If Tears Were Wishes And Other Short Stories (2 page)

"Come, I buy you one," Peggy said, taking Lindsay's elbow as she closed her laptop. "You need sugar."

Lindsay shook her head. "Was I that bad?"

"No, no," Robert said. "Not bad. Just nervous."

She let out a gusting sigh and allowed them to lead her out of the meeting room to the elevators. "I can't screw up. Cleio needs a partner."

Angela pushed the down button. "I don't think Frank wants to lose Cybera. Clara Lecto is one of the biggest celebrities in Taiwan."

Lindsay tried to smile. "As big as Mariah Carey?"

Angela grinned. "Not quite
that
big."

The Starbucks in the ground floor lobby of the building was full as usual, so they took their drinks outside. It wasn't quite as hot as it had been the day before when Lindsay met Ma-tsu at the temple. Now that she thought about it, it was interesting that the woman had used a traditional Chinese name rather than a Western one. Everyone she knew here at NGTS had both.

"I actually met someone yesterday who didn't have a Western name like all of you," Lindsay said. "She introduced herself as Ma-tsu."

Her three friends stared at her briefly, their coffees and frappucinos halfway to their mouths, and then, as if on cue, they all started laughing.

"I think this woman was joking with you," Robert finally said when he caught his breath. "Ma-tsu is a Taiwanese folk goddess."

"A folk goddess?" she repeated.

"The goddess of the sea," Angela elaborated. "She is worshiped in China too, but here in Taiwan we regard her as our own."

"Have you heard of Kwan Yin?" Peggy asked.

Lindsay nodded mutely.

"In Taiwan, Ma-tsu is associated with the goddess of compassion. They are often worshiped together."

****

Well, at least Ma-tsu-whoever-she-was hadn't been joking about Yangmingshan. The red line bus number 5 took Lindsay straight there — a beautiful national park, just north of the city. She wandered through the gardens, looking for the trail leading up to the volcanic mountain, and hoped she would eventually be able to get away from the other visitors a little. The pace of Taipei was exhausting — and with the worries and heartache she was dragging around with her all the time, her energy level was low to begin with. What if NGTS was gambling on Cleio going bankrupt, so that they could buy the rights to Cybera outright, if they wanted it so much? If that was the case, she could just give up and go home.

Go home to an impending divorce.

But what was she supposed to do? Cleio's share of the profits from the English-language version of NGTS's White Magic, as promising as the new game was, would never be enough to cover their proposed business expenses for the coming year.

She gave herself a shake and tried to concentrate on her surroundings. On the lawn in front of her was a peacock, bright blue and proud of it, and she moved forward to get a better look. The peacock, however, seemed to interpret that as an invitation and came purposefully in her direction, probably assuming she had food.

Lindsay started backing away, right into someone on the path behind her.

"Oh, excuse me!" she said, and then, remembering where she was, "
Du bu qi
!"

"I understood the first well enough," a deep male voice with an American accent responded as she turned around.

He was tall and lanky with curly, shoulder-length hair, a riot of dark blond and rich brown corkscrews, and his wide smile was as friendly as his voice. The backpack slung over his shoulder looked as if it had seen better days, long ago and far away.

"So sorry," Lindsay said.

"Hey, no problem. It's not every day you get attacked by a peacock." He stuck out his hand. "I'm Joel, by the way."

She took it. "Lindsay." She looked back at the offending bird, but he was standing motionless now, neck stretched tall, eyeing them critically.

"Playing innocent," Joel commented. "But we know better. Hear me, bird?" The peacock cocked its head to the side. "No more funny business."

She laughed and the bird turned around and waddled majestically in the other direction.

Joel combed his curls back with one hand and looked down at her. "What do you say we hike the mountain together? Trying to get by in broken Chinese gets pretty tiring after a while. Besides, we were thrown together by a peacock. Now if that isn't fate, I don't know what is."

Lindsay laughed again. Laughing — she was
laughing
. "Sure, why not?"

Together, they headed up the trail to Mt. Chihsing. "What are you here in Taipei for?" she asked.

Joel shrugged. "For? Fun. I'm traveling around, working when I can, you know."

Actually, she didn't know. She'd been to Mexico, easy enough from Texas, and she and Trevor had done Europe in three weeks for their honeymoon, but she'd never done the backpack-tourist thing, even though she'd once dreamed of it. She turned the ring on her finger and stared at the thick foliage on the side of the path.

"And you?" he prompted her after she'd been silent too long.

"I'm here on business."

"What kind of business?"

"I'm in computer game development."

"Wow, that sounds cool. Anything you've worked on that I might know?"

"Maybe Cybera?"

"
Cybera?
Hot damn." Joel stopped in his tracks and stared at her, and Lindsay felt a warm glow of gratification start to take hold in her chest.

He shook his head. "Clara Lecto is one of the hottest things in pixels.
Everybody
knows her."

The warm spot was growing. "Thank you."

