◎ Wishing You a Pleasant Journey ◎

As for Gu Qiao coming to America to see him, Luo Peiyin had held no expectation whatsoever from the start. Plenty of people got rejected for visas. Even if she had gotten her passport in advance, it would be very difficult for her to secure an American visa on her own — given Gu Qiao’s background, experience, and age, she would very easily be suspected of intending to immigrate.

But the fact that Gu Qiao had not yet gotten a passport was outside what he had anticipated.

If this accident had not happened, he had been planning to return to China to help Gu Qiao sort out the visa. Given Gu Qiao’s level of education and language ability, applying as a student to come over on a student visa was nearly impossible. The best option would be to first apply for a dependent visa and attend a few months of language classes at a community college as a transition. But to apply for a dependent visa, an ordinary boyfriend-girlfriend relationship was not sufficient — a marriage certificate would be required.

Gu Qiao fired off a series of questions: “Is there anyone taking care of you right now? Do you have enough money? I’ll exchange some U.S. dollars tomorrow and wire it to you — you must hire someone to look after you.”

A silence fell on the other end of the line, though it did not last long.

His voice grew flat again: “It’s just a minor accident. I’ll be out of the hospital before long. And I’m not short on money.”

“You’re alone out there — having a little extra on hand never hurts.” Gu Qiao knew he was not short on money. He had told her more than once that with him there, she could pursue her studies in the future without any financial burden. Every time, she had let that topic slide past. Opportunities to earn money did not come around all the time — miss this one and there was no guarantee the next would be seized. Books, on the other hand, could be read at any time.

She understood, of course, what he meant. He was not simply talking about sending her to study — he wanted her to enjoy, while she was still young, the carefree happiness of a female student with no financial worries: no need to fret about money, no need to think about bearing any responsibilities, because the student years were the time when others were responsible for you, and the greatest hardship was nothing more than exams. That particular happiness was missing from her life, and he wanted to make up for it. And with her going to study, the problem of their long-distance relationship would also be resolved. This was not a kind of happiness she had no interest in experiencing — it was simply not yet the time for it.

But she could not bring herself to directly refuse Luo Peiyin’s vision of the future. In his planning, the day they would see each other was in sight. If she continued down her current path, there was no telling when they would be reunited. Even before she and Luo Peiyin had gotten together, she had heard Xiao Jia say that a direct doctoral track from undergraduate could take at least four or five years to finish, and some people failed to graduate even after seven or eight. If you did not return to China right after graduating, the wait would stretch on indefinitely. At the time she had not yet turned twenty, and hearing the number seven or eight years had felt terrifying — as though it accounted for nearly half of the life she had already lived.

Gu Qiao believed there was always a way forward when you reached the mountain. She had not the slightest doubt that her tomorrow would be better, that everything she wanted was waiting ahead: money, and the person she loved… and now these waves of cash surging toward her only deepened Gu Qiao’s conviction, the money arriving sooner and in greater amounts than she had imagined. She was unwilling to give up a single one of them. She was not going to give up a single one. She did not try to rank which mattered more, because she wanted all of it.

At twenty-one, Gu Qiao’s appetite was remarkably good. She did not believe there was any bone in this world she could not gnaw through. And if there was — she would simply sharpen her teeth a little more.

Apart from wiring money to Luo Peiyin, there was nothing else she could do to show she cared. Even with the Russian interpreter she had hired, she would send him a few packets of cold medicine when he fell ill so he could work more effectively — but Luo Peiyin was sick, and she could not even lay eyes on him once. She could not even manage the basic concern one colleague might show another.

Though there was little she could do, Gu Qiao always pushed whatever she could do to its absolute limit: “Money is genuinely no problem for me right now. The shares you invested — when I told you they’d double, they’ve more than quadrupled now…”

Luo Peiyin had already heard Gu Qiao say this more than once. Her daily routine on their calls included telling him how much money she had made, sharing her joy with him the moment it spilled over. Her voice climbed higher and higher with that swelling happiness, one word chasing the next — she was so delighted, every word trailing off with a joyful lilt. When a person is happy to that degree, it is the kind of thing that invites envy in others. An envy so sharp it makes you want to destroy that happiness.

There were plenty of ready-made words to condemn her happiness as vulgar and shallow, to make his anger seem entirely justified. But Luo Peiyin restrained himself through reason. He knew the destructive power of those words, and he was clear-eyed enough to recognize that no matter how noble they sounded, they all came from a decidedly un-noble place: this happiness had nothing to do with him. He wanted Gu Qiao to be happy — few people wanted her happiness more than he did — but when her happiness had nothing to do with him, he felt a sense of loss unlike anything he had experienced before.

