Going the Distance Read online

  A few more teachers trailed out of the mah-jongg room and studied the tree, looking dubious, amused, and alarmed. More than a few snickered, though not all maliciously. Olivia pursed her lips. They’d see. It wasn’t finished yet.

  “This is Ritchie,” she said, gesturing between Honor and the architect. “He helped design it. He knows what he’s doing.”

  “Ritchie?” Honor echoed, looking at him for the first time.

  Ritchie cleared his throat and stuck out a hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  Honor hesitated, then grasped his fingers. “Nice to meet you, too.”

  Olivia tried not to laugh. She’d taught her students how to introduce themselves in January, and their practice dialogues had gone a lot like this. Only…not quite like this. Because Ritchie and Honor were gazing at each other with more than the strained discomfort and amusement her students had displayed. They looked…interested.

  “Ritchie is an architect,” she said. “He works at the project down the road.”

  “Yes,” Honor said, nodding. “I know it.” It was the only project in this part of Lazhou that had foreign workers; everybody knew it.

  “You’re a teacher here, Honor?” Ritchie asked, though that was obvious, too.

  “Yes. I teach the same year as Olivia. She is a good teacher.”

  Olivia glanced up, surprised. No one here had ever complimented her on anything other than her looks. Your hair, so yellow! Your eyes, so big! Very pretty! Maybe a little fat.

  “Thanks, Honor.”

  “You are welcome.” She and Ritchie were still flicking shy glances at each other, and now a few of the braver teachers meandered closer, studying both the tree and the strange man. Olivia had a fleeting image of Jarek standing here, towering over everybody, intimidating them with his stern glare. He’d never been to the school but he had learned its name, and her middle name, and a few other things that said he wasn’t trying to be an uncaring asshole all the time, it was just his nature. But he staunchly refused to talk much about himself, so she’d settled for him being a decent person who made an effort, and chosen not to dwell on the fact that she regularly slept with a man whose middle name she did not know. Well, slept wasn’t the word for it. They didn’t sleep, and he didn’t sleep over. Ever. And he never invited her to his apartment, either, not once. She rather suspected he just didn’t want to schlep her back to her place in the middle of the night, since he remained convinced that she’d fall in love with him and beg to have his babies if they ate breakfast together.

  What he did obsess over, however, was how to make her orgasms better, constantly grilling her about what she wanted him to do. He swore up and down that he’d do anything, there was nothing she could ask outside of having him piss on her that he wouldn’t at least consider. She was both flattered and unnerved by his focus, but she didn’t know what the problem was. She liked sex in general, and sex with him in particular. She didn’t have any secret wants or desires she was afraid to express. There were times the build up to orgasm was promising, that she was sure it was leading up to the “big one” Jarek seemed intent to find. And then it didn’t work out. She still came; she wasn’t unsatisfied. But he was. And no matter how many questions he asked, she honestly didn’t have the answer to this one.

  She shook her head and tuned back into the conversation. The teachers were asking Honor questions for Ritchie, and she was shyly translating the responses. How old are you? Twenty-nine. Are you married? No. Where do you live? Down the street. Do you like China? Yes, I do.

  Olivia smiled as she watched the interrogation, and thought she’d rather like to bring Jarek here one day, see him fend for himself against these women, and learn a little bit about the man who’d become her second friend in over a year.

  There wasn’t time to dwell on this thought, however, because right then the bell rang and seconds later came the telltale roar of the kids racing out of the cafeteria and back to their classes. Ritchie paled and took off, absorbed into the incoming swarm, and everyone returned to their regular routines. Olivia waited at the door to welcome the kids back, explaining patiently that “what is that thing?” was a tree, or at least it would be, exhausted by the time Davy trailed in after the others.

  “Tree?” he echoed thoughtfully, staring at it.

  “It will be,” Olivia told him. “When I’m done.”

  “Yes,” he said with a nod. “Okay. Very good.”

