by Amy Cheung
“Is he madly in love with you?” Chui Yuk asked me.
Of course Chen Dingleung wasn’t madly in love with me. No one had ever been madly in love with me. Even when Sam and I were together, I never felt like he was madly in love with me. Maybe there’d been a time when he was in love with me, but it hadn’t ever been mad enough. If it’d been mad enough, he would’ve gotten divorced for me. Chen Dingleung had nothing on Sam.
I didn’t go out to lunch with Chui Yuk and Yu Mogwo, but Chui Yuk came to the store afterwards to see me.
“He and Yu Mogwo really hit it off. He already has the basic concept for it. He’s going to have it done in a week’s time.”
“He’s really not going to charge you for it?”
“You really think he’d ask for money?” Chui Yuk said. “He asked about you, though.”
“Oh, really? Well, since he’s already agreed to design the cover for you, there’s no need for me to meet with him anymore.”
“He’s good looking. Certainly no worse than your Sam.”
“You can have him, then!”
“No thanks. He’s certainly no match for Yu Mogwo!” Chui Yuk said smugly.
“I don’t blame you. Every woman thinks the man she loves is the best,” I said.
A week later, Chen Dingleung had finished the cover design and delivered it to Yu Mogwo. Chui Yuk showed it to me. The book was called Attack of the Killer Bees, and the cover featured a hand-drawn illustration of bees by Chen Dingleung. The illustration was exquisite. There was something truly menacing about it.
“Isn’t he talented?” Chui Yuk said. “This is an important book for Yu Mogwo. If it’s a hit, he won’t have to worry anymore about no one wanting to publish his work.”
“It’s going to be a hit,” I said.
“Thank you.” Chui Yuk seemed touched. “So have you decided whether you’re going to sell your place or not?” It was a question I had to face. When a woman leaves a man, she’s forced to come to a decision on many things. But I didn’t have an answer for her.
Later that day, I went to the cake shop to see Kwok Seon. She was getting ready to lock up.
“Do you still want to buy my apartment?” I asked her.
“I really do fancy it. But if you don’t want to sell it, I don’t want to pressure you. I bought a house once before. It was the place where my husband and I lived for more than twenty years. We couldn’t bear to sell it. Along the outside walls of that house, there were all these spots that were infested with termites. The night before we moved out, I suddenly started trying to hunt down their nest, and I remember watching them crawling everywhere. I was absolutely fed up with them. But when I left, I realized I was sad to leave them. I completely understand how it feels to give up a home that you love,” Kwok Seon told me tenderly.
“Tell me about it. Termites and your love for someone can be very similar. They both have the power to totally ruin things.” I laughed bitterly.
I asked Daihoi to handle the transaction, and he agreed to do it for me pro bono. I took him and Yau Ying out to dinner to thank them.
“Have you found a place for yourself yet?” Yau Ying asked me.
“Not yet,” I said. “The rents are too high in this neighborhood, and the spaces are too big.”
“I know of some buildings in Central with smaller units, and the rent’s not too bad. They should be fine for one person,” Daihoi said.
So Daihoi found an apartment for me. The building was located near the city center, right next to an escalator. The unit I looked at had a window that actually faced the escalator. There was only a twelve- to fifteen-foot gap in between. If you stood at the window, you could see the passersby and hear the escalator’s motor.
“It’s going to be noisy!” said Yau Ying, who had accompanied me.
“That’s why the rent is so low,” the landlady said.
“I’ll take it,” I said.
“Won’t the noise bother you?” Yau Ying asked me.
“It’ll be fine if I just keep the window shut, don’t you think?”
After the landlady and I had taken care of the paperwork, Yau Ying and I went to eat at a fast-food restaurant nearby.
“I honestly never thought you’d consider a building like that,” Yau Ying said.
“But the rent is so cheap! If I’m going to be self-reliant, I have to be frugal,” I said.
“The problem with you is that you’re too conscientious for your own good. You really don’t have to sell the apartment.”
“I don’t want to get any kind of help from Sam,” I said.
“Do you want me and Daihoi to help you move?”
“I haven’t even thought about the move yet.”
“The law firm has a car for clients that you can borrow.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Oh please—you don’t have to thank me! When you don’t have love, you need friends. If I were the one going through heartbreak, I’d be moving in with you! That’s why I’m here to help.”
“Are things all right with you and Daihoi?”
“If there’s been no progress, does that mean that we’re regressing?”
“I don’t think that’s how emotions work,” I said.
“Daihoi’s been falling asleep during sex again. Plus we’re doing it less and less often. Lately it’s been like neither of us is even interested.”
“This is in spite of the fact that you’ve been wearing sexy lingerie?”
Yau Ying laughed cruelly. “Sexy lingerie is only there to titillate. Once the novelty wears off, it’s useless.”
I recalled when Sam and I made love for the last time. Both of us were happy then. “If you have good sex right before you break up, it’ll be your fondest memory,” I said.
“It’s so true! It’s a lot better than breaking up and not being able to remember the last time you did it.”
“I can remember quite a few of the times when Sam and I made love,” I recalled.
“Really? How many times?” Yau Ying asked me, grinning.
