Japanese Denim

When I left Anhui for Shanghai, at the innocent age of seventeen, the recruiter told me that the theme of the hotel where I was going to work was “rustic farm life.” That was something I knew well. I’d grown up surrounded by farms, and animals, in my small village, and I was used to labor. But no farm I’d ever been to looked like the Farm. The property was gated all around and driving down the long gravel road, the first structure that Xiaobin, another boy from a neighboring town in Anhui, and I saw was the stables.

The wooden barn-shaped building was see-through. Made with dark wood and long panes of glass, the building showcased the horses feeding and sleeping in each of their enormous spaces. Their individual stalls were larger than the living room of my parents’ home. Through the windows, too, was the glimmer of yellow light from a line of crystal chandeliers that hung down from the ceiling. The glass that largely made up the walls of the barn separating the horses from the outside world was pristine. A number of men walked around, all wearing black shirts and pants. We’d kept animals on our land back home. I knew how much effort it likely took to keep that glass looking so clean.

The main building looked like a farmhouse—its shape was similar to that of the stables, but with more extensions jutting off from the sides.

An enormous black barn door slid open automatically as we approached, and we drove into an inner stone courtyard driveway that led to another set of tall glass doors, flanked by large bonsai trees and stone sculptures. Another crystal chandelier glimmered behind the glass.

The man, who we’d soon come to know as Manager Ma, was directing us inside and said, “The Farm was renovated a few years ago by the new owners. They sometimes stay on a house at the edge of the property, on the weekends.”

We were walked through the hotel, which seemed empty of guests.

Ma led us along a path around an open field and pointed out the vegetable garden, forest trail, and greenhouse. A large stream cut through the wooden area of the property and we walked over several footbridges on our way past. Fish and turtles swam in the water. Past the stream, a large swimming pool sat in its own field, surrounded by lawn chairs.

Beyond the pool house, behind a fence, was a glass structure.

“What’s that?”

“The owner’s house,” Ma said. “You won’t need to go there; you are not allowed on their property.”

When we reached the employees’ dorm, I saw the stables again and realized we’d walked a long, circuitous route back to the start, like a winding, uneven horseshoe.

Xiaobin and I unpacked our belongings onto our bunk beds and got changed into our uniforms.

We were sharing a room with two other employees, who had come to Shanghai from the north. From the window of our room, I could see in the near distance the pool, the pool house, and beyond it, rising above the pool house, the top two floors of the glass house, darkened, black, even in the sunlight.

My first time working in the stables the next day, I kept looking around at the structure, the windows, the chandeliers. I couldn’t believe that this was a place for horses. Who were these people who had built and designed such a place? The first weekend on the Farm, I waited to see if the owners would arrive on the estate. But the house remained dark. Instead, a few guests checked in to the hotel, and it felt like everything mobilized in service of them. By the end of the week, I guess after a few days of busy work, I was already getting used to the hotel, my room, the chandeliers dripping their golden light everywhere.

I was also starting to feel a little homesick. It was my first time living away. It was my first time stepping foot in a hotel. I was missing Gigi, whose face was as wide and as white as a bowl of milk, and whom I’d loved since the age of thirteen. We went to school together for three years, before I dropped out. She wanted to finish high school. What she was going to do with that degree, I had no idea. She didn’t need it. She never wanted to leave our hometown. I was always the one who wanted to get away.

When my first week’s paycheck arrived, I purchased, online, with nearly all of my money, a pair of jeans so stiff and dark that they nearly crackled when I pulled them up. It was one of those random things you come across in your spare time that lodges in your mind and won’t give up hold. Suddenly I needed these jeans more than anything else. They were supposed to mold to my legs, telling the story of a man in motion and revealing the shape of my days. They were supposed to become as pliant and as comfortable as skin. They were supposed to last all of my life. I was not supposed to wash them.

I wore them as much as I could. I felt almost as though training them to my body were my second job. After work shifts, I’d peel off my uniform and squeeze into my jeans. They were tight. I had been told, by their customer service, to buy a size down. In my room, to the laughter of my bunkmates, I did squats and stretches and jogged in place. On nights when the hotel was empty, I took my jeans out for walks around the grounds.

