Chapter 8
The next morning, he was awoken by the light that slipped into the bedroom through the chinks and corners of the curtain. He pulled and flung the curtain to the hook, and immediately a dawn, with a shape of triangle, was opening a window as if in his heart.
Trees and shrubs were serene and still like a painting on canvas. The light of the babyish sun was slanting in soft silver and pink, patching here and there and drifting among the leaves, either whitening or darkening the branches and twigs. There, a pregnant palm tree was giving birth to a new cluster of seeds and flowers, which, by their ivory bony fingers, caught the prime of a day’s brilliance. Birds, one or two or three, flew and floated above the streaks of young light, but without noise coming to him, they were no birds but shadows of paradise.
Such was an early morning in Sydney!
This was the sort of window opened every day for him; its depth of colour and its breadth of waver depended on how the Heaven had a mood playing the planet. Every morning, with the first opening of his eyelids, the window let him glimpse at the life and the breath of universe, to feel the flow of his own living moments.
He reached the curtain and released it from the hook. The image of the triangle was at once blotted out. He closed his eyes, pulled up the soft quilt to his cheek, and snuggled into his bed for more indolent hours of Sunday.
By the time he woke up again, it was after 9:30 in the morning.
Then he thought of Serena. He turned on the computer, which was on the desk beside the bed.
The messages from her said, ‘Is it in the Rocks? The German Bar? I passed there once, the waiters and waitresses are beautifully dressed, but I haven’t ever dined there.’ The time was 12:35am, so she was still on QQ after midnight.
Instantly his soul admitted a stirring of new light, and he composed a long text carefully before sending it, ‘Yes, that is the one. The waiters, in breeches, are like young riders or rough farmers; and the waitresses are in tight blouses, in their colourful flared skirts, they dance more than walk. The way they deliver the drinks is very special. A long stick laden with a line of wine cups in sockets is presented to the customers as near as to their noses,’ he sent, and added, ‘Their special pig knuckles, fried and grilled into a colour of gold, have a shape like a huge bow tie.’
He put quite a vivid description of the bar in an obvious bid to entice her interest to dine there with him. But he didn’t expect her reply anytime soon, for she was more likely still asleep, considering her late night before.
So he left the computer on, and went to the bathroom. When he came back minutes later, he saw two new messages winking at him. ‘Are you free now?’ and, ‘Can I treat you to breakfast now?’
All at once he was buoyant like a balloon. And her two ‘nows’ in her messages spoke of her urgency to see him. Oh, my…! She seemed to be wanting him no less than he did her. He could feel the tremor of his fingers when he sent, ‘Yes, I am free.’ Then, ‘You treat me breakfast? Well, let me treat you,’ then, ‘when? 10:20am?’
‘No, I haven’t yet got up yet,’ and, ‘Oh, I made a mistake, I thought you said in 20 minutes,’ then, ‘ok, let’s meet 10:20am.’ He could feel her pulse beating as fast as his.
He jumped off the seat, allowing a rush of joy to go freely through him. He pulled hard to take off his pyjamas and underwear, tossing them to the floor, stepping on them and beating them crazily, as if his excitement wouldn’t be expressed in full without a measure of ferocity.
He went for a big shower.
Amidst the pour of water his mind began to calm down and question the cause of her sudden change of attitude. How could this happen? The only logic he could think of was the two long messages he had sent describing the restaurant. Have they stirred her imagination and finally caught her romantic nerve? But he knew, after a few meetings with her, that she was not fond of literature, and she was far from being a sentimental creature like other women he had known.
Well, the main thing was she wanted a date with him, the reason for which was no longer important.
Sharp, clean, and at his best as he perceived himself in the mirror, he was soon on the road, driving, or flying like a bird to the service station. It was drizzling and drifting; the strokes of the windshield wipers were mirroring his heart’s palpitating, and the rain beads on the glass, blown by the headwind, shooting upwards like countless sperm heads before they were wiped away.
He parked the car in the same place at the service station. He got out and walked in the rain to the shop. He thought he needed to buy at least something, such as a couple of bottles of water, so to be a genuine customer authorised to use the parking space. And, today could be a long day; after breakfast, they might go anywhere. He truly believed this time their story wouldn’t be finished by the end of breakfast, therefore the water would be needed for rest of their meeting.
When the guy behind the desk asked for $7, he was not a little surprised. Instead of the five dollar note ready in his hand, he had to find a fifty dollar note from his wallet. He was never a person who minded much the price tag when shopping, but three and half dollars a bottle for water was enough to rouse his price-sensitivity. Maybe it was just the premium of convenience in the service station he had to pay for; maybe the price was actually similar to other supermarkets where he had scarcely bothered to check the price tag. He remembered seeing a headline in a newspaper saying Sydney was the third most expensive city to live in the world. Well, he knew that house prices were certainly expensive, but other living expenses? He wouldn’t have a clue. In the years of his marriage, it had been his ex-wife who had taken care of domestic matters. Since I began to live as a single, he had been almost blind to any items on the shopping receipt. He would use his Master Card, or preferably the American Express if it was acceptable, because of its higher reward points, and grandly signed off the slip at the counter.
Carrying two of the cold water bottles, he walked back to the car. He didn’t quicken his steps to avoid the rain. He liked rain as much as the rays of sun. In this aspect, he was similar to those local Aussies, especially the uniformed high school students on the road, who would not be scared by a storm, and who would just walk, walk, walk, and never bother shaking their head or ruffling their hair. Indeed, they were not like the frightened chickens, who had to seek an immediate shelter on any emotional outbreak of nature.
However, in the car, he did snatch a couple of tissues to dry his hair and face. Then, he called Serena.
She said, ‘My landlady wants to go Ashfield. Can she go together with us in your car? It is raining.’
‘No problem.’
Ashfield was less than one hundred meters away. So her landlady needing a lift for such a short distance made him think of other possible ulterior motives Serena might have in mind. It was very likely she wanted her landlady to see and check on him, then to give her some opinion in her hu*****and-decision-making process, now that she was readily taking him on.
Minutes later, under a small umbrella, Serena was turning up, but alone. With short whitish pants that ended at her knees and a pinkish blouse that set off her relatively dusky skin, as well as a pair of sandals that exposed her insteps and toes, she was appearing rather casual and real and relaxed, though far less striking than last time when her tight spotty leopard-pants had impressed him.
‘Where is your landlady?’ Bing raised the question through the open window.
‘She changed her mind and decided to go over there herself,’ she said, as she walked around to the passenger door.
Bing felt vaguely disappointed. Then he heard Serena speak again, ‘Can you save a bird?’
‘Bird?’
‘There is a little bird on the road, looks like it’s dying, can you save it?’
‘Of course, where is it?’
He stepped out, the rain had temporarily ceased. He followed her to a corner where a bird, common in Sydney, lay prostrate on the wet road, cheeping weakly. Bing didn’t know its name, but it was definitely not as tiny as a sparrow, though it did have similar grey feathers.
‘A young bird, it must have fallen out of its nest and wounded itself,’ he said, as he approached the little creature.
He picked it up with his hand. The bird struggled feebly in his palm, and Bing noticed its head tilted unnaturally to one side.
‘I guess it’s hurt its neck,’ he said, ‘I don’t think it’s going to survive. If it is only in its legs, then there might be some hope.’
‘So it can’t be saved,’ she said sadly.
