From the novel: April Affairs

Wei Lai thought he had misheard.

He stepped away a couple of paces: “Say that again?”

“How are you and that ‘deflated of all spirit’ Miss Cen getting along?”

Wei Lai was genuinely impressed: “You can actually use a phrase like ‘drained of all life and spirit’ now.”

Milu was very enthusiastic about learning colloquial expressions, but it was rare to hear him actually produce a four-character Chinese idiom.

Milu, having achieved his goal, was in high spirits: “Wei, I just knew you’d catch it! Chinese idioms are so hard! How are things — are you getting along with Miss Cen?”

Wei Lai said: “Pretty well.”

“Pretty well?!”

“She’s not really a ‘drained of all life and spirit’ sort of person, actually. Every now and then she does something that completely catches you off guard. Quite alarming.”

He glanced down at his trousers — the bloody handprint was still there. Passersby probably assumed it was some kind of artistic style or an eccentric decorating choice.

“Getting along pretty well… so would you two get married?”

Where on earth did that come from? Wei Lai didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

The blond musician was smiling at Cen Jin. Smile all you like — you haven’t got a chance. She’s going to marry a doctor, a lawyer, or a professor. Not someone who plays stringed instruments.

He lowered his voice: “I don’t see much hope of that.”

Milu sounded wistful: “Can’t you at least try? Wei! The two of you are really a perfect match. I’ve even thought of a name for your children.”

Wei Lai felt a vein bulging at his temple.

But he intended to hear this out — Milu never had flights of fancy without reason.

Sure enough —

“I’ve been studying Chinese these past couple of days and just figured it out!”

“Wei — your name is Wei Lai, which means ‘future.’ Miss Cen’s name is Cen Jin, which sounds like ‘the past.’ If you had a child together, you could name it ‘now,’ meaning ‘the present!’ “

“Your whole family would be: past, future, and now. I could even write you a song — ‘now’s naughty, past’s a beauty, future’s responsibility…'”

Utterly hopeless.

Wei Lai’s scalp crawled. He cut Milu off before the musical cells in his body could break free entirely.

“Miss Cen had her life planned all the way to forty when she was a teenager. I can promise you — there is no place for me in that plan, now or ever.”

By now, her plan was probably extended all the way to eighty. She might even have the funeral arrangements sorted out.

A thought struck him — he suddenly wanted to verify this.

He hung up and settled back at the table. The dark beer had arrived, topped with layers of fine white foam, like cola that had gone far too dark.

“May I ask — have you made plans beyond that? Old age, your funeral, who goes first…”

He couldn’t go on. It felt absurd even to himself.

But, terrifyingly, she answered.

“I have given it some thought. Ideally, I would prefer my husband to die before me — married life inevitably accumulates certain secrets. If I go first, there’s no guarantee he won’t go about blurting things out, damaging my reputation.”

“If he goes first, I would have a rather quiet stretch of later years to use for writing my memoirs…”

Wei Lai wanted to drown himself in the dark beer.

Mapping out a plan that far — at first it sounded laughable, then on reflection, alarming, and then there was something very slightly admirable about it.

But some things he couldn’t hold back: “Following a schedule so precisely — living like a train running on timetables… doesn’t it feel dull?”

“Not at all.”

She said it offhandedly: “It’s just talk, anyway. This train of mine derailed a long time ago… didn’t you know?”

——

When they had finished resting, Wei Lai called a taxi to the airport, gesturing for Cen Jin to share the back seat with him.

Along the way, he began wrapping things up. Cen Jin, following his instructions, propped up her backpack to act as a screen while she watched him disassemble the gun.

He worked like someone solving a puzzle — unhurried, and it was impossible to tell quite how he did it, but a perfectly functioning pistol broke apart into scattered fragments between his turning fingers: magazine, magazine catch, firing pin, recoil spring, the bent-up anesthetic syringe. In the brown paper bag — a forlorn assortment of remains.

None of these could go through airport security. They had to be dealt with.

Wei Lai held out his hand to her: “The bear claw.”

Cen Jin didn’t want to give it up.

Wei Lai understood completely. She probably didn’t want to part with it because of how the bear claw looked — this particular one was especially compact, with a black Teflon coating, no guard, just a ring to slip a finger through, designed for close-quarters combat against the body. If it weren’t sharpened, worn on a cord around the neck it would make a handsome pendant.

Women don’t like danger, but they are often drawn to things that are beautiful and dangerous — the bear claw, for instance, or men with exceptional looks.

He kept his hand out: “The bear claw.”

Cen Jin still didn’t move.

“This bear claw is new — the very first thing it drew blood from was me. That makes it mine to keep.”

No wonder — the moment meaning got attached to something, things became complicated. Now that she put it that way, Wei Lai actually found it quite meaningful — behind this knife was a ship full of women whose fate was still unknown.

“You genuinely want to keep it?”

His tone seemed to leave room for negotiation. Something stirred in Cen Jin; she nodded.

“Then give it to me.”

He had an idea? Cen Jin was half-convinced, half-doubtful, and at last passed the bear claw over.

Wei Lai weighed it in his hand. It really was quite small…

He looked up at Cen Jin, smiled warmly: “Not possible. It won’t clear security.”

Cen Jin turned to look out the window. Every cell in her body was saying: don’t talk to me anymore.

···

The car arrived at the airport. Wei Lai had already worked out a plan — three things, one at a time.

First, he walked Cen Jin in a circuit of the terminal — from one rubbish bin to the next.

At each one, he dropped in part of what was in the brown paper bag, tossing a few pieces, scattering them like a farmer sowing seed.

The individual bullets went into the drains in different sections of the terminal — a clean, deliberate dispersal. That gun would never be whole again in this lifetime.

