Midas.
I saw him from the corner of my eye in the crowded streets of New York city- the profile in my peripheral vision was unmistakable. "Midas," I mumbled, but the figure didn't turn. I quickened my pace, tripping over my bags, bumped into him softly enough to be an accident. Midas.
The man turned towards me. The eyes were unfamiliar. The skin was sallow, not the rich, creamy Grecian ivory of Midas's. "So sorry…" I mumbled and walked quickly, face down at my feet, keeping my eyes focused on the streets straight in front of me, walked the city way.
I walked like a city person, like all I cared about was getting to where I was going, but my mind was preoccupied with when I knew Midas.
He was always on the back of my mind like that…
I opened the door to my shared apartment and dropped my bags on the floor. The ever-present Oriental smell of ginger and teas filled my nostrils. It smelt almost like home, and was comforting, almost like being home, even after my parents were long dead.
The emptiness of the place was strange to me. I had grown used to Jaen's presence; her absence only intensified the loneliness that losing Midas once again had brought.
I put the kettle on the burner while I put away the groceries, allowing my mind to wander over to Midas. It whistled, and as the tea steeped, I looked over the mail. The only thing was from Beijing, a postcard from Jaen, in Chinese except for the address. I nearly laughed. The US postal service, vast and powerful as it was, needed the address written in English to get it where it needed to go.
I traced the characters. Mei Un Ghain. The Chinatown address, all written neatly in English printing. Dude… it's been great. Wish you were here… Heh. Really. It's kinda boring, what with all the family here, I just need someone who I can party with a little. When was the last time you came to China anyway? Check ya later!
The tea was ready, and strong. I breathed the familiar scented steam in and sank into the shabby chair Jaen and I had bought from a thrift shop. Sometimes I wished I was Jaen, with a family, not haunted by figures from the past the way I was.
The small Confucian altar caught my eye. I wondered who was the dominant partner in our relationship? She was my closest friend since college, both taking the film class at NYU. It was true, I had spoken to her first, but somehow I felt her influence over me was greater than mine over her. And she had become more subdued, quieter, and more of a thinker since then, more like me, and I hadn't changed that much. Yet I felt that she swallowed all the air from me when she was in the room, her soul was so great and strong; you knew you were beside an extraordinary person.
And I was just Mei. Quiet, introverted Mei, with no great talents except for my music, no friends except for my books and violin. What had made me want to make films, make me change my major the summer before my freshman college year?
It was a familiar question and the answer… I knew. It was Midas.
I switched the radio on to the college station. Notes that almost sounded like the wind on at sunset near the golden end of day were playing. A familiar symphony filled after the solo…
I knew him, you know. (I know.) You know why I knew him? (Yes.) Aren’t you supposed to be angry at me for what happened….?
The joke was that everything was Midas today.
"Mother? Father?" I spoke softly, pleading in Chinese.
"Yes?" My mother's soft voice answered.
"May I go the town green tonight?"
"Why?" My father stood in the kitchen doorway; his eyes focused on cross-examining me.
"There's a symphony visiting… May I go? Please?" I was anxious to get out of the stuffy house over the dry-cleaners; to escape the last vestiges of my brother's haunting.
"What do you want to see this for? It is only a concert… there are several a year… We need your help tonight." My father's words stung me as if he had just slapped me.
"Let her go…" My mother murmured.
My father considered, looking at my mother's shadow because that's all she was, in that dark room with the window shades drawn tight against the last rays of sun.
"Fine. But you be back right after it is over, or I will go for you."
I nodded. My father need not have worried. I had gone through four years of American high school without making a single friend. It suited me fine. I came home from classes, did my homework while I helped at the dry-cleaners, lit some incense and played my violin. Sometimes I read books, Chinese or English ones from the library, until dinner.
The chimes over the door chimed as I slammed it, and I ran down the steps. I was still wearing my heavy work skirt and sweater, despite the heat of the day. At least it had begun to cool down… I rolled my sleeves up and savored the first few notes as the symphony began to play.
Music was the only thing that I had since my brother died. I wanted to play in the Philharmonic, go to Yale and major in music composition, play on Broadway, if I could. I wanted to run away from home and my brother once and for all.
I walked along the sidewalk, listening to the occasional crescendo and diminuendo of passing cars. The wind softly rustled the leaves in the trees, a soft trill against the sparse trailing sounds of the street.
