This is my submission for the "One Night in XXX" Story Event. It may look familiar to some readers because it is based on my previously published story of the same title (now deleted). This version has many changes and additions, making it a much better story in my opinion, and also making it conform to the event guidelines. Thanks to ChloeTzang for organizing the Event and providing the incentive to give this little tale the time and care it should have had originally.
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I tapped my water glass with my spoon.
"Everyone? Thanks. I just thought we should all take a moment to congratulate our newest team member, Mei Xing from Malaysia. She did a fantastic job today on her first big line build!"
A nice round of applause circled the table. We had three continents represented, and twelve of us in all. We were celebrating a successful first day of our project to build new assembly lines for our latest digital camera model, at our manufacturing contractor's plant here in Taipei.
Mei Xing, two seats to my left, put on that dazzling smile of hers, a little shyly. In addition to being the newest, she was also the youngest of us, only a few years out of school, but whip smart and a quick study. I knew from experience. I had been her trainer when she hired on, less than a year ago.
"Thanks, everyone," she said as the clapping and cheers faded, "But I couldn't have done it without Dave's help. He taught me everything I know about our process and our technology."
It was my turn to smile as a smaller round of applause sounded for me.
"You're too modest, Mei Xing," I said. "I watched you connect up the cable bundles between the stations on Line One. You could have done it with your eyes closed. Not one false move, and it had to be in record time."
"That's not true, Dave. I couldn't have done it with my eyes closed. I was following the color coding."
"Which you memorized, and there's only what, sixteen different functions in the bundle."
"It's hard to confuse the serial bus and the servo power. The connectors give them away."
"Well," broke in Aaron from Sydney, "I was impressed with the way she solved the problem with the software installation on the focus test station. That would have had me tearing out what hair I have left."
"Oh, and thanks Mei Xing, for running interference for us with that floor manager," boomed Buddy, my office mate from San Jose. "Keeping those guys with their questions away from the build was a major time saver."
I relaxed, enjoying her well-earned moment in the sun. This was the good part of the job: the camaraderie, the satisfaction in a good day's work, a fine dinner at a world-class restaurant in a major world capital. Tonight it was Din Tai Fung Tienmu, in the Shilin district of Taipei, just a few miles from the plant where we were working. This place is world-renowned for its dumplings, and I can attest that it delivers on the promise. The shrimp and pork shao mai I had were delectable. All on the company credit card, of course, one of the perks of the job. If the site work finished on schedule, there was usually an extra day at the end of these trips when we could do some sightseeing.
But I often wondered if it made up for the down side: the endless tedious hours of traveling and all the hassles connected to it, being away from home so many weeks of the year. It was only the first full day of this trip, and already I was badly missing Karen and the kids. I wondered how long my wife would be able to put up with my frequent absences.
It had to be hard on Mei Xing too; this sort of life is not kind to single people either. She mostly worked with the local production houses in Malaysia, but would be called away on short notice to tend to emergencies all over east Asia. Still, in our weekly group conference call she projected cheerfulness, in all but the most dire of situations.
We finished dinner, lingering awhile over our glasses of Shaoshing wine, then settled up and piled into our carpooled rentals for the drive back to our hotel. I rode with Buddy, who was driving, and Rodney, also from the San Jose office. Both were planning an early evening. It had been a long day, and there would be another one tomorrow.
"Where do you want to go on Saturday?" Rodney asked us.
"I've heard good things about the National Palace Museum," I said. "It's not far from the hotel. But maybe the Aussies have been there already."
"We'll ask them," said Buddy. "But they would probably go again, even if. We could probably work in the Yangmingshan park as well."
"If we get the build done on time," I reminded them.
"We'll get it done," growled Buddy.
We all knew that a crippling technical or logistical problem could arise at any time, and we were always under pressure from our management to make deadline, no matter what.
Buddy turned onto Fuhua Road, which crossed over the canal and became Donghua Street. Then it was a good two miles of busy city street to the Aloft Taipei Beitou, where we were staying. Motorcycles and scooters were everywhere; they cut in and out around us according to some rule known only to their riders. I found it unnerving, but Buddy was an old hand at urban driving in half a dozen countries, and we arrived without incident.
We said good night on the elevator as each one got off on his floor. My room was on the twentieth floor, and I was the last rider. I arrived at my floor and was walking down the corridor when someone came up beside me.
"Hi, Dave," said Mei Xing. "Fancy a nightcap?" Her English teachers had been British; she had picked up some of their idiom.
