He was silent. I took this to mean yes, he had fought back.
“Then you were part of the problem, Lan Yu!” I said imploringly. “You’re too attached to money—you should have just given him whatever he wanted. People like that will kill you in a heartbeat. A lot of cab drivers have been killed that way.”
“Are you done yet?” he asked. His left arm was tied up in a bandage, hanging in front of his chest, and his right hand was wrapped in gauze. He had obviously tried to fight back or else he wouldn’t have gotten hurt this way. I kneeled in front of the bed and gently took his right arm in my hand.
“Does it hurt?”
“It’s fine,” he said grumpily.
I leaned in and kissed his lips. “Remember. It’s not for nothing they say money is the root of all evil. What matters is life! I just worry that if you don’t control your temper, something bad is going to happen to you.” I sounded like I was lecturing a child.
He gave me a cheerful smile. “Give me another kiss!” He hadn’t listened to a word I had said.
A week later, Lan Yu’s arm was improving. One afternoon he rushed into the house excitedly to tell me that because of his injury, there were two exams he didn’t have to take. “Where there’s a loss, there’s always a gain,” he said, repeating the old adage. He jumped onto the couch and clicked on the TV with a giddy smile on his face, and it suddenly occurred to me that this guy, ten years my junior, really was still a kid.
Two weeks after the mugging incident, my secretary stepped into my office and dropped an envelope onto my desk. It had just arrived in the mail, but there was no return address. In fact, there was nothing inside the envelope at all except a check for ¥100,000 from a company called Wonderland. That, I knew, was the company of Yonghong’s older brother, Yongzhuan. Later in the day, Yongzhuan called me. He was nearly fifteen years older than his younger brother.
“Listen, Handong,” he said in a conciliatory voice. “You know what Yonghong is like. Don’t fight him on this.” I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Oh, god, of course not!” I exclaimed, sounding like an idiot but unsure of what else to say. I didn’t know what the phone call was about, but it obviously had something to do with Lan Yu. “Besides,” I continued, “you and I have our friendship to think about.”
“Exactly!” Yongzhuan said. “Anyway, the hundred grand is just a little something to help the kid forget about it.”
“Well, that’s very kind of you,” I said. I had no idea what Lan Yu was supposed to “forget,” but I had to play along to save face. “You know, I never really thought much about this anyway,” I continued. “Yonghong isn’t the kind of guy who gets out of line.” This was all I could think of to say.
After we hung up, I started thinking. I remembered the way Yonghong had tried to talk to Lan Yu in the swimming pool. I didn’t know the details, but I figured what had probably happened was this: that bastard Yonghong had tried to hook up with Lan Yu on a number of occasions, and finally succeeded. When he saw I wasn’t doing anything about it, he got the jitters and asked his older brother to pay me off—just in case I was silently plotting my revenge. Whether or not Yonghong had actually told Yongzhuan all of this, who knows? I suspected that all Yongzhuan knew was that something bad had gone down between Lan Yu and his brother, and that ¥100,000 might help clean up the mess.
I didn’t say a word to Lan Yu about the check or the phone call. Instead, I called Zhang Jie. She knew Yonghong well and wasn’t averse to a little gossip. If there was anything to know, she would be the one to know it. She answered the phone and I told her I needed to come over to talk.
“You guys are too much!” Zhang Jie jeered with a big smile on her face while pouring me a drink. “Two guys fighting over a guy?” She was shocked, but obviously loved the drama.
“Wait—no, that’s not what’s going on at all,” I protested. “I don’t even know what happened!”
“Quit bullshitting me!” she laughed.
“I’m not!” I insisted. “I truly have no idea. I can’t read Yonghong’s mind, and it’s not like Lan Yu’s my wife or something. He never told me what happened. Besides, I’m not even into that kind of stuff anymore!”
“Geez!” she exclaimed. “If that’s the way you feel about it, then Lan Yu’s really wasting his emotions on you, isn’t he? I mean, why even bother being faithful? He should have just slept with Yonghong!” Zhang Jie rolled with peals of laughter.
