The Book of Salt - Monique Truong [113]
From the look of this place, Sweet Sunday Man had none of that to spare. The walls are awash in a fresh coat of paint. The floors are waxed and spotless. The wood-burning stove has been scrubbed a shade closer to clean. The door is fixed and muted. It must have taken the landlord days. Sweet Sunday Man must have had at most two or three to pack up his belongings. He did a meticulous, well-thought-out job until the very end. As he closed the door to the garret, he looked back at the city's chimney pots framed by the open windows, a landscape reserved for the very rich or the very poor, and he remembered me in a flash of white light. He knocked on a neighbor's door and smiled. She would have given him anything, but he asked her only for a pen, a piece of notepaper, and a pot of paste. Sweet Sunday Man wrote: "Bee, thank you for The Book of Salt. Stein captured you, perfectly." The note was written in French except for the four English words. The title of my Madame's notebook, I assume. In his haste, he could not even translate it for me. Why bother, he probably thought. In his haste, he also forgot to sign his name. He reached into his coat pocket and found there the receipt from Lené Studio. He pasted and he folded. He left his final note to me on the floor because there is nothing left inside his garret but the Buddha belly stove, which is still radiating heat in spite of the change in the weather.
23
BÃO WAS WRONG. Useful foreign words and phrases have little to do with drink, money, or girls. The more impenetrable the language, the more unpronounceable it is, the easier life becomes for a man like me. Choices lose their numbers. Decisions are freed from consideration. Options become explicit and clear. If I do not see it, I cannot have it. If the man next to me is not drinking it, I am unlikely to order it for myself. A quick nod, a finger raised, an eyebrow arched, says: "I will have what he is having." Then I sit tense until the waiter returns, praying the entire time that the liquid in my neighbor's glass is not twenty-five-year-old Scotch or vintage champagne. I do tend to exaggerate. The kind of establishments that I frequent carry little that is over a year old. Youth in such places is cheap, just like the clientele, mostly boys but sometimes girls as well. One can never really tell until there is a thorough examination of the hands. Feet can be made to appear smaller with pointed-toe shoes. High heels can create the visual impression that there is nothing beneath that skirt but ten diminutive tippytoes. But hands, nails painted or bare, are red, waving flags. Gloves—black is best as pastels and bright colors only accentuate size— are therefore a standard giveaway. In fact, some "girls" wear them just in case the customers are too dumb or too drunk to identify their unique services. As for me, what they see is what they get.
Bão, for one, had no interest in what he saw. On the Niobe, he had a collection of already-paid-for memories, which he coaxed forward with hands warm like the South China Sea. While the ship, a hammock strung between two falling stars, swung us to sleep, I often heard him moan.
"Serena the Soloist," Bão whispered, "always had them on."
"Had what on?" I asked, bracing myself for yet another tale about female self-love.
"Gloves."
"Oh."
"Black and elbow-length," he added, "and nothing else."
"Nothing?"