‘Anyway, let me put it in the car, at least it won’t be drenched in the rain. It may survive, we can’t tell.’
He walked to the car, and opened the boot. After spreading a sheaf of Chinese newspapers inside, he laid the bird onto it. The bird didn’t even move.
While closing the boot, Serena caught sight of a pink-coloured raincoat, and she said, ‘What is that?’ then before he could reply her, she spoke out, ‘is it your daughter’s?’
Her flat tone was not sounding serious at all, but Bing’s stunning was never so absolute. ‘What? My daughter’s? Are you kidding.’ His quick denial rushed out to stifle his troubled expression. And, in his conscious effort to distract and divert her attention, he was pushing down the boot with a force more than necessary. ‘It must have been left over by one of my neighbours.’ He searched for a quick excuse, hoping her curiosity would soon die off.
Honestly, he didn’t know how the raincoat had got there. It must have been a long time before when he took his daughter to the beach. He never imagined that the item, such a common thing in his eyes, would one day attract the interest of someone like Serena.
He walked around to get into the car, his mind refusing to cling to the matter. Actually, it was not the first time Bing had been struck by the sharpness of a woman’s intuition. His ex-wife had demonstrated quite an astonishing if not horrible sixth-sense in his thirteen years of marriage to her. He himself was largely a careless man, easily and characteristically forgetful and ignorant of any earthly things outside his area of concern. If Serena’s attention to a raincoat in his car was natural and understandable, her instant conjecture of its association with his daughter was utterly incredible. How could she possibly have any knowledge of his daughter? She didn’t even know he’d been married! Or did she? Had she managed to find something out? Oh, how ridiculous and absurd, and dreadful!
‘Where do I put my umbrella?’ Serena asked. He turned to her, and found her holding the dripping umbrella, hesitating at the opened door.
‘Just get in,’ he said, realising he hadn’t even thought of it in his consternation. ‘I will put it in the back seat.’
She stepped in. Bing took the umbrella from her, but before he was about to throw it, he thought better of it. ‘Better put it in boot.’ He got out of the car.
Inside the boot, he found the bird stiff on the paper, already dead. A sudden thought came to him that its struggle in his palm a while earlier might have exhausted all its little remaining energy, therefore, what he had intended to save it was actually quickening its death. Feeling bad, he thought of putting it in a garbage bin, but looking around, he couldn’t see any bins available for the funeral. ‘I’ll have to take it along,’ he said to himself, while unfolding another paper for the umbrella.
When he got back in the car, he didn’t mention the bird to her, nor did she seem to remember any such merciful deed ever happened on the gloomy day.
‘Where to for breakfast?’ Serena probed.
Again, a chronic what-to-eat and where-to-eat question was plaguing the minds of a spinster and a reclaimed middle-aged bachelor. Bing advised they could just have MacDonald’s on the way to somewhere yet to be decided. But Serena expressed a low opinion of a Big Mac as being the first meal she wished to treat him.
‘Then Ashfield?’ he asked. ‘Many good restaurants here could serve well our breakfast, couldn’t they?’
‘No, too many people may recognise me,’ she answered simply.
Although slightly confused as to why she was afraid of people recognising her, he didn’t have the mood to reason with her. In the end, Burwood again became the only destination they could agree upon.
During the trip, Bing was ill at ease, influenced by the dismal occurrences that had severely damaged his earlier jubilation. A long, poignant silence was smothering the souls in the car. The atmosphere was eerie, unnatural, and unhealthy. It was as if an idea or two were tossing and turning actively in their respective minds, banishing any threads of possible speech. The only distraction was the music, which seemed to help a bit diluting the heavy sombreness that had built up to saturate the air of the chamber.
Suddenly, Serena asked, ‘How old are you? You are thirty-six, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ he was taken back, but didn’t turn his head to her. ‘Why?’
‘Well, it’s just that you look older than that,’ she said lightly, yet seriously. ‘I have known a number of men about your age, but they don’t look like you.’
‘Hehe, maybe I often go outdoors, quite weather-worn,’ he made his explanation as lightly as his heart permitted.
‘Show me your ID, hehe,’ her crude request came as abruptly as her first question, but her eyes at which he turned quickly to look or stare, were twinkling like those of a mischievous child.
‘Well, you guess it first,’ he answered steadily, after a moment of difficult composure. Part of the reason for his ability to remain relatively calm, at least on surface, was due to his understanding that, sooner or later, he would have to expose his true identity to her, if any serious relationship was about to commence. Serena’s suspicion, though so ghastly and unpleasant, only brought forward the time of its eventuality.
‘38?’ she said, looking curiously into to his left side.
‘No,’ he shook his head, not as uneasily as he could have imagined.
‘40?’
To this, Bing didn’t give an immediate reply. He formed his lips into a twisted smile and said diplomatically, ‘Keep as a secret for the moment.’
Serena didn’t chase it further; she was cunning, but in no way stupid. She was shrewd enough to lend him a crack of room to breathe, and so, his last remark seemed, tentatively, to have put an end to this ugly and tormenting guesswork. With a sophisticated woman’s tactic, she handled this situation remarkably well, preventing her probe or provocation from pricking his last skin-layer of self-respect. In her numerous dating experiences, she must have encountered the same false and deceptive internet-men like him before.
They parked the car in the same place in Burwood. He opened the boot, took out the umbrella and gave it to her. There was only one umbrella, and Bing, consciously, was unsure how they were going to share it, or not share it. It was only drizzling; Bing had no concern about walking in the rain. In fact, for this moment, he was inclined to run away from her, at least for some time, for him to settle down, to muse over his plight.
However, for some reasons, Serena was behaving considerately and intimately, as much as a friend, or more than a friend. She leant into him, and she was on his right, straining her left hand to hold the umbrella over his head. Bing was debating within himself whether he should take the umbrella and do the job as a man. But he didn’t; he simply drifted along, like a grass in a flood surviving only by clinging to a bough. Wasn’t he a frail and miserable sheep turned from a man by himself, or by her? Wasn’t he a disgraceful thief caught off guard by a policeman, or by her?
And worse, the fact that she was walking on his right against his preference made the air under the umbrella ever more awkward and unbearable. It was like a couple of animals on the brink of extinction, without love or chemical, were being forced to build an intimacy within a zoo condition in order to breed their offspring.
If only she could just carry him onto a bed, or elsewhere, to rape him, crush him and beat him, he didn’t think he had an ounce of energy to fight her back.
There, they were moving, he under her sister-like protection. Now and then, they would mutter one or two dull comments about the weather, about many a Chinese shop. When entering the open area of the street, such as crossing a traffic light, he would stray a little from her coverage to escape from her feminine power, to free himself from a shame that had made his conscience smart so much and so unprepared. But she didn’t let him loose; she deftly reached him and covered his head again. And, the fleshy softness his right elbow occasionally caught from her left flank was ridiculously comfortable, so sexually stirring, even if he was at the time too much an unnerved creature to enjoy such moments of ecstasy.
They, or just she, decided on the restaurant for their breakfast. It was a Chinese noodle shop. It was old-fashioned; Bing couldn’t remember he’d dined there before. He liked something new, a new concept expressed by the restaurant proprietors of this generation, either by the cloth lanterns painted with red flowers and birds or by some artistic strokes or frames on the wall, like the Old Shanghai Shop in Ashfield.
