“What?” I raised my voice in shock. “He’s here now? Listen, Zheng. Lan Yu and I are finished! You need to help him go abroad!”
Liu Zheng nodded his head understandingly, but said nothing in reply. Instead, he spoke of my ex-wife. “Lin Ping’s been calling, too, Handong. She’s worried. She’s been asking me if there’s anything she can do to help.”
“Please, let’s not talk about her.” Mention of those dark days only made me feel worse.
Liu Zheng cast me a feeble smile. “I know she had her bad side, but she never meant any harm.” He had always been good at defending her.
The three months I spent in that cold little cell were difficult. One can imagine what it was like: no trial, no legal process, just a lone man thrown unceremoniously into a prison cell. And on the day I was released, they pulled me out of my cell just as they had thrown me in: without any rhyme or reason.
Stepping back into the world with Liu Zheng on one side, my lawyer on the other, I enjoyed the feeling of warm rays of sunshine hitting my face. A broad grin appeared on my face when I saw Lan Yu in the distance leaning against his car. Arms folded and legs crossed at the ankles, he reeled me in with his strong and gentle smile. As always at the end of the summer, he was darker and thinner than usual, but to me that only gave him an additional layer of sexiness. He scrutinized me as I walked toward him as if not yet convinced that I was real. We didn’t say a word as I got in the car. No hugs, no tears—this wasn’t an option for us in public—but I felt his gaze cling to me as I opened the door and got inside.
Lan Yu and I sat in the backseat and Liu Zheng drove, the passenger seat next to him empty. I took a deep breath and looked out the window. I’m free, I thought. I was free and alive and returning to the city, to that seething metropolis I knew so well. As these thoughts churned in my mind, I suddenly felt the warm touch of Lan Yu’s hand against my own. The motion was slow at first, halting, as if he wasn’t sure what my reaction would be. That’s when I squeezed back and his grip became firmer. I looked down at our hands, the hands of two men binding themselves together, and then into his eyes, where I saw a mixture of steady resolve and boundless tenderness. I pressed my hand deeper into his, so hard it hurt, but neither of us let go. The pain reminded me that I was alive, alive and with the man I loved.
Liu Zheng drove straight to my mother’s house, where my mother and sisters were waiting. Lan Yu said he would wait in the car. As I walked toward the house, my mother came running out the front door, throwing her hands into the air before clutching frantically at my shoulders. She fell against my chest with a heavy wailing that hung in the courtyard.
I held her, patting her on the back while trying to keep myself together.
“C’mon, Ma!” I said. “It’s nothing. What are you crying for? Aren’t you glad I’m home?”
All my efforts at consolation were to no avail. On and on my mother cried with no end in sight until I began thinking I myself was going to cry. Finally, my sisters intervened by prying her off of me and, eventually, coaxing a smile from her face.
When all the excitement and fuss started to wind down, my mind returned to Lan Yu, who was still waiting in the car for me. It was an awful feeling. There I was emerging from a major crisis and I couldn’t have the two people in my life I cared about most—my mother and Lan Yu—with me at the same time. I gave my mother a final hug and invented some pressing task I had to take care of at the office. Then Liu Zheng and I went back to the car.
“That was fast!” Lan Yu exclaimed as we got back in the car. “Is our Ma okay?” He’s saying “our Ma” again!
“She’s fine,” I said. “It took her a while, but she’s fine.” Lan Yu’s worried expression turned into a smile.
“So, where to?” Liu Zheng asked, glancing back at us through the rearview mirror. “I’ll take you guys wherever you want to go.”
“Are you guys hungry? Why don’t we grab a bite to eat?” Lan Yu suggested. “My treat!”
“Sure,” Liu Zheng said. “But it’s my treat, not yours—to celebrate Handong’s safe return!”
“We can eat,” I said, “but I don’t want to go out. And whatever we do, I’m taking a shower first!” I hadn’t had a decent bite of food in months, but I didn’t feel like being at a restaurant.
