Lost in Translation Page 0,1

center. She steered into a brick-paved, stone-walled alley so narrow, her bicycle could barely pass. There. The Brilliant Coffee.

The neon sign screamed COFFEE in English, English being very fashionable in Beijing just now, but of course coffee had very little to do with the purposes of this establishment. She chained her bike to the crowded metal rack. There was one door, painted black, and a row of windows sealed over to make the place appear closed. There were no signs of life. But it was Friday night, almost midnight, and Alice knew better.

She pushed open the door. Instantly she was hit with the pounding, insistent karaoke bass and above that the roaring stutter of a smoking, chattering crowd. Hip, dazzlingly dressed Chinese, fresh out of their cultural confinement and keening to be part of the exploding yangqi, the now, crammed in shoulder to shoulder. Not a seat anywhere, she thought, looking around. Hardly a place to stand.

Across the low-ceilinged room she watched a slight man with a closely cropped black head and antique round glasses take the stage and begin belting a nineteen fifties R&B tune. He lurched from one foot to the other, out of time with the music, swinging the microphone stand from side to side as he shouted out each syllable.

She smiled. God, she loved Beijing. Tomorrow she would meet her new client. Tonight was free. She scanned the packed tables as the horns took off in a smart, prerecorded flourish.

A man slid into place beside her. He had wide shoulders, a deep waist, and black eyes flat in his head. "You await someone?" he said in Chinese.

"Wo zai deng, wo bu zai deng, " she shrugged, her intonation almost perfect. I’m waiting, but then again I’m not. "What about you?"

He smiled, pleased with her subtlety, and it warmed her all over, because it was an uncontrolled streak of pleasure that opened his ivory-colored face suddenly into something unprotected, almost innocent—though innocence, in a place like the Brilliant Coffee, would be impossible. People kept themselves well concealed in places like this. Which suited Alice fine.

He laughed softly. "I wait for you," he said. "And an outside person too. Imagine."

"Yes. An outside person." Behind his smile she caught the usual male reserve, the relaxed sense of his own racial superiority which always made her tremble with fear and hope and excitement.

"Please." He signaled with a sidelong glance, then turned and threaded through the crowd away from her, not leading her, not even looking back at her, but knowing she would follow. A waiter jostled past them with a full tray. She felt the Chinese eyes: Look, a Western woman in a short black dress, red hair, birdlike, freckled. She liked being noticed. It heightened the satisfaction of nights like these, nights she allowed herself because, after all, she was a woman and when there wasn’t real love in her life she needed, at least, some attention. Now—a miracle. The man was producing two empty chairs.

"How are you called?" He leaned close to shut out the wall of music.

She answered "Yulian," the Chinese name she currently used for these situations. Yulian was an old-fashioned name; it meant Fragrant Lotus. It was a name that rang on many levels. The bound feet had been called lotuses, and there was also that famous heroine of Chinese erotic fiction, the Golden Lotus.

These allusions were not lost on him. He pressed his mouth together in amusement. "I’m Lu Ming."

A hollow-chested young waiter with a sharp, acne-cratered face materialized. "Bai jiu," Lu Ming told him, slang for the steamroller 120-proof rice spirits popular in China. Then he turned to Alice: "Unless you’d rather have a"—he interrupted his Chinese to try to pronounce it the English way—"Coca-Cola?"

"Bai jiu ye xing," she answered. Good, she thought, rice spirits, one shot, maybe two. It was better to be high. "Good. Bai jiu."

The spirits arrived, clear liquid in two tiny glasses. Lu Ming toasted their friendship with a standard phrase, and then added, "Gan-bei," dry glass, and they both drained it and laughed. The fire burned through her stomach and rose instantly to her head. How long since she’d eaten?

"What are you doing in Beijing?" Lu Ming asked, circling his empty glass on the wet tabletop.

She paused. Sometimes she invented professions; tonight, on a whim, she decided to tell the truth. "I’m an interpreter."

"Trade?"

"Freelance. I’m about to start a job with an archaeologist. Something to do with Homo erectus."

"Eh?" he squinted.

"You know, Homo erectus, our ancestors, the missing