A Map for the Missing(36)

“So many different experiences!” Li Tuan agreed heartily.

Guifan hurried to stand and raise a cup in Li Tuan’s direction. “It’s an honor to have you visiting our city.”

Li Tuan downed a shot with him. “We’re in a very defining moment right now, you all know. In a couple of decades, maybe even less, our country will be the greatest in the world, second to no one, not even the Americans. City officials like you have the power to shape the direction of the nation. You could make Hefei City look like a totally different place in just a few years.”

“Shouldn’t that be up to you, Mr. Li?” she said.

Li Tuan looked over at her. She realized immediately she’d gone too far. With his face this close to her, she could see how astute his eyes were. She’d been deceived by his gregariousness. He hadn’t become as powerful as he was through some accident. She saw a steely distance in his gaze, belonging to a man who could evaluate a situation and act the role of whatever person it demanded of him.

His eyebrows raised softly, almost imperceptibly, in minute judgment. “Your wife is very beautiful,” he said, turning to Guifan.

He didn’t turn back to her for the rest of the night as the men began to drink in real earnest, going around the table and offering shots in his honor. She hoped that he would drink so much he wouldn’t remember what she’d said. Around the fourth shot she counted, the mayor entered—rushing on his way to another engagement, he said—and raised a quick glass to the table. “Vice Mayor Wang will take good care of you,” the mayor said, pointing to Guifan, who winced while taking his shot. Yitian would never find himself in such a situation, she thought. Nothing like this would ever dirty his pristine scholarly life.

There’d been a time when she’d attended many of these dinners with Guifan, her eyes agape at the dishes of exotic animals weighing down tables ever more gilded and plush. At some point, all this had ceased to impress her, when every dish tasted the same and she could no longer see the rooms she entered anew. One night a man had vomited right onto her lap, and since then she’d told Guifan to make some excuse for her absence at each invitation. When she’d been a girl, all their ideals had been about sacrificing for the country and Party, any talk of money enough to kill one’s reputation like a poison. But now the demonstrations of wealth were everywhere. She couldn’t wrap her head around it.

When they finally rose, piles of food remained on the table, many dishes still completely untouched. The drink had been the focus of the night, and the men had ordered much more food than they needed, just to prove they could.



* * *



—

When she’d first moved into this home, she’d found its size unwieldy, always requiring her to shout to be heard from another room. She’d call and call her mother and Yuanyuan but receive no response. She’d imagined the names, then her entire voice, being absorbed into the house and going nowhere, all her words taken and never returned to her. Now she felt grateful for the distance and thick walls, which could provide barriers from her mother overhearing them.

“Why didn’t you just ask them to stop?”

Guifan, his cheek pressed against the toilet of their bathroom, didn’t respond.

“You could have just pretended you were drunk,” she said. She’d never seen him like this before and it was easier to question how he’d stumbled than to think about her own mistakes at the dinner. Leaning against the countertop, she looked at his figure, kneeling and dry heaving, and couldn’t believe she’d staked her entire life upon him. The sounds from his mouth were unnatural and vulgar. She, her mother, and her son all depended on this person huddling on the cold floor like a wounded animal.

She wrapped her arms around his back, holding him up as he vomited. When they’d been dating and he’d held her like this, she’d felt a surge in her heart, a feeling she thought must have been love. She’d felt safe beside him, and what was the greatest gift someone could give another, if not safety? Now she didn’t feel like she was touching her husband; she felt more like she might when Yuanyuan was sick and cried and she had to hold him until he fell asleep.

“What will you do?” she asked.

He took so long to respond that she thought he might have fallen asleep.

“I don’t know.”

“You have to do something.” If it were not for how pathetic he looked, sweat-soaked and fatigued, she would have shaken him. Yes, the situation was difficult, but it required action.

“If I do this one thing, it will just lead to more.”

“But if you don’t do anything now, we’ll have no future to consider at all,” she said. He was deft at thinking through all the possibilities and consequences, but when it came to taking decisive action in the present, he was of no use.

“Look at the mayor. He became involved, and now every time they need help, they go to him.”

“What’s the alternative?”

“What the mayor does—it’s not a way to live.”

“Neither is this,” she said.

They sat in silence. They’d talked their way into a dead end, or at least that must have been what Guifan thought it was. He was grasping on to some old ideal of the country and his role as an official, but nothing was so pure. She’d made the compromises she’d been forced to.