by Amy Cheung
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
“It’s nothing urgent. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
I felt overwhelmed by sadness when I hung up. It seemed so unfair that Chui Yuk and Yu Mogwo could be together so freely, while Sam and I couldn’t. I had no choice but to believe that the love between Sam and me—compared to the kind between Chui Yuk and Yu Mogwo, and even compared to whatever other love was out there in the world—was both profound and rare. That was the only way that I could endure the pain of knowing that we could never get married.
As I rinsed the scorpion necklace in warm water, I thought that if I were a scorpion, I might be fierce enough to steal Sam right from under that woman’s nose. But that wasn’t really an option. A truly righteous woman would never be the other woman in the first place.
The following evening, Chui Yuk invited me to dinner. She said Yu Mogwo wanted to thank me for taking care of her. Yu Mogwo looked much healthier than he had before he left for the States. In fact, he looked like his old self again. His fashion sense hadn’t evolved much—he was still wearing sneakers. He didn’t seem like he was on the brink of insanity anymore, which was fortunate.
“Chow Jeoi wants to know how hummingbirds can fly backwards,” Chui Yuk said.
“It turns out hummingbird wings are rather unusual,” Yu Mogwo said.
“How so?” I asked him.
“The wings of hummingbirds move at a rate faster than fifty times per second. As a result, they can hold their position in midair and move either forwards or backwards. It turns out they can travel at a speed of thirty to thirty-eight miles an hour, while a sparrow can go only twelve to eighteen miles an hour.”
“I had no idea,” I said.
“But it’s not very useful to be able to fly backwards,” Yu Mogwo said.
“Why not?” Chui Yuk asked.
“Human beings don’t have much use for walking backwards. If you think of a place you want to go back to, all you have to do is just turn around and walk there,” Yu Mogwo said.
“When people can’t go back to a place where they used to be, their thoughts can go back. It’s just their bodies that can’t,” I said.
“I’d rather not be able to fly backwards,” Chui Yuk said, laying her hand on Yu Mogwo’s thigh. “Wouldn’t it be scary if Yu Mogwo went back to the way he was before he went to the States?”
“You were pretty frightening,” I told Yu Mogwo.
He chuckled.
“I don’t think there are any hummingbirds in Hong Kong,” I said.
“Most hummingbirds live in the Americas. There are roughly three hundred species in all,” Yu Mogwo said.
“Do you have a sample specimen?” I asked him.
“Are you looking for one?” he asked.
“Why are you so interested in hummingbirds?” Chui Yuk asked.
“Because they’re singular in this world,” I said.
“I have a friend I met in the States who does a lot of research on birds. I can try asking him,” Yu Mogwo said.
“Thanks. Have you ever thought about writing a story involving hummingbirds?” I asked him.
“A science-fiction story?”
“Like where a man turns into a hummingbird and he flies backwards, all the way back into the past, and marries the woman that he could never marry before . . . ,” I said.
4
Grade A in a Lover’s Eyes
Sam and I were eating at my apartment when I noticed that he was wearing a watch I’d never seen before. It made me uneasy. Sam noticed that I was staring at his watch.
“I bought it myself,” he said.
“I wasn’t asking,” I said, feigning ignorance.
“But you’ve been staring at my watch throughout dinner.”
“Oh, was I?”
“I bought it more than ten years ago. I dug it out recently and started wearing it.”
“Oh, yeah?” I pretended not to care.
“Weren’t you wondering who gave it to me?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re the only woman who gives me gifts,” he said, putting his hands on my shoulders. But I suddenly felt sad, since I wasn’t the only woman in his life. Even a wristwatch could trigger a flood of thoughts that I couldn’t let go of.
“I didn’t mean to stare at your watch,” I said, as tears welled in my eyes.
“Don’t cry.” Sam brushed away my tears. “Why is it that you always cry at the happiest moments? We’re together right now. Aren’t you supposed to be happy right now?” Sam asked me sadly.
“Maybe you’re right. But it’s hard to be happy when I never know when or if I’ll see you again,” I said.
“You will unless I die,” he said.
“I just want to ask you this one time. Are you ever going to get a divorce?” I hadn’t expected to have the nerve to ask him that.
He didn’t answer me.
Yau Ying called me at three in the morning.
“You’re not asleep, are you?” she asked me.
“I can’t fall asleep,” I said.
“Why not?”
Maybe because I needed so badly to be comforted—and because Yau Ying was my childhood friend—I told her about what was going on between Sam and me.
“I never would have imagined . . . ,” she said despondently.
“You never would have imagined that I’d be the other woman?”
“I never imagined that you’d go on to become a typical housewife and mother, but I didn’t think you’d become the other woman, either. You were always such an independent girl.”
“It’s because I was so independent that I ended up becoming the other woman! That’s what made me able to handle being alone. If I could be a little more dependent, then I’d make a good wife,” I said.
“So am I more of a good wife or the other woman?” Yau Ying asked.
“For you, it’s hard to say. But by the looks of it, you’re more of a good wife—the future wife of a lawyer. What about Daihoi? Where is he?”
