by Temple Drake
“You haven’t touched your drink,” Chu En Li said.
“I didn’t ask for it.”
“You talk very tough,” he said, “for someone who looks the way you do.”
He seemed to want to make her the subject of the conversation, but she hadn’t flown two thousand kilometers to talk about herself. She decided to have one last attempt.
“If you want to be angry with someone,” she said, “be angry with Qi Jing’s father. Or with your employer, Wang Jun Wei.”
Leaning forwards, she crushed out her cigarette, half smoked, then she stood up and wished him a good evening. As she turned away, he called out after her, but she paid no attention.
The two young Filipino women were sitting at the bar. They also had pink drinks.
“Maybe you should leave,” she said, “while you can.”
They smiled and waved at her with their fingers as she moved on.
Once she was downstairs, on the street, her stomach seemed to rise towards her throat. In a back alley behind the club, among restaurant dumpsters and empty cardboard boxes, she bent over and retched. Nothing came up.
AFTER WORK ON MONDAY NIGHT, Zhang joined Jun Wei at a newly opened KTV club in Putuo district. Like most high-end karaoke places, the decor was extravagant and overblown. With its marble floors, its mirror-paneled walls, and its lavish use of gold, it reminded him of a Saudi palace. A lift took him to a room where Jun Wei and several members of his inner circle were lounging on golden sofas, each of which must have been at least ten meters long. Hennessy X.O was being served by three or four pretty girls in short black dresses.
When Jun Wei saw him, his face opened wide. “You came!”
He made it sound as if Zhang had surmounted unbelievable odds to be with him.
“You’re my brother,” Zhang said. “Of course I came.”
Jun Wei motioned to one of the girls, and she poured Zhang a cognac on the rocks in a balloon glass and passed it to him using both her hands.
“How long have we known each other?” Jun Wei asked.
“Twenty-eight years.”
Jun Wei nodded slowly. “It’s a long time, and we have done well for ourselves.” He sipped his drink. “Without you, though, none of it would have been possible.”
“That’s an exaggeration,” Zhang said. “You would have succeeded—with or without me.”
“You think?”
One of Jun Wei’s inner circle—a cousin—stood up, took hold of the microphone, and, putting out his cigarette, began to sing a romantic song.
“Life wouldn’t be life if it was smooth all the way,” Jun Wei said.
Zhang looked at him. “Is something the matter?”
“The Iran deal fell through.”
“I’m sorry.” But Zhang felt a small burst of relief. He hadn’t wanted to be involved in the first place.
“We had to work all through Golden Week,” Jun Wei said, “for nothing.”
“Maybe we can salvage it.”
“No.” Jun Wei shook his head several times, firmly.
“There will be other deals,” Zhang said.
“It’s of no great consequence to you, I suppose—the man who has everything.” Jun Wei looked out across the room.
The man who has everything. Zhang was sure the phrase was intended as a piece of gentle mockery, but he was troubled by the bitterness that seemed to coat the words. Perhaps Jun Wei had sensed Zhang’s relief—or his indifference, at least. He had always had an instinct for such things.
“How’s the new girlfriend?” Jun Wei asked after a few moments.
“She’s been in London. She’s due back tonight.”
Jun Wei looked at Zhang with sleepy eyes. His gaze had a weight that was uncomfortable, and unfamiliar.
“What?” Zhang said.
Jun Wei shook his head again, then handed his empty glass to one of the pretty girls, who replenished it. “She and I had a little talk,” he said, “on the night of the banquet…”
Zhang remembered.
“I think she forgave me for my crass remark.” Jun Wei swirled the cognac in his glass. “How was I supposed to know she spoke Chinese?”
Zhang smiled, but said nothing.
Reaching into his cognac with finger and thumb, Jun Wei pulled out a cube of ice, put it in his mouth and began to chew on it. He seemed to relish the splintering and cracking sounds it made. His cousin finally came to the end of his dreary, sentimental song, and Jun Wei and Zhang applauded.
Zhang’s phone rang. It was Naemi.
“I have to take this,” he said.
Jun Wei nodded.
Standing up, Zhang pressed Accept, then he crossed the room and sat down on a sofa that wasn’t occupied.
“Are you back?” he asked.
“I just landed,” she said. “Can I see you?”
Zhang watched as Jun Wei took hold of the microphone and began to sing “Don’t Say You Don’t Care About My Tears,” which was the song he always sang. The collapse of the Iran deal had upset him. To see him performing, though, you would never have guessed. He seemed his usual affable self.
“Zhang? Are you there?”
“I can’t tonight,” he said. “I’m with some people.”
“You can’t get away?”
“Not really.”
He was still watching Jun Wei. On high or heartfelt notes, his friend would move the mic away from his mouth and then back again, as pop stars often do, but there was really no need, since his voice was weak, almost effeminate.
“I’m actually pretty tired,” Naemi said. “It was a long flight.”
“You should get some rest.” He had adopted a distant, soothing tone, as if they were at a completely different stage in their relationship. A much later stage. He could easily have made his excuses and left. He wasn’t quite sure why he hadn’t.
