Who could it be? He was puzzled. Everyone he knew should be attending the ceremony. He got up and walked out of the hotel; with all the onlookers inside the restaurant, the area near the entrance was deserted, except for the rows of cars. After taking a look around and seeing no one, he was about to go back inside when someone inside a taxi by the side of the road rolled down the window and shouted, “Hey.” He looked over and saw a pair of oversized sunglasses. He knew who it was and ran over.
“Are you here for the wedding?”
“I came to see you,” Tang Wan’er said.
He looked up and sighed.
“Can you meet me at the House of Imperfection Seekers after the wedding?” she asked.
After turning back to look at the hotel entrance, he opened the door and got into the taxi. “Take us to the street by the Great Void Nunnery.”
She immediately locked her arms around him and planted urgent kisses on his forehead, face, nose, and lips, as if she were gnawing on a cooked sheep’s head, leaving red lipstick marks all over his face. The driver flipped his rearview mirror.
“Are they all gone?” she asked when they reached the street by the nunnery.
“Yes.”
“Then let’s go to your apartment at the compound.” Without waiting for his consent, she gave the driver ten yuan, and the taxi turned around to head north.
Once they were in the apartment, she asked him to hold her, saying she missed him so much she could die; she had been trying to find a way to see him, confident that God would somehow give her the opportunity. She had found it that day, and she wanted to spend this noontime meeting making up for all the days they had been apart. Telling him to hold her tighter and tighter still, she lost her composure.
“Zhuang-ge, tell me what to do, Zhuang-ge. Tell me.”
Not knowing what to tell her, he could only try to make her feel better, but his words soon sounded hollow, phony, and meaningless even to himself. He could only murmur her name, “Wan’er, Wan’er.” Assaulted by a splitting headache, he felt as if his head were filled with water. Waves of pain surged when his head moved and the water sloshed around.
They held each other as if holding onto silent rocks; at some point, without being aware of it, they undressed each other, until they were both naked and wondering whether they were going to make love again. They exchanged a look and a smile, sharing the knowledge that only when their bodies became one would they be able to forget their suffering for a while, and that they would have fewer and fewer chances to do that until one day they would not be able to do it ever again. When he laid her down on the sofa, she said:
“No, I want to do it on your bed. I want you to carry me into your bedroom.”
They replaced the sheets and pillowcases and laid out the best blanket. She lay down with her arms and legs spread out to quietly watch him turn on all the lights in the room, start the stereo system, spray the room with perfume, and light some sacred Indian incense.
“I have to pee,” she told him.
He brought a chamber pot decorated with peony flowers out from under the bed and handed it to her, but she said: “I want you to hold me up.” She had such an alluring look on her face that he had to get onto the bed and hold her up like a child, listening to the sound of water falling into the pot like strings of beads. ☐☐ ☐☐ ☐☐ [The author has deleted 666 words.] But no matter how hard he tried, he could not do what they wanted. He sat there dejected, his head down, listening to the tick-tock of the pendulum clock in the living room.
“I can’t, Wan’er,” he said. “My problem again, I think.”
“How can that be? Would you like a cigarette?”
He shook his head. “I just can’t. I’m sorry, Wan’er. It’s getting late. Let’s go where it’s quiet, all right? I’ll be able to do it again. I can satisfy you. When we go out and calm down, we can go to the House of Imperfection Seekers and spend the afternoon, even the whole night, there if you want.”
She lay there quietly before saying, “Don’t talk like that, Zhuang-ge. You’re nervous and you’ve been depressed. We didn’t do anything, and yet I’m satisfied. I’m completely contented. Being with you on this bed in your room lets me feel like the mistress of the house, and that makes me very happy.” Fixing her eyes on Niu Yueqing’s photo on the wall, she continued, “She hates me and is probably calling me a shameless slut. She’s one of the city’s happy women, but she doesn’t understand me; she’ll never know the pain of another woman in different circumstances.” She got up and turned the photo around.
After leaving the compound, they walked aimlessly before stopping at a diner to get something to eat. When they passed a theater, they bought tickets and went in to see a movie, agreeing that they would return to the House of Imperfection Seekers after the show. They would buy enough food and drink to fully savor the feeling of being together all day and all night.
“One whole day,” he said.
“Two days.”
“No, three days.”
“Then we’ll die in our sleep.”
“If we do, it will be a beautiful death.”
“If that happened and we were found, would people eulogize the House of Imperfection Seekers as a place to die for love or as a den of iniquity?” They laughed at the thought, and then continued to talk and laugh while they watched another story play out on the screen. As she put her head on his shoulder, he recalled the picture they had taken together, but he quickly put it out of his mind; instead, he whispered to her that their posture reminded him of an interesting Chinese word.
“Which word?”
He wrote it on her palm, and she wrote another, even more suggestive, one on his. Lifting her legs to lay them on his lap, he took off her shoes to massage her feet and whispered in her ear, “I’m hopeless. When I wanted to use it, it was useless, but now, when I can’t, it’s ready for action.”
She groped in the dark, and indeed it was as hard as a stick, so she unbuttoned his fly and bent down. ☐☐ ☐☐ ☐☐ [The author has deleted 39 words.] Concerned that people behind them could see, he pushed her away. “I’m wet.” He touched her and found she was very wet. Pinching her nose to shame her, he said, “I’ll go buy some melon seeds.” He got up, and as he walked up the aisle, he saw two men squatting by the wall. They looked like latecomers who were looking for seats, so he gestured to show them there were empty seats up front, which made him laugh, since they wouldn’t be able to see his signal in the dark. Besides, why was he worrying about those people?
He went to the concession stand for watermelon seeds, but they were out. “I’ll have some pumpkin seeds, then,” he said. Pumpkin seeds were good for summer days, but they were out of those, too. All they had were sunflower seeds. He recalled seeing a grocery store not far from the theater, so he told the ticket taker where he was going, and walked out. When he went back inside, there was no sign of her, other than her handbag. She must have gone to the toilet. He even wondered whether she had gone to the toilet to pleasure herself after the earlier moment of intimacy. But ten minutes later, she was still not back. Growing suspicious, he went out and called her name from outside the toilet; there was no response. He asked a woman who was going in to look for her. She came out and told him she wasn’t in there. Worry built as he wondered where she could have gone. The lounge? She wasn’t there. She liked pranks, so surely she was hiding somewhere in the theater waiting to jump out and scare him when he walked by. He began checking the seats, row by row, before looking around the front and back of the theater. When the movie was over and the viewers were filing out, he stood at the exit to check everyone, until the theater was empty. There was still no sign of her, and he panicked. He phoned Meng Yunfang, who asked him why he had disappeared from the wedding. What had he been doing? Zhuang had no choice but to tell Meng everything and ask him to go to Zhou Min’s house to see if she had gone back on her own. Meng told him that he had gone to Zhou’s house with Zhou Min right after the wedding ceremony; he hadn’t seen Wan’er there and had in fact just gotten back from their place. Zhuang put down the phone. His one remaining hope was that she had gone ahead of him to the House of Imperfection Seekers; he hailed a taxi, but she wasn’t there, either. His last stop was Meng Yunfang’s house. Zhuang burst out crying the moment he went inside.