When his daughter Rose was months from graduating high school, N started swimming. He met a man at the pool. For several months, they only ever saw each other in swim trunks or naked in the locker room. N often saw him while swimming in the fast lane at the community center pool, and they nodded to each other when they saw each other. Hao Zhang, as he later introduced himself to N, was in his mid-fifties but he was a notably fast swimmer. He also had commendable endurance. He could swim five hundred meters of butterfly without stopping. He wore a white swim cap with the words “We Are the One” on it, and, unworried by the drag and possible corrosive effects of chlorine, he sported a gold chain that he never took off. Hao Zhang was muscular and fit and seemed like he could be good at any sport. When the whistle was blown to mark the end of lap swimming, he headed to the lockers and sat naked in the hot tub with his arms spread open like a gangster. And, of course, N noticed his big dick.
N showed up at the pool three days a week. His office was near the diamond district, where he worked for a water treatment company, selling filtration technology. N took the last open swim slot of the evening from 8-10PM. He spent his entire weekend either with his daughter or waiting for his daughter who was that rare breed of student who was both studious and popular. When Rose was born, N dropped out of university where he was studying chemical engineering to work in the private sector. He had trouble explaining his new work to Rose’s mother Jenny who called him a plumber. N remembered the conversation over their grilled cheese dinner very well. Jenny said she had dreams about water sometimes. Water would pour over her as she was trying to climb a ladder. N told her that it wasn’t his expertise, but water dreams could mean that there was something in her waking life that was overwhelming her, or it could mean that she was about receive a financial windfall. She said she had had these dreams all her life. They laughed about it. Jenny then went to buy a lotto ticket the next day at the liquor store they often patronized. She kept the lotto ticket sandwiched in the pages of the July edition of a pop culture magazine she kept rolled up in her purse. She won a fair amount of money, quietly cashed it out, and without so much as a note, left N to raise Rose. N heard from her parents that she had gone to New York to chase a dream. What dream? N asked. And her father replied, I’m sorry. When Rose was four, she had her first strawberry. When Rose’s fourth-grade boyfriend left her for a girl who wore pigtails, N was home waiting for her. It was the most furious N had ever seen her and he spent a troubled night where the thought of her mother entered his mind for the first time in many years. Many years after that Rose became inspired by the philosopher Foucault and the economist Arrighi and wrote an essay with the title, Transnational Dreaming: The Port of Hong Kong and the Body, which N read through four times and gathered from it that there was a nation, Hong Kong, and another nation, the nation of shipping workers, and that the lines of transnational shipping which were also originally the lines of communication was how the modern world was created. There was also some other idea that maybe Rose wasn’t even aware of herself, that the body was better conceived of as a ghost or astral projection. In any case, something that tended to both disappear and linger. N thought to himself, She’s smarter than I ever was. And again, he thought of her mother in the night while in bed. At the time N met Hao, Rose was seventeen and she was excited about leaving home to a faraway city for school. She also seemed guilty, as if she believed she was abandoning her father, and she took care to spend time with him on weekends and on rare occasions she cooked dinner for the both of them during weekdays. While Rose would be cooking, N loitered and helped out when he could while she talked about stocks and what currencies were depreciating or appreciating.
Sometimes, while alone, on his way home from work or on troubled nights where he read novels that narrated the characters’ whole lives, N wondered what life would have been like if he had pursued the ambition of becoming a scientist (at NASA) or becoming a musician (pianist). Other times, he never thought of it at all and simply survived like a snail making its way on a log or a clover among other clovers.
Swimming was something he looked forward to, and only a month after he began, N could feel himself getting stronger. Rose liked stories about the strange cast of characters and joked that gangsters ran the pool. They were like school bullies and they will slap you and take your money. There were a few suspicious characters, N agreed, but he said perhaps that was simply representative of the general public. In general, N explained his observations, the groups broke down into those who were regulars, people who learned how to swim but never learned how to push themselves. There were people in the process of learning. Old people who struggled against the water and others who socialized in the slow lanes. The locker room was a place he had to get accustomed to because he wasn’t really comfortable with getting naked in front of strangers and blow drying his hair. Usually, N left the pool without taking as long as the common swimmer in the showers. But one day, he forgot his phone, and as he was heading back into the locker rooms in a state of panic, he heard, Hey you! And there was Hao, holding his phone up with a rakish smile. At first, N had trouble recognizing Hao because he was dressed. He was in a well-fitting but obviously cheap navy suit with no tie—a suit tailored for men of a particular age. His hair, which had always been hidden under a cap, was wavy and full. Hao took the time to praise N’s backstroke and gave him tips. He invited N to have a drink nearby and, against his better judgment, N accepted the invitation.