"What exactly is your job?" he asked, walking again. On either side of them grew thick bushes and short trees, some cut back ornamentally, but some looking as if they grew wild, a small piece of jungle just outside the city.

"Actually, I developed the first version of Cybera with a friend of mine way back when I was in high school," she said. She was already sweating, although the incline was not steep. "We taught ourselves the programming we needed to do it. And when we ran into something we didn't know how to do ourselves, we enlisted more friends."

"
You
came up with
Clara Lecto
?" Joel shook his head, and his curls glinted gold and bronze in the sun. "Man, I can't believe I met someone so famous in the wilds of
Taipei
. Where'd you get the idea?"

Lindsay pulled a water bottle out of her bag, took a sip, and offered it to Joel. "I read this essay in AP English called 'A Manifesto for Cyborgs' and decided a female cyborg would make a great game character."

"So you designed her yourself?"

"Not like she is now, we didn't. Believe me, she's changed a lot in her twelve years of life. And in the original Cybera, the emphasis was more on puzzle-solving than hunting down bad guys."

He handed the water bottle back to her. "And what do you like more?"

"The puzzle-solving, actually. My favorite kind of games were the old-fashioned adventure games." Lindsay hadn't mentioned that little twinge of dissatisfaction with her life to anyone in years, she suddenly realized. She wasn't even sure she'd still been aware of it. After all, her life had been perfect. Hadn't it?

Joel pulled a rose-colored handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed the sweat off his forehead. Lindsay found the surprising color charming. "Like King's Quest," he said, shoving the pink piece of fabric back into his jeans.

"Yeah."

"Then how come she turned into action-adventure?"

She shrugged. "Marketing. It was the wave of the future." She wiped off the top of the bottle and took another drink.

"Don't tell me — her boobs didn't used to be as big either."

Lindsay laughed and choked on the water, and Joel patted her back.

"Bingo!" he said with a wide grin.

She gave him a stern look, trying not to chuckle.

"Have you ever thought about creating a new game that's closer to what you wanted Cybera to be originally?" he asked as they continued on their way.

Lindsay shook her head. "Can't. We just don't have the resources right now. Cleio's having financial difficulties — not enough capital to continue development on our big sellers, let alone invest in a new game which isn't likely to sell that well." She heard herself confessing her financial woes to him with surprise. She didn't usually open up so quickly to strangers.

Joel stopped, taking her elbow and giving it a slight shake. "But what if you sold out, did your own thing? You've got the copyright to Cybera, right? That must be worth a fortune."

She pushed her ring up and down just below the joint. A fortune? Not likely. Was it? She had to admit, she didn't know.

But the rights to Cybera wouldn't be one of the company's assets if they went bankrupt. She still had some cards in her hand. She didn't know why it hadn't occurred to her before — probably concentrating too much on her own misery.

"I never thought of it that way," Lindsay said slowly.

Joel grinned and gave a shrug that said,
easy enough
. "Hey, sometimes all you need to see your way out of a problem is a different perspective."

Which he certainly provided. As they continued up the gentle incline of Mt. Chihsing, they talked easily, learning about each other on the hike. They even lived in the same city, of all things. Their lifestyles, however, were completely different. She probably wasn't much older than he was, and she'd been running her own business with her husband for the last seven years. Joel was a graduate student in anthropology who only left college to travel the world with a backpack and a smile. For him, everything was temporary; for Lindsay, everything was permanent — only now, all her permanence was leaving her.

She didn't know how Joel could seem so secure and carefree living a life of such constant change. She didn't even want to
think
about all the change that was waiting for her when she got home. She twisted the ring on her finger and caught Joel looking at it and then away.

Lindsay slipped the ring off and put it in the pocket of her jeans. "That's another fun thing waiting for me when I get back," she said. "Divorce proceedings." They had reached the summit of Chihsing, and turned to enjoy the view of the Taipei basin. This far up, the air was clear, and the city stretched out before them, hugging the Tamshui River and climbing partly up the mountains on all sides.

"Oh," Joel said, his cheerfulness deserting him.

Now what had possessed her to reveal
that
? "I never thought Taipei could be so beautiful," Lindsay said to change the subject.

"Yeah, the setting is great, isn't it?" Joel was obviously relieved.

It really was beautiful up here, away from the valleys of concrete filled with taxis and honking horns and exhaust fumes. A small spark of joy caught her by surprise, and she smiled.

From the summit, they hiked to the sulfur pits and the hot springs and the waterfalls. The green hills and the peace of the setting were a balm to Lindsay's soul, and she returned to her hotel at the end of the day feeling more rested and composed than she had since Trevor told her he wanted a divorce.

And Joel — Joel was a living lesson in being comfortable with change. She was grateful for his admiration, but she knew it wouldn't lead anywhere; they were just too different.

She picked up her key at the reception desk and took the elevator to the ninth floor. As she walked down the hall to her room, she noticed something on the floor in front of her door.

It was a long, blue peacock feather.

****

The peacock feather rested against her monitor in the NGTS office while Lindsay clicked on one of the links Google offered.