16. There Are No Successful Female Magicians
Wang Meili was being deliberately mysterious, yet she had no intention of revealing the mystery.
The moment she turned around, Jin Yu suddenly grabbed her by the wrist. “Give me an answer right now.”
“What?” She jumped, thinking he was about to expose the whole tortured journey behind her drunken story-making again. Fine. Who was she afraid of? She just wanted a man to fuck her with sympathy and tenderness. Ordinary animal mating behavior was boring. So what! Couldn’t a hookup come with a story? You had snacks to go with alcohol, didn’t you!
Jin Yu tightened his fingers around her wrist and held her hostage with his gaze. “I’m really tired of this.”
“Of what?” she asked, though she knew perfectly well.
Wang Meili liked the feeling of conquest. She was a wolf, and she liked wolves too. Jin Yu was too obedient, a little sheep. This rare display of forcefulness made him seem like a wolf. She could feel his possessiveness, and while she was intoxicated by the little lamb’s transformation, she was also, to some extent, uncomfortable with being held hostage.
Jin Yu clenched his teeth so hard that sparks seemed to fly from his eyes. He wished he could strap her to a tiger bench and force-feed her chili water, yet after holding it in for ages, he still could not get the words out.
What was he supposed to say? Give me a title, a proper status? That was way too awkward. Did that even sound right? Or should he ask, Does this mean we’re together? What if she said no? No, according to her temperament, she was even more likely to tease him with a question of her own: What do you think?
What do you think? What did he think? What did she think?
Jin Yu thought... they were together. This was the kind of thing adults simply understood without saying. If he pushed it any further into the open, they would lose that pleasant atmosphere lovers had. From Wang Meili’s knowing smile, he understood that she knew all about his struggle and hesitation. Jin Yu let out a breath of relief. Love was not something written in black and white. Love was an unspoken understanding.
“I understand.” Jin Yu smiled. Pale skin, white teeth, lips light in color, making a person want very badly to kiss him to death.
Understand what? “What if I’m lying to you?”
“Then I’ll get revenge on you.”
“Huh?” To be honest, Wang Meili was startled. Her life had always stayed far away from melodramatic prime-time soap operas and niche arthouse films. After some vague impulse, the story simply came to an abrupt end. Men like hawks and falcons rarely appeared in her script. For a moment, she had no idea how to continue the conversation.
Jin Yu stared at her until her scalp prickled. Covering her mouth, she looked away. “Stop looking at me. I’ve got so many closed comedones.”
What were closed comedones? “There is no woman in the world more beautiful than you.”
Chinese love talk spoken with a French accent sounded strange. Wang Meili said, “How could there not be?” There were beautiful women all over the streets, okay?
“Who? Show me.”
He looked around from side to side, then cupped her face in his hands. “You’re the prettiest.”
The one thing a man would never lie to a woman about was desire. She pretended to be stupid and believed him, the corners of her lips lifting. “Fine. I’m the prettiest.” She raised her beautiful but shattered, sleep-deprived face and, exhausted, let out an invitation.
Even amid the ragged, breathless tearing at each other, Wang Meili still could not escape her own unwillingness to let things go. A murky breath kept surging upward inside her, so she rose onto her toes and pushed him down beneath her, loosely gripping his throat. “You’ve seen me somewhere other than the gallery too, haven’t you?”
Jin Yu froze for a moment, then nodded.
“Janvier Sec?” [1]
The game of cat and mouse was about to begin.
Jin Yu finally realized and bolted toward the side of the bed as if fleeing for his life. Wang Meili nimbly jumped onto his back and wrapped an arm around his neck. “You little brat! You fucking pervert! Just how much do you know about me?!”
“It really was a coincidence!” Jin Yu had been accompanying a friend who was volunteering when he saw her. At the time, the president of France’s anti-addiction federation was using social media to promote a sobriety campaign, and group members helping one another overcome alcohol dependence had become popular locally. He had run into Wang Meili several times at the sobriety meetings. She had really been in terrible shape at first, with heavy dark circles beneath her eyes and an utterly drained presence. So when he saw her running through a flea market the following year, he was delighted. She had gotten better. She looked more alive.
