In their well-manicured hands, they gripped petite cell phones, always at the ready to offer their services. Harry had received just such an offer a half-hour after checking in. A voice cooed in a Texas twang and Chinese tones: “Hello, honey, you lonesome tonight?” And though Harry was tempted, he was also a veterinarian who was well aware of the precise opportunistic methods by which parasites and deadly viruses travel. Down, boy. Good boy.
Bennie Trueba y Cela had received a similar call and had laughed uproariously. “Sweetie, you’ve got the wrong number,” he said. He had the girth and robustness of his Texan mother, and the sensual lips and extravagant gestures of his Spanish father, who died a month after Bennie had announced to him by letter that he was gay.
This sent Bennie to a psychiatrist to examine his problems with other people’s anger, disappointment, and criticism. “My father’s death was like a complete rejection.” He said some variation of this at almost every session, making it sound each time as if it were a sudden epiphany.
Bennie’s room at the Glorious View Villa was the one that would have been mine, across from Vera’s at the end of the hall. The hotel liked to please tour leaders and gave them rooms with a mountain view, that of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. Its numerous jagged 6 1
A M Y T A N
peaks did indeed recall a sleeping dragon with a ridged back. When I was last here and was told I had a mountain-view room, I was suspicious of what this meant, for I have been in hotels that claimed to have panoramas but had only the poetic hint of one. And on one unpleasant occasion, I snapped back the curtain to see that the view was indeed that of a mountain, only it was placed right against the window, the dark rock obscuring all light and emitting the dank smell of a cave.
Bennie took a deep breath and inhaled inspiration from the mountain. The group had originally hoped to secure Dr. Bill Wu as tour leader, and a wise choice that would have been. He was a dear friend from the days when he and I were teaching at Mills College. But he was busy leading another group on an intensive study of the thousand Buddha carvings of the Dunhuang caves. Bennie had a few years of docent experience, but unlike me, he had never been to Burma or China and knew little about either country or its art. He had cried with gratitude when told after my funeral that he had been chosen the new leader. (That was after several other possibilities had been ruled out.) Thus appointed, he vowed to help in any way he could—by organizing luggage collection for transport, confirming airline reservations and passport needs, doing the hotel check-ins, arranging matters with the local guides provided by China’s and Burma’s offices of tourism, anything that would ensure that everyone had a marvelous, first-class adventure.
Pleasing people was his greatest joy, he liked to say. Unfortunately, he often promised what was humanly impossible, and thus made himself the target of people’s ire when reality replaced intention. It was that way with his business. He was a graphic artist, and his lover, Timothy, was an art director. Bennie pledged impossibly fast turnarounds, special design elements and paper stock upgrades thrown in for free, a budget twenty percent lower than what any other firm had submitted, which later grew to be twenty-five percent higher 6 2
S A V I N G F I S H F R O M D R O W N I N G
than anyone else’s. (He had inherited this technique of estimates and overruns from his father, who was a building contractor.) There were always unavoidable, perfectly legitimate reasons for the overruns, of course, and in the end he endeared himself to the clients, for they were always ecstatic with the final product. He was, in fact, a very talented designer. But by going away to China and Burma for three weeks, he risked missing his deadlines—again.
On the other hand, the current project was for the Asian Art
Bennie Trueba y Cela had received a similar call and had laughed uproariously. “Sweetie, you’ve got the wrong number,” he said. He had the girth and robustness of his Texan mother, and the sensual lips and extravagant gestures of his Spanish father, who died a month after Bennie had announced to him by letter that he was gay.
This sent Bennie to a psychiatrist to examine his problems with other people’s anger, disappointment, and criticism. “My father’s death was like a complete rejection.” He said some variation of this at almost every session, making it sound each time as if it were a sudden epiphany.
Bennie’s room at the Glorious View Villa was the one that would have been mine, across from Vera’s at the end of the hall. The hotel liked to please tour leaders and gave them rooms with a mountain view, that of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. Its numerous jagged 6 1
A M Y T A N
peaks did indeed recall a sleeping dragon with a ridged back. When I was last here and was told I had a mountain-view room, I was suspicious of what this meant, for I have been in hotels that claimed to have panoramas but had only the poetic hint of one. And on one unpleasant occasion, I snapped back the curtain to see that the view was indeed that of a mountain, only it was placed right against the window, the dark rock obscuring all light and emitting the dank smell of a cave.
Bennie took a deep breath and inhaled inspiration from the mountain. The group had originally hoped to secure Dr. Bill Wu as tour leader, and a wise choice that would have been. He was a dear friend from the days when he and I were teaching at Mills College. But he was busy leading another group on an intensive study of the thousand Buddha carvings of the Dunhuang caves. Bennie had a few years of docent experience, but unlike me, he had never been to Burma or China and knew little about either country or its art. He had cried with gratitude when told after my funeral that he had been chosen the new leader. (That was after several other possibilities had been ruled out.) Thus appointed, he vowed to help in any way he could—by organizing luggage collection for transport, confirming airline reservations and passport needs, doing the hotel check-ins, arranging matters with the local guides provided by China’s and Burma’s offices of tourism, anything that would ensure that everyone had a marvelous, first-class adventure.
Pleasing people was his greatest joy, he liked to say. Unfortunately, he often promised what was humanly impossible, and thus made himself the target of people’s ire when reality replaced intention. It was that way with his business. He was a graphic artist, and his lover, Timothy, was an art director. Bennie pledged impossibly fast turnarounds, special design elements and paper stock upgrades thrown in for free, a budget twenty percent lower than what any other firm had submitted, which later grew to be twenty-five percent higher 6 2
S A V I N G F I S H F R O M D R O W N I N G
than anyone else’s. (He had inherited this technique of estimates and overruns from his father, who was a building contractor.) There were always unavoidable, perfectly legitimate reasons for the overruns, of course, and in the end he endeared himself to the clients, for they were always ecstatic with the final product. He was, in fact, a very talented designer. But by going away to China and Burma for three weeks, he risked missing his deadlines—again.
On the other hand, the current project was for the Asian Art
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