Happy Dreams, page 19
Almond’s eyes shone as she told me about her plans. “You must never think you’re no good!” she said. “You always have more to do! My next-door neighbor, Wang, started out in the County Town with a job at the paper mill, but he lost his job when they went under. He thought he was a goner and, sure enough, three years after he came home, he upped and died. Then there was another guy in our village. He was a hulk of a man, strong enough to kill a tiger, but after he gave his dad a good funeral and built a house for his son and got him married, he told me he had nothing left to do. I knew what was going to happen. What was he going to live for if he had nothing to do? And sure enough, he kicked the bucket a year later.”
I looked at Almond. I really liked the way she talked. “I . . . ,” I began.
Almond interrupted me. “I know what you’re going to say: You’ve got a pair of high-heeled shoes but no one to wear them, you haven’t got a kid or a city residence card, you’ve got no money, and you haven’t got a proper home here. You haven’t made your mark yet, but your head’s bursting with ideas, isn’t it?” What with her gimlet stare and her sharp words, I felt like she’d cut right through my clothes and my skin and laid bare my heart, my liver, and my guts. I was a fine fellow, and Wufu and Eight looked up to me. Lively Shi did too, so why did I suddenly feel as if I’d become as transparent as glass with this woman?
“I . . . I,” I began again.
“Am I right, or am I right? What are you thinking?” Almond demanded.
“I’m thinking I want to hug you!” I said. I wanted to take that back as soon as I’d said it. It seemed disrespectful, and my ears turned red.
But Almond said, “OK, but you can only hug my clothes.”
She pulled me toward her, a little too suddenly and hard, and I banged my head on her breasts, lost my footing, and fell over. She cackled with laughter. “Mr. Gules, Mr. Gules!” she shouted. “Come and look at Happy Liu! What nerve he’s got!”
28.
Wufu was pissed that he hadn’t brought any ground-up persimmon and rice-husk mix with him. “Did you used to eat that at home?” he asked Eight.
“No,” said Eight. “Our assholes are too delicate. That stuff stops you up.”
“That’s because you only make it with rice husks and persimmons, so of course you get stopped up,” Wufu said. “The way we make it is much better. We mix barley with it.”
They got into a squabble about the merits of their local recipes. “Why are you fighting about persimmons and rice husks?” Almond shouted up the steps. “If you’re starving, you should feed on imaginary banquets! Why not dream of bread? Is starvation food the best you can do?” Almond had three pig tails and was sitting under the tree, scraping the bristles off in warm water. “Wufu, Wufu,” she said, “are you really going hungry?”
“Who says I’m going hungry?” Wufu said. “I’ve just been to the butcher’s to order a pig’s head!”
“That’s nice,” Almond said. “Mind you pull all the hairs out before you cook it.”
Wufu and Eight were so annoyed, they took their bowls into Wufu’s room and ate there.
“It’s all show,” Wufu said. “When she’s got only rice gruel, she stays in their room and won’t come out. She’s a trash picker, just like us. How’s her life any better than ours?”
“She’s got lots of tricks up her sleeve, that woman has,” Eight said.
“What tricks?” Wufu asked.
“Didn’t you see she’s been getting up early these past few days? When we go to the Dengjiapo dump, she and Goolies go to the Ghost Market. The sellers are thieves. The stuff is all stolen—manhole covers, steel from building sites, you name it. She buys it cheap, then sells it to the depot. She’s raking it in!”
“So we’ll go too,” Wufu said.
“They’re a bunch of crooks, the lot of them. I don’t know about you, but it’s not for me,” Eight said.
“But we’re crooks too!” Wufu said. That was just bravado, of course.
Right after, he told me what Eight had said, and asked if I knew about the Ghost Market. Of course I knew about it. It was scattered along the Horse Passage, the ramp that led to the top of the city wall at East Gate, and was frequented by some very odd characters. The market used to deal in antiques and was held before dawn, so it got called the Ghost Market. Then the antiques business moved to Pagoda Street, but the old market, a place where stolen goods were fenced, kept the name. Once, when I was cycling by, I saw a gang fight—a fat man was being held down, and they were tearing his ear off. There was blood everywhere. It had never occurred to me to buy trash there. But Almond and Goolies had been around a long time and knew what was what. I sighed. No wonder they had pig tails for dinner.