That loss even exceeded Luo Peiyin’s own expectations. After all, from a very young age he had come to accept that his parents’ most important happiness had nothing to do with him. Children tend toward sweeping generalizations, treating their own household as the entire world — he had been genuinely astonished when he heard someone say that having children had brought them the greatest joy of their life, and it was his first glimpse of the truth that people were not all the same. With training like that, he maintained a habitual silence about the differences between people and was never particularly shocked by them.

When Gu Qiao expressed her happiness, Luo Peiyin preserved the image of the “good older cousin” she held in her memory, relying on reason to do everything a good listener could.

Only today, lying immobilized in a hospital bed, when Gu Qiao brought up money, did he let his impatience show: “You’ve said this more than once already. We can talk about something other than money.”

“I just hope you can—”

“Of course I know you’re trying to show you care.” Luo Peiyin had moved too much and touched his injury; he bit down on his teeth and refused to let the pain travel through the phone receiver to Gu Qiao’s ears.

Once the pain finally subsided to within what Luo Peiyin could endure, his voice softened: “Sing me a song.”

Gu Qiao hesitated, then heard Luo Peiyin say: “Sing one you’ve never sung for me before.”

All of Gu Qiao’s music cassettes were ones Luo Peiyin had given her. She had been too busy to listen to new songs. Whatever was popular on the streets, she would hear it while driving. But for these songs she only remembered the melody — the one song she could actually sing the lyrics to was an old one that had been playing around town lately.

*”The long road offers itself to the distant horizon,*

*The rose offers itself to love,*

*What do I have to offer you,*

*My beloved…*”

Gu Qiao stopped suddenly here. She heard the catch in her own voice. After a brief moment of silence, she continued.

*”The white clouds offer themselves to the pasture,*

*The rivers offer themselves to the sea,*

*What do I have to offer you,*

*My friend,*

*What do I have to offer you —*

*I keep asking,*

*I keep searching,*

*Keep wondering.*

*The white doves offer themselves to the blue sky,*

*The starlight offers itself to the long night,*

*What do I have to offer you…*”

As she sang, she suddenly forgot the words that followed, and started again from the very first line. She sang very slowly, and for the first time completely forgot about the cost of the phone call.

“I’ll go get my passport tomorrow. Once the visa is ready, I’ll come to America to see you.”

“Wait for me…” — she seemed to have said something like this more than once, so the words carried little weight now. To make Luo Peiyin believe her, she immediately said: “Trust me, this time there won’t be any problem.” If she only went for a week, it should be fine with Lou Deyu holding things together.

—

It was only after she had gotten her passport that Gu Qiao discovered how agonizingly long the wait for the American visa interview was — so long that summer would have to end before her appointment came around. And by the time she could actually go, it would probably already be autumn. She had assumed Luo Peiyin would be disappointed, but he told her over the phone: “Perfect timing, actually — I’ll be completely recovered by then, and we can visit more places together. If you’d come early, you’d have had nothing to do but sit in a room with me.”

As though her coming late was actually the better thing.

From that point on, their conversations had new content. Luo Peiyin insisted on being the one to make the calls, and their phone time shifted to mornings in China. The first voice she heard each morning was always Luo Peiyin’s — what documents to prepare for the visa interview, how to answer the interviewer’s questions, the itinerary for Gu Qiao’s trip to America. Even speaking quickly, all of it together could eat up tens of yuan in phone fees each day. Gu Qiao had originally only planned to go see Luo Peiyin, but the itinerary he mapped out sparked her genuine excitement: stargazing at Death Valley National Park, white-water rafting at the Grand Canyon, driving herself along Highway 1… Sometimes Gu Qiao could not stop herself from saying a little more, and a hundred yuan would be gone.

Their conversations once again nourished Gu Qiao’s good appetite — there was so much in this world she had yet to experience. The approaching journey did not make Gu Qiao idle; on the contrary, it added fresh fuel to her drive to earn money. Plane tickets, travel — none of it came free.

On the fourth day, Luo Peiyin was discharged from the hospital. After his stitches were removed, rather than placing newspaper advertisements and waiting for clients to come to him as he had before, he took up his crutch and went to visit small banks one by one, following the addresses in the yellow pages — a process that could also be called selling. But because he was impeccably dressed, the sales aspect was considerably softened.

His visits — or rather, his sales calls — helped him close a fair number of deals. When Annie heard from her cousin that Luo Peiyin had gone from small bank to small bank on crutches, her first reaction was that this man was genuinely shrewd. Her second was that he surely could not be that short on money.

Because Annie had referred a client to Luo Peiyin — though it had not worked out — Luo Peiyin honored his earlier promise and took her to dinner at a Japanese-French restaurant.