“Let’s go to my place, then,” Liu Zheng offered.
It was a real men’s night at Liu Zheng’s that evening. I took a quick shower, and within half an hour, heavy clouds of smoke filled the living room and our ears rang with the sound of shot glasses clinking together. Also filling the air was an endless stream of cursing, not from Lan Yu, but from Liu Zheng and me. I was first to get drunk, but Liu Zheng followed quickly. Lan Yu drank very little. He mostly just sat quietly, looking supremely contented as Liu Zheng and I bitched and moaned about everything that was wrong with the world.
“Liu Zheng!” I roared, holding my glass high while trying to focus my bleary eyes. “To you, buddy! I’m gonna make it up to you! We’ve been through thick and thin, but I’ll tell you one thing, I’m gonna make it up to you!”
Liu Zheng and I never spoke of it directly, but Lan Yu later told me that my childhood friend had spent ¥3 million securing my release—his entire life savings. He had risked everything—his livelihood, his family—to bail me out. This, I felt, was his way of returning the debt of gratitude I had earned by not firing him five years earlier.
“Let’s not speak of the past,” Liu Zheng said. “You’re back now and that’s what counts!” He lifted his glass to mine.
I turned to Lan Yu. He was his usual laconic self, but was genuinely pleased by the drunken banter happening around him.
“And you!” I hollered, raising my glass with a smile. “Thank you so much for your note! I couldn’t have survived another minute in that hellhole!”
Lan Yu beamed. “Drink!” he shouted, raising his glass to mine.
It took many months, but at last there was a desirable outcome to my case. They threw out all charges against me because of a lack of evidence. Still, the audit they had performed brought to light other discrepancies, such as tax evasion, and I was hit with a series of heavy fines. It wasn’t going to be easy, but one way or another I would recover.
There was some good that came out of the bad. Returning from the brink of ruin brought a new kind of clarity to my life. The excesses of my past now seemed empty, dissolute. I decided to start living a little more simply, a little more sincerely, in a way that was a little more real.
Thirty
After the impromptu celebration at Liu Zheng’s place, all three of us fell asleep in our respective chairs—two of us passed out drunk—until early morning, when the virgin rays of sunlight burst into the room and coaxed us out of slumber. Liu Zheng stumbled off to join his wife in their bed, and Lan Yu and I took a cab back to Gala, where we jumped immediately into his. Lan Yu sat up against the headboard; legs open in the shape of a V, he patted the open space between them to invite me to sit. I nestled against his broad chest and he held me tightly in his arms, kissing the back of my neck. It was rare for him to hold me that way, the exact opposite of the pattern we’d established through innumerable hours of cuddle time. He leaned forward to look at my profile, kissing my cheek now and then. I loved the feeling of his arms around me as much as I loved my newly restored freedom.
“Do I look any different?” I asked, turning my head slightly so he could see me better.
“Not really. A little thinner.”
“I was sure you had forgotten about me.” I tugged at his arm, tightening it around my chest.
“Are you kidding me? Never!” He nuzzled his nose against my ear. “I was worried you wouldn’t be able to take it, that you might even . . .,” his voice trailed off, then he continued. “Believe me, I know what those confessions are like. When they got the fax at my work, every single manager in the company pulled me aside to ‘talk,’ then security made me write a statement. It was such bullshit. When my coworkers found out
about it, they started getting on board with the inquisition, too. So I knew exactly what you were going through. And I was worried about you.”
Quietly, I listened to him speak. Lan Yu had never been much of a talker, and he wasn’t always good at expressing himself. But I always understood what he meant.
“All right, mister, time’s up!” I pulled myself out of his arms to swap positions with him. I wanted to take him in my arms and hold him as I’d done so many times before. I wrapped my arms around the front of his torso and scrutinized his profile, noting all the things about him that had changed since we met. The childlike innocence he once had was completely gone now, permanently replaced by a deepening maturity that was just beginning to dig into the length of his brow. In the past, when he had looked at me it was with anxiety, suspicion. But he now possessed a kind of relaxed and easygoing self-confidence. I squeezed him tightly. He seemed even thinner than the day before, when I’d seen him waiting for me outside the jailhouse. I wondered if being with me somehow made him unhappy.