Through gritted teeth, she said, “Asshole.” Wang Meili was somewhat unaccustomed to this little brat knowing so much about her past, especially a past that had not been particularly beautiful.
“I...”
“How many chance encounters have you been holding back? You’re seriously terrifying!” She bit down on his arm, determined to make him suffer a little.
“I haven’t!” Of course he had wanted to tell her about this connection between them, but as he watched her stories grow smoother and smoother, watched her avoid her old drinking companions and move from one venue to another, watched her condition steadily improve, he gradually held himself back. He knew how happy she was when she stood before everyone and told a wonderful story, a happiness that surpassed alcohol itself. And he also knew that she did not particularly want anyone to see through her “fabrications.”
Jin Yu defended her. “A lot of alcoholics make up stories. It’s normal.”
“I know!” Otherwise, how could everyone have so many fascinating life stories to share? A large part of it was dramatic embellishment. But she was still embarrassed. Those were all the ugly things from her past. “I just hate you! I hate you!” She pounded him willfully, venting her inexplicable irritation.
This was too much. Having someone watch her lie, and not even the original version, but one she had revised several times, was simply too embarrassing. Especially since last time, when she had gotten carried away after drinking, she had told him a perfectly self-consistent final version one-on-one, face-to-face. And he had even played along, holding her emotionally and pretending to believe her. The more she thought about it now, the more she wanted to bury herself alive.
Wang Meili snarled, “Too much!”
He admitted it. “I went too far.”
“Where did I go too far? Why should I admit it?” Wang Meili got even angrier. She bared her teeth and flailed her claws like a dog, so furious that tears came to her eyes. They were tears squeezed out by an overly expressive face.
“Do you think I’m ridiculous?”
“No! Absolutely not!” He was lying to her. He had once suspected that she had mental problems, until later, when he saw several alcoholics get so excited after sharing their sobriety stories that they immediately wanted to crack open a few bottles and drink to their heart’s content. Only then did Jin Yu understand. What they enjoyed was “lying,” standing before a crowd and delivering a kind of “accident-ridden life” as though giving a speech.
Wang Meili felt awkward. She pulled the covers over her face and urged him to hurry things along. How could Jin Yu still be in the mood? Seeing that she had gone silent, he cautiously apologized. “I just thought you looked very happy.”
“Not particularly.” Who would be happy about being dragged to a place like that by a friend? Apart from being addicted to alcohol, using alcohol to escape her schoolwork, and using degeneration to disguise her laziness, she had no story at all. Her family was bad, but no matter how bad it was, it was only a traditional Chinese family with an overbearing father and a mild-tempered mother. The first time she had to face a whole roomful of eyes, she practically wanted to write out her entire family genealogy. They were too enthusiastic. Her silence convinced her fellow sobriety-seekers that she must be carrying some profound and painful burden, and they kept encouraging her. Deep-set eye sockets surrounded her in a riot of colors. The pressure became too much. She closed her eyes, and two streams of tears shot down.
The “speech” had begun in a rather ridiculous way. Yet as she cried and cried, she somehow made up a whole tragically miserable life for herself.
Qin Su was astonished. At first, Wang Meili had refused to go to sobriety meetings, but later she actually began running around to different ones everywhere. Qin Su was even happy that she was actively working toward sobriety. What bullshit. After alcohol, Wang Meili had simply become addicted to a new stimulus: lying. Or giving speeches. Or fabricating a life. Call it whatever you wanted, changing the words did not change what it was.
From Wang Meili’s observation, at sobriety meetings, when everyone talked about their fascination with alcohol and the times they had lost control, men had a much higher proportion of bragging and fabrication.
“Do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because in secular society, men lying and women lying aren’t the same thing. Everyone assumes men will brag and exaggerate their life experiences. It’s considered a social skill. Even if they get exposed, they can just laugh it off. But when women lie, it’s seen as frivolous and cheap, a label that gets stuck to them for life while people point and gossip. That’s why magic is so popular around the world, yet there are hardly any successful female magicians.”
There was no denying that lying and making up stories gave her the thrill of walking a tightrope, though it had also led to some miserable consequences. In Rouen, she once ran into someone who had heard one of her sobriety stories, but she could not remember during which phase of her life she had met the woman, so naturally, the story she told was completely different. Even now, Wang Meili remembered the expression on that woman’s face, folding and changing with every movement of her lips, the disbelief on it like something out of a horror movie.
