Homesick for Another World(7)

He went to the arcade. The woman was not there. He paid for his time and got a computer in the corner, out of sight of anyone else, and sat and played video games, pausing to check his phone every minute or two, until the sun came up.

As he walked home, he stopped in the courtyard of the old PLA camp to watch a group of high schoolers practice their sword postures. They looked very elegant and upright in their pea green uniforms, he thought. A bird warbled somewhere in a flowering tree. He walked beneath a curved cement archway and through the badminton courts and out through the tall wrought-iron gates and up the road to the morning market under the bridge and bought a bowl of hot dry noodles and brought it home to his apartment and ate it by the open window.

? ? ?

He was awakened by his phone that afternoon. It was a text from the woman.

“Actually, I am a very sad person. I am very lonely and troubled. Who are you?”

He couldn’t believe his attack had produced such a vulnerable, honest reply.

“I am an admirer,” he wrote back. “I think you are beautiful.”

And then he sent another text: “I am in love with you.”

He lay back down and waited for her to text him back. He waited twenty minutes. Then he couldn’t wait anymore.

“When I said I was in love with you, I meant I admire you very much. I’d like to get to know you better. But I’m not sure that you’ll be attracted to me.”

Still, that wasn’t good enough.

“I don’t know what type of man you like. What type do you like?” Now he had made a big mistake. He had said too much. He felt he had ruined everything. He knew he had just ruined his entire life.

“I like a man who isn’t afraid to try new things,” she wrote back.

He did not want to ruin what he had left. He thought carefully of how to reply. But she sent another text.

“Let’s meet,” she wrote. “I want to see what you look like.”

“When?” he wrote back. “I am free anytime.”

“Tonight,” she wrote. “Meet me at the back gate by the market at midnight. I will wear a rose in my hair.”

The man’s heart stopped for a moment and then started back up again very slowly. He lay back down and caressed himself beneath the sheet. He had not caressed himself in a long time, he realized. He thought of their meeting, her face, the rose, the striped shadows from the iron gate falling across her bosom in the moonlight. He would watch her for a few moments before emerging from the shadows. He would be a long dark figure, he thought. He would be smoking a cigarette. No, that might disgust her. He would keep his hands in his pockets, his chin down. He thought of the American movie Casablanca. He would be like in Casablanca. He would touch her face lightly with the back of his hand. She would blush and turn her face away, but then she would look up at him again, into his eyes. They would fall in love, and he would kiss her. Not a long kiss on the mouth, but small kisses on the cheeks and neck and forehead. Mr. Wu thought long kisses on the mouth were disgusting. When they happened in movies, he averted his eyes. The thought kept him from caressing himself any further. He read all her texts again. It was only two o’clock. He dressed and went to the arcade.

? ? ?

The woman at the arcade looked worried and unkempt. Her hair was tied in a ponytail and she wore a stained trench coat over her dress. He tried not to pay attention to her disarray. Once she was his, he could dress her any way he liked.

“How are you, Mr. Wu?” she asked. She barely looked up from her wad of bills.

“How are you?” he replied searchingly. He put his arm up on the counter, tried to smile. She turned and yelled to one of her employees in the back room, counted out his change, and handed him his card.

“Enjoy,” she said gruffly and picked up her phone.

He took a computer directly in front of the counter so that if he sat to the side of it and crossed his legs as though he were reading articles online and smoking, he could look at her out of the corner of his eye. He watched her take out her compact and pat down her hair. She took down her ponytail and tried to comb it out with her fingers. It only made her hair look worse. She tied it back up again and drew down the corners of her eyes. She seemed to clean out some gunk from her eyes. Mr. Wu gagged a little and stubbed out his cigarette. He looked at the time. It was three thirty. She powdered her face, and as he watched he noticed that her powdering was a little heavy-handed, that she was powdering a little too quickly, with too much gusto. He thought she looked the wrong color. He thought she looked very strange. Now she took out some rouge and spread it on her wide cheeks. That’s not so bad, he thought. But then she licked her fingers and wiped some of the rouge off. He thought of all the money and cards she’d handled with those fingers. He thought, Would I kiss those fingers? He thought of the fingers of the prostitute from the day before and wondered where they’d been, how much money they’d handled, and what sticky knobs of doors they’d pulled on. Then the woman put on some blue eye shadow and red lipstick. Wu could not help having the thought that the woman looked like a prostitute. She looks worse than a prostitute, he thought. She looks like a madam. He wondered if he still loved her. He took out his phone and reread all her texts again.

“I am very lonely and troubled. Who are you?”

She sounded desperate, he thought.

He had made a grievous mistake, he thought.