Leo dropped the dirty glasses he was holding into the sink, making a loud clank and interrupting Jia Jia. ‘Don’t you think that sometimes we just need to love in the simplest way possible?’ he said.
Jia Jia focused her attention fully on him for the first time that night. He saw a sudden influx of emotion in her gaze. Her eyes were black, so black, and Leo thought that he had never seen such wonderful, sorrowful eyes.
‘You know what I decided today?’ Jia Jia said, her tone determined. ‘I’m going to Tibet.’
‘You’ve come to say goodbye,’ said Leo. He stopped himself from asking her why she was going to Tibet – she had her own reasons, reasons that had nothing to do with him.
She looked away towards the corner of the room.
‘And I am to wait for you?’ Leo asked.
‘I don’t think you should have your life all tangled with mine any longer. I don’t want you to.’ She finished the rest of her wine in one gulp and started filling both of their glasses. While she did that, he just looked at her hands. ‘Drink with me tonight.’ She clinked her glass against his, on the counter. ‘Let’s remember this night as a happy one.’
It was a Sunday and the bar was quiet. Jia Jia’s agent paid his bill and left, telling Jia Jia that he would send her a lease agreement later on in the week. Leo closed for the evening. He removed his bow tie and stuffed it into his bag without folding it like he usually did.
They drank more and spoke less throughout the night. During the few conversations they did have, Jia Jia laughed in the most honest way Leo had ever seen her laugh. She went behind the bar and started rummaging through his whiskeys; she delved into his bag, pulled out his bow tie, tied it around her own neck and took a picture with his phone. She felt more familiar to him than ever. He became regretful for the life he had never had with her, for the nights they had never spent together behind the lit-up window of their own apartment.
They played disco music from their phones and danced. At some point, Jia Jia made fun of Leo for only owning jazz records. ‘How can you dance to these songs?’ she said while flipping through his collection.
When the sun peeped through the window, he walked her out the door and told her he loved her.
‘How much do you love me?’ she answered.
‘I couldn’t say.’
‘Very well.’
She re-tied her hair and headed towards the subway station.
Back in his bar, Leo washed and wiped all the glasses except the one that Jia Jia had used. He sat at the counter for a long while, in the seat at the end, holding her glass. When he finally felt drowsiness creeping over him, he washed the glass thoroughly and hung it above the bar counter with all the others. He arranged Jia Jia’s lantern on a small table at the corner of the bar and headed home for a deep, long sleep.
*
When Jia Jia got back to her grandmother’s apartment, the aquarium was on fire. There was a single flame the height of a child, thrusting up on one side of the tank from the base towards the ceiling. The corals swayed like metronomes and the fish continued their sluggish, aimless wander, oblivious.
Jia Jia rushed through to the kitchen in search of a container of some sort. Her grandmother was washing rice, and like the fish, she did not have a clue about what was going on. Jia Jia dragged out a bucket from under the sink, knocking over a bottle of cleaning fluid, filled the bucket with water and hauled it back to the living room. She launched it at the tank, spilling half of it on herself. The water seemed to calm the flame somewhat and she began the process again. By this time, her grandmother had emerged from the kitchen and was yelling things.
‘Quick, quick, quick,’ she kept repeating as she shuffled her feet as fast as she could.
Jia Jia’s aunt appeared from her room, saw the flaming tank, and immediately turned to the bathroom to fetch another bucket, all the while shouting at Jia Jia’s grandmother to stand out of her way. Jia Jia was not sure how many buckets of water she hurled at the fish tank. She was running out of breath, and her arms refused to lift themselves any more. With one last effort, it was her aunt who managed to put the flame out.
Jia Jia unplugged the aquarium and the blue fluorescent light went off, leaving the fish and coral dull and dusky. The three women stood around the tank, none of them saying anything.
10
Jia Jia’s aunt and grandmother began taking turns to sleep at night. They wanted to make sure, they said, that someone would be awake in case the fish tank sparked another fire. An electrician had come during the day and identified the cause of the fire to be an old socket. Ever since then, although the wiring had been replaced, Jia Jia’s aunt persisted in pacing back and forth in the living room for hours until her old mother took over the watch at around two in the morning.
Jia Jia needed to finish her work at Ms Wan’s home. The restlessness of her aunt and grandmother was oppressive and she needed the balance of the payment for her travels. When Jia Jia phoned to make the arrangements, Ms Wan said that she was in America with her children, and she found it a pity that she could not be there to witness the completion of the painting. The maid will be at home, she told Jia Jia.
In fact, when Jia Jia arrived, it was Ms Wan’s husband who was perched on the sofa, blowing smoke rings into the air. She was surprised to find him alone with a bronze ashtray overflowing with Yun Yan cigarette butts, walnut shells and used napkins. From what Jia Jia knew of this man, he was never settled at home during the afternoon. His ponytail was tied lower, but it still revealed the few threads of grey behind his ears. His beard seemed to have grown even longer.
‘Sorry for the mess, I didn’t know you were coming,’ he said. With an ashamed smile, he emptied the ashtray, washed a plate of grapes, and left it on top of the shoe cabinet in the entrance hall for Jia Jia.
‘I didn’t mean to take such a long break, sir,’ Jia Jia said. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’ve ever asked your name.’
‘My name is Du Fan, you can call me Old Du. And there’s no rush for this painting thing. No rush.’ Turning back towards the sofa, Mr Du waved his hand at the painting as if he were brushing someone away.
‘Mr Du, if I’m disturbing you today, I can come back when you’re not home,’ Jia Jia said. ‘Say, tomorrow.’
‘Not at all,’ he muttered under his breath. He searched, with a hint of nervousness, for something to do with his hands. ‘I’m going to fetch myself a drink.’
An opened bottle of cognac was already sitting on the dining table and the stench of alcohol filled the suffocating, indoor air. Mr Du poured out a glass.
‘Ms Wan and the kids are on holiday in America?’ Jia Jia asked as she mixed a palette of blue paint.
‘She’s in Boston buying duvet covers and pillowcases,’ Mr Du said. ‘The kids are going to boarding school there.’
‘But the children are so young!’ Jia Jia said. ‘Do you have a house in Boston?’
‘They’ll have a guardian there; a good friend of mine. We’ve known each other since middle school. Wan Lian is coming back in a few days, after they start school. She had originally planned to come back yesterday, you know?’
He held his fist to his ear, pretending he was talking on a phone, and continued, ‘But she called me saying, “Oh, the mattress is too soft, their spines will become crooked, I need to buy them a new mattress. I need to buy them shoe cabinets for the new trainers we bought in New York, otherwise the tiny rooms will become smelly. I need to buy a tennis racket for Huihui, I need to buy ballet shoes for Yingying, I need to buy this, I need to buy that.” He drank the glass of brandy in one gulp.