A Map for the Missing(71)

“When?”

“Right after your grandfather died.”

“You never told me.”

Even now, she spoke slowly, as if reconsidering with each word whether to take it back. “We had that dream of going to college together, and I didn’t want to hurt you. And then afterward, I thought, well, maybe it’s good I didn’t succeed, so I could study with him. Maybe this is what I need to pass. But it didn’t work.”

Walking around her beautiful home, he’d thought her the happy one, the one for whom life had played out as a series of fortunate surprises.

She said, “Do you remember Hongxing? One of the other girls there with me?”

He nodded.

“She’s become a professor, too. Just like you. In English. It’s a small teaching university in Jiangsu, nothing like the school you’re at, of course. She got to go back to study in Shanghai, right before the gaokao. Do you know why? She hurt herself on purpose so they’d have to send her back. I tried it first, but she was the one who succeeded.”

“I’m glad it didn’t work.” He remembered Hongxing’s accident. The villagers had spoken about it with pity for the girl.

“Yes, well. I showed how far I was willing to go.” She laughed and shook her head, as if clearing the dream away. “No, it doesn’t do to think of what might have happened. I feel like Yuanyuan. Making up stories in my head to keep myself happy.”

She looked so resigned, and this made him sadder than all the other revelations. He wanted to turn back time for both of them, to return her to a moment before. He moved suddenly across the table. When he interlaced his fingers with hers, he was shocked by the coldness.

Her body twitched slightly at the contact, but she spread her hand wider to allow his fingers into hers. Outside, he heard the long and drawn-out shout of a peddler, announcing himself.

They were both still, hands together.

Then the sound was gone. The room was silent for a single moment, and in the next, her lips were on his. His hand was still reaching across the table, touching her knee. He had no other thoughts except to break that boundary on the way over to her.

He was surprised at how hard and determined their first kiss was. Their teeth knocked lightly against one another, the meeting of two people both pushing the limits of their momentum.

He pulled away, remembering suddenly how afraid she’d once been of even a kiss. “Is this all right?”

Instead of responding, she leaned in for a second time. He was amazed at this person she’d become in an instant, so willful and certain, allowing no fear to enter into her body. He pressed back against her this time. He had the feeling they were walking out on a tightrope together, farther and farther, that to look down would send them tumbling to the ground. He kissed her as he wished he had when he was a teenager, before everything else came, when there were no other facts in the world besides the simple desperation and joy of an embrace.

It was she who stood up first, holding her hand out to him and leading him to the dark bed. He felt shy, seventeen again, waiting to be led by her confidence, trying to catch a glimpse of her to know the next step. He hadn’t felt like this in years. He and Mali made love with knowing, sex a dance they’d performed the choreography of hundreds of times. They cycled through the same positions, reached out to stroke the same part of one another. It was familiar, comfortable, easy. The ritual accumulation still revealed a glimpse of newness each time.

But this feeling now with Hanwen was made completely of raw spark, making up for everything they were once afraid to do. Every touch was new and unexpected and held two different kinds of feeling: the touch itself and his own surprise at how his body responded. The thought of Mali gnawed at him, but he tried to shake away the knot of her. Then Hanwen leaned into the tiny section of her skin that made contact with his stomach. She pressed into him hard, as if wanting to sink into his body. When she removed her hand, Mali’s face appeared. In the next, her soft hair fell onto his cheek, and Mali was gone again.

He was not sure what caused him to open his eyes at that moment. Later, he would tell himself that he felt a chill suddenly entering the room, a secret language whispering to him to look more closely.

He was kissing a stranger. In that instant, he saw her face, naked and pale, just as she was about to bring it to his. The expression there startled him. Her eyes were still closed, and her face was utterly vulnerable in this moment when she thought she wasn’t under any gaze, how he imagined she must have viewed herself when she sat in the back of a car alone or closed the door of her home against outsiders. There was no desire on her features, none of the simple surrender he experienced as he kissed her. What he read there, instead, was determination. Her jaw, hard and set. Her eyes, a sternness in the way they crinkled harshly at the corners. She was willing herself toward him.

Her face looked nothing like it had on evenings when they snuck out together. He’d called it pale like the moon, then. Now she’d shed so much, her cheekbones becoming so angular that any round image for them was inapt. He’d held her memory in amber, a tool for his use, to believe there was a part of the world that hadn’t moved on.

She opened her eyes as his touch drew away. There was surprise on her face, but for only a moment. Then she released a small sigh.

“Right,” she said.

They both looked at the scene around them. The dark hotel room, the sheets rumpled by that burst of desire. He wanted to cover up his body, though he’d hardly shed any clothes. Already, the past few moments felt like they belonged to a different life, or one they’d never have the chance to live.