14. A Night Shimmering with Ripples of Light
Jin Yu had called her at dawn. A man picked up. Without thinking, Jin Yu asked, who are you?
The other party sounded arrogant, the kind of tone you hear from a boss. His voice was low and hoarse, edged with impatience. He spoke sparingly, like sending a telegram, each word weighed and minimal. Sui Tang.
Jin Yu asked if Wang Meini was there.
It was strange. This was clearly a mobile phone, yet the way he asked made it sound like he had dialed a landline.
Sui Tang said, “She is. Wait a moment.”
Hearing that Wang Meili was there, Jin Yu’s heart loosened, then immediately tightened again. He knew that if she heard the call, she would definitely feel uncomfortable. She disliked any sense of restraint.
Jin Yu, reading the situation, said it was fine. Then the call ended.
As long as she was alive, that was enough. As long as she had not gotten into a car accident, that was enough. With her kind of personality, she really did not need his meticulous concern.
When he mentioned Sui Tang, he had not thought much of it. Seeing her expression, something strange welled up.
She rarely hesitated when facing questions. Fortunately, her next sentence did not surprise him—
Wang Meili answered honestly, “A man. Very handsome, very cool, and very rich.”
“And then… you?”
“I fall for people easily.” She tugged at the corner of her mouth.
Jin Yu did not know how to respond. His hands slackened, and Wang Meili’s legs slipped down from his waist.
“Oh.” He did not want to ask anymore. He felt that if he continued, his mood would turn bad.
“Not asking anymore?” Jin Yu turned to eat buns, while Wang Meili was left hanging, neither up nor down. “You sure?”
Jin Yu was not sure. But in that moment, he did not harbor much suspicion toward Sui Tang. Later, he kept thinking about it, what kind of confidence had allowed him to overlook such an important clue and person, to walk a single path straight into a dead end of darkness.
Feelings really do make people blind.
Wang Meili was very clear-headed. She knew that Jin Yu and she were not on the same path, that they should not continue planning anything together. Yet at this moment, she suddenly fell silent. She felt that if she said a little more, if she were a little more honest, Jin Yu would become like the men she had met before, impossible to grasp.
People are different at the beginning, and then they all become the same.
She was very curious. If Jin Yu clearly understood the kind of relationship she maintained with Sui Tang, what would he do?
But Wang Meili very rationally suppressed that curiosity. Tonight, she did not want to sleep alone.
This ignoble struggle lasted no longer than the time it took to lift her eyes and smile. Neither of them probed further.
Love seems like a grand topic. It is obviously cliché, yet never exhausted in discussion. Perhaps the reason is not that it is too big, but that it is too small, so small that before you can see it clearly or grasp it, you are already overtaken by it; so small that before you can hold onto it or secure it, it slips away.
Wang Meili despised love. Qin Su, tainted by proximity to her, also despised it for a while, then later, influenced by someone else, turned into a walking red heart.
Wang Meili held an awkward curiosity toward her friends’ lovers. Curious, yet insisting on wrapping that curiosity in disdain.
In her eyes, a devoted man who was gentle, honest, and from a good family ought to be a middle-height man with a protruding belly, a receding hairline, and a string of prayer beads rolling under his thumb. Even after seeing Qin Su’s wedding photos, Wang Meili believed it was the work of the retoucher, not the favor of fate. Look, that is how hopeless she was about the word love. So when Qin Su appeared hand in hand with her husband, Wang Meili’s jaw nearly dropped. He could not be more handsome than in the wedding photos. That violated human cognition.
A man like that had to be a scumbag. Yes.
Throughout the meal, Qin Su kept grilling her about whether her younger brother or her boss had been “flipping her card” more often recently, while Wang Meili half-heartedly dealt with her friend’s gossip, her attention entirely on the husband.
Could such a perfect specimen exist in this world?
No, no. Time simply had not polished out the true nature yet.
It was cold outside. Qin Su stubbornly insisted on dining at an outdoor table. In the wineglass, a sparkler shaped like a firecracker burned. Her husband crouched down to take photos for her, and after finishing, quickly grabbed a coat to drape over her shoulders, attentive as if he could physically feel her cold.
She quietly watched the pair in front of her, their harmony like a staged performance, and silently made a bet. This man would definitely turn out to be a scumbag. Hmm… could he be a random sample released into the market by artificial intelligence?
That was what she thought, but as she watched them get into the car and leave, and stepped into the solitary night herself, she still felt like she had eaten a high-calorie dessert. She hugged her arms tightly around herself and smiled in contentment.
In her heart, past and present waged a fierce debate. The number and quality of scumbags and mediocre men were evenly matched. In the end, a variable broke through and threw the whole situation into chaos.
Jin Yu’s two large suitcases were still moved in, like his sudden encampment. The room, too, was suddenly blocked up. Such a tiny apartment, slowly filled by him, filled to the point it could not breathe.
Sometimes, when she came back in the middle of the night, she would stare at the strangely dense shadows in the room, staring until Jin Yu woke, until she sobered from the alcohol. She would shiver, burying a question she did not dare voice:
Could it be that I am actually in a relationship?
She had a mischievous urge toward many things in this world. She wanted to tear off the mask of gentlemen and watch them grow unrestrained, wanted to poke at the taut stomachs of muscular men until the tension loosened so she could pinch at the fat, and also wanted to see good men struggle between morality and desire, their brows drawn tight in a kind of tense, sensual frown.
Time is a truth serum. No one escapes it. And alcohol is a catalyst for truth.
She poured drinks into Jin Yu, who did not drink, forcing him to drink anyway. When the halo of light in his eyes settled on her face, Wang Meili propped her chin in both hands and, with a look of complete sincerity, pressed him about when he was going to find a place. A second ago he had been smiling foolishly. As soon as she finished speaking, he turned serious, sitting there in silence, lips pressed tight.