The day had become cloudy since the sunny morning. It looked almost like rain… but the rain matched the melancholy music being played. Sian would have loved the piece… there was a long, trilling flute solo. No bird had sung higher, more beautiful notes than my brother's flute.
Even here, my brother was on my mind-
"Ouch!" I felt someone barrel into my side. They cried out at the same instant of impact that I had.
"Oh, man… Sorry," the voice groaned. It was definitely masculine and had a familiar cadence to it.
"Heh."
"That was one hell of a fall, eh?" the voice said.
"Oh. Yeah," I answered, rubbing my side.
Suddenly, the voice became concerned. "Hey, you okay?" It was like he had just noticed me, or my thinness and paleness.
A palm appeared through the curtain of hair and cupped my chin, forcing me to look at him.
I was staring into the face of the boy who had sat next to me in calculus, the impish Midas Reim.
"Yeah, I'm ok," I said hotly, trying to turn away from him, angry that he had grabbed at me like that, even angrier that I had been caught off guard and was now talking to him like a cornered animal, rather than biting back.
He dropped my face. "Hey, it's ok."
I turned from him and continued up the street to the gazebo in the center of the green.
"Hey… what's your name again?" I was surprised to hear him run up to my side and ask me what my name was. Yet his hesitance was exaggerated, and did it matter now that he knew we were both alright after the fall?
But I answered, regardless. "Mei."
"You had calculus with me, right?"
I nodded, and continued walking.
"Where are you going?"
I had to laugh in spite of myself. Midas was making this seem utterly ridiculous in the way that he had with everything. But I continued to walk ahead, not answering him.
"I'm going to follow you until you tell me, you know."
"Well." I looked into his eyes. "I'm going to the symphony in the Green."
He almost laughed. "No, really. What are you doing down here?"
"I'm listening to the symphony for the night." His laughter hurt me the way the collision had, and I began to walk ahead again.
"Mind if I join you, then?" Suddenly he was in front of me, instead of beside me or behind me.
I shrugged. I really didn't want him to. I just wanted to enjoy the music. I didn't want someone around who made me uncomfortable. He made me feel like I was going to be pushed off an invisible edge by him any moment.
What would someone like him be doing listening to classical music on a Friday night? Didn't he have some party or something to go to, someplace or someone who needed him?
But he fell into step beside me and accompanied me to the concert despite my noncommittal answer. I allowed myself to drift off, picking up the piece by ear. I'd have to try it when I got home-
"Do you want to sit down?"
"No. I'm ok."
"It's all fine for you, isn't it?"
I ignored him again, feeling slightly entertained. Surprisingly, I was no longer focused on the music, but instead his voice.
I continued to stand, staring out onto the nearly empty desert-like expanse of sand and long, willowy grasses.
"It's ok if you don't want to converse with me. I don't mind." I ignored the sarcasm in his voice,
and let him continue not to mind, and drifted off to the edge of the Green, towards the marsh area.
The tide was going out. There were small tide pools between the grasses that were growing larger, filling as the beach downtown drained.
I always felt safe here. The wind whispered softly, carrying the music. They had begun a new piece, something more violent. It fit the pre-storm clouds perfectly.
My eyes closed and I began to drift into the notes, to the black room where I would see Sian.
It happened every time I heard music. He would be speaking to me from the gaps within notes, and if I listened hard enough, listened for those gaps, he'd lead me to the black room. And there he would be. I could see him; his grinning fifteen-year old face would be in my field of vision just for a second until the music hit its last note.
And then he would be gone and I'd stand in the room alone until I opened my eyes.
I could hear his lucid voice, telling me I was almost there…
"Hey."
My eyes flew open. Midas had sat beside me, and was looking over the sandy stretch before him, barefooted with his shoes in his lap.
"You want to go for a walk or something?"
"No."
"C'mon…" He grinned at me. "You can't just sit here and look like you're on a patronage to a distant planet."
I got to my feet. "You'd be surprised," I murmured.
"Eh?"
"It's nothing."
I shut my eyes and tried to recapture Sian's voice. But all I could hear was the music.