She was thrown out of that sobriety meeting. Then, in her panic, she encountered a drunk driving a car. She was hit and dragged for several meters, the skin and flesh of her outer ear scraped into a bloody mess.
She hated alcohol. It pissed her off to death.
The night flowed quietly onward, their lovemaking interrupted twice.
Jin Yu took advantage of the opening. “Was there really someone named Situ?”
“Yes.” She admitted it. “The first boyfriend whose name I can remember.”
Jin Yu licked his lips. “You don’t remember the ones before him?”
“At first I did. But later, I made up too many names, so I forgot the real ones.”
After saying that, their breaths collided, hot and burning. Jin Yu was lost in the chaos of her stories, his desire dropping to zero. Wang Meili was drowsily beginning to fall asleep, and Jin Yu, exhausted from all his travel, was sleepy too. They lay twisted every which way, tangled together, just about to drift off, when Jin Yu suddenly jolted awake and cupped her face.
“This time it’s real, right?”
With her eyes closed, Wang Meili lazily turned over and tucked the covers around herself. “If you believe it, then it’s real.”
A strange smile curled at the corner of her lips. She looked every inch a proper villain.
Jin Yu did not believe her, and he did not care either. He was busy calculating how to fool his parents next week so he could spend the New Year here with her, even though Wang Meili had said she did not need him.
“One hundred and sixty-two. Today, neither of the two times ended in s, so we’ll count them as 0.5 each. That makes one hundred and sixty-three...”
He murmured so quietly that he sounded like a mouse gnawing on cheese, but it still disturbed Wang Meili’s light sleep.
She heard the doors of her heart creak open like ancient city gates, followed by a burst of pounding drums. Her cheeks immediately flushed red.
“Count that again!”
“I was counting secretly.”
“Only a pervert would count how many times they have sex!”
“Then I’ll be a pervert. A female liar and a male pervert, we’re a perfect match.”
He said they were a perfect match, and she neither refuted him nor cursed him for it. To Jin Yu, that night was too important.
Without thinking, he let the truth slip out. “When we’re old...”
Wang Meili kicked backward hard. She hated that sort of thing the most.
Jin Yu deliberately turned up the cheesiness. “Even if we don’t make it to old age, then when we reach one thousand times, we can have some kind of anniversary.”
Wang Meili jumped up in embarrassed fury and threw her arms around him, gnawing at him wildly. “Say it again! Go on, say it again!”
“I was counting secretly. Whose fault is it that you eavesdrop every single time?” he whispered into her ear.
In that moment of utter intimacy, Wang Meili’s cheek was squashed into a lump by the crook of his arm. All her sharpness had disappeared. She looked like a child, not fierce in the slightest, yet deliberately trying to act fierce.
Through gritted teeth, she said, “Count in your head.”
“I’m afraid I’ll cheat. I have to say it out loud. Otherwise, if one time lasts especially long, I’ll want to count it twice.”
Men inflated easily. He even scored himself in his head, holding her tightly and asking whether he had been impressive that time.
“Ah! You’re so annoying!” Wang Meili clutched her head. She did not want to talk to him anymore.
Jin Yu tickled her waist and laughed so hard he could not stop.
In a muffled voice, she said, “Do you know how boring sex after making a relationship official is?”
“No.”
“You’re only this naive because you don’t know.” Without lifting her head, she continued, “It’s like how you aren’t interested in washing your face or brushing your teeth, but you still have to do them. Mechanical. Boring.”
“So what?” He did not understand. Jin Yu had plunged headfirst into the river of love and wanted to drown in it. He thought doing boring things with someone you liked was perfectly normal.
“Forget it.” Wang Meili could not be bothered with him. There was no explaining something like this to a brat.
In her dream, Wang Meili fell into a vat of warm, melted chocolate.
✦
Notes:
【1】The British charity Alcohol Concern launched the “Dry January” campaign, in which participants abstain completely from alcohol during the first month of the new year through mutual support and supervision. Its French name is Janvier Sec.
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