“You’re not the only one,” I replied. “I was just as pathetic as you were!”
After dinner, our bodies came together and we made love. Really made love, not just me wanting to be his “whore” like the last time. Lan Yu climbed on top of me and straddled my waist, thighs open wide. With one hand on my chest, he used his other hand to reach back and guide me into him. The instant he put his hands on my thick chest muscles and began riding me in pleasure, I knew he was mine again.
Lan Yu and I had been together for four years before breaking up, so when it came to sex, we mixed as easily as milk and water. We knew everything about each other: what the other liked, how he liked it, where to touch and how. Nearly two years apart and sex with him was just as hot as before. Hotter, even.
The summer was as oppressively muggy as any other Beijing summer, and Lan Yu’s tiny apartment could get excruciatingly hot. After we climaxed, Lan Yu went to the kitchen and grabbed a couple of cold beers. Plopping back down on the bed, he handed me one of the bottles and turned on the television: it was some American movie with cops and criminals beating the crap out of each other. Lan Yu had always liked war movies and action flicks—anything with blood, chaos, and pandemonium. I used to tease him by calling him lowbrow, but he would just laugh it off, insisting that I was just jealous of his refined taste. He was absorbed in the spectacle, but I wanted to talk.
“So how long have you been working at your new place, the Japanese company?” I asked.
“About a year,” he replied, eyes glued to the TV set.
“How come you left City Nine?” I knew perfectly well the answer to this question.
“Isn’t it better to work at a foreign company?” he replied. Mild Chinese curses—shoot, darn it!—flowed from the dubbed movie on the TV, out of synch with the lip movements of the English-speaking actors. It was evident that Lan Yu had no interest in discussing the past.
“It was because of the fax, wasn’t it?” I asked.
Lan Yu turned his eyes from the TV set and looked at me in shock. “How did you know about that?”
“I looked everywhere for you, Lan Yu!” I exclaimed. “Including your old workplace! I was scared. I really thought something happened to you.”
He scoffed and continued watching the stupid movie. “Why even bother?”
“Why didn’t you come to me for help?” I persisted.
“And what good would that have done?” he snapped. “Look, Handong, it doesn’t matter, okay? I was planning on leaving City Nine anyway.” He wanted to end the conversation.
“But if nothing else, I could have helped you find a new job.”
He returned his attention to the movie, but the distressed look on his face told me he wasn’t really watching. I needed to know more. I needed to know how he had survived after getting fired from his job.
“What did you do after you left?” I asked.
“Well, I got by, didn’t I?” he retorted. “I didn’t starve to death. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” He was losing patience with the subject.
Lan Yu squinted in fixed concentration at the television. I didn’t like seeing him upset and never had. I took the remote from his hand and clicked off the TV.
“My ex-wife did it,” I said. “The fax. She did it.”
Lan Yu looked at me in horror. “Are you fucking kidding me? What an evil bitch! How could you marry someone like that?”
There was nothing I could say. I certainly couldn’t refute him.
After a few more minutes of angry cursing, Lan Yu calmed down. “Well, it’s in the past now,” he said. “As long as it wasn’t you.”
“How could it even cross your mind that it could have been me, Lan Yu? I was going crazy worrying about you! I looked in every corner of the city for you. I really thought—”
“Well, you were wrong,” he interrupted me. “Sometimes things are horrible when they’re happening, but you just have to clench your teeth and get through it.” He turned the TV back on and looked at me. “Anyway, the fax wasn’t nearly as hard for me as when we broke up.”
I looked into Lan Yu’s eyes. I knew them so well. They were the eyes I had fallen in love with, those deeply troubled eyes that had ignited my desire innumerable times past.
Now, sitting there in the blue flicker of the TV set, his eyes penetrated me like a knife. Damp tufts of hair clung to his forehead, a sweaty reminder that we had had sex only a short while ago. The stiffness of his body told me he was still agitated from the conversation we had just had. He clenched his lips and squeezed the remote control so tightly I thought it might break. And yet he continued to stare at me. I kissed him until the tension in his body melted away and he at last locked his arms around my neck. We didn’t have sex again, but stayed like that, kissing each other gently in front of the TV.
