Beijing Comrades (14 page)

“
What?
Yonghong is the one who beat him up? I thought Lan Yu got mugged! What a fucking scumbag!” I fumed. I was furious at Yonghong, but I also had to admit that Lan Yu was braver than I. I don't know what I would have done if I had been in that situation. One thing was for sure, though: I was way off in my estimation of what the Â¥100,000 was about.

I didn't say a word about my conversation with Zhang Jie to Lan Yu. I felt powerless in the face of the situation and didn't want him to see it. At the same time, however, I was truly puzzled.
Why hadn't Lan Yu told me the truth about what had happened?

That evening, I held Lan Yu in my arms like I held him every night. We messed around a bit, but didn't take it very far because of his injuries. When he tried going down on me, I prevented him because of the strain it would have put on his arm.

“Don't you worry,” I said with a kiss to his nose. “When you're all better, I'm gonna pound you so hard, it'll be worth the wait!” That brought a smile to his face.

I drew him deeper into my arms. “Hey, Lan Yu, I've been meaning to ask you something.”

He looked at me searchingly. I hesitated, not entirely sure what I was about to say. “Do you think gay people can have everlasting love?”

He smiled as if relieved by the question. “I don't know,” he replied. “I've never thought about it.” Lan Yu had never liked theoreticals. He'd always been the kind of person to go with his gut feeling.

“Well, I think they can,” I said confidently. “If straight people can have it, then gay people can, too.”

“Are you talking about us?” he asked, and his eyes sparkled.

I grinned sheepishly. “I'm talking about me.”

Lan Yu laughed softly, but seemed at a loss for words.

“Lan Yu,” I continued. “Do you care about me?” I had never asked anyone such a question. Before meeting Lan Yu, I had never known what it felt like to lack self-confidence.

“Of course I do,” he replied quietly.

A long silence followed. “It was Yonghong, wasn't it?” I asked. “You were lying when you said you got mugged.”

More silence.

“He's good looking,” I said. “And generous.”

Lan Yu yanked himself out of my embrace and looked at me angrily. “It makes me sick just looking at him!” he said. “I didn't do anything, Handong. I didn't ask him out, I didn't flirt with him, nothing! That guy has mental problems.”

“Why didn't you tell me about it?”

“I just thought the whole thing was so disgusting, I didn't want to tell you about it. I was afraid that—I don't know—I thought it would put you in an awkward position.” He averted his eyes and for once it was I who had nothing to say.

Fourteen

I bought the villa in the Northern Suburbs: a huge five-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath house with two garages and even an indoor swimming pool. Lan Yu enthusiastically agreed to help me with the renovation and design. What I didn't tell him was that it was to be our new home. Instead, I told him I was helping a friend who lived in the United States buy it. When we got to the estate I took Lan Yu from room to room, soliciting ideas.

“Wow!” he said, poking his head into the master bathroom. “That friend of yours has some serious money. He's spending—what, a couple hundred thousand yuan on renovations alone?”

“You like it?”

“Like it? It's amazing!” he said, knocking on a wall. “I love the overall structure. Something about it reminds me of the architectural style of northern Europe. I read this article about a famous amusement park in Copenhagen. Some of the features here remind me of one of the structures they had in their ‘Nordic Village.'” Lan Yu stepped into the kitchen. “Oh my god, look at these tiles!”

I couldn't conceal my excitement any longer. “What would you say if I told you this was our new home?”

Lan Yu looked at me in shock. Then he looked at the bedroom again. “Holy . . . fuck! Are you kidding me?” he shouted as he flung his arms around me in delight.

Lan Yu and I moved out of Ephemeros and into the villa, which we christened “Tivoli Gardens” after the Danish amusement park he had read about. I still held on to the old apartment, but almost never went there.

The first time we made love at Tivoli, it was in the bathroom. Lan Yu was in the huge hot tub–style bathtub, his face poking out of a thick swirl of bubbles that made him look like a baby wrapped in an enormous white blanket. I stood outside the tub wearing nothing but a pair of pajama bottoms, inspecting my chin in the mirror to see if I'd sprouted any new stubble.

