of freshly cut mangoes and black coffee.
“I made us breakfast,” she said.
For the first time their lovemaking felt pointless and forced, as if a memory of Isabella had slipped into bed beside them. After watching a bootleg DVD of Troy, Megan left the apartment at midday and Joe paced the rooms, the afternoon passing with a geological slowness. He fixed a leaking tap in the bathroom; he went running in Xujiahui Park; he read the same paragraph of the same article in the Pharmaceutical Journal eight times. How would Isabella react to seeing him? With indifference? With studied cool? He couldn’t bear the prospect of a polite, bourgeois dinner where she asked meaningful questions about “Iraq and the war” while Miles joked about “the good old days in Hong Kong.” He wanted Isabella to himself. He wanted to connect with her again.
Finally, as the sun went down behind the London plane trees of the French Concession, Joe took a shower and changed for dinner. It was six-thirty. Within two hours he would be sitting at a table making conversation with the woman who had colonized his thoughts for the best part of a decade. Pouring himself a drink, he settled in a deep armchair, took out his copy of Gatsby and finished it just before half-past seven.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
The traffic running east along Yan’an Road was as slow as the midweek rush hour and Joe was twenty minutes late arriving at M on the Bund. A bald Italian steered him through the glittering dining room to a table on the crowded outdoor terrace which appeared to have been set for only four people. Shahpour was already in situ with his back to the Bund, looking crisp and laundered, but with a certain nervous intensity in his eyes. A cool breeze was blowing south along the river. Miles was seated opposite him and clambered to his feet as Joe came towards them.
“Joe. Buddy. Great to see you.” He was wearing a black Polo shirt and his voice boomed around the terrace. “I believe you two have already met.”
Shahpour also stood up to shake his hand. He looked more anxious and somehow far younger than Joe remembered from the club.
“Yeah, we met in Zapata’s,” he said. “Nice to see you again.”
Joe scanned the two vacant places. Where was Isabella? Both napkins were still folded onto white ceramic plates with the chairs neatly pushed in. Making the obvious calculation, he realized that she was not going to be coming to the restaurant. The day had been a prolonged anti-climax. Sensing his confusion, Miles said simply, “Izzy couldn’t make it,” and Joe felt a terrible gnaw of disappointment. “What happened to your date?”
“Ditto. Last-minute crisis.”
He wondered what had gone on behind the scenes. Joe had had no intention of inviting Megan and supposed that Miles had also lied about his plans. Did Isabella even know that he was living in Shanghai? That thought, in itself, was enough to drive him crazy with frustration. Yet the alternative was even worse: that Isabella knew of his presence in the city, but had told Miles she had no desire to see an ex-boyfriend who had lied to her throughout every moment of their relationship. Joe settled into his seat and ordered a vodka and tonic.
“So I guess it’s just the three of us,” he said.
At least it was a glorious evening on the Huangpu. Miles had secured one of the finest views in all Shanghai. From his chair, Joe could look directly across the river at the high-rise lightshow of Pudong while, ahead of him, the grand fluorescent curve of the Bund arced north towards Suzhou Creek. Long ago he had concluded that Asian cities were at their best at night: the chemistry of heat and neon was exhilarating. He lit a cigarette as two young Chinese waiters mournfully cleared away the empty space in which he had longed to find Isabella.
“So tell us about her.”
“About who?”
“Megan,” Miles said.