  She smothered a laugh and followed him into the room, ordering everyone into their seats. “How was lunch?” she asked, as she did every day.

  She was answered with varied shouts in English and Mandarin, punctuated by Rose’s insistent “Liv! Liv!” Olivia silenced them and fixed Rose with a stare that said she’d heard her, and now she must wait to be called on. The little girl with perpetual grass stains on her pants and tangles in her hair folded her hands and stared straight ahead obediently.

  “Okay, Rose,” Olivia said, trying not to smile. “Please put in the CD. We’re going to play song number four today.”

  Rose leapt from her seat like a firecracker, and scurried over to the CD player to fumble with the CD she’d been allowed to touch for exactly seven days. Olivia had finally managed to control Rose’s impulses with a tentative reward system—don’t be bad, and you can put in and take out the CD when we sing songs. At six years old, this was the epitome of Rose’s ambition, and she struggled mightily to maintain the privilege.

  “Everybody stand up, please,” Olivia called as the now-familiar opening notes of “The Hokey Pokey” rang out. The class absolutely loved this song, particularly because the last verse allowed the participants to choose the action, and they were delighted to stick their heads “in,” or their tongues, or, on several occasions, their butts. More than once Olivia had been shaking her ass “in” and then “out,” only to spot a fellow teacher peering through the window, bewildered.

  “Alan!” she shouted, when the last verse was about to begin. “What should we do?” The kids absolutely died to be the one to pick the movement, and Alan, who had studiously hated Olivia and refused to speak to her from the second she’d set foot in the classroom, loved to dance. She’d been trying to get him to participate in this part of the song since they’d first begun learning it, and could see the urge to suggest something warring with his reluctance to speak to her. Again today, as he had for weeks, he folded his arms and shook his head stubbornly.

  “Who else?” she tried. Every other hand in the room went up.

  Three hours later she waved good-bye, another day over. Alan, of course, ignored her, but everyone else shouted, “See you tomorrow,” before darting out of the room. Olivia waited until the courtyard was clear, then gathered the feather “treetop” she’d made at lunch the day before, and shuffled out to the trunk that had been drying all afternoon. She set down the bundle of feathers and stared at the monstrosity. It would look better with paint, definitely. She returned to the class to fetch a chair and the length of rope she’d gotten from Ritchie, and was working hard at fixing the treetop to the tree when she heard a tiny voice.

  “O-liv-ya?”

  She glanced down to see Davy standing a few feet away, watching. “Hey, buddy. What are you doing here?”

  He replied in Mandarin and she didn’t understand a word. Davy thought for a second, then put his hands on his hips and said, “The tree is green and brown.” He pointed accusingly at the trunk. “No brown.”

  “I know,” Olivia replied. “I’m going to paint it now.” The newspaper felt dry to the touch, and she’d fastened it around a tall metal post Ritchie had rescued from the trash pile at the site, then covered in cardboard. She ducked into the class and returned with a bottle of brown paint, a paper plate, and two brushes. “Want to help?”

  Davy nodded and they got to work. It took nearly an hour to get the trunk painted, and when they were done they stepped back—then farther back—to truly appreciate it. It looked like a tree. Like a tree from a Dr. Seuss book that had
been in a storm and barely made it out the other side. But Davy was beaming.

  “Very good, Davy.”

  A voice called out in Mandarin and they both turned as one of the older Chinese teachers entered the courtyard. She addressed Davy and snapped her fingers, and Davy handed her the brush and waved good-bye before running off. Olivia tidied up and collected her things, then contemplated rolling the tree into her classroom for the night before deciding against it. The sky was clear blue, not a cloud in sight, and she didn’t want the paint and paste fumes to permeate the room.

  “Hello, Olivia.”

  For the second time that day, she turned to see Honor watching from the doorway. “Hi, Honor.” Three other Chinese teachers hovered behind their friend, looking on. “Is everything okay?” She didn’t want to hear another word about the tree. Really. She could see it.

