10. An Adult’s Life of Lies
At two in the morning, it finally came to an end.
Speakeasy did not move a large volume of stock, but customer loyalty was fairly good. The artsy, bourgeois crowd was terminally addicted to this sort of thing, fond of dimly lit places of wine and sex. When wandering through the order of the modern city, they would suddenly plunge into a retro, languid tavern from another era, as though alcohol had cast a close-range magic trick on them.
That night, amid the conversations between the two bar owners, she caught the name Sui Tang.
She did not know whether it was the tendency to suddenly notice something everywhere once it had become relevant to you, or because Wang Meili had recently broken into a new social circle, but Sui Tang’s name seemed to keep circling around her. He was a central figure. Whether inside the circle or outside it, even when he himself did not appear, his name would make a conspicuous little stroll through the scene.
As it turned out, the Sober Café in this city belonged to him, or rather, to his ex-wife. The two owners knew nothing about his divorce. They said that newly married people were prone to lust clouding their judgment, and Xu Yiqing had simply lost her head. She had taken such a successful internet-famous café and decided to change it just like that, making a sweeping transformation into a professional bar, without leaving the old customers any room to come back. Originally, the place operated as a café during the day, closing at 5 p.m., then opening as a bar at 7 p.m. until 2 in the morning. One shop in the city center doing two businesses was pretty damn impressive for a woman, yet Sui Tang had gotten involved and said it was neither fish nor fowl and had no style. He changed it into a “Finding the Door” bar, and who knew what it would end up looking like.
In China, hardly anyone drinks during the day. Therefore, outside of sports seasons, bars have very low utilization during the daytime. Owners go to all sorts of lengths simply to make the greatest possible use of their shop expenses during those hours. From the standpoint of commercial profitability, Sui Tang’s decision really was absurd.
The business had been doing perfectly well, and then he had to stick his hand into the bar business. Such a sweeping overhaul was clearly going to ruin a perfectly good operation.
Seeing how absorbed Wang Meili was, they asked whether she had ever met Sui Tang.
Wang Meili was very clever. She gave a faint smile, indicating that she only knew the boss who kept her fed. As for everyone else, who the hell were they?
Under the red lights and green wine, the drinks on the menu came down hard. These bosses were slippery. Before they had started drinking, they only joked around and did not discuss business.
Wang Meili caught the hint of business and removed her necklace, then took off her bracelet and carefully stuffed both into her bag.
As though she did not care whether she lived or died, she downed more than sixty shots in one go. In between, she slipped into the bathroom twice to force herself to vomit. For a while, she could not even do arithmetic anymore, yet she maintained a pair of clear, lucid eyes the entire time, until she watched with her own eyes as the two bar owners signed the contract.
On the way back, her partner Bai Mu asked her, “Did you black out just now? I was holding up numbers for you, and you were completely out of it.”
Wang Meili refused to admit it. She stubbornly said that she had stayed in France too long, so she was just not very good at arithmetic anymore. With the strange rhythm of counting and reciting numbers in French, anyone who stayed there long enough would become slow at arithmetic.
Besides... besides, she had gone there when she was eighteen. It had been too long, so long that even if she were sober, she was afraid she might not be able to react immediately.
Wang Meili leaned against her boyfriend’s shoulder, imagining the days when they would make a fortune. He had also drunk too much, his abdomen swollen out in a round circle, carrying a big belly. Wang Meili reached through his shirt and pinched it, laughing at him without giving him any face.
“Hey, your circle is pretty strict about body shape. You’ve gotten this fat, you probably can’t even touch meat or fish anymore, right?”
“Fuck!”
They clung to each other, arms and waists winding together like vines, supporting one another as they staggered out of the car. The taxi drove away, and only then, at the brightly lit elevator entrance, did the two of them see Jin Yu.
When Jin Yu saw Bai Mu, he hesitated and did not move. He stood inside the opening elevator doors as though he were a doorman holding the way open for them.