“You look—at
most
—twenty-five,” Lan Yu said, eyeing me up and down from the tub. I was thirty at that point. Lan Yu would soon be turning twenty.

I beamed with pride. It wasn't for nothing that I exercised at least two hours a day and watched what I ate.

“Oh, by the way,” he laughed, distracted by some other thought. “You should see our teaching assistant this semester. He's this new graduate student. Not even thirty and he already has a beer belly!” Lan Yu attempted to wipe a thick blob of suds off his forehead, but only succeeded in getting more of them on him.

“Sounds like you've examined him pretty closely!” I said, leaning into the mirror. “You have a thing for him or what?”

“Well,” Lan Yu replied without the slightest trace of irony, “he
is
awfully nice to me.”

I put the razor down and turned to look at him. Lan Yu
sat motionless in the tub, his arm resting along the outside rim. Crouching like a predatory animal, I moved toward him in playfully exaggerated slow motion, maintaining eye contact the entire time. He clenched his fists as if challenging me to a fight, but when I tried to bite his arm, his reflexes were faster than mine and before I knew it he had plopped a big handful of suds on the top of my head. The whole thing reminded me of the water fights I used to have as a kid.

“Ha!” Lan Yu laughed. Lovingly, I bit his arm a second time, then jumped into the tub to join him, pajama bottoms still on. I sat in his lap, facing him, grabbed his arms, and continued biting: neck, face, whatever I could find. Slowly, so as not to fall, I shifted positions so that I could hold him from behind and kiss the back of his neck while he laughed in delight. By the time I finally stopped biting and kissing him, his upper back was covered with faint teeth marks. Only then was I satisfied enough to settle down and cuddle with him in the bathtub, pants and all.

“Hey,” I whispered into his ear. “We may not be able to get married, but I've given you everything I can. Do you understand what I mean?” I didn't know exactly where I was going with this, but I wanted to speak from the heart.

Lan Yu was still laughing from the water escapade we'd just had. I couldn't see his face, but he nodded his head to say yes, he did understand.

“Do you regret having met me?” That was my next question. It was something I had wondered about for a long time.

His laughter quieted. “No,” he said, shaking his head, and I hoped it was true.

The next thing I knew, Lan Yu extricated himself from my embrace and sat up in the tub, seemingly startled.

“Hey, what's this?” he asked, reaching back to grab my
rapidly stiffening cock, which pressed against his lower back through the pajamas. I wrapped my arms around his torso to pull him back toward my chest, noticing the way his skin, submerged in the water, felt even silkier than usual. I pressed my chest against his back and strained my face forward to smell his cheek. I had always loved his smell. Then I turned him around so we faced each other. I hooked my hands under his thighs and he wrapped his arms and legs around me. Gently, I lifted him out of the water and laid him on his back on the broad marble platform separating the tub from the wall. Still standing in the water, I lifted his legs and perched his ankles on my shoulders. We made love like that, right there in the tub with the steaming hot air swirling around us.

The days following our move to Tivoli were the happiest and most carefree we had shared. Lan Yu would be graduating soon and spent most of his time working on his thesis, a building design he hoped he would be able to sell further down the road. I, meanwhile, was going to my office two or three days a week. My business pursuits were progressing smoothly, and I was also in the process of planning my next move. A friend of mine had given me the opportunity to invest in and manage a joint-venture cosmetics factory. Running a factory was new territory for me, but I was energized thinking about the possibilities.

Life was so good in those days, I even started to think it might be possible for Lan Yu and me to stay together forever. Our relationship was my nesting ground, a home for my heart. As to whether or not love between two men could ever gain social acceptance, I never gave it much thought. Financial security meant not having to worry about things like that.

I didn't know whether two comrades could be lifelong partners, loving and taking care of each other till the end.
There were those who said relationships like ours couldn't survive longer than a year, but I knew this wasn't true because I'd spent several years living contentedly with someone of my own sex. Perhaps it was precisely because our days were full of such joy, so quiet and stable, that the onset of ruin was that much more devastating.

