by Ang Li
“Without concrete interests and real benefits, public relations are a waste,” she said to Lin with a broad smile; he listened attentively, with a degree of indulgence.
Yinghong usually attended lunch and dinner meetings, and told people at the company not to arrange for girls to join them. If they needed the presence of women, she would invite female real estate agents or office staff. Sometimes, she asked guests to bring their wives along, which went against the norm of the husband-only practice, but achieved unexpected results. A few of the more active wives even urged Yinghong to form a lady’s club so they could get together regularly.
She saw, from these wives, a solidifying base for Lin’s election.
In addition to inviting wives to join the men’s banquets, Yinghong also insisted on not joining the men when they went to bars after dinner. Everything was fine at the various Taipei restaurants, where there remained a clear distinction between dinner and men’s entertainment; the line was blurred once the men went to Beitou, particularly because hotels there provided all services, from meals to banquets, to drinking and flirting, to rooms for other activities.
Beitou, located on a small hill on the edge of the Taipei Basin, was developed as early as the colonial era, thanks to its high concentration of sulfur springs. Interspersed in the verdant hill were hot springs hotels in the Japanese style, all with such elegant names as Singing Wind Pavilion, Carefree Garden, and the like. It had been a pleasure den for all sorts of people: poets, literati, wealthy merchants, and entrepreneurs.
When the island’s economy took off, the omnipresent real estate business, the so-called engine of all business, had also spread its tentacles into this beautiful hill. With real estate’s tendency to destroy anything old, the traditional, secluded Japanese hotels were leveled and the greenery on the hill was slowly overwhelmed by high rises in concrete and steel, hotels with up to two hundred rooms, and, as dictated by current style, imported bathroom tiles laid on the outside, the more vulgar the better.
Gaudy new hotels spread Beitou’s reputation as a town that never sleeps. As for the few remaining Japanese-style hotels, a different kind of eroticism and lewd desire were hidden in tatami-filled rooms inside zenlike pavilions and gardens characterized by gray roof tiles. After newly developed real estate razed most of the traditional buildings, nostalgia returned people to these elegant, old-style hotels for pleasure.
Singing Wind Pavilion, situated at mid-hill, had a driveway that led to stone steps framed by nicely maintained Japanese gardens, with small ponds encircled by fine white sand, pine trees, and osmanthus. In the fall and winter, the osmanthus sent its subtle fragrance into the air, giving the illusion that it floated above the damp, heavy smell of sulfur. If you inhaled, you smelled the pleasant fragrance of osmanthus first before the sulfur hit you.
The elaborate Japanese structure had a large entranceway with wind chimes hanging from the outstretched eaves. In the lobby were a reception desk, sofas, and long cabinets for shoes. Middle-aged women came up, bent at the waist to offer slippers, which were laid out in neat rows on a floor made of long strips of dark brown wood. The straw slippers were identical, except for size—larger for men and smaller for women. Some customers considered shared slippers unclean and left them behind.
Guests followed winding hallways to their rooms, where paper doors were opened to reveal a ten-tatami room in which there were low, round tables high enough for the guests to sit with legs crossed or knees bent. One rainy night in early spring Yinghong and Lin arrived to be greeted by more than a dozen people around one of the tables. Unlike chairs at restaurants, tatami floors offered diners the chance to press up against each other. One man was already straddling a bar girl, while they fed each other liquor through their mouths.
The host that night was Mr. Chen, the owner of Big and Wide Construction, and, like Lin, a real estate tycoon with considerable influence. He got up when they entered and greeted them attentively. During the brief pause in the noisy singing, he introduced Lin and Yinghong. Most of the men were too drunk to stop their raucous bantering.
The young woman who opened the paper door and walked in got everyone’s attention after someone welcomed her with cheers and applause. She walked in slowly, in a composed manner. On that early spring night, she was wearing a colorful pullover top over a black patent-leather skirt that wrapped tightly around her full, round behind. The wrinkled leather showed it had been worn many times, which was why it fit so nicely; it was not long enough to cover knees on long legs clad in black fishnet stockings.
Her long, permed hair was a tangled, puffed-up mess that framed a pair of sleepy, limpid eyes offset by rouged cheeks. She zeroed in on her target and slipped in the space beside Lin Xigeng. With a flirtatious glance, she called him Brother Lin in a honeyed voice.
Before she had a chance to say another word, Lin introduced Yinghong to the woman, who lowered her eyes, and, with no perceptible change in demeanor and posture, shifted her body and glued herself to the host, who was seated next to Lin, toasting him and threatening his original companion, a tall girl whose expression changed, though she sat quietly, impassively raising her glass. While fully aware of the intention of the new girl, she could do nothing but look upset.
At that moment, the door that the girl in the leather skirt had pulled shut was opened again, to reveal a tall, potbellied, middle-aged man with an oily sheen on his red face. He swaggered in to sit beside the girl in the leather skirt and blurted out proudly:
“Let me show you the good stuff.”
With a swift movement, he yanked the girl’s top out of the leather skirt, unzipped it and pulled it down the shoulders. Before anyone realized what was going on, the girl’s chest was in full view; a pair of large, natural breasts under a transparent, unpadded lacy bra.
