“No. The opposite.”
She moved towards him, her face seeming to darken as she blocked out the stark white light above the sink. There were no other lights on in the room.
“Kiss me,” she said.
They kissed. There was the taste of blood in her mouth, warm and claustrophobic, and he began to feel giddy. The floor was tilting upwards. Either that, or she herself was tilting.
She broke away. “I think I need a shower. Do you mind?”
“No. Of course not.”
“You go back to bed. I’m fine now.”
In the bedroom he stood at the window, staring down at Puming Road. He watched the gaps between the cars, noticing how they kept widening and narrowing. He imagined the gaps as objects in themselves. Alternate beings. Hidden entities.
Somewhere far below, a siren ghosted through the night.
When Naemi climbed into bed, her hair still wet from the shower, she wanted to make love. She kept murmuring his name. Her lips burned his skin. She seemed feverish, and he wondered, once again, if she was ill.
Later, when he was dozing off, he thought he heard her say something else. “What was that?”
“I love you.”
The words had come from nowhere, and he was too taken aback to respond.
“Did I say the wrong thing?” she murmured.
“No,” he said.
She began to tremble.
He looked at her in the dark, but there was only the back of her head and the polished curve of her right shoulder. She was facing away from him. “Are you crying?”
“Could you hold me?”
He had imagined that he was beginning to get her measure—her insistence on privacy, her self-sufficiency—but this was a side of herself that she had not revealed, or even hinted at—until now. He took her in his arms and held her tight.
“It’s all right,” he murmured. “Everything’s all right.”
Her breathing slowed and deepened, as if she was sinking towards sleep. He had all kinds of questions for her, but they would have to wait.
* * *
—
Two days later, on Saturday morning, Naemi texted him to say that something had come up. She had to fly to London, she said. She would be gone for about a week, but he would be in her heart. He was disappointed, not least because it was almost Golden Week, which was a national holiday, and he had been hoping they might travel somewhere together—Lijiang, perhaps, with its magical Old Town and its complex history. He texted back, suggesting that he might visit her in London, but her response was not encouraging. It was a work trip, she said. She would have no time for him. He pictured her on the plane to London, the reading spotlight shining down on her, and people all around her in the darkness, sleeping.
Later, as Chun Tao drove him to the Athens Palace, the bathhouse in the center of Pudong, he read her text again. You’ll be in my heart. He remembered how she had told him she loved him during the early hours of Thursday morning, and how she had asked him if he would hold her. She had seemed unlike herself, and he was still struggling to interpret her behavior as he walked up the wide steps of the bathhouse and through the lobby, with its faux-Greek statues, its ornate, gold-trimmed armchairs, and its ivory-colored grand piano.
While he was undressing, his phone rang. It was Laser, asking if their practice session was still on. He told Laser that it was. Mad Dog had canceled their session the previous weekend—he’d had flu—but he had called Zhang earlier to say he was feeling better. For the next hour, Zhang moved between the Pool of General Flowers, which was heated to 44 degrees Celsius, and the cold plunge pool. Afterwards, he walked over to the massage tables, where a man with huge, muscular arms scrubbed him all over, removing the dead skin. Later, when he had showered, he went upstairs and lay on a bed in a darkened room. He slept for almost an hour. By the time he left the building, he felt much more relaxed, his mind cleansed of all anxiety and unease.
As they drove to the recording studio, Chun Tao asked Zhang for some advice. It was his girlfriend, he said. She wanted to get married and have a child, but he wasn’t sure if he was ready.
“Do you love her?” Zhang asked.
Chun Tao nodded. “Yes.”
“Then you have two choices. Either you give her what she wants, or you break up with her.”
“I was hoping there might be another option.”
“You can delay things, but only if you promise to give her what she wants in the end. If you stay with her, it’ll probably happen anyway. She’ll wear you down.” Zhang paused. “It may be what you want too. You just don’t know it yet.”
Chun Tao nodded slowly.
Zhang looked out of the window. Sichuan Middle Road. Though there was still some gray light in the sky, it seemed dark at street level. A girl drew alongside on a moped. She wore a pink crash helmet, and a small dog lay between her feet on a piece of carpet.
“The trouble is, it’s hard to keep saying no,” Zhang went on. “ ‘No’ weighs a lot, like lead. It’s hard to keep heaving it into your mouth. But ‘yes’? It’s light as air. What’s more, there’s the reward of how her face will change when you come out with it—how you’ll suddenly be everything she hoped you’d be…”
They had stopped at a red light, and Chun Tao looked at Zhang in the rearview mirror. “That’s amazing. Thank you.”
In the silence that followed, Zhang felt a distaste for himself. Who was he to be offering advice? What did he know, really?
A few moments later, they pulled up outside the alley where the recording studio was. Mad Dog was already there, leaning against the wall by the entrance in an old gray suit and a green shirt. He was smoking. Zhang opened the car door, and the smell of the Shanghai afternoon flowed in. Warm tarmac, fermented fruit. And drains, always drains. He paused, with one foot on the pavement, the other still in the car.
“You know what, Chun Tao? Forget everything I said. It’s always a mistake to generalize.”
Chu Tao turned and looked at him.
“Except for the bit about yes and no. There might be some truth in that.” Zhang took out his wallet, peeled off several 100 RMB notes and held them in the gap between the two front seats. “You can have the rest of the day off. Take your girlfriend to dinner. Go dancing.”
“You’re sure you don’t need me later?”
“I’m sure.”
Chun Tao got out of the car and opened the boot and handed Zhang his guitar. As Zhang walked over to where Mad Dog was standing, he heard the Jaguar pull away.
Mad Dog took his cigarette from between his lips and looked at it. “How’s the girlfriend?”