“So why didn’t you call me?”
“I only just ran out.”
On the other end of the line, Xiaorong stayed silent for a full two minutes. Dunhuang stayed silent longer.
“Come and get more,” she said finally. “He’s not here.” She hung up.
By the time Dunhuang got to Furongli she had already arranged the DVDs by type — several of each. They didn’t look at one another, staring at the movies as they spoke, as if they were addressing the characters in the films. “That should be enough for three days,” she said, turning a DVD over in her hands. “The other kind is still under the bed, if you want them you can take them.” He bent down and pulled a stack of porn out from under the bed. Turning his head, he saw Xiaorong’s feet in her slippers, her gray socks seemed to warm him. He raised his head, his gaze traveling up her leg, all the way up past her breasts to her face. She immediately looked away. He stood very slowly, then swept her onto the bed. The porn scattered across the floor. She cried out, and only then did Dunhuang feel a little surprised at himself. But it was too late for them to stop. She pushed half-heartedly at him once, then once again, but then she wrapped her arms tighter and tighter around his back.
Things began in haste and eagerness, but then unfolded leisurely, like a silent film from the twenties or thirties. When they finished, it was a drawn-out sigh drifting in on the wind. Afterwards, Dunhuang didn’t know what to do. He buried his face in her breasts, silent, then got up and dressed. He gathered the DVDs, shouldered his bag, and got ready to leave. Xiaorong said, “Do you think Beijing’s a good place?”
“Pretty good,” he answered.
“I still want to go back,” she said.
As he understood it, what she meant was: one day she would go back to her hometown, and she would go back with Kuang Shan. But Dunhuang pictured a string of women, women with children at their breast or on their back, each one asking, “are you looking for DVDs? Need an ID?” Dunhuang noticed, for the first time, four fine wrinkles at the corners of Xiaorong’s eyes, two on each side. They would soon be joined by others like them.
Before he left he said, “You should go back.”
They hadn’t discussed what would happen when the DVDs were all sold, and when he needed more the next day, he hesitated before calling her. He told her that a student at Peking University needed thirty-five copies of Der Himmel über Berlin. Xiaorong hung up, then called back and said no problem, he could come get them that night.
When Dunhuang arrived they were fighting. Kuang Shan was a tall, skinny man in his early thirties, with a clearly defined little mustache. The argument interrupted, Kuang Shan grinned and shook his hand, saying Xiaorong had told him Dunhuang was like a younger brother to her. How was he finding the job?
“It’s not bad,” Dunhuang answered, looking at Xiaorong sitting on the bed, having wept so hard she was hiccupping, her neck stretched forward as she tried to catch her breath. Years ago he’d seen his mother cry this way, when she and his father were getting a divorce. “Xiaorong, sis, is something wrong?”
Kuang Shan waved a hand. “She’s just making a scene. Women, right? It’s never really that big a deal.”
She slumped sideways on the bed, her sobs rising again.
“What are you doing to her?” Dunhuang’s face darkened.
“It has nothing to do with you. Take your DVDs and get out.” Kuang Shan looked sidelong at Dunhuang. “Leave our cut here.” Dunhuang didn’t move. “What?” said Kuang Shan. “You don’t want the movies?” Xiaorong stopped crying. She came over and pushed Dunhuang, trying to get him to leave. She couldn’t budge him. Kuang Shan’s face turned ugly — he didn’t know about the two of them, but he could tell something wasn’t right with Dunhuang. “I can’t have a fight with my old lady, huh?” he said.
“Who’s your old lady?” exclaimed Xiaorong. “I’m not your anything!”
“Don’t push it!” said Kuang Shan. “I’d slap you even if he was your real brother.”
Then Dunhuang’s fists were flying, and Kuang Shan bled from both nostrils. Xiaorong hadn’t expected Dunhuang to act so swiftly, and he was forced back a step as she thrust him bodily toward the door. Kuang Shan’s temper flared and he moved to strike back. “You fucking hit me! Where the fuck do you get off hitting me?” Dunhuang’s fist flew over Xiaorong’s head and landed on Kuang Shan’s left eye. “That’s right,” he said. “And there’s more where that came from!”
“Okay!” Kuang Shan sputtered. “So you sicced your beast of a brother on me! Stick around if ya got the balls!”
Dunhuang wanted to laugh — the guy even trotted out Beijing slang when he got angry. “Ya. .?” Do y’think that’s all it takes to be a Beijinger, you ass? Xiaorong shoved him out the door before he could say anything more. She said, “I’m begging you Dunhuang, don’t cause trouble for me.” Dunhuang’s fire died down a little, and he tossed the money through the door before turning and heading down the stairs. Kuang Shan was desperate to retrieve a little face, and came rushing out of the apartment to continue the fight. Xiaorong couldn’t stop him, and as Dunhuang emerged from the building he came down the stairs, cursing all the way.
“Stop right there!”
Dunhuang turned to look at him, saying “what the hell d’ya want?” He took a step forward.
Kuang Shan instinctively took a step back. “What gives you the fucking right to hit me?” he asked again.
Dunhuang looked up and saw a head peering out of a third-story window. His voice abruptly softened. “You should treat her better,” he said. “A woman like that.”
“She treats me like shit, why should I treat her well? And who sent ya to just parachute in and hit me?” Kuang Shan was yelling, waking nearby porch lights with sound-activated switches. Dunhuang could suddenly see the veins and tendons in his neck.
He was preparing to get back into it when Xiaorong called “Dunhuang!” from overhead. And Dunhuang knew he’d been beaten. It suddenly struck him as funny — no one had even arranged a match, and here he was declaring himself the challenger. What right did he have to challenge? He was nothing but an “adopted brother.” The “brother” called to the “sister” upstairs: “Don’t worry, I’ll just take my brother-in-law here for a drink or two and we’ll be fine.” He turned to Kuang Shan, “Let’s go, my treat.”
“A drink?” Kuang Shan said, struggling to keep up. “Drink what?”
8
The restaurant, just outside the gate of Furongli, was called The People’s Hearth. Dunhuang ordered ten bottles of beer, a few small dishes, and twenty kebabs. He wasn’t particularly in the mood to drink that night, it was just a way of handling Kuang Shan — they couldn’t have gone on slugging it out with Xiaorong watching. And anyway, there was no great harm in getting drunk.
“Five bottles each,” Dunhuang said.
“Five bottles?” Kuang Shan eyed the beer arrayed before him, muddled. He gritted his teeth and said “okay,” determined to suffer no further losses.
Dunhuang pushed the beer on him mercilessly. He didn’t want to waste too much breath on the guy — the sooner he was good and drunk the sooner the whole thing would be over. Kuang Shan could hold his alcohol, but after the first onslaught he slowed down — not because he was trying to get out of it, but because he couldn’t resist the urge to talk. Dunhuang noticed he was starting to slur, and as he slurred his gaze softened, and he took on the look of someone who’d met a childhood friend in an unexpected place. Though the drinks had reddened his face and thickened his neck, Dunhuang thought he looked a little more sincere like that, at least preferable to the way he preened his little mustache when he was sober.