Beijing Comrades (4 page)

“I'm gonna go take a shower,” I said. “I've been running around all day. I probably smell like those people in the restaurant!” For some reason, the zit-covered singer had popped into my mind.

Still Lan Yu remained frozen near the door. Making my way toward the bathroom, I glanced back to smile at him. Suddenly I heard a voice.

“Director? Um . . . Director Chen?”

The words came out abruptly. Lan Yu's face was red and he appeared to be gathering courage to say something. “Can I work at your company?”

“Um . . . What did Liu Zheng tell you?” I was afraid of saying something different from Liu Zheng. I didn't want to
screw up the plan, but at the same time wasn't sure what the plan was. I had forgotten to discuss with Liu Zheng whether giving the kid a job really was part of the deal.

“He said . . . I mean, 'cause your company doesn't usually hire people to work half days. But I have class during the day, so I can only work in the evenings. So Liu Zheng wanted me to ask you.” He quickly added, “I can work until eleven.” Surely he must have known our office closed before then.

He was so earnest I suddenly felt guilty. Maybe he was just a nice, innocent kid after all.

“Come to work tomorrow,” I said with a halfhearted smile.

Lan Yu beamed. It was the first time I really saw him smile. Sweet, radiant, beautiful.

It was September, but the heat was still in the air and the days were incredibly long. In that part of China, autumn days burned with sunshine until well past eight o'clock, when the last rays of deep-orange sunlight filtered through the burning red carpet of leaves stretching from the Summer Palace to the foot of the Great Wall. I sat on the couch draped in a loosely tied bathrobe, stroking my cock and thinking about how to get Lan Yu into bed.

He was very upbeat now that I'd offered him a job and a monthly salary of Â¥150. When I asked him if he wanted to take a shower, he hesitated at first but quickly agreed after poking his head into the luxurious hotel bathroom. “This shower's awesome!” he called out before jumping in. I leaned back into the couch, listening to the sound of the water splashing against his naked body while spreading my thick, toned legs until the bathrobe fell open around my thighs. Watching the steam drift out of the cracked-open door, I smiled, wondering what was going to happen next.

There's no doubt about it: it's a hell of a lot easier to seduce
a man than a woman. If I had asked a girl to take a shower there she would think I was hatching some sinister plot. But Lan Yu went willingly. While he was gone I called room service to order a bottle, something sweet but with a kick to it. I asked for a bottle of red wine, then changed my mind and asked for white. Next, I slid a porn video into the VCR. Everything was set. I sat back down on the couch, my heart pounding in my chest as I waited.

A few minutes later, Lan Yu came out of the bathroom wearing the light blue pajamas I'd stuffed into his arms before he went in. I always kept a new set of pajamas in the room as well as an extra bathrobe. The pajamas were far too big for him. They hung off his shoulders with long, pendulous sleeves that made him look like some kind of Han dynasty official. His hair stuck to his forehead in a wet, clumpy mess.

“Relax. Have a drink.” I handed him a glass of wine.

Lan Yu took the glass, but remained standing, seemingly unsure of what to do.

“Have a seat.” I could tell from his breathing that he was more relaxed than when he had gotten into the shower.

Lan Yu sat down and looked up at the television, where he saw a naked white girl licking another girl's pussy as she squeezed her tits and moaned. A panicked look swept across his face. Frozen in shock, he remained seated in front of the TV, gripping his glass tightly. I knew this would have been his first time seeing a porn video.

“Have you ever seen one of these?” I asked.

He shook his head, eyes glued to the TV set.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

Silence.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” I repeated.

“No.” There was alarm in his voice. His face was red and
his dick pulsed visibly through the fabric of the pajamas. I turned off the TV and moved toward him, gently placing a hand between his thighs. He pushed the hand away. I put it back.

When I placed my hand between his legs a third time, he tore his gaze from the TV and looked up at me with a timid expression.

