Until they were thirteen, Alice was what you might call a “natural beauty”: smooth-skinned, with light brown eyes behind corrective glasses and a nose so small it could be drawn on paper with two dots. She didn’t go to the gym or play a sport, and since the Was never vacationed, she was in every way untouched by American leisure: the pale princess of her mother’s grocery, thin-wristed, her black hair uncombed around her shoulders. But around fourteen, Alice began to grow, soon surpassing Fang by inches. Her little nose also grew longer, dipping down with the ferocity of the Was’ Manchurian ancestors. James saw her at the store with decreasing frequency. She made no eye contact; her hands shook as she gave out change; her sentences—never complex—trickled away. No one was surprised when, after high school, Alice, too, stayed at home.
Now, standing close to Fang, Alice slides a glance at James, her glasses magnifying her long eyes and soft, caramel-colored irises. If only she would not stoop, but she does. He has a penetrating, hallucinatory double vision of her as some caged, exotic predatory bird. Green-feathered, yellow-eyed, hook-nosed, clawed, and horned. A wing clipped.
Ask her out. It’s Dagou’s voice he imagines. Ask her out, you noodle-dick.
“How is college, James?” Alice half whispers, and the sound of her voice—sweet and silvery, with a strange, rich, low undertone her mother instructs her to conceal by raising it to its highest register, like a small girl’s—pierces him. When they were thirteen, she let him look under her shirt. Only once. At the memory, painful feathers sprout up on the flesh of his arms, the back of his neck. Sweat soaks his sleeves. Where are Fang and their mothers?
“Okay,” he says. “Listen, are you at the store later today? I may come by to—”
Alf yips and whines at Alice.
“Stop it, Alf!” More yipping. James tries his father’s command. “Ting! Ting?” Like many dogs, Alf understands two languages, but sometimes listens to neither. He leaps on Alice. She drops her purse.
When James struggles to retrieve it, he and Alice narrowly miss bumping heads, and he catches unexpectedly the smell she’s carried with her since childhood, a combination of cheap shampoo and dried goods—mushrooms, seaweed. There’s also something that affects him so viscerally his hand slips on the purse. He clears his throat.
“Be right back,” he croaks, and hobbles away, Alf at his heels.
In the little men’s bathroom, James bolts the door. He pulls down his pants, sits on the toilet in the left-hand stall, closes his eyes, and takes hold of his penis. Alice, naked, straddles him and pushes his head against the tank. Alice’s vivid caramel eyes lock onto his as she smiles a predatory smile and kisses him, thrusting her tongue deep into his mouth. Her powerful wings flap once, twice as she hovers above him. James ejaculates into a wad of toilet paper. He breathes.
Alf barks.
James opens his eyes. “What the fuck, Alf? Can’t I have some privacy?”
Alf barks again. He stands directly in front of the toilet: bat ears, bright button eyes, heart-shaped nose, and small, slightly quivering jowls.
James stands, flushes the toilet, pulls up his pants. Alf puts his front paws on the toilet, dangles his head inside, and begins to drink.
James pushes him aside, closes the toilet lid. Alf whines. James turns on the faucet and hoists Alf to the sink. His pink tongue laps sloppy circles into the stream of water. The dog’s solid weight in his arms, and the clean, harmless water running calm him. He sets Alf back on the floor and turns off the tap.
Someone knocks at the door.
“Just a second.”
Another knock. He opens the door. It’s his father.
“Almost done,” James croaks, gesturing at the sink.
Leo’s face splits into a knowing grin. “Beating off for Buddha? Ha, ha! Sorry to disturb you! It’s time for you to get out of here. Gu Ling Zhu Chi is coming.”
The Abbess
Backstage, Ming and Winnie are already waiting. Up to now, Ming has managed to avoid wasting his morning. He woke early, went for a run, showered, and drove to the Spiritual House. He made some calls for work and skimmed a document. He checked in with his mother. But now the day has come to an inevitable bottleneck. They’re stuck in a group of people, waiting backstage for their audience with Gu Ling Zhu Chi. Dagou still isn’t here.
Gu Ling Zhu Chi’s public appearances are rare and unpredictable. Because Dagou sponsored the community lunch, she’s promised to adjudicate his case. Dagou couldn’t keep his mouth shut, and so there are several other visitors waiting for consultation. They’re mostly women whose American lives have grown too bitter for them to eat more bitterness, or too morally confusing for Confucius. For years, they’ve been coming to Gu Ling Zhu Chi for spiritual guidance.
Ming has a grudging admiration for the old abbess. Whatever her Buddhist qualifications, Gu Ling Zhu Chi is the only person in town Leo Chao might listen to. Leo respects her, in his way, because of some mysterious backstory Ming doesn’t know. Ming examines his father; Leo waits with uncharacteristic taciturnity, his hands in his pockets and a restaurant delivery bag slung over his shoulder.
Gu Ling Zhu Chi and her handler walk onto the stage.
The old woman is so small her elbow fits right into the fingertips of the handler, an Amazonian nun whose beautifully shaped, silver-blond buzz cut shines like that of a towheaded boy. The Amazon, An, was once Chloe North. Years ago, she appeared early one morning at the front door of the Spiritual House, a high school sophomore, dressed in only a torn Totoro nightgown, clutching a kitchen knife, with bruises on her chest and arms. Next to An’s creamy skin and pale blue gaze, Gu Ling Zhu Chi’s face is brown and shriveled, her pouched eyes calm behind thick-lensed glasses. Even Fang says she’s inscrutable.
The first people to come forward are Mr. and Mrs. Chin, mechanical engineers. Everyone knows the reason for their consultation. Their middle daughter, Lynn Chin, a college sophomore, has changed her major to journalism. She has been seduced by words in a language they don’t like to speak. She’s refusing to take pre-law classes. If not for their resistance, she might be majoring in English.
Lynn herself stands nearby, with Fang and James, and Alf. She is a dusky, bespectacled young woman who’s almost always clutching a book.
“What was your old major again?” Fang mutters to Lynn.
She scowls. “Data science.”