Parishioners and Other Stories. Joseph Dylan

didn’t think she dared, this being her first time out with Levinson. Heng ordered a concoction of orange and pineapple juice.

      “What are your plans?” he asked congenially once they were seated. With his elbows on the table, he rubbed his hands together. He rubbed his hands together as though he was about to conjure a magic trick.

      “What plans?” Heng had only been half paying attention. She was trying to take in all the ornate decorations of the expensive restaurant. Still, the question seemed confusing. “What plans do you mean?”

      “I mean what are your plans. What’s the overall picture. What do you want to do with your life? Just what do you want out of life. You have to want something.” Before she could answer, the waitress brought them their drinks, setting them down on leather coasters on the red tablecloths. When the waitress asked them if they knew what they wanted to eat, Joshua Levinson replied in broken Chinese to “give them a few minutes.” Not a word he’d said in Chinese had the waitress understood. Heng told the woman in Mandarin to give them a few minutes. “So what are your plans?” Levinson repeated.

      “I want to get out of China.” Her own frankness amazed her. Normally, she would show more discretion. Only a few of the nurses in the clinic were aware of Heng’s desire to leave China. “I want to make a life for myself somewhere outside of China.”

      Sitting across from her, the palm of his right hand cupped, supporting his chin. At that precise moment, she wished she had ordered something stronger, something with a little alcohol, to take the edge off her feelings. Levinson could be disarmingly charming, but he always seemed to come around to things she didn’t want to talk about.

      “I thought you’d be more concerned about getting married,” he said, smiling. His smile was definitely a little crooked, rising higher on the left side than the right. His smile was crooked like a huckster’s proffering items of questionable quality or integrity.

      Refusing to be completely frank with him, she said, “I’m not that concerned about getting married.” Zhang Heng’s candor was only going to go so far.

      “You’re not,” he said, beaming. He began rubbing his hands together again. He rubbed his hands and then took a deep gulp of his martini. “That’s something of a revelation. You’re not married. Do you have a boyfriend?”

      “You ask a lot of questions.” She looked down at her lap. Seeing that the pleats of her skirt were askew, she straightened them out with her hands.

      “But you still have not told me whether you had a boyfriend or not? You told me that you weren’t married, but you didn’t mention anything about a boyfriend. I mean you’re an attractive woman. You must have a boyfriend. I’m dying to find out. What would it take for you to tell me?” Rosenthal plucked one of the olives from his martini, popping it into his mouth. He washed it down with another sip of his martini.

      “Not right now. We broke up a couple of months ago. He went back to his old girlfriend...I’d like to talk about something else, something more interesting.” She tried smiling at Rosenthal, but it was a thin, nervous smile. She suspected that Rosenthal could tell how tense she was.

      “Now, I find that fascinating. Absolutely fascinating.” His arms shot out, palms up. He began waving his arms like a young chick attempting to take flight. Then he placed the the palms of both hands back on the table. “I find you absolutely fascinating. Why would any hot-blooded Chinese man let you go. Certainly, there are a lot of men asking you out to dinner?” He chortled as though she had said something very clever and amusing. “There’s nothing more interesting to me right now than that.”

      “There are more interesting things in life than boyfriends.” She turned to the waitress. “Fuwuyuan,” she said. The woman came over to the table. “I’ll take some red wine.”

      “Is there something wrong with your juice?” inquired the waitress.

      “No. I just feel like a glass of red wine,” she stammered.

      “We have a red house wine. It’s a Merlot.”

      “Anything will do.”

      When the waitress had retreated, he said, “Most of the Chinese women that I’ve known just care about boyfriends and getting married and having a family.” For a brief moment he frowned. Then he smiled again. There was a small gap between his front teeth.

      “I’m not your typical Chinese woman,” said Zhang Heng abruptly. “I didn’t say I didn’t want them. I just said I wanted to get out of China. If I can get out of China, the rest will fall in place. Besides, I’m through with Chinese men.”

      “Are you so sure?” The man shrugged in his shoulders as though to say, “Are you kidding me?” When he smiled, his eyebrows writhed like pennants in the wind.

      “I want a family. I just don’t want a Chinese husband. They’re too vain...they’re too fickle. They’re too immature. They complain about everything. They complain about everything and don’t do the least to change things. They’re just not men. At least not the man my father was. He was a true man.”

      “Sounds like you have some fairly strong opinions on the subject. Sounds like you’ve had a couple of bad experiences.” He smiled, but this time didn’t laugh. “You must have been close to your father.”

      She nodded her head. “I was close to him. I was as close to him as a daughter can be to her father. He saw me through a lot. He saw the family through a lot. Most men these days can’t even keep the promises they make. I remember my father holding my hand, walking me to school. I remember him lifting me up the steps of the train that carried my family to Xinjiang when I was a little girl.”

      “Sounds like he was quite a man.”

      “He was. In his own way he was a very great man.” The waitress returned with her glass of Merlot. She took a sip.

      “He still alive.”

      “No, he passed away a couple of years ago. He had cancer. Liver cancer.”

      “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Levinson, now with all the probity of a small town judge. “Must of been very hard on you.”

      “It was. It was hard on all the family.” Heng opened the menu going through it page by page, the dishes in photographs with their names in both Mandarin and English.

      “But you don’t want to settle down with a Chinese boyfriend?”

      “No,” she replied sharply. “I already told you that. I just know that I don’t want to marry a Chinese man. Besides if I marry one, I’ll never get away from this place.”

      “You’re sure about all this?” His hands, which had been balled up into two small fists on the table, he spread out on the tablecloth. Again, he seemed to be setting her up for some sort of card trick.

      “These days, I’m not sure of anything,” she replied. “I’d just like it to be that way...Certainly there are more interesting things to talk about.” She paused and looked down at the menu.

      “Sounds like you need a boyfriend, a Westerner. A Lao Wei.” He smiled from ear-to- ear.

      “Fuwuyuan,” she said abruptly to the waitress. She was beginning to regret that she ever accepted the dinner invitation. “What do you want to eat?”

      “The Gung Pao Chicken is always good.”

      “That’s all you foreigners eat. Let’s try something a little different. Do you mind spicy food?”

      “Do you mean, do I like it. I love it. I love it.” He chuckled. “Go ahead and order. The spicier the better.” He set his menu on the table.

      Zhang Heng continued to peruse the menu. Taking her time, she knew that the questions would abate until she had finished ordering. Telling the waitress that they wanted hot, diced chicken as the main course, she ordered some cold dishes and one hot dish of vegetables. All the while she was ordering their dinner, Levinson