◎ Tug of War ◎
Gu Qiao shared her popcorn and fries with Bai Ling. Bai Ling shook her head with a smile, letting her jacket slip halfway off her shoulders, a cigarette pinched between her fingers.
Bai Ling ordered another whiskey and felt a stab of sympathy for the girl in front of her who could only drink hot chocolate: “What do you want? My treat. I won’t tell your cousin.”
“Thank you, but I don’t drink.” Bai Ling was clearly treating her on account of Luo Peiyin — Gu Qiao wasn’t about to take advantage of that.
Bai Ling laughed openly and teased: “You really are a good girl who listens to her cousin.”
“I’m not that much younger than you. I simply don’t feel like drinking tonight.”
Bai Ling tapped her cigarette against the ashtray, then picked up her camera and took some photos, standing up, then sitting back down.
Bai Ling asked Gu Qiao: “I’ve taken a lot of photos, and your cousin’s expression on stage looks about the same in all of them.” The stage has a way of drawing out a person’s desire to perform — even those who are shy and introverted offstage can explode into wild, passionate energy once they step into the spotlight. But Luo Peiyin was the exception. He looked far too composed, to the point that someone who didn’t know better couldn’t guess that the hypnotic, maddening arrangements were his work. Before he left the band, all the arrangements had been Luo Peiyin’s. He was more proud and unyielding than he appeared; when the lead vocalist took his compositions and described to Luo Peiyin how he wanted something relatively lyrical and melancholic, what resulted was the polar opposite. When someone is unyielding enough, even if they are wrong, people begin to wonder whether they might in fact be right — let alone in cases where there truly is no right or wrong.
Later when Luo Peiyin left the band, it was entirely within Bai Ling’s expectations. He didn’t enjoy the spotlight, and he wasn’t accustomed to publicly releasing his emotions. He was suited to sitting in the audience, watching the results of his work with exactly the same expression he wore now on stage.
Bai Ling asked Gu Qiao: “Is your cousin like this at home too? The less expression someone has, the more imagination they tend to inspire. Maybe this is what you Chinese call the art of leaving space in a painting.”
Gu Qiao said nothing. Bai Ling stopped her: “Don’t give me the answer yet — I want to find out for myself. A family member’s description always destroys all imagination.”
Gu Qiao looked at Luo Peiyin on stage, and couldn’t help asking: “What kind of imagination, exactly?” She didn’t think she understood Luo Peiyin any better than Bai Ling did. Looking at him on stage, she genuinely couldn’t picture him absorbed and lost in the music the way the lead vocalist was — his eyes during a performance seemed to be only on the keyboard. What she thought about more was: his jacket was on her; he was wearing just a single layer. If he could at least keep moving like the others — even just out of excitement — that might generate some body heat.
Bai Ling looked at the fully grown young woman before her, then at her hot chocolate, popcorn, and fries. She exhaled a ring of smoke and asked with a smile: “Do you have a boy you like?” She still wasn’t sure how receptive an eighteen-year-old Chinese girl who didn’t drink would be.
Gu Qiao slipped a fry into her mouth: “I’m not thinking about that kind of thing for now.” By this point, her ears had learned to pick out Luo Peiyin’s particular part from within the whole band.
Bai Ling laughed: “Then what are you thinking about?”
Gu Qiao felt saying “making money” might sound a bit crude, though it was the most direct and accurate answer, so she swapped it for another word: “The future.”
Bai Ling asked her to explain more plainly — her Chinese was fluent enough, but with certain grand words, she could never quite pin down the meaning.
So Gu Qiao explained her future more concretely: she was currently selling clothes. She showed Bai Ling the jeans she had been selling and asked: “Winter is almost here — I’m thinking about stocking up on winter clothing. Could you give me some suggestions?” She needed some input to adjust her own restocking list.
Bai Ling was a little surprised: “You’re already working?”
Gu Qiao smiled: “Do I not look it?”
Gu Qiao worked hard to stuff herself with the popcorn and fries — high-calorie things that could generate warmth — and very quickly they were all gone. Once she had finished everything, she rose from her seat. She smiled and said to Bai Ling: “You’re the most effortlessly cool person I’ve ever met. Running into you tonight has made me very happy. Thank you for keeping me company and talking with me for so long.” She extended her hand. Bai Ling saw how formal she was being and smiled, shaking her hand in return.
Gu Qiao called the server over to settle the bill, but the server told her it had already been put on Luo Peiyin’s tab. Since he was performing here, he wasn’t going anywhere, so the bar allowed him to run a tab. Gu Qiao said she would settle it now. The server didn’t refuse — and proceeded to add the whiskey Luo Peiyin had ordered for Bai Ling to the total alongside Gu Qiao’s popcorn and fries.
Gu Qiao heard the amount and almost thought she’d misheard. The server then read out each item one by one. Every price surprised her — it was practically extortion; the markups were so much higher than what she earned selling clothes. The price of this one bucket of popcorn was enough to pop an entire huge sack’s worth back in her village — back home, for one jiao’s worth of popcorn, she and her younger sisters could snack all afternoon. Having failed to negotiate the price down, she settled the bill — including the whiskey Luo Peiyin had ordered for Bai Ling. She gathered the money she had earned with such difficulty that day, counting out tens, ones, and jiao notes one by one into the server’s hands. As she handed it over, the warmth of the money still lingered on her hands. She was reluctant to let it go.
