Mingmei Yip - Song of the Silk Road

To my surprise, his department secretary told me he was on sabbatical to write a book and wouldn’t be back for another month. She asked me to leave a message, and I did. There must be something wrong that Chris took a sabbatical without letting me know. In the past, he’d used his time off so he could spend more time with me, or fuck me, to be exact. There was something seriously wrong. What was it?

But Chris never called.

Then, a month before my book was due to come out, I opened the New York Times and discovered an interview with him about his new novel—Romancing the Silk Road.

It was clear as day that not only had he stolen my story, he’d even beat me in getting his out. So he could drink the first sip of the nutritious soup—as the popular Chinese saying goes. No wonder he’d disappeared and avoided me for so long. He was hiding somewhere to write his—actually my—story.

I almost suffocated in my own anger as I read the Times article. Did this constitute plagiarism? I thought so. But I had to read the book to be sure.

I dashed down to the street, hurried to the nearby Barnes & Noble, and snatched up a copy of Romancing the Silk Road. From the back cover, Chris’s intense eyes stared back at me, as if mocking my stupidity and carelessness.

“Asshole!” I spat.

When I was leaving the bookstore, I cast another look at his picture displayed at the front in the window and spat out, “Jerk!”

I finished the four hundred fifty pages of Romancing the Silk Road in three days. I was even more bitter to have to admit to myself that Chris was an excellent writer. He was able to pull readers into the story, to make them vicariously experience all the adventures, dangers, discomforts, and mystery of the desert. But there was no question that he’d gotten all of it from my journal. However, since I’d left out my affair with Alex, the love story in his novel was between the English professor, based on himself, and his student—me. Very clever. The ending of the story was that “I” refused to go back to civilization, married a Uyghur, converted to Islam, and settled in the desert, while “he,” the professor, heartbroken, went back to his teaching and writing his memoir. So in the novel, he was the victim because “I” was the one who’d mercilessly left him for an exotic man to live in a strange land. The rest of the novel was lifted in toto from my adventures.

“Shit! Shit! Chris, how could you do this to me!?” I screamed as I picked up the phone and dialed his number over and over but got only his impersonal, recorded voice. I responded by leaving a very personal, angry message. When he heard it he would at least know where I was coming from.

In ten minutes, just when I was about to call again, the phone rang. I snatched up the receiver and screamed, “How can you do this to me?”

“Lily?”

It was my agent.

“Ellen, I’m so sorry. I thought it was someone else.”

“Did you read in the New York Times about Romancing the Silk Road?”

“Yes.”

“So you know.”

“Yes.”

“How could this have happened?”

I had no choice but told Ellen everything.

A long silence but for some deep exhalations on both ends.

“What are we going to do now?” I asked timidly.

“I just called your editor and discussed this with her. She said that Center Books will probably sue Chris Adams for plagiarism, or will arrange a press meeting for you to tell all. You have the credibility, since you had the firsthand experience and he didn’t. During the meeting, you can show reporters your notes taken during your trip, your mother’s and your healer friend’s journals, all the photographs and stuff like that. He’ll look very bad, so maybe we won’t even have to take legal action. You ready for this?”

“I think so.”

“Lily, may I ask you something personal?”

“Go ahead.”

“Did you have a romantic relationship with Chris Adams?”

“Yes.” Ashamed, my voice came out weak and vulnerable.

Her response surprised me. “Good, that’s a great story for the media. A famous novelist and university professor took advantage of his student’s dire situation to seduce her, then plagiarized from her work based on her courageous solo journey. Lily, you’re going to be a star in all the major media. The publisher’s publicity and I are working on it right now. Just be sure you’re available for all the interviews.”

Before I could respond, she had already hung up.

Musing on the whole thing, I suddenly remembered Master Soaring Crane’s pouches. I took the piece of paper out of the second one and saw:

See all, but stay hidden.

Damn! I should have looked at it sooner because that was the very mistake I made—not keeping my journal hidden from Chris.

Three weeks later when my memoir, The Mountains of Heaven, came out, I was thrown into a series of frantic activities. In the end my publisher didn’t need to sue Chris for plagiarism. I just told my story and it worked. My memoir shot up to number ten on the New York Times best-seller list, the highest commercial success any new author could dream of. I wondered if Chris now remembered what he had once told me: “Any writer would run over his or her mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, and any remaining family members to be on the New York Times best-seller list, even if only once.”

Ha! I didn’t even have to do that, for both of my parents, in fact, both pairs of my parents, were no longer on this Red Dust for me to “run over.”

Chris’s Romancing the Silk Road did not fare well because of the bad publicity. I even heard a rumor that he was blacklisted and wouldn’t get any more contracts.

“Congratulations, Lily.” One day Ellen called me, two months after my memoir had been sitting on the best-seller list. “You’ll soon receive a check, a very fat one.”

“May I ask what kind? I hope not saturated or trans fat.”

She laughed heartily. “Ha, very funny. You’ll laugh out loud when I tell you.”

“Fifty thousand?”

“Oh, think big, please.”

“A hundred?” My heart was beating like a battle drum.

“Lily! You heard what I said, think big!”

“Two hundred?”