“Here, let me help you,” I said with a grin as I leaned into him. Nervously, he took a sip of wine while I pulled the pajama bottoms down. His dick wasn't especially large, but it wasn't small either. He had the thick constitution of a northerner, but his legs were thin because of his youth. It occurred to me that, at sixteen, he wasn't even fully developed yet.

Lan Yu looked at me again, but this time with a face flushed with desire and even a kind of feeble imploring. I peeled off the pajama top and gently pushed against his chest to make him lean back into the couch. With one hand still firmly wedged between his thighs, I placed my other hand across his shoulder, then bent down to run my tongue along his chest, kissing his nipples and massaging the back of his neck. He gripped the couch and looked down at me, utterly transfixed by what I was doing.

“If you're uncomfortable, just say so,” I said. He continued staring at me in silence.

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that it doesn't matter if it's a guy or a girl: When you sleep with a virgin, you've got to be gentle. This is the moment they're going to remember for the rest of their lives. Do it right and they'll obey you forever.

I moved back up to Lan Yu's lips, licking them gently with my tongue. His mouth was rigid and unyielding at first, but then he started kissing back, sinking deeper into the couch and wrapping his arms around my neck. What turned me on about
him wasn't so much his physique but rather his unspoiled boyishness, so clean and virginal. I don't know. Maybe it was nostalgia for my own lost youth. But that couldn't have been everything. There was also something about his eyes. Unforgettable.

I began kissing him frantically, clutching at every inch of his body until his cock was in my hands. By the time I stretched my hand farther and started rubbing the velvety patch of skin under his balls, he was overwhelmed with excitement. He closed his eyes and his breathing got heavier. His face remained tense, as if he was trying to restrain himself from showing too much pleasure. Then he grabbed my arms and without any warning let out a soft groan and came.

I almost laughed. I didn't think he would come so fast.

We fooled around two more times that night. Things eventually progressed to oral sex—I went down on him, then he did the same to me—but I didn't ask him to let me fuck his ass. It wasn't the right time yet.

I don't know if it was the effect of the alcohol or because he was tired or because of his age, but Lan Yu fell asleep almost instantly after the third time. Looking down at his handsome, youthful face while he slept, I thought to myself: I have to treat Liu Zheng to dinner.

The next morning I got up early. I had an 8:00 a.m. appointment with the credit manager of China Construction Bank to discuss a ¥10 million loan. Lan Yu was still sleeping heavily and I didn't want to wake him, so I had breakfast sent up to the room and wrote him a note.
Forget about the job. Focus on your studies. If you need anything, contact Liu Zheng.
I put down the pen, then picked it up again.
Let yourself out after breakfast.
Then I put ¥1,000 next to the note. I wanted to
leave more than that but fought the urge because I didn't want him getting greedy. This, I knew, would only make it harder for me to say no if he had any unreasonable demands further down the road.

Later in the day, I wrapped up the loan deal, then took my colleagues to lunch at a Hunanese restaurant. We were barely seated when the manager pulled me aside to tell me Liu Zheng was on the phone. I got up from the table and went to the service desk at the front of the restaurant.

“Was the kid still asleep when you left this morning?”

“Yeah, why?”

“The hotel called to say you left Â¥500 in the room with a note.”

“What note?”

“He said he was only taking half of what you left him and that it was only a loan. He said he'll pay you back when he has the money.”

I was perplexed for a moment and didn't know what to say. “Okay. I'm busy right now. We'll talk about it later.” I hung up the phone and smiled. Perhaps I would be seeing Lan Yu more than I had originally thought.

I made my way back through the smoky, crowded restaurant, unable to get the image of Lan Yu out of my mind. I entered the private dining room where my colleagues were seated, and my senses were hit by the rich, heavy aroma of Hunanese chili peppers. I pictured Lan Yu's lips—rigid and unyielding at first, then with the faintest trace of a smile, then kissing me—and my heart began beating rapidly. Laughing cheerfully, I sat down and raised a glass to the company, just in time to hide the erection growing in my trousers.

