The Last Rose of Shanghai(30)

Men’s voices came from the hallway outside; he froze, unwilling to separate himself from her, but suddenly the voices pounded in his ears.





21


AIYI


I stood up, pulled my dress down, and parted quickly from Ernest, just before the two shadows appeared at the open door: Cheng in an eggshell-white suit and Ying in a walnut-toned jacket with red suspenders. Ernest turned around to leave, and I swept aside my bangs, making a conscious effort to control my breathing.

Cheng watched Ernest as he walked past. Then Cheng looked at me, his gaze drilling deep into my skin. I didn’t know what to say. It was only a kiss, except it wasn’t just a kiss, because I had wanted more, and I didn’t feel ashamed about wanting Ernest, either. But Cheng, my future husband, must never know. I could feel his suspicion, his jealousy, and his rising anger as he struck a match to light a cigarette, each intake of his breath a curled fist to my face.

My throat burned with nervousness. The perfection of Cheng was as thin as fine silk, and years of being babied by his mother, worshipped by his sisters, cousins, nannies, and servants, and groomed by his late chauvinistic father had created a man with a deep sense of privilege equipped with an explosive temper. I knew well of the subtle lift of his smooth eyelids, the pinch of his full lips, and the stiff turn of his body.

“What’s the pianist doing here?” Ying asked.

“He’s on a magazine cover. Emily wrote an article about him. Everyone in Shanghai knows him now. He’s famous. Here, take a look.” I was glad Ying asked.

“How did she know about him?”

“She’s a journalist. She knows everything. You are here early today. No mah-jongg?”

“Sinmay said the Japanese thugs interrogated him for hours because he published a forbidden article. They set all the journals on fire. Big loss. Sinmay was in a foul mood, wouldn’t play. Want to go play poker?” Ying looked at Cheng.

He was looking down at the two movie tickets that I had not had a chance to hide.

“Let’s go,” Ying said. “Cheng?”

“Aiyi, you come too.”

I sat on my tufted high-backed chair, avoiding Cheng’s eyes. The way he spoke frightened me. He must have been suspicious, after seeing the movie tickets. “I have things to do.”

“Come with us.” Cheng put his hands around my shoulders, so I knew this was not up for discussion.

The moment I got in his Buick, I was trapped. Ying had stopped at the club’s bar to get a drink before we left, and I was alone with Cheng. He had dismissed his chauffeur.

“You forgot to wear your bra again.” He gave a low growl.

“I’ll remember to wear it tomorrow.” I looked at the window, but I couldn’t see anything with the fabric curtain hanging in the way. I could hear the automobiles, the rickshaws, the oxen drivers, the bicycles, and an echo of a gunshot in the distance.

“Come, sit on my lap,” he said. This had been our intimacy, me sitting on him and him exploring me. I had been fine with it. But somehow the thought of Cheng’s hands on my skin, the skin Ernest had touched, gave me goose bumps.

“I have cramps.”

“Come on, you like this.” He swung an arm across my shoulder and began to rub my stomach and my breasts with the other hand. Then he parted my legs, his hand going under the folds of my dress near my thighs.

I crossed my legs. “People will see us.”

“No one will see us.” He uncrossed my legs. His face, dim in the car, was upon me, his breaths driving away all the air in the Buick.

“I don’t want to do this, Cheng.”

He stopped. “We’re going to get married.”

“I want to wait.”

He straightened and pulled his tie. “Did you let the foreigner touch you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Let him go. I don’t want to see him in the club.”

“I can’t. Customers love his piano. Business is doing well.”

“Find another pianist.”

“It’s not that easy. Not everyone can play the stride piano.”

Cheng was silent, his black eyes glittering. It was that type of silence when he, as a kid, pinched my shoulder when I refused to do hide-and-seek with him, the silence before he smashed the precious porcelain vases and plates because his dog ran away. I felt nervous.

“I want to go home.”

He kicked the seat in front of him; the Buick shook. I shuddered. He was twenty, no longer a boy; and the wildness of his strength and the rawness of his emotions were intimidating. If he forced himself on me, I wouldn’t be able to fight him off.

But he took me home. In my room, I scooped up water from a small basin and scrubbed, to rid myself of Cheng, rid myself of my own wretchedness. Finally, I flopped onto my bed. I didn’t think I would go back to work today.



Cheng and I were cousins, betrothed since we were in diapers when Mother, a cousin of his mother, thought it would be a beautiful thing to unite our families. We were born in the same month, the same year. Mother had believed it was an ideal marriage, matched in all facets of blood, status, and wealth, a marriage for a golden boy and a jade girl. You can marry a man you don’t love, but you can’t marry a man who doesn’t have money, she had said countless times. Cheng had money.