"An 86%," I say.
"An 86%?" he says, "so high? When did you find out? I thought you weren't going to check."
"I had to, better to know the worst than anticipate. I just wanted to tell you, I didn't want to disturb you. I'll see you tomorrow evening as usual?"
"Right, right." A pause. "Where are you now?"
"On the arcade," I say.
"Oh," he says, "are you busy?"
"Oh, sure," I say, "there are all these incredible men lined up waiting to spend the afternoon with an engineering genius."
He laughs and sounds a little more like himself. "Tell them to go away and come up. No wait, tell them to keep you entertained, buy you lunch or something, and give me thirty minutes. Everything is, ah, let me think of the Zhang way to say this," his voice changes, he speaks softly and mimics my American accent and northern pronunciation, "things are a bit untidy, and if you do not mind, I must inconvenience you a little, respectfully request you wait."
"Ta ma da," I say, 'Your mother.' "Just get dressed and come down to the coffee-bar. Go shopping with me. Show this poor confused foreigner what clothes to buy that will make him look less like he comes from a second-rate country."
"Mao-Zedong and Lenin, I thought you'd never ask," he says and breaks the connection.
But it is twenty-five minutes before he shows up. I am sitting in the coffee-bar nursing my coffee-or at least the sweetened syrup that passes for coffee in this country-when Haibao stops in the doorway. He scans the room, which is full of students. His gaze flickers past me a couple of times, although I wave. He is pale and lost; his hair looks as if he has run his fingers through it, his long yellow and green tunic doesn't match his tights. At last he sees me. He puts his head down and enters the crowd like a swimmer making a long dive.
"Do you want anything?" I ask him when he slides into the seat.
He shakes his head.
"What's wrong?" I ask.
"Nothing," he says. "Where do you want to go shopping?"
"I don't know, where do you go?"
"We don't want you to look too much like a fag," he says, off hand. "Why have you got your hair that way?"
My hair is tied back in a ponytail. I keep it shoulder length so there's not much tail. "I had my tool handling class today, I like to keep it out of my eyes when I work."
"It looks nice," he says.
"It looks huaqiao," I say. "I think maybe I should cut it.
"No, don't," he says. "Please don't."
The din makes it hard to carry on this conversation. Students call to each other in nasal, six-toned Nanjing dialect and shrill four-toned Mandarin. At home, my non-Chinese speaking friends say Chinese conversations often sound like arguments. I wonder how long it will be until I hear the liquid vowels of Spanish again. "Yan Chun!" the young man next to me shouts, "Yan Chun! Zouba!" 'Let's go.' Across the floor, a tall young man with an open face, dressed as if he just came off the gym floor, turns and smiles. "Shemma?" 'What?' The mandarin word for 'a good time' is renao, hot-noisy.
"Let's go," I say.
The arcade is busy, too. Haibao has his hands jammed in his tunic pockets, and moves with his head down.
I want to get out of this, to some place where it is quiet and private. Sometimes I take real pleasure in being with a person when there are all these straight people around and that person and I are just two people together. But right now Haibao and I aren't together, he is there and I am here and the physical space between us is not nearly so vast as the emotional distance. But I can't suggest we go to his flat, since he made a point of telling me it was a mess. I can't take him to my dorm because Xiao Chen might bring friends back from class and then we'd have no privacy.
So we walk down to the bus stop. "Have you heard any more about your friend?" I ask.
He shakes his head. "I talked to someone back home last night. He said my friend is still suspended from teaching, but nothing else. Everyone is still waiting."
"How did they find out about your friend?" I ask.
"It's complicated," he says.
Rebuffed, I say nothing.
The sun is hard on the street. Traffic is not heavy at mid-day, a street sweeper running off a power line raises and absorbs clouds of yellow dust. The window across the street is full of empty bird cages, in a square of sunlight, a white cat sleeps beneath them. It doesn't feel like home, the light is different or something. Maybe when I go back to New York I'll get a cat. Chinese people do not keep pets very much, it seems particularly Western to make an animal a member of the family.
"The District Superintendent of Education is a fag," Haibao says. "He hired my friend and I. He was arrested in a park. Then my friend was suspended. That's all anyone really knows."
The District Superintendent must be how Haibao got to study engineering. It must be a big scandal that someone in education is gay, someone so important, a big person.
"Do you think they'll be looking for you? The school hasn't suspended you."
"Not yet," Haibao says. Chinese never say 'no'.
I see the bus, far up the street. Segmented buses look as if they are hinged in the middle, they bend a bit when they go around corners.
"I'm not feeling very well," Haibao says. "Maybe I'll go back and take a nap. You go on, celebrate your good mark." He smiles tiredly, "I forgot to say congratulations."
"Don't go back," I say. "You'll just sit by yourself, that's bad, I know."
"I'll take a nap," Haibao says.
"No you won't, you'll try to sleep but you won't. I promise, we'll only be gone an hour, you'll sleep better if you do something."
He shakes his head. The bus is coming.
"Haibao," I say, "I don't know how to dress, what to buy." I remember feeling the way he does. "If you won't come shopping with me, I want to go back to your flat with you."
The bus stops, the door hisses open.
He shakes his head again, but gets on. I palm the credit and pay for both of us. He slumps down into the seat and looks out the window.
I feel as if I shouldn't leave him alone, although I'm not sure if it's him that shouldn't be alone, or me. Surreptitiously I run the flat of my hand over his thigh. He glances over at me and smiles a little.
"You are one son of a bitch," he says.
"Have you talked to Liu Wen?" I asked.
"Not since the night the three of us went out."
"He is an unusual person," I say.
Haibao laughs dryly. "You have such a way of putting things. Yes. Liu Wen is 'unusual'." He watches out the window for a moment. "Maybe I'll call him. Do you have an early class on Friday?"
"Yes."
"Then Saturday. Maybe we'll go play pressball, if he'll pay."
"Is he rich?"
"Sometimes. When he has a good week."
"What does he do?"
"Cui cui."
Hurry-hurry? Slang is the most difficult part of Mandarin for me. "What's that?"
"Sells himself."
My face must betray me. Haibao breaks out laughing. "You are right, it's good to come out with you, you cheer me up. You look as if I told you he murders little girls."
"Why does he dress that way if he, cui cui?"
"Because they like it. Talk softly."
"You say I always talk softly," I hiss, feeling the heat rise in my face. I glance around, the bus is nearly empty.
"Well, don't stop. Do you not want me to call him?"
I want very badly to play pressball, I want to get ten points. I've never been out with a man who goes for money. I mean, pick-ups, of course. When I was fifteen I used to go out to Coney Island and wait to get picked up, and when I was older, go to pick up, but not for money.
"What's wrong with it?" Haibao says.
"It spreads disease," I say.
He rolls his eyes. "I won't call him."
"No," I say, "call him."
"We are corrupting you," he says, then laughs. I, of course, do not find this funny.