“Can we go?” Wufu asked.
“Well, if there’s really trash to pick, and if Almond and Goolies can go, then sure, we can go too.”
“When you say that, I feel brave,” said Wufu. He rubbed his hands in glee at the prospect.
“Look at you, getting all excited. You look like you’re expecting the market street to be paved with gold.”
“That’s right,” said Wufu. “But I’m playing it cool, and I’m not telling Almond, or Eight either.”
We were up at the crack of dawn that day. Almond and Goolies hadn’t opened their door yet. Inside the shit-house, we could hear a lot of huffing and puffing. Wufu said in a low voice, “Having trouble crapping, Eight?” Eight grunted. “Take your time then,” Wufu said. We got on the bicycle, and he pedaled us into town.
At the depot, we retrieved our carts. Then we set off for the East Gate. On the way, Wufu bought four fried youbing cakes flavored with scallions. “We need a good breakfast,” he said, sharing them equally, and we ate as we walked. He asked how much money I’d brought.
“Two hundred and sixty.”
“That won’t be enough! What will we do if we find more trash?”
He patted his pocket and told me he’d brought three hundred and ten.
“Leave your pocket alone. You’re telling all thieves that you’ve got money in there.”
“Make sure you stick with me when I find stuff, OK?” Wufu said.
I told him firmly that when we got to the Ghost Market, we’d pick up whatever we could. If there was nothing for us there, then we’d just go. “Whatever you do, don’t get mixed up with the people in the market! Keep your eyes peeled, and if anything’s not right, we take off!” I warned him.
“Got it!” he said.
The street to the north of the Prosper Street intersection was all hair and beauty salons. It made me think of the wild monkeys in the mountains near Freshwind. One monkey would sit down, legs akimbo, to soak up the winter sun, and the next thing you knew, they’d all follow suit. It seemed like it was the same in the city: if the beauty salon at the top of the lane did well, then the whole lane quickly filled with beauty salons. The salons here all had one thing in common: each frosted glass door was half-open and a young woman sat in each doorway, her breasts bulging out from her tight top, one leg, clad in a high-heeled shoe, crossed high over the other and swinging to the rhythm of the music being played in the shop.
Wufu asked, “That salon you were talking about, is it the one at the top of the lane?”
“I’m not sure, there are so many of them,” I lied. Of course I was sure. We started down Salon Street, and I found myself tensing up. I stopped eating my youbing. My palms were sweaty. Wufu swung his head around and examined every girl in every doorway to see if she was wearing shoes identical to my pair of high heels, but none of them were.
One of them smiled at Wufu. “Shampoo your hair, sir?”
“Shampoo?” asked Wufu.
“It feels good,” said the girl.
“Why would I wash my hair when I’m on the street?” said Wufu. The girl bent her head and examined her fingernails. She had flowers painted on them.
I prodded Wufu in the back and continued down the street. When we got to the salon I was looking for, I licked my greasy lips clean, blinked, and pulled myself together. There were three women standing in the doorway, cleaning grime from the top of the door with brushes atop long poles dipped in water. Wufu looked down, and I tweaked his ear.
“I was only looking at their shoes!” he said.
“They’re not like mine,” I said.
“Did you look?” he asked, and went closer. None of the women had my shoes on. But then something unexpected happened.
A woman with dyed-red hair swiped the door so hard with her brush that she spattered dirty water all over our faces. I wiped my face, but Wufu didn’t wipe his and the dirty water trickled down his nose.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he said.
Red Hair giggled.
“And why are you laughing?” Wufu said.
“It was just a few drops of water,” she said.
“It’s dirty water.”
“You’re a trash picker. Why are you worried about a bit of dirt?”
That made me angry. “Are you saying all trash pickers are dirty?”