The warmth of the money gave Gu Qiao a sense of warmth that was hard to resist — and now that warmth was temporarily gone. She asked the server for a receipt; the server looked at her blankly. She insisted until she could see the server erase the tab previously recorded under Luo Peiyin’s name. Still not fully at ease, she wrote a note: “Bill settled in full — no need to settle again,” and tucked it into the jacket pocket.
She neatly stripped off the oversized jacket she’d been wearing and handed it to Bai Ling: “Please give this jacket back to my cousin, and tell him — I had a wonderful evening here tonight.”
The moment she stepped out of the bar, the deep-autumn wind poured straight into her long-sleeve T-shirt. She turned to look back at the bar’s sign — it was practically highway robbery. She would not be back until she had earned real money.
She ran toward the bus stop. As long as she ran fast enough, she couldn’t feel the cold. Gu Qiao had never run so fast as she did tonight. When she reached the bus stop, her bus had just pulled up — she leaped on just before the doors closed. The bus windows were fogged with a film of condensation; looking out at the city’s nightscape from inside was not entirely clear. Gu Qiao wiped the mist away with her hand and strained to see the city as clearly as she could. Today she had earned money only to watch a good portion of it go back out again — but ahead of her were still many chances. She would make her place in this city. Thinking this, she smiled brightly at her own reflection in the glass.
Back at the Luo family home, in the small room she was staying in, Gu Qiao immediately changed into a properly fitted sweater. She took out the box from the drawer and returned the little bird brooch to it. She left her door open a crack, keeping her ear carefully tuned to the sounds from the living room, waiting for people to clear out before she went to use the telephone to page Luo Peiyin’s number. Once the voices in the living room faded, she slipped quietly into the living room, turned on the floor lamp, and in the dim amber light, looked at the buttons on the telephone — it was so late now; did she really still need to call?
Just as Gu Qiao’s hand touched the buttons, the phone rang. At the same moment, she heard her own heartbeat. When the rhythm of her heartbeat and the ringing of the phone fell into sync, she picked up the receiver.
“Hello.”
The other end didn’t respond right away. Gu Qiao repeated: “Hello.” And then said nothing more.
“Hello.”
Gu Qiao immediately recognized whose voice that was. She wondered whether to explain why she hadn’t paged his number to report that she was home safe — then decided Luo Peiyin was unlikely to be calling just because of that. After all, the probability of her not making it home safely was really very small; it wasn’t worth Luo Peiyin worrying that much.
“Cousin, is something the matter?”
Luo Peiyin didn’t bring up the fact that she hadn’t paged him. He simply asked: “What are you doing right now?”
Since Luo Peiyin hadn’t brought it up, Gu Qiao omitted the part about sneaking into the living room to call him. She smiled and said: “I was going to get some water and happened to be passing through the living room when I heard the phone ring. Is your performance over?”
“It’s over.”
“Did Bai Ling give you the jacket?”
“She did.”
Silence again on the line. Gu Qiao waited for Luo Peiyin to end the call, but he didn’t say goodbye. In the living room, only the floor lamp was lit; everything was bathed in amber, nothing entirely clear. Gu Qiao thought of Bai Ling’s words — that family members destroy all imagination. But the thing was, Bai Ling had gotten it wrong. She and he were not truly family.
Among all the imaginings, Gu Qiao chose the one closest to reality.
So she asked quietly: “Cousin, are you hungry? If you are, I can cook you a bowl of noodles now — it’ll be ready by the time you get home.”
“I’ve already eaten. Get some rest.”
“All right.” Gu Qiao paused. “Then, goodbye.”
Luo Peiyin didn’t say goodbye — he simply hung up.
Gu Qiao went back to her little room and wrapped herself tightly in her quilt. Before sleep came, she ran through her accounts one more time and thought about tomorrow’s restocking list. Once the restocking list was settled in her mind, she heard someone come into the living room — and with that reassurance, she let herself drift off to sleep.
Early the next morning, when Gu Qiao came out of her room, she found the living room light on and Luo Peiyin sitting on the sofa, flipping through something. He had gotten up even earlier than her, and was wearing a different jacket today.
She was wondering whether to disturb him when she heard Luo Peiyin call her name.
She immediately answered: “Cousin.”
“If you don’t want to keep your current job, the pay at foreign trade companies is fairly decent right now — I could put in a recommendation for you. Didn’t you tell your aunt you signed up for an English tutoring class? You might as well actually go enroll in one. Two months of training should be enough. In the meantime, if you’re short on money, just say the word.”
“Cousin, there’s no need. I still want to sort out my job situation on my own.” She already owed him enough. Besides, she was perfectly capable of earning money herself.
“Think it over. Give me your answer tomorrow.”
“Cousin, thank you for thinking so much of me — but I’ve already made up my mind. I think what I’m doing now suits me very well.”
Luo Peiyin handed her a neat stack of banknotes: “This is for the trousers, and for yesterday’s bill.”
“The trousers were a gift from me. And the popcorn and fries — I ate them, so of course I should pay.”
“The whiskey, at least — that wasn’t something you drank. So why did you pay for it?”
“Bai Ling is wonderful. She kept me company and talked with me for so long — buying her a drink is nothing.”
“Bai Ling is my friend. You didn’t need to treat her. As for what you ate — that was also my treat. I don’t think those are necessarily things you’d have chosen yourself.” He didn’t think they made for a proper dinner either, but that bar only had those things to eat.
Luo Peiyin suddenly took Gu Qiao’s hand, placed the money in her palm: “Keep it. I don’t like to go back and forth over things.”