At night was when nature really started showing off. The chandeliers became glistening embers, turned down to their lowest setting. The moon would be full and low, and bright. I walked up the stone path to the pagoda in the middle of the Lover’s Garden, which was the name of the small forest separating the hotel from the grounds. In the moonlight, standing in the garden pavilion, I wondered what Gigi was doing, back at the hometown. Might she be staring up at the same moon? No. She was an early sleeper. She’d be in her bed, the bed I’d tried to gently push her into together for the past two years. How much longer would she make me wait? And I was gone now—I was here in Shanghai. What was I here for? There were not even customers to attend to.

So much useless beauty, I thought. But also, I was enjoying it. I was still not used to it then, as I am now. I was not yet used to a life suffused with clean elegance. Frogs bellowed in their clear ponds, little moon-filled midnight plates. A dragonfly floated by, her mate not far behind. Ducks, the rabbits, the swans, were all asleep, their soft heads tucked into their soft bellies. Eyelids shuttered, or slowly heavying. The stream burbled over velvety emerald moss on stone on silt. The relentless death-song of the cicadas hovered above it all.

The next weekend, when I’d already changed and begun to do my exercises, Baozi came up to me and asked for a favor. He hadn’t had time to clean the pool—and he had to leave early to catch a train into the city. He had a date. Would I do it for him? It was saltwater and high maintenance. I had to brush the walls and clean the filters and turn on the pump overnight. He’d give me an hour’s wage.

Everyone else was lying on their beds, scrolling through their phones. A few other guys were lounging on the floor, playing dou dizhu. I was the only one up and moving.

We all knew what Baozi meant when he said he had a date. We’d been told by Kuaizi what he spent his salary on in Shanghai on his days off.

“Made an appointment, eh?” said Roro. “This one human or humanoid?”

“Steamed buns tonight,” ribbed Mantou.

“Leave enough time for the next guy for disinfection, eh?” shrieked Kuaizi. Baozi was always running late.

We all had food nicknames back then. It was a good group of guys. They’d just started calling me Tientien—sweets, sugar.

I didn’t bother changing into my uniform. It was an empty weekend at the hotel. I went out into the night toward the pool. Everything was quiet—as usual. I noticed, though, that the owners were around. Their house was glowing with a light that seemed to be trapped within. Later, I’d learn that this was the effect of seeing lights on in a house fitted with one-way windows. That night would be my first and only night seeing the house aglow, full of life.

The pool was an inky black rectangle against the dark grass surrounding it. I started brushing down the walls when I heard a sniffling sound coming from the far end. I hadn’t realized it when I arrived, but there was a girl lying flat along the diving board, and it sounded like she was crying.

I froze, unsure of what to do. We did not have any guests, so I realized that this must have been one of the owners’ daughters. I pulled my brush half out of the water.

The crying stopped. She brought an arm up to her face and I saw her wiping her tears away. Then she curled up to sitting, in one graceful motion. Her hair hung around her face like long velvet curtains. Her fringe came down nearly over her eyes. She looked at me and said: “You’re not wearing a uniform.”

Would she report me? Would I get in trouble with Ma? Who did I ultimately answer to: Ma or this girl in front of me? “I’m off duty,” I said finally. “I’m just covering for someone who had an emergency.”

“I’ve had the worst day of my life,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry.” The brush still hung in my hand. Its weight, half in the water, pulled on me and I made an effort to continue brushing.

“You’re just going to keep cleaning?” she said.

I laughed, nervously. “I think so?” I said.

“You don’t want to talk to me?”

“No, I do. I do.”

“A horse died today.”

“What? Is that why you’re so sad?”

“No. It wasn’t my horse.”

“Oh. So why are you so sad?”

“I just. I want to get away. I want to be free from everything. I want to start life over. Do you know what I mean?”

I did know what she meant. I had felt that way for a long time. But instead of saying those things to her, I just stared, silent, afraid and spellbound, as if she were a rare, wild animal that might attack or disappear if I made any sudden movements.

“Can you come closer?” she said.

I pulled the brush out and brought it along with me as I walked along the pool to the far side. She never took her gaze off of me. When I got near to the board, she gently patted next to her. I looked around. There was no one. I dropped the brush to the ground and took a seat.

Before I knew it, she had wrapped her arms around my body and lay her face into my chest. She lifted her legs into my lap, so she was curled into me, almost like a child. She continued crying. “I just want someone to hold me,” she said, through her quiet sobbing. “Just for a little.”