But today, the furnishings mattered little to him. It was Serena’s hospitality and treat; she had the choice. And he was in no mood, with no room for art or sentiment.
Serena, upon entering the restaurant, halted her steps, turned to him and said: ‘I need to go the shopping centre to get some cash. Will you wait here for me?’
‘Yes, no problem.’ Truly and absolutely, it was not a problem; rather it was a so much wanted solution, for it would offer a great timeslot for him to soothe his perturbation, to become himself again, to transform a chicken-hearted creature to another who has a stronger will and resolve. But whatever result it was going to be, it wouldn’t a tiger, because he had never conceived of himself as someone with a ruthless mind and a dogged head, who could do nothing but attack and conquer in the fierce battle of human society. At best, Bing could only be a goat, braver than average, or maybe more like a creepy snake. After all, he came from a country where the famous The Art of War was developed thousands years before by a Chinese named Sunzi. A tiny snake could still take over the world, if he was acting smartly.
‘Well, what am I going to do now?’ he asked himself, seeing her walk away from him. ‘How long can I conceal my true background from her, now that she has become aware of my fabrication on the internet?’ Of course, it was not a crime, but it had the same shame and distaste of a crime. And if he told her about his age, then naturally his marital status would be her next questioning, though the rest of the information, such as his work, and his approximate income, was right. Admittedly, his chief motive was to conceal his age for a period of time, because it was so sweet to fancy he were still young and with enough charm to attract the young.
It didn’t take long for him to make a final decision. He would tell her everything during breakfast, for it would be unthinkable if he later had to reveal more untruthfulness to her, which would then be really unacceptable, and deadly criminal, and would absolutely become an issue of his character, violating his snaky integrity.
With that, he felt very much lightened. Some of the lost energy and pride started creeping back to him. At the same time, the shame and the ugliness and indecency of his concealment that had tormented him heavily during all the while, seemed in the process of detaching itself from his conscience. And he began to excuse himself: Well, a lot of people hide their true identity on the internet, it is just a consideration of privacy. If anything, it is just sliding a bit over the margin of morality. It is about when to tell, rather than not to tell; and, see, I am going to tell the truth…
He checked the direction of the Shopping Centre. She was still not in sight. She seemed to have taken too long for an ATM transaction. And now the fact was, instead of wishing her away, he was anxious for her to come back, so that he could tell her the truth, so that everything would be black and white, so that he would be no longer painfully crooked.
Yet five minutes more had elapsed, she was still nowhere to see. Then he started wondering. What was happening? One would never take such a lengthy period to carry out a transaction with an ATM. After all it was not dealing a teller at the counter in a bank.
Then a thought crossed his mind. Was it possible that she, knowing he had been hiding himself and faking his story, had just escaped from him? And her ATM business was no more than an excuse? And that she would just send an SMS later to inform him she was not coming back for breakfast? Or simply leave him standing there forever as a type of punishment?
Well, the scenario would be too much of a melodrama, but it was not entirely impossible. She seemed to be, always if he had been able to estimate her correctly, an impulsive and capricious woman.
Or, it was also possible, she was thinking alone inside the shopping centre, and teetering on the next movement she was to take.
Then he caught her figure, coming out of the sliding door of the shopping centre, and waiting placidly at the traffic-lights for a little while, before crossing the road and walking towards him as gracefully as before.
Reaching where he was standing, she gave some reason for taking so long, but Bing didn’t grasp her words, for his mind was tight with his own thoughts.
Entering the restaurant, she closed her umbrella and thrust it into the basket at the entrance. Seated, they ordered some food, and then waited.
‘Actually, you should have come in and ordered the food, then we wouldn’t have had to wait,’ she said, in her usual critical way.
So, his speculation of her sudden leaving him without courtesy was unfounded. He said, simply, ‘But I didn’t know what you wanted to eat.’
‘Well, it doesn’t matter, just breakfast.’
Yet, in Bing’s mind, the matter did matter to her, and, to a lesser extent, to him. Otherwise, why did they spend so much time ordering? People, so fussy and spoiled by their own relentless inventions, have too many choices nowadays not to confuse them in every living situation.
They did not have to wait as long as expected. The porridge, the dumplings, and the Fried Dough Sticks (You Tiao) were soon on their table. Serena seemed to like the fried dough-sticks very much; but to Bing, this was the best representation of unhealthy foods, even worse than the chips in MacDonald’s or KFC’s. But he knew it was very popular for Chinese breakfast, especially when eaten together with porridge or soybean milk. It was soft, and with a great aroma typically from pig-oil, eating them was not a little enjoyable. And, loose and hollow and insubstantial though its inside was, it had a stiff shape of a sausage, which, for a peculiar and perverse impression, tended to remind him, as wicked as he had known himself to be, of the shaft of a man’s penis.
Serena asked the waitress to cut the dough sticks into shorter stumps so as to fill easier in her porridge bowl.
The breakfast went on smoothly, with Serena again being the main eater.
Meanwhile, Bing picked the moment to make his scheduled confession.
‘I was born in 1970,’ without much preface, he dived into the sensitive waters. ‘So I am even older than your guess.’
’41 or 42?’ She obviously needed a bit of mental arithmetic to work this out.
‘Precisely, by this 20 July, I will be 42,’ he said, proudly as if he was saying a proud thing.
‘Oh, no wonder,’ she smiled a little, ‘I just thought you were about 38.’
‘So I look younger, do I?’
‘But not as young as 36 though.’
‘Frankly, you are the first one in my dating history, who’s voiced out such a suspicion,’ he said. ‘The others seemed to be indifferent, or just ignorant.’
‘Maybe they don’t care much about a man’s appearance, or maybe they are just desperate for a man to fulfil their destiny of marriage.’
‘So you are different,’ he commented, and then as flippant as now of his manner, he released the last stain of his shame, ‘and I was divorced, and have a daughter.’
‘Really? How old is your daughter?’
‘Nine.’
‘Living with her mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long have you been divorced?’
‘Three years.’
By this time, Being’s appetite was all gone. Serena asked him to eat more, for there was plenty left on the table. He persuaded himself to take one of the sticks, which he did, together with some porridge.
As soon as they came out of the restaurant, after his taking the umbrella from the basket, Serena said to him, ‘Why did you have to conceal your age and marital status? I know quite a lot of girls who’d be interested in a mature man like you.’
‘Well, I just don’t want to confine myself to certain age groups. After all, most of the meetings would go nowhere. One doesn’t have to reveal everything on the first date. It is the face-to-face meeting that should be taken as a real starting point, well, in my opinion.’ He found it very hard to say things straight.
‘Well, where to go?’ Serena asked, diverting the difficult topic for him.
‘Can we go to the beach? Dee Why?’ he proposed, now he was feeling like a different man, a true man, his tone was somehow more confident. He knew it was raining, not a good time to stroll on the beach. But he pictured them dining in one of the beach restaurants. The fact that she was still willing to go with him after his revelation was a sweet encouragement. Even talking to her in the car could be quite relaxed and unreserved, to an ‘honest’ man he had just now become.
‘Okay,’ she agreed, with the charm of womanly obedience unseen on their previous negotiations.
He was again the driver now. Without having to pretend to be a naïve newbie in the field of human relationship, he was assuming a new role of potency and maturity. After all, he had seen and experienced a lot more than she; there was no reason he should feel timid and humble before a person much his junior. Presently he was feeling now as a winner, and she a loser, for all of her previous claims about him had been mistaken, and had derived hastily and shallowly from her shallow mind.
