“If it took so long to make, then you shouldn’t have sicced it on me,” I retorted.
He shrugged, unrepentant, folding his hands in his sleeves like a mandarin from the picture books.
“I can make another,” he said. “I’m Khai.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, looking him over as he looked me over.
“Jordan Baker,” I responded. “Have you been here all month?”
“Something like that,” he said. “The troupe performed here just a few days before you caught me. They were moving on to Philadelphia, and I don’t get on in Philadelphia, so I decided to stay until they came back.”
“Just found yourself a guest room, and pretended you had been invited?” I asked, and he gave me a curious look.
“What’s it matter to you? You’re one of Mrs. Chau’s girls, aren’t you? I heard she got some girls from Vietnam…”
A dull red heat came up on my face, and I felt as if my spine were turning to clear, cold ice.
“I’m not one of Mrs. Chau’s girls at all,” I bit out.
He gave me another look, up and down, speculative and curious. I realized that he thought my dress was a costume just as much as his own outfit was. He thought there was another world I lived in, like the one where he dressed in gray slacks, striped shirts, and braces. For a moment, I wondered what he imagined I wore in that other world, and I almost choked.
“Hey,” he started, but I was turning away. I decided I was bored, and he was tiresome.
“Hey wait,” he said, grabbing me by the arm. “Wait. I’m sorry.”
“Good!”
“Here, let me make it up to you. You c?t gi?y, right?”
I had no idea what the words meant, and they felt like rocks dropped in the middle of his otherwise perfect English. Still they made me choke a little. I couldn’t have heard words like that since I started walking, and I wasn’t supposed to hear them at Gatsby’s party.
I stood as still and straight as a garden trellis and Khai must have taken that to mean that I cared what he had to say, because from his sleeves, he pulled out an elegant pair of shears and what looked like a thick piece of gold paper.
“All right, are you looking?”
He waited until I nodded, and he started to cut, the shears moving so quickly that they seemed to blur, throwing scraps of paper everywhere like a tiny blizzard. Something about the snick of the blades cutting through the thick card stock sent a chill up the back of my neck, made me want to hug myself for warmth even on the hot August night. I felt exposed, I realized. I had done what he was doing twice, once in my bedroom, once in Daisy’s, and he was doing it for fun, in front of God and Gatsby’s guests and everyone.
I started to tell him to stop, that I wasn’t going to be impressed, but then the shears disappeared and he was plucking at the edge of the card stock. With a single flick of his fingers, there was a bright orange chrysanthemum blossom in his hand, flecked with gold as the paper had been. He spun it up in the air, and before it had reached the top of its arc, there was another one in his hand, red this time, and up it went as well. In a moment, I was standing in a shower of flowers, and despite my reluctance, I looked around in wonder at the shower of red, white, orange, and violet falling down around me, brushing against my arms, my cheeks, and my shoulders.
At the end, Khai held a pure white chrysanthemum edged in with gold around each narrow petal between his fingers and presented it to me. I took it without smiling, but I brought it up to my face anyway, curious. I was disappointed when there was no scent.
“Of course there’s no smell,” he told me. “It’s only paper after all.”
“It feels real, though,” I said, plucking some of the petals and crushing them to a wet pulp between my fingers.