The contact brought me to life. Her skin, exposed white against her black bathing suit, was exquisite. Her long hair fell across my arms. I hugged her back. When my fingers touched the skin on her back, I felt like I’d been electrified.

And yet, though my body was sharply attuned to this girl and all of her body’s textures and movements and pressures against mine, I thought of Gigi. For just two weeks ago, when I was visiting home for Labor Day weekend, she had sat on my lap in nearly the same position, crying and begging me not to leave. I told her I would be back one day. That we would marry. That she could come to Shanghai herself. We kissed. I brushed her tears away. But I was gone the next day.

That moment conflated with this one, as I brought my hand to the girl’s face to brush away her tears. Had someone left her, too? She presented her face to mine as I wiped the tears away. Her eyes and lips were swollen, wet; they were irresistible. I brought my lips to hers and I tasted salt. I kissed her as though I were parched for it.

She pulled away and lifted her legs off of my lap. Then she slowly raised herself to her full standing height. She knew what she was doing to me. I sat there, entranced, taking in every inch of the vision.

Her body was long, slim, barely curved, beautiful. She came to the edge of the board and began bouncing slowly, on the balls of her feet. She stared into the water, into one spot of the black pool. The lights outside the hotel had all been turned off. Only the blinking of fireflies cut through the darkness. The crickets were awake but the mosquitoes had begun their rest.

Finally she dove in. She slid in and rocketed through the entire length of the pool. What I watched was a long shadow like an eel, and the rippling of the surface as she passed underneath. She came up at the other end and sucked in a deep breath. Then she turned directly to me and said—her voice commanding—“Come in.”

I was still wearing my jeans, but I did not bother wasting the time to take them off. It was as though I were being spirited away beyond my control. I didn’t know how to swim, but I jumped in. The pool was not deep; I knew that from cleaning it. Through the weight of the water, the increasing weight of the sodden clothing, I slowly made my way to her. What else could I do? I was seventeen. She wrestled with the tight, wet jeans, finally peeling them off of me. And as soon as she succeeded, she took me in her hands and pulled me in.

After I’d come back to my senses, she smiled at me and swam to the other side of the pool. My jeans had floated there on their own. She grabbed them and easily pulled her long body out of the water. She threw the jeans to me. They landed with a splash an arms length away.

She looked toward her house. “Wait for me,” she said. “I’ll be back soon.” And then she ran across the field. She was so dark against the night. I watched her, barely visible, entering her house. I waited, for a long time, unsure whether she would come back that night, or if she were talking about another day, another weekend, another month. When I started shivering in the salty water, I pulled myself out, cleaned the pool quickly, and went back toward the dorms.

I felt in my gut the stubborn, familiar mix of lust and remorse that I had when I thought of her in passing. Did she ever think of me too? What remained of her memory of me?

I returned in a daze. No one noticed that I’d changed into a uniform. I had hung my jeans out on the porch fence to dry.

You can imagine what I felt that night. A boy who’d lost his purity, who’d been unfaithful to his hometown girl. An entire ocean of emotions was roiling within me. I tossed and turned; I pulled the elastic of my pants open to see if anything had changed down there, if I’d been marked. But when the storm finally cleared, near three in the morning, what was left was a peaceful happiness unlike I’d ever felt before. I had been initiated into the realm of men. I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

By the next day the family was gone, and they never came back. For a month or two I wondered: Was it because of me? But I doubted anyone knew. With so few guests at the hotel, security was inconsistent and relaxed. Later, I would wonder: Was it all a dream? But the house remained. And its presence was proof of what it had and could once again contain.

I thought about her—the daughter, the swimmer—for a while, I’ll confess. I had fantasies. That we would meet again, fall in love, get married. I’d become the owner of the hotel, anointed in an unbelievable twist of fate. Mostly these ideas floated around in my head for the first year working there, and mostly after Gigi had finally left me. Otherwise, the years passed in quiet industry. Especially once it became clear that the owners were not coming back.

We moved about slowly, languid, as if living through a waking dream, as if the speed of things were turned down. A guest—a family—was a thrilling event. And the corporate retreats that came through periodically kept us busy enough. But those drunken groups at times seemed to be less customers than a distorted reflection of ourselves—a band of brothers, a group of friends, colleagues bound by place and effort.