Lan Yu woke up early the following morning, grumbling about how strict his Japanese company was about punctuality. I wanted to offer him a ride to work, but didn’t have the courage to say the words. Our relationship was different now—ambiguous, lacking in definition. Involvement in each other’s daily lives belonged to the past, to the relationship we once had. Lan Yu seemed to want it this way.
After getting dressed we stepped out of his building and into the morning sunlight. When we reached the main gate of Gala, he rushed off to catch a bus, saying he’d be in touch. This, I knew, meant “don’t call me, I’ll call you.” And I had no right to ask him for anything more. I had promised him my life.
When Lan Yu and I were together, especially during those precious moments when we made love, I felt so close to him that he sometimes seemed an extension of my own body. It was times like these I knew for sure that the person I was with was Lan Yu, that he was the same person I had known all this time. But most of the time there was only distance between us. It was a strange and surprising feeling: for the first time in my life, I felt the pangs of unrequited love, the agony of wanting someone who was out of my reach.
I did everything I could to get over him. I slept with other men and even with other women. But Lan Yu was like a drug to me. When I couldn’t get a fix, I craved him. When I got him, it was bliss. But when he was gone, the agony of the crash was unbearable.
In a sense I had Lan Yu back, but it was a narrow sense because our relationship was purely sexual. We rarely asked about each other’s lives, and never uttered a word about the past. We spoke freely of sex, but emotions were off limits. I never did manage to find out what he had done between jobs at City Nine and Yamato. Lan Yu’s reluctance to discuss it that night in front of the TV set made me drop the subject.
Each time I saw him, a long interval would pass before he’d pick up the phone and call me again. Gradually, however, he started contacting me more often. I, meanwhile, was growing accustomed to his lack of commitment. And yet, I sometimes couldn’t help but wonder: Why did he keep coming back? Was there something about me that made him want me more than he wanted other men?
One Tuesday afternoon, I went to Skytalk to pick up Lan Yu after work. Exiting the parking lot, I suggested we go to Tivoli. The truth was, I didn’t care much for being at Lan Yu’s place. He made decent money at his job, but not enough to get out of the tiny, simple apartment he lived in.
“I don’t want to go there,” he replied bluntly.
“But it’s your house.”
“I don’t want it.”
“But I gave it to you.”
“I don’t want it!”
“There, you see? You do hate me.”
“I do not hate you.”
“Then why don’t you want to go there?”
Lan Yu folded his arms in front of his chest and looked out the window. Then he laughed. “I guess it wasn’t enough to buy my virginity with a thousand yuan,” he said frostily. “Now you want to buy my love with a house, too.”
I was so angry my hands shook. I slammed on the brakes. “Get out.”
Lan Yu didn’t waste any time mulling it over. He opene
d the door, jumped out of the car, and began walking down the street in the direction from which we’d just come.
It only took a few days for us to make up, but the incident made me begin to wonder if Lan Yu was right. Perhaps we were better off leaving things strictly at the level of sex. Words were dangerous. Anytime we used them, they only threatened the fragile simplicity of the casual relationship we had.
Twenty-Six
Two weeks after National Day I received a piece of news about as welcome as a kick in the teeth. Yang Youfu, the stubby, fat-faced cousin of my ex-girlfriend Hao Mei, had been arrested. There had been no warning signs. Before Liu Zheng walked into my office and told me the news, I never could have predicted he’d be grabbed.
My first instinct was to wash my hands clean of any ties we had, however minor they might have been. At the same time, I wasn’t going to drop stones on a drowning man by going to the police with what I knew. I wasn’t that callous, and besides, talking to the authorities would only be implicating myself in the case.