Three

Hao Mei worked in sales management at a joint-venture company. She was my girlfriend. I liked her because she embodied a particular type: the beautiful, professional woman.

When it came to women, there were two kinds that I went for: The first was the college girl. The second was a girl like Hao Mei. I couldn't stand bitchy supermodel types. They wanted it all, but the goods were secondhand and they had shitty dispositions to boot. When it came to guys, I tended to go for creative types: painters, musicians, that sort of thing. Guys like that usually only wanted a one-time thing; often they did it for the money or just to try something new and exciting. But a college guy? I had never slept with one of those, not because I didn't want to, but because I'd never had the opportunity.

The truth is, it was a lot harder to find guys than girls, especially quality guys. A guy would go to bed with you faster than a girl, but a decent guy who was into that kind of stuff? Few and far between. I suppose that's why I liked quality guys best: the thrill of the hunt.

Hao Mei was from the South, from Guangdong Province. By her own admission, she only came to Beijing for a guy, “a mistake of a guy,” as she put it. I believed whatever she told me, and didn't care much anyway.

What I liked most about Hao Mei wasn't her good looks or her wit or her sharp and sensitive mind. What I liked about Hao Mei was her big, round ass. She didn't have the typical flat ass of most Asian girls. Hers was full and curved, fat and plump, and stuck out gallantly like a peacock's feathers when she walked. We only fucked in two positions: Me seated with her on top, riding me while I juggled her ass in my hands. Or, her on all fours, hands and knees anchored to the bed while I plowed her doggy style. I was particularly fond of this second position because of the way she would thrust back into me while I knocked her thick, meaty ass around in my hands like a bag of dough. Obviously, I couldn't tell her it was mainly her ass I was into or she would think I was a jerk. The day I met Lan Yu, I had been dating Hao Mei for half a year and had spent eight or nine thousand yuan on her, and that was on crap gifts alone.

One bright but chilly Sunday morning, I was wrapped in a blanket, deep in sleep, my arm stretched out lazily across Hao Mei's big ass. November was just around the corner and the leaves would be falling off the trees soon. It had been two months since the day I met Lan Yu.

The radiator hummed softly in the corner, and the empty bottle of pinot noir we had drunk the night before was lying on the floor. On the dresser, a Teresa Teng cassette sat mute in the tape deck next to a cheap imitation of some Tang dynasty glazed pottery, a dragon that stared vacantly across the room with a grimace on its face. Hao Mei had picked these things up while visiting her cousin in Shanghai the weekend before—the
tape for herself, the figurine for me, a peace offering for the argument we'd had because I didn't want to accompany her on the trip.

The brash sound of the telephone jarred me out of sleep. Hao Mei picked up the receiver and passed it to me. It was Liu Zheng.

“What the hell are you calling me this early for?” I mumbled, half-asleep.

“What do you mean, early? Have you looked at the clock? It's almost noon!”

“Anyway, what is it?” I asked impatiently.

Liu Zheng wasn't in a great mood, either. Whatever it was, he couldn't have been thrilled about dealing with it on his day off.

“Lan Yu called this morning. He said he just finished his midterms. I guess he wants to see you.”

For a moment I was silent. By this point I had more or less given up hope of seeing Lan Yu again. I wasn't expecting him to contact me and had actually forgotten that I'd given him Liu Zheng's number to begin with.

“You do remember him, don't you? He's that kid who—”

“I know, I know,” I interrupted, rubbing my eyes. “Just have him—” I looked at the clock on the wall. “Tell him to meet me at Country Brothers at two.”

I hung up the phone and a sudden surge of excitement rushed through me. I climbed out of bed, tripping slightly over the telephone cord, and pulled on a pair of pants.