***
The pool was located near the garment district. The center of the garment district was full of tourists, but the edge of the garment district was where the wholesalers set up shop. A canal, a park with a little stream for couples to stroll along, marked the northern border of the district. Hao, full of a youthful energy, proudly declared that this liminal region was his turf and led N to a plaza where a café named Café Fashion People served as a focal point in front of which a few tents with seats were arrayed. Workers drank there – motorcyclists, truck drivers, warehouse stockists. Hao stepped up to a tent and a woman who seemed to be in her sixties greeted him with effusive friendliness, inviting the two of them to be seated at a plastic table. Hao ordered raw octopus that came to the table still writhing, a clear liquor, and two tall bottles of beer. N asked Hao what he meant when he said that this area was his turf and he told N that he worked here and that he was well-respected. He used to run what he called a boutique shop of golf apparel named Labroste – Rhymes with cost, Hao said, as in high-cost – which was similar in quality to the respectable brands of the day. The emblem was a light green gecko, sewn onto every item they sold. Green for money, he said.
“Ah,” said N.
“It’s my own brand,” Hao said.
“Did you trademark it?”
Hao nodded ambiguously and said, “You can’t sell fakes. It’s illegal. They’ll catch you.”
“Who will catch you?” N asked.
“The police,” Hao replied. “Interpol,” he said. He made a gesture that indicated, Everyone.
Then they talked about swimming and how they learned. They talked about which oceans and seas they had swam in. N, the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, the Caribbean Sea for the only family vacation of my life, he said, and once in the Sargasso Sea. Hao said he had swam everywhere but the Sargasso Sea. Even the Arctic Ocean? N asked. Even the Arctic Ocean. That was when I was a sailor for a Russian liner. I’ve been to the Maldives too. I want to go, N said. Hao looked at N like a smiling cat and said, The Maldives is, and he held up his hand and rubbed his thumb against his pointer and middle fingers.
After they ate and finished two more bottles of beer, Hao made a big show of paying for the both of them, putting a rough hand on N’s shoulder to keep him in his seat while Hao went to pay the proprietor. It even seemed like he was tipping the old lady handsomely. He asked about her son, who N pieced together was also working somewhere nearby at a job that took a physical toll on his body. N noticed the way the lady looked at Hao, like the neighborhood savior. Hao Zhang led N to a nearby warehouse, and N saw a garage door open and workers transporting tightly packed packages. Hao and N stopped in front of a little truck called the Bellhop which Hao said was his, a truck only meant to transport stuff within the city. He circled the truck and showed off its features. Two locks, he said. A dolly. Here’s Sam, he said, gesturing to a large man he called his employee in the same tone of voice he was using to describe the features of the truck. Hao opened the doors as if throwing open the gate of a nobleman’s estate. There used to be an air conditioning unit for when I transported seafood. He pointed at the back. Crabs. Delicious. He left the doors open and gestured at the goods on the ground. Look at this. He was pointing at mounds of blankets wrapped in plastic and taped shut. Letters and numbers were written in fat marker on each bundle.
“4a,” N read. “What’s this for?”
“Organizing. We follow the basic principles of organization. The 4 means something, and the lowercase a does too.”
“Ah,” said N.
“The money is good. Some of this goes as far as China,” he boasted.
“How good is the money?”
“Are you curious?” Hao laughed, but he didn’t answer the question.
N then asked if he would give N a tour of the warehouse, but Hao said that it was currently busy and he didn’t want to distract the workers. Instead, he gestured back towards the tents which looked to N like the gathering of a horde. If you want to meet my colleagues, Hao elaborated, We drink here often. Things don’t really get started until 4AM. N was surprised and asked when he woke up for the day’s work. Around 2PM, Hao said. But really, I only need four hours of sleep.
