China Mountain Zhang

'Oh,' I say, 'not so busy, but I know you're working and you don't have much free time.'

Politely we dance through the formulas of ending, of parting. We walk back to the platform and say things like, 'It was really good to see you again.'

The trains, of course, don't come and we are left hanging there gracelessly.

'You know,' San-xiang says suddenly, 'I'm sorry about the way it worked out, but I'm glad we went out together.'

'I enjoyed your company,' I say.

'Was it because of my face?' she asks.

'Was what because of your face?' I say, knowing I don't want to hear her question.

'That you couldn't really like me?'

I could say that I did like her, but that isn't what she means. I look up, the board says her train is coming in. I want to explain, but I don't know how she will react, if she'll be disgusted. It is hard to break silence, it's a habit not to.

'Was it because you're only part Chinese?' she asks.

Her train slams into the station, cushions to a stop. 'Good luck on Mars,' I say, as people push around us. I am unable to think of how to answer her, of what to say. She has pretty eyes, now, turned up at me, asking, what is so wrong with her that I wouldn't do the dance, the dance that men and women are supposed to do? She starts to duck her head, to get on the train.

I touch her arm, 'San-xiang,' I say, 'it didn't have anything to do with you.'

Her face is closed. It sounds like everything else I have said to her, a polite lie to escape feelings. The doors will close any time now. 'San-xiang, I'm gay,' I say, and gently push her on.

She stops in the door and looks back at me, looking in my face, while her mouth shapes the word. She doesn't understand right away. Then as the doors close I see a look of wonder as she begins to realize. The train starts up, accelerates away. I hope that in this moment she feels some sort of absolution, some understanding that it was not her lack.

I am relieved that I didn't have to see if that look of wonder was followed by disgust. And now, I tell myself, it doesn't matter anyway.

I get back to Peter's flat and there's a call. I barely catch it, slap the console. I am looking at the reason that I have to find another place to live.

'Hello,' says the reason, 'is Peter there?'

I glance at the clock. 'He's running a little late, probably stopped for something,' I say.

'Tell him Cinnabar called,' he says.

'Sure,' I say and he cuts the connection. So now I know his name. Peter is involved, a fact he keeps secret from me. It is hard to come back and find that Peter is in love. I've been gone on and off for four years, and I had thought, maybe, when I came back, that Peter and I could try again, that we've matured and now maybe it will work. But I never said anything to him, and he never said anything to me. It probably wouldn't have worked for all of the same reasons it didn't before. And now we're good friends.

This Cinnabar, he seems, well, short. I don't know how to explain how someone looks short on a monitor, but he does. I think he's a flyer. Peter always had a thing about fliers. He's not very good looking, I'm a lot better looking than he is. He seems nice. If he seemed like a son of a bitch it would be different. (Different from what, Zhang?)

I've hardly been home a week, and my life is so complicated already. Peter's flat is so small; tiny kitchen, main room, bedroom. I'm sleeping on the couch, which isn't very comfortable (I wake up some mornings without having the slightest idea where I am.) I should stay here, save my little bit of money left over from my Wuxi salary, wait until I get a job placement, but I don't know how long I can stand living here. I have to get out. I can't stand Peter pretending I don't complicate his life, I can't stand any of this.

'Hey, Rafael,' Peter is at the door, balancing the canvas bag he uses for groceries. 'Did you clean the flat?'

'And painted.'

He looks around, 'And you matched the old color exactly, down to the smudges.'

'Hey,' I call as he disappears into the kitchen, 'I'm an engineer.'

'Pijiu?' He tosses me a beer. 'There, shook it for you.'

'Cinnabar called,' I say.

He comes back around the door again. 'Oh yeah?' Not knowing what to say or how to act. Even though it's July, he's wearing the yellow jacket I sent him from China, shining with silk thread, embroidered with long-life medallions and stylized phoenix. Everybody wears jackets all the time. Fashion.

'No message, just tell you he called.' I flick on the vid. 'I went down the housing office today, the nearest available housing is upstate Pennsylvania. And it doesn't have running water. I got a prospectus for you.' Now I have to think of an excuse for an errand so I can get out of here and Peter can call this flier person.

I develop the habit of walking the boardwalk. The air smells salty these days. It doesn't have that burnt smell anymore, the project to clean up the harbor must be working. Reassuring to know that something is working. But I miss the smell, for me it's exciting. Sexual. Not that I'm cruising these days. Hell, even if I wanted to, where would I take them, back to Peter's couch? And I'm too old to climb under the boardwalk and let some kid do me in the sand.

I remember kneeling in the sand, shivering, with the light coming down between the cracks in the boardwalk. Going to school in the day, pretending to be like everybody else, feeling like I had some secret knowledge, some understanding of the real world that the people I went to school with didn't have. Gooseflesh and the smell of ash. Some chickenhawk with his fingers locked in my hair.

I walk every night from eight until almost nine, regular as clockwork. The first couple of nights it's all right, but Friday night it's altogether too hot, and the boardwalk is crowded with people. Couples, girls in cheap flashy clothes, bright flimsey things. The young girls are shaving high up the backs of their necks, up even with their earlobes, and just leaving a tail of braided hair hang down.

'Ever had a hotdog?'

I'm leaning up against the railing, watching the kids go by. He's older than most of the kids, but only by a few years.

'Si,' I say, 'Yo habito aqui.' 'I live here.'

For a moment he looks confused. He looks hispanic, but that doesn't mean he speaks spanish. That will teach me to try and be clever.

Then he grins. 'Donde?'

'Coney Island,' I say.

He shakes his head. 'For a moment I didn't realize what you were saying, you know, I just didn't expect you to speak spanish. Chinese clothes and all.'

'I grew up on Utica Avenue,' I say. He's handsome. Dresses cheap, short matador jacket (no shirt) and tights. He has a tattoo of a tear at the corner of his left eye, it hangs on the edge of a sharp cheekbone. He's darker than I am. 'So you were going to poison a foreign guest with a local hotdog.'

He shrugs, 'I just thought, here's this foreigner, all by himself on the boardwalk. Somebody ought to give him a taste of the ethnic cuisine.'

We walk a bit. He struts, gestures as he talks. The boys seemed spaced along the walk at regular intervals. They lean against posts and watch us. Coneys. The couples become static, white noise. The salient features of the landscape are the boys, and this amazing young man walking with me who talks about growing up out here on the edge, in the part of Brooklyn some people call Bangladesh.

'See,' he explains, 'there's always going to be a group of people who aren't ideologically sound. There's always going to be a bad element fringe. So the Party doesn't mess with Bangladesh. We're a safety valve surrounding Coney Island. So out here we can be free.'

'What about all the communes being established?' I ask. The girls dress in bright colors, the coneys dress dark. A coney in dark pants, dark sleeveless shirt watches us from the corner of his eye. He rests one muscled arm on a post.