Unspoken

Two months ago, I was working at a Chinese tech company in Los Angeles, with Sales Director printed on my business card.

Two months later, I was standing behind a coffee machine at an energy conference in Sydney, wearing someone else’s name.

Scarlett was the company’s receptionist. It was also the name of the heroine in Gone with the Wind, once my favorite novel — a name I had loved long before I had to wear it. She had fallen ill, and I was there to cover her shift at the last minute. Only with her name tag on could I get into the exhibition.

Guests kept calling me Scarlett all morning, and after two hundred cups of coffee, the name no longer felt borrowed.

I posted a photo from the event on Instagram.

James messaged me:

“You have so many names. You told me to call you Naomi in private, How many identities do you have? Are you sure you’re not a spy?”

I only have one legal name. My Chinese name has shape in its characters, tones in its pronunciation, and the blessings my parents placed inside it. Watching Aussies struggle to pronounce my Chinese name, placing the stress in strange places, I would rather they call me by my preferred name.

That was when I understood immigration is not simply switching from one language system to another. It means even your name must be taken apart and put back together again, its order reversed, its sounds forced into a new alphabet.

The tones are erased. The meaning is deleted. And then, eventually, you give up. You choose a name from the Bible. In the end, you even convert to their God.

I texted him back: “If I were a spy, I’d be your Bond girl — your little scarlet starlet.”

He replied: “So when am I seeing my little scarlet starlet next?”

James and I had already had sex. The first time we met was at an English pub he often went to. Even the bar counter, he told me, had been shipped over from England, and on their secret drinks menu they sold the Vesper. He noticed me staring at it and asked if I wanted to order one. I said I didn’t like martinis. He said, “Eva Green was my childhood crush. She’s my favorite Bond girl.” Then added, “You’re my Bond girl too.”

He looked like a playboy at first glance, the kind of man who seemed to have been born into ease. There was something trust-fund-baby about him — the confidence, the careless charm, the way he moved through a room as if the room had already forgiven him, everyone loved him. We all seemed to orbit his light. For a while, he lit me up too.

First, he told me he was a wine expert but ordered a cheap Italian bottle. “Italy had the best food, the best wine, the most beautiful—

“Sea views.” he corrected himself.

“I prefer French.”Too quickly.

“The French are just overrated, their wine is light, Italian wine is usually heavier, that’s the difference.”

Someone else told me his hometown, Bordeaux, had the best wine in the world, his hand circling my calf the same slow way he handled wine glasses.

“I thought you like things lighter.”

Then he asked what brand my top was. Not my watch — that would have been too obvious. Later, he made sure I knew he had a house. He made sure I knew his Zegna blazer was worth ten thousand Australian dollars.

As we walked past the designer boutiques, his arm linked through mine. He said, “For a while, I felt like Gatsby.”

That was when I became certain he had no trust fund. A man born inside the golden room does not compare himself to the man staring at the green light from across the water.

“Gatsby is pathetically handsome. You’re handsome, but not pathetic.”

He said, “Elaborate.”

“Because Gatsby did a lot of illegal things to become rich, but Daisy was NOT worth it.”

I searched for the words and continued. “The moment she realized his money was dirty, she immediately retreated into Tom’s arms, back into the comfort zone of old money.”

He asked me in return, “But wouldn’t you want someone to go that far for you?”

I had a sentence in Mandarin, long and exact. By the time it reached my mouth in English, it had become only: No.

“No. Usually, I’m the one who loves more and gives more.”

Memories from the past flashed through my mind like a kaleidoscope, one scene after another. A thousand tangled sorrows surged up in my chest. My brain felt as if it was about to explode. I was racking my mind, while also trying not to reveal too much of my past to James.

And in that moment of hesitation, when the limits of switching languages had stalled my expression, he looked straight at me with his ocean blue eyes and said, “You really want to kiss me, don’t you?”

I swear to God, I did not.

He continued, “I often tell people that this novel contains every type of man. You can understand what all men are thinking from The Great Gatsby”

So I asked him why, in the film, Vesper asks Bond why he doesn’t like her, and Bond says, “Because you’re single.” Was it because if a woman looked like Eva Green, she would have many suitors, but if she had a husband, Bond would only need to defeat one man?

Surprisingly, James let slip that he had loved a woman who was with someone else.

“She was my Daisy.”

“Why are you using the past tense?”

“She was my Vesper.”

“Oh, I’m really sorry.” And I repeated it again, as I know I could never defeat someone had already passed away.

“We were both 22 back then…”

Then he used his lips to finish his talk.

But every time he kissed me, he never used his tongue.

Weeks later, one afternoon after sex, he asked me to be his mistress, saying he was going to run for the Senate. “Wouldn’t it be nice for us to rule Australia together?”

The word mistress stung me. The ghost of that woman began to take shape. His name for her slipped into my mouth.

“Was she Italian?”

“Who”

“Daisy.”

“Yes…How do you know that.”

“You know, people are obsessed with a country for a reason.”