Hao told N all of this standing in the doorway of the truck, tall and broad shouldered like the statue of some ancient hero, and while en route to get more beer which they drank on the street like young delinquents, he was no different. Hao strode like a conquering hero and laughed like a bearded hero. He seemed to be rigorous in his work, something N admired because he wished he could be rigorous. Hao tolerated no laxity in those around him either, working just as hard or harder than those he employed. The strict quality of his work life only made his personal life of greater interest to N. I’m a rich man when it comes to love, do you know? Money isn’t everything, of course. I have a great love story. Not everyone has a great love story, so I consider myself lucky. If I ever feel desperate and alone in life, I just remind myself that I’ve felt some things that I’m not sure others ever feel. I’ve seen some things that I’m not sure others have seen. He spoke so surely in these broad generalities and it affected N deeply. But there were moments that Hao seemed cheesy and quaint. Her name was Lulu. The name of every legendary bar girl in the late eighties and early nineties. Lulu or Kiki. They all wore wigs. Blonde or pink wigs. Mine was Lulu. I married her, he said proudly. But he didn’t elaborate.
The descriptions in that part of Hao’s monologue barely brought any recognizable imagery into N’s mind and for the only time that evening, N felt their insuperable cultural gap and wondered how much of Hao’s stories were truth and how much was fiction.
N left Hao a little past midnight. Though drunker than he intended, in the cool air of a March night, N was supercharged with a renewed sense of ambition. N considered hailing a cab, but changed his mind and took a late-night bus. As soon as he stepped on the bus, it was unnaturally bright, filled with a throbbing white light overloaded with electricity, the super-clarity of an operation room. At home, he put a glass on the table where Rose was still working on her paper on Emerson and the Church of Morning (whatever that was), and he poured water from a carafe into the glass. She looked from her work and knew something had happened. N told her the story of his evening. He described the truck and the bags of goods and tried to convey the atmosphere of the tent where they drank. He told her about Labroste and how expensive it was. I never met anyone who worked in textiles before, N said. Rose interrupted him to say, You sound like you like him. Too much. What do you mean too much? N asked. I mean that something doesn’t sound right. Something sounds dangerous. N laughed carelessly and asked about her day. She told him about the novel she was reading and what the weather was like while she was on the way to school, sunny and windy. She needed sunglasses that afternoon and N knew which pair she meant, a pair that rendered buildings and trees and roads into tones more golden than sepia, more butterscotch than auburn. She told him what she was listening to on her headphones and N knew the artist as well. The music Rose was listening to was strange electronic music that reminded N of the early days of technology.
“Are you seeing someone?” she suddenly asked.
“No,” he said. “Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know. But I feel like if you have an affair, you’d be the type to fall in love. Right away. And then you’d be a totally different person. You’re just that type.” She looked at him for the briefest of seconds, “I don’t think love is good for you, dad.”
“I don’t have time for love,” N replied. That night, a quarter before 3, he woke abruptly in the grip of a terror that told him something had happened to Rose. She’s being attacked, said a voice. Hurry. He reached over to his nightstand and felt for anything that could be a weapon and rushed down the hallway to her room clutching a pen in his fist. There she was, her long body under the covers, her hair messy. Her hand was by her face and her eye twitched a bit. N watched her until he was sure she was breathing properly and then he turned away, slack-limbed and assured. Whose voice had spoken to him earlier? When he was snug in bed with a head still full of booze, N thought of what Rose had said about love and then he thought of Rose’s mother for the third time since she left.