“Who was that? Are you going out?” Hao Mei sat up in bed, casting an alarmed look my way. She wanted to know more but stopped short of probing for details, undoubtedly because of what I had told her on our third date: “Whether work related or personal,” I had said, “if I don't freely offer
the information, it's a private affair and you would do well not to ask.” Hao Mei broke up with me at least once a week because of this thoroughly unreasonable demand, but always came back to me like a well-trained house cat, moaning and groaning about how she had fallen in love with “a little devil.”

“Come on, get up,” I said, tossing her clothes to her. “We can have breakfast first, but I have some important things to do in the afternoon.”

“What's the hurry?” she protested, slipping on a shirt.

“Nothing,” I replied. “It's just work, but I have to go.”

Hao Mei didn't ask any more questions. She knew when to keep her mouth shut.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon and the lobby of Country Brothers was dead, nothing but a few tables occupied by small groups of people engaged in conversation. At two twenty, Lan Yu walked in looking completely different from the last time I'd seen him. His eyes darted around the room as he entered. I stood up and waved.

“Sorry I'm late,” he said, stopping short of offering an explanation.

“How did you get here?”

“By bus.” His Mandarin had improved. “I'm not very familiar with Beijing yet. I just screwed up one of my transfers.”

Studying him as he spoke, I did my best to take it all in. In just a few short months, he actually seemed to have grown taller. Still he offered no smile, but the aura of gutted despair that had enveloped him the first time we'd met was gone and there was almost a look of contentedness on his face. That faint anxiety in his eyes, though—that hadn't changed.

“Next time take a taxi,” I said, tearing myself away from his eyes and refocusing my attention on the conversation. “Or, if
I have time, I'll pick you up.” I started toward the elevator to take him up to my room.

Lan Yu started to follow, but then hesitated. “Do we have to go up?” he asked.

“Um, would you prefer to go somewhere else?” I didn't know what he was getting at.

“I don't know. Anywhere. Outside?”

“Right now?” The idea was ridiculous. “Aren't you going to be cold?” It was already late autumn, but he wore only a thin white jacket, hardly enough to ward off the chilly fall wind.

“It's still early in the day. It's not too cold out yet.”

“Okay, fine,” I said, the words sounding a little more acerbic than I had intended. “Why don't we go sit over there for a while?” I motioned toward a small café on the west side of the lobby. If this kid was planning on blackmailing me or wanted some kind of heavy relationship or something, he was definitely fucking with the wrong guy.

We sat down at a little table. Lan Yu was silent as we waited for the waitress to bring us our drinks. I lit a Chunghwa cigarette. That was my brand.

“Aren't you in school right now?” Peals of smoke poured out of my mouth and I stared at him with a clinical gaze. “What made you call me?”

Lan Yu squirmed in his seat. “I guess I just wanted to get out of the dorm for a while,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant but clearly troubled by something. Nervously, he took a sip of his soda. A long silence ensued, followed by more silence. I was growing tired of the game.

“Listen,” I said, placing my cup of coffee on the table. “If you have something to say, say it. I need to be out of here by three.”

“Oh, no, it's nothing,” he replied. “I just wanted to talk. I'll go back to campus now.” He stood up to leave and I, still seated, looked up at him. He might have been overly sensitive, but his self-respect was undeniable. He wasn't going to just sit there looking like an idiot.

I remained seated. “Let me drive you home.”

“Oh, that's okay,” he said, throwing me a polite little smile. What the fuck? I laughed in disbelief. It was bad enough that he was rejecting me, but he didn't have to be so nonchalant about it. Besides, where had a small-town kid like him picked up a genteel affectation like that?

“Have I offended you, old man?” I asked, still looking up at him as he gathered his jacket to leave.

“Huh?” He looked at me in confusion. Apparently, he wasn't used to Beijing humor.