  “Yes, everything is fine. Do you want to have dinner together tonight?”

  Olivia’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly, like a startled fish. “Yes,” she said finally. “Okay. Thank you.”

  “Let’s go.”

  She trailed the four girls out of the school and down the busy road, turning down one narrow street and then another before emerging in a crowded alley. “Is here okay?” Honor asked, as though Olivia might have a clue one way or the other.

  “We’ll see,” she said.

  They went inside what turned out to be a bustling hot pot restaurant. Olivia had had hot pot once before in Lazhou, at another, somewhat nicer place. During her first week at the school she learned that different teachers had been instructed to hang out with her in the evenings and show her around, and they’d half-heartedly done so, though Honor hadn’t been among them. She’d eaten strange foods, been taken to McDonald’s and KFC—twice—and guided around the large supermarket. Almost immediately after her initiation week, she’d been completely and unceremoniously abandoned. If she wasn’t mistaken, this was the first time anyone from the school had opted to hang out with her when they weren’t being ordered to do so.

  The restaurant was large and crowded with tables and people and carts full of raw food. The basic premise was that each table came with its own pot of boiling broth and a sprawling order form with every possible kind of food listed—in Chinese, of course. Diners checked off which food they would like, it arrived at the table raw—beef; quail eggs; mushrooms; potatoes; pig brains; stomach lining; meatballs; live, crawling shrimp—absolutely everything—and patrons cooked it at their leisure, fishing out various items when they decided they were ready.

  Olivia hadn’t known what the hell was happening the first time she’d come, and though she wasn’t a picky eater, she really hadn’t enjoyed herself. Things went into the broth looking one way, and came out completely unidentifiable. She didn’t recognize seventy percent of the food she’d put in her mouth. Diners at another table had tipped over their covered container of live shrimp, squealing with laughter when they scrambled over the table, trying to escape. Tonight, at least, Honor and Sunny, one of the other teachers, made an effort to help her find things she might like, and spoke English even though it appeared to pain them to do so.

  A tray of small puffed pastries arrived, filled with an unrecognizable purplish-gray paste. They urged her to take one, then took one themselves, biting in. The pastry was light and flaky, the filling a strange texture, both sweet and salty. “Do you like it?” Sunny asked.

  Olivia nodded around a mouthful. “It’s different. What is it?”

  “A snack,” Sunny answered.

  “Snack?” Honor echoed, frowning. “Or snake?”

  “Hmm,” Sunny mused thoughtfully.

  Olivia stopped chewing, horrified. “Which is it?” Tiny bits of pastry stuck to her lip and she wiggled her arm like a serpent. “Snake?”

  “Oh,” Honor said. “No. Not a snake. A snack.”

  Olivia finished the pastry but declined a second one, and eventually they were eating a variety of boiled foods and Olivia was spending her first night in the company of someone who wasn’t Jarek, and having a pretty decent time. What she couldn’t figure out was why, until the teachers exchanged sly looks and asked her how well she knew Ritchie.

  “I think I may have to pimp him out,” she told Jarek the next evening on their run. “If it makes me friends at school, I’m going to do it.”

  “He could use a bit of pimping,” Jarek agreed, running a circle around her. “He’s kind of twitchy.”

  “I know. And Honor’s so cute. They’ll make a good couple.”

  “That important to you?”

  “That Ritchie and Honor get together?” She laughed and tightened her ponytail. It was warm enough now that she could run in shorts and a long sleeve top and not freeze her ass off. “Not really. But today four people talked to me—four. That’s…four more than normal.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “What did you mean?” She looked at him and he jogged ahead so he could turn around and run backward, watching her as they talked. They’d been running for close to an hour and his cheeks were flushed and his hairline was damp with sweat, his blue T-shirt sticking to his chest. She’d thought he was intimidating when they’d met, with his perma-scowl and fixed stares, but now she just thought he was hot. Moody. Closed off. But still hot. Hotter for trying to be a decent guy when they were together.

