The director said both departments were overregulated, but HR more so in that they could involve themselves in your personal life.
I said, I’ve never had a problem with them.
But once they find a discrepancy, game over. Never give them a shred of doubt.
Doubt about what?
The director finally straightened up and looked me in the eye. He put a finger to his lip, though I never knew him to be paranoid.
I said if he was worried, then should I be? A few weeks ago, I’d taken a page out of the director’s own phonaesthetics book and told Reese how a hypothetical woman might tell a hypothetical man to fuck right off.
The director’s mouth twitched; his pupils became two black dots on two white spheres. You what? Fuck right off and not just fuck off? But that could send someone over the edge, couldn’t it? A person who was already unsteady.
He seemed fine with it, actually, I said. He didn’t know what I meant.
Even worse, replied the director.
We stood near the exit doors of the atrium, far enough that they wouldn’t open automatically but close enough that we could see the breath of the people walking outside.
Oh well, he said, out of our hands now, it is what it is, and the cards will fall as they may. When the director resorted to idioms, I knew he was at his linguistic limit. What’s the opposite of kill two birds with one stone? he asked me.
I said, Huh?
The opposite. As in we’re the two birds that might have killed a third one with our stones.
I explained that birds can do lots of things that humans can’t, like fly, but birds can’t pick up stones and throw them like projectiles, so no such idiom exists.
The lack of a perfect English phrase for our predicament seemed to frustrate him and the director made a grr sound.
* * *
—
IF I WAS IN my apartment, the television was on. I didn’t always watch, but the sounds of people talking at low volume were nice, soothing, even if it was for seemingly an hour of commercials.
When I finally heard the name Jerry, I came out from the kitchen where I’d been waiting for water to boil, to pour into my Cup Noodles. On-screen, I saw a short funny-looking man call a tall funny-looking man Jerry. George and Jerry. They were in Jerry’s apartment, and then right on cue, another tall funny-looking man with fluffy hair, in an oversized plaid shirt, barged in. He had a shaky way of moving and talking and, out of the three, seemed to have mismanaged his nerves the most. Something funny was said by Jerry, then George, then Kramer. The laugh track played and played.
More booklets came for me in the mail. Several vacation catalogs for ski resorts （to the mountains!） and all-inclusive tropical escapes （book now, why wait!）。
A magazine called Awake! The header said that a stress-free life is possible. Subheaders and the first page: What causes stress? Divorce, death, illness, crime, job loss, natural disasters, the hectic pace of life. How to deal with stress. One, don’t hold two handfuls of work. Two, kill your stress with kindness. Sixteen pages.
The thickest of silken envelopes would soon arrive for me as well. Tomato red, fiery red, the red of oxygen-rich blood. I noticed the postmark date for this invite was weeks ago, so it must have gotten delayed. Time of the bash was set in two weeks, at the end of Spring Festival Golden Week on February 1.
It was soon to be the year of the rat and an embroidered piece of the invite explained what the coming zodiac year entailed. Men born in the year of the rat are curious, handy, and adaptive to new environments. Women born in the year of the rat are organized, neat, and place a great value on family life. Notable people who are rats: fútbol superstar Cristiano Ronaldo, basketball all-star LeBron James, and the Great One, Wayne Gretzky. Please join us at our home to celebrate history, family, and the importance of coming together.
I wondered why Fang stopped there. He could have continued to list notable people born in the year of the rat. It took only a minute of googling on my part to find more.
Civil rights activist Rosa Parks.
Computer scientist Alan Turing.
Former president Richard Nixon.
The world’s first cloned mammal, Dolly the Sheep.
Dad.
* * *
—
AT THE END OF DECEMBER, some people in China, in the city of Wuhan, had contracted pneumonia, a cluster of cases stemming from a visit to a fish market earlier that month. Cases continued throughout January, and details about them were scarce. Except that it turned out not to be pneumonia and to be a new kind of disease, from an unknown virus, possibly derived from bats that were being sold illegally at the market. I didn’t know whether I should be paying attention or not. I’d never been to Wuhan and was no virologist. My mother hadn’t texted me about it, nor my brother. The local news touched on it briefly and went straight into weather and traffic delays. The international news spent a minute longer on China and then moved to turmoil in the Middle East.