Untitled - ScholarWorks Home - California State University, Northridge

uf' the trip she thought it would do him good. Maybe even bring back the man
she had trouble remembering: the one with ambition, drive and charm. The one
she had, for thirteen years, compared against all others for his intelligence and
wit. "You go. It'll be an adventure. Take a month and wander, you've always
wanted to."
Bill hadn't worked in two years, not what Marilyn considered work.
Be lectured, part time, business and economics at the University of Southern
California. Marilyn wouldn't mind his extended trip, wouldn't miss the sound
of his slippers shuffling across the wood floor, his constant presence in the
house. And she wouldn't miss the dinners. Bill had taken to watching the
cooking channel on television. He had his favorite chefs, "sure bets" he'd say,
and dishes he relegated to the "worth trying" category. He liked meals centered
around specific food items, like a dinner starting with cold artichoke puree fol­
lowed by grilled artichokes on a bed of bitter lettuce and finished with arti­
choke hearts braised with, say, lamb shank. He described the tour.
"We were taken to a really touristy section of Guangzhou for lunch.
The restaurant was packed; downstairs diners Chinese, upstairs reserved for
foreigners. We were served a veritable banquet: boiled beef soup that I kept my
distance from - solidified masses of fat floating on top of absolutely unidentifiable
bits of flesh -- and a pale steamed carp -- slippery and fishy looking in that pun­
gent spoiled way you find with silty river fish." He said the waterways in
Southern China were murky and slow moving and that the backwater shanty­
towns they traversed were primitive and dirty.
Marilyn watched him as he talked and thought it hadn't hurt him to
miss a meal or two. Even Bill's six-foot frame had trouble handling the thirty
pounds he had gained over the past two years. "Then what?" she asked.
"Back on the bus and hauled around to more predetermined sites. Our
tour guide was from the north, Manchuria. A young girl, early twenties I'd say,
very pretty. She told us she wanted to get a management job with one of the
manufacturing companies in Shenzhen and find a sponsor for a visa to the west.
I think she'd jump at the chance to leave China and never return."
Bill did not tell Marilyn that the tour guide's optimism depressed him.
That he'd envisioned her disillusionment with American business if she ever
realized her ambition. That throughout the day Bill conjured up a whole story
for the Chinese tour guide, her transition to Southern California, the minefield
of interpretation she'd have to learn to navigate working at a place that would
be called something like 'Dynamic Enterprises' or 'Precision Products' and
located in an industrial center in someplace like Ontario or Fontana. "It's
funny," he said, "but in the end it's the snakes swirling around in the red plastic
tubs that I think about most, that, and all the things I missed."
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