I sit in a lantern-lit tearoom in Chinatown, planning my book release party. I haven’t got a book—not yet—but the party will be held at the Cliff House as the sun dips into the bay and colors the evening seashore gold. Through the window, below the patio, wet sand will glow like snow in moonlight, and the lanterns—just like the ones heating this tearoom—will project red puddles, iridescent and out-of-focus festive, on the mat-stone floor. The floor must be mat-stone.
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| The Cliff House |
The color scheme, pastel blue and white, must fade into the dusk-light—enhance the dusk. Unobtrusive. Celestial. Invisible behind the smiling and the buzz-hugs and the red-pool lantern-glow.
“Let’s go,” Justin says. I’d forgotten he was there. I am looking out the window at rain.
“It’s raining.”
“Yeah let’s go.” Justin eyebrow twitches, I can see the tension in his shoulders.
I’ll want rain. Rain upsetting the bay: waves, clouds—panoramic seascape drama. Rust on the low sun, the water. A million water-drops jumping on the uneasy sea, the texture of unrest. Building up.
Champaign. Pop! The party starts and the band gets loud and lantern-light projections morph into shifting prisms and starlight and the moon is close out the window-wall.
“I’m going,” Justin says. He stands up.
I don’t move. “You pushed me up there.”
“What?”
“Last night. You made me get up there.”
“You did fine.”
“I sucked.” The Chinatown lights, neon and too-loud, stain the rain. This tearoom is seedy. I want to smash my teacup on the dim-stone—no, linoleum—floor. I drop it and it breaks in half, like the teacups in Alice in Wonderland. I smile.
Justin walks out, into the neon rain, away. Everyone is staring at me.
I try to think of my book release party. I cry.
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