Beijing Comrades (22 page)

Twenty-Three

Ever since I was a kid I had always hated Beijing's sweltering summers. Nature didn't care much what I thought, though, and the hot months were invariably the longest period of the year. By the time the summer after my divorce rolled around, Lan Yu and I had been apart for a year and nine months. It had been a late autumn day when I turned to look at him one last time before walking out the door, when I saw him sitting on the arm of the couch, eyes fixed on me but communicating nothing, and that strange, elusive smile dancing softly on his lips. How many late autumns would pass before I saw him again?

One afternoon, a friend of mine, a real estate developer, asked me to come to a construction industry expo. Held in the first week of June, it took place just days before the four-year anniversary of the events that had taken place at Tian'anmen Square. I wasn't especially interested in the business scheme my buddy wanted me to dive into, and I was also afraid that a construction industry event would remind me of Lan Yu, but
I agreed to go because I didn't want to cause a friend to lose face. When the event was over and I had fulfilled my duty, I stuck around for a while to check out the many displays dotting the floor of the exposition space. It was a mammoth event, and I was awestruck by the seemingly endless number of foreign and joint-venture enterprises that participated. I was no authority on the construction industry, but I had to admit the vendor displays were impressive to look at.

Scanning the room as if I'd been at a cocktail party, my gaze was suddenly detained by three men, a triptych of business suits standing before a vendor display. The one on the right was a foreigner—a white guy—and the other two looked Chinese. I couldn't see the one in the middle because his back was to me, but the one on the left was short, frumpy, middle-aged, and balding. When the one in the middle turned around slightly, my eyes nearly popped out of my head. Yes, it was Lan Yu! I was sure it was him! My heart leaped in my chest and for a moment it became difficult to breathe.

His dark blue suit hugged his tall, virile body. His hair, cropped short, looked nothing like the long, boyish haircut he used to have. He had lost some of the youthful innocence that once surrounded him like a halo, but the masculine allure he now exuded more than made up for it.

The three men were speaking, but I couldn't tell what language. I supposed it was English because the foreigner was not likely to speak Chinese. Lan Yu listened intently as the white guy spoke, and then turned to the middle-aged one. Was he interpreting? I was too far away to see my former lover's face clearly, let alone hear what he was saying. The only thing I knew was that nearly two years had passed and this charming man was just as gorgeous, radiant, and beautiful as ever. The only difference was that now his beauty was inflected by the
relaxed charisma and distilled confidence of a grown man.

I moved closer to them, then lingered behind a display column so they wouldn't see me. The foreigner and the middle-aged guy left, leaving Lan Yu by himself. He went back to the display area of what must have been the company he worked for and stood behind a wooden podium. He took a sip of water from a plastic bottle he pulled out from inside the podium, then exchanged a few words with a Chinese girl—a coworker, I guessed—who stood beside him. He must have said something amusing because she gripped the podium with one hand and covered her mouth with the other to suppress her laughter. She recovered quickly from the joke, but her eyes lingered on Lan Yu's face for some time afterward. Did she have feelings for him? She picked up a folder and began to leaf through some documents.

Watching them from behind the faux-marble column, I recalled that Lan Yu had never been especially adept at interacting with girls. And yet, at that moment he looked so calm, so natural. I took it as sign of how much he had matured in the last twenty-one months, but I also wondered if perhaps, just maybe, he had developed an interest in girls. No sooner had the thought entered my mind than I dismissed it. Lan Yu knew who he was. We both knew.

A few minutes passed and the older guy came back. He waved his hands in the air authoritatively, then patted Lan Yu on the back. The way he touched Lan Yu somehow bothered me, as if he were encroaching on something that was mine. But before I had time to dwell on the injury, the two of them packed up their things and said goodbye to the girl, who stood there smiling as they walked off. Lan Yu was coming toward me. I stepped out from behind the column and our eyes met.