Bai Mu, however, sensed that something was off. He teased him, hooking an arm around Wang Meili and pulling her into his embrace, then provocatively raised his brows.
“Know each other? Waiting for you? Why don’t you introduce us...”
“Why are you here?” Wang Meili was more or less displeased. Of course, the alcohol had made her tone lazy, making it look as though she were playing along with Bai Mu, like husband and wife singing in harmony.
It was so late, and this slender, fair-skinned handsome young man was here. Surely no one had abducted him for his looks? If Wang Meili saw an innocent boy like this, she would want to trick him home to sleep with her.
A trace of completely impractical worry flashed through Wang Meili’s subconscious.
Jin Yu’s gaze dropped, staring at their bodies pressed tightly together. His mind went completely blank until Wang Meili sighed and pushed Bai Mu away.
“Stop fooling around.”
Only then could Jin Yu gather his thoughts.
“I...”
Bai Mu was curious. “Is there something going on?”
Wang Meili tossed out, “Bullshit.”
Bai Mu was perceptive. Knowing his floor-bed accommodation had gone up in smoke, he turned around and went home to sleep. Jin Yu had no time to think it through. Bai Mu had tossed a graceful burden into his arms, so naturally, he could only follow Wang Meili upstairs.
Wang Meili wrapped her arms around his neck, repeatedly bumping her knees against him, deliberately asking, “What did you come here for?”
The little bit of displeasure she felt was diluted by Jin Yu’s pair of innocent eyes. His curls rested against his temples.
So pretty.
As she asked, Wang Meili hooked a fingertip beneath his chin, half-hanging off him, her eyes alluring as she breathed out and flirted with him.
He said nothing. He avoided her kisses that came and went, faithfully adhering to his boundaries as he escorted her into her room, then murmured an apology.
Showing up unannounced really was somewhat impolite.
Earlier that night, Jin Yu had sent her a message. The WeChat chat window had displayed 【The other person is typing...】 for a long time, only for several hours to pass without a single word coming back. He did not have her phone number, and could not help worrying.
It was only when he saw Wang Meili appear with Bai Mu that Jin Yu realized how stupid he had been. Perhaps he and she simply understood their relationship on completely different frequencies.
“What are you apologizing for?”
“Did I disturb you?” They were standing very close, so he pressed his lips tightly together. He had waited a long time and was hungry, so he had drunk a can of plain milk at the convenience store. The taste left in his mouth after drinking plain milk probably was not very pleasant, and he was afraid the smell on his breath would disturb her. Though the strong smell of alcohol coming at him could easily cover up many other scents.
Seeing the gloomy expression on his face, even Wang Meili’s cold heart softened.
“It’s nothing...”
The instant she saw him, there had been a faint flare of anger. After hearing his concern, however, she felt that she had been too harsh. She had opened the chat window before going to make herself vomit, then completely forgot to reply afterward.
Jin Yu said, “As long as I know you’re safe.”
“What? You’re leaving?”
“I did disturb you today, didn’t I?” His gaze was fixed straight on her. His tightly clenched teeth held back many questions, many questions he knew he should not ask.
Wang Meili played dumb. The worldly, flirtatious energy from the drinking table had not yet stopped, and she shoved his shoulder, grinning wickedly.
“Oh, I really did get disturbed.”
Jin Yu’s face fell.
“Real sex isn’t like what you see in those movies. Everyone says you men have limited stamina, but a woman’s place is flesh too. It can’t withstand you plowing into it so fiercely.”
She bit his lip. The elevator gave a ding and came to a steady stop, but she was still hanging onto him. After he turned his face away, blushing, she pushed her advantage further, opening her mouth to lightly nip the corner of his lips, humming softly.
“I even rubbed myself sore walking today. And then you came again. You really did disturb me.”
Jin Yu did not completely crumble either. There was still a needle drilling away inside him.
He endured for a moment before asking indirectly, “If you were already sore... then why did you still...”
“Still what?” She blinked.
He looked at her without speaking.
No one moved. The elevator doors slowly closed. Before they shut completely, Jin Yu stretched out his long leg and braced it against the doorway.