Fifteen

The Bible says there are two kinds of sin. The first is original sin, the kind that Adam and Eve committed before passing it down to us. The second is the sin we commit when we are led into temptation by Satan. When I first met Lin Ping, I thought she was just that: Satan, a bewitching devil luring me to ruin. But I was wrong. The devil was myself.

My professional life was thriving at that juncture. On top of everything else that was going on, yet another rare opportunity had presented itself. I became the director of City Commerce. Not just anyone could enter that world. It was a major coup, an opportunity to penetrate an exclusive stratum of power and rub shoulders with high-ranking public figures. The new arrangement was sure to multiply my business opportunities exponentially. It was at this time that a small American company hoping to strike it rich in China had asked me to be their go-to guy. That's when I met Lin Ping.

When that American devil first walked into my office, I didn't know who the woman beside him was. I didn't even know if she was Chinese. All I knew was that I was transfixed
by the stunning Asian woman before me. It wasn't long before I figured out she was the interpreter the American had brought with him to help with our negotiations.

She was phenomenal. Her sapphire-blue suit showed off two long legs, a narrow waist, and perfectly proportioned hips and ass. Her long, curly hair was tied up on top of her head, falling here and there in seductive strands around her neck and shoulders, black as a crow in flight. She had a simple elegance. Her only jewelry was a delicate pair of square-shaped earrings, sapphire blue like her suit, perched on two tiny earlobes and twinkling against a background of snow-white skin. There was something about her face that looked Western: long, narrow, and very modern. A high-bridged nose, thick, full red lips, and eyes much lighter than the average Chinese woman. Her eyes were a lucid hazel that peered into the world as if calling out from a foggy dream.

The way she carried herself with the American was perfect. Not a trace of arrogance, but nor was she self-effacing. Somehow, she managed to walk the fine line between sober earnestness and polished self-confidence. A fucking masterpiece, I thought, eating her up with my eyes. I wanted her. And I was going to have her.

The three of us went into the conference room and sat down, me on one side of the table, she on the other side next to the American. She interpreted between English and Mandarin as the American and I exchanged a few obligatory pleasantries. Then we got down to business.

If I had been eating her up with my eyes when she first walked into my office, I was now slowly gnawing at the bones, extracting every drop of marrow I could from the exquisite flesh before me. I didn't know whether she had noticed the way my eyes penetrated her, but I felt that she was gazing back
at me periodically. Was there more going on than the attentiveness required of an interpreter? Her smiling eyes were as gentle as a doe's. They signaled openness—to what? Not once did she avert her eyes from mine. Not once did she try to hide from my clinging gaze.

When the dialogue with the American was over, we stood up from the table and walked toward the door. I shook the American's hand and said goodbye. Then I turned to her.

“Miss Lin deserves a special thank you for making our negotiations proceed so smoothly today,” I said, squeezing her hand. “Your English is exceptional.” I had no idea if her English was good or crap.

“Thank you,” she fumbled shyly. She didn't interpret my compliment for the American, who patiently waited for us to finish speaking. Her modesty spurred an adrenaline rush.

When I got home that evening, I was still reeling from the experience. Excitedly, I recounted the entire affair to Lan Yu, who laughed at the story, but didn't have much to say in response.

“You really have no interest in women?” I asked him while pouring myself a scotch. Lan Yu was seated on the couch reading a magazine. The glossy cover showed a wrecking ball hovering over a decimated building.

“Women are all a little fake,” he replied bluntly.

“So you're telling me you've been at your school for nearly four years and not one girl has gone after a good-looking guy like you?” I teased him.

“Girls? What girls? There are hardly any girls in the architecture department. And the ones that
are
there . . . well . . .” He laughed. “There's even a rhyme about it.”

“All right, let's hear it then!”

Lan Yu took a deep breath:

“Huada girls though sweet and proper

To the eye have naught to offer.

Don't bother trying to cast your hook,

Her nose is buried in a book.”