I thought for a second. All I had planned was to send a quick text to Karen and hit the sheets. A chance to catch up with my mentee would be welcome.
"Sure," I replied. "Do you want to go down to the lounge, then?"
"We could, but my room is right here, it's more quiet."
She worked her key card in the door nearest us. It opened.
"I can make you a vodka and tonic. That's your favorite, no?"
"Yes, but..." I was worried about the propriety of being in her room. It wasn't forbidden, of course, but one learns to avoid even the appearance of a compromising situation.
"Come on, we will just have a drink and talk, no harm."
She was already through the doorway and was tugging slightly at my wrist, gently urging me inside. I gave in.
"I just need to get ice. One minute."
She grabbed the ice container and left the room again, leaving the door slightly ajar.
It seemed to be a done deal. I waited for her return, which was in less time than she had promised.
"Okay," she said, coming through the door with the ice. "I will have it ready for us in a minute."
She produced some vodka miniatures and a bottle of tonic water from her suitcase, and got busy with them and the ice and the plastic hotel glasses.
"One thing, I wanted to say thank you for recognizing my work at dinner tonight. It means a lot because you are the one who taught me the job."
"And you learned it all very well," I said. "We are all lucky to have you on the team."
"Drinks will be just a second. Why don't you sit down there?"
Her room was well appointed: there was a small low sofa, more like a love seat really, to which she gestured. I sat down. The window behind me looked out high over the city, a myriad of lights against the darkening sky. I knew that the other side of the hotel, by contrast, featured a peaceful view of wetlands blanketed with green rice fields that ended in the distance at the confluence of two rivers.
Mei Xing placed her drink on the bedside stand next to the sofa, as she handed me mine.
"Here you go. I really don't drink much, Dave. But it's a nice thing to share with friends."
"Why, thank you."
"Cheers," she said, holding her glass up.
We took a first sip. I tasted the bitterness of the tonic, tempered by the sweetness and heat of the alcohol.
She sat next to me, dressed in the black jeans and simple white shirt from our work day, and we talked. She shared some of her life story, how she had moved from her childhood home in Guizhou province to Malaysia in search of a better future, how she had found a second home there among the ethnic Chinese community that had settled decades earlier, worked her way through university by waiting tables, and finally found gainful employment with technology companies.
"When I get enough vacation saved, I will go back to Guizhou and take my mum to the doctor," she said. "She has heart problems, but I hope they can be treated."
I hadn't much of a story compared to hers, but at her prompting I told her a little of my home life and my family. That brought the topic around to the one that was just below the surface of her conversation: her loneliness.
"You are lucky to have your Karen and your children," she said. "You know, I'm single now. When I had a boyfriend, before I started working with our company, I could do a long day of work and it would seem worth it because I could see him in the evening and we could make love. Now I do a long day of work and just get frustrated in the evening. I want to find another boyfriend, but it's hard now. So much work, so much travel, no time."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I have thought before that it must be hard for you. I could say that it's also hard for me being away from my family, but it's not the same thing."
"No," she agreed. "You know, if there were a single man in our team, I think I would be with him right now. You know what I mean. But everyone is married."
She paused for several seconds.
"You know, Dave," she went on, "When I was training with you, I saw you looking at me."
She had me dead to rights there. I had thought at the time that my lingering looks at her had gone unnoticed. Every day, she would appear at my cubicle entrance with her laptop and ask if this was a good time to do some training. Of course it was. I would bring up my guest chair and we would sit close together, there being no way to be much farther apart in our cubicles, and work with the production software. It was inevitable that my eyes would wander over her dark, lustrous hair, her large, expressive eyes, and her naturally full, moist lips, then take a quick dart downward to her slim, girlish figure to which her close-fitting top clung. But when she turned to me in glee with her thousand-watt smile after some success with the code, she always found my eyes meeting hers. Or so I thought.
"Uh..." I fumbled for a response.
"No, don't worry, it's okay. You were, what is the word...discreet. Yes. And, tell the truth, I liked it."
"Well, I'm relieved, then," I said. "You are a nice looking woman, Mei Xing. I couldn't help but notice."
"I liked it that you noticed me." She was looking me in the eyes. "You helped me so much and were so kind to me. Do you know, of all the men on our team, you are the one I most wish were single right now."
She paused again.
"And I think you must be frustrated too, being so far away from your wife. Could I help you with that?"