“See. Guaranteed real. There’s no match.”
As the man continued talking, he opened the black bra to expose a pair of fleshy, arching breasts that jiggled in front of the guests.
Everyone’s gaze was fixed on her breasts, which, so rare among Asian girls, projected a degree of self-assurance. Big and full, they looked proud and imposing, with a healthy, pink-tinged paleness. The dark, red nipples were erect, probably from the man’s hands when he pulled her bra open.
With a quiet gasp, Yinghong looked instead at the two canines through the girl’s parted lips. Those were teeth adored by Japanese men, who saw them as standing for the purity and innocence of young girls. But this girl wore a smug smile. The other girls looked at her with disdain, but the knowledge that they could not match what she had added unhappiness to their faces.
The man reached out and pushed the girl’s head toward his chest. She then stuck out her pink tongue to slowly and carefully lick every inch of his exposed chest.
Saliva oozed from the corners of her slightly opened mouth; she had no chance to swallow, for her mouth was all over his chest, smearing her lipstick at the corners and staining the edges of her lips with thick, irregular bloodlike smudges. The man’s chest was also covered in red spots, like bloodied wounds, as if he’d just been bitten.
Sticky saliva stuck to the man’s black chest hair, wet and twisted, as if a snail or a worm had just crawled over it.
Instinctively, Yinghong wanted to get up to leave, but a pair of powerful hands pressed down on her waist. They were Lin’s hands, and she gave up. She was reminded of the first time they met, at one of those typical banquets with the businessmen fooling around; Lin had also gotten her to stay by asking her to dance when she felt insulted.
With flirtation continuing at the table, the host watched quietly for a while before turning to Lin and beginning a casual conversation about a hillside plot with great potential.
They could open an amusement park on this plot of land, which was on the outskirts of Taipei, but reachable within an hour by car via the highway. It would be like Magic Mountain in the United States, with a roller coaster and other recreational features; it would please the Taiw
anese, who were now rich enough to enjoy such leisure activities. It could be a new direction in their investment.
Yinghong had first brought up the idea. Though they might not manage a joint venture with an American amusement park, such as Disneyland, it could work with a smaller company as the first step toward international cooperation. Lin himself did not entertain any big ambitions for an amusement park, but with the development of a park like that, the land around it would rise in value, which would generate substantial profits, and this was what interested the two real estate tycoons.
They were making a preliminary evaluation of their financial investment, risk, and profits. It was not the first, nor would it be the last time they discussed the feasibility of the plan, for there would be endless, prolonged meetings. For the two major players, consensus on the fundamental issues needed to be reached first, and the raucous gathering in Beitou provided them with an opportunity to chat, during which they touched upon issues casually in order to get to know one another better and make an initial plan.
The flirting continued at the table, but by this time the man had stood up and pulled the woman over to fondle her full breasts. They were then all over each other, as they moved toward the paper door, which the man freed up one of his hands to open. Now Yinghong had a clear view of the next room, a smaller room with a tatami floor; bedding and pillows were strewn all over, an indication that they had already been used. She realized the convenience a simple paper door provided, which could be why Beitou had enjoyed popularity for such a long time.
“Impressive. Good going. He can go right back and do it again,” someone at the table jeered, but it was impossible to know who that was over all that noise.
The paper door was still open, but the man was already on top of the woman, who struggled to free one of her hands with red-lacquered fingernails to pull the two doors together, but failed to close them completely; from where she was sitting, Yinghong could no longer see what went on inside the next room.
Loud laughter erupted at the table, a sign that everyone was used to it, as they continued to drink and sing. Perhaps taunted by the fact that the girl could earn her fee twice in such a short period of time, the other girls took turns going up to sing popular love songs about waiting faithfully for their lovers to return, or “flowers opening up waiting to be plucked,” or “bees flying off after taking nectar from the flowers,” or “flowers waiting to bloom in the rain.”
One by one, the men took girls into another room with a paper door, and the racket at the table began to die down, until the drinking, finger guessing, and flirting came to an end. Lin seized that moment to say good-bye before leaving with Yinghong.
They were not the last couple to leave, but the owner walked them out to the entrance, where Yinghong cast a quick glance at the wall clock. It was past two in the morning. As they walked down the stone steps, the early spring night seemed to be much colder in the hot springs district. In the misty night, damp with dew and fog, he reached out and grabbed her hand.
“Come on, let’s go back inside.”
Though confused, she walked up the stairs with him and reached the reception desk, where Lin asked, with noticeable familiarity, for a room on the west. The mama-san, who obviously knew him well, replied with a big smile:
“Director Lin, the previous guests have only just left, but the room has been cleaned.”
They walked along the hardwood floor of the winding hallway to the room. When the paper door was opened, Yinghong let out a cry of wonder.
It was a twin of the previous room, but this one faced a corner of the courtyard, where ground-level lights in the Japanese garden softly illuminated an old cherry tree with many branches, all laden with flowers in full bloom. A tree full of red flowers evoked a dream that would be hard to wake up from.