“Well, did he?” I asked.
“No!” she shrieked. “God, I wish I’d been there. Apparently that little guy of yours is tough as nails. I heard he grabbed the knife right out of Yonghong’s hand and told him he’d die before he’d sleep with him!”
“What? Yonghong is the one who beat him up? I thought Lan Yu got mugged! What a fucking scumbag!” I fumed. I was furious at Yonghong, but I also had to admit that Lan Yu was braver than I. I don’t know what I would have done if I had been in that situation. One thing was for sure, though: I was way off in my estimation of what the ¥100,000 was about.
I didn’t say a word about my conversation with Zhang Jie to Lan Yu. I felt powerless in the face of the situation and didn’t want him to see it. At the same time, however, I was truly puzzled. Why hadn’t Lan Yu told me the truth about what had happened?
That evening, I held Lan Yu in my arms like I held him every night. We messed around a bit, but didn’t take it very far because of his injuries. When he tried going down on me, I prevented him because of the strain it would have put on his arm.
“Don’t you worry,” I said with a kiss to his nose. “When you’re all better, I’m gonna pound you so hard, it’ll be worth the wait!” That brought a smile to his face.
I drew him deeper into my arms. “Hey, Lan Yu, I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
He looked at me searchingly. I hesitated, not entirely sure what I was about to say. “Do you think gay people can have everlasting love?”
He smiled as if relieved by the question. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I’ve never thought about it.” Lan Yu had never liked theoreticals. He’d always been the kind of person to go with his gut feeling.
“Well, I think they can,” I said confidently. “If straight people can have it, then gay people can, too.”
“Are you talking about us?” he asked, and his eyes sparkled.
I grinned sheepishly. “I’m talking about me.”
Lan Yu laughed softly, but seemed at a loss for words.
“Lan Yu,” I continued. “Do you care about me?” I had never asked anyone such a question. Before meeting Lan Yu, I had never known what it felt like to lack self-confidence.
“Of course I do,” he replied quietly.
A long silence followed. “It was Yonghong, wasn’t it?” I asked. “You were lying when you said you got mugged.”
More silence.
“He’s good looking,” I said. “And generous.”
Lan Yu yanked himself out of my embrace and looked at me angrily. “It makes me sick just looking at him!” he said. “I didn’t do anything, Handong. I didn’t ask him out, I didn’t flirt with him, nothing! That guy has mental problems.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about it?”
“I just thought the whole thing was so disgusting, I didn’t want to tell you about it. I was afraid that—I don’t know—I thought it would put you in an awkward position.” He averted his eyes and for once it was I who had nothing to say.
Fourteen
I bought the villa in the Northern Suburbs: a huge five-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath house with two garages and even an indoor swimming pool. Lan Yu enthusiastically agreed to help me with the renovation and design. What I didn’t tell him was that it was to be our new home. Instead, I told him I was helping a friend who lived in the United States buy it. When we got to the estate I took Lan Yu from room to room, soliciting ideas.
“Wow!” he said, poking his head into the master bathroom. “That friend of yours has s
ome serious money. He’s spending—what, a couple hundred thousand yuan on renovations alone?”
“You like it?”
“Like it? It’s amazing!” he said, knocking on a wall. “I love the overall structure. Something about it reminds me of the architectural style of northern Europe. I read this article about a famous amusement park in Copenhagen. Some of the features here remind me of one of the structures they had in their ‘Nordic Village.’” Lan Yu stepped into the kitchen. “Oh my god, look at these tiles!”
I couldn’t conceal my excitement any longer. “What would you say if I told you this was our new home?”
Lan Yu looked at me in shock. Then he looked at the bedroom again. “Holy . . . fuck! Are you kidding me?” he shouted as he flung his arms around me in delight.
Lan Yu and I moved out of Ephemeros and into the villa, which we christened “Tivoli Gardens” after the Danish amusement park he had read about. I still held on to the old apartment, but almost never went there.