“A lot!” I said, blushing.
“I have a few of those memories, too. But when I think about it now, I feel so hopeless. Those times when Daihoi and I were the happiest seem like such a long time ago.”
“I once asked Sam if he ever got tired of always making love to the same woman.”
“What did he say?’
“He said no.”
“I used to think that women didn’t have their own sexual needs—that was in my twenties—and that making love was something you did to satisfy a man. But ever since I turned thirty, I’ve realized that I have needs, too.”
“I wonder if when a man reminisces about a woman, he thinks about the first time they ever made love.”
“I don’t know.”
“Men are always so eager to move from one experience to the next. I wonder if they even think about which time was the best,” I said.
“I’ll have to find a man so I can ask him,” Yau Ying said, covering her mouth as she laughed.
When I got home that night, I went over to the bed and pressed my body into the sheets. The last time Sam and I made love was a memory I truly cherished. It was too bad that the new place was so small. It meant I couldn’t take the bed with me.
The night before I was supposed to move, I packed up all my belongings. I couldn’t take most of the furniture. Since I couldn’t take the bed, I took the sheets Chui Yuk had given me and the comforter Sam had bought me. I removed the framed puzzle of the Cherbourg restaurant from the wall and wrapped it in newspaper.
Someone knocked at the door. It was Kwok Seon.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked, looking around. “I really like the way this place is decorated. I don’t think I’ll change a thing. Do you have a new phone number yet?”
“I just signed up, so I still don’t have one yet.”
“I’ve heard that these days you can keep your old phone number after you move.”
&
nbsp; “I need a fresh start,” I said. “Any news on the congee shop owner?”
“We’re going out for vegetarian food on Lantau Island tomorrow night. Only old people would call that a date. But we hope to take ballroom dancing lessons together in the future.”
“Is he going to move in with you?”
“Why? This is my own little corner of the universe.”
“Have the two of you done the deed yet?”
“People become more reserved as they grow older. Plus I don’t dare. The last man who saw me naked took off running,” Kwok Seon told me.
“Took off running?”
“Maybe it’s because I take care of my appearance that he misjudged me and assumed that I’ve maintained my figure equally well,” Kwok Seon said with a chuckle.
“Did he really take off running?” In my mind, the scene was just too comical.
“No. He just made his pager beep. Then he said someone was looking for him and left in a hurry.”
“That’s so awful!”
“He probably imagined that I had these firm, perky breasts. When he saw what they were really like, he was terrified.”
“They’re not as bad as you say they are,” I said.
“It’s kind of funny looking back on it.”
“If this congee shop owner runs away, he’s dead meat!” I told her.
“That’s right! I’ll butcher him and use him to make congee.” Kwok Seon paused. “Did you and Mr. Tong have a fight?”
“It’s not as simple as that.” At the mention of his name, I was overwhelmed with sadness.
“He seems like such a nice man, and you love each other so much. I expected you two to get married.”
You can’t really trust the observations of a woman who makes men take off running. In any case, Kwok Seon had guessed wrong. Seeing that I didn’t want to talk about it, she didn’t press me on the subject.
“You’re even leaving me the sofa, the bed, and the fridge. I don’t have to buy a thing. This refrigerator looks like it’s brand new!” Kwok Seon swung open the door to the fridge.
“What? You still haven’t eaten your birthday cake?” Kwok Seon discovered the rose-shaped birthday cake that Sam had ordered for me. It was rock hard.
On Sunday morning, Yau Ying, Daihoi, Chui Yuk, and Yu Mogwo came to help me move.
I had carefully inspected every last nook to make sure that I didn’t leave anything behind. As I looked at the bed, I felt sad that I’d never be able to crawl into it again. Why was I suddenly unwilling to part with the apartment that Sam had given me? Was it because I was naive and full of pride? This bed had once been a token of his love. Soon, all I would have left of him was the scorpion hanging around my neck. I slumped onto the bed and cried.
“I knew you’d do this,” Chui Yuk said, sitting down beside me.
I brushed away my tears.
Yau Ying, who was standing at the doorway, said, “You already sold that bed to someone else. It’s time to go.”
She was always the rational one.
“I knew all along that you wouldn’t be able to go through with this. You shouldn’t have broken up with him.”
I got off the bed and stood up. “Let’s go!” Then I stopped. “Hold on.” I went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. I took out the birthday cake that Sam had given me.
“Did you buy a cake? I’m ravenous,” Chui Yuk said.
“It’s gone bad,” I said.
The bed in my new apartment was built into a recess in the wall. The craftsmanship was shoddy, and there was a crack between the wall and the bed. I made the bed with the sheets from Chui Yuk and the comforter from Sam, but the bed was too small, and the linens were too big.
“What about your phone?” Yau Ying asked me.
“Someone’s coming over tomorrow to install it.”
“I don’t have my cell phone on me,” Yau Ying said.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
“Daihoi, can you lend your cell phone to Chow Jeoi?”
“I’ll get by without a phone for a day,” I said. I really didn’t want to take Daihoi’s cell phone. Plus he didn’t look enthusiastic.