Midas was dipping his toes into a yellow tide pool, turning it into gold with his touch. The smooth metal surface rippled, and the gold color began to spread to the green marsh grasses until they became fine honey-colored strands woven into the sand. I watched, captured and held in place by the snaking gold marsh grasses…
The color continued to spread as the sun receded into the water on the horizon. Then, the night took it back, a fleck at a time, until the only gilded thing was the tide pool where Midas was stirring the surface with his feet. Then, it flickered away, and I got to my feet, leaving Midas alone with his wasted fortunes.
I don’t think he noticed my departure.
I closed my eyes and sipped the tea. The cup was dry. Only a small circle of ginger orange remained at the bottom. I left it on the small oak table, next to the other marks left by cups forgotten on the surface.
My violin sat in the corner of the room. How long had it been since I had played it? It seemed like years.
I arched my fingers. Would they still know what to do, if I had decided that I wanted to continue to play? I watched them dance, agilely, like wind on water.
No. They moved too slowly, too stiffly. There was no grace left in these hands.
The bells over the door jingled. I shut my book abruptly and the harsh sound echoed through the empty front room of the dry-cleaner’s.
Midas stood in front of me, his arms loaded up with dress shirts and slacks. His thin frame was overwhelmed by what he carried in his arms.
“Ummm… four shirts… I think… three pairs of… umm…” His voice broke off as he noticed me behind the counter. “Ummm… hello.”
My eyes stayed focused on him. “So… four shirts and three slacks, eh?”
“Yeah.”
“They’ll be done in three days.” He handed the shirts over and I counted, adding the price to the price of the pants.
“So. Your family owns this place?”
I nodded.
“Well… it’s nice. My dad never complains that his shirts never have enough starch…”
“So you’ll want extra starch, then?”
“I guess so.” The last syllable, so, languidly lagged behind.
I turned to the load of laundry and hung them on the ingoing rack.
“What a way to spend the last summer in your hometown, eh?”
He wasn’t leaving. I shrugged. “I’m used to it.”
“Huh?”
“Oh…” I blushed. I had spoken in Chinese. “I just said, I was used to it, ‘cause I’m expected to help out and stuff…”
Midas stared at me, refusing to break contact.
I busied myself behind the counter. The small yellow basket caught my eye. “You want a lollipop?”
“You’d give me one? What do I look like, a bratty three-year-old…. I’ll take orange.”
I handed over an orange flavored lollipop, took a red one for myself.
The clock hit seven-thirty. My shift was finally over. “Midas?”
“Mmm?” He talked around the orange lolly in his mouth.
“We’re closed.”
He turned his back and walked outside, the pillars and steps of the dry-cleaners turning yellow behind him.
It was then that I placed his name. Midas. The greedy man in Greek mythology who wanted only gold.
I’d never seen anyone who was more their name than he was.
He came back, three days later, at the exact same time- right as we were closing. I looked for his name on the hang tags of the garments on the racks. Randall, Raleigh, Renton, Riley….No. It had to be here. I looked again. Randall, Raleigh, Renton, Sage, Sully, Sutton, Reim… I took the clothes from the rack and handed them to Midas. “Here.”
“Do I get a lollipop today?” he said as he took them.
“No.”
His eyes lingered on the yellow lolly I had in my hands, wrapper off and shiny with saliva.
“We’re already closed, you know.” The clock read seven thirty-six.
The delay was my fault. I had misplaced his clothes, out of alphabetical order.
The door jingled behind him when he left. I flicked the lights off and made sure the machines were off. We didn’t run machines so near closing anymore. My parents didn’t want to be bothered with working so late after my brother died.
I went out the front way, the way Midas did, and locked the door behind me. The parking lot was empty of cars, the huge blacktop expanse dry as a desert around me.
There was no sun today. A breeze caressed my fingers. No birds were singing. The sky was tense and grey, a day in limbo.
My fingers loosened around my lollipop, and it fell to the ground, breaking into a thousand precious shards. “Sunlight for Midas,” I murmured. The wind carried my words away to Sian.
I know he heard. He always listened to the wind on days like today, and would play them on his flute for me. I listened harder. I could already hear his breathy concerto beginning…
Someone was waving at me from the other side of the parking lot, but I paid no attention as I followed the voice down the bleak hall…
“Mei?”
I stepped away from the black room.
Midas was beside me, clothes in his arms. He shook his head slowly. “What are you looking for?” he asked me.
“Nobody,” I answered.
