Severance

We were brand strategists and property lawyers and human resources specialists and personal finance consultants. We didn’t know how to survive so we Googled everything. We googled how to survive in wild, which yielded images of poison ivy, venomous insects, and bear tracks… We Googled how to build fire and watched YouTube videos of fires being lit with flint against steel, with flint against flint, with magnifying glass and sun. We couldn’t find the requisite flint, didn’t know how to identify it even… We Googled how to shoot gun, and when we tried, we were spooked by the recoil, by the salty smell and smoke, by the liturgical drama of the whole thing in the woods. But we loved to shoot them, the guns… Google would not last long. Neither would the internet… Our Googlings darkened, turned inward. We Googled maslow’s pyramid to see how many of the need levels we could already fulfill… We Googled 2011 fever survivors, hoping to find others like us… we Googled 7 stages grief… We Googled is there a god… There was no answer.

I didn’t think much of my photographs. When I first moved to New York, I had created a photo blog called NY Ghost. It was mostly pictures of the city. The intent was to show new, undiscovered aspects of New York from an outsider’s perspective, but in retrospect, the pictures just looked clichéd and trope-y: neon-tinged diners, gas-slicked streets, subway train cars packed with tired commuters, people sitting out on fire escapes during the summer— basically, variations of the same preexisting New York iconography that permeates calendars, romcoms, souvenirs, stock art. They could have been hung in any business hotel room. Even the better, more artfully composed images were just Eggleston knockoffs, Stephen Shore derivatives. For these and other reasons, I hardly updated the blog anymore. I hardly took pictures anymore.

All of this is to say, Bob said, that it takes a long time for a human being to die. […] Killing is more an accumulative effect rather than the result of one definitive action. […] The point, Bob said. The point I’m making is about the fevered. They aren’t really alive. And one way we have of knowing this is that they don’t take a long time to die.

It was true, sort of. For the most part, from what we had seen, the fevered were creatures of habit, mimicking old routines and gestures they must have inhabited for years, decades. The lizard brain is a powerful thing. […] They were more nostalgic than we expected, their stuttering brains set to favor the heirloom china, set to arrange an rearrange their aunts’ and grandmothers’ jars of pickles and preserves[…] Tears streamed down their cheeks. Recognizing their residual humanity, we shot them in the heads but not the faces.

I arrived to the city carried by the tides of others. Most of my college friends were moving there, if they hadn’t already. It seemed like the inevitable, default place to go. Arriving, we did exactly what we thought we wanted to do. Jobless, we sat outside at sidewalk cafés, donning designer shades, splitting twenty-five-dollar pitchers of spiked Meyers lemonade, and holding tipsy, circulating conversations that lasted well into evening, as rush hour waxed and waned around us. Other people had places to go, but not us. It was summer of 2006 and the move itself seemed like a slight, inconsequential event in the grand sequence of things. Which was: my mother died, I graduated college, I moved to New York.

Periodically I’d take pictures. Pictures of ordinary things; of trash bin contents, of doormen yawning, of graffiti splashed across subways cars, of poorly worded advertisements, of pigeon flocks across the sky—all the usual clichés. I used to feel sheepish doing it, fishing around in my purse for the camera discreetly, as if for a lipstick or a compact. But then I would keep the Canon Elph on me openly, dangling from my hand by a wristlet. I preferred if people thought I was a tourist. It looked less weird that way. […] In the evenings, as many people returned home, I looked into the windows above and imagined the lives of the occupants inside. Their desk lamps, their hanging spider ferns in wicker baskets, calico cats lounging on throw pillows. I could do that indefinitely: roam the streets, look up into windows and imagine myself into other people’s lives. Maybe I could be a creepy Peeping Tom and that could just be my life.

I would go through the images on my camera and upload the good ones to NY Ghost. The ghost was me. Walking around aimlessly, without anywhere to go, anything to do, I was just a specter haunting the scene. A wind could blow and knock me to Jersey or Ohio or back to Salt Lake. It seemed appropriate that I kept the blog anonymous. Or maybe the anonymity was because I didn’t know whether the photos were any good. What I enjoyed, or at least what I felt compelled to keep doing, was the routine.