At the very beginning of his career in water filtration, N traveled to Kuala Lumpur on a business trip. He stayed in The Grand Hyatt, which struck him as exceptionally lush, with dark green flora in the lobby and large skylights. After he checked into the hotel at 6PM, exhausted from the travel from New York, he fell asleep on top of the sheets. When he woke, it was 9. The windows were dark. If he put his head on the glass, it seemed like he could hear a busy subway deep underground. He showered and changed. He went to a hotel restaurant high above the city and had a light dinner of grilled fish and a salad. Midway through the meal, he added a glass of Chardonnay. The total came to over fifty dollars and N promised himself he would bring Rose’s mother someday. He considered taking a quiet and luxurious elevator down to the first floor and walking out into the city, but he wanted to rest in preparation for the next day, so he went up to the lounge, where he ordered a scotch. Well past 11, he was still awake, suffused with the feeling of a dreamer dimly aware he wasn’t in the real world, so he visited the pool with his trunks and a hotel towel hoping that a workout would tire him out. The pool was on the top floor and the roof was a skylight that opened to only the night sky. The chlorine was barely noticeable and fresh. The deck was quiet and warm. Unlike a busy public pool, there was only one other person at the pool at that hour. An older man in perfect shape was swimming laps in black form fitting trunks. He executed perfect flip turns. Now, revisiting that memory, it seemed to N that Hao’s face and physique had replaced that of the original man and that the memory of the original man had been completely erased.
***
It was almost a week later before N saw Hao at the pool again, even though N had gone swimming every other day. Hao left the pool quickly and was nowhere to be found in the showers or the locker room. As N was leaving the building, he saw Hao waiting for him, smoking a cigarette or a joint. They returned to the plaza at Café Fashion People and ate again at the tent with the old lady who recognized N this time around.
“I’ve been busy,” Hao said. “Very busy.”
“These days there are many people like me,” he said.
“What do you mean people like you?” N asked.
“Dreamers,” he said. “Dreamers in a foreign land. They could be anywhere.”
“You’re not foreign. Aren’t you from here?”
Hao laughed and pointed across the canal. “I was born at that hospital. But I don’t recognize this city anymore.”
He gestured at the buildings nearby and even at the night sky, which had a few gauzy, stretched out clouds and no stars and a moon hiding somewhere to the east. At that time, Hao went on, this canal was a river. Then it was a river with a highway over it when I was in high school. And then it became filled with trash. Now, it’s a revamped tourist trap with a little neat, paved path and a canal filled with tap water. The world is always changing. It changes because people do the impossible. And then Hao looked at N and said, Anything is possible if you believe, stressing the word “believe.” When he spoke the word “believe,” N could see Hao’s strong, even teeth. N thought of a young Hao, a Hao that frolicked along the banks of a little river in a city not quite rich nor developed. Then a Hao full of angst under a bridge. A Hao not yet familiar with the extent of pain nor failure that was possible in a life.
“Do you want to make a little money?” Hao asked.
Easy money. The plan was simple. N signs for a warehouse and Hao pays him a cut of the new business. We’ll sell these, Hao said. And he showed N a series of photographs on his phone. He held it close so N had to lean in to see it properly. Hoodies and shirts with bold geometric designs and industrial style text, like the shirts were a series of limited-edition prints and each print was endowed with a unique number, never to be repeated. This is excellent work, said N. Magnificent. This is what I have in mind, Hao said. He felt in pockets for a blue pen and a red pen, and in a matter of seconds he had drawn a map of East Asia and dotted lines to illustrate routes (in red) crisscrossing the various seas and the routes across land as well (in blue). Then he drew the type of cargo ship that would carry the goods, stacked with containers. Then he drew the ideal shop that would house the property. He said that if everything went well, there would even be a shop. But for now, everything could begin its existence in the collective dream online.
N commented on how well he drew, and Hao said, I draw all my designs. I can only draw something if it comes from here – he held a palm over his heart – or here – and he pointed at his temple. Many people, amateurs, draw from photographs. I can’t. It will end up a diminished attempt at capturing the thing or it’s a copy. People don’t want to say it, but there aren’t any copies of anything in the world. Not of anything important. N said that he wished he could draw because there were many things he imagined. Don’t you have a full life? Drawing from memory is acceptable, Hao said. I once went on a trip with my late wife. We went to Norway because she wanted to see whales and I regretted not taking any photos. But many years later, I drew it. I drew the cabin we stayed in and the view from the train we rode from Oslo S. I drew the backs of the whales and then I drew the whales from the perspective of being underwater. But there was one thing I couldn’t draw, which was the whale song itself.
You can think about it, said Hao. They ordered more beer and exchanged numbers. I’ll take you home, Hao offered. We can ride in the Bellhop. Don’t you need it for work? N asked. I have five trucks. Hao made some masculine gesture. Don’t worry about it. They are all over the city right now, busy as ants.