He stood beside me and waited.
“I love this place.” I waited for his reaction. “I’m not safe here, but there’s no place I trust more.”
The wind picked up and my words were lost, carried over the ebony asphalt and left to drift along with the breeze.
Midas laughed as the plastic laundry bags whipped in the wind, and the clothing floated over his face.
“You’re looking for something you’ve lost, eh, Mei?” He handed me another yellow lollipop, unopened, returning the sunset.
Midas left just as the rain began to drizzle, on foot. All the extra starch in the world would never have kept those shirts from wilting.
My apartment now reminds me of home. It smells the same; it’s dark the same way like home was, hardly any windows and only a few lamps, the bulbs in the overhead fixtures long blown, and Jaen and I too busy or lazy to replace them.
Jaen always makes the effort to make the place look like our own. There’s a wide, low vase filled with small, beautiful rocks from the beach beside my family’s house and the beaches Jaen has visited in China. You can tell which ones are from where, because my rocks are vibrant and perfectly round. The rocks from China are rough and the same dusty grey-brown color all over.
She also left me flowers- lilies. Bone white lilies from the florist’s shop down where she works, with a single vibrant red one in the center. They were an apology over our last dinner together before she left, her apology at leaving me in this place with no one while she went back somewhere where there were many people waiting for her.
The flowers are dead, they were from the moment they were cut. They’re wilted and brown around the edges, shriveled on the inside. They’ve begun to rot in their vase… I can smell their lingering death-scent from anywhere in the kitchen.
I reach out to the sculpted black vase. My hand curls around it, tight so that my knuckles are white.
The hand goes limp.
There was another symphony the night after. My parents were out, and I was supposed to stay home, but I couldn’t.
The first thing you saw when you walked into our apartment was a family portrait. Me, Sian, and our parents, our stern faces glaring down at you, watching you austerely.
At first when you looked at it, everyone looks perfectly fine, like a normal family, even if my parents are a little old, their faces with the suggestion of wrinkles, the thick, black hair streaked with white. Maybe they looked a little tired, by life, of life.
But if you look again, Sian grabs your attention. His face looks so worn by his years, despite the smoothness of his skin. His eyes look as if they have seen a thousand deaths and they are crying, glossy black pools of lament. His hand is held stiffly towards his body, like he has to watch it to make sure it does not betray him. Perhaps it is his own hand that killed the thousands his eyes had watched die.
I couldn’t stay here alone while Sian watched me, lifeless from the flat photograph.
Midas was sitting at my bench, hands folded in his lap like a young boy in church, staring out onto the water solemnly.
I sat beside him and he didn’t say a word.
The concert was heavy on strings. There would be no stepping-stones in a burbling lake under the childhood sunlight of lazy summer afternoons to walk on to Sian.
He was always jealous of the violent solos I got to play as a violinist. Every piece for flute was breathy and delicate, like a young girl in love.
Sian was more like the abrupt, scratchy compositions I could play on my violin than anything he ever played on his flute.
I fell into the notes, found Sian at the climax of strings, as we always had. He looked at me, his sweet, girlish face twisting into the face of the dragon, one that blew ice instead of fire-
“I knew your brother.” Midas spoke and the image of Sian, the god of frost, retreated.
I watched him start to walk away, along the water’s edge. His wake was liquid bullion, permeating everything by the water’s edge. As many times as I had seen his golden sun-magic by now, I was still enchanted by it.
“I know you did.”
Midas shook his head, his eyes downcast, concentrating on shaping his gold correctly before it hardened into its permanent shape. “It’s not my fault, what happened to him…”
“I know that too.”
He looked at me, not understanding what I meant. “You know why I knew him, though.”
“Yes.” I looked away from him. If I listened hard enough, I could still see Sian… I knew him better than anyone else.
“Aren’t you supposed to be angry with me for what happened?”
“Why should I be?”
He shrugged, watching the circles of water radiate from his movements in the water.
“It’s not my job to forgive you,” I whispered in Chinese.
Midas met my gaze. His flaxen hair rippled in the breeze gently, matching the lapping rhythm of the water he stood in. The recognition in his face soon flickered away.
I walked up the stairs into the apartment. Sian stared at me from his vantage point on the wall, but I opened the door to his room anyway.