And he knew very well how to get to their destination; no need to rely on the GPS that would make him look green and inexperienced. It was raining, so the feeling inside the car was cosy and safe, and comfortable, and romantic. And so, to extend the time for such a nice closeness between them, he deliberately chose a longer road through Lane Cove and then the sinuous Mona Vale Road, to the far north of Sydney, from where he would drive down to the beach.
‘Do you see your daughter?’ she asked, meaning how often he saw his child.
‘Yes, once or twice a week, not fixed though.’
‘May I ask how you came to divorce?’
It was definitely not a good time for answering this type of question, yet he had no other choice but to pacify some of her curiosity. ‘Well, I would say it was my fault. It was me whose mind wandered too far in the midst of a so called middle-aged crisis,’ he paused to make up a safe story. ‘It was as if, coming towards my forties, I was able to see at the end of my life for the first time, and I could no longer bear the monotonous and uninspiring progression towards the end. I felt something was missing from my life. It was one of those wonderings and whims, a type of dissatisfaction with what you are and what you have, you know.’ He took a break, then decided not to go further on the uneasy topic, although he knew he had simply evaded her query. The real cause of his divorce was simple, base and common. He had betrayed his wife; he had been unfaithful. For now, holding the truth back from Serena was not an issue of honesty, but again, something to do with precious privacy. After all, she was not yet his girlfriend, not even a friend in the common sense. Even if she were already his wife, he would still have a right to keep it from her.
Nevertheless, Serena didn’t seem to be so much interested in his past as her question might have implied. Her question was more like picking a topic for the sake of a topic, for, while his mind was still with her first inquiry, she jumped to another branch, utterly irrelevant, ‘Do you know why I asked you out for breakfast today?’
‘No, I don’t know,’ he said, glad of the change in her direction of chatting, increasing his sense of humour. ‘You haven’t fallen in love with me, have you?’
‘Haha…’ her little laugh brushed off gleefully his little humour. ‘You know, since I met you the first time, I have thought of you in the light of a hu*****and. I am not stupid, I am no longer a young, vain, silly girl who was only guided by the appearance and look of a man, although I am still naturally and more readily attracted to those qualities. I am mature enough to know the unstable and short-lived nature of a feeling. Last time I told you I didn’t have a feeling for you, which was true, but I didn’t intend to give you up completely. You are still a good candidate, height acceptable, as well as work and salary. But you did seem a bit odd and strange to me, not seemingly belonging to my generation. The music you listened to, the way you behaved were a contrast to other men I had met before.’
She paused to touch one of the water bottles Bing had placed in the cradle between the seats, and asked, ‘Can I have one of these?’
‘Yes,’ he answered, picked up the bottle, and handed it to her.
She took it from his free hand, screwed off the cap, and began to drink, softly.
The car was moving, shrouded in the sentimental rain. The wipers were working diligently as good servants, and his hands on the steering wheel were truly of an expert driver’s.
After taking a mouthful of water, she replaced the bottle, and went on, ‘Now would you tell me your real background so that I can start to piece together a complete picture of you.’
Bing was ready to tell her about everything about himself, and paused a while to think where to start. Then, Serena, as often happened before, changed the conversational direction dramatically again, ‘You know, yesterday I had a date with the doctor from UNSW, the one I told you about before. It was an utter disappointment. I had my high-heels on, and you know what his comment was?’
‘No?’ His tone was encouraging.
‘He said I shouldn’t bother wearing high heels if I didn’t feel comfortable. It seemed to me, after two years, he was still only conscious of how I dressed, as if he didn’t have anything else to say about me. And he said he could accompany me shopping if I wished. But I never like the idea of a man, like a puppet, escorting a woman around the shopping counter. Oh, such a person! And to think I had to strain and pain ankle by trying to appear more attractive to him.’ She stretched out both feet, taking off her shoes, revealing the scraped reddish skin around her ankles.
Conscious of her quiet waiting for some sympathy from him, he looked at her feet, feeling the pain, and said, ‘Oh, so red…’ Honestly, he wanted to touch it, but couldn’t, so he asked, ‘How old is he?’
‘Thirty five,’ she said.
Bing gave an opinion, ‘I am not sure of what type of person he is. But at the age of thirty five and single, he must have picked up and dropped, picked up and dropped his Ms Right during his entire ten suitable years, which was exactly what some of my never-married single friends had been doing. I don’t know why a man should have so much concern with a woman’s dress, and even if he must, he should consider keeping his mouth shut to show some respect to a woman, shouldn’t he?’
Still bent to nurse her red skin, she didn’t answer him. Then she asked, in her usual, off-the-course manner during a dialogue, ‘How old were you when you married?’
‘Twenty six.’
‘Well, you got divorced,’ she said, with obvious disdain and mockery in her tone, hinting strongly that it was much worse getting married then divorced than not marrying at all, and that her ‘spinster’ status was after all not as bad and miserable as she and others might have thought her to be.
‘Yes, but one can’t predict the future,’ he returned, philosophically. ‘Life is a process, I do not anticipate an ideal end result. Above all, there is only one end in all lives, nothing but death.’
For the next minute or two, they were silent, as if the word ‘death’ in his remark had choked off their thoughts.
The car had now entered a narrow road, winding through the forest, sandwiched by the thick trees and undergrowth. The quietness was suggesting they were now in a place far away from the noisy human-habitat. For a long while, the feeling of remoteness, and the misty semi-transparent sky, and the steady brushing sound of the wiper, and the hesitating and merging raindrops on the window glasses, seemed to dominate the two souls of Chinese origin. It was a little sad, a little romantic, a little longing, yet seemed to be peaceful in the heart.
‘I like this road. It is sort of adventure in the bush,’ he said to her, as she sat back and began to finger her earrings.
‘I like it too,’ she agreed, which for her was a rarity of showing direct agreement on a subject with him, and which encouraged him to chat further in the same direction, ‘you know, sometimes, on a fine day, the rays of sunshine were pouring down from the treetops, like a curtain. It is a fantastic experience when you’re driving through the trees.’
No comment from her. It seemed every time he tried to extend a topic hopeful of building a deeper rapport between them, she would cruelly curtail it, disappointing and dejecting him. For so many times, he had been trying to stimulate her aesthetic or romantic sense, but she was rather unresponsive. Either she lacked it, or deliberately shunned his efforts, he was let down just the same.
In one way, she was excessively practical, yet in another, she was a vain and showy girl, over-emphasizing her superficial attractions. Maybe her self-absorption blinded her to other forms and refinements admirable in a person, or other objects on the earth.
At any rate, when they finally arrived at Dee Why and drove to the place he used to park in many of his previous visits to the famous beach, he sincerely hoped, or at least sensed, albeit vaguely, that a special intimacy had been brewed and nurtured between them, from sharing the long silence and in-car confinement favourable to develop the human affection under the circumstances. He felt he was a step closer to her, in his naked, true form of himself.
He went over to buy a parking ticket. He pressed the ‘plus’ sign a few times, watching the hours and prices change, then he inserted his credit card. He was waiting for a message on the screen, which didn’t come up. Withdrawing the card and after dusting a bit on its magnetic stripe like he used to do with a music CD, he inserted it again, yet still nothing happened. A familiar agitation began to affect him. It was rather pathetic to think that, with so many years of driving and toll-paying experience in Australia, he still couldn’t find sufficient confidence in operating these ticketing machines, so damned solid, so cold, so inhuman, so annoying, so indestructible.