N thought that Rose must be at home. He envisioned her in her bedroom, trying on her clothes and laying them out on her bed and an open trunk on the floor. Some of the lights in the apartment must be off, N thought.
“I’ll sign it,” N said.
Hao returned to the topic of his cabin in Norway. While talking about the Norwegian Sea and how dark and cold it was, Hao pulled out a stack of papers. He continued to talk as he flipped the pages and N signed five documents, which Hao placed into a black leather briefcase without looking at them.
***
Hao said he needed to take care of something and they returned to the warehouse, N with the fleeting sense that he was trailing Hao, but the thought was vaguely formed and quickly dissipated and N didn’t think about what it could mean. Unlike the first night, the warehouse was now completely empty. Even the surrounding streets were quiet with only a few pedestrians lingering like lovers in front of houses. Or zombies. All the activity that had exhilarated N only a week ago had ceased, as though an epidemic had swept the city and the economy had ground to a halt. Inside the building, with nothing on the floor and shelves, the warehouse seemed so much larger and colder than N expected.
“Where is everyone?” N asked.
“Everyone’s resting,” said Hao.
Hao flicked one switch and only half the lights in the room came on. Immediately N thought of the scenes on TV shows where drug deals were about to take place. On the bare metal shelves was one navy duffle bag. Hao unzipped the duffle bag and N saw that there was cash inside. Hao zipped the bag shut and walked to the door and said, Wait a second, I’ll be right back. N thought about the cash for only a second and then thought that businessmen were always moving cash around. He walked around the storeroom, full of ecclesiastical echoes and heavy silence. It’s like a church, N realized, and even though she wasn’t there he knew Rose would say something about that. He took his phone out and texted her, Where are you? And she didn’t respond in the next few seconds that he stared at the phone. He wondered to himself if he was a bad father and he realized he had no way of knowing whether or not he was a good father or a bad father and then he thought that if Rose said that he was a good father, then he was a good father. Where could she have gone though? N felt as though he had made a very terrible mistake and he wondered how he had even ended up here. On one of the shelves, he found a glossy magazine. The magazine was a pop magazine with a portrait of a popular star on the cover and in its pages, were stories about that star and other stars’ marriages and suspected lovers. Their falls from grace and their suicides. It was a magazine N knew was found in bookstores and gas stations and convenience stores. Rose bought it occasionally and cut pages out for a wish board.
N put the magazine down and pulled his jacket tight. He looked at the bare metal of the shelves, the indifferent mechanism of the garage door. There were faint voices somewhere outside and the sound of a car engine or a truck. N looked into the rafters and the peaked ceiling and thought again, It’s like a cathedral, and he thought of the old laws of sanctuary where slaves would show up at cathedrals, hoping to find safe harbor. N remembered stories he heard about war criminals staying for years in temples after the war. They even shaved their heads and adopted temple life. N felt he could live at a temple for years. He texted his daughter again, Are you home? Then he thought it seemed desperate and he told himself he wouldn’t text her again. N wondered where Hao had gone and he felt utterly abandoned.
At that very moment, Hao showed up again, appearing by N’s side, who didn’t hear him approach. “Did you think I ran away?”
Hao laughed and put his fingers through his hair.
Alright, look at this, Hao said. Close your eyes and picture this. This is what it’ll be like. Hao slipped a hand into the inside of N’s arm as if to help him stand. Textiles, coats, blankets on every shelf, Hao said. People are shouting to each other. Months pass. Things get so busy, we get a forklift. Boxes are packed with address labels on them and delivered all over the country. The box comes to someone’s front door and they’re happy about it. Hao and N were standing in place. In the middle of an enormous floor. Hao was speaking almost in a whisper. N started to feel dizzy, as if something had been slipped in his drink. A full warehouse. A busy floor of forklifts and workers pushing dollies, Hao said. N asked, And taking breaks and eating snacks? That’s right, Hao said. The workers have plenty of breaks. They smoke cigarettes and eat snacks. Everyone’s happy. Close your eyes, he said. Keep them closed. N began to get very frightened. Hao grabbed N’s hand. It was a hand accustomed to tools. I’m here, he said, in the cocksure voice of an experienced doctor. Imagine it. Everything I told you. Imagine. Hao’s grip was very tight.