“He’s in the bedroom sleeping. I’m calling you from the kitchen.”
“The kitchen?”
“I couldn’t get to sleep, so I came in here to get something to eat. But then I wasn’t hungry, and I felt like calling you instead.” Yau Ying was clearly worried about something.
“What’s the matter?” I asked her.
“I smelled someone else’s perfume inside Daihoi’s car.”
“Someone else’s perfume?”
“I use Chanel No. 5. This fragrance smelled like Dior.”
“What did you do?”
“I asked him which scent he preferred,” Yau Ying said, suddenly roaring with laughter.
“You had the nerve to do that?”
“I’m surprised myself that I could be so matter-of-fact about it. I wonder if it means I don’t love him anymore.”
“How did Daihoi answer?”
“He said he didn’t know what I was talking about.”
“Does Olivia Wu use Dior?”
“No, she wears Issey Miyake.”
“So maybe Daihoi dropped off a female colleague on the way home, and she happened to be wearing Dior.”
“That’s what I told myself to make myself feel better.”
“Your nose can be sensitive to a fault, you know,” I said.
“I know! If I hadn’t smelled that perfume, I would be sound asleep right now.”
“You don’t know how much I envy you. At least you and Daihoi can live together. You should be grateful and not so suspicious of him.”
“If you and Tong Man Sam could live together, you’d be suspicious of him sometimes, too,” Yau Ying said.
Maybe Yau Ying was right. I’d always wanted to be able to live with Sam. It hadn’t ever occurred to me that the reason we were in love now—and that we could continue to love each other so deeply—was precisely because we couldn’t live together. If we were to see each other day in and day out, life might very well become a
series of troublesome spats.
“Why haven’t the two of you gotten married? If you were married, you might feel a little more at ease,” I said.
“He brought it up a long time ago, but hasn’t mentioned it even once in the past two years. He won’t—and I won’t, either. A lot of people probably think I’m being foolish, since we’ve been together for seven years. But I don’t like to tell people off. I just want him to marry me if and when he wants to, not because otherwise he’ll be the reason I’ve squandered years of my life. There’s a big difference between those two things. Besides, I don’t seem to love him the way I used to.”
“You don’t feel any anxiety about your future with him?”
“Maybe we’ve gotten so used to living together that neither of us want to change the way we are to suit someone new.”
“I think you may love him more now,” I said.
“What makes you say that?”
“Because the more you love someone, the more afraid you are of losing them. It’s hard to deal with that kind of pressure, so you tell yourself you don’t really love him that much. That way, in case you do lose him, you won’t be as hurt.”
She was silent.
“Am I wrong?” I asked.
She let out a deep sigh, and said, “I’m just a secretary. Even if I work my hardest, I’m still just a secretary. I don’t have much of a career, whereas Daihoi is in the prime of his. I’m not jealous—there shouldn’t be jealousy between two people who are close—but I just feel like I have no security whatsoever. He’s like a ray of light, and I’m nearing a dead end.”
I finally understood why Yau Ying was unhappy. It terrified her that there was such a chasm between their job situations. But I didn’t know what to say to console her.
Three days later, Daihoi showed up at the lingerie store. It seemed odd to me that he was there.
“I want to buy a gift for Yau Ying,” Daihoi said. “She’s been buying a lot of designer lingerie recently, so I figure she really likes it.”
“I’ll gather some nice pieces for you to choose from.”
I picked out a few silk negligees, and he chose a pink one. If Daihoi demonstrated any lawyerlike quality, it was the quality of judiciousness.
“How’s Yau Ying?” I asked him.
“She’s meeting a friend for lunch. Are you free? Would you like to grab lunch?” Daihoi asked me.
“Aren’t you worried that Yau Ying might get the wrong idea?” I said, laughing.
“She doesn’t get jealous.”
He didn’t have any idea that she’d become jealous to the point where it was a serious problem. But I figured there was no harm in accepting his invitation and agreed to go.
“Has Yau Ying seemed worried lately?” Daihoi asked me once we were seated.
“I can’t really tell.” I didn’t want to talk to him about what was going on with her.
At the end of lunch, Daihoi lit a cigarette. He leaned back in his chair and said, “I really love her.”
I found it strange that Daihoi announced his love for Yau Ying to me like that. But it’s always moving when a man is so frank as to openly declare his love for his girlfriend. Maybe there was no need for Yau Ying to have been so unhappy recently, I thought. In spite of the fact that they had been together for seven years, it seemed as if they didn’t understand one another. He didn’t know she was jealous. She didn’t know that he loved her. How on earth did these two people communicate?
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked him.
“You two were good friends as children. She’s never had many friends,” Daihoi said.
“Do you want me to tell her what you said?”
Daihoi shook his head. “I have the courage to tell you that I love her, but I don’t have the courage to tell her.”
“Why not?”
“She’s the kind of woman who makes it hard to tell her that you love her.”
This was the first time I’d ever heard of a woman who made it impossible for the man who loved her to show it.