Wang Meili tilted with his shifting center of gravity and could not hold back a laugh.
“Okay, okay, I won’t tease you anymore. Come home with Jiejie.”
She tugged at his hand.
Jin Yu did not move. His face was still dark as he waited for her to finish.
“Okay, he’s my business sex partner."
Every sentence she said in Chinese somehow sounded strange.
His Adam’s apple bobbed.
“So late?”
Forget it. She was too tired. She was too lazy to keep going around in circles.
Wang Meili stretched.
“He doesn’t like women.”
Feeling the warmth enthusiastically pressing against her from behind, the corners of her mouth stiffened for a moment, but she did not ruin his mood. Who could get worked up over a handsome young man’s jealousy? Besides, with him wrapping his arms around her so tightly from behind, who could refuse a hug like that?
At that moment, if she had been sober, if she had not been drinking, she might have thought about exactly where this relationship was headed, thought about just how far she was going to let herself betray other people.
But she had been drinking.
Drinking really did get in the way of things.
There was something subtle and delicate about it. By the time she woke up, she had already missed her chance to sort it out.
#
#
Wang Meili kicked off her shoes and walked barefoot into the room.
She was dying of thirst. Her entire mouth felt as though a fire were burning inside it.
She was in a hurry and naturally turned on the faucet to get some water. Unexpectedly, a force from behind crashed into her. The fragile stemmed glass gave a crisp ting sound, and in an instant the glass shattered into three pieces.
Glass shattered.
“Water in China can’t be drunk straight from the tap.” Jin Yu had only been here once, yet he was already familiar with the place. He bent down, took a bottle of mineral water from the cardboard box, twisted off the cap, and said, “Drink mineral water.”
“Ah, this glass was really expensive!”
For a moment, Wang Meili could not believe that the glass had shattered so theatrically.
She gathered the glass fragments in her palm. Clean and transparent, light as drops of water, they fell silently into the stainless steel sink.
“Was it very expensive?”
Only then did Jin Yu notice that the wine glass had shattered. He had only tried to stop her, never expecting a drunk person’s ability to remain upright to be so utterly untrustworthy.
She nodded blankly, still looking completely dazed.
This glass had been very, very expensive. For a time, it had been the most valuable thing she owned. When she had been down and out, reduced to hardship and embarrassment, she had relied entirely on it to collect water, sustaining that ritualistic sense of ceremony when there was barely enough food to fill her stomach.
Ah?
It was broken.
Jin Yu caught Wang Meili’s hand and held it under the faucet, rinsing away the glass shards. He said he would buy her another one, then brought the mineral water to her lips.
The water gurgled down her throat. A delayed sadness began to climb up, little by little. Certain images surged into her mind.
Wang Meili turned her head and glanced at the trash can.
Her tears suddenly burst their banks.
Jin Yu was startled and asked, “They don’t sell them anymore?”
Wang Meili covered her face and shook her head. She did not know either. Were they still selling this glass? She had even forgotten what brand it was, or how to spell it. But did any of that matter? It did not. All she knew was that the glass was broken, and she was very sad.
She said the glass had been given to her by her first boyfriend. He was from Zhejiang, very rich, married and with children, and claimed that he and his wife were on bad terms and were preparing to divorce. Wang Meili had met the owner while working as a waitress. He had sweet-talked and deceived her, making her dizzy on the carousel, and she ended up with this man thirteen years her senior.
Her mother objected, so Wang Meili began lying about going out. She made herself appear very busy, when in fact she met him in secret every day. She wrapped her lies to her mother in bouquets of love. After that, she needed to lie to her boss at work to ask for leave, and lie about her unexcused absences from language classes.
She was eighteen or nineteen that year, and every day was spent inside lies. Yet she felt that she was very righteous.
Her mother had seen the man’s car. She said he was a bad man, that he was married, and that he specialized in deceiving little girls like her.
Wang Meili was bristling from head to toe. She raised her head and answered her mother, “He’ll get divorced soon.”
