Homesick for Another World(8)

He logged off his computer, got up, walked to the counter, and handed her his card.

“Thank you,” she said. He felt sick.

There was a karaoke bar above the dry-goods store on the corner. He went up the stairs. The woman there gave him a large beer and a bowl of peanuts. He ate them quickly and drank the beer and looked out the window and smoked and remembered the woman smearing on that greasy lipstick. He imagined her as the manager of a team of teenage prostitutes. He imagined her yelling at one of them for not pleasing a customer. He had a horrible vision. He envisioned the woman from the arcade washing the prostitute’s private parts with the hose from a latrine. He imagined her hand in the prostitute’s private parts. He ordered another beer. He could not believe his own mind. He imagined the woman’s mouth on the prostitute’s private parts. He imagined her cleaning all the little pockets of this prostitute’s private parts with her tongue, using her tongue like a bar of soap. “I like a man who is not afraid of trying new things.” What if these new things were disgusting things like what he was imagining? What if she wanted him to lick her private parts like that? Could he do it? What if she wanted to use the latrine on his hand? And what if she wanted to lick his fingers after she’d used the latrine on his hand? He couldn’t possibly go through with something like that. What if she wanted to clean herself after moving her bowels without toilet paper, lick her fingers and then ask to kiss him on the mouth? He might have no idea that she’d cleaned herself after moving her bowels without toilet paper and licked her fingers. She might want to kiss him tonight, at midnight. His eyes filled with tears. He put out his cigarette.

“Sing a song?” said the woman behind the bar.

But Wu was too disgusted. He went down the stairs and took a walk by the ravine. He imagined the woman from the arcade swimming in the refuse. He imagined her sucking the dirty water into her mouth and then spurting it out like a fountain. I will never kiss that woman on the mouth, he decided. That is one thing I’ll never do.

But he still loved her, he tried to think. I could still love her.

He went back up past the ravine and past the shops and bought a bottle of baijiu and another pack of cigarettes and went and sat on the steps of the temple flophouse and drank and smoked for a while. A dog came and sniffed his leg. He drank and drank and spat and flicked his cigarettes at the passing dogs. “Ha ha ha ha ha,” he cackled. He looked at his watch: five o’clock. He had plenty of time before his date. At the little family restaurant he ate a soup made of mutton and spicy peppers. He shoveled the rice into his mouth like a peasant, let it fall all over his lap and onto the floor. My last day of freedom, he thought. He decided to take a taxi to the city and visit his little prostitute. He bought another bottle of baijiu for the road.

? ? ?

His little prostitute was not at work that day.

“Sorry,” said the fat, gray-haired madam. “We have other nice girls for you.” He looked at the teenagers sitting on the stained couch. They barely lifted their heads from their phones. One of them had stiff shifty hair like the woman at the arcade, but her face was covered in hard little pimples.

“I’ll take the one with the pimples,” he said.

“Wan Fei!” yelled the madam. The girl got up. She was extraordinarily tall, he saw.

“Never mind,” he said. “Just give me the dumbest one you have.”

“Zhu Wenting!” yelled the madam. A fat-faced, pale, short-haired girl got up, eased her phone into the back pocket of her pale yellow jeans. He followed her into the back room and watched her undress in the red light. She had small, hard, pointy breasts. He went over to her and pinched them. She had no reaction.

“Does that hurt?” he asked her.

She pinched his cheek like a little child’s. “Does that hurt?” she asked him. He found her delightful. He got undressed. Although he was drunk, he was still shocked by his own actions. He reached down and caressed himself while the prostitute walked to the bed and pulled back the sheets. Her bottom was round and dimpled and the color of polished brass.

“Let me kiss you,” he said and pushed her face down into the pillows.

As he swiveled his tongue around her privates, he fell in love with the woman at the arcade again. He reached down and caressed himself. The prostitute laughed and put her butt in the air.

“Put your finger in it,” she said.

He was aghast.

“In what?” he wanted to ask. But he did not ask. He put his finger in his mouth—he did that—and put it up the prostitute’s bottom. She made a squeaking noise and wriggled and squeezed on his finger and squeaked again.

“Wrong one,” she said.

He was not embarrassed. He put a second finger in there. She made a bigger noise. He pushed them deeper in. He decided he would make love to her this way—in her bottom, with his fingers. This was living, he thought. He reached down and caressed himself as he did it. She wriggled and squealed.

“Be quiet,” he said. He took his fingers out of her bottom and pushed her head into the pillow to muffle her squeaks. That gave him an idea. He squished his fingers between her face and the pillow and hooked them in her mouth. He felt around her mouth for her tongue and did his best to wipe his fingers off on her tongue. Then he went back to making love to her behind with his fingers. He continued to caress himself. He thought of the woman at the arcade.