Marissa blinked, put off by Yukying’s cheer. Yukying chastised herself. Wasn’t this what they were always telling Tinseng not to do?
“I’m sorry if that came on too strong. I’ve been spending too much time around my brothers. But I really would enjoy your company.”
Marissa stared at her a moment longer. Yukying got the distinct impression she was being measured. Then Marissa turned back toward the mirror and opened her clutch.
“Are you . . . visiting the post office today?” she asked as she looked down at her bag.
“It’s funny you mention that,” Yukying said as Marissa pulled out lipstick. “There are more than we ever thought, and we’re not quite sure which one is best. For the architecture,” she added, not sure if they were still keeping up a ruse even here in the bathroom where Marissa’s husband couldn’t possibly be. Or maybe they were talking like this for Marissa herself; maybe it was a comfort to be distant from it all.
“You should visit the post office on Calle Comte de Salvatierra,” Marissa said. She put the lipstick back in her clutch. “The ceilings are original.”
Yukying’s heart sunk; that wasn’t either of the ones Tinseng or Jinzhao were going to.
“Well, original ceilings—that sounds lovely,” she said weakly. “I’ll see if we can’t stop there today.” She wanted to thank the other woman but understood that she wanted no acknowledgment of what she’d just done. Instead, Yukying walked around Marissa and hurried out toward the gangway. She had to find one of the boys before they left or they’d miss Grodescu entirely.
The deck was its usual swarm as they pulled into the Barcelona harbor. Yukying stayed at the railing as the staff gave the all-clear to disembark. She watched the first wave of passengers leave, but didn’t see Grodescu, Tinseng, or Shan Dao in their midst. With a frown, she returned to the table; Chiboon and Cheuk-Kwan hadn’t moved.
“Have Tinseng or Shan Dao been through?” When both shook their heads, she went back to the gangway. No matter how hard she looked, they were nowhere. She wondered if Tinseng had found a way to watch the gangway without being seen or if she was merely unobservant. Perhaps Grodescu had left while she was gone and Tinseng followed.
On her way down to their rooms, she found Laurence in a deck chair, smiling wryly at his book.
“I might be late to dinner,” she said, “I have to go ashore and find Tinseng.”
“Should I care about whatever’s going on?” he asked without looking up.
“No, no.” Fondness overwhelmed her as she looked at him, in his crisp shirt and the silly straw hat he’d bought from a hawker in Portugal. It was always moments like these that struck her most: the quiet, unremarkable slivers of a person no one else would ever see. Love at its most mundane was also love at its true center, she thought, when we could be the most like ourselves without fear. “It’s just the usual nonsense.”
“It always is with them. Good luck.”
She was sure she’d need it. She hurried down to Tinseng and Shan Dao’s door, fearing she’d missed them, but after a moment, Shan Dao answered; he already had his suit coat on.
“Do you know where Tinseng is?” she asked.
“Gone.”
She sighed. “Well, at least you’re here. I ran into Marissa, and she told me which post office is it. It’s neither of the ones you chose.” If Tinseng was already gone, there would be no way to contact him. Shan Dao would have to go on his own. She took in his expression: There was something there, a darkness too like fear, that made her raise her chin and say, “I’m coming with you.”
5 Literally “great wisdom seems stupid.” Colloquially: great wisdom can seem foolish to those who are not wise.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Three Days Ago. June 22, 1963. Barcelona, Spain.
“I’m coming with you,” she said, assuming it would be a fight the way it would with Tinseng or Cheuk-Kwan, or even Laurence. But Shan Dao simply nodded and closed the door behind him. He started walking down the hallway, then turned back when he realized she hadn’t followed, his quizzical expression asking, Are we not in a hurry?
“You don’t think I should stay behind?” she asked despite herself.
“Should you?”
The question surprised her. Shan Dao didn’t know her the way her other companions did. He hadn’t been there during her adolescence when she’d wheezed after a steep flight of stairs; he’d never seen her laid up for days from exhaustion or pain. She’d outgrown some of it, could manage the rest; where she hadn’t grown stronger, she’d grown resilient, and she took quiet pride in that. She knew the boys were proud of her, too, but, just as she still thought of them as boys, she knew they still thought of her as fragile.
Shan Dao was free of those concerns. He thought of her no differently than he thought of anyone else. She found she liked it, seeing herself through his eyes. Adding another mark of approval to her mental tally, she fetched her wallet and passport and followed him.
They took the tram from the port into the city center and sat in tense silence as the scenery passed. Her first impression of Barcelona was the colors: deep orange sepias, pale tans, camel hair and caramel, bleached whites, washed-out stone. Almost every building was a varying shade of white or brown, none of it uniform, but somehow the palate became cohesive and deeply pleasing in a blur from the window.
Her second impression was to wonder at its size. Barcelona was the only other city in Spain she could name besides Madrid; she had expected it to be much larger.
“Did you know there were palm trees in Spain?” she asked, for want of anything else to say. Palms lined entire streets, escorting them into the city.
“No.”
Silence fell between them again.
“Have you read Don Quixote?” she tried.
“No.”
Why was conversation with Shan Dao so much easier in the early morning before everyone else was awake?
“Laurence made me read it; he loved it. It’s the only novel I’ve read where any of it takes place in Barcelona.”
Shan Dao was quiet a long moment, then offered, “The Thief’s Journal.”
“Is that a classic in the West?” She’d never heard of it.
Shan Dao almost laughed. “No.”
“Would you recommend it?”