In the meantime, Serena had also got out of the car and came to him, holding the umbrella over his head. He took out the card, began seriously reading the instructions, still finding no clearer steps for him to do. Then as Serena watched beside him, he pressed a sequence of keys carefully but in ignorance of what he did, turning over his card fretfully a couple of times as if unsure of its usability. When the paper tearing sound finally came out from it, to be followed by the ticket dropping to the slot, he even sensed a slight vibration of his fingers. It seemed that such a small task indeed could have such a power to drive even a mature soul to helplessness and madness. Every time he was being frustrated in front of a parking meter, he had a picture of himself kicking and smashing it, of even bombing it with a bomb, destroying the stupid robot that stood there every single day plaguing so many innocent heads and hearts.
Why didn’t people invent a satellite system or something to charge the parking automatically in the same way as electronic tolls? Why didn’t they stop wasting more of their talent in bringing more of those fancy and stupid mobile phones as well as those so called tablets that had already sucked too much blood from the eyes and the fingers of electronic-victims all over the world?
‘I once got a fine of $120 for not calling the toll office after unable to produce a ticket,’ he said, recalling one of his bad experiences with those parking dramas in the city.
It was 12pm, the expiry time in the ticket was 3pm, so they could stay here for three hours if they wanted to. He walked back to the car, opened the door, and placed the ticket under the windshield to make it visible to those sneaky rangers, whose only living activity was to make people unhappy.
‘So where will we go?’ Serena said, seeing him coming back to seek shelter under her umbrella. It was now only sprinkling, Bing would have loved to walk in the open air, but with Serena close to him, and sharing a small umbrella, the temptation of leaning close to her body was too good to miss.
‘Let’s walk to a restaurant over there,’ he said.
The place he parked was on a hill, and being on the edge of the cliff, it was a nice vantage point. The sea, which was usually clear and sparkling blue, was muffled in a smoke of rain. Since this parking area was not free, it was always easier to park there than at the more convenient places close to the shops and the beach, where free parking was allowed within a time limit. To him, parking was such a painful and disgusting business that all he wanted was to finish it as soon as he could, either by paying the toll, or by parking at a place more distant from a centre of interest.
‘It is far away, long walking. It is cold,’ Serena protested, as she did in their first meeting in Burwood. However, this time her complaint sounded weak and obedient, more like a whinging wife to a hu*****and.
‘It won’t take long,’ he consoled, with tenderness he had not felt for a long time to a woman. ‘Let me take the umbrella’
‘Oh, you should have done this long before, you are such an “un-gentleman,” uncaring,’ she said, her left hand clutching at her right shoulder. ‘Sore.’
Bing swapped to his right hand to hold the umbrella, touched and caressed her shoulder with his other. Then their steps slowed down to a pause, at which point of time Bing held her waist, and quickly placed a kiss on her cheek.
She didn’t shrink from him.
They moved on, in silence, only the rain pattering lightly on the umbrella. But strange the kiss he had just given her had not made his heart beat. It was more like a courteous farewell kiss when a colleague left the company.
However, since the kiss, he was able to put his arm around her waist, until they crossed the road, where the shops were established. Here more people were moving about, their uncovered heads graciously receiving the raindrops. Going further down to a restaurant named Seaside Café, they entered and sat inside, because Serena said she was feeling cold in her short pants.
Bing was hungry, which was unreasonable considering they had taken a breakfast less than two hours before. But he knew he had only eaten a little then, so he thought to order himself a proper main item, beef with something, while she only wanted a coffee and an ice-cream. When asked by the waiter about the drink, Bing wanted beer, ‘Heineken’, not his favourite VB. Well, any beer would give him the same desired effect. In real terms, he was drinking beer for the sake of beer; very much as he was living life for the sake of life. He chose Heineken this time, because he felt the name a little difficult, a bit of challenge for him to pronounce correctly. Usually he would get it right after mimicking once or twice his friends’ or a waiter’s correct pronunciation.
So the waiter immediately corrected him, and he immediately repeated it after him, feeling a strange satisfaction as if he was a baby in his early phase of linguistic development, and he knew he would slip back to his wrong pronunciation next time, which was just one of the weird stubbornness in one’s language brain.
Ordering for western cuisine was invariably expedient for Bing, because really he was an ignorant diner in western restaurants. He would ask for beef, fish, or lamb, and would always readily accept whatever the waiter may suggest for the flavour, sauce, side dishes, by nodding yes, yes, yes. Sometimes what was eventually delivered turned out to be of poor taste beyond his tolerance, but he would invariably accept his fate, without complaining. No fuss, just something for one to survive! He often imagined that one day humans wouldn’t have to eat, instead, when they were hungry, they would merely go out into the sun, bathe in it, and as with solar power, the energy would pass into the system and keep the organs functional.
‘I need to go the toilet,’ Serena said, rising to her feet, gingerly moving out due to the little space around the two-seat table.
She stepped towards the counter, obviously intending to ask the waitress, who was presently serving another customer, about the whereabouts of toilet. In the meantime, there was a moment of her standing there, tall, motionless, with a curious detachment from reality. Her facial expression was very different from just a while earlier when she was close to him. There was little charm, she looked tired, and heavily drawn, her eyebrows tightened, and sagging. Her nose, a great attribute to her personality in his original admiration, was now of a sombre and subdued significance.
It was only a flash but a sad image he believed would last long in his memory. It must be her true self at home, or elsewhere when she was alone, when she was not out in the market searching for a man for a marriage from which she had so much expected to derive her living happiness.
Nonetheless, on coming back to the seat, her charm was recovered, she was smiling, her eyes concentrating, her nose gazing again proudly at him.
Suddenly, he became conscious of his own hands that had saved yet killed the bird at the service station. ‘I go to wash my hands,’ he said, moving swiftly to where Serena had come out.
He came back to see the dishes delivered. After drinking his first mouthful of beer he had poured himself, he started to use the knife and fork to cut the beef. Serena was stirring the rich and thick chocolate-coated foam, with a shape of heart, on top of the coffee, making a comment that the cream was the best. Then she added, as she had mentioned before, that her doctor had told her not to drink too much coffee, because it would affect the absorption of calcium and other minerals. Well, Bing thought, it was just a common sense, not too much everything; too much everything would become an evil, either in the case of food, or money, or even love. So, Bing didn’t ask her for a reason.
The beef was cooked medium, with a colour of real blood, which excited sufficiently his appetite. He lifted a cut piece to his mouth, and started chewing. Good meat, but strangely, he tasted garlic. Only then he noticed there was a thick layer of white crumbs of garlic, mixed with dark sauce on the surface. It tasted weird and very unnatural, but he trusted himself he could finish the whole piece without much a struggle.
‘Wang Bing, you know why I asked you out this time?’ Serena asked, apparently forgetting she had asked the same thing before.
‘Well, you have fallen in love with me, obviously,’ he grinned, repeating his expired humour.
‘Hehe, that is exaggerating,’ she grinned back. ‘I gave a prophet, a Chinese Eight Trigrams specialist, your birth date, and that doctor’s. He said you would be a better hu*****and than him.’