The night of the arrest, Liu Zheng and I stayed at the office longer than usual to discuss Yang Youfu’s arrest and, more importantly, what might happen next. We needed to make an objective assessment of whether or not we were going to be affected. At first, Liu Zheng was brimming with ideas about how to divert the impending disaster. But by the time we poured our seventh shot glass of baijiu, helpful advice was turning into poison arrows. We had a fight, a big one.
“Handong,” he said, “I gotta tell ya—and I’m speaking from the heart now—you’re fucking up big time right now. It’s just one mistake after another.” He filled my glass. “If you don’t come forward with information about Yang Youfu, you’re only going to burn yourself in the end. I don’t care if it seems callous. Whatever it takes to protect yourself, you do it.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said curtly. “Anyway, I’ve already helped the police as much as I can.” That was bullshit and we both knew it. “I don’t want to think about it anymore.” I polished off another glass of liquor and plunked it down loudly on the table between us.
Liu Zheng looked at me in exasperation. “Well, if you don’t want to think about this, Handong, what do you want to think about? Are you going to spend the rest of your life thinking about nothing but Lan Yu?” He looked at me fixedly.
“Look,” he continued in a conciliatory tone. “I know he’s not a bad kid, okay? But he’s not exactly good for you either!”
“Excuse me,” I retorted, “but I do recall you being the one who picked him up to begin with.” I was becoming angry.
“Right,” he said, “but I never imagined it would turn into something like this! I thought you were just messing around. How could I have possibly known you would end up taking the relationship seriously?” I stared at my glass in silence, and Liu Zheng saw his chance to dig in deeper.
“It was a mistake for you to leave Lin Ping,” he said, taking a long drag on his cigarette. “Keep on like this and it’s just going to get worse and worse, Handong.” Red-gray ash sizzled and fell to the floor.
“Lin Ping was a fucking monster,” I said.
“You’re wrong, Handong,” he said sternly. “That woman never did a thing to you. So she was a little scheming in the way she dealt with things. Who isn’t these days? People aren’t stupid anymore, Handong. They’re going to catch on to things. You know as well as I do that the whole fax thing wasn’t her idea, it was our Ma’s. And the money she transferred out of the company account? You divorced her, Handong—what was she supposed to do? You gave her no choice but to do it. Before this whole thing happened, she never did you wrong.” He took a big mouthful of liquor, then looked at me as if waiting for a response. I didn’t correct him by saying that Lin Ping was the true mastermind behind the fax.
“And don’t forget,” he persisted, “after the divorce was finalized, she never came after you for anything. She just went on with her life and let you go on with yours. Let’s be clear about that, okay?”
I was growing sick of Liu Zheng’s shrill housewife bitching. “If you think she’s so great, why don’t you go bang her yourself? I promise not to tell your wife.”
Liu Zheng slammed his glass on the table. “I’m sick of your shit, Handong!” he yelled, his face purple with rage. “Let me make things clear for you, since you can’t seem to figure it out on your own. You fucked everything up, but didn’t have the balls to blame yourself or Lan Yu, so you saved all your venom for your wife. You know I’m right—if we weren’t childhood friends, I would never say this to you!”
I stood up from my chair. “What the fuck do you know?” I shouted. “You’re a fucking nobody! Who are you to come in here and throw accusations at me?” I knew I was going too far with this language, but I wasn’t about to apologize.
“Right, Handong, I’m a nobody.” Liu Zheng stood up and looked me in the eye. “Who else but a nobody would stick around in this shitty job for so long? You think I haven’t paid my dues here? Well, let me tell you something: Putting up with the crap that goes on in this place, I’ve probably shaved five years off my life. If I was just muddling along, I’d have a lot less stress than I do now. I don’t owe you shit, Handong, and I have no problem leaving this place. You want to fire me? Fucking fire me! China’s a big country. Liu Zheng won’t go hungry.” He held his shot glass in the air as if to toast me, then dropped it on the table below. It didn’t break, but the effect was jarring. He picked up his jacket and stormed out of the office.