“You remember Kung Lan,” she was saying, “the artist I told you about? His opening’s tomorrow night, at the gallery. Why don’t you come along? We could go out afterwards.”
“Text me the details,” Zhang said.
“All right.” She paused. “I can’t wait to see you, Zhang. It’s been ages.”
“I can’t wait to see you either.”
He ended the call and rejoined Jun Wei, who was sitting down again.
“Your singing hasn’t improved,” he said.
Jun Wei grinned, then reached for his cigarettes and looked around. “Do you like this place?”
“It’s better than the place on Dapu Road.”
“There are women here. On another floor.” Jun Wei’s smile was sudden, unnerving.
“I’m sure,” Zhang said.
“Do you want a woman? Do you want two?”
“You know what? I think I’ll get an early night.” Zhang rose to his feet. “Thanks for the drink.”
Jun Wei stood up and put a heavy arm round Zhang’s shoulders. “You’re sure you don’t want a woman? You seem a bit tense. It might relax you.”
“I already have a woman.”
“She’s not here, though.”
Zhang looked at the floor and smiled and shook his head. Jun Wei was always trying to push you into doing something you didn’t want to do. It was as if he knew best. And if you didn’t give in, if you didn’t go along with what he was proposing, you were made to feel you were questioning his powers of persuasion, or even his judgment. In resisting him, you were insulting him.
“And anyway,” Jun Wei went on, “it never stopped you before.”
“This is different,” Zhang said.
“If you say so, my friend. If you say so.” Jun Wei stood back and slid his hands into his trouser pockets. “But perhaps everything isn’t as straightforward as you think.”
Zhang smiled.
When he reached t
he doorway, he stopped and looked back. Jun Wei was sitting on the sofa again. He had scooped up a handful of peanuts and was lobbing them, one by one, towards an empty glass. The first three missed. The fourth bounced off the rim. The fifth landed inside. Smiling to himself, Jun Wei tossed the rest of the nuts into his mouth. There was always a moment in the evening when he tried to lob peanuts into a glass, usually when he was by himself and he thought nobody was paying attention. But he was Wang Jun Wei. There was always somebody paying attention.
As Chun Tao drove him home, Zhang reflected on Jun Wei’s state of mind that evening. His friend had seemed prickly and distracted, and there had been a pointed aspect to many of his remarks. The man who has everything, he had said—and yet he was far wealthier than Zhang would ever be…Did he blame Zhang for the collapse of the Iran deal? Had he realized that Zhang’s heart had not been in it? Or did it have to do with Chu En Li? Implicit in Zhang’s concern about Chu En Li’s relationship with his sister was the feeling that Chu En Li was beneath her, and it was possible Jun Wei had taken that personally. After all, Chu En Li was somebody he had worked with, somebody he had hired. Jun Wei could be thin-skinned at times, and Zhang suspected him of feeling slighted, or harboring a grudge. Was it something he had done, or something he had failed to do? Had he been insensitive? His thoughts kept circling the subject without ever arriving at an answer.
* * *
—
The following evening, a low-voltage yellow glow colored the tops of the buildings as Chun Tao drove Zhang across the city. At street level, though, it was already dusk, and the snack booths and the shops selling rice noodles had their lights on. The pavements were filled with the silhouettes of people walking home from work. Two text messages came in, one after the other. The first was from his secretary, letting him know that she had booked him on the ten a.m. flight to Beijing. He had meetings in the capital, and would also be seeing his family. His wife, his son. His mother. He would be back in time for Mad Dog’s funeral, on Tuesday. In the second text, Johnny Yu told him that Chu En Li had flown to Manila the week before. He was living in a three-star hotel not far from the waterfront. Zhang nodded, then put his phone away.
At half past six, they turned into Moganshan Road, passing graffiti-covered walls and a middle-aged woman with a hosepipe washing a car. Art Island was located on the third floor of a building at the rear of the complex. Zhang climbed several flights of wooden stairs that had been painted red and entered a room with high white walls and skylights. Though he was early, the gallery was already packed, and since he couldn’t see Naemi anywhere he began to look at the work. As she had told him previously, the show was called Modern Madonnas. He stopped in front of a larger-than-life picture of a Chinese girl in her early twenties. Dressed in a scarlet blouse, she was leaning against part of a bus shelter. It was evening, and the light filtering down from a streetlamp overhead made the gritty concrete wall behind her look yellow. The expression on her face was demure and yet delighted, and it wasn’t hard to imagine that she was gazing not at a phone but at a baby. Her expression worked for both. He thought the image was exquisite—the primary colors, the glossy-magazine glamour—but it was scathing too. In capturing the way in which people worshipped their devices, Kung Lan was implying that social media was the new religion. What’s more, since all the women photographed were on their own, since they were isolated figures in an urban landscape, he was also positing the idea that virtual interaction was beginning to supersede its human equivalent. Only the day before, Zhang had read an article about two teenage girls in Shanghai who had run into each other on the street by chance. They wanted to talk, but weren’t able to find a place they were both happy with. In the end, they decided to return to their respective homes and communicate online, as usual.