Joe looked at Shahpour, who had been drinking steadily since he arrived. Candlelight caught a look of disquiet on his face which suggested to Joe that he was either out of his depth or struggling to suppress feelings of anxiety. Hastily, Shahpour described his meeting with Megan and Joe in Zapata’s, a story that Miles appeared to have heard before. There were predictable jokes about “sharking for chicks” and Joe was glad when his vodka arrived, sinking half of it almost immediately to quench his thirst. He had given some thought to the reasons behind Shahpour’s presence at the dinner. It was possible that he was authentic Microsoft, and therefore a useful ally for Miles in trying to prove the legitimacy of his cover. More likely, however, Shahpour was also CIA and Miles had brought him along as a second pair of eyes. Yet he wondered why a trained intelligence officer would appear at a meeting of such importance looking so edgy. In Zapata’s, Shahpour had seemed impressively self-assured, if somewhat vain and intense, and Joe had been struck by both his intelligence and charm. Either this current mood was an act, the purpose of which would eventually be revealed, or Miles had said something which had momentarily undermined his confidence. If that was the case, it certainly wouldn’t have been the first time that Miles had belittled a junior colleague.
“So what do you make of Shanghai?” Miles asked. He might have been talking to a tourist just off a long-haul from Heathrow. A few feet behind him, the red flag of China was fluttering in an infrequent breeze and Joe reflected on the irony of the restaurant’s predominantly Western clientele quaffing Martinis and New World Chardonnays beneath an icon of communist repression.
“It’s like a frontier town, isn’t it?” he said, lighting a cigarette. “I’ve been impressed with almost everybody I’ve met. People are ambitious here, sometimes reckless, but the intelligence and energy of the average person you come across is amazing.”
“Han or laowai?”
“Both,” Joe replied. “This is Shanghai’s moment, isn’t it? The feeling of tens of thousands of people-Chinese and foreigners-converging on a single city in search of fame and fortune.”
“Try millions,” Miles replied, as if he were only interested in correcting Joe’s mistakes. Shahpour fixed his gaze at a point beyond Joe’s head and broke his silence.
“I think it’s a city of contradictions,” he said, touching the gold necklace at his throat. “You got rich and poor, locals and laowai, the cultured and the hedonistic. All of it existing side by side. It’s amazing like that.”
Was he stoned? Joe looked at his eyes, dark and swimming, then down at the tense, sculpted jaw. There was evident awkwardness in Shahpour’s relationship with Miles, yet the imbalance between them was so pronounced that Joe began to suspect an element of theatre. “So Miles is your boss?” he asked, trying to draw out more background.
“That’s right. Got me my job, actually. I was working in construction out here and he hired me. Tell me about Quayler.”
The immediate change of subject was telling: Shahpour was uncomfortable under questioning, as if he knew that Joe could quickly unravel his cover. Joe duly broke into his rote speech on pharmaceuticals, a performance with which his dining companions seemed predictably bored.
“Gaining sixteen per cent every year, huh?” Joe had finished talking about sector growth.
“That’s right. Sixteen per cent.”
Shahpour saved them. “So how do you guys know each other?”
“We met long ago in Hong Kong.” Here at last was a subject about which Miles could talk for hours.
“We were good friends.”
“Still are,” he barked, resting a hand on Joe’s back. “Miles was always very enthusiastic about doing business with China.” The grip and sweat of his hand was like a dead weight on Joe’s shoulders. “I’m not surprised he’s lasted as long as he has out here.”
Miles frowned at what was an accurate if harmless observation, and promptly withdrew his arm. An Australian waitress brought three menus to their table and began discussing the specials. Joe ordered seared tuna as a starter followed by fillet steak and went to the bathroom to wash his hands. He wondered if Miles had watchers keeping an eye on him in the restaurant. Setting his cellphone to vibrate, he checked his reflection in the mirror, his thoughts returning time and again to Isabella. He had believed that they were only moments from seeing one another; her absence from the dinner was like a broken promise. His work in Shanghai, he realized, was dangerously entwined in the possibility of their reunion; there were times when Joe felt that he could not rest, nor make progress, without knowing, one way or the other, if they had a future together. Was he mad even to think such things? How was it that a person so calm and objective in every other area of his life was held captive by this unrequited desire? He wanted answers. He wanted hope, or to be free of her and to move on.
Back on the terrace, Joe found three glasses of Chablis on the table and Miles waxing lyrical about the moral