I sat back down, utterly shell-shocked that someone I’d known for decades would turn against me in this way.
Whatever else had been said, we both knew the real issue was Lan Yu. There was nothing I’d been unwilling to sacrifice for him. I’d worried my mother to death. I’d sat idly by while my friends and associates gossiped about me. I’d insulted my closest friend and lost my wife. And yet, for all that, I was still alone, unable to hold on to the one person for whom it had all been done.
I slammed my fist against the wall. If Lan Yu didn’t love me—if we truly weren’t fated to be together—then it was all in vain, all this sorrow was for nothing. I calmed down somewhat and poured myself another drink. Maybe we really were better off apart.
I stayed in my office for the rest of the night, doing my best to process everything that had happened. At four in the morning, I finally fell asleep on the couch, swearing to myself that if Lan Yu didn’t call me, we would never see each other again. I certainly wouldn’t be calling him.
And yet, Lan Yu did call. The following Saturday he rang my cell phone—long since updated since the Big Boss days—and asked me to come to his house.
I was surprised. It was rare for him to invite me over on the weekend, so rare that I would joke sardonically that I was his “Tuesday lover,” or perhaps one of the “discreet afternoon playmates” I had read about in the personal ads of American newspapers. But however surprised and even thrilled by the offer I might have been, it didn’t matter anyway. I had to decline Lan Yu’s invitation because I had a major dinner event that evening that I couldn’t miss.
“Where’s your dinner?” he asked. I told him it was at the Fangshan Hotel.
It was past ten when the banquet was over. I had drunk a lot that night, and my head felt heavy and dizzy as I stumbled back to the parking lot where the company driver was waiting for me. Just as I was about to get in the backseat, I heard a voice call my name. “Chen Handong!” I turned and found myself face-to-face with Lan Yu.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, surprised.
“I’ve been here all night,” he replied. “I got here at seven.”
It was a chilly late-October night and Lan Yu had waited outside for me for over three hours. What did it mean? I was completely thrown off guard by the idea that he cared for me that much. First he rejects me, now he’s here. What kind of game was he playing?
I sent the driver off without me, and Lan Yu and I took a cab to his place at Gala. When I asked him wh
y he had come looking for me at the Fangshan, he just smiled. I pressed him to answer the question and he laughed. “I guess I just had nothing better to do tonight!”
Waves of nausea hit me as the alcohol churned in my stomach and the smell of cheap cologne in the back of the taxi filled my nostrils. I didn’t feel like talking—couldn’t in fact—so I leaned my head against the window and shut my eyes.
“Have you been very busy lately?” a voice rang out of nowhere. I had almost forgotten where I was.
“Mmmm . . .,” I groaned, more asleep than awake. I looked through the vertical bars separating us from the driver. I was looking for something to focus my eyes on to keep from vomiting.
He turned his head to look at me. “You okay?”
Slowly I rolled my head in his direction, then looked back out the window and squeezed out an “uh-huh.” His gaze remained fixed on me, but he was quiet.
The taxi sped through the night, passing a seemingly endless number of intersections and traffic lights. It was close to eleven at that point, and the streets were empty except for the occasional cluster of late-night food vendors stationed along highway underpasses. I looked out the window at the throngs of weekend warriors slurping noodles from huge plastic bowls. Unrolling the window to get some air, I caught a few words from an argument taking place on the street. A skinny, red-faced guy with an impressively chiseled flattop and a girl with an even redder face and huge, clunky shoes were going at it.
“I never said that!” the guy threw up his hands and yelled.
“Bull!” the girl screamed back at him, hands on her hips, an angry look on her face.
Lan Yu’s body morphed under the rapidly flashing lights, which transformed the inside of the car into a kaleidoscope of color. We were only arm’s length from each other, and yet I couldn’t see his face clearly. Was there something wrong with my vision, or was the distance between us greater than I had thought?
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