The rain had stopped by the time we left the restaurant. The air was warm. Gasoline puddles formed in the streets. Office buildings glittered as if in halfsleep, a scattering of darkened windows. The city was really beautiful. In a few of the fluorescent windows, employees worked late hours, each alone at his or her office. […] Looking at the office workers suspended high above us, I sensed for the first time my father’s desire to leave China and to live in a foreign country. It was the anonymity. He wanted to be unknown, unpossessed by others’ knowledge of him. That was freedom.

I looked up at my father, his gaze also directed to those office buildings. He glanced down briefly and smiled. Like worker bees, he observed in English.

I remember thinking in that moment that I was going to live in New York one day. That was the extent of my ambitions at age nine, but I felt it deeply. I didn’t want to go back to China […] I didn’t feel that way anymore.

Through the yuzu aftershave, I could remember what it was like to kiss him, at the beginning of the summer, when he first took me over to his loft. I went around looking at his things, his books, the framed art on the walls, his furniture that he’d paid someone to arrange. I opened up his bathroom cabinet and sniffed his collection of aftershaves. I opened up his closet and looked at his wood hangers and shoe trees. He got off on my curiosity. When I kissed him, it was like kissing all of his things, all the signifiers and trappings of adulthood or success coming at me in a rush. Fucking was just seeing that to its end, a white yacht docking.

Certain days, we went stalking. As in: Let’s stalk this town. Let’s stalk this street. Pick a house, any house. It wasn’t just houses that could be stalked. Gas stations could be stalked. Strip malls could be stalked. Gyms. Clothing boutiques […] we were familiar with the range of layouts, the types of products, having grown up in similar homes.

Stalking, Bob liked to say, is an aesthetic experience. It has its rituals and customs. There is prestalking. There is poststalking. Every stalk is different. There are live stalks. There are dead stalks. It isn’t just breaking and entering. It isn’t just looting. It’s envisioning the future. It is building the Facility and all of the things that we want to have with us[…] Foodstuffs. A library. DVD Movies. Office supplies. Throw pillows. Tablecloths, one for every day, one for holidays. Ceramic planters. Soap dishes. Prescription drugs. Toys, though there were no children among us.

You could lose yourself this way, watching the most banal activities cycle through on an infinite loop. It is a fever of repetition, of routine. But surprisingly, the routines don’t necessarily repeat in the identical manner. If you paid a little attention, you would see variations. Like the order in which she set down the dishes. Or how sometimes she’d go around the table clockwise, other times counterclockwise.

The variations were what got me.

When I was a kid, I used to watch my mother go through her daily facial routine. She subscribed to the Clinique 3-Step skin-care regimen: Liquid Facial Soap Mild, Clarifying Lotion 2 (because she had dry combination skin, like me), and Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion. Every morning and evening, she stood in front of the bathroom mirror, going through this process. It wasn’t always the same. Sometimes she’d wash her face in circular clockwise motions, other times counterclockwise. Then there were times when she’d finish with an extra, unsanctioned step: Fujianese face oil, patted onto her face. The oil was a mystery, tinted emerald green, reeking of some chinoiserie, a fussy floral scent, imparting unknown medicinal qualities. It came in a small broad-shouldered glass flask imprinted with the image of a poppy flower. I have looked for that product everywhere, in both Cantonese Chinatowns, in Fujianese Chinatown, in Sunset Park, in Flushing, and never found it.

I had only returned to China once since my parents had immigrated. […] I saw all of my relatives, many of whom I remembered and some I did not. My grandmother cried upon seeing me. My contact with them has been intermittent at best.

Approaching the end of the driveway, I reached a dirt road with a row of dusty storefronts, some closed with a rolling garage door. The difference between the hotel and its immediate surroundings was acute. At one of the storefronts, an old Chinese man in a wife-beater and plastic sandals sat on a plastic crate, in front of a dusty display of candies. He glared at me and spoke something. His Chinese, either a local dialect or heavily accented Mandarin, was impossible to understand.

I said hello in Mandarin, meekly.

But now he was standing up, speaking angrily. Though I couldn’t understand what he was saying, it was clear he didn’t think I should be sticking around.

