Fake House (2 page)

It is a shame you cannot see my wife because any man who has will concede that she is a strikingly, almost disturbingly, beautiful woman. She has eyes that beg a little but lips that are determined,
fierce, without being vulgar or cruel. They are well drawn and not too fleshy. Her smiles are discreet. She is not one of those women who, out of fear and dishonesty, are constantly showing their teeth. She is tall, two, maybe three inches taller than me.

Sheilah is Tracy’s predecessor. She worked for me for two years before we started dating. It was she who asked me out the first time. The pretext was her twenty-fourth birthday. She said, “Me and a bunch of friends are going to this French bistro on Ghirardelli Square for my birthday. Would you like to come as my date?”

I noticed she had said “date,” not “friend.” She did not say, “Would you like to come as my friend?” but “Would you like to come as my date?”
Here’s that crack in the line
, I thought,
run for it
.

I must admit that although I was attracted to Sheilah from the moment she walked into my office for the job interview, I did not dare to betray my interest. She was out of my league. Even now, five years into our marriage, I still catch myself in moments of self-congratulation. Once I even laughed out loud, shaking my head and exclaiming, “You didn’t do too bad, you ugly son of a bitch!”

Josh, on the other hand, has never been married, has never even had a relationship with a woman lasting more than a few months. Three times he had to borrow money from me to pay for his girlfriends’ abortions. It is a good thing, these abortions, considering the kind of father he would have made.

I haven’t told you about the incident that prompted me to get rid of him the last time he came to stay with us.

He had been brooding in front of the TV all week, drunk on my wine. When he wanted to borrow my car one night to go into town, I was more than happy to oblige. I even gave him twenty
dollars for beer. He left at eight o’clock and came back at around one in the morning. I could tell immediately that he had a girl with him. My wife was asleep but as usual I was up reading. Each night before bed I try to take in at least twelve pages of a good novel. Although a businessman, I do not neglect to develop the left side of my brain. On that night, if I remember correctly, I was reading
The Joy Luck Club
by Maxine Hong Kingston.

Since the guest room is adjacent to the master bedroom, I could hear their voices fairly distinctly. Josh was talking in a near whisper, but the girl was loud. She was black. I could never recall him dating an African-American girl or showing any interest in black women, and was a little surprised by this fact. Of course playing the saxophone, he was always listening to the great black musicians. They were haggling.

“Please.”

“You don’t got forty bucks?”

“I only have ten.”

“Uh-uh.”

“I’ll give you my jacket.” It was actually a ski jacket I had lent him.

“I won’t even suck your motherfuckin’ white-trash dick for that motherfuckin’ boo sheeiiit jacket!”

“Please.”

“Get me the fuck out of here!”

She left.

It was over in less than a minute. I was so startled by such an unusual incident occurring in my own home that I had no time to react. Maybe I was a little disappointed that something even more bizarre did not happen. My wife had slept through the entire episode. She could sleep through anything: car alarms, sirens,
earthquakes. I looked down at her serene, distant face and felt an overwhelming urge to penetrate.

A week, maximum, I decide, massaging my right thigh as I turn into the driveway. We live in a split-level three-bedroom house with a two-car garage, in an upscale, multi-ethnic neighborhood. My brother is standing inside the plate glass window of the living room, waiting for me. He has on a dirty-looking baseball cap and a black T-shirt. When he comes out of the house, I notice that he has put on weight just in the past year. He has never taken care of his body, never eaten right, never exercised. He trots down the sloping brick path leading to my car, smiling shamelessly. My brother is always most obsequious during the first few days. Sheilah is nowhere to be seen. I step out of the car. “Good to see you, Boffo!” he practically screams. We hug.

“How … how … how are you?”

“Can’t complain!”

“Howsa, howsa … Mustapha?”

Josh looks confused. Then he says, “Mustapha died in the fire.”

A professional con man, my brother. I place a hand on the back of his neck and start to massage it without thinking. I lead him into my house.

