I remember being a coney. Hawks seemed old.
White time. Baffin Island time. Two weeks of my life slide by. A couple of evenings I go downstairs and talk to Peter and Cinnabar. Cinnabar is having a party, I agree to go to make Peter happy. Instead, the Friday of Cinnabar's party becomes a landmark, a navigation point, something happening. It's like a white out, where the wind is blowing the snow sideways, and the windows of the observation station might as well have been painted white. We came back from Halsey Station in one, using instruments to navigate. I got so disoriented I had trouble standing up when we got inside, I'd lost all sense of right and left, up and down.
Then Cecily Hester from The Office of Occupational Resources calls. 'I have lots of news,' she says. She is excited. 'Western Technologies in California. They're offering ninety-two hundred, but I think that's low. It's only to get you to come and talk to them anyway. And I think I've got you something to tide you over.'
'In California?' I say stupidly. Ninety-two hundred? I made eleven hundred a year as a construction tech. Thirty-two in my year of 'hazardous duty' on Baffin Island. My father lives somewhere in California.
'Right, Western Technologies. But the place that's really going to be interested in you is New Mexico-Texas. That's where you're going to get the real offers. They're both multinationals, with headquarters in the free economic zone in Hainandao. That's why they can afford to offer the salaries. Of course, when your salary is paid by a free market corporation, you're taxed. I imagine you've never been taxed. It's a lot of money, thirty, forty percent, but that's still a very good salary.' Comrade Cecily Hester smiles at me, 'I've learned a great deal about Organic Engineers in the last three days, Engineer Zhang. There aren't very many of you outside of China. It's nice to see that you came back.'
The braindrain to China. All the brightest and best go there. How funny that she lumps me in with molecular biologists who go to China to do grad work and never return.
'Also,' she says, 'Brooklyn College would like to have you teach an Engineering course. They were very excited when I told them you were in the city.' She looks thoughtful, 'It's a pity they don't pay much, that would allow you to stay in the city. But they're not going to be able to come anywhere sixty.'
So much money. 'Thank you,' I say.
Cinnabar's Party. I'm not sure I'm in a party mood. I'd really like to talk to Peter about this New Mexico-Texas thing, but I probably won't get much chance. I have a bad feeling about this party.
I decide to wear the black suit Haibao said was so conservative it wasn't. I wonder if Liu Wen still plays
I take the train down to Brooklyn Heights where Cinnabar lives. Peter is helping to host so he's been there all day. I carry beer, my contribution.
Cinnabar lives in an old building, it was probably once a single family residence, now apartments. Cinnabar has the top two floors. The hallway is cluttered with kite frames, a bicycle, a couple of chairs turned on their sides. He's a consultant for one of the companies that supplies kite frames. The door is open. Cinnabar's place is pretty big, rather dark and cool. I haven't been to many places the size of this, Cinnabar Chavez obviously does pretty well, but I've been to a lot of places that looked much the same, if smaller.
It's an old building, built strong and decaying slowly. Inside seems shabby and cheap. It's not, not by New York standards, I know. (I think of the Wuxi complex, beautiful red tile roofs.) On one wall is a short vid loop. It's a flyer hooking into a kite harness, talking to a kid on his crew. The flyer isn't Cinnabar, although he's hispanic. After a moment I realize the kid is, a young Cinnabar. There's no sound, just this flyer jacking in, a real short clip of him taking off in an old looking kite with bright blue and violet silk. Then a clip of another flyer, probably Cinnabar, touching down in a kite with red silk. Then repeat.
There's music, that tinkly, percussion stuff for pattern dancing. I take my beer into the kitchen and stuff it into a cold box already full of beer and wine. Nobody's dancing yet. I see Peter talking to a couple of people and say hello. I go back and get a beer so I have something to do with myself until I fit into the party. I see Cinnabar talking to another flyer, a woman with long crinkly hair, a red jacket and hips like a twelve-year-old. I don't recognize many flyers, I know some of their silk colors and that's all, and I haven't been to a race since before China.
Cinnabar doesn't seem to have much furniture. Makes a great space for parties.
I drink my beer and say hello to a couple of people I know from Peter's building. I end up talking to Robert, who doesn't know anybody here either. 'You're in the building? How come I haven't see you at the meetings?'
'I've only been there a couple of weeks.'
We make small talk. It's eight-thirty, I figure I can sneak out at eleven, maybe ten-thirty.
I glance around and to my astonishment make eye contact with the guy from the boardwalk, Invierno.
'It's the angel!' he says and saunters over.
'Hey,' I say, delighted. 'Are you a friend of Cinnabar's?'
He is, well not exactly, he's a friend of a friend. 'I almost didn't come tonight,' he says.
'I'm glad you came.'
He knows a lot of people at the party. 'The woman talking to Cinnabar? That's Gargoyle, the flier. Only her name's really Angel. And that guy over there? That's Previn Tabat, the guy on the news.'
He tells me that the flyer in the vid is Cinnabar's elder brother, dead in a flying accident. He flirts with me. He flirts with Robert. He has large dark eyes and very long eyelashes. He's dressed in his matador's outfit again.
'I haven't seen you on the boardwalk,' I say.
'I don't get out too much.' He shrugs. 'I work at a bank, I work weird hours in Routing.' Something about keeping track of credit.
Robert drifts off while we stand talking. Invierno's such a kid, full of himself, aggressive, almost obnoxious. But I keep finding him funny.
'Dance with me,' he says. People have started dancing.
'I don't know how,' I say, amused.
'I don't believe you.'
'It's true,' I protest, laughing. 'I really don't know how.'
'I'll teach you a pattern,' he promises, and taking me by the wrist, pulls me to the center of the room where we are most noticeable, and teaches me a pattern, a simple one. We dance and I think he'll get tired of me, but he doesn't. He changes pattern dancing into something baroque, to go with his Spanish clothes. He invests the steps with a stiffness, machismo. He holds my hand high and when he looks at me, he has veiled his eyes under those lashes. He looks like a willful boy who is sensitive to slights. And the more I laugh, the more he warms under the attention.
So, of course, late in the party I take him home. We slip down the steps to the subway and sit on the train, casually uninterested in each other, my left knee touching his right, while an old man sleeps across from us and a girl in a waitress' uniform knits next to us.
I take him into my room, out of the dark hall where the lights go off the moment you open your door, and he says, 'This is where you live?'
I imagine it's too bare for him, I don't even have a chair. 'I haven't been here long.'
Then he surprises me. 'This is really nice,' he says softly, enviously. 'Is this the way they do things in China?'
'No,' I say, 'in China you'd program lights and wall colors. And there'd be more furniture.'
He nods, touches the walls with the tips of his fingers. 'It's white. Doesn't white mean death?'
'It also means life. It depends on whether you're eastern or western.'
'What are you?' he asks.
I shrug. 'A little of both.'
He stands there, looking at me. Waits for me. I am the older man, I make the first move. That is a shock, too. I've always been the pick-up, or we were both young and there was no older/younger, like with Peter. But now we are in my place and I have Invierno.
So I take him to bed.