Her mother was so angry she could barely stand. Wang Meili continued to provoke her.
“Besides, he never hits me.”
Her mother, whose eye was swollen and bruised, cried. Later, when Wang Meili carefully looked back on it, she wondered whether she had once wanted to regard that man as the god who would take the mother and daughter out of hell.
The answer was yes.
He had tried his best too, running back and forth between the embassy and police station, asking friends in the Zhejiang business association for help, and even trying to find her mother a job.
But her mother was too weak. She knew perfectly well that she could not leave France, could not leave that man. She had brought her daughter there, abandoned everything back home, and then returned? It would be an absolute joke. How could a Chinese woman get divorced three times?
She fought viciously with her mother, their relationship tense, and this gave the drunkard an opportunity to take advantage of the situation.
That tall, broad French stepfather was very good most of the time. That was also why her mother forgave him again and again after he became violent.
But once he drank, he became a different person...
When he drunkenly pressed himself against her and said he wanted to comfort Wang Meili, she tried to wake him with her screams. For more than a year, he had never shown any interest in her. And when she had stammered in French, emphasizing that he was not allowed to hit her mother again, he had even sincerely apologized and claimed that he would quit drinking. He had spoken to her with the genuine tone one would use with a little girl.
That night, there was blood. Wang Meili was so frightened that she was completely at a loss. Later, when she remembered it, every scene was like a crazily spinning Rococo painting. Gorgeous and absurd. She had brought her dream of a carousel to France, only for it to end like this.
They called the police. While they waited, Wang Meili was terrified. She turned back toward the drunkard, blood running from his forehead, and asked through her tears, “When he wakes up, will he retaliate against us?”
They both knew that one candlestick had only been enough to knock him unconscious. He was simply too tall and strong...
No mother could continue tolerating a man after learning that he had improper intentions toward her daughter. Her mother’s hands trembled as she casually took down a stemmed glass, filled it with water, drank it all, then said to her,
“No. We’re leaving here.”
Wang Meili suddenly felt a little happy. At eighteen or nineteen, she thought leaving would solve everything. She took the stemmed glass from her mother, filled it again with plain water, and said, “Okay! Situ will help us!”
Situ was the lover.
Her mother looked at her deeply and forced out a smile. Wang Meili knew she did not like Situ, so she did not continue.
The police were taking so long. She could not wait any longer and ran outside to ask the neighbors.
She saw that a home slightly ahead and to the side still had its lights on.
She ran very quickly, the slippers on the soles of her feet going ba-dap, ba-dap, their crisp sounds echoing through the residential neighborhood in the early hours of the morning. She felt a freedom she had never felt before. She could no longer endure the muffled, dull sounds behind closed doors, nor the uncontrolled volume of a drunkard.
She went out, then came back.
She and the neighbor woman saw her mother and that man lying in a pool of blood.
She heard screaming, followed by a string of French she could not understand. She stood motionless before the terrifying pool of blood, her eyes fixed on her mother’s snow white lips and those horrifying eyes.
Eighteen- or nineteen-year-old Wang Meili thought that as long as the dream was frightening enough, she would wake up soon.
She really did wake up.
It was just that when she woke, her mother was gone.
Her love continued, but by the time she was twenty, she understood that love was full of lies. With no mother, no tutoring classes, and no boss at work, her lies began to unfold toward Situ and herself.
Her mother really was wiser for having eaten several more years’ worth of rice and loved a few more men in vain. Situ’s claim about his marriage being broken beyond repair really was a lie.
But he truly loved her.
He seriously made plans for her, wanting her to complete her higher education so that she could establish herself in France. He would not let her work. He found her a private language tutor. He took her to banquets, accompanied her shopping, taught her how to make AI, and listened to her lose her temper.
But she still left him. She left when she could no longer lie to herself and no longer wanted to lie to him.
She loved him very much, but that kind of love was terribly painful.
A golden canary yearning for an equal love could never be happy.