  “You were popular in high school, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess?” He mock-punched her in the shoulder, some weird boxing thing.

  “Okay, fine. I was popular.”

  “Beauty pageants?”

  “God, no.” She’d begged, but her mother said she’d rather die than see her smart, athletic daughter parade around in a bathing suit.

  “Homecoming queen?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Student council president?”

  “Treasurer.”

  “Valedictorian?”

  “So?”

  “So you’ve never been a normal person. Not everybody gets fawned over every day.”

  “I know that.” She certainly did know that. She’d spent the first twenty-five years of her life in a bubble, and then it had burst. “Were you a loner?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t think you had any friends at all.”

  He laughed. “I had friends.”

  “Your brother doesn’t count.” She’d gotten that much out of him, at least. One sibling.

  “Okay, fine. I had friend.”

  She laughed, too. “What was his name?”

  “Stacey.”

  “Girl Stacey or boy Stacey?”

  “There’s such a thing as boy Stacey?”

  “Was she your girlfriend?” Olivia wasn’t jealous; she was intrigued. A second detail about Jarek’s deeply mysterious life? Color her invested.

  “Yes. That’s enough. I’m the one who asks questions.”

  “So if you weren’t a cop and you weren’t a journalist or a private investigator or a psychologist…”

  “I was…”

  “You were…”

  He arched a brow and waited for her next guess.

  “Just tell me.”

  He lifted his knees and jogged in place, the action strangely familiar.

  “You were in the army?”

  He nodded and turned to face forward, running beside her again.

  “Why didn’t I guess that before?”

  “Because you’re obsessed with being popular. You’re obsessed with yourself.”

  She tossed back her head and laughed. “Am not.”

  He was looking down at her, smiling slightly. “Nah. You’re not.”

  “What’d you do in the army?”

  “Whatever they told me to do.”

  “Did it involve asking questions?”

  A muscle in his jaw ticked, and she knew, without him confirming it. The scary face, the questions. How they’d felt like interrogations.

  “When did
you get out?”

  “A long time ago.”

  “What’d you do after?”

  “The same thing, but with a private contractor.”

  “Did you like it?”

  He met her eyes. “Yes.”

  She flinched inwardly, but knew she wasn’t wrong. She’d seen movies where men with exactly Jarek’s countenance had strung up other men, tortured them until they got the answers they were looking for. And then.

  “When’d you stop?”

  “Two years ago.”

  “Why?”

  “Time for a change. Why’d you come to China?”

  “Because I wasn’t popular anymore.”

  “Come on, Olivia. The truth.”

  She looked at him now, eyes serious. “That is the truth.”

  Jarek dropped it, but he didn’t want to. They grabbed dinner at McDonald’s and took it back to her place where he ate his burger while she took a shower, and then she ate hers while he washed up. They’d developed a bit of a routine, which didn’t bother him. It had only been a few weeks, but everything intensified when you were in a foreign environment, the strangeness of things throwing people together in ways they wouldn’t normally be. That’s what he attributed it to, anyway. This…relationship he was falling into. The pattern.

  Even as he’d told her about the interrogation work, he’d lied to himself, saying he didn’t know why the words were coming out as cryptic as they’d been. Except he did know why. He told her because she’d started looking at him like he was a good guy, a decent guy, and he wanted to remind her that he wasn’t. That he wasn’t her boyfriend and he wasn’t going to be, that if she got too close she’d get hurt in the end because he hadn’t loved anybody outside of his family in a really long time, and that wasn’t going to change.

  She was lying in that damn twin bed, reading one of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books she’d found at the bookstore—this one for the Pet Lover’s Soul—when he came out of the bathroom. The books were half English and half Chinese, and always made her cry, which he hated, because he was the one who inflicted pain, not the one who cleaned up afterward. And then, as though she recognized his discomfort, she’d put the books away and laugh and wipe her eyes, calling herself stupid when she was the furthest thing from it.