"Yes," Poet Zhao answered, adding emphatically, "and at a salary of one hundred yuan a day."
Wandering Zhou nodded, then started issuing orders like a boss. The first thing he wanted Poet Zhao to do was to help him take the two boxes of artificial hymens to the warehouse. Poet Zhao looked at him blankly, not knowing where the warehouse was. Wandering Zhou saw Poet Zhao standing there without moving and barked, "Go, quick."
"Boss Zhou," Poet Zhao said, "where is your warehouse?"
"Where is your house?" Wandering Zhou asked in return, then added, "Your house is my warehouse."
Poet Zhao finally understood and thought that if this fellow wanted to use his house as a warehouse, that was fine, but he should pay for it. Poet Zhao asked with a grin, "Boss Zhou, how much do you plan to pay to rent the warehouse?"
Wandering Zhou looked down at the straw mat on the ground and said, "Twenty yuan a day."
Poet Zhao happily agreed. When he picked up those two cardboard boxes and prepared to go, Wandering Zhou called out to him again, and from one of the boxes he took out two stacks of flyers for artificial hymens. One pile of ads was for domestic Lady Meng Jiang hymens, which sold for one hundred yuan apiece, and the other was for imported Joan of Arc ones, at three hundred yuan apiece. Wandering Zhou took the two thick stacks of ads and, looking around, said, "Originally I was supposed to have twenty salespeople here, but with the car accident they are now all laid up at the hospital. Now I just have you, and that is not going to be enough."
At this point Song Gang opened his door and walked out. Poet Zhao called out, "Song Gang, I'll hire you to be a salesman and will pay you eighty yuan a day. Are you interested?"
Song Gang had not yet had a chance to react when Wandering Zhou patted his suit and said to Poet Zhao, "So I hire you to work for me for one hundred yuan a day, and then you turn around and hire someone else to work for you for eighty yuan, allowing you to come out earning twenty yuan?"
"No." Poet Zhao shook his head. "You will be the one paying the salary, and you will give him eighty yuan and then give me twenty yuan more as my finders fee."
Wandering Zhou continued patting his suit. "Then it would be me hiring him, not you."
Wandering Zhou saw that Song Gang was wearing a face mask despite the summer heat and asked curiously, "Is there something wrong with your mouth?"
"There's nothing wrong with my mouth," Song Gang replied, smiling behind his mask. "Its my lungs."
Wandering Zhou nodded. "I'll hire you, for one hundred yuan a day."
Song Gang didn't know what kind of work he was being hired for. He uncertainly mentioned his lung condition, but Wandering Zhou told him, "You won't need your lungs for this job. All you need is your mouth."
Wandering Zhou divided the flyers into two further piles and handed them to Poet Zhao and Song Gang, explaining that their assignment for the day was to distribute the flyers to every woman they saw. "Don't leave out anyone, not even the old ladies."
Wandering Zhou asked Poet Zhao and Song Gang to walk up and down the street distributing the flyers under the blazing sun. Meanwhile, he himself retreated to Missy Sus air-conditioned snack shop, from which he didn't emerge all day. He started helping Missy Su create the straw-embedded buns. That morning he ventured into the kitchen and, with the delighted Missy Su, started instructing the chef on how to prepare them. Mama Su sat at the cashier's counter, watching her daughter bustling through the shop with a rare look of delight on her face. She couldn't help feeling uneasy, unable to shake the feeling that this dapper young man was not to be trusted. When she herself was young, she had also been deceived by a handsome young man, who had left her pregnant with Missy Su. Though her handsome young man had sworn his eternal love and devotion, he soon disappeared, and she had never heard from him again.
Wandering Zhou spent the entire day sampling those straw-embedded buns, alternating between opining that they didn't contain enough juice, or that they were too bland. He began his taste-testing in the morning and continued right through to the afternoon, devouring seventy-two straw-embedded buns in all. He had so many of them that, by the end, he couldn't speak without burping. He had so many that Missy Su looked at him with concern, asking if they shouldn't rest for a bit and continue experimenting tomorrow. He rubbed his belly and readily agreed. Then, sipping the green tea that Missy Su brewed for him, he sat down in the seat nearest the air conditioner and launched into tall tales of his exploits.
Song Gang and Poet Zhao spent the entire day walking up and down the street, ending up completely covered in sweat. Even Song Gang's face mask became soaked. By this time virtually all of the virgin beauty contestants had arrived, and the streets of Liu were teeming with lovely and not-so-lovely women from all over the country. Accents ranging from the far north to the deep south mingled throughout town. Even though they were hot and tired, Song Gang and Poet Zhao were both upbeat — Song Gang was happy because he was earning one hundred yuan for such an easy day's work, while Poet Zhao was excited because never before had he seen so many comely young women gathered in the same place. Zhao whispered to Song Gang that he felt as though he had entered a women's bathhouse and only regretted that they still had on their blouses and skirts. The two distributed flyers for Wandering Zhou's artificial hymens to these virgin beauties, who would giggle as they stuffed them into their handbags, sniffing, "But of course we have no need for these."
When the two returned home at noon, Poet Zhao peeked into the snack shop across the street. Seeing Wandering Zhou sucking down his straw-embedded buns, Zhao handed Song Gang his remaining flyers, saying that he had other things to attend to that afternoon and asking Song Gang to distribute the remaining ads. Lin Hong was still working at the knitting factory, so Song Gang had lunch at home alone. After lunch he put on a new face mask, donned a straw hat, draped a towel around his neck, and filled a thermos with cold water before setting off again with his hymen ads. Song Gang could see that Wandering Zhou was still sampling straw-embedded buns in the snack shop and laughed. Wandering Zhou looked up and saw Song Gang about to go outside but didn't catch sight of Poet Zhao, and wondered what new trick that fellow was up to. He nodded to Song Gang, who nodded back before heading east down the street.
Poet Zhao snuck home to have lunch and, taking advantage of the fact that the two virgin beauties staying there were out, he lay down on the couch and took a nap. Zhao slept until evening, and when the two virgin beauties came home and saw him sleeping on the couch in his underwear, they cried out in alarm. Poet Zhao sprang up and rushed out the door. When he got downstairs, he saw that Wandering Zhou was still in the snack shop, waving his hands about and holding forth. A huge crowd had gathered around him, with some people sitting down and eating steamed buns and others standing around listening to his tall tales.
Poet Zhao quietly walked over to Song Gang's open door and saw that Lin Hong was inside cooking dinner and Song Gang was on the couch watching television. Poet Zhao asked him, "Did you distribute all of the flyers?"
Song Gang nodded, and Poet Zhao turned around and glanced over at the snack shop. Making sure that Wandering Zhou hadn't seen him, he sprinted across the street — covering the intervening 180 yards as though he were on a track and ending up bathed in sweat. He wiped the sleep from his eyes and, looking as if he had been diligently distributing hymen advertisements all day, trudged exhaustedly into the snack shop. When Wandering Zhou, in the middle of some tall tale, spotted him, he waved and told the people around him, "Exec. Asst. Zhao has arrived."