“Zhang!”
He turned to see Naemi standing at his shoulder in a simple, tight-fitting black dress. There was the trace of a bruise near her left eye, and he wondered if she’d had another of her fainting fits.
“Did you notice anything unusual?” she asked.
He smiled. “Like what?”
She took his hand and led him through the crowd to the far end of the gallery. There, on the back wall, was an enormous photograph of her. It seemed that she, too, was part of the exhibition.
“What do you think?” she said.
Like all the other women, she was looking at her phone, and though he suspected that she knew she was being photographed the image had a certain spontaneity about it. Her expression—a fond half smile, as if she was watching a child take its first steps—felt entirely natural. The fake-fur jacket she was wearing echoed the tones of gold and honey in her hair. The sky behind was a deep midnight blue, the shapes of trees low down in the frame, as brittle and black-edged as burnt paper.
“Where was it taken?” he asked.
“Hong Kong. In a park.”
He nodded.
“You know the funny thing?” she said. “I was reading a text—from you.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” She considered the photograph again. “When he first asked me to do it I didn’t want to, but he kept on at me, and now I’m kind of glad I did.”
“It’s beautiful,” Zhang said. “You look modern, but also—I don’t know—eternal.”
Something flashed across her face and was gone, too fast for him to be able to interpret it.
“Kung Lan would like that. You should tell him.” She looked past him and nodded, and he realized they were about to be interrupted.
“You have to work,” he said. “Are we still seeing each other afterwards?”
“Absolutely.”
“If I’m not here, I’ll be outside in the car.” He kissed her on the lips, then turned away.
* * *
—
After spending an hour in the gallery, Zhang returned to the Jaguar and opened his copy of Mad Dog’s book on ghost culture. He picked up where he had left off—a chapter about blood-drinking ghosts, also known as jiangshi. Mad Dog’s style, which was dry, spare, and elastic, not unlike his bass playing, was highly readable. Since blood-drinking ghosts had no flexibility—their limbs were stiff, as if with rigor mortis—they hopped rather than walked, usually with their arms outstretched. Their hair was long and white, and their skin had a greenish tinge, a reference to the mold that appears on things that are old or dead. What’s more, their bodies were often covered with white fur, like that of a snow weasel. They were frightened of mirrors, and peach wood, and the cock’s crow, and if you wanted to distract them you simply dropped rice or sand on the ground, as they would feel compelled to count every last grain. Zhang had been carrying the peach twig on him ever since Mad Dog had given it to him, along with the tin-backed mirror and the red envelope containing orange peel, but they didn’t seem to have affected Naemi in the slightest. Shaking his head, he skipped a few pages, then started reading again.
When people died in ancient China, Mad Dog wrote, their souls traveled across a bridge to the afterlife, but they could not set off until the appropriate funeral services and burials had taken place. Also, certain customs or rituals had to be observed. If any part of this process was mismanaged or overlooked, the souls of the deceased would lack the sense of peace required for their journey. Instead, they would return to the earth and bother those who were still alive. Generally speaking, this would be their families. Their loved ones. Ghosts were a reality, Mad Dog argued, whether you believed in them or not. As phenomena, they might seem abnormal and disturbing, but they should be viewed as natural, not supernatural, since they were emanations of qi, the psychophysical energy that constitutes the essence of every object and being in the universe. As Feng Menglong wrote, “The dark netherworld and the clear world of the living blend into each other, as water melts into water.” In other words, the border between the two worlds was porous. The dead could visit the living, and vice versa—
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Sensing somebody approaching the car, Zhang looked up and saw Naemi crossing the pavement. He closed the book quickly and slid it beneath the seat in front of him.
“Sorry I was so long,” she said when she got in. “Kung Lan wouldn’t let me go.”
“Well, it’s his night,” Zhang said.
She leaned over and kissed him. “The look on your face when you saw that photograph of me…”
“Actually, I bought it.”
She stared at him. “What?”
“I bought it,” he said. “It wasn’t cheap, but I’m told that Kung Lan’s work is really beginning to take off. I think it’s probably a good investment.”
His deadpan answer made her smile, though he sensed that his purchase had shocked her, and made her uneasy. It wasn’t a straightforward response.
As they drove across the city, he decided to change the subject.
“How was London?”
“It was lovely.” She sighed. “The air had that autumn smell already—fireworks and dead leaves. There were dead leaves everywhere.” She glanced at him, the blue neon passing through the inside of the car making her blonde hair look cold. “Have you been?”
“Once or twice,” he said, “but never at this time of year.” He looked out through the window and saw an office building with all its lights on, no one sitting at any of the desks. “Tell me about your mother.”
“My mother?” she said. “Where did that come from?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m curious.”
“She was restless. Quite wild. She was a Sami. I think I mentioned that before.”
“Did she look like you?”
“Not really. She was about my height, but she had black hair. Her eyes were blue.”
“When did she die?”
“Years ago.” Naemi stared straight ahead. “I loved her very much. I miss her.”