I turned back.

The worker, in his late twenties with a goatee, punched in some different measurements and pulled the lever again. Out came a larger stack of cardboard, then a midsized stack. The shipping boxes were the least important part of the book production. I wasn’t sure why we were focusing on this so much. But I was mesmerized anyway. It was such a rote, mechanical movement, the punching in of measurements, the pulling of the lever. Cardboard boxes of different sizes and shapes were produced. He did the same thing over and over again, on a loop, until suddenly, he stopped in midaction and unleashed what sounded like a protest.

When I was a kid, I named this feeling Fuzhou Nighttime Feeling. It is not a cohesive thing, this feeling, it reaches out and bludgeons everything. It is excitement tinged by despair. It is despair heightened by glee. It is partly sexual in nature though it precedes sexual knowledge. If Fuzhou Nighttime Feeling were a sound, it would be early/midnineties R&B. If it were a flavor, it would be the ice-cold Pepsi we drink as we turn down tiny alleyways where little kids defecate wildly. It is the feeling of drowning in a big hot open gutter, of crawling inside an undressed, unstaunched wound that has never been cauterized.

I nodded, seduced. I’ve always been told my skin is too dry.

In a sudden, intimate gesture, she leaned over the counter, took my face in her hands, and spoke with care. You have beautiful skin, it is just uncomfortable right now. […]

And I remembered, in a sudden jolt of recall, that my mother had traveled to Hong Kong alone, one winter, when I was a teenager. The city was renowned among the Chinese-American communities for expert, cheap cosmetic procedures, and she was there to get the moles and beauty marks removed from her face. Her sisters used to call her a spotted leopard. When she returned, however, there were white spots on her face where the moles had been. She was still marked in the places she desired to be unmarked.

It took me a second to understand that there was sound coming out of Ashely’s mouth. It was a sounds of pain, but resigned; flattened into monotony. I had never heard anything like it before. The closest approximation is a hum, but stronger and fresher; sticky and electric and rhythmic like a pestilence of parched cicadas on the deepest summer night. It is a sound that you can feel, […] like bass pumping from an SUV on the street below, outside the window. […] The track is Rihanna and it was the only thing I’d heard that weekend. It was a few nights after Jonathan had left. Summer nights in my Bushwick studio, when it was so hot with no air-conditioning, and I’d put cold water on dishrags and stick them leechlike all across my body. […] All the lights were off, and I just lay there, trying to pass the hours before I had to get up and go to work, which was impossible because the night was so loud. [… The sounds] were all converging together to say one thing: You are alone. You are alone. You are alone. You are truly and really alone.

Half-in, half-out, I look around at am enormous red ballroom, decorated with gold bows, balloons, and banners, and crowded with people sitting around round tables, piled mountainously high with pig offal and Peking ducks and KFC buckets, toasting one another and smoking cigarettes. In one corner, a bunch of Chinese children crowd around a giant TV screen […] it’s playing Jaws […]

At floor height, I see people I recognize […] My grandmother and my grandfather. The other grandmother and grandfather, My great-great-aunt, eye blinded, world-weary. […] My four uncles, dressed in tuxedos, patting one another on the back and smoking so hard like it’s still the eighties. My father, sitting next to them […]

Then I spot my mother […] She sees me at the same time I see her. Coming over, she bends down and pulls me through the mouse door […]

Memories beget memories. Shen Fever being a disease of remembering, the fevered are trapped indefinitely in their memories. But what is the difference between the fevered and us? Because I remember too, I remember perfectly. My memories replay, unprompted, on repeat. And our days, like theirs, continue in an infinite loop. We drive, we sleep, we drive some more.

The feeling of walking into a mall before you’ve spent any money, the sense of promise that always diminishes gradually, as you go into the same stores, looking at the same merchandise.

You are not accumulating new knowledge. You are remembering, even though you have not set foot in a mall since you were a teenager. And whether the memories source from some collective memory (enshrined in movies, books, magazines, blogs, shopping catalogs) or from personal memory, try to see as much as you can. Try to remember as much as you can. And because memories beget more memories, you always remember more than you think is even there. The ones that are hidden from ourselves are the most revealing, give you the most information. Let your feelings fall away from you. A stalk should never be personal. It is about envisioning.