He kissed her the minute they stepped inside. She closed her eyes, but the sea of red flowers seemed to remain before her eyes and crowded around her from all sides.
While kissing her, he began to undress her, but instead of taking her right away, he led her into a side room with a small pool filled with water from a hot spring. As they soaked in the water, he bit on her ears and whispered in a slurred voice:
“Let’s get a masseuse.”
Yinghong’s heart skipped a beat. She’d heard stories about young women giving massages in the nude and then sleeping with their clients, so she hesitated. But the heat of the bath created a different kind of dizziness; as the misty air enshrouded them, she felt that anything was possible, so long as it was a professional masseuse. Relaxed in the comfortable setting, she nodded.
The knock at the door came later than she had anticipated. Obviously, contrary to what she had thought, not every hotel had a masseuse waiting to be summoned. As she waited, she began to regret her decision, but she knew that Lin would be upset if she had a change of heart, and she didn’t want to displease him.
It was half an hour later when the mama-san came in with a blind, middle-aged masseuse.
“I’m sorry to make you wait so long,” the mama-san apologized in Japanese. “I wanted to get you the best, the master masseuse.”
She paused and glanced at Yinghong.
“Would the young lady like a massage also?”
Lin smiled and took out a thousand NT, which sent the mama-san away with a broad smile.
He was not used to getting massages while clothed, and removed her bathrobe as well. The room was brightly lit, and Yinghong felt shy and uneasy, even though she knew the masseuse was blind. He, however, lay down stark naked as the masseuse’s hands danced on his body, while he reached out to touch Yinghong tenderly with the clear intention of arousing her.
They tried not to make any noise, but the masseuse obviously knew what was going on, and yet she remained focused on her job, a true case of the blind working without seeing. Taking the lead, he touched her first and then asked her to pose in all sorts of ways for him to gaze at or for him to kiss her body while lying down. At first she was hesitant, but the silent movements gave new possibilities to the familiar interactions of their bodies; by guessing what the other was thinking and asking questions, they discovered a harmony that helped them truly know each other.
Little by little, she let herself go and started to respond and lead him on. Sometimes she sat on top of him; at other times she moved away, teasing him with her foot. As he was lying down for the masseuse to work on him, he could not move, forced to let her have her way with him, as he waited for an opportunity to grab her.
Yinghong was free to do what she wanted, for the third person, though present, seemed not to exist, due to her inability to see. For Lin, however, the masseuse’s every hand movement on his body appeared to arouse her, making it seem as if they were engaged in a threesome. It was not real sex and they were under some restraints, which helped stoke the fires, creating a different kind of sexual stimulation and carnal pleasure.
Particularly because Yinghong felt she must remain quiet and tried not to bump into the masseuse, no matter how she abandoned herself to the play. The masseuse continued to work, moving down on his neck and shoulder, first one side and then the other, stretching him constantly. In the end, both women moved at the same time, and Yinghong’s leg touched the masseuse’s calf.
Her first reaction was a shudder caused by the coolness from the masseuse’s skin, followed by an unexpected unclean feeling and disgust from the contact with a total stranger. She quickly removed her legs and sat up, while the other woman kept the same posture as she continued to massage Lin’s body, seemingly unperturbed.
Owing to the prolonged rigorous work, the masseuse showed signs of fatigue and began to breathe hard, her mouth opened slightly. The forceful movements of her hand caused her body to sway back and forth, matched by the heavy breathing that escaped her mouth at regular intervals—”Uh, uh.” The sound did not seem human, more like something totally unrelated to human speech. Truly odd. Yinghong suddenly realized that the masseuse did not wo
rk with her eyes closed; instead both eyes were open, showing mostly white eyeballs with tiny incomplete irises, resembling tadpoles sitting at the edge of her eyes, rushing around or rolling up every time she blinked.
With the movements of her hands, she rolled the whites of her eyes and emitted the odd, rhythmical “Uh, uh” sound.
Unnerved by the sight, Yinghong backed away and moved up to Lin, who turned to look at her; obviously mistaken about why she’d stopped teasing him and had come over, he asked the masseuse to leave.
Before the masseuse could slowly grope her way out the door with the help of her cane, Lin turned over and climbed on top of Yinghong to force his way in, clearly highly aroused. At first all she could see were the whites of the blind masseuse’s eyes, and amid the premonition of death caused by unexpected apprehension and fear, she let herself go and moved with him.
They spent the night in Beitou. When she woke up the next morning, she could see from where she lay that under a drizzly sky, the bright red flowers continued to bloom on the tips of the old cherry tree. In a room that was totally different from what she recalled from the night before, the man next to her slept on.
What occurred to her at that moment was the thought that she could not afford to lose him again. In order to keep him and, in particular, to retain his normally short-lived passion, she would, she knew, do anything.
It finally became clear to me that his halfhearted performance in bed a while ago was likely caused by his tendency to be bored easily. There might not be other women he sees regularly, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he still feels passionate toward or interested in me. The information I managed to extract from the driver I’d personally hired showed that he never takes women back to the suites, but that means nothing.