“Ha!” I chortled. “Who came up with that?”

“Someone wrote it on one of the desks at school.”

“Well, it's a good thing I majored in the humanities. You science types are pathetic when it comes to going after girls.”

“So, you still want to go after them? Even now?” Lan Yu put down the magazine and looked at me.

Raising my hands, I made circles out of my thumbs and forefingers and held them to my eyes like glasses. “We are already old, it doesn't matter to us anymore!” I laughed. I was quoting Zhao Ziyang, the general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. He had been purged and put under house arrest after delivering a sympathetic speech to student demonstrators during the hunger strike the previous year. When Lan Yu heard me imitating Zhao's heavy Henan accent, he burst into laughter. “Anyway, even if I went after the ladies, I couldn't run fast enough to catch them!” I continued, ascending the staircase while Lan Yu remained on the couch, shaking his head and laughing.

The second time I saw Lin Ping was at my company again, but this time in the quiet solitude of my private office—and alone. Her boss had returned to the United States and asked her to come see me face-to-face to go over the details of our agreement. I was more than happy to oblige. When we met, she wore another blue suit, a kind of bluish-green cyan this time, bright and colorful, but with a lingering elegance that made my blood race.

We talked shop for a while then chatted animatedly about this and that for some time until there appeared a brief lull in the conversation. I leaned back in my chair, riveting my gaze on her in a way that was, I thought, polite and professional, but which carried an unmistakable hint of flirtation that she couldn't have missed. She maintained composure at first, and looked me straight in the eye, calm and cool. A few moments later, however, she broke eye contact and looked down at her hands folded in her lap. Damn! I had never met a woman like her.

“Would Miss Lin allow me to thank her by accepting my invitation to dinner?” I asked, leaning forward in my chair and holding her steady in my gaze.

For a brief moment, Lin Ping's face was overcome with a kind of panicked indecision. Looking downward, she fingered the hem of her skirt as if trying quickly to decide what to do. In a flash, her lips formed a smile, and I heard the words I wanted to hear: “I'd love to!”

For dinner I picked a posh French restaurant called Le Ciel Harmonieux. At eight o'clock on the dot, Lin Ping strode into the lobby where I waited, the automatic glass doors unfolding before her like parting seas. My eyes lit up. One hundred seventy centimeters of breathtaking beauty. Her simple but elegant ash-gray evening dress clung to her finely wrought frame. The dress had a little black floral ornament on the right shoulder, perfectly matching the sleek black pocketbook she carried in her left hand. Her hair was up in a loose bun with strands of hair falling over the tiny black earrings she wore.

What a fucking body! Slim, slender, and tight—so different from Hao Mei with her big, clunky ass. She was just the right height for me, the perfect complement to my tall, masculine
frame. My mind spiraled with desire as her dainty feet clicked their way toward me in the lobby. I stood up from my chair to greet her with a gentle, lingering handshake. Something was definitely happening between us.

We stepped into the lush, well-lit dining area, my right arm hooked around her waist. Testosterone surged through my veins as we made our way through the maze of tables, lighting up a runway of grandeur as each man we passed, whether Chinese or foreign, turned to drink her in with his eyes. I beamed with a kind of pride I never thought possible. Lan Yu would never be able to give me that.

Lin Ping and I conversed throughout dinner and late into the night. She told me she had graduated from Fifth International Studies University four years earlier and had worked as an English interpreter ever since. The job with the American company was her third since graduation.

Like Hao Mei, Lin Ping was originally from the South. Her father was an official in some government agency or another, and her mother was a typist. I sat across the table from her, more captivated by the way she spoke than by what she was saying. Everything about her was mesmerizing. Her delicate mannerisms, the graceful way she ate, her gentle laugh, her frankness and openness. I was enchanted.

When I got back to Tivoli it was nearly midnight. Lan Yu was still awake, reading the paper in bed.

“How come you're still awake?” I asked.

“I can't sleep,” he said with a yawn. “How was work?” He never took any interest in my work. It was just something to ask.