“What’s the big deal?” Yau Ying said picking up Daihoi’s cell phone from the desk. “You just moved in. You don’t know the area or the neighbors. What are you going to do if you need something?” So I took the phone.
My friends eventually had to leave, and there I was, all alone. The silence was truly terrifying. At noon, Daihoi’s cell phone rang.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Hello. May I speak to Daihoi?” a woman with a pleasant-sounding voice asked me.
“He’s not here,” I said.
“Isn’t this his cell phone?”
“It is, but he’s not here.”
“Oh.” The woman sounded disappointed.
“Who’s calling?” I asked.
“I’m a friend of his,” the woman answered briskly.
“Would you like me to tell him that you called?” I asked.
“No thanks.” The woman hung up.
This woman’s voice sounded so sweet. It sounded familiar. Who could she be? What was her relationship to Daihoi? Did Yau Ying know about her? Was she Daihoi’s secret mistress?
I took out the framed puzzle and placed it in front of the window in the bedroom. The restaurant and skies over Cherbourg were a vast improvement over the escalator.
Daihoi’s phone rang again early the next morning.
“Hello?” I answered it.
The caller hung up. Was it that woman again?
Around noon, I went to give Daihoi his phone back. Yau Ying had stepped out for lunch.
“Did you sleep OK in your new place?” he asked.
“It wasn’t so bad.”
“Did anyone call for me?”
“There was a woman,” I said.
“Oh.” Daihoi looked a little embarrassed. “Did she say who she was?”
I shook my head.
“It might’ve been a client. There’s one annoying client who’s been calling me almost every day.” I got the feeling that he wasn’t entirely telling the truth. Just then, Yau Ying walked in.
“Chow Jeoi, what are you doing here? There’s no hurry to give the phone back.”
“My phone was installed this morning. Here’s my new number.” I handed her a slip of paper with the number on it.
Yau Ying winked at me, signaling for me to look at the woman who’d just walked in. She was young, probably around twenty-four years old, and she wore a white silk blouse with a midlength skirt. She was very busty, and I realized it had to be Olivia Wu, the 36C that Yau Ying had been talking about. She was busy talking to a secretary.
“I’ll walk you out.” Yau Ying clearly didn’t want to talk to me about Olivia in front of Daihoi.
When we got outside, she grabbed my hand and said, “Totally over the top, isn’t it?”
“Even bigger than Chui Yuk.”
“She especially likes getting up close to Daihoi. It’s so disgusting!” I’d heard Olivia speak, and she didn’t sound like the woman who’d called Daihoi last night.
“Where are you off to?” Yau Ying asked.
I opened my purse and showed Yau Ying the check I’d written.
“I’m giving this to Sam,” I said.
“God, $2.8 million! What a shame!” Yau Ying was even less willing to part with the money than I was.
“Sometimes money is just a number,” I said.
Because really, if you couldn’t be with the person you loved, what good was money?
“You’re planning to hand it to him in person?” Yau Ying asked.
“I’m going to put it in the mail.” I didn’t have the courage to meet Sam face-to-face.
“You’re going to mail a check for $2.8 million? Isn’t that awfully risky?”
“It’s not like it’s cash.”
“Wouldn’t it be safer to have someone deliver it? Do you want our company’s courier to
do it? Sam’s office is nearby.”
“But . . .” I was hesitant.
Yau Ying went to the reception desk and brought back an envelope.
“Where’s the check?”
I handed it over. Yau Ying folded the check inside a sheet of white paper and slipped it inside the envelope.
“Write the address on the outside.” Yau Ying handed me a pen.
I wrote the address of Sam’s company on the outside.
A messenger stepped into the office just then. Yau Ying handed him the envelope and said, “Please deliver it to this address. And get signature confirmation.”
The messenger readily accepted the envelope and got onto the elevator.
“It’s much safer this way,” Yau Ying said.
I was instantly filled with regret.
“I want my check back!” I burst into tears.
I looked at the bank of elevators. One elevator had stopped at the top floor. Another elevator was going down. I ran down the stairs.
As I exited the building, I discovered that the messenger was already far off in the distance.
“Wait up!” I called.
People on the street turned and stared at me. The only person who didn’t turn around was the messenger. I finally caught up to him and latched onto his backpack, right there in the middle of the street.
“What are you doing?” he asked me.
“Give me back my envelope.”
“Which envelope is yours?”
I grabbed the envelope for Sam out of the backpack.
“This one,” I said.
Yau Ying caught up to us.
I clutched the envelope. I’d just come to my senses. I wasn’t ready to part with it.
“What on earth are you doing? You just ran down from the fifteenth floor all the way to the street. I’m so out of breath, I’m dying! You really can’t bring yourself to give that money to Sam, can you?” Yau Ying was panting as she spoke.
“This isn’t about the money. I can’t accept the fact that I’ve seen Sam for the last time. I have to give this check to him in person.”
I put the envelope in my purse. Holding my purse tightly against my chest, I headed to work. I waited until closing time, when Anna and Jenny had left, before I finally gathered the courage to call Sam. He sounded happy to hear my voice and we made plans to meet at our favorite French restaurant.