◎ Appetite ◎

“What I can supply are leather jackets in a wide range of styles and materials, and all of these products can pass local inspection standards—”

“Miss Gu, the food has arrived — let’s eat first…”

Because Gu Qiao had been intending to save the drinking for later, she hadn’t made the courteous gesture of pouring for Manager Yu. He didn’t press her, and instead poured her glass full himself.

Manager Yu was well-versed in the arts of coaxing someone to drink, making it seem as though refusing his pour was a declaration of contempt for him.

Gu Qiao did find herself growing more and more contemptuous of him — but whatever she felt inwardly, she still raised the glass and took a small sip. She noticed how Manager Yu was looking at her — a kind of toying quality in his gaze, as though she were some decorative object. It made her feel slightly ill. But she was not particularly skilled at avoiding someone else’s stare. She turned the tables and fixed her gaze directly back on Manager Yu, studying him from his dark eyebrows all the way down to his wide chin.

Manager Yu had been rather taken with Gu Qiao’s large eyes — some people could make you feel utterly bewitched simply by the look in their eyes. If that wasn’t possible, then downcast lashes and a flushed face had their own kind of appeal. But Manager Yu got neither pleasure from Gu Qiao. The cool assessment in her gaze left him deeply displeased.

Manager Yu was not exactly a handsome man worth lingering over. Gu Qiao staring at him this way made him feel nothing but provoked. He had assumed that since Gu Qiao was there to ask something of him, and was so young besides, the gap between their positions went without saying — being polite and warm toward her cost him nothing. But Gu Qiao was being far too brazen. Manager Yu decided to put her in her place — to let her understand that she was the one who needed something from him, and people seeking favors ought to carry themselves accordingly.

Just as Gu Qiao was about to bring up her leather jackets, Manager Yu stopped her: “Every occasion calls for its own conversation. Tonight’s focus should be on the meal. I believe sharing a meal is the best way to get to know someone. Only by understanding each other properly can we move toward a more productive collaboration. Don’t you agree, Miss Gu?”

That was not what they had agreed on beforehand.

Manager Yu refilled Gu Qiao’s glass: “Miss Gu, you say you’re very sincere about cooperating, but I’m not seeing any sincerity right now.”

Faced with the choice between excusing herself to the bathroom as a pretext to flee the bill or staying at the table to continue her conversation with the man across from her, Gu Qiao chose the latter. If an old lecher was going to look her up and down, let him — she could stare right back. After all, she was here now — and even if no business was done, getting some useful information wouldn’t be wasted.

Gu Qiao sipped the liquor in small mouthfuls. She had never tried Moutai before and wanted to taste it carefully to see what all the fuss was about. Having tasted it, she concluded that she still preferred sauce-light baijiu — the intensely sauce-fragrant style did not agree with her palate. Bite by bite, she savored the drink she had paid for, in a way that Manager Yu interpreted as someone with very little tolerance for alcohol.

Gu Qiao began to feign drunkenness. She pressed a hand to her forehead: “I can’t drink any more…”

“Miss Gu, you’re speaking so clearly — you don’t look the least bit drunk.”

“Are you determined to get me completely drunk? What would be the point of that?”

The speaker meant nothing by it, but the listener read something into it. Manager Yu heard not a rebuke, but a hint of something else entirely. He grew more at ease.

Taking advantage of the time she could still endure, Gu Qiao smiled and raised a few of the questions she genuinely cared about.

“Didn’t we say we were just having dinner tonight?”

“The finest delicacies are no match for golden words of insight — I’d much rather hear your views.”

Manager Yu had received no small amount of flattery in his time, but the genuine curiosity in Gu Qiao’s gaze he mistook for admiration, and he couldn’t resist it. Faced with her eager expression, he let himself share what he knew.

But Manager Yu was an old hand. Just as he reached a critical point, he stopped abruptly and refilled Gu Qiao’s glass: “If you want to hear more, there’ll be plenty of future occasions for me to tell you. Tonight, food comes first.”

Gu Qiao immediately understood what he was suggesting. If she couldn’t give him what he wanted, she had no hope of getting what she wanted from him either. And a crafty old lecher like this — even if she actually let him get something, she’d likely end up eating only the picture he had painted of a deal.

Gu Qiao put away her smile: “Very well. Let’s stop talking and eat.” She took Manager Yu at his word and set about eating in earnest. By now she had completely abandoned any thought of working with him, and had decided to pay her share. His words and his person were not worth the price of his meal.

Gu Qiao carefully peeled her shrimp, one by one, eating slowly and deliberately — one finished, another peeled, chewing with her mouth closed, not saying a word. Since she had decided to split the bill, she ate exactly half the shrimp with precision. Then she turned her attention to the golden-broth abalone, first studying the components with her eyes before tasting it with the tip of her tongue.

