There was a long breath.
“I wanted to see you,” he said.
“Last night?” she said.
“Yes. And now. Could I come over there now?”
The sentence was simple, but his words had a kind of gravity that made everything exactly clear. She was silent a second.
He waited with her.
The words hung on her tongue, balanced, a long moment before she could say them. “All right.” But still a hesitation hung in the air.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s just… I got a deal.”
“I know. I’m glad for you! It’s great.”
“But now I have to go to Hong Kong. I’m obligated to see to the shipping. I have to leave.”
His turn for silence. Then he said: “When?”
“Tonight.”
“Oh,” he said. “How many hours?”
A giggle punched through her anxiety and suddenly she was laughing, and then they both were. “That’s so terrible,” she said.
“Not terrible. Wonderful. How many hours?”
She looked at the clock. “A lot, actually. Plenty.”
“Well,” he said.
She was aware of herself. Disparate parts of her felt joined for the first time in so long. “I’ll be here,” she said.
17
In Hunan, Bai had slept some hours in Yujia’s husk-filled bed under a cotton quilt bright with pink peonies. Refreshed, he arose late in the evening, sat down at the table, and ate his first wife’s vibrant Hunanese cooking. Then he climbed in his vehicle, brought it sputtering and roaring back to life, and descended the jade-lipped hills to the outskirts of the provincial capital. Zhou had come down from Jingdezhen to meet him.
They’d met on the north side, on Yanjiang Dadao, at the appointed place just above the lapping, iron-gray flanks of the Xiang River. Zhou was there at the Two Friends Café, drinking beer, watching the boats on the river with their lights under the star-strewn sky. For men like them it was the most natural thing in the world to embark on an important, serious adventure late at night, fortified by alcohol. They were always most precise now, lightest, most alert.
And the night driving had been good. There were reasonable roads from here to Hengyang, then Chenxian, Shaoguan, Yingde, and finally Guangzhou. The two men had sailed, with good conversation and laughter. But mainly Zhou drove, and Bai slept, and thought. Everything depended on the next day, when he would run the last lap alone.
Now, in the morning, the city of Guangzhou spread out many miles from its center. Its chalk-colored towers made deep canyons of its central streets and thoroughfares and shimmered in the southern light. The traffic condensed, slowing with every mile. By the time they reached the center of the city, they were rolling at a stop-and-start. Buses, trucks, cars, and taxis jammed the freeway. They got off at Jiefang Lu. Traffic was stopped here too. By sheer power of tonnage, Bai was able to push his way to the side of the road and let Zhou off. The bus hub was just on the other side of this block, and they both knew Zhou could go anywhere from here-back to Jingdezhen, or where he liked.
“Thank you,” Bai said, and pushed a small folded wad of yuan into Zhou’s hand. Zhou protested, but of course took the money.
“Good luck.” He climbed out and hopped to the ground, looking up at Bai’s thin face, his high hair, and his big, guileless mouth. “Level road.”
“To you too,” Bai answered from the driver’s seat. “Put your heart at rest. I’ll get through.”
To that Zhou raised a hand and turned and was gone, walking away even as he heard the big chuff of the engine shifting gears and then pulling out and roaring away up Liu Hua Lu.
Zhou walked down the block to a concrete ticket office fronted by potted palms. He used a small part of the money Bai had given him to buy a ticket back to Jingdezhen.
He sat in the waiting area a long time and then much later went out and climbed the three steps up to his waiting bus. He chose a middle row, a window. So much went on in and out of Guangzhou, so much that was illegal, that all the buses had security. Before they left, a uniformed employee got on and stalked up the aisle, videotaping every passenger.
Zhou knew what to do. He knew just how to pull up his collar, lower his eyes to a book, or turn away, interested in something he glimpsed out the window at just that exact right moment. There had never been a discernible likeness of Zhou on any of these tapes. He was very proud of that. He knew the system well.
She had barely had time to wash and get her clothes on when he came and knocked. She felt a jolt of gladness as she opened the door to him, and right after that came the natural flood of fear. Suddenly seeing him inches from her, seeing his white shirt open at the neck and knowing he’d come here for her to unbutton it and take it off, she felt unable to move at all.
“Can I come in?”
“Please. Sorry.” She stepped back.
“You okay?” he said. His hand came out to her arm.
She smiled. She felt altogether too shy to speak. “Yes. It’s just-you know.”
“I know.”
“Don’t you have to go to work?”
“I’m sick today,” he said. But he was smiling.
“I see.” She felt his hands exploring the catch at the top of her braid, then sliding down to the end of the rope. He looped it around in front of her. She watched. He pulled off the elastic and started separating the strands.
Then her cell phone went off. She worked it out of her pocket. “Wei.”
“Wei. Fan Xiaojie,” Miss Fan. It was Gao Yideng.
“Mr. Gao.” She looked down at Michael’s hands. She could barely breathe. “All is well?” she said into the phone.
“Oh, beyond well, excellent, I should say. You did a fine job! But I must not detain you. I just want to tell you my driver will call for you this evening.”
“Your driver?” She looked at Michael. “Thank you, but no. Please don’t send the driver.”
He was perturbed. “Why?”
“I’ll go myself.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she said, “I’m sure.”
“If you say. But you are my guest! Well, good journey, then, Miss Fan. And thank you.”
“Don’t be polite,” she said. They traded parting wishes and she closed the phone.
His hands were higher. “Everything okay?” he said.
“Yes.” She dropped the phone on the table. She felt like everything about her body was standing straight up.
He came to the top of her head and unhooked her hair. It fell loose all around her, and her scalp tingled with the fine ache of unbinding. “That’s nice,” he said, looking across to her eyes, picking up the strands in front of her and lifting them back behind her shoulders. “Take your shirt off.”
It took Bai a long time to get the truck out of Guangzhou. Freeway traffic rolled at a walk, but that was normal here in the morning. He stopped and started, the brand-new engine hot but humming well, and inched slowly through the ranks of tall buildings, once white, now grimy. It wasn’t until he made his way to the ring expressway, which led him quickly south to the city’s green suburban hills, that he could drive at a good speed. Here the road flew. Through breaks in the slopes he saw behind him, in his mirror, the forest of white rectangular blocks that was Guangzhou.
He passed the exit signs for Guangcong Road, Guangshan Road. Now there were dull apartment blocks on either side of the road, along with truck yards, factories, little smokestacks belching. And then, just when it seemed to Bai that there was nothing here except trade, business, industry, and the beehives of living, a cleft in the hills would open and he’d see a green spreading valley under syrupy light.
Closer to him, right by the road, brick-earthed banana plantations were scored with marching electrical towers, hauling their power loads away across the hills.
He kept his eyes on the road. Something was happening up ahead. He braked. Flashing lights. Police cars. There was a man lying on the shoulder, an overturned cart near him. Bai could see his short-sleeved plaid shirt against the concrete. Blood spread in a puddle under his head. Someone knelt beside him, holding a towel to his head, shielding his face from the traffic.