'Come on,' he says. 'Do you like to dance?'
'I don't know how,' I say. 'Look, I really ought to get home, I mean, I'm really kind of tired, you know, I worked all day.'
He takes hold of my arms. 'I really meant to show you a good time tonight, but I haven't really, and I feel really bad. Let me take you to this place I know, and then if you want to go home, I won't say a thing. I won't call you again, I won't ever bother you.'
'That wasn't what I meant at all,' I say. His face is so wonderful, everything is so clear, it's like I can see in the dark. His smell, the smoky cologne smell, is fresh and intoxicating. 'That wasn't what I meant.' I don't want him to never call me.
He leans forward and gives me a kiss. The kiss makes me kind of uncomfortable, he puts his tongue in my mouth and I keep thinking that I haven't brushed my teeth. But he wraps his arms around me and pulls me against him and I can feel his silky sweater and smell the leather ties. He squeezes me real hard, and lifts me up a little bit so my feet are off the ground. I don't know what to do. It feels very good, I want him to hug me harder. I don't really want him to kiss me, but I want him to hug me and hug me.
'San-xiang,' he says, 'I love your name. Three Fragrances. Come with me now, okay?'
'Okay,' I whisper.
But first he has to go back to the party to meet the Tomas person. He takes me to a restaurant and buys me a cup of tea. 'You don't have to go back, I'll be back as soon as I can. Okay sweetheart?' He gives me his little boy smile, 'That's the perfect thing to call you, 'sweetheart'. Like a sweet fragrance. Wait right here for me, sweetheart. Promise you won't go anywhere?'
'I promise,' I say.
He is gone for thirty-five minutes while I have three cups of tea and read a newspaper. This isn't what I expected at all. This isn't like a date with Zhang, he picked me up, we went to the kite races, then we had something to eat and went home. We didn't do all this running around. Of course, Bobby has all these friends. My headache goes away but then I feel tired. It's only 10:30, it feels as if it's later. In the bathroom I look in the mirror. My face is still there, but I don't care. I try to think of how nice it looks, but it's like a dress I have worn all day, it is just there.
In the restaurant they are playing sweet old people versions of popular songs. A cup of tea is expensive, and the sandwiches and samosas are as much as a dinner in Brooklyn. Each place is laid, as if they are expecting 200 people to come in during the middle of the night, and each table has it's canister of chopsticks.
Bobby comes back and whisks me out of the restaurant into the night. I am sleepy again. I'll go to whatever this place is he wants to take me to and then I'll go home, and I don't care if he ever calls me again. Up and down, up and down, all evening, and now I'm tired.
'Here,' Bobby pulls out another of those pieces of paper.
I shake my head.
'It'll make you feel better,' Bobby says.
'They give me a headache.'
'Don't breath quite so deep,' he says.
So I don't and it still gives me a headache, but not as bad, the coldness rising into my head and white little sparkles in my eyes and then everything clear. Bobby is looking at me, not smiling, and I don't know what that means. 'Come on,' he says.
We get on the nearly empty subway and ride, swaying and nodding, for two stops, then get off. Bobby's face is green-white under the old lights of the station, his burgundy sweater is the brown-red of bloodstains. While traveling he does not look at me. He is angry at me. Maybe he is tired, too. I hope he is tired, although I'm not anymore. I can't keep a train of thought in my head, many thoughts just skitter around, my head is a cricket cage.
He will be angry when he finds out that I don't know how to dance. The new San-xiang should know how to dance, but I just don't. I can't help it, I don't. When he gets mad, then I'll go home. In the subway station there are mosaics of beavers in the tiles. I wonder if beavers used to live in New York City.
We walk and I try to piece together an outline of the evening. The bar, the party, waiting in the restaurant, riding in the subway. When Mama says tomorrow, 'What did you do?' what will I answer?
'Do you like to swim?' Bobby asks.
'Yeah,' I say. I haven't been swimming in a long time, but I used to go to the health club when I was a teenager. When I was six we went to Hainandao, in China. It is an island, like Hawaii, only bigger. We stayed in a huge hotel and went down to the beach. I remember the big hotel. I remember getting lost on the beach. I remember there were steps into the blue pool, the first step and the second step were fine, the third step was pretty deep and everything after that was over my head.
We go through dark glass doors into something like the lobby of a hotel. Bobby smiles at the girl behind the counter. 'Hey sweetheart,' he says and for a moment I think he is talking to me, but then I realize he is talking to the girl, who smiles back at him. He pays her money in cash and she has to have somebody come out and take it