‘Thank you.’
‘But now your birth date is wrong. Your age is outside my range. No more than 40 for me.’
‘Do two or three years make much a difference?’
‘Of course it does. It is such a gap. More than ten years’ difference is too much for a couple. And you were married before, and with a child. Too complicated. Even if I accepted you, my mum would be surely against it.’
‘Well, I don’t think it easy for you to get a good, unmarried Chinese man under 40, unless you like to broaden your coverage to include non-Chinese.’
‘No, I don’t feel attracted to Aussie men. Language and cultural things, unimaginable.’
‘But there are many Chinese women I know, who have married non-Chinese,’ he said. ‘I once saw a girl, apparently Chinese, on a cruise with a handsome man, from India I think, they were kissing and caressing each other, they appeared very intimate and happy.’
‘I don’t know. It would be very strange for me.’
‘Why don’t you extend your territory beyond Sydney? Or even to China?’
‘Too much trouble. If you find a man in China, he would have to start here all over again. It ain’t going to work out in the end. What would happen if he couldn’t find a job here?’
‘But, in Sydney, there aren’t enough suitable male candidates meeting your requirements. ’
‘Yes, that is why it is such a task to find a partner here.’
‘Partner? You are after a hu*****and, to be more accurate.’
‘Yes,’ she said, despondently.
Bing drank and, suppressing his eyebrows from frowning, ate another piece of beef. Serena was working on her ice-cream with her long, thin spoon. Temporarily there was no conversation. He glanced about the restaurant. Next to his table, there was a group of four sprightly elder people, presumably retired couples, or pensioners. One lady’s clothing was leaving her arm and shoulder very bare. Her skin was heavily creased and mottled. They were laughing, apparently over some jokes the male diners or the hu*****ands had been telling. Their table and especially their mighty platters were laid plenty of food, chips, meat, salads, sauces, beers and other bottles or classes of who knows what beverage, as well as forks and knives so many that any Chinese would have to wonder.
Oh, happiness was so easy to them!
Then, turning his interest back to the girl sitting in front of him, he said, ‘But, I thought you had already dropped me after our last meeting.’
‘Well, that was not true. I just told you I didn’t have much feeling for you. It was you saying you wouldn’t contact me. What could I say? I couldn’t say to you, “Yes, please continue to keep in touch”, could I?’
‘But when you told me you didn’t have any feeling for me, it was very much an end of the whole story. Your words were merciless and brutal and slighting. You had hurt my pride very much you know.’
‘On that night, I only wanted you to ease down your courting enthusiasm. You were too aggressive. You should have given me breathing time.’
‘But I did have a feeling for you. And I couldn’t help it.’
‘I know, but now it doesn’t matter any more. We ought to be just friends.’
Bing raised his eyebrows and looked seriously into hers. He was expecting something that would betray the opposite of her assertiveness, but he failed. She only held his eyes for a short, fleeting moment, before averting her eyes and turning to her sweeter ice-cream.
However, Bing was not absolutely sad and disappointed. The fact that she was with him now, either as a friend or as a lover, had overcome most of the anxieties he had suffered during his initial efforts of gaining her favour. Presently he was feeling assured and confident at her presence. It was less an issue now whether or not he could win her into a loving relationship. Having adequately restored his manly position was itself a great relief to him. He may like her, adore her, but a new feeling of compassion and pity had also developed during the past hours. In his eyes, she was not a mystery any more. She was more transparent as a female, as a fellow Chinese, not much different from many other Chinese female immigrants who had to toil through the matching process in the niche market of marriage.
In a few more minutes, they declared their lunch finished. He waved to the waiter for the bill, and was a while later handed a nice black leather folder. Bing took out his credit card, and opened the folder, placing gracefully the card inside, as if he was after all a decent and successful person, a Chinese who had migrated here a decade before and had finally dug his feet deep enough in this part of the land.
The waiter came back for his signature. With a stroke as extravagant as Chairman Mao doing his calligraphy, he signed the slip and then, replacing the card into his wallet, he squared his shoulder, arising to leave.
They crossed the road to the sidewalk of the beach. It was still raining, though lightly. He saw one or two lonesome surfers battling the waves in the sea, but on the beach was no sign of wanderers.
The sky was all a greyness of low-hanging cloud. The rain, silvery and mystical, were slipping down. Every item around the beach, live and lifeless, animated and inanimate, was being painted with a sober calmness.
Bing didn’t suggest walking on the beach, though he would have liked to do so. To him, lingering together with Serena on the deserted beach would stir an imagination too precious to miss. But Serena was in her sandals, and she said she was cold, and she was not romantic or she was just not so much so when with him.
He held the umbrella, but he didn’t hold her waist as before, though their bodies were rather close as they walked. His arm rubbed against hers, feeling a warmth that was so sweet, so poignant in the gloominess of air that he forgot she was indeed cold and shivering.
They walked slowly along, aimlessly for a quarter of an hour. Then she said, ‘I need to go to the toilet.’
Oh, she wanted to go to the toilet again; now he truly believed she couldn’t possibly drink beer.
He advised, ‘Do you want to go back to the restaurant, which is closer, or to the public toilet at the other side of the beach?’
‘To the public,’ she said simply, ‘but are you sure there is one over there?’
‘Yes. I’ve been there before,’ he confirmed. ‘If not, we can always go back to the restaurant, where the shop owner won’t possibly refuse a request from a pretty girl like you. The Aussie shop owners aren’t like Chinese ones who would usually shut their toilets as tight as their underpants.’
‘Hahaha…’
They turned and walked towards the other end of the beach. It was not too far. Half way there, she said, ‘So far away.’ And he said, ‘Hold on, you will enjoy it finally better.’ And she chuckled, ‘Hahaha… not that, it is my foot that hurts. Yesterday, the high-heeled shoes scraped hard on my skin. You see the red scars?’ she pointed, and he saw and believed and felt her pain, as before.
‘I think I need a bandage.’
‘There must be a shop for a bandage. We can get it afterwards.’
Now the rain seemed gathering a bit. A gust of wind was slanting the umbrella, causing the raindrops to scatter on their faces. She shuddered, then he noticed her body was indeed very soft.
‘Cold?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Let me buy a coat for you,’ his voice lowered to a near whisper.
They approached the toilet, a solid, boxy flat. It was also a shower room, providing fresh water for the careful swimmers and crazy surfers.
Seeing the Ladies sign, she was quickening her step. He said after her, ‘Don’t rush, it is not like a teller transaction.’
She seemed to have heard something, but without pause and response. She hid her body quickly inside the door.
Seeing the Men sign, he felt a need also. He went in and out, waiting for her under the eave.
Coming out at last, she asked him, ‘You didn’t go to the toilet?’ He answered, ‘Already done.’ She said, ‘Really? So quick.’ He answered, ‘Yes, I have no need to fake that as I have done with my age.’
‘Hehe, you like kidding about.’
‘Yes, I do when I am free from a pressure, when I am more like myself. I told you in QQ that a person may be distorted under pressure, didn’t I?’
‘Em.’ She was exhibiting a little feminine tenderness.
‘Now, let’s go get a bandage and overcoat for you.’
‘Maybe not, I don’t want to walk any more. Let’s go back to the car.’
The car park was on the same side as the toilet. It took them less than two minutes to reach the car. He opened the door for her, as a ‘gentleman’, holding the umbrella as she got in, and closed the door for her after she was in. Then he opened the boot, swiftly tossed the umbrella into it before banging it shut.