“Okay,” I said, turning off the light. “Let's get some sleep.”

Lin Ping and I went out a few more times after our first date.
The power her charm and sex appeal held over me grew stronger and stronger, but my desire was frustrated by her apparent unwillingness to consummate the deal by sleeping with me. We only met at night, staying out pretty late each time. With a little logistical help from Liu Zheng, I was able to arrange things so that Lan Yu had no idea what was going on.

One Saturday night I had to attend a social gathering at the Dai household. Donald Dai was the number-two bigwig in the high-flying world of Chinese finance, and he had the English name to prove it. I'd managed to get myself invited through a friend in common. To make everything feel more natural, I asked Lin Ping to accompany me at the last minute. She agreed. Everything was perfect at the party, thanks in no small part to Lin Ping. It was good for me to have a woman by my side, and especially a woman like her. Her beauty and charm won people over wherever she went.

“I want to thank you for coming with me tonight,” I said as we left the party and our feet hit the pavement outside the Dai house.

“You'd better,” she said with a playful smile. “How do you intend to do it?”

“How about dinner?”

“That doesn't count!” she cried. “Although”—her voice became quiet—“you must have read my mind because I really am starving. Let's get something to eat!” She laughed sweetly. In each of our interactions she had been so professional and restrained. This was the first time I'd seen the cute girly side of her. There was something so tender and loving in her manner—or so I thought at the time.

That night after dinner, I kissed her in the car. I was on the verge of exploding, and the way she draped herself around me like a shawl told me she liked it too. But before I could go any
further she pushed me away abruptly.

“Handong!” she cried faintly, clutching at the collar of my shirt as she pinned her eyes to my chest.

“Hmmm?” I cooed.

“There's something I need to know,” she continued, turning away from me and resting her folded hands in her lap. “Do you have a wife?”

I laughed. I found it amusing that she would even ask such a question. “What makes you think that?” I asked.

“Let's just call it a woman's intuition,” she replied, gazing straight ahead through the windshield.

“Listen,” I said. “I'm single. I've never been married.” I touched her arm gently to signal that I wanted her to look at me. “You want me to show you the marital status on my household registration card?” Rich or poor, everyone had a household registration card. It said where you were authorized to live and work, as well as whether you were married or single.

Lin Ping smiled bashfully and looked down at her lap. Then she looked up at me again. “Handong,” she said. “I'm so scared of this! I'm scared of getting in too deep. I'm scared of hurting you, hurting myself.”

I was struck by her words. Few women will demonstrate their love this openly. Especially beautiful women.

It was one o'clock in the morning when I took Lin Ping home, gently kissed her good-night, and went back to Tivoli. Still wound up from the date but ready for some shut-eye, I kicked off my shoes and went straight to the bedroom. Lan Yu was sitting up in bed, watching a movie on the VCR. He didn't even look at me, let alone greet me.

“Up this late!” I said nonchalantly. “Don't you have class
tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow's Sunday,” he said coldly.

“Well, I'm going to take a shower and go to bed.” I unbuttoned my shirt, hoping that if I didn't say much he wouldn't start asking questions about where I'd been all night. It didn't work.

“You're pretty busy these days,” he said abruptly. He was no dummy.

“Yeah, work stuff. What a pain!” I hated it when he started acting suspicious.

Lan Yu turned off the TV and pulled the blanket over his head as if to tell me he was going to sleep. When I returned from the bathroom after my shower, the blanket was pulled down again and he was lying on his stomach with his head turned to one side, almost falling off the edge of the bed. I turned on the headboard light, then stood at the side of the bed and looked down at him. Eyes closed, the contours of his thick black eyebrows and pouting lips were as exquisitely precise as if they'd been carved in stone. His expression when he slept was always so serene, so calm and unperturbed, without the slightest trace of artifice. I squatted next to the bed and gently kissed his lips. This must have roused him out of his sleep, because he rolled onto his back, muttering something. I climbed into bed and lay directly on top of him and kissed him until he woke up.