“Right.” She leaned back, her head against the headrest. Light passed over her face. Blue, then yellow. Blue again. It was smooth, and it kept happening. Like watching someone stroke a cat. “What about you?” she said after a while. “Do you bite?”
* * *
—
Not long after they ordered their drinks, Zhang looked up and saw his sister, Qi Jing, at the bar. She was sitting with a man who seemed familiar.
Naemi leaned close. “Do you know them?”
“That’s my sister,” Zhang said.
He stood up and walked over. Qi Jing was dressed in a miniskirt and a black gauzy blouse that showed the black bra she was wearing underneath, and her hair was dyed dark brown, with waves in it where it fell below her shoulders. Born just before the one-child policy came in, Qi Jing was eight years younger than Zhang, and she had always been something of a rebel.
She lifted her eyes to his as he approached. “Long time, no see.”
The man on the stool glanced round. He had prominent cheekbones and close-cropped hair, and a chain of gold links hung around his neck, inside his shirt. Zhang couldn’t place him.
“What do you want?” the man said.
Qi Jing told him that Zhang was her brother.
The man stared at Zhang, then nodded and hunched over his cocktail again. He didn’t bother to introduce himself. He didn’t even shake Zhang’s hand.
Zhang asked Qi Jing how she was. She said she was fine.
“You’re sure?” he said.
There was a sudden stubbornness in her face, around the mouth and jaw, and he knew her well enough to realize she wouldn’t admit to anything—at least, not while that man was sitting next to her.
But he persisted. “Are you sure?”
“You heard her,” the man said.
Zhang let his eyes drift out across the room. Deep pink lighting, like an old-fashioned whorehouse. Holograms of green rats on the walls. The Glamour Bar.
He spoke to Qi Jing again. “If you need me, I’m over there.” He gestured towards his table.
“Who’s the blonde?” Qi Jing asked.
“A friend.”
She gave him a knowing look.
“She’s beautiful, your sister,” Naemi said when he sat down again.
“She’s trouble too,” he said. “Sometimes.”
“Do you feel like a game of pool? I know a place that isn’t far from here.”
He smiled. “I need to go to bed. Why don’t you come back to my place?”
“Where’s that?”
He pointed through the window at the Oriental Pearl Tower, the huge sphere halfway up the building glowing purple. “Over there. Pudong.”
While Naemi was reaching for her jacket, he glanced over his shoulder. Qi Jing and the man with the gold chain had left. He should stop worrying, he told himself. After all, she was thirty-four years old. Probably she could take care of herself.
* * *
—
“Come in,” Zhang said.
He held the door open for Naemi, and she moved past him, into the apartment.
“Something to drink?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine.”
He leaned his Gibson against the wall, then went over to the sound system and put an LP on. The Mexican release of Gloria Estefan’s Cuts Both Ways.
“I thought you would live in an old place,” she said as she stood at the living-room window, looking out over the city. “Somewhere traditional.”
He was pouring himself a nightcap. “Are you disappointed?”
“Not disappointed. Just surprised.” She turned back into the room. “Would you dance with me?”
He put down his drink and took her in his arms and held her close. She had removed her denim jacket. Her arms were bare. Under his right hand, he could feel the slender muscles that flanked her spine.
“I never dance,” he murmured. “I must be drunk.”
“You’re not bad,” she told him later. “You don’t try too hard.”
By then, they were scarcely moving at all, his right hand lower down, near her coccyx, his cheek against her hair. He had asked her what fragrance she was wearing. The Sacred Tears of Thebes, she said. She had bought it in Paris. She refused to tell him how much it had cost. His mouth found hers. The kiss lasted as long as one entire song. “Si Voy a Perderte.” He led her into the bedroom, where one dim lamp was burning. The record finished, and the low roar of the air conditioning took over.
Once inside her, he seemed to leave the room. He found he was skimming, birdlike, over level countryside. Beneath him were acres of wild grass that was scoured and flattened by the wind, and punctuated, here and there, by smooth gray rocks. Sometimes there was a small wooden house on its own, sometimes a few huddled dwellings, but people had made little or no impression on the landscape. It was unspoiled. In its natural state. He had no idea where he was—it wasn’t somewhere he had ever been—but that didn’t bother him. All that mattered was the flying. How happy it made him, how effortless it was.
I didn’t know I could do this, he thought.
He was filled with an elation that seemed to have something to do with innocence. He felt like a child, but ageless too.
On he flew.
* * *
—
His whole body jerked, like a penknife snapping open. It was dark in the bedroom, and Naemi was leaning over him.
“You fell asleep,” she said.
“Not while we were—”
Her white teeth showed. “No, afterwards.”
She was lying on her stomach, her hair disheveled, half covering her eyes.
“Zhang?”
“I’m here.” He liked the way she called him by his family name. It was so formal that it created, paradoxically, a whole new level of intimacy.
“I think I’m being followed,” she said.
Fully awake now, he stared at her, but didn’t speak.
She told him that a man in a green suit and a porkpie hat had come to the gallery where she worked. Even from where she was sitting, at her desk on the first floor of the office, she could tell that his interest was feigned. He might be looking at the paintings, but his mind was elsewhere. As she stared down at him, he seemed to sense her presence, and glanced sideways and upwards. Their eyes met. Though he only held her gaze for a split second, there was something in his face that told her he had seen what he needed to see, that he had come not for the art but for her. She watched as one of her colleagues—Kevin—approached the man. They had a brief exchange. Kevin walked away, returning moments later with a program of upcoming events and shows. The next time she looked the man was gone.