A Map for the Missing(77)

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Hanwen was to stand alert in case the table needed service, while Huihong and another waitress delivered food to the room. She hated this position, because the diners could go on for hours, and if you were stationed there, you could do nothing but wait.

When she saw the group of men gathering in the room, she wished she’d taken up Auntie Bao’s offer to go home early. The host shoved a bottle of baijiu at her. She must have allowed her face to blanch, because the host shouted, “Come on, we need you to open it. We’re here to eat and drink. We want to show our guests from Wuhan a good time.”

“Yes, sir. Just one moment.” She tried to make the voice sweet and elevated, but she could hear its thinness.

During her two years at the hotel, she’d learned there were two kinds of obnoxious guests: the first were rude to you without your input, but the second kind was worse for how they thought themselves charismatic and insisted on the waitresses’ participation.

She tried to throw glances at the other girls when they brought dishes in, but they didn’t meet her eyes. None of them liked her, which was why Auntie Bao had taken pity upon her. When Hanwen worked with them, she was often left to complete tasks by herself while they slunk to the hotel’s garden, perching on the lips of the fountains to gossip.

They were so much more sophisticated than her, although they were all about her age. They did their makeup easily and talked openly about men and love and going out to bars on dates to drink. They’d stayed in the city when she was sent down, and it seemed to her that in those years, the village had softened her, while the girls who’d stayed in Shanghai had become harder around the edges, ready to bite. Their rudeness had started when they first commented on the fact that she studied every day. She wondered if their behavior was because there was so little to be had in their world, and her studying marked her as someone dissatisfied, who might one day have more. She felt like telling Huihong that she hadn’t passed the gaokao after all, that, despite all her dreams, she would end up the same as all of them.

She was grateful when the food came. The men were occupied gnashing on the glistening parts of roast chicken and fried fish. Technically, the local governments were to operate on principles of austerity, but she’d seen enough dinners hosted here to know there were always workarounds. Night after night, she watched the diners devour dishes she and her mother would have died to try. Her mother wanted a life like this for her, she knew, like those of the men at the table and the well-coiffed women who were by their sides—not their drunkenness, but the ease of it all. What did they have that she didn’t? Luck, that was all.

“We always appreciate the hospitality shown to us in the cities we visit,” one of the guests was saying. She supposed that he was the leader of the visiting delegation, given the number of toasts that had been made to him. He had two snaggleteeth that caught on his lower lip when he closed his mouth, giving him the look of one perpetually on the verge of interrupting someone else.

“Of course. How could we let you come to Shanghai and not show you a proper reception?”

“If we didn’t have you to guide us, I would never be able to understand the way you Shanghainese people speak.”

There was laughter all around the table.

“Tell me,” the man continued. “Is it true what they say about Shanghainese women? That they have the men here wrapped around their fingers? I heard they make the men cook, do the dishes, everything!”

“Our women are known for a certain fiery spirit,” the host chuckled.

“Should we ask this young Shanghai lady what she thinks?” the visitor with the protruding teeth said. “She won’t be afraid to give us her real opinion. Girl, what do you do for your husband? Or do you just order him around like all the other women of this city do to theirs?”

Her face was burning as she tried to think of something clever to say. “I’m—I’m not married, so I wouldn’t know,” she stammered. The words had sounded much better in her head. She resented the other waitresses, stationed in the safety of the kitchen. They were witty.

“How come you’re not married?”

“I’m engaged,” she said to the floor.

“Speak up. We can’t hear you.”

“I’m engaged.”

“Oh, really?” He laughed again, as if her words had been some great joke. “Why do I have a feeling that’s not true?”

“It is the truth,” she mumbled, but he seemed to have grown bored of the conversation.

“Our teapot is empty. You haven’t refilled it in a while.”

The other men turned to each other and began another topic. No one watched her as she approached the table and refilled the teapot from a hot water thermos.

“You haven’t filled my cup,” the man said.

She was standing between him and another guest, leaning forward to reach the teapot. “What?” she said blankly.

“You filled the teapot, but you haven’t poured our cups yet.”

“Normally we don’t—” She looked around, but none of the others were paying her attention any longer. Only a single man, seated directly across from where she stood, seemed to have heard. His eyes looked apologetic, but he didn’t open his mouth or offer her any help.