Before going, Annie had prepared herself to split the bill to the decimal point with a man who would only buy a thirty-point diamond ring. Even if he had earned some money by now, a person’s attitude toward finances was sometimes unrelated to how much they actually had. She, for instance, would never allow any man to take advantage of her when it came to money.

Annie could accept a man who split bills with her, but she could not accept a man who got the arithmetic wrong. In fact, she had once dated such a man — he was very pleasing to look at, but she genuinely could not stand a stupid man. If his math skills were not the issue, pettiness was just another form of stupidity.

Luo Peiyin declared upfront that he would not be buying her drinks. Annie read the subtext: he would be paying for the meal.

Annie discovered that this man, who had been washing down sandwiches with instant coffee in the hospital, was equally capable of indulging himself when the occasion called for it — and even understood caviar better than she did.

Over the course of the meal, Annie learned that Luo Peiyin’s girlfriend would be coming to see him, and he asked her to recommend some restaurants.

Finding the good things in life requires a willingness to spend money and energy on trial and error. Annie was precisely that kind of person. She had assumed the man across from her was the same. Setting aside the matter of the thirty-point ring, she and Luo Peiyin got along far better in conversation than she ever did with her cousin. He admired her designs, though he was unwilling to pay for them — suggesting she try her luck pitching to the wealthy people in their social circle; he was not among the wealthy, and for now only willing to pay for things with practical value.

Annie asked, with great tact: “What price range are you comfortable with for a restaurant?”

“Anything you think is good.”

“In my view…” Annie’s suggestion exceeded what would be appropriate for people who had met only a dozen or so times: “A knife should be used at its edge — a one-carat diamond ring might move someone more than several fine meals. What do you think?”

“Thank you. But she may not be quite like what you’re imagining.”

Luo Peiyin had rented a new apartment — no other tenants besides himself — and Annie guessed it was probably because his girlfriend was coming. His new home was very bare, entirely befitting a bachelor. As a housewarming gift, Annie gave him a five-wheeled reclining lounge chair. According to Annie, this lounge chair — constructed of steel, aluminum, and plywood — was a reproduction of Marcel Breuer’s work from the 1920s.

“It’s not just indoor furniture — you can wheel it outside and sunbathe in it. I think your girlfriend will like it.”

“Thank you. I think she will too.”

—

The day before her American visa interview, Gu Qiao went to the bank to cash a 600,000-yuan check she had received from Lianxing Company. The bank told her the check had been frozen and payment was refused. With large transactions like this, it was impossible to require every client to pay in cash. She had verified it carefully beforehand — the check was genuine. She had only considered whether the check was real or fake, but had never thought about the account being frozen. There was no way to cash her money.

Most of her assets had been converted into leather jackets sitting in a warehouse, and those jackets were waiting for her to cash the check first so she could pay the remaining balance.

Ninety percent of everything Gu Qiao had ever learned about finance and law over her twenty-one years of life was acquired within twenty-four hours.

During those twenty-four hours she barely slept. Though she had no appetite, she forced steamed buns into her stomach for the sake of energy. The more difficult the moment, the more she could not afford to lose her nerve — she had to get her money back.

It had been raining the morning of the interview, and the rain grew heavier, raindrops hammering the windows of the yellow Dafa. Before reaching the embassy, Gu Qiao had already run to Lianxing Company, the courthouse, the bank, and the law firm. Lianxing Company — the one that had issued the check — had already shuttered. People were crowding at the door, some there to collect gambling debts, others who had been defrauded with forged checks. By the time she reached the visa office, the check was still in her hands, uncashed.

She was wearing the yellow suit she had prepared long in advance, but this lucky yellow suit had been soaked through during all her running about and had not dried out entirely by the time of the interview. If not for good luck — hitting green lights the whole way — she would have very nearly missed it.

Raindrops slid from her hair down to her lips, icy cold. The two people ahead of her had already been rejected, both on the grounds that they might overstay in America.

When the visa officer asked Gu Qiao why she was going to America, Gu Qiao said matter-of-factly: “I want to go to Death Valley National Park to stargaze.”

Somewhere inside her, she was quietly hoping to be rejected. That way, she could not go to America, and she would have an explanation to give Luo Peiyin. Her check was still of unknown when it might be unfrozen — possibly it would still be frozen by the time her appointment arrived. She had more than sufficient reason this time, yet she had made too many promises to him; even if she could not go see him, she had to come to the visa office at least once. Ever since she had said she would get the visa, she had been dragging out his expectations for far too long. She needed the visa officer to give her a force majeure reason — a reason that would make it impossible to go even if she wanted to.

She had just learned a new phrase from her lawyer: *force majeure*.

Gu Qiao had expected to be rejected, but the visa officer stamped her passport and wished her a pleasant journey.

—