“What was that?” I ask sweetly.
“Fine—fine.Just... send it somewhere else....”
“Sure. But don’t forget,” I say, picking up the puppy. She curls instantly into my chest, nuzzling against the crook of my elbow, the warmth of her fur spreading through my shirt. I carry her along the street and set her down in front of a grocery store, where fresh strawberries and cherries are being sold in green plastic buckets bigger than my head. Then I buy a plain slice ofbread for her, tearing it apart with my fingers and letting her eat it from my hands.
Once she’s finished licking all the crumbs, the puppy lingers a few moments longer, as if to thank me, her watery eyes bright and round as the setting sun, before slinking off into the nearby bushes.
“Is it gone?” Ares asks when I return.
I’d been prepared to make myself comfort him, to build that fake emotional connection. But as I draw closer, I don’t feel like faking anything. He’s sitting on a stone bench, ankles crossed, his usually composed expression shadowed by embarrassment and the remnants of fear. His crow-dark hair is rumpled from the wind, strands of it falling into his eyes, his shirt smelling faintly, sweetly, of the cologne samples from the mall. The desire to comfort him rises up inside me without prompting.
“Yeah, it’s gone.”
“Thank you,” he says, reluctant, but not insincere.
“No big deal. It’s what I spend most of my time doing,” I say. “Swooping in and saving pretty faces from monsters.”
There it is again—the suggestion of a smile, forced back down before it can fully form, like he’s annoyed by his own reaction.
“Hey, don’t beat yourself up over it,” I tell him.
“What?”
“Enjoying my company,” I say. “It’s perfectly normal.”
He rolls his eyes and stands up, but this time, instead of following one step behind me, he walks right by my side.
“Thisis the spot?”
Ares stares around the barbecue stall and the tiny wooden chairs like he expects me to open up a trapdoor in the middle of the busy street, one that will lead to a proper restaurant, or just anywhere that doesn’t cook its food right out in the open.
“What?” I snort as I drape my jacket over an empty seat to create a makeshift cushion. I motion for him to join me in the chair across the table, which he does slowly, angling his long legs so they don’t bump against the wood. Everything here is small, squeezed to maximize profit. The table beside us is so close that I could easily turn my head and slide into the conversation happening between the two half-drunk college-aged guys there. I’m pretty sure one of them just got dumped, seeing as he laments every few seconds, between swigs of Qingdao beer and bites of grilled lamb, “I can’t believe she just dumped me.”
Most people fall in love with this city because it makes them feel important, being at the heart of everything. Or they love it for its endless opportunities, the cash flowing through the five-star hotels and dizzying plazas and live streamers on the streets to the skyscrapers in the financial district. Or the history, the hutongs that have survived the turn of centuries and the crimson-painted temples that have witnessed countless changes of seasons, white snow settling on their sparrow-wing eaves and melting again in the spring.
But I love Beijing most on nights like this: the thrumming crowds, the glow of the street stall lights, the lick of oil and salt in the warming air, the easy flow of conversation around me.
When I was in Australia, everything always seemed to close before the sun had even fully set beneath the horizon. More times than I could count, my friends and I would chat until we could tell the restaurant staff were impatient to leave, and then walk aimlessly through the suburbs.
Here, though, the whole city stays wide awake all the way until dawn, ready to offer you anything you wish for, so long as you know where to look. You could buy a heat pack and a strawberry plushie from the convenience store at three in the morning, or request red-date-and-ginger tea to be delivered to your door faster than it takes you to boil water yourself, or hail a rickshaw to the Olympic Village and wander around the glowing towers, because why not?
“It just... doesn’t seem like your usual sort of style,” Ares remarks, still staring, taking the place in: the hawkers in matching red caps and aprons crouching down to cook, the single LED light suspended over the grill, the smoke wafting into the night air, the ugly but eye-catching rainbow posters advertising the different skewer options in bold Chinese characters.Squid, ten yuan. Lamb, five yuan. Chicken gristle, five yuan. Potato, one yuan. Leek, one yuan.
I raise my brows to hide my satisfaction at his surprise. I’d deliberately chosen this place to show off how flexible I am, how at ease I can be in any environment. “You want to keep a man interested? You have to be unpredictable,”my mother had advised me years ago. “Every time he thinks he has you figured out, reveal a different side of yourself.”
“You think I’m incapable of eating something if it isn’t prepared by a Michelin-starred chef and served on a golden tray?”
His gaze flickers back to me. “I didn’t say that.”
“You think my life is easy,” I go on mildly, without accusation, as though I’m pointing out something as obvious and indisputable as the weather.
“I think,” he says, “that your life is very different from mine.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I just do,” he says. Then, after a beat, he adds, “I saw that interview you did.”
“What interview?”