Thirty-year-old Wang Meili could understand that kind of pain, but she could no longer put it into words. She asked Jin Yu, “Do you understand?”
He nodded and said he did.
“What is it?”
He looked at her and said seriously, “You’re together, but you’re also not together.”
Wang Meili sniffed hard.
Fuck, even the alcohol was coming out.
Now she was painfully clear-headed.
Afterward, she never again met a man who treated her better than Situ. There were men who cheated her out of money, men who cheated her for sex, rotten men who fought back and forth with her, and ordinary, boring men too, but they were all passersby. She never again felt even the slightest longing or guilt. She faced poverty openly, fought fiercely, loved briefly, then left cleanly.
She had always been living her life properly. She had never given up.
It was only when Qin Su took her to an AA meeting that she realized she should not drink. To some extent, the lives she and her mother had lived had been destroyed by alcohol.
But she had no way out.
She had no degree, no particular skill. Just like love, her jobs were all short-lived. Alcohol was the thing she understood best.
And unexpectedly, it became her work.
She hated alcohol, yet had no choice but to love it, like a tortured love affair.
Jin Yu asked, “Do you still love him?”
Perhaps in a man’s arms, one should act a little more innocent. It was cuter that way.
But tonight, she was especially honest.
Wang Meili curled into his arms, swallowing the heaviness lodged in her throat.
“Love and hate have both been far away from me for a long time. Right now, I just miss my mom more.”
When the wine glass broke, she suddenly missed her mother very much.
She used the story to miss her mother’s blurred face for a while. After telling it, she missed her even more.
In the past, Jin Yu had found it difficult to understand why such a beautiful girl would make such a mess of herself over drinking, and would even take pride in it from time to time.
He had interpreted it as strange.
A strange beauty.
Someone with a soul as boring as his would have a hard time understanding it.
After reading through her “past and present life” today, he suddenly understood her situation. Everything he had completely failed to understand before, he now accepted in its entirety.
He held her, holding in the words of comfort he had been struggling to find for a long time. Then he lowered his head, only to find Wang Meili in his arms letting out a soft snore.
He could almost imagine that if she discovered she snored, she would surely raise her hand with great pride and say, “That’s just how it is when we get older.”
She would not make excuses for herself. She was completely unapologetic, liking everything about herself that was not quite so bright, not quite so beautiful.
Jin Yu found makeup-removing wipes underneath the bed. He pulled out two and wiped her face. As he wiped, a mischievous impulse arose.
While she was asleep, Jin Yu pinched the flesh of her cheek. Before this, he truly had not dared to do such a thing.
Wang Meili was especially harmless when she slept, mumbling with her lips pursed like a little girl sulking.
She was really beautiful.
#
#
Wang Meili woke from thirst and searched everywhere for water. When she raised her hand, she discovered an opened bottle of mineral water sitting on the orange round stool.
Where was Jin Yu?
The room was pitch-black. There was no one beside her. She quietly drank the water, suddenly feeling a little disappointed.
The men’s sneakers at the entryway were still there, their reflective strips catching a silvery-white light.
Wang Meili called out, “Jin Yu!”
No one answered.
Wang Meili frowned, rubbed her dizzy forehead, and turned on the light.
A one-bedroom apartment, completely exposed. There was nowhere to hide anything.
She looked around the room. A faint light seeped through the crack beneath the bathroom door.
When she opened the door, a head of fluffy curls was right there, facing her.
Jin Yu was sitting on the toilet, his underwear pulled down to his ankles, the loose hem of his T-shirt covering himself. His phone was held horizontally, his expression utterly serious.
When he saw her come in, he looked surprised and hurriedly pulled up his pants.
“Huh? Why are you awake?”
Wang Meili was displeased.
“What are you doing?”
He was actually playing on his phone.
She had just been looking for him, and he had made her heart race for several dozen seconds.
Jin Yu awkwardly rubbed his hair and turned the phone screen around.
On the green pitch, several players in white jerseys were running around, sweating.
He grinned.
“Arsenal versus Tottenham.”
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