With Gu Qiao suddenly going quiet, her manner of eating becoming quite refined, Manager Yu poured more Moutai for her. This time Gu Qiao didn’t refuse — she sipped it slowly, little by little. Even though she preferred the light-fragrant erguotou, since the money had already been spent, she tried her best to find its merits.

All the fine things in this world — she wanted to try them, one by one.

Having given up on any deal with Manager Yu, Gu Qiao’s attention drifted to the other person in the restaurant.

A third person had joined Luo Peiyin’s table. Male, and seemingly not very old.

She had drifted into a sort of reverie — so deep that when Manager Yu’s hand reached out toward her, she didn’t notice. Not until his hand landed on her hair did Gu Qiao recoil as if startled, crying out: “What do you think you’re doing?”

With a sharp crack, her hand came down on Manager Yu’s arm — the sound rang clearly through the room. It was entirely instinctive self-defense. Had she not been lost in thought, she would have seen his hand coming and dodged in time, then put him in his place with a few sharp words, paid her half of the bill, and left. Luo Peiyin was in this restaurant, and she would rather not draw attention to herself over something like this. Otherwise she would have gladly made this man look like a fool in front of everyone.

Everyone else in the restaurant turned to look at their table. Manager Yu felt utterly wronged. Reaching for someone’s hair was the most preliminary of moves — with plenty of plausible interpretations. If the other party were willing, he would slide his hand to her shoulder; if she dodged away, he wouldn’t pursue it. Over the years, those two reactions were essentially all he’d ever encountered. Touching someone’s hair was not touching their thigh — why react so extremely? With Gu Qiao making such a scene, if this had been an ordinary woman, the situation would have been nearly impossible to explain away.

To prevent Manager Yu from turning the tables and trying to defame her, Gu Qiao called out loudly: “I took you for a dignified, upstanding elder, and this is what you turn out to be — what a disappointment!” While still simmering with indignation, she pulled out her purse and counted out several bills: “I had at most one-fifth of the liquor, so I’ll pay for one-fifth. I may not have eaten exactly half the food, but I won’t quibble about that. My half of the meal I’ll cover myself — the rest is on you!” Even in her outrage Gu Qiao was still doing the arithmetic, producing another fifty-fen coin to add to the bills already slapped down on the table. Her voice was loud, as if nothing less would prove her innocence.

“You—”

Gu Qiao’s way of settling the bill surprised Manager Yu even more than her earlier outburst. In his heart he cursed: today I must have walked into something truly cursed.

If Gu Qiao hadn’t taken money from her purse, Manager Yu would have had any number of ready-made rebuttals — he could have called her a girl using her looks to freeload at his expense, greedy for more once she’d got what she could, turning on him when he didn’t oblige. Or he might have implied she was in a certain trade, that when he’d criticized her she’d gotten flustered and turned on him. After all, no one had actually seen whether or not he’d touched her hair — and even if they had, it was hardly a serious matter. It could be explained as an elder offering comfort, or a wordless word of counsel.

But Gu Qiao had placed her share of the meal money on the table, and most of the ready-made retorts became unusable.

Gu Qiao grabbed her bag and was just about to walk out when she looked up and found herself facing a face that was eighty percent familiar. She said quietly: “Cousin-Brother.”

That remaining twenty percent of unfamiliarity made her look at him for a moment through a different lens — as a woman looking at a man. Against the backdrop of Luo Peiyin, Manager Yu’s flustered and humiliated figure looked rather ridiculous. But in Gu Qiao’s mind there was no comparison being drawn between the two. Only when she needed to be on guard against Manager Yu did she think of him as a man at all.

Luo Peiyin’s gaze moved from Gu Qiao to the liquor on the table, then to the money beside the bottle, and finally settled on Manager Yu’s broad face.

But when he spoke, it was to Gu Qiao: “What did he do to you?”

Manager Yu, convinced he had walked into a set-up, pointed at Gu Qiao and launched into an accusation before she could get a word in: “I’m warning you! Don’t you go slandering people — I didn’t do a thing to you. If you and your Cousin-Brother are trying to shake me down, you’ve come to the wrong person! I can call the police and have you arrested. I’ve seen this kind of honey-trap scheme plenty of times. Take a good look at who you’re dealing with today.”

Luo Peiyin grabbed Manager Yu’s arm and smiled with cool contempt: “I’d like to find out who you are, exactly. Though — don’t you own a mirror at home?”

