Gigi giggles in delight. ‘Aiya, Mr Lee, sit, sit.’ She pats the chair, and Mr Lee does as she asks. ‘To think Jing was prepared to use you as a sacrificial lamb – and for what? To satisfy her unhealthy obsession with the hulijing.’
‘What do you mean?’ Mr Lee asks.
I make eyes at Gigi, urging her to shut up. But she plows on, like an ox in the fields, with no regard to anything other than the path in front of her. ‘Oh, well, isn’t it obvious? The whole point of her escorting you around yin Shanghai, and agreeing to come to yang Shanghai, is because of her little revenge plot against the hulijing. Why else would she be so keen to pin the fake talisman on the Hulijing Court?’
I’m about to kick Gigi under the table, but the server arrives, cutting her off. He places a plate full of various pastries and another of salted caramelma ka rongon the table.
‘When do you have to go back?’ I ask Ah Lang, changing the subject, though I can feel the chill of Mr Lee’s glare on my back.
He gazes sadly at Gigi. ‘In two days. Then I won’t see my petal until I can get leave to visit Hell or yang Shanghai again.’
‘Unless baba changes his mind,’ Gigi says. Her eyes sparkle a little too bright, and she makes a small noise that is very unlike Gigi – a quiet sob. But she shakes her herself, drawing herself tall. ‘Big Wang promised he’d make a case for us. The old man can’t stay mad at me forever.’
‘But you suffer so when we’re apart.’ Ah Lang traces a finger down her cheek. It comes away wet.
The moment feels too intimate. I look away, and catch Mr Lee staring at Gigi, a sudden bleakness in his gaze. I grab his hand, muttering, ‘Be right back,’ and pull him away from the table to give Gigi and Ah Lang some privacy.
We browse the sweets on the shelves inside the café. Mr Lee picks up a bag of sea salt caramels and asks, ‘Is it true? Does Gigi suffer terribly when they’re apart?’
I nod. ‘Sometimes she sinks into a dark mood. Playing kanhoo helps keep her mind off the heartache. Big Wang makes sure she has food when we play. Otherwise she doesn’t eat.’
The bag of sweets crinkles in his hand. ‘Maybe it would be better for her if she hadn’t met him at all.’
His comment surprises me. I shake my head. ‘It would be better if she hadn’t made her baba lose so much face by forgetting her duties. But I think Big Wang has a chance of swaying the Jade Emperor. They’re good friends. It would have been better if she hadn’t told him the truth in the first place. If she’d just said she forgot the date, rather than admit she wasted all her time mooning after a boy, her baba would not have gotten so angry.’
Mr Lee’s gaze turns dark. ‘Why is lying always the first thing you reach for?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You pretended to Big Wang you were not going to try and find out more about the fake talisman. I thought maybe you wanted to ask the old woman about it because you were worried about me. Your concern touched me, so much so I went out of my way to get you blood. But now, I know it wasn’t about me at all. It was all about getting your own back on the hulijing.’
My face flushes. ‘You don’t know what they’re like—’ I start. But he holds up a hand.
‘I understand you have an ugly history with them. You were a child and in no way to blame for what they did to you. But now? Your decisions and your actions are your own. I thought you cared for me, but how much of that was merely a means to an end?’ He huffs, a derisory sound. ‘Looking back, everything you did, everything you said, was duplicitous. You made it seem like you didn’t want to go to the Paramount but really, you wanted to go so you could speak to Brother Zhu.’ He shakes his head. ‘Why lie to me? Did you think I wouldn’t help you, wouldn’t support you?’
‘It’s not that. It’s that you’re a rule follower.’ I spread my hands, trying to make him understand. ‘And I’m not.’ Even to my ears, it’s a pathetic explanation. I try again. ‘I didn’t lie, really. I only massaged the truth.’
‘We would have gone to the Paramount willingly, if you’d only asked. There was no need for all the scheming.’ He huffs again, his gaze colder than I’ve ever seen it. ‘I told you, I can’t abide liars.’ He leaves me inside the café and rejoins Gigi and Ah Lang outside. I don’t know what to say or do. I don’t know how to make things right.
After lunch, I try to slip my hand in his while we wait for a rickshaw to take us to a covered market where Gigi wants to look at pearls. He gazes at our intertwined fingers, then drops my hand to fiddle with his wallet. Once seated, he keeps his hands busy – scratching his head, eating caramels, then finally propping his arm over the back of the rickshaw, out of reach.
We watch a talking picture at the Grand Cinema. He shifts in his chair and leaves a wide gap between us. He hasn’t addressed me directly at all since lunch; only speaking to me if courtesy requires. Sitting beside him in the darkened theatre, he feels so far away that he might as well be on the opposite bank of the Yellow River. This continues through the afternoon, the chasm between us growing wider and colder. For my part, I get angrier and angrier. He has no right to judge me, to criticise my choices. I want to spit in his eye, scream at him, but I won’t ruin Ah Lang and Gigi’s last day in Shanghai.
So I wait.
Twenty-Three
Broken
When we all agree to head back to our rooms and rest before meeting again for dinner, I finally have the chance to confront him.
As soon as the door shuts to my room, I pounce.
‘What’s with you?’
‘What do you mean?’ His gaze rests somewhere over my shoulder.
‘That– what you’re doing now. You spent the whole day avoiding me. You hardly even looked at me. So I lied! Everyone lies!’
