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The following week, I left an event early due to a headache. I suspect that I was sick from inhaling so much cigarette smoke.
Janet was on holiday in Bali, so I hoped that she wouldn’t know about my early departure.
I stumbled around the pantry searching for decongestants before returning to my laptop, where I discovered an email from a classmate:
Lana,
I’m in Hong Kong but will be in Shanghai soon. Let’s meet up.
Best, Curt.
I didn’t know Curt very well, but he was a fairly tall guy in his thirties. Everyone seemed to like him. Professors favored him, women laughed at his jokes, and men agreed with his points.
I, on the other hand, was not so easily impressed. Steiger annoyed me with his wavy brown hair, crystal blue eyes, and pearly white smile. He reminded me of a guy in a toothpaste commercial or a Congressional rep on C-SPAN.
I imagined that Curt grew up in a pretty house with a white picket fence and loved playing any sport that featured a ball and was always picked first for any team.
In contrast, I never cared for sports involving something that could hit me in the face. I preferred pursuits like running, ice skating, and swimming. I avoided big-toothy grins like Curt’s because I didn’t like showing my teeth. And I had never lived in a house with a white picket fence unless you counted my cousin’s place in Portland. I didn’t because the wooden gate was rotting from termite infestation, constant rain, and lack of upkeep.
Curt sat behind me in a corporate law course filled with PhDs. I once overheard his friend joke, “Why pay for a date? Wouldn’t it be more expeditious to give a woman fifty bucks for sex? After all, isn’t a date payment for sex?”
Curt was stoic and didn’t engage in adolescent discussions. However, I felt he was guilty by association. Curt volunteered whenever cases pertained to pharmaceutical and biotech issues. On a macro-level, I disagreed with him, but refrained from any form of debate because he fixated on minutiae that I didn’t fully understand. Rather than risk public ridicule, I kept my opinions to myself.
I ignored Steiger’s message and focused on picking out an outfit to wear to work the next day. I gravitated towards classic styles and typically wore dark pencil skirts, white blouses, and flats.
As I got ready for bed, I thought about Malaysia because living in Shanghai triggered repressed memories. KL rapidly developed in the nineties, as China had for the past decade. However, the 1997 Asian financial crisis drastically changed our lifestyle and security. My parents began fighting because Dad had invested his savings in a fraudulent hedge fund.
Lying in bed, I struggled to fall asleep. I was wound up, and could hear my neighbors quarreling in Mandarin because the apartment walls were deceptively thin. Their squabbles sounded familiar, and as I drifted off, I heard my mother screaming, “Jason, how could you? How could you trust our life savings with such an obvious crook?”