I stretched my neck forward to press my lips against whatever part of his face I could find. Eyebrows, nose, then lips. He returned my kiss by pushing his tongue into my mouth, inviting me to push back deeper. Pulling back slightly, I studied his profile while combing my fingers through his hair. There was something I needed to ask him.
“In the note you wrote me, why did you sign your name Yu?”
He smiled, but didn’t answer the question. So I tried another one.
“So, if I’m going to repay you . . . I mean . . . how do you think I should do it?” More silence.
“Tell me!” I said, squeezing my arms around his chest as tightly as I could.
He turned and looked at me cunningly. “I guess you’ll just have to figure it out on your own!”
I looked at him closely. Why didn’t he tell me he loved me? I had nothing to go on but intuition. I knew he loved me, and I had once thought that knowing it without having heard him say it was more romantic and exciting than a million sweet words. But knowing it was no longer enough. I wanted to hear it.
“I want you so badly,” I whispered into his ear as I enveloped him in my embrace. “We’re going to be together forever, okay?”
“What about when we’re old?”
“As long as you still want me.”
He laughed, and it hurt. I was trying to be sincere, and he was laughing at me.
Lan Yu could see I was bothered by his flippant response. He turned to me and rubbed his nose against mine.
“You’re like a drug,” he said matter-of-factly. “I know I shouldn’t go near you. I know you could ruin me. But I can’t stay away.”
Upon hearing this, I realized it wasn’t just me who’d thought of him as a drug. He thought the same of me!
“So you are prone to addiction!” I laughed. “And how do you intend to manage this problem, young man?” I wanted to take the same light tone as him. It would be easier that way.
“I guess one day I’ll just have to quit!”
“And when will that be?” I held my breath, praying he wasn’t suggesting we should break up.
“Oh, I don’t know. When you get married again, or find someone else.” His tone of voice remained cavalier.
I closed my eyes. How could I put my feelings for Lan Yu into words? He still distrusted me because of what I had done in the past, and yet there he was, forgetting the past so he could be with me. I opened my eyes again.
“So, are you going to go abroad this year?” I wanted to change the subject.
“Ugh,” he lamented. “It’s hopeless!”
“Has your boyfriend gone yet?”
“He left a month ago.”
“Did you guys break up?”
Silence.
“He knows everything about us, doesn’t he?”
“He doesn’t know a thing,” Lan Yu replied. “I never told him about you.” That surprised me. It was hard to believe he’d never said a word about a relationship that had lasted as long as ours. But there was more.
“I’ve never told anyone about us,” he continued.
“Why not?”
Lan Yu turned to look me in the eye. “It’s ours, Handong. It doesn’t belong to anybody else.”
The words hit me hard. I had known Lan Yu for seven years at that point. I always knew he was a sensitive person, the kind of person who values feelings more than anything else. But it was only in that moment that I realized just how strong his feelings for me really were. Maybe I didn’t need to hear him say he loved me. Maybe this was his way of saying it.
When evening came around, Lan Yu and I made love for the first time in over three months. Whatever else could be said of him, he had always greatly enjoyed the pleasures of sex. I did, too, but on that night—our first real night together since my release—a nagging caution tugged at my heart. I was deathly afraid—afraid of losing myself, afraid of falling so deep that our bodies and souls became one.
I barely slept a wink that night. Lan Yu, on the other hand, slept heavily. Lying in bed drenched in pools of moonlight, I held him in my arms, thinking about the strange and unlikely path my life had taken. I thought about my mother, my career, the days I had spent behind bars. I took in Lan Yu’s beautiful face with my eyes and made a vow to myself: unless there came a day when he grew tired of this life—tired of me, tired of being with another man—I was going to stay with him forever.