He seemed to understand that once he withdrew from the apartment, it would be difficult for them to maintain this kind of intimacy. Wang Meili was sly, like a roly-poly toy. You could push and shove her from either side and she would not fall. You could try to steady her from both sides, and still you could not control her.
“The bed is small. It is a bit cramped.”
“Then I will hold you tighter.”
“The luggage is such a nuisance. My apartment is too small.”
“Then we find a bigger apartment?”
“We?”
“Who else?”
Wang Meili tried to squeeze him out of her life without hurting him, but helplessly, he was like a sponge pressed against the skin. You knew he was something foreign, yet he was too soft. Leaving him there seemed to cause no real discomfort.
She went to Shenzhen for a wine exhibition, staying at a hotel. The first week she suffered from continuous insomnia. Lying on the large, unfamiliar hotel bed, she pressed the pillow snugly into the hollows of her body and fell into a daze.
She fumbled for her phone and realized she had not opened her dating apps for quite some time. There were often periods when she was so busy her feet barely touched the ground, but to be so busy that she lost her curiosity for novelty, that was rare. In the past, the more pressure she felt, the more she liked to vent through letting her body go out of control.
A comfortable emotional state really could tame a person.
Just then, Jin Yu’s call came. Wang Meili very honestly described the pain of insomnia and the loneliness of sleeping alone. Jin Yu asked, do you want me to come keep you company?
“No need. You are part of the working class now,” she said. Then she live-narrated her Tinder browsing to him, talking through her thoughts as she kept swiping left, interspersed with complaints. “Why is it all gym muscle photos… why do men take suit portraits, they look like insurance agents… why so much hair gel, I would really want to help him wash his hair. Oh right, did you know, I used to work at a hair salon, always washing people’s hair. Later, when I saw someone with oily hair or lots of dandruff, I would really want to scratch their scalp a couple of times…”
Jin Yu listened in silence. Wang Meili kept waiting. In the end, she could not stand the oppressive quiet on the line and softened her voice to coax him. “These are all so boring. I will just sleep with my pillow tonight.”
#
#
In Luohu District, where the lights had just come on, the surprise of a long journey was disrupted by this call. Amid shifting neon shadows, fine dust brushed against Jin Yu’s face. Hurried pedestrians and passing cars streamed endlessly around him as though he were a pillar.
A sudden surge of anger rose uncontrollably with the swell of his chest. Jin Yu realized this was some distance away from the kind of love he had imagined. Wang Meili was like an unmoored boat, and he could no longer enjoy it, nor could he deceive himself. He sensed that she was delineating the boundaries between them, and that boundary was something he could not accept.
They had once had such a conversation. She had asked him what his ideal relationship looked like.
Jin Yu had been very happy that she could pose such a formal question. After thinking seriously, he spoke of his “small-scale communism” ideal.
“Alain Badiou defines romantic love like this. ‘Communism has not yet been realized, but we have all experienced it in love. The more you devote yourself to another, the less you lose yourself. Instead, you become a better self.’” Meeting the storm beneath her calm gaze, Jin Yu did not dare remain solemn. After taking a deep breath, he relaxed his tone. “It sounds a bit stupid, right. That is why it is an ideal. Idealism always ends in tragedy.”
“True. But it is very special.” She had accepted too many self-centered ideas about living in the moment, and even spread that “virus” herself. No matter how long she had known Jin Yu, she was still shaken by his steadfast purity.
He asked, “What about you?”
“You know already.” She pressed a hand to her forehead, somewhat vexed. “But I do not want to say it. My answer contrasts too sharply with yours. It is like lowbrow folk songs and refined high art. Forget it, forget it. Pretend I never asked.”
At the time, Jin Yu had simply smiled, bewitched by her beauty. Now he regretted it. He should have found a chance to expose her bottom line. Otherwise, he would remain trapped in constant gain and loss, unable to achieve this so-called small-scale communism.
Carrying a travel bag, Jin Yu drifted into a shopping mall like a wandering ghost, drifting from one floor to another. He was drawn to a delicate glassware shop and remembered Wang Meili’s story about wine glasses. Later, she had bought an enamel mug printed with a slogan of Chairman Mao. She said her grandmother had the same kind of cup. Jin Yu walked into the shop and picked out a slender, fragile wine glass. The shop assistant asked how many he wanted. He said one.
Seeing the assistant pause, he made a dry joke. “One cup, one lifetime. It is for a confession.”
It had only been a spur-of-the-moment quip, but as soon as the words left his mouth, Jin Yu suddenly felt a surge of excitement. He jumped up on the spot, startling the assistant again.
Jin Yu followed the map toward Wang Meili’s hotel, calling her along the way. She had just been lying idly on the bed. There would probably be no plans tonight. He was very eager, wanting to tell her the cheesy line that had just popped into his head and see her reaction. Although he disliked those uncertain tests, disliked the seesaw of relationships rising and falling, he truly enjoyed teasing her with earnest affection, watching her at a loss, retreating back into her ridiculous turtle shell.
She had not driven him away, had not said anything harsh. That, too, was a kind of answer. Jin Yu narcissistically interpreted those blanks.
Neon traffic became a backdrop. Jin Yu clutched his phone, running wildly through the shimmering night. His backpack bulged, beating against him in rhythm with his heart.
No answer. No answer…
✦
Notes:
一杯子，一辈子 (One cup, one lifetime): it is a homophonic pun, where "one cup" (yī bēizǐ) sounds the same as "one lifetime" (yībèizǐ), often used romantically to imply lifelong commitment.
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