The first time we made love at Tivoli, it was in the bathroom. Lan Yu was in the huge hot tub–style bathtub, his face poking out of a thick swirl of bubbles that made him look like a baby wrapped in an enormous white blanket. I stood outside the tub wearing nothing but a pair of pajama bottoms, inspecting my chin in the mirror to see if I’d sprouted any new stubble.
“You look—at most—twenty-five,” Lan Yu said, eyeing me up and down from the tub. I was thirty at that point. Lan Yu would soon be turning twenty.
I beamed with pride. It wasn’t for nothing that I exercised at least two hours a day and watched what I ate.
“Oh, by the way,” he laughed, distracted by some other thought. “You should see our teaching assistant this semester. He’s this new graduate student. Not even thirty and he already has a beer belly!” Lan Yu attempted to wipe a thick blob of suds off his forehead, but only succeeded in getting more of them on him.
“Sounds like you’ve examined him pretty closely!” I said, leaning into the mirror. “You have a thing for him or what?”
“Well,” Lan Yu replied without the slightest trace of irony, “he is awfully nice to me.”
I put the razor down and turned to look at him. Lan Yu sat motionless in the tub, his arm resting along the outside rim. Crouching like a predatory animal, I moved toward him in playfully exaggerated slow motion, maintaining eye contact the entire time. He clenched his fists as if challenging me to a fight, but when I tried to bite his arm, his reflexes were faster than mine and before I knew it he had plopped a big handful of suds on the top of my head. The whole thing reminded me of the water fights I used to have as a kid.
“Ha!” Lan Yu laughed. Lovingly, I bit his arm a second time, then jumped into the tub to join him, pajama bottoms still on. I sat in his lap, facing him, grabbed his arms, and continued biting: neck, face, whatever I could find. Slowly, so as not to fall, I shifted positions so that I could hold him from behind and kiss the back of his neck while he laughed in delight. By the time I finally stopped biting and kissing him, his upper back was covered with faint teeth marks. Only then was I satisfied enough to settle down and cuddle with him in the bathtub, pants and all.
“Hey,” I whispered into his ear. “We may not be able to get married, but I’ve given you everything I can. Do you understand what I mean?” I didn’t know exactly where I was going with this, but I wanted to speak from the heart.
Lan Yu was still laughing from the water escapade we’d just had. I couldn’t see his face, but he nodded his head to say yes, he did understand.
“Do you regret having met me?” That was my next question. It was something I had wondered about for a long time.
His laughter quieted. “No,” he said, shaking his head, and I hoped it was true.
The next thing I knew, Lan Yu extricated himself from my embrace and sat up in the tub, seemingly startled.
“Hey, what’s this?” he asked, reaching back to grab my rapidly stiffening cock, which pressed against his lower back through the pajamas. I wrapped my arms around his torso to pull him back toward my chest, noticing the way his skin, submerged in the water, felt even silkier than usual. I pressed my chest against his back and strained my face forward to smell his cheek. I had always loved his smell. Then I turned him around so we faced each other. I hooked my hands under his thighs and he wrapped his arms and legs around me. Gently, I lifted him out of the water and laid him on his back on the broad marble platform separating the tub from the wall. Still standing in the water, I lifted his legs and perched his ankles on my shoulders. We made love like that, right there in the tub with the steaming hot air swirling around us.
The days following our move to Tivoli were the happiest and most carefree we had shared. Lan Yu would be graduating soon and spent most of his time working on his thesis, a building design he hoped he would be able to sell further down the road. I, meanwhile, was going to my office two or three days a week. My business pursuits were progressing smoothly, and I was also in the process of planning my next move. A friend of mine had given me the opportunity to invest in and manage a joint-venture cosmetics factory. Running a factory was new territory for me, but I was energized thinking about the possibilities.