“Are you saying that she doesn’t think she’s worthy of being loved?”
“No.” Daihoi looked like he was mulling over how to express his thoughts. Ever the lawyer, he was probably carefully choosing his words, as if he were in court, in order to be as accurate as possible.
“It’s like with some lawyers, you don’t tell them the truth because you can never tell what they’re thinking. You can’t tell if they even believe you,” Daihoi eventually said.
“You don’t think she’ll believe that you love her?”
“It’s almost as if she doesn’t cherish me.”
“From what I understand, she cherishes you a lot,” I said. If Daihoi had known that Yau Ying considered getting breast implants for him, he’d never again say that she didn’t cherish him.
“Does she seem like that to you?” he asked.
“All I know is that you both seem to cherish each other.”
“But it never seems like she cares,” Daihoi said.
Finally, I understood. Daihoi was probably talking about the business with the perfume.
“Are you talking about how there was the scent of perfume in your car, but instead of asking you about it, she asked you which fragrance you liked better?”
“She told you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Don’t you think she acts differently from most other women?” Daihoi asked.
“So then who left the scent of perfume in your car?”
“I dropped off a female prosecutor on the way home.”
I’d guessed correctly.
“Jealousy doesn’t always show,” I said. You couldn’t tell by the look on Yau Ying’s face that she was jealous, yet her fear had alerted Daihoi to the fact that she indeed was.
“It’s also hard to let someone know that you’re jealous.” Daihoi laughed darkly.
I’d always believed that as long as two people really loved each other, things would work out between them. But apparently that wasn’t the case. Some people could love someone in their heart but not know how to express it.
As Daihoi and I crossed a pedestrian bridge on our way back to work, a man carrying several bundles of brightly colored silks passed by us. He abruptly stopped right in front of me. It was Chen Dingleung.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
Chen Dingleung sounded a bit embarrassed when he replied. He probably assumed that Daihoi was my boyfriend, and was therefore hesitant about whether to call out to me.
“I have to run—I’ve got to get back to work,” Daihoi told me.
“Where are you off to?” I asked Chen Dingleung.
“Was that your boyfriend?” he asked.
I chuckled, but didn’t answer his question. I didn’t think there was any need for me to tell Chen Dingleung the truth. If he wanted to jump to conclusions, then let him. Moreover, it could be fun to play him off against Daihoi.
“Those are beautiful fabrics,” I said, touching one of the fabrics in his arms. “Looks comfortable.”
“It is. It’s very high-quality material. I’m working on my own designs and setting up my own brand.”
“Congratulations,” I said. “Where are you heading? I can help you carry some of that.”
“Thanks. Careful, though. It’s really heavy!” Chen Dingleung said as he placed one of the bundles into my hands.
“Wow . . . you’re really unloading this thing on me?” I teased.
“If a man can do the job, so can a woman,” he said as he began to walk.
“Where are we going?” I asked, following him.
“We’re almost there.” He entered a shopping center, and stopped in front of a tiny shop space.
“This is your store?” I felt like it didn’t suit him at all.
“My old office had a view of the sea. This office has a view of a shopping center,” he said, chuckling to himself.
“You didn’t mention this big project of yours the last ti
me we spoke,” I said.
“That guy just now wasn’t your boyfriend,” Chen Dingleung said, taking the bundle of fabric out of my hands.
“How do you know?”
“The look in your eyes says you two aren’t lovers.”
“Not every pair of lovers has the same look in their eyes. He’s my friend’s boyfriend. Are you the only one here?”
“I have a partner.”
“Should I patronize your shop and have something made to help you kick off your new venture?” I asked.
“Of course you’re welcome to. What kind of piece are you interested in?”
“I don’t know off the top of my head.”
“I know what you’d look good in.”
“Oh? What would I look good in?”
“You’ll know what I mean when you see it.”
“When will it be ready?” I asked.
“When it’s finished, I’ll let you know.”
“Is this how you plan to treat all your customers?”
“I plan to give them a pickup date.”
“How come I’m not getting one?”
“That might just be because I’m going to work extra hard on yours. So don’t ask me when it’ll be ready.”
That evening, I had dinner with Chui Yuk and Yau Ying.
“Daihoi came to see me today,” I told Yau Ying.
Yau Ying looked stunned. “Why?”
“He told me that he really loves you.”
Yau Ying’s expression went from stunned to sweet.
“Why would he tell you that?” Yau Ying asked.
“Because if he told you, you wouldn’t believe him. He didn’t say that I should tell you. In fact, I promised him I wouldn’t.”
“He’s never told me that before,” Yau Ying said.
“You’ve never told him that you love him, either—isn’t that right?”
Yau Ying was silent.
“You’ve never told him that you love him?” Chui Yuk said. “You’ve been together for seven years!”
“I don’t know how to say it,” Yau Ying said.
“I tell Yu Mogwo that I love him all the time.”
“But it’s so hard to say those words,” Yau Ying insisted. “I’ve never told any man that I loved him.”
“Daihoi really wants to hear you say them,” I said.