F
RITZ
G
LATMAN

M
ariechelle, Norie, Loida, Sylvana, Emie, Dulce, Maria, Marites.… The catalogue,
Origami Geishas
, is laid out like the cheapest high school yearbook. Twenty-four out-of-focus black-and-white photographs to a newsprint page. Thirty-two pages. Six-hundred-plus brown women desiring a white man who will take her into his home.

I am Fritz Glatman (43), American, of English and Austrian extractions/6-1; 227; of Counsel at the Center City law firm of Gontarek & Enfield. I am divorced, with no children. My ex, Jane Kulik, was recently made a partner at Cohen, Javens, Petaccia & Kulik. We’ve been exchanging Christmas cards every year for the past fourteen years.

Within the past year I’ve been toying with the idea of securing for myself an Asian woman, a mail-order bride. I’ve been brooding over this prospect, sober or drunk, on many sleepless nights.
A hoary wet dream
, I’d think, emitting a little laugh. A last-ditch recourse.
Aegri somnia
.

This solution plunged me into the deepest shame initially, but I am now increasingly resigned to its feasibility. There’s even a dull excitement daily creeping up on me.

Before this idée fixe, if you will, took hold, I was never partial to Asian women. Never even thought about them. But with mental exertion came a gradual, grudging appreciation. Stare at anything long enough, I suppose, and beauty will rise to the surface.

The girls in
Origami Geishas
are mostly plain, their faces plain, their hair plain. Some are outright ugly. But my future wife must be unequivocably beautiful, though not too beautiful. Son of an immigrant, I was taught to be modest, to shy away from luxuries, and to shun all ostentatious displays. Indeed, even with a six-figure salary, I drive an old-model Ford.

But I should quantify that she must be at least several notches better-looking than I am. Like any man, I cannot be satisfied
with merely an equitable return for my pecuniary investment. I want a little extra.

She need not be too smart obviously. If I want to feed my brain, I’ll buy a book. What it comes down to is this: I can only exchange what I have, money, and the fact that I’m a citizen of a first-world country, for what she has, what every woman has.

My wife will undoubtedly be a social incongruity in my life, a foul ball and a blip on my record. I’m a lawyer, not a sailor for Uncle Sam. But since it would not be feasible to conceal her existence from my colleagues, to lock her up, figuratively speaking, in a carriage house or a wine cellar, sentence her to life without parole, or to introduce her as an au pair—or, rather, as a maid—to my neighbors, I must steel myself for the negative publicity, from the invidious snickers to righteous smirks to actionable slanders. Caveat emptor.

To facilitate her assimilation into this society, perhaps it is advisable that I send her to the community college for a semester or two of remedial English, art, and music appreciation, and to let her wallow in the secure ambience of a college campus.

My father, long dead, would not have objected to my marrying an Asian woman. A kind-hearted, simpleminded, and sincere man, he was a concrete contractor for forty-odd years, specializing in driveways, patios, handicapped ramps, and stucco. Although he never finished high school, he was an enthusiastic reader. He pronounced
Orientals
“Orienals.” He would lecture to his five children: “The Orienals are an inward people. I have a lot of respect for them. They have an inward orienation because of their physiognomy. The epicanthic folds on their eyes block out much of the sun, and hence much of the world. They have a wispy
physique, and do not gorge themselves on red meat like we do. They live on top of each other, in gross discomfort, which drives them further inward. Because they have no outer space”—he would hush his voice at this point, squint his eyes—“they must seek inner space. They live close to the earth, build flat houses, and are small of stature.”

He had a peculiar concept called perpendicularity. Angles and curves had to be minimized. All the furniture in our house, beds, tables, were lined up at a ninety-degree angle to the wall, hugging it, with the middle of the floor kept empty. Throw rugs were banished, since they could not be maintained at right angles. At dinner, forks and knives, when at rest, had to be placed perpendicular to the edge of the table. Likewise, if our chairs were not perpendicular to the edge of the table as we were eating, he would whack us on the head. Do not lean against the wall, he always reminded us. “The Orienals sit at round tables,” he said. “They have no sense of perpendicularity.”