Her high-pitched laughter pealed like the most sonorous church bell. “Five hundred.”

“What? Are you kidding?!”

“Nope. Besides, I just sold your novel for movie rights.”

The rest of the conversation was a complete blur.

I was flown first class to the West Coast for a multistore book tour, put up in a five-hundred-dollar-a-night suite at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco, and driven to the different bookstores in a limo with TV and a minibar. Was this a mirage, like the one Alex and I’d seen in the desert an incarnation ago?

I was to do reading/signings at Barnes & Noble, Borders, Book Passage, Book Inc., Kepler’s, among others.

Arriving at my first West Coast event, the San Francisco Borders, I was surprised to find the space already packed, with the crowd spilling into the hallway. The manager, a lively, thirtyish man, led me to the podium as the audience enthusiastically clapped.

After forty minutes of talking and reading about my desert adventures, passions, and survival, it was time for questions.

“Did you write this book for money?” asked a young man with a smug expression.

“Of course!”

Laughter spilled like water from a sprinkler.

I went on. “We write—or sing, or paint, or act, or play music—for all kinds of reasons. Not only money, but curiosity, challenge, to prove something… But who minds being paid for all of our painful efforts? And what about our bills?”

“Yay!” a group of young men yelled.

When the commotion died down, a very old, heavily made up lady in the front row demanded, “Where’s Alex? Do you miss him? Are you going to try to find him?”

The unexpected question brought tears to my eyes, but I blinked them back. I nodded. “Yes. And if anyone here happens to know his whereabouts, please tell me.”

More laughter as a few girls clapped and giggled.

A fortyish, professional-looking woman in a black suit raised her hand. “How do you feel about losing your mother, finding another one, then losing her again?”

“How would you feel?”

Another round of loud laughter rang out.

The audience was so enthusiastic that finally the manager had to stop the Q&A session to announce that it was time for the signing. In less than a minute, the queue already snaked all the way past the in-store café. A staff member gave out slips of paper for buyers to write down names to save time and avoid misspellings.

As I began to tire of repeatedly signing my name, a woman’s soft-spoken, accented English snaked into my ears. “Miss Lin, I’m Lingzi Lee. Very pleased to meet you in person.”

I looked up and saw the face of a fortyish Asian woman, somehow familiar. “Have we met?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“But I’m almost certain I’ve seen you somewhere.”

She pointed to a young man behind her, now moving up to us. “Maybe my son is the one you met?”

I almost fainted the moment my eyes landed on his face.

“Lily.”

“Alex!”

This time I could not hold back my tears. But then my joy at seeing Alex immediately changed to anxiety—he looked so gaunt and weak. What had happened?

I asked softly, “Alex, you lost a lot of weight. Are you OK?”

He nodded. “I’ll explain later. But don’t worry, I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

A chubby teenager behind Alex was the first to figure out what was going on. She screamed excitedly to her girlfriend, then everyone in the bookstore, “That’s Alex Luce, Lily Lin’s lover in the desert!”

Now all eyes were glued on us. Alex’s Chinese mother snatched out a couple of tissues and handed them to me. “You never imagined a reunion under public scrutiny, did you?”

Alex said, “Mother and I have just arrived from Taiwan.”

I extended my hand to shake Lingzi Lee’s. “Nice to meet you, Miss Lee.”

A pretty smile bloomed on the kind face. “Please just call me Lingzi.”

Alex spoke again. “Lily, finish your signings first, then we’ll talk. I will wait for you.”

“But please stay close where I can see you.”

Suddenly Alex leaned to my face and kissed me deeply on my lips, lingering for a long time. I was too shocked to respond. But not the audience—they broke into rounds of frantic applause and loud cheers.

Someone shouted, “Alex Luce is over there!”

Heads turned to scrutinize my desert lover, then ping-ponged between us.

A middle-aged woman yelled to me, “Wow. So young and handsome. Does he have a brother?”

I yelled back, “Go to the desert and find out!”

Feeling dizzy and choking back tears, I was achingly conscious of Alex’s stare and the audience’s curious ones as he stepped aside for me to greet fans.

The event finally ended at 10 PM. The manager thanked me. “Readers absolutely love you and your book.” He turned to wink at Alex, who was patiently waiting for me with his mother in a corner.

Then he turned back to wink at me. “I think you should definitely write a sequel to your memoir.”

I nodded.

“Better strike while the iron is hot.” He winked again, smiled, then walked away.

I wondered, Which iron should I strike—writing the sequel while my memoir was hot or marrying Alex when our passion was hot. Or both?

I only hoped the winks were not just muscle tics.

The three of us—Alex, Lingzi Lee, and I—got into the limo waiting outside. After a short ride, we got off at the Mark Hopkins Hotel and I led them straight to the restaurant in the hotel lobby.

Lingzi seemed fascinated by the elegant décor, the overpriced menu, and the gathering of richly dressed diners.

I was happy to see that it was not the décor or menu but me that held Alex’s attention. His eyes wouldn’t leave me, despite the parade of elegant women passing by.

Even though the waitress was beginning to show signs of impatience, Alex ignored the menu lying closed in front of him.

I kicked him under the table.