The following morning, the sun rose in the east, and Lan Yu and I began our respective days. I dropped him off at work, then drove to my office to commence the long and arduous process of mopping up the shitstorm created by jail time. I essentially had to start my career over from scratch. A herculean task, but an exciting one, too, since it represented the new start on life I desired.
Arriving at my office, the first thing I did was call the front desk of Country Brothers. It was time to rid myself of my secret little room there, that house of pleasure that time and again had opened onto a seemingly endless horizon of new adventures. I also made arrangements to sell my apartments at Movement Village and Ephemeros, though this idea had more to do with needing fast cash than wanting to turn over a new leaf. Apart from the occasional visit to my mother’s house, I stayed with Lan Yu each night, joking that I was a down-and-out drifter who had found shelter at Camp Gala. I never went to Tivoli, nor did I mention it to Lan Yu.
The Japanese company Lan Yu worked for was exacting, and he spent long hours at work each day. He often grumbled about how vile foreign bosses were. He said if he had his way, he’d wipe the Japanese off the face of the earth.
“What are you, some kind of radical nationalist?” I feigned shock.
“Damn right!” he beamed with pride.
Lan Yu was good at his job. One evening after work, he burst through the apartment door shouting that his boss had given him a raise. I gave him a big hug and told him we were going out to dinner that night—on him! He laughed when I threatened to order lots of pricey dishes.
Lan Yu rarely talked about the past and talked even less about the future. He said he didn’t believe in the future. I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but it didn’t matter. We were happy in the moment, in the present. That was enough for me.
One late afternoon, I went to Skytalk to pick Lan Yu up after work. I wanted to surprise him, so I parked at a distance so he wouldn’t be able to see me when he walked out. At ten past five, he stepped out of the building, chatting spiritedly with a strikingly attractive girl. They waved goodbye as she hopped on her bicycle and rode off.
When Lan Yu saw me, he waved excitedly. He dashed to the car, opened the passenger door, and jumped in.
“Look at you,” I teased. “Reeling in the babes, huh?”
“Hey, she’s the one who’s after me!” he said, clearly pleased with himself.
“I bet she is!” I said breathlessly. “Why don’t you go for it?”
It would be hard to describe the look on Lan Yu’s face when he heard thi
s. Somewhere between disbelief and disgust.
“Well, that would be unfair to her, wouldn’t it?” he said coldly.
“Come on, I was only joking,” I said, realizing the stupidity of what I had said. “I thought maybe you were into her!” I was trying to find a way out.
“Well, I’m not,” he said, throwing his bag into the back seat. “And I’m not getting married, either. Don’t you get it, Handong?” He turned to me austerely. “I just don’t understand why so many people like us get married. It doesn’t make sense. And it’s wrong.”
I laughed sheepishly. We both knew who he was talking about.
Thirty-One
Living with Lan Yu in his little apartment at Gala represented a strange reversal of the dynamic we had shared for most of our relationship. In the past, he had always been financially dependent on me. But now, except for when we went out to eat, Lan Yu covered nearly all our expenses. Money became a taboo subject for us, the proverbial elephant in the room. It was an awkward arrangement for both of us, but this was how it had to be. It often occurs to me today that we could have been much happier if our relationship had not been so intimately tied up from the start with that peculiar thing called money.
One evening, when we were staying in for dinner—we had both started learning some basic cooking at that point—Lan Yu told me his landlord wasn’t going to continue renting to him the following year.
“Is he raising the rent?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. “He says the guy in the other bedroom is coming back.”
I wanted to be optimistic for him. “That’s okay! We’ll just look for a new place for you.”
“Apartments are hard to come by these days,” Lan Yu replied. He was standing over the burner in the kitchen making a dish of egg fried rice. It reminded me of the joke I’d made so long ago about using his sweat as cooking salt. That was only the second time we had met.
I took a deep breath. I was about to say something I’d been thinking of for a while. “What about us going back to Tivoli together?”
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