“I’m talking about him, not you,” Red Hair said.
Now that I’d chimed in too, Wufu raised his voice. “It’s not all right to talk about me either!”
As we argued, the salon owner (“boss,” the girls called her) came out of the shop. She had very long, stained teeth—real wolf fangs. She told Wufu to wipe his face clean, but he wouldn’t. “Are you trying to start a fight?” she said. “Because if you are, I’m calling the police.”
“Start a fight? I’m not starting a fight,” Wufu said.
“That’s because you wouldn’t know how to! So you want compensation then?”
“What do you think?” Wufu said.
“Well, I’m not giving you a cent, so you can forget about it,” the woman said.
“You mean I just have to put up with it?” Wufu said. “Let me splash her back then!” He reached for the dirty water bucket, but I stopped him.
“Don’t you dare!” the woman said. “OK, if you’re trash pickers, you can collect some trash. There are two door frames and three window frames upstairs, aluminum alloy. You can have them cheap. Is that good enough?”
“That’s fine,” Wufu said. But she meant me. She wasn’t letting Wufu in. Wufu couldn’t believe his ears.
I pulled Wufu to one side and told him we were very lucky to get two door frames and three window frames, that we’d split the money evenly. I’d fetch them, and he’d go on to the Ghost Market on his own. All his bravado vanished at that. “On my own?”
“You’ll be fine,” I reassured him.
He set off with his cart, muttering, “Wolf fangs!”
I ran after him. “Don’t forget what I warned you about!”
“Uh-huh,” Wufu said, and cursed again. “Wolf fangs!”
It’s weird the way things pan out: when we’d first set off for the Ghost Market, we should have taken another route, but Wufu insisted on buying the youbing, so we ended up going down Salon Street. Whenever I’d passed before, I’d just glanced in, I’d never stopped, but today we stopped, because those girls splashed our faces with dirty water. Then, Wufu should have been the one to get the frames, but the salon boss picked me instead. Thinking back, I couldn’t help but be amazed how things had turned out so beautifully.
So now I was going into the salon. I’d put my left foot over the threshold and my right foot was following, when to my alarm, I saw another Happy Liu coming toward me. Then I realized there was a large mirror mounted on the opposite wall. By the mirror were three revolving shampooing chairs, with two girls standing behind them. The girls were nothing special to look at, and they weren’t wearing my high heels either. Maybe I’d got the wrong salon, or maybe she’d left. My heart sank, and I simply stood there stupidly. “This way,” said the owner. I followed her. Behind the mirror were some stairs. The owner shouted up the stairs. “Number three! Number three!” I didn’t understand why she was shouting “number three,” but then she said to me, “Go on up.” I was surprised that a beauty salon like this had such narrow, steep stairs. I tried my best to tread softly, but my feet echoed on the boards. There were around twenty stairs, and you couldn’t look up. You had to keep your eyes trained on them, ten . . . thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and suddenly I saw a pair of feet in front of me, wearing the exact same style of high heels as I had at home! I looked up then, to see a woman standing at the top of the stairs.
The woman smiled at me but said nothing. I stood on the fifteenth step, the toes of her shoes almost touching my forehead because the staircase was so steep. I was scared out of my wits.
When you want something really badly, you imagine every detail, every lovely word that you want to say, ever so calmly, but when the occasion suddenly presents itself, it throws you into a complete panic. I started to sway and almost fell backward.
“Careful,” the woman said. “These stairs are steep.” She smiled and I smiled back, I don’t know why. I stood there, beads of sweat breaking out on my face and head. “Come up,” she said. She was about five foot six, long-necked and slender but with broad shoulders, and she was wearing a very revealing yellow top. She had prominent collarbones that seemed to go straight into each shoulder. I shot her a quick glance, then hurriedly looked down. Her pants were black, like her leather shoes.