We froze. In some ways, nothing about him had changed:
he was just as beautiful as he'd always been. He stared at me in surprise, but this was quickly replaced by something else—what was it? A combination of pain and sadness—perhaps hatred, too. But in a flash this enigmatic expression was replaced by a vacant, emotionless look, a kind of nothingness. Finally, Lan Yu turned his eyes away from me and faced the middle-aged guy as if he hadn't seen me at all.

With no idea what to do, I remained rooted to the spot like an idiot. I needed time to pull myself together and figure out what to do. And yet there was no time. Here was the moment for which I'd waited for ages, but it wasn't going to wait around for me to seize it. After all the days and nights of longing, was I just going to let him go? I had to think fast.

I ran out of the building and into the parking lot, where I stuffed a handful of cash into my driver's hand and told him to take a cab back to the office. I sat behind the wheel, locking my eyes to the front of the building while waiting for Lan Yu and the other man to come outside. When they did, they got into an upscale Japanese car, black with tinted windows, and drove off. I followed, my mind a whirl of confusion. Where were they going? At first I had thought the middle-aged guy was Chinese, but now, looking at him more closely, I wasn't so sure. He looks like a fucking Jap! I thought angrily. What exactly was their relationship?

I followed them at a distance for twenty minutes before they stopped in front of Skytalk, a massive business complex housing a number of offices, mostly foreign companies doing business in China. Lowering myself in the driver's seat so as not to be spotted, I watched with anguished expectation as Lan Yu and the other man entered the building. By this time I no longer cared whether or not they were lovers. My only concern was not to lose track of Lan Yu's whereabouts. Besides, I
told myself, this was a commercial space: the middle-aged guy was probably Lan Yu's boss. Once they were out of sight, I sat up straight in my seat, wondering how long I would have to wait for them to come back out.

At five o'clock, a flood of office workers began exiting the building. Beijing had no shortage of beautiful young women and men, and seeing so many of them concentrated in one place was quite a sight. Carefully, I examined each guy coming out of the building, but Lan Yu was nowhere to be seen. By the time he finally came into view, the hands of the clock had nearly crept to six. I was surprised to see that he had changed out of his suit and into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. He was empty-handed—no bag, nothing—and was evidently in a rush as he walked hurriedly down the street. I trailed behind him in the car at a safe distance, thinking it was a good thing I was driving the black company Audi, which I knew he wouldn't recognize. He walked a few blocks, then came to a standstill at a bus stop: route 011. There he stood among the crowd of people staring vacantly into the distance, breaking his trancelike gaze only to look down at his watch now and then, apparently worried he was going to be late for something.

I watched him clandestinely from the car, my heart a jumbled mess of conflicting emotions—even I didn't know which one I felt the most. There he was, an ordinary kid who had tasted a lifestyle normally reserved for the Chinese elite. Through me, he had gained access to wealth and splendor beyond anything he could have imagined. He had a house, a car, and all the other things I'd left him with when our relationship had ended. And yet, at the end of the day, there he was standing at a bus stop, perfectly happy to—no, determined to—leave those things behind. It was as if he knew that the best way to get back at me for deserting him was to throw it all
back in my face. He and he alone had the power to deprive me of the peace of mind I would have gained by seeing him accept all that I had given. I watched him standing there at the bus stop, an ordinary kid who'd come to Beijing like all the others. And yet, nothing about him was ordinary.

When the bus came, Lan Yu hopped on and I continued to follow. Half an hour later, he dismounted in front of a small residential complex—called Gala, I learned from the sign out front. When Lan Yu reached the main entrance, he paused to buy a few items from a vendor who had set up shop near the gate, as a steady stream of bicycles and pedestrians flowed past. He paid the vendor and I trailed behind him, still in my car, so that I could see which building he lived in. Straining my eyes, I peered through the tinted windshield, which suddenly seemed so dark that the world may as well have been steeped in tea. Eventually, I was able to read the number on the building: four.