A minor problem: I’ve been advised that the Filipinos cannot enunciate the “f” sound. They call their own country “Pilippines.” It is perhaps the only country in the world that cannot pronounce its own name. Instead of “Fritz,” my wife would have to call me “Pritz.”

Naturally, in thinking about my future wife, I’ve become more alert to all things Asian. At least three times a week you’ll find me at some restaurant in Chinatown, happily stuffing my face with sashimis, happy pancakes, spring rolls, or wontons. I’m conditioning my innards for her cooking. I asked Justin Park (né Duk Chong Park), a new associate at our firm, for book recommendations. We were standing by the Mr. Coffee: “Justin, I’ve been thinking a lot about Southeast Asia recently, the Philippines in particular. I
want to take a trip there next year. Never been to Asia. Can you recommend a book for me to read?”

“I’m Korean, Fritz.”

“I know, buddy, I know! Duck Pork is a Korean name! Pusan City. I’ve seen your résumé. But if anyone here knows anything about Asia, you do, so don’t be so defensive.”

“All right, all right, there’s a novel by Jessica Hagedorn called
Dogeaters.”

“Dogeaters?!”

“Yes,
Dogeaters.”

“Is it any good? What’s it about?”

“It’s pretty good”—he furrowed his brows, tried to remember the book—“but it’s hard to summarize it. There’s too many characters. It’s about Manila. There’s a guy named Joey Sands, a half-black, half-Filipino hustler, and a fat German film director, a Fassbinder type whom the hustler called Rain or Shine.”

“That’s pretty clever: Rainer, Rain or Shine!” He was trying to get back at me for being a Kraut, I could tell.

Justin has been with us for just over a year. Fresh from Harvard Law, he does fairly good work but is perceived by the other attorneys as being a tad too cocky. As the firm’s first minority hire, however, his job is reasonably secure. He wears a loud tie not only on Fridays but on every other day as well. While standing in the elevator lobby, he often shoots an invisible basketball at an invisible hoop, throws an invisible football at an invisible receiver, or swings an invisible bat at an invisible baseball. He pulls these stunts even in the presence of clients. But in spite of this showy proclivity for sports, he declined to join our softball team. After he became adjusted to his new surroundings, as his confidence grew, he went out and got both of his ears pierced. He was
sleeping with one of the temps, a petite twenty-two-year-old named Traci Mintz, a clone of Shannon Miller, the gymnast who broke her ankle on TV. They were often seen leaving TGIF together. It is none of my business, of course, but our firm is fairly small, with only twelve attorneys. After Traci left, he started to pork our beloved, longtime receptionist, Julia LaPorte, a buxom widow in her late thirties.

A week after our chat about the Philippines, Justin said, “Fritz, I don’t mean to be nosy, but, ah, are you thinking about getting yourself a mail-order bride?”

I stared at him in disbelief. What chutzpah! Doesn’t this punk know what privacy is? “Whoa! Ha! ha! That’s pretty funny. Why would you say that?”

“Just asking.”

I looked him straight in the eyes, tried not to blink too fast: “I’m going to the Philippines because I want to see Asia: a guy like me, forty-three years old, never seen Asia. It’s the biggest continent in the world, you know, all those people, ha! ha! I can’t afford Korea. Or Japan. Or Singapore. And Vietnam: all those bad associations. And I also have, uh, this interest in volcanoes. I grew up in Washington State, I don’t know if you know that, near Mount St. Helens. She popped her top fifteen years ago, remember?” He was blank. “Maybe you weren’t even here then. But there’s this one spectacular volcano in the Philippines called, uh”—I couldn’t think of its damn name—“it’s on the tip of my tongue. What is it, what is it, what’s the name of that volcano?”