On our days off there was a shuttle to take us from the Farm to the city center. When we went into Shanghai, we had to keep moving. We had no home base, no place to rest. Bar to café to arcade to restaurant. We walked. We didn’t want to pay for bars, or trains, or even buses. But we’d made it. We were living in the big city—or, at least, in proximity, accessible to, in its orbit.

We went to dives, where the girls, also from places like our places, came to hang on the weekends, and on their days off, from the nail salons, the massage parlors, the homes where they lived and took care of other people’s kids. Far away from family, and friends, we danced, we kissed, we made love for a night or even two. We rented rooms by the hour, the only necessary expense.

One day, we decided to get tattoos together. All four of us crowded into the tattoo parlor—a converted lane house, ground floor and basement. Baozi and Kuaizi got dragons. Roro got a tiger along his shoulder. I decided to get a wild horse running across my bicep. It looked like one of the horses we cared for at the stable. We got the tattoos for cheap. There were a few new guys who were training to become artists. What did I care—it was just skin. Everyone needed to practice. Everyone needed someone to learn off of.

Later, our skin inflamed and wrapped in plastic, we followed our new friends to the skate park. I stood around as they showed off their tricks, their spins and jumps and flips. When had they become so good at this thing? While also becoming artists? That summer, I tried my hand at both—I filled a few notebooks with sketches and tattoo ideas. I managed to learn a few tricks on the skateboard, but I had no talent for it. I was too risk averse.

Every year there were rumors of the hotel closing. But no one knew anything for sure. The boss, the manager, said nothing when we asked. So year by year, I remained at the hotel, where time stood still, where we manicured a world sequestered behind tall gates, the rolling wall that opened and closed, opened and closed slowly. Baozi, Roro, Kuaizi—they all left one by one. To their hometowns, or to Beijing for a new job, to take care of ailing parents. They asked me when I was going to leave, and I said to them: soon, soon.

But the hotel still needed me. And I felt, despite the rotating staff coming and going, that there was something special here for me. That I was meant to stay. During the green disease a few years ago, when produce died across the country and prices soared, when everyone was hoarding and no one could get their hands on enough food, quality food, we were fine. We had enough produce, stores of grain, enough livestock to last a long time. Duck, rabbit, chicken, even horse when it came down to it. We worked together, packaging up boxes of emergency food and supplies to sell all over the city. We sold out of our surplus in one day. We were needed, and we were resourceful, and I loved those moments of coming together as a crew: when we made the property so productive and efficient and beautiful that it almost sang out in a glorious, perfect harmony.

I still had my jeans, and they were indeed as soft and as light as skin. I’d kept them ever since my first paycheck, and they’d accompanied me all through my time at the hotel. They were useful, actually, in that I’d never had to buy another pair of off-duty pants. And then, I also had no reason to wash them, either. I was not supposed to wash them except for in the salt water of the sea. How romantic—I’d always thought—to take the pants to the ocean, to baptize them under a sunset. But there was no good ocean around Shanghai. It was all muddy water around the reclaimed shore. So when they got too dirty, I jumped into the swimming pool instead. And when I did, I always wondered, walking out there in the night, whether she might be there, lying stretched across the diving board, crying. Or had she managed to get away, to start her life all over again?

Now, as the newly minted manager, walking toward the house, key in hand, I felt some of that same anticipatory anxiety though I knew the house was empty. But for the first time I would see inside. I would learn more about the girl, and her family, than I’d ever known. The new staff who came to work here, to live and build a life here, had never once seen the owners. And I realized, with a catch of ambivalent pleasure, that to them I was as much of a Manager Ma, as adult and as powerful, as he had once been to me.

The door unlocked easily—just one key, no facial recognition, no fingerprint scan, nothing. But when I entered and shut the door behind me, I saw a variety of locks and bolts that climbed up nearly the entire length of the door—chains, dead bolts: double and single and combination. I flicked on the lights. The house was as elegant as the hotel, and had been designed in the same style. Well, everything had been designed by the owner’s wife, I remembered now.

From the entryway, I could see the entire floor: the expansive living room, the same buttery soft leather recliner in the corner as the ones that punctuated guest suites. (“A collector’s item,” someone had once told me.) A fireplace took up nearly an entire wall and also seemed to house a brick oven.

There was no screen anywhere. This must have been, then, one of those unregistered houses, off the grid. I recalled the solar panels that glimmered from the roof on sunny days. Maybe out back I’d find a well, or a rainwater unit.