All this she did as much for her relatives as for herself, snapping photos, at every instance, to mail back to Fuzhou. She bought a Clinique skin cream, which qualified her for a free gift of a makeup bag with several samples

Her homesickness eased in department stores, supermarkets, wholesale clubs, superstores, places of unparalleled abundance. The solution was shopping, Zhigang observed. He was not trying to be reductive.

Spectra will deposit the agreed-upon amount after the termination of the agreement, November 30, 2011. It will be direct deposited to your bank account in arrears on this date. Spectra holds the rights to extend the contract, if necessary.

It was a delirious offer. I turned the number around in my head. I wrung it dry. It rained with Crème de la Mer moisturizing creams, Fendi handbags, and Bottega Veneta sandals—luxury items that my mother wanted but never allowed herself to buy.

In the end, there was the empty office […] We, the remaining employees, circled around in our smaller confines, bumping against locked rooms we weren’t allowed to enter. Like the glass offices of upper management. As we walked past these offices on our way to and from our desks, we glimpsed their belonging sealed off and entombed behind glass like emperors’ afterlife provisions […]

In the end, there were a half dozen of us left to man the course. We were a ragtag crew of younger employees, including Blythe and Delilah, many of whom remained out of ambition, in the hopes of career advancement after this catastrophe passed. We shared an unspoken understanding that Spectra would once again resume at full capacity […]

Management had left without establishing a clear hierarchy of our positions, so inevitably there was competition and jostling. Our camaraderie was uneasy; everyone was keeping score […] When we passed each other in the hallways, in our ridiculous professional outfits of wool trousers or pencil skirts and button-up shirts, we instinctively smiled tight-lipped smiles—which of course weren’t visible behind our masks.

Your blog makes me appreciate New York even more, he continued. And I’ll tell you a story. I just got back from Massachusetts last week. My cousin’s out there. He’s part of this group—they call themselves a colony, which, I don’t know about the terminology—and they all squat in one of those rich abandoned old houses together. They grow vegetables and make art and sing songs around the bonfire. I was supposed to move in with them out there.

Huh. So why did you come back?

They didn’t like me! He burst out laughing. No, I mean—I’ve lived in New York my whole life. I’ve lived in Spanish Harlem, in Morningside, in the Bronx. This place is home. What am I going to do at this point, go sailing the Martha’s Vineyard? He laughed again, a little uneasily this time. Besides, now that all the white people have finally left New York, you think I’m leaving?

I smiled

You should put on your blog something about how New York belongs to the immigrants, how it was once the first point of entry for foreigners. The history of it, you know?

All of my blood pumps to this pulse […] My sudden rage surprises me.

You have done a tremendous, tremendous job, Michael Reitman says.

I shove Bob and the force pushes him back. Again and again until he topples backward […] I kick him in the ribs, in the stomach, in the groin, in all of his soft parts […] I spit on his face, on his eyes that don’t even blink. The sounds this kicking makes, squelches and crunches, are unreal video-game sounds.

Candace!

I look up. It’s Adam, standing a few feet away. He has appeared out of nowhere. His incredulous expression quickly reassembles, neutralizes into one that’s controlled, authoritative.

Candace. Stop before you do something you regret, Adam says loudly, enunciating every word as if speaking to a child […]

He must find the words very funny because I hear the sound of trembly, jagged laughing. Except his face hasn’t changed […] Someone is laughing […] This familiar laughter […] It’s me. It’s actually me laughing. I’m laughing because I have never had a personal conversation with Adam in all this time and he is telling me what to do. That’s pretty funny.

To live in a city is to live the life that it was built for, to adapt to its schedule and rhythms, to move within the transit layout made for you during the morning and evening rush, winding through the crowds of fellow commuters. To live in a city is to consume its offerings. To eat at its restaurants. To drink at its bars. To shop at its stores. To pay its sales taxes. To give a dollar to its homeless.

To live in a city is to take part in and to propagate its impossible systems. To wake up. To go to work in the morning, It is also to take pleasure in those systems because, otherwise, who could repeat the same routines, year in, year out?