‘I thought you were opening a restaurant?’ asked Jia Jia.
‘We figured it’s better to do something Li Chang’s good at,’ her aunt explained. ‘The restaurant idea was a little foolish.’
Jia Jia’s aunt had never been able to earn the life she wanted with her various business ventures. Chen Hang used to criticise her approach: he would flip his hand in the air, shake his head and declare that Jia Jia’s aunt had set her sights too high, that she was too eager, that she idealised money too much. You won’t earn money by obsessing over it, he would say, while he cracked a nut. But had he not been the same?
‘How about you, my dear, what are your plans?’ Jia Jia’s aunt looked up from her tea set at her niece.
‘I’m looking for somebody to rent or buy my apartment. Auntie, I think I should start painting again,’ Jia Jia said. ‘Sell my paintings.’
‘Oh, get yourself a stable job,’ her grandmother said, walking slowly behind the table to sit beside her daughter and making a shuffling sound with her slippers. She had been wearing those yellow polka-dotted slippers for more than ten years at least, and when the problems began with her knee joints, she had sewn fabric to the soles so that she could move more easily by sliding her feet along the floor. ‘You should’ve listened to me,’ her grandmother added with a sigh.
Jia Jia remembered, of course she did: she remembered her grandmother telling her to study something that would give her more job security. An ‘iron rice bowl’, her grandmother had called it. She breathed in deeply, knowing that there should not be any more debates over this matter, and that the old woman had already been through too much in her life. Anything coming out of Jia Jia’s mouth, should she allow herself to open it now, was going to be too spiteful. So she said nothing. She had to control her temper. She could not allow her aunt and grandmother to detect the faltering feeling inside her.
‘Let me ask if Li Chang has anything for you,’ her aunt suggested.
‘Make sure that it’s proper work and that they won’t cheat her,’ Jia Jia’s grandmother said.
‘Ma,’ her aunt began again. ‘I know you don’t like Li Chang, but he knows a lot of wealthy people who might like to order some art from Jia Jia.’
‘I won’t intervene any more,’ her grandmother said with a forlorn expression. ‘I don’t know how the world today works. But having a practical skill is the safest bet. Look at you and Li Chang, still living in my apartment. He should have his own place by now.’
Then she rose from her seat to start cooking dinner, shaking her head as she slid away.
‘Stay for dinner, Jia Jia,’ her aunt said.
*
Just after nine p.m., Jia Jia roamed into Leo’s bar. She did not speak at first: there was too much on her mind for it all to be organised into words. It had hit her, upon walking out of her grandmother’s door, that she no longer had to abide by rules made by anybody else. She was not a child any more, and her grandmother’s opinions, no matter how strong, were confined behind that door. She could walk anywhere now, answering to nobody. She had the opportunity to pursue her art, without Chen Hang there to tell her how bad it looked to others. It made her want to get a nice glass of champagne.
She called Leo over.
‘A glass of the best champagne you have, please,’ she told him.
‘This one?’ He opened the menu and pointed it out to her. ‘It comes by the bottle usually. But I can give you a glass. Looks like you’re in a celebratory mood today.’
‘Oh, let’s have the whole bottle then!’ She laughed and tapped her finger on the name of the champagne.
If she were to support herself with her art, she wanted to feel free to walk around her home in an oversized T-shirt, face unwashed, hair trimmed short. Though even there, she imagined someone who would provide her with comfort regardless and bring her food from whichever restaurant she desired in that moment, even if it was on the other side of town. Yes! She would make new memories with someone else, memories that would give her a home and fuel her work.
Leo returned with the bottle and opened it discreetly, releasing a soft hiss. He poured a glass out for her – cool, golden.
‘Do you like art?’ Jia Jia asked.
‘I’ve always been more into music.’
‘Will you write a song for me then?’ She laughed.
Usually she was courteous with her laughter, but she wanted to be flirtatious, playful. She could not remember the last time she had expressed herself like this, not with a reaction to something but with an initiation. Leo smiled back to match her. His laugh was almost a chuckle.
‘Have you ever written songs for your girlfriends?’ she asked.
‘Once, for my most recent ex. But she didn’t like it.’
‘Tell me about her.’
‘Well …’ He searched for a succinct way to answer a broad question. ‘She was like a bad hangover.’
‘So she gave you a headache.’
‘Many. Bad ones.’
‘Did you understand her? I mean, did you really understand who she was and why she did what she did?’
‘Just because you understand someone doesn’t make them any easier to deal with.’ He placed the bottle in the ice bucket and draped a napkin over it.
Jia Jia considered that for a moment. ‘I never understood my husband,’ she said.
‘Was he a complicated man?’
‘Oh, not at all. He grew up in a poor but normal family, worked hard, did well in business, married me, and then died. Sounds like a simple life, right? But I didn’t even understand his simplicity.’
‘Is that what you want? Simplicity?’
‘I’m not sure any more.’ She took a sip of the champagne. The bubbles were intense at first, like a loud chord at the beginning of a symphony, but almost immediately afterwards, harmony came to the tip of her tongue.
He gave her a questioning look, requesting an elaboration.
‘It’s like I’ve been walking up the walls of a tower my whole life,’ she explained, putting the glass down. ‘My body parallel to the ground, and then, the world turns and I’m standing straight up, and the tower is lying flat on the ground. Everything is now distorted but my head is up again, I’m walking forward. But the truth is, I don’t even know which way is up. Do you understand what I’m getting at? The champagne is good, very good, I must tell you.’
Before Leo could answer, some other customers walked in, and Jia Jia gestured to him that it was all right to pause their conversation. It was a party of four: two men and two women. Both men wore suits beneath their overcoats, one grey, the other navy; they had taken their ties off after work. The smaller of the women removed her fur coat and revealed a colourful halter top with a low neckline. She was loud. Before she even sat down in her seat, she had announced that she was a lawyer.
‘Those boys didn’t have a chance against me,’ she bragged. ‘I don’t care if you’re fighting in front of the club, but if you’re going to punch my friend in front of me, then you’re being foolish. I made sure that the kid got the sentence he deserved.’
‘He was pretty young though, right?’ the other woman asked.