I went to the chair and sat in it now, lowering myself into its wide seat. Yes, I understood now the value of things. I felt as though I were melting, as though my body had become as supple as the chair, when in fact, my body was rough, and wiry, and always burned dark by the sun. I pulled myself away. No one had been sitting in this chair for over fifteen years. What waste.

I moved into the kitchen and spent some time looking at sketches—and what looked like handmade toys—of flowers, plants, and herbs. I opened the fridge. It was, of course, empty.

But where had she lived—the swimmer, my swimmer? I searched everywhere for the stairs to the second floor. I knew it existed. One could easily see from the exterior of the house that there were three floors. Finally, I stumbled upon it by chance when I leaned against a wall and the wall fell back behind me. The swinging door was hidden in a panel in the wall, so nearly seamless that it would hardly be noticeable unless one was looking out for it. I pushed my way through; on the inside of the door were, again, a series of dead bolts and locks. What were they hiding from? What danger were they so scared of? What was coming in that they needed so much protection against? Outside the house, it was just the Farm, just the staff, just the boring countryside. I went up the stairs.

The entire second floor was a bedroom, for three girls. The beds were made, a chandelier hung, as in the stables and throughout the hotel, from the ceiling. It was dusty—the crystals had become gray. I would make note of that for the cleaner next month. Clearly, she thought her work was going unsupervised. The room was spacious, it and its bathroom filling the wide second floor of the house. Large windows let the sunshine through. Three beds stood head to foot, head to foot along one long wall, and in the center of the room was a large pink sectional couch that circled a table and a small bookshelf. In one corner was a wooden playhouse. Lining the wall opposite the beds were three long desks topped with colorful books, lamps, and small toys.

So this was where she lived when they came on the weekends, with her younger sisters, who were just kids. Princess pink. It was all so commonplace, the room, all so cliché. But still, I felt in my gut the stubborn, familiar mix of lust and remorse that I had when I thought of her in passing. Did she ever think of me too? What remained of her memory of me? What fragment of my body lingered, what image, what word?

There were no photos of the family anywhere.

The gardener prepared the box of produce and sent it to my office. I looked up the address Manager Ma had given me on his last day of work. I was to prepare a weekly shipment of our fresh, organic vegetables and have it sent to the owner’s address, as he had done for the past twenty years. It was in downtown Shanghai. I took the box, heavy though it were, and caught the train into the city. Now, as manager, I could come and go as I pleased, without asking permission. I’d decided to hand-deliver the first box of produce under my new guardianship. Maybe I’d even catch a glimpse of the daughter.

What would I say? How would I introduce myself, if I did meet her again? Hello, I was the boy you made love to in the pool that one night fifteen years ago? I didn’t know what I would say. Probably I wouldn’t say anything at all. I just wanted to see her face. I wanted to see her, properly, in the light of day.

From the train station I caught a self-driver to the address. All along the street were walls and gates two stories high. From one neighboring property, whose gates were iron and allowed for outsiders to see in, I saw an immaculately manicured estate, a young boy playing on a front lawn.

The owner’s address was surrounded by an opaque stucco wall. I walked around. There was nothing to be seen. Atop the wall there were bamboo shoots that had been sharpened to fine points and strung vertically along the top. To prevent birds, likely, from sitting on and dirtying the wall.

Near the entrance, a guard in a uniform sat in a tiny guard’s house. He did not pay attention as I walked up and tapped on his window.

“I have a delivery for the residents.”

“Leave it with me,” he said, taking a look, finally, at the crate in my hands.

“No, I’d like to deliver it personally. I’m the new manager of the hotel.”

“Which hotel?” he asked.

“The Farm,” I said. Were there other hotels?

“I’ll let them know you came by.”

“I’d really rather do it myself.”

“No.”

“It won’t take long,” I said. But I knew that I was fighting a hopeless battle.

“I’m not opening this door. You can wait all night if you like,” he said.

I left the box with him. On top I had written a note: From the new manager of the Farm, former stable boy, former pool boy.

From the end of the block I stared at the stucco wall for a long time, debating whether to visit some hotels in the area to see about jobs or whether to make my way back to the hotel. Maybe it was time for a change. Then, I had a crazy idea. I could call Gigi and see what she was up to. She’d been waiting for me for so long.