Saving Fish From Drowning. Amy Tan

pink T-shirt, and jeans. She still had a child’s body, not a hint of adolescence on the horizon. But at twelve, the girl could take care of herself and would be less of an obstacle to his gaining Marlena’s solitary affections. In any case, three weeks lay ahead of them, plenty of time to figure out logistics and ways that a prepubescent could amuse herself without the company of her delightful mother. Esme, love, here’s ten dollars. Why don’t you run off into the jungle and give a dollar to each monkey you find?

      Harry peered into his wallet. There they were: two condoms. He briefly considered the other attractive single woman in the group, Heidi, younger half sister to Roxanne. She had a certain beguiling quality: big wondering eyes, limber legs, tumbling bunches of blond hair. And those breasts on such a tiny rib cage—they could not possibly be real. (In fact, they were.) Harry, an expert in animal structure, had convinced himself he knew better. They pointed and didn’t sway; he had noticed that many times. What’s more, the nipples sat too high, as if they were doilies floating on balloons. No doubt about it, they were not the bona fide mouthable chew toys. He had slept with a half-dozen women with artificial bosoms, so he should know. His friend Moff had also slept with many of the same type of inflated woman—a few, in fact, were the same, not surprising since the two vacationed at the same Club Meds—and Bamboo Boy swore he could not tell the difference. Tut, tut. That was more telling of Moff, Harry secretly opined. A superior lover, such as he, knew instantly. Naturally endowed women reacted with intense shivers when their nipples were caressed with a feather, an edge of silk, a silky tongue. The reactions of women with implants were a second or two off, or sometimes, to Harry’s horror, entirely absent, especially if their eyes were closed so they could not gauge when to pretend. This left Harry feeling he had fondled a corpse.

      Two demerits to Heidi for the implants, Harry decided. Marlena’s breasts were smaller, but they would react lusciously to his touch, and these days, that was far sexier than size. Also in Marlena’s favor, she was relaxed, older than Heidi to be sure, but with a confident maturity he was ready for. Heidi was young, cute, and a little neurotic, a combination that would become in a short time less young, less cute, and more neurotic. She was always so worried about things going wrong—was it clean, was it safe? If she’s on the lookout for problems, Harry thought, she’s going to find them. The best thing for her to do is be on the lookout for good things. It’s how they train people to train dogs. If you’re keen to spot bad behavior that you must punish, you will see only bad behavior. Catch the dog doing something good and reward him, and you’ll start seeing good behavior all the time. God, if only more people knew the principles of dog behavior. Wouldn’t the whole world be great?

      Marlena’s child, Esmé, was thinking of dogs as well, one in particular: a tiny Shih Tzu puppy with runny eyes and a cough, which she had seen in the hotel’s beauty parlor late at night. The beauty parlor with its pink lights had odd hours and even odder services. It provided not haircutting or styling but the companionship services of three beauties, who looked not much older than Esmé. One of the girls owned the puppy and said there were others—seven fingers’ worth. This puppy was maybe three months old, she guessed, and a “very good dog.” As she said this, the puppy squatted and let out a stream. It was also for sale cheap, the girl went on without hesitation, only two hundred kwai, about twenty-five American dollars.

      “Where’s the mother dog?” Esmé asked.

      “Muzzer no here,” the girl replied.

      “It’s an orphan?”

      And the beauties were quick to assure her, “Fun, fun. Guarantee you money-back.”

      Unlike Esmé, who still preferred T-shirts and jeans, the beauties were swathed in tight dresses and perched on chunky-heeled shoes. They carried key chains slung on low-hipped belts, attesting that they owned cars, or at least had privileges to them. In their well-manicured hands, they gripped petite cell phones, always at the ready to offer their services. Harry had received just such an offer a half-hour after checking in. A voice cooed in a Texas twang and Chinese tones: “Hello, honey, you lonesome tonight?” And though Harry was tempted, he was also a veterinarian who was well aware of the precise opportunistic methods by which parasites and deadly viruses travel. Down, boy. Good boy.

      Bennie Trueba y Cela had received a similar call and had laughed uproariously. “Sweetie, you’ve got the wrong number,” he said. He had the girth and robustness of his Texan mother, and the sensual lips and extravagant gestures of his Spanish father, who died a month after Bennie had announced to him by letter that he was gay. This sent Bennie to a psychiatrist to examine his problems with other people’s anger, disappointment, and criticism. “My father’s death was like a complete rejection.” He said some variation of this at almost every session, making it sound each time as if it were a sudden epiphany.

      Bennie’s room at the Glorious View Villa was the one that would have been mine, across from Vera’s at the end of the hall. The hotel liked to please tour leaders and gave them rooms with a mountain view, that of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. Its numerous jagged peaks did indeed recall a sleeping dragon with a ridged back. When I was last here and was told I had a mountain-view room, I was suspicious of what this meant, for I have been in hotels that claimed to have panoramas but had only the poetic hint of one. And on one unpleasant occasion, I snapped back the curtain to see that the view was indeed that of a mountain, only it was placed right against the window, the dark rock obscuring all light and emitting the dank smell of a cave.

      Bennie took a deep breath and inhaled inspiration from the mountain. The group had originally hoped to secure Dr. Bill Wu as tour leader, and a wise choice that would have been. He was a dear friend from the days when he and I were teaching at Mills College. But he was busy leading another group on an intensive study of the thousand Buddha carvings of the Dunhuang caves. Bennie had a few years of docent experience, but unlike me, he had never been to Burma or China and knew little about either country or its art. He had cried with gratitude when told after my funeral that he had been chosen the new leader. (That was after several other possibilities had been ruled out.) Thus appointed, he vowed to help in any way he could—by organizing luggage collection for transport, confirming airline reservations and passport needs, doing the hotel check-ins, arranging matters with the local guides provided by China’s and Burma’s offices of tourism, anything that would ensure that everyone had a marvelous, first-class adventure.

      Pleasing people was his greatest joy, he liked to say. Unfortunately, he often promised what was humanly impossible, and thus made himself the target of people’s ire when reality replaced intention. It was that way with his business. He was a graphic artist, and his lover, Timothy, was an art director. Bennie pledged impossibly fast turnarounds, special design elements and paper stock upgrades thrown in for free, a budget twenty percent lower than what any other firm had submitted, which later grew to be twenty-five percent higher than anyone else’s. (He had inherited this technique of estimates and overruns from his father, who was a building contractor.) There were always unavoidable, perfectly legitimate reasons for the overruns, of course, and in the end he endeared himself to the clients, for they were always ecstatic with the final product. He was, in fact, a very talented designer. But by going away to China and Burma for three weeks, he risked missing his deadlines—again.

      On the other hand, the current project was for the Asian Art Museum, and Bennie believed that they, of all people, would understand. He even convinced himself that I, dearly departed Bibi, was sending him signs to lead the tour in my permanent absence. For instance, he found a message in a fortune cookie: “Go where your heart leads you.” A book on Burma popped into his hands when he was in a bookstore. That same day, while purging his files, he happened upon an old invitation to a fund-raiser for the Asian, for which I was listed as a patron and he as having provided a donation in kind. I assure you, I was incapable of sending any such billets-doux. And had I been, I would have been far less subtle. I would have advised Bennie to stay home.

      To his credit, Bennie did conscientiously study the itinerary I had prepared. Before the departure date, he had called the various tourism offices in China and Burma to confirm that all arrangements were still locked in. He was so obsessed with making sure everything was right that he ate cashews constantly to assuage his gnawing anxiety. He later switched to pistachios and sunflower seeds, since shelling