It took some finagling, but I eventually got Lan Yu to stay awhile. The way I did it was this: First, I insisted on driving him back to his dorm. When he agreed, I asked him to come with me to my room to get my car keys. He told me he'd wait in the lobby, but I insisted, protesting that he wasn't going to make me go traipsing around the hotel on my own. After some back and forth about it, he finally caved in and we went upstairs.

When we got to my room I wasted no time getting down to business. I followed Lan Yu inside, then locked my arms around his torso from behind, pulling him with me as I backed up against the wall of the entryway. He didn't resist, but he didn't exactly respond with the erotic delight I'd hoped for either. It was only when I began planting kisses across his neck that he started to get turned on.

That's right, I thought, twirling him around to kiss his lips roughly. Quit acting so fucking naive.

I looked down at Lan Yu's cherubic face and watched him nod off to sleep. Completely covered in sweat, even his eyelashes glistened with tiny pearls of watery moisture. His youthful cheeks flushed with warm shades of red. Waking suddenly, he smiled when he saw me, but in an instant his heavy, sleepy eyelids closed again.

“You really worked up a sweat,” I laughed softly as I ran my tongue gently along his chest. “The next time you cook you won't need salt. Just lean over the wok and let it drip!”

Lan Yu opened his eyes and smiled weakly.

“Seriously,” I continued with a jocular tone entirely out of step with his drowsiness, “the next time you need to get some, just give me a call. Don't wait so long! Four out of five experts agree: it's not healthy for a young man to go so long without getting laid.”

That woke him up. His smile disappeared and he looked at me with an injured expression. “I didn't come here to . . .
get some.
”

“Then what did you come here for?” I asked cavalierly. I got up from the bed under the pretense of going to take a leak. The truth was, prolonged eye contact with Lan Yu was making me a bit uncomfortable.

“Nothing,” he faltered. “It's just that . . . I mean . . . one of the guys in my class died yesterday. He was in the bunk right below me. I just don't want to be in the dorm right now.”

“Oh man!” I exclaimed, poking my head out of the bathroom. “How did he die?”

“He broke his spine doing a roll in gym class,” he replied, pointing to his neck. “The top part, up here. He was the only guy in our class from the countryside. They hardly have any PE classes in their schools, so he never learned how. He was afraid he wasn't going to pass the tumbling exercise, so he
asked me to go with him to practice. His parents came this morning. I heard his mom was crying so hard at the hospital that she passed out. He was an only child. Just last week he was saying he didn't know how he was going to survive all this time away from home.” Lan Yu looked up at me. “He shouldn't have said he wasn't going to survive. It's bad luck to say something like that.”

“Oh well,” I said bitterly as I returned from the bathroom. “Dying is nothing. It's the living I feel sorry for.” Lan Yu became quiet at this, and I suddenly felt guilty for making such a flippant comment.

“Hey,” I said tenderly, sitting next to him and placing my hand on his arm. “Don't think about it too much.” I stood up again, grabbing his arm so I could pull him with me. “Why don't we get cleaned up and go to the nightclub downstairs?”

Lan Yu raised his arms over his head in a disinterested stretch, then paused as if remembering something. “Didn't you say you had to leave at three?” he asked. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was five.

“I decided not to go,” I said, returning to the bathroom to take a shower. “Anyway, it wasn't that important.”

We sat at a small corner table in the nightclub, watching the other patrons as they reveled on the dance floor. When I asked him if he was having a good time, Lan Yu said it was the wildest nightlife he had ever seen. I ordered him a drink—a martini—which he said was okay but a little too bitter. Then I got us a private karaoke room. After carefully inspecting the song list, Lan Yu said there wasn't a single number he knew. So we ended up singing “I Love Beijing Tian'anmen.” Everyone knows that song.

It was past midnight when Lan Yu finally insisted on going
back to campus. He also insisted that I not drive him. “I'm not a girl,” he said, putting down his drink and standing up to leave. Somehow that impressed me, but I was also annoyed that he was leaving so early. Whatever. The whole night had been a waste of time.