The moment he was inside the car, she commented, ‘It is warmer here.’ Then she pulled one or two tissues to wipe her feet, which had now been freed from the constraint of her sandals. The vivid red scars, half across the arch and ankle of her foot, looked very sensitive, and pitiful.
‘Sore?’
‘Throbbing.’
‘I can go out and get a bandage for you.’
‘No, don’t bother. It is all right.’
‘Do you want music?’
‘No, I said your music is from my dad’s generation,’ she teased.
He was not affected as unpleasantly as before. ‘Well, there are a great many of songs on the disk, many of them English, and of your generation as well.’
‘Better just chatting.’
‘Okay.’
She took more tissues to dry her hair. ‘Can I leave the used tissues here? I will dispose of them later,’ she said, employing both hands brushing and loosening her hair.
‘Don’t bother,’ he said lightly.
For a long moment, neither spoke. Bing watched the raindrops making runnels on the windshield, which, unlike the ones falling on the ground, didn’t explode or splash but produced many small eddies, rippling and waving like oil.
‘Are the earrings nice?’ Serena broke the silence, surprising him. He turned and saw her hands holding a pair of tiny golden earrings, diamond-shaped.
‘Yes, where did you get them?’ Bing commented easily.
‘From the shopping centre in Ashfield. There was a discount sale yesterday,’ she said, her fingers caressing the metal.
‘Good,’ he said, showing no enthusiasm for this topic. ‘But, really, I think all of those trinkets are good and beautiful.’
‘Hehe.’ At his lack of interest, she turned her attention back to the earrings in her hands, while he took a moment to wonder why she had to show him this kind of thing at this particular time. Did she just want to find something to say, or was she hinting at something else?
Then he felt the air in the car becoming stuffy. He pressed the button to lower the windows on both sides. The rain was slanting in a bit.
‘You don’t mind the rain wetting the leathers inside?’ she asked.
‘Well, why, only a little bit.’
‘Some people are more serious about that.’
He imagined her ‘some people’ referring to her ex-boyfriends. ‘Well, it is just a car, even a human doesn’t mind a few drops of rain.’
But noticing the rain dampening her legs below her shorts, he closed the window on her side, and adjusted the one on his side to a narrow crack to admit fresh air.
‘Do you still love him?’ he asked, casually yet abruptly.
‘Who?’
‘The one of 190cm.’
‘Don’t know, it has all passed. I did love him, but I don’t know if I still love him now.’
‘A woman can only love a person at a time. Is that a true statement?’ Bing pursued, philosophically.
‘I tend to di*****elieve it.’
‘But, frankly, I don’t think you can love any more. Every time you catch a man, you will compare him with another. And the feeling you have had with him is actually not dead, only dormant, and it will be awakening each time you have a next chance to compare.’
‘Well,’ she was faltering.
‘It sounds like what you are trying to do is to find a man to fill your room, a physical, brick and mortar room comprising a bed, a number of pillows and closets, but not a room of love, feelings and emotions. So I tend to think you won’t be able to love a man any more.’
‘But I did have another relationship with another man, after my boyfriend had left me for the US.’
‘Well?’ He turned to her, his eyes widening.
‘Soon after I thought I had recovered from the loss of leaving him.’
‘…’
‘It was a deed of shame, I admitted. The man was married, and he was actually a good friend of his. I fell for him helplessly when he said he loved me.’
‘I guess it was more to fill the empties left by your boyfriend, kind of opportunistic.’ He commented, after a little shocked by her revelation.
‘I don’t know. But my feelings were very strong, in many ways more intense than my ex.’
‘Do you think it was love?’
‘That is the thing I am not sure about.’
‘Then what?’ He was encouraging.
‘His wife discovered the affair, and I knew I must end it. So I went back to China and stayed for two months to pacify myself. I hurt his wife, an innocent woman. And then I got a chance to learn a bit about Buddhism, and repent for what I had done to her. Now I would never get involved again with a married man, even if in despair. ’
‘Was that when you were studying?’
‘Yes.’
The air in the car seemed to become heavier with the new threads of her confession. He pushed open the shade of the sunroof. The light from the sky, by the crystal rains, was brightening the space. The raindrops were mildly bubbling on the glass roof.
She bent her body forward, to nurse her scar on her foot again. ‘That bloody man at UNSW. How stupid was I to have pained my feet for his sake! For someone who didn’t even appreciate a woman’s earnest effort!’ she said, with a vigorous bitterness in her tone.
Bing didn’t make any comment, and she continued to spell out her own thoughts, ‘It is just unfair that a woman has no say in the matter of marriage.’
‘What do you mean? Of course you will have your say when marrying someone.’
‘But a woman can’t make the final decision, can she? She can’t say like a man that “I want to marry you.” That sort of decision seemed always to be in the hands of the man, whereas a woman can only passively wait for something like fate, so painfully hopeless.’
‘Well..’ He was about to say, when a woman refused a proposal, or expressed an ambiguous, uncertain response, the pain a man had to feel was by no measure any less. But he thought it too heavy and complicated, and said no more. Serena didn’t pursue it either.
In the silence that followed, Bing watched her caring delicately for her hurt foot. Her toenails were actually manicured blue, but only mildly, and not very smooth. Then he wondered about her fingernails, and noticed for the first time that they were also manicured, subtle and pale, inconspicuous. She had long legs, spotless shins and calves and knees, nice-looking, though not white enough if he allowed his desire for perfect beauty to go skywards.
Her posture for a moment reminded him of a swan, in her stooping to tend her solitary pain and vanity. Her slender neck, and her hair that splashed over her shoulder, even if common for most girls he had ever known, were remarkable, and tantalising.
Then, as if enough care had been taken of her body, she straightened and leant back on the seat. She turned and looked at him and said, ‘You faked your profile, what would happen if a girl is already in love with you, before you tell her the truth?’
‘Well, if she is in love, what else does she need? She has got love, that is what she wants, that is what I want, will my background matter any more once we are in love? Love, in my understanding, should be unconditional.’
‘You would put a girl into jeopardy if she has to cut her love after realizing your deception.’
‘If she decides to leave me, it only means she is not really in love with me, and I don’t think she would possibly feel real pain, because she cares more about other things than me as a person.’
‘Well, the sort of ideal love, or whatever name you might like to call it, may be unconditional as you’ve explained. But what about just some simple likes or a bit of admiration?’
‘Then the pain will be even less. Please remember it is my least intention to hurt anyone. All I need is to give myself, and her as well, a fair and equal chance to get to know each other, to realize, to discover the love, a true and pure love, which may otherwise be missing from both of us,’ he said, then as if by accident, he added, ‘Do you like me?’
He gazed into her eyes steadfastly, longer than he, or she might have anticipated.
Holding his look also, she didn’t answer him; but a change, a colour, or just a softening, started to affect her features. And in her eyes, a measure of tenderness together with a helpless defiance was glowing.
Then she moved her eyes away and lowered her head. On her cheek, screened by the strands of her loose hair, he saw the same charm and luminous vivacity that had struck him previously when she was in the spotty leopard-pants.
‘Serena?’
She was without answer, and she retained her position.
