Pocketing his phone, he walked over to the bar, sat down on a stool, and asked the girl in the plum-colored dress for another whiskey. He asked if she would like a drink as well.
She looked at him. “It’s not that kind of bar.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s just a drink.” He glanced around at the empty chairs and tables. “You’ve nothing else to do.”
“All right. Thank you.”
She poured his whiskey and put it in front of him, then she reached for a bottle of Malibu. He smiled to himself, since he felt this was a choice he could have predicted.
“What’s your story?” he asked.
“My story?” Her full lips twisted, and she looked towards the window. “Nothing’s happened yet.”
She was twenty, she told him, and she came from a village in Anhui Province. Her father was a minor government official. He drank too much baijiu. If they were lucky, it sent him to sleep. If not, he shouted and broke things. Her mother sat in front of the TV. She didn’t care what she watched. She only stopped if there was a meal to cook or washing to be done.
“It doesn’t sound like much of a life,” Zhang said.
“No,” she said. “But maybe I learned a lesson.”
“Don’t live in the countryside?”
She shook her head. “Don’t live with somebody who drinks.”
“That’s a good lesson to learn.” He paused. “Strange you ended up working in a bar.”
“I know. How stupid is that.”
The door opened, and two foreigners in suits walked in, shaking the rain from their umbrellas. Zhang put a few notes on the bar.
“Thank you,” the girl said. “Have a nice evening.”
* * *
—
The next morning, Zhang’s alarm woke him at six, and he sat on the edge of his bed, studying his phone. There were e-mails from Hong Kong, London, and New York. Nothing from Naemi, though. He walked to the window and opened the floor-to-ceiling curtains. The city was plunged deep in a milky fog. The other forty-story towers in the compound were visible, but the high-rise buildings to the north and west looked insubstantial, featureless. She was out there somewhere. He had no idea where. Just as screen savers are triggered by periods of inactivity, so images of her would float into his mind whenever he relaxed. Naemi with her elbows on a gold-topped bar, Naemi at a distance, beneath dark trees. Naemi kneeling by the window in the Chairman Suite, staring at the view. He was still wondering about her detachment, her apparent self-sufficiency. She had told him Finnish people were known to be reserved, but this was reserve taken to extremes—and anyway, she had gone on to say that she didn’t believe in generalizations. Was she trying to cultivate an air of mystery? Was it all a game? Whatever lay behind the facade she had built up, he had no regrets about asking Johnny to look for her. He wanted the information, even if he didn’t use it.
In the kitchen area, he switched on the TV. As he waited for his yellow tea to brew, his phone rang. It was Wang Jun Wei.
“So did you sleep with her?” Jun Wei said.
“Sleep with who?”
“The Park Hyatt girl.”
Zhang reached for the remote and turned the volume down. “You’re up early.”
“I haven’t been to bed yet. Are you hungry?”
“I could eat.”
Jun Wei gave him an address on the north side of the Yangpu Bridge. Zhang knew those streets. They were dark and pungent, the creeks jammed with rubbish, the wooden houses patched with corrugated iron and sheets of colored plastic. Pet shops selling fish and snakes. Foot massage. Karaoke. Though Jun Wei drove a Maserati and owned several blue-chip properties, it seemed fitting that he would be drawn to such areas. He had made a fortune from the flattening of old Shanghai. History? he’d once said to Zhang. I piss on it. Nostalgia too.
Zhang finished his tea. It would be hot again, the weather girl was saying. There was an orange alert for rainstorms in southern China later in the day. He switched off the TV, picked up his keys, his wallet, and his phone, and left the apartment. He took a lift to the underground car park, where Chun Tao was leaning against the front wing of the Jaguar, smoking. When he saw Zhang approaching, he dropped his cigarette and trod on it.
“Where to?” he said.
Zhang gave him an address.
They arrived half an hour later, pulling in behind the black Mercedes Vito Tourer that Jun Wei often used on his nights out. Zhang told Chun Tao to wait, then entered the restaurant.
Usually, when Jun Wei had been partying, he had a woman with him. Sometimes two. Not today. Sitting alone, facing the door, he was hunched over a bowl of noodles. Lined up on the table next to his left hand were a packet of Chunghwa cigarettes, a lighter, his gold iPhone, and an ice-blue charger.
Zhang sat down. “There are some nice restaurants round here. This isn’t one of them.” He looked around. “I’m probably going to get diarrhea.”
“Only a bit.” Jun Wei’s head tipped back, and his mouth opened wide. His laughter was almost always silent, which Zhang found unnerving, even after a quarter of a century.
He scanned the menu, then ordered braised fish belly and a pot of green tea.
“You should have gone for the noodles,” Jun Wei said. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“Yes, I do.”
“What about a beer? Or a plum brandy?”
“No.” Zhang closed the menu.
Jun Wei sat back. The whites of his eyes were pink, and his forehead shone. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I didn’t need to.”
“Who is she?”
“She’s called Naemi. She’s Finnish.”
“Finnish? What’s that?”
Zhang explained.
Jun Wei’s phone rang. He glanced at the screen, but didn’t take the call. “Sounds exotic,” he said. “But foreigners—I don’t know. More trouble than they’re worth.” He reached for his beer. “What’s wrong with Chinese girls?”
“You sound like my father.” Zhang drained his cup of green tea and poured himself another.
His food arrived.
“You wanted my help,” he said as he picked up his chopsticks.
Jun Wei used a paper napkin to wipe his forehead and the back of his neck, then he crumpled it into a ball and dropped it in his empty noodle bowl. He shook a Chunghwa out of its red packet and reached for his lighter. Jun Wei had a reputation as something of a gangster—things had been done by him, or in his name, which were questionable, to say the least—but he had been careful never to compromise his friend. Whether Jun Wei was driven by consideration or by a lack of faith, Zhang couldn’t have said. He was grateful nonetheless.