I didn't have the guts to jump out of the car and follow him, but neither was I willing to turn around and go home. So I sat in my car watching the windows in his building light up one by one as the sun went down, wondering all the while which unit was his. At around eight, two men came out of the building. It was dark at that point, but I could see that one of them was Lan Yu. I was unable to make out the other guy's face clearly in the darkness, but I could tell he was wearing glasses. He looked a few years older than Lan Yu. Something about him reeked of the intellectual snob type. I gripped the steering wheel and my palms began to sweat.

The guy with the glasses unlocked his bicycle from the metal bicycle rack in front of the building. He and Lan Yu were standing close to each other, too close, and I even thought—
or had I imagined it?—that he reached out and squeezed Lan Yu's hand before jumping on his bicycle and riding off into the night. Lan Yu stood there for a while, watching him ride away until finally he disappeared, and then went back inside.

The following day I was a mess. No matter where I went or what I did, Lan Yu occupied my mind entirely. Shirtless, I stood in front of the mirror, shaving as I mentally walked through the reality of the situation. I yearned to see him, but I was too chicken. I kept thinking about the previous day, when we had made eye contact at the expo. What was it I saw in his eyes? Did he hate me? Was he disgusted by me? He seemed to be doing pretty well for himself. He had a job and also, apparently, a boyfriend. The words pulsed through my mind again and again: Leave him alone! He doesn't need you. I cut myself shaving. “Fuck!” I shouted at the mirror.

And yet, I reasoned, I have to see him—I need to see him! I stuck a tiny piece of toilet paper to my skin. Then I hatched a plan.

At five that evening, I drove back to Lan Yu's workplace at Skytalk. The instant he stepped out of the building, I slammed my foot on the accelerator and drove to his apartment complex, where I stood near the entrance of building number four until the sky was black and it was nearly nine. As I waited in the murky darkness, I thought back to that extraordinary night four years earlier when I sat on the side of the road waiting for Lan Yu to come back from Tian'anmen.

At last he came home. I fixed my eyes on him as he walked toward the entrance where I stood. Fumbling with a set of keys in his right hand, he held a small leather bag under his left arm. He approached the door and saw me in the darkness.

“Handong?”

I stayed planted on the ground, as silent as the moonlight illuminating his face.

“When did you get here?” he continued. “How did you know I lived here?”

“I got here a while ago,” I said quietly. All this time I'd wanted nothing more than to talk to him, and here I was with nothing to say.

“Okay . . . so . . . can I help you with something?” The formal tone of his voice was off-putting, but at least he was speaking.

“No,” I said awkwardly. “I just—I mean, I wanted to see you.”

We stood in the dark. A neighbor exited the front door and he and Lan Yu greeted each other. “Hi, hi, have you eaten? Good, good.” When the neighbor walked off, Lan Yu turned to face me, but an awkward silence ensued.

Finally he spoke. “Well, why don't you come in?” he said, smiling faintly. I had no idea if he really wanted me to come in or if he was just being polite, but I followed him inside and we made our way upstairs. When we reached the fourth floor, he stopped in front of apartment 419 and unlocked the door. I stepped inside and found myself in a small entry area, where I instinctively took off my shoes. Lan Yu handed me a pair of blue plastic slippers to wear, and I entered the living room. In one corner sat a blue table with chipped paint surrounded by a couple of chairs. In another corner was a couch. To my left and right were two doors, one shut, the other open and leading into a bedroom. At the far end of the living room was a small balcony. Clotheslines hung from the ceiling and a few empty flowerpots sat on the cement floor. Trying to look nonchalant, I peered through the door of the
open bedroom: a double bed, two identical writing desks, a bookshelf, and a few empty boxes and suitcases piled up neatly in one corner. The room was small but tidy, and had a kind of Spartan dignity to it.

I wanted to just come out and ask Lan Yu why he wasn't living at Tivoli anymore, but decided to phrase the question indirectly. “You rent this place?”

“Yeah, but I only get these two rooms,” he replied, waving his hand in a circle to indicate the living room and the bedroom on the right. “There's another guy in the other bedroom.” He pointed toward the closed door on the left.

“He's not here?”

“The landlord says he's abroad or something. I'm not sure when he's coming back. Anyway, I was lucky to get this place.”