It was exactly the way I remembered it, nothing touched since that day. His sheet music was on the music stand in the crowded corner of the tiny room, the flute thrown hastily on the floor, among the many books and papers.
A sheaf had the music staff printed on it, notes deliberately penciled in their places. I didn’t look.
They still belonged to Sian.
I grabbed the cigar box from under his bed, hastily slamming the cover down. I turned to leave the room, the silver spoon clinking steadily against the box, in a slightly faster tempo than the one to which I stepped.
Sian’s flute still laid on the floor, fully assembled, next to the open, blue-velvet lined case.
The box fell to the floor with a clinking sound, its gruesome contents spilling in full sight for anyone to see. I didn’t care, as my hands deftly disassembled his flute, put it in its box the way I had watched him do countless times.
A diamond shattered against the sapphire lining.
Before I left the room, I put his belongings back into the cigar box and brought them to my room with me.
Sometimes, when Jaen wasn’t home, or would be out for a while, I’d visit our neighbors, timidly amongst the constant influx of people, all hardened men in their forties, or young punkish teenagers with long hair and ripped clothes who didn’t know any better.
I felt out of place, with my heavy, clean hair and solemn clothing, clear, smooth skin, so far from the yellow color of theirs.
Once, I thought I saw Sian, in a young boy, thin and yellow the way he was, his hair and nails brittle, the voice breathy and lilting as he fell back to the floor after the hit struck him.
I turned my face towards him and studied him. His clouded eyes stared back. Remember… I asked, my voice husky and foreign to me, remember when it was enough to blow bubbles in the afternoon, and watch them go “pop” in the yellow sun?
He nodded, and stared back into me. I watched his eyes grow cold, lost him in the way I lost everyone else.
The bells tinkled with the door. It was a little after seven, the night that Midas was due to pick up some clothes he had left off.
I looked up, not expecting him so early. He was always a last-minute customer, running in only seconds before we closed.
“Hey.”
I wondered if he thought that my refusal to forgive him was an offer of friendship. I turned to the rack of clothing, not even needing his receipt. I had it memorized… two shirts, pinstriped, a jacket, a pair of slacks. Midas Reim.
“So… where are you going to college?” His voice was bright, offering something golden that I had seen in him many times before but had never been given to me.
“New York.” His clothes were missing, again.
“What are you going to do there?”
“Major in music. Violin.” My voice stayed cold, eyes studied the rack. Mother must have misplaced it or mistagged it in yesterday night’s rush to finish what was due today.
“I’m going to be a filmmaker. I’m going o San Diego. Tomorrow, actually.”
I flinched at the friendliness in his voice. Film.
Maybe Midas and I could be equals after all.
I found the clothes, the shirts sandwiched between Summer and Tangiers, the suit pants and jacket between Cole and Desmond.
He wrote out the check, and I stamped the back of it before placing it in the register.
Midas had his back towards me. “Midas…”
“Eh?”
I had my hand around the box I had taken from my brother’s room over a week before. “Midas…” He saw what I was holding, recognised it. “I want you to have this.”
He walked over, took the box from me, opened the lid and valued its contents quickly. “Thanks, Mei…” He never finished his sentence, but instead closed the top of the box and walked quickly outside, his footsteps thudding softly on the carpeted floor.
The bells rang softly again as Midas closed the door. An older man, dark, not golden the way Midas was, tired in the way my parents were, ran to the door.
“I’ll be with you in minute,” I said as I took a yellow lollipop from the basket beneath the counter, unwrapped it, and let my tongue caress it and taste its bitterness before crunching it with my teeth.
I sat down to the small screenplay Jaen and I had written for our thesis. Most of it was done being shot, all that it needed were a few voice-overs and some splicing to make it flow and fade correctly. That could be done easily the last week before screening.
I traced Jaen’s light, brisk characters with my pencil, adding some notes of my own, my fluid, heavy strokes contrasting hers.
One hundred seventeen identical paper cranes are lined up on the coffee table. In the fading light, I make the final page of the screenplay into an origami crane, the way that my mother taught me when I was little, five or six, while Sian colored the pages in a coloring book at the kitchen table.
I open the window and release the cranes into the molten golden Midas- light, the kind of light that makes everything seem like solid gold, even air, which was thick enough that you fooled yourself into thinking if you reached for it and closed your palm fast enough, you would come away with a piece of the sky in your hand.