Manager Yu was in too much pain to speak: “You—”

Luo Peiyin turned to Gu Qiao: “Give me one of this man’s business cards. Let me broaden my horizons.”

Gu Qiao glanced at Manager Yu’s face — contorted with pain. Afraid that if this escalated further, it would only cause trouble for Luo Peiyin, she quickly said: “I never gave him the chance to go further. Cousin-Brother, let go of him and let him leave — any more contact with this person will only bring bad luck.”

Luo Peiyin looked at Gu Qiao. She did not look like someone who had been wronged. He gave Manager Yu’s face a quick glance, then released his arm, smiling as he said to him: “Give me a business card. Let me see for myself just what kind of person you are. Perhaps I’ll pay you a visit one day.”

If this man had kept throwing threats at him, Manager Yu would not have taken it seriously. But this man’s smile made his blood run cold.

Manager Yu tried to guess inwardly what this young man, taller than himself, actually did. From his manner, bearing, and dress, Manager Yu concluded he had a well-connected father — though whether that father’s advantage was money or influence he couldn’t quite determine. If Gu Qiao truly had connections, would she have shown up at his office uninvited? But then again, if she had no connections, how were these two being so audacious?

At this point, a young woman walked over to Luo Peiyin’s side, and the two exchanged some words in quiet English.

The restaurant was well-heated, and the young woman wore only a long dress without feeling cold. Apart from a small pair of pearl earrings, she had no other accessories. Looking more closely, she and Luo Peiyin had a similar nose — both quite straight. She swept her gaze over Manager Yu from head to toe, the way one might look at a piece of garbage. She had spoken English from childhood, but a dedicated Chinese-language tutor at home had given her both fluent listening and speaking in Mandarin.

Manager Yu grew increasingly certain that these people had some kind of background. Here he was, surrounded by an entire party, in a restaurant where people he knew might very well be watching — drawing attention to himself was not ideal. But he had not taken this level of humiliation from anyone in years. Just walking away didn’t sit right with him.

Gu Qiao saw the young woman approach and guessed she had probably interrupted their dinner: “Cousin-Brother, there’s no need to spare this kind of person another glance — even looking at him any longer ruins your appetite.”

Luo Peiyin noticed Gu Qiao had told a small lie. The shrimp shells on her plate and her empty bowl made it quite clear that her appetite had been thoroughly intact just moments ago.

Luo Peiyin called a server over to help Manager Yu settle his bill. Manager Yu glanced at Luo Peiyin and could only swallow his fury for now. He left in a thoroughly mortified scramble, nearly stumbling over a chair on his way out.

Luo Peiyin said to Gu Qiao: “Come and sit at our table for a while.” He introduced the young woman who had been dining with him: “This is my cousin-sister.”

When Luo Peiyin introduced Gu Qiao, he did not use the words “cousin-sister.” He introduced only her name.

The young woman greeted Gu Qiao in perfectly fluent Mandarin, and Gu Qiao smiled warmly in return.

Gu Qiao understood the thought behind Luo Peiyin’s choice. She was, after all, a cousin-sister requiring a great many qualifiers to explain — compared to a true blood cousin-sister, her “cousin-sister” status had a somewhat forced, stretch-of-a-claim quality to it. Luo Peiyin had probably avoided the word to spare her embarrassment.

“I won’t come sit with you.” Gu Qiao’s lips parted slightly and then pressed together again. In the end she decided to keep addressing him as she had: “Cousin-Brother, are you free tomorrow evening? I’d like to treat you to dinner.”

Chance encounters like today’s couldn’t be counted on to happen again.

When Luo Peiyin asked how much she had drunk, she said not very much. But when Luo Peiyin, on account of the alcohol, offered to drive her home, she didn’t refuse.

—

In 1990, after Gu Qiao returned from Erlian Haote, her older cousin-sister reached her through a pager and invited her out for a chat. Afterward, her cousin-sister handed her a very thick envelope, full of cash. Her cousin-sister said the money was just sitting idle, and having heard from Luo Peiyin that Gu Qiao was in the clothing business, she wanted to buy a stake. Gu Qiao demurred. Her cousin-sister laughed and asked her: are you really going to quietly make your money while I just watch from the sidelines? Gu Qiao didn’t believe that after just a few brief meetings, her cousin-sister had come to trust her so deeply. She didn’t call out the lie, and she didn’t accept the money either. She said: my business right now is all small-scale, I don’t need that much — wait until I’ve grown bigger, and then you can come buy in. She thanked her cousin-sister, then added: please pass along my thanks to Cousin-Brother too. I understand his meaning, and I’m grateful.

He had wanted to help her, yet had not wanted her to misunderstand. She hadn’t.