“Come with me,” the woman said. Her voice was low, and she spoke standard Chinese with an accent that softened it, though I couldn’t work out where she was from. I followed her. She smelled nice and I breathed in, my nose twitching. It wasn’t the usual sharp women’s perfume, it was the smell of fresh grass at first light, the kind that lingers on your hands, the smell of a fresh steamed bun when you pull it apart. The corridor upstairs was dark and narrow, lined with doors, each with a curtain hanging in front. The lightbulbs were very dim. We passed three doors before my eyes adjusted and I could see where I was going. I began to relax a bit, and I ran my fingers through my hair and straightened my collar. I felt rather warm, so I wiped the corners of my eyes. Her butt wasn’t big, but it stuck out and she walked slightly pigeon-toed. By now, I was absolutely sure that this was the woman I’d seen the first time at the door of the beauty salon, and also the one I’d seen carrying a plastic bucket.
Without looking round at me, she asked politely, “Are you a migrant worker?” How did she know? I wondered, puzzled at how she guessed when I was wearing a suit and leather shoes!
“Yes, I’m a migrant worker,” I said.
“Me too.” Most pretty women were cold as ice, but she sounded so pleasant, I relaxed completely. I felt quite excited, and my brain started whirring as I tried to speak without my Freshwind accent.
“What’s it like working here?” I inquired. “Is business good? Why is the whole street beauty salons?” She answered all my questions, though a bit vaguely.
Emboldened, I said, “May I ask your surname?”
“Meng.”
“The same Meng as in Mencius’s name?”
“Yes. And it’s the same Meng as Lady Meng Jiang who cried the Great Wall down.”
She obviously liked the grieving widow better.
We turned a corner and passed another four doors. This salon certainly had a lot of rooms. Did it double as a hotel? I wondered. Curious, I lifted one of the curtains as we passed. The door was open, though it was too dark to see inside. I heard a man exclaim, “Hey! Hey!” and a woman’s voice, “Horrible man!” I was startled, but Ms. Meng pulled me away and we went to the farthest room. Inside, it was completely empty, except for a bed, and a bathroom in the corner. “There’s running water in there. You can take a shower,” she said.
“Take a shower?”
“You have to take a shower.”
“There’s no point,” I said. “If I’m moving door and window frames, I’ll sweat.”
She was taken aback. “So, you’re not . . . not a client?”
“Why would your boss let a trash picker in as a client?” I said.
Ms. Meng laughed so hard, her eyes almost disappeared into her sockets, a joyous, slightly silly laugh. She leaned against the bathroom door. “I sure got that wrong!” And she laughed again. I was wondering what it was she’d got wrong, when I heard a groan from next door, and a rhythmic knocking sound from the bed frame. It suddenly dawned on me what kind of a place I’d come to and what she thought I’d come to her room to do.
I felt like such a fool. How could I have been such a fool? I turned on my heel to go, and her laugh stopped abruptly. I ignored her and clattered down the corridor, turned the corner, and bumped my head on the wall. I didn’t stop to rub it but simply stomped on. When I got to the top of the stairs, I patted the dust off my suit. There wasn’t any dust on it, but I patted it anyway. I wanted to clear my head. Just then, I saw an open door to the left. It led to a balcony where there was a pile of window and door frames. I went out and lifted up one of them. It was covered in dust, and cobwebs stuck to my face.
Ms. Meng appeared behind me, looking embarrassed. “I thought, I . . .”
I didn’t say anything because I was busy shifting the frames to the top of the stairs. But the stairs were too narrow for me to get them down.
“Hold them sideways, then they’ll go down,” she said. She tried to give me a hand, but the door frame jerked forward and one of her shoes tumbled down the stairs. I got it for her. It was identical in style to the pair I had. I gripped it, looked up at her, my nostrils flaring, then I passed the shoe up to her.
She met my gaze. Her eyes shone, but differently from before, a bit like a frightened cat now. In that instant, I felt terribly sorry for her, but what could I say? I’d had so many beautiful illusions about this woman, and she turned out to be a prostitute. What a blow, what a heavy blow! Once I’d moved the frames outside, I settled with the owner, ninety-eight yuan. I gave her a one-hundred-yuan note and waited for my change.