Life was so good in those days, I even started to think it might be possible for Lan Yu and me to stay together forever. Our relationship was my nesting ground, a home for my heart. As to whether or not love between two men could ever gain social acceptance, I never gave it much thought. Financial security meant not having to worry about things like that.
I didn’t know whether two comrades could be lifelong partners, loving and taking care of each other till the end. There were those who said relationships like ours couldn’t survive longer than a year, but I knew this wasn’t true because I’d spent several years living contentedly with someone of my own sex. Perhaps it was precisely because our days were full of such joy, so quiet and stable, that the onset of ruin was that much more devastating.
Fifteen
The Bible says there are two kinds of sin. The first is original sin, the kind that Adam and Eve committed before passing it down to us. The second is the sin we commit when we are led into temptation by Satan. When I first met Lin Ping, I thought she was just that: Satan, a bewitching devil luring me to ruin. But I was wrong. The devil was myself.
My professional life was thriving at that juncture. On top of everything else that was going on, yet another rare opportunity had presented itself. I became the director of City Commerce. Not just anyone could enter that world. It was a major coup, an opportunity to penetrate an exclusive stratum of power and rub shoulders with high-ranking public figures. The new arrangement was sure to multiply my business opportunities exponentially. It was at this time that a small American company hoping to strike it rich in China had asked me to be their go-to guy. That’s when I met Lin Ping.
When that American devil first walked into my office, I didn’t know who the woman beside him was. I didn’t even know if she was Chinese. All I knew was that I was transfixed by the stunning Asian woman before me. It wasn’t long before I figured out she was the interpreter the American had brought with him to help with our negotiations.
She was phenomenal. Her sapphire-blue suit showed off two long legs, a narrow waist, and perfectly proportioned hips and ass. Her long, curly hair was tied up on top of her head, falling here and there in seductive strands around her neck and shoulders, black as a crow in flight. She had a simple elegance. Her only jewelry was a delicate pair of square-shaped earrings, sapphire blue like her suit, perched on two tiny earlobes and twinkling against a background of snow-white skin. There was something about her face that looked Western: long, narrow, and very modern. A high-bridged nose, thick, full red lips, and eyes much lighter than the average Chinese woman. Her eyes were a lucid hazel that peered into the world as if calling out from a foggy dream.
The way she carried herself with the American was perfect. Not a trace of arrogance, but nor was she self-effacing. Somehow,
she managed to walk the fine line between sober earnestness and polished self-confidence. A fucking masterpiece, I thought, eating her up with my eyes. I wanted her. And I was going to have her.
The three of us went into the conference room and sat down, me on one side of the table, she on the other side next to the American. She interpreted between English and Mandarin as the American and I exchanged a few obligatory pleasantries. Then we got down to business.
If I had been eating her up with my eyes when she first walked into my office, I was now slowly gnawing at the bones, extracting every drop of marrow I could from the exquisite flesh before me. I didn’t know whether she had noticed the way my eyes penetrated her, but I felt that she was gazing back at me periodically. Was there more going on than the attentiveness required of an interpreter? Her smiling eyes were as gentle as a doe’s. They signaled openness—to what? Not once did she avert her eyes from mine. Not once did she try to hide from my clinging gaze.
When the dialogue with the American was over, we stood up from the table and walked toward the door. I shook the American’s hand and said goodbye. Then I turned to her.
“Miss Lin deserves a special thank you for making our negotiations proceed so smoothly today,” I said, squeezing her hand. “Your English is exceptional.” I had no idea if her English was good or crap.
“Thank you,” she fumbled shyly. She didn’t interpret my compliment for the American, who patiently waited for us to finish speaking. Her modesty spurred an adrenaline rush.
When I got home that evening, I was still reeling from the experience. Excitedly, I recounted the entire affair to Lan Yu, who laughed at the story, but didn’t have much to say in response.
“You really have no interest in women?” I asked him while pouring myself a scotch. Lan Yu was seated on the couch reading a magazine. The glossy cover showed a wrecking ball hovering over a decimated building.
Beijing Comrades Page 15