He reached out and put his hand on her head, gently fondled her silky hair down towards the nape of her neck. Then he stretched himself over, and with two hands, he moved her head so that she faced him fully. He searched her eyes, which were for the moment closed with the eyelids quivering.
He kissed her eyes, feeling the flutter beneath his lips; he kissed her lips, feeling their warmth and softness. Then she was responding, wrapping her hands around his neck, at first lightly, then increasing her force as if to drag him down to her.
They clutched each other in such a strained, angular manner for a long time, until he felt the soreness around his waist. ‘To the back seat,’ he whispered to her. Then he released her and extricated himself.
Opening his door, he got out and walked around to her side, and opening her door, he pulled her out and picked her up like a child. A faint resistance was felt at first, but as if yielding to a force beyond her control, she slid out, barefooted on the wet ground. She mumbled about her shoes, but the other door was already open, and it was raining heavier than before. Bing pushed her into the back seat, and pushed her deeper inside so that he was get himself in.
He was in seconds embracing her body.
‘I am wet again,’ she complained weakly.
He answered her with his kisses, kissing dry all the raindrops on her face. She was heaving passionately in the middle of her struggle. Soon she lay to occupy the entire length of the seat, and he on top of her. Her hands were tremulous, gripping his shoulders to pull him to her. They were kissed absorbedly. And in his palm, a fire seemed burning, so he closed both over her breasts. Her tiny nipples, now fully exposed, were stiff and purplish, and he treated them like drinking the spring-water when he was a child in the valley of his village hills.
She was panting, her bosom thickly heaving.
He was hard. His pants were straining it. Freeing up one hand, he arched and moved to loosen his belt and unzip his fly. It sprang out, throbbing and staring, like a dragon.
‘Hold it,’ he begged, but she didn’t, so he grabbed her hand, and forced it onto it.
The urge was on. He moved his hand to her belly, then down to her mound, in a blind effort to remove her short pants. Then he felt her hand stopping his attempt.
‘No, not today.’
‘Why…’
‘No, not safe.’
‘But I can be careful.’
‘No.’ Her tone was firm.
He withdrew his hand, and occupied himself again with kissing, now reaching her belly and the button. Her legs and thighs were cool and moist with rain, to be warmed gently by his heated palms. Then, their first wave of energy half exhausted, the movements were going slower, less frantic.
Without fully pushing off her pants, she let his hand slide into her triangle. The hair was rough and smooth, dry and damp, and her wet lips seemed crying tears for him. He couldn’t control himself, he moved into position, with her hand following.
Then her hand was off him. She whispered, ‘Don’t enter.’
‘En.’ He promised, and started to rub and thrust, using all his middle-aged wisdom not to enter her mystery, the only hole that could possibly put out the fire of a man, the only abyss that could absorb a man’s soulfulness and madness.
And amazingly, she trusted him. How could she have the faith in the discretion of fully aroused masculinity? But he kept his promise, and in the end he burst out all in his reserve into her crotch.
He dropped his cheek against hers; his fingers caressing her features. They kissed more, slowly and more lovingly, the swell and flood and blood rhythmically subsiding.
Sitting up, they adjusted their clothing into a decency and sobriety more acceptable to society. He had been sweating; with his hand, he was mopping his forehead. From the front seat, he brought over the tissue box. Carefully, Serena cleaned herself, declining his proffered assistance. She then collected all the used papers, and threw them onto the front seat, to join the ones she had used for her feet.
‘What’s the time?’ she asked.
Checking his mobile, he said, ‘Nearly 4.’
‘We’d better go. I have a party tonight. My colleagues drag me along, and this time I can’t escape.’
‘All the staff in your bank?’
‘It’s being organized by one individual. It happens quite often, I rarely go. But this time, they insist on my attendance. Not much fun, they just drink, and I don’t.’
‘So what do you do at the party if you don’t drink?’
‘Just drink water. I like coffee, but my doctor advised not to take too much caffeine, it will hinder my absorption of calcium and minerals,’ she explained once more.
He was curious, so he asked, ‘Why? You are still young, not as if you have to seek this type of advice?’
‘Well, I am thinking of having a baby,’ she answered, flippantly.
‘What? Have a baby? You don’t have a hu*****and yet.’
‘But I have to prepare for it. I am not as young as I would have wished.’
‘Do you really want a baby?’
‘Yes.’
‘Labour is such a pain, let alone rearing a child.’
‘But a woman can’t be regarded as complete if she hasn’t been a mother.’
‘Well, nonsense, if you permit me to say. You know, when I watched my ex-wife in labour in the hospital, I fainted at the sight when the doctor put the needle into her spine with some pain-killers. And it was me who needed a bit of care from the midwife. They gave me some sugar to recover.’
‘So you still left her after seeing her pain?’ Serena asked, critical, which made Bing exceedingly uneasy.
‘Well…people tend to forget pain. Like a woman who might have sworn never wanting to have another baby would do again after one or two years.’ He circumvented her question.
‘Maybe you really didn’t love her,’ she said, in a bid to smooth the edge of blame of her words.
A period of silence fell in the car, rendering the air peculiarly stagnant. Feeling the clumsiness and disconcertion affecting him again, he started the car.
‘What time is the party?’
‘They will pick me up 5:30pm at the service station.’
‘Hehe, the service station, it has become your bus stop.’
‘Yes, it is. I always ask people, my friends to pick me there.’
‘There must have been a lot of boys over there, waiting and lingering and worrying for you.’
‘Yes, quite a few, over the years, just think I have lived in that place for almost 10 years, and it’s not as if I ain’t attractive, is it?’
‘Of course not. I just imagine the staff in the service station will one day ask you for a fee for the convenience for your frequent dating.’
‘Hahaha..’
Bing started the car moving, and due to the time, he had to travel by a quicker route back to Ashfield than the Mona Vale.
In the car, they shared more of their past encounters and romances. He had never felt he was so much himself. They talked freely, and Bing was restful and jubilant. Serena mentioned Nan Tian Temple, the majestic, and the most prominent Buddhist temple in Australia, located half way between Sydney and Canberra. He said he was willing to drive her there one day.
Only when approaching Ashfield, Serena picked the unfinished bottle of mineral water, and said, ‘I should take this with me as a memento.’ Bing detected something unusual in her tone, but he only said, lightly, ‘Why a memento, we have plenty of time,’ to which she smiled at him inscrutably and slyly.
At the service station, he got out first, went and opened the boot, caught a glimpse of the dead bird, took out the umbrella, and closed the boot. He opened the umbrella for her. She put all the tissues into her handbag, and got out of the car. He didn’t understand why she cared so much about the used tissues.
While handing the umbrella to her, he took the opportunity to pull her body over to him, and after placing a heavy kiss on her lips, he said, ‘Bye, see you later.’
She replied, in a weak voice, ‘Bye.’
When Bing arrived home, he wrapped the dead bird in the newspaper and disposed of it into the red-lidded rubbish bin.
In the evening at his dinner, thinking the next day was Australia Day, a public holiday, he sent an SMS to her, ‘If you want to go Nan Tian Temple tomorrow, just let me know.’ He got her message late midnight, ‘Thank you. No.’
Then, two days later he got her message again, ‘Let’s marry soon, I am very tired.’
Confused, and surprised, and no less excited, he started to imagine he could hold a body that was eleven years younger than him, and make love to her every night.
He replied, ‘Okay, in three days, after I have come back from the trip.’
---End of Chapter 8--