Second, he went and bought himself a coffee.

Cen Jin sat waiting not far off. In the brief time it took to grind and pour, the girl at the coffee counter was laughing and couldn’t stop — and in the end, she wrote her phone number down on a slip of paper and slipped it to him, along with a glance that flew across the counter.

When Wei Lai came back over, she said: “Not bad.”

Wei Lai laughed: “You have to find small pleasures on the road, otherwise how dull.”

“If you were a bit more consistent about who caught your eye, you’d have a house full of children and grandchildren by now.”

Wei Lai leaned toward her.

Said: “Watch your words. Children of your own, that’s fine — grandchildren? Do you think that’s possible?”

He looked into Cen Jin’s eyes and slowly slipped the small rolled tube of paper he had twisted into her canvas jacket’s arm pocket.

“Your bear claw — after the negotiation, call her yourself and pick it up.”

···

Third — he went to stand at the entrance of the tourist center, planting himself in the most conspicuous position possible, right in the center of the doorway.

Nordic men, and particularly Nordic men, tended to be tall and broad-shouldered, long-limbed, with an average height above 180 centimeters. In this regard, Wei Lai held his own without any difficulty whatsoever — Cen Jin, watching him from the side for a moment, suddenly felt that using “clothes rack” to describe a man was actually quite apt.

A young blond woman walking past even glanced back at him.

This could be counted as bringing honor to one’s origins — even if both of their nationalities were something of a long story.

Waiting was dull. Cen Jin went over to speak to him: “Just standing there — you’ll actually get the tickets this way?”

Wei Lai looked at her: “You haven’t done a lot of these handoffs, have you?”

He explained: “You stand and wait, and Milu will have things arranged — naturally, inconspicuously, without drawing attention. In this line of work, there are many small details that an outsider might not notice…”

Before he could finish, someone behind him hollered: “Christmas Tree? Christmas Tree? Is there a Christmas Tree here?”

Wei Lai felt… life was really, truly exhausting.

Cen Jin looked at him.

Wei Lai hoped she would say nothing.

The gracious and tactful thing was to say nothing — leaving someone a bit of dignity was a kind of virtue.

The person came striding over: “Christmas Tree?”

It was an airport maintenance worker — work uniform, carrying a mop bucket — stocky, hair sticking up at all angles, looking a bit of a lunkhead.

“They said black-haired man, name’s Christmas Tree, woman with him. Is that you? Why didn’t you answer?”

And then he slapped an envelope into his arms: “Your tickets.”

As he walked off with his bucket, he grumbled under his breath — something like “dumb,” “didn’t answer when called,” “blockhead.”

Wei Lai did his utmost not to look at Cen Jin. He kept his expression composed and pulled out the tickets to check them.

Cen Jin was still looking at him.

Wei Lai hoped she would say nothing.

Events conspired otherwise.

“Arranged ‘naturally and inconspicuously’ — that means hollering, does it?”

Of course not — you can burn a shirt and call it “settling things”; I can call Milu’s arrangement a cunning reversal, working precisely against expectation…

“Let’s go then.”

She didn’t give him the chance to say more — she turned and walked into the terminal. At the moment she stepped through the entrance, her right arm rose high, and her fingers curved inward with a beckoning motion.

Like a summons. Like a rallying call. Like someone riding a pig, raising an arm to lead a charge…

Wei Lai felt this comparison was exactly right — a wordless insult, smooth and seamless, falling like spring rain.

He shifted the strap of his bag, spirits unexpectedly bright, and followed.

Wait — he stopped suddenly.

A rallying call, riding a pig — leading a charge… the ones being rallied… were those also, perhaps…

——

Security and immigration went smoothly. Wei Lai’s one minor complaint was the ticket: a red-eye flight.

Though on reflection — with nearly twenty hours of flying ahead, there was bound to be some night travel. Besides, the Saudi had been generous: the seats were business class.

All that remained was to wait for boarding.

For a bodyguard, the hardest thing to endure was waiting alongside the client — you couldn’t keep chatting with them either; people found that annoying.

Then again, Cen Jin didn’t chat with him. She had her own way of passing the time: she took out her drawing paper and pencil and sketched away, not once lifting her eyes.

Wei Lai kept half his attention on the surroundings and half on watching her draw.

No sense of danger — perhaps everything was as he had suspected, and the threat to Cen Jin was only an obsessive stalker.

She was laying down the outline; a shape gradually emerged. It seemed to be a primary school — there was a playground, a flagpole, a flag at the top of the pole.

On the playground, people gathered in small clusters, cooking over open fires, smoke rising up to meet the overcast sky.

Behind the school’s iron gates: beds, classroom desks, stones, and a truck, all piled as barricades.

He was finding it rather interesting when laughter suddenly broke out — mixed with the rolling rumble of luggage wheels and a language he didn’t understand — passing by the entrance to the business class lounge.

Wei Lai thought nothing of it. An international airport — naturally, voices from every direction.

But Cen Jin’s pencil stopped — just for an instant. She was using a pencil; the stroke had been flowing smoothly. With that sudden pause, the mark at that spot was darker than everything around it, conspicuously so.

Wei Lai gave no outward sign; his gaze drifted toward the passengers who had just gone past.

A large family group — children and adults alike, thick outer coats over the edges of long, brightly colored robes. Among them was a little girl, hair woven into small braided twists, tips tied with colorful beads that jingled with every shake of her head.

Wei Lai looked back: “This flight is bound for Khartoum. There should be quite a few African passengers on board.”

Cen Jin said nothing. After a while, she went on drawing.

Only — no matter how many strokes she added, no matter how fine the details became, the mark left by that brief pause of the pencil remained, always there, in the picture.