I got on. It was the first time I had been alone with her. “How’s he doing?” she asked.
I was startled for a moment, before I realized she meant the man who had proposed to her on bended knee. “He looked tired,” I said. “Maybe he spent the whole night walking the streets.”
I heard a sharp intake of breath. “It really made me look bad, the way he behaved.”
“He made himself look bad too,” I said. I watched the numbers of the floors flashing by as the elevator descended.
“Do you think me a bit callous?” she asked abruptly.
I did think that, but what struck me more was the forlorn tone in her voice. “I think you’re lonely,” I said. “You don’t seem to have any friends.”
Somehow my eyes were wet. I had never thought about her outside work hours, because I had always told myself that I was not even on her radar, but at that moment I suddenly was sad for her. I felt a tap on my arm, and looked down to find her proffering a mini-pack of tissues. I took one and gave her the rest back.
In the days that followed, we carried on as before, each of us arriving at work and leaving work at our own time, and with her often coming over to ask me things. I continued to look at her in a routine way as I answered her queries. Apart from this we had no other interaction. Although her eyes would light up when she saw me in the morning, our little encounter in the elevator didn’t make me start getting ideas — I just felt we had formed more of a connection. I was content that I could see her at work and had no inkling that she had developed feelings for me.
In those days the most glorious thing for a girl was to marry the son of an official, but Li Qing was an exception, for she could see at a glance that those spoiled young bucks would not make good lifetime companions. At the business dinners that she attended along with the general manager, she observed the ingratiating manners of many successful men who pursued other women behind the backs of their wives, and it may have been that experience that determined her criterion for selecting a mate, causing her to seek a loyal, dependable man — someone like me.
My emotional state then was cramped and confined, like a room with tightly sealed windows and doors: although love’s footsteps could be heard outside the room, I felt they were steps heading somewhere else — until one day when the steps came to a halt and the bell rang.
It was a late afternoon in spring. The office was empty of people, for I was working overtime to finish an assignment. I heard the sound of high heels tapping on the marble floor and coming closer. When I raised my head, there she was with a smile on her face. “You know what?” she said. “Last night I dreamt we were married.”
I was dumbfounded. How could that possibly happen?
She looked at me. “Funny, isn’t it?” she mused.
So saying, she turned around and walked away. The sound of her high heels hitting the floor was as loud as my heartbeat; even after the sound faded away, my heart continued to pound.
I began to fantasize, and in the following days my mind would easily wander. Late at night, again and again I would think back to her look and her tone when she mentioned the dream, and I would speculate cautiously about whether or not she was interested in me. With her on my mind so much, one night I too dreamt that she and I were married — not in a bustling wedding scene but with the two of us holding hands as we went to the local registry office to fill in the forms. When I saw her at the office the next day, I suddenly blushed. She was quick to notice, and when nobody else was around, she asked me, with a searching look, “Why do you blush when you see me?”
“Last night I dreamt that you and I went to the registry office,” I said timidly.
She beamed. “Meet me outside after work,” she said softly.
What a long day that was — almost as long, it seemed, as the years of my youth. I kept losing focus, giving distracted answers to my coworkers’ questions. The hands of the clock moved with unbearable slowness, and at times even breathing seemed a strain. Finally, through sheer willpower, I made it to the end of the workday, but when I stood on the street outside, I still found breathing an effort, not knowing whether she was having to work overtime or was deliberately dragging her feet in order to test my devotion. It wasn’t until dark that I saw her appear. She paused briefly on the steps, looked around in all directions, and after seeing me she ran down the steps. Dodging the cars going back and forth, she crossed the road and ran up to me, smiling. “Are you hungry? This is going to be my treat.”
She took my arm and marched forward briskly, as though we were longtime lovers instead of on our first date. I was startled, then immediately bathed in happiness.
In the days that followed, I often wondered if this was really happening. We arranged to meet every morning at a bus stop and take the bus together to the office. I would arrive at the stop at least an hour before the appointed time and get nervous that she wouldn’t show up; I wouldn’t feel at ease until I saw her elegant figure loping toward me, her arms swinging by her sides. That’s when I knew it was real.
Together we arrived at work and together we left, and even after ten days of this nobody had realized that we were dating, probably assuming — as I had earlier — that for us to get together was unthinkable. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I would have finished my work and she would have more to do, so I’d sit at my desk waiting for her.
“How come you’re still here?” a coworker asked.
“I’m waiting for Li Qing,” I replied.
A strange smile appeared on his face, as though he was amused to see me falling into the old familiar trap.
At other times she would finish first and I would have more work still to do, in which case she’d sit down next to me.
When coworkers passed, they would have a different expression on their faces, and they’d ask her in astonishment, “How come you’re still here?”
“I’m waiting for him,” she would reply.
News of our romance spread like wildfire. The men found it baffling: in their eyes, Li Qing falling for me after rejecting the sons of city officials was like someone favoring a sesame seed over a watermelon. Thinking themselves in no way inferior to me, they smarted with the injustice and muttered to each other that “it’s true that ‘the fresh flower gets stuck in a cowpat’ and ‘the scabby toad gets to eat swan meat.’ ” The women, for their part, rejoiced at Li Qing’s lapse of judgment: on seeing me they would smile meaningfully and draw a lesson from what had happened. “No need to set your sights too high when looking for a mate — more-or-less is good enough. Just look at Li Qing there — she spends all that time playing the field and ends up with a loser.”
For the two of us, immersed in our love, these comments were — in Li Qing’s words — just “grass blowing in the wind.” But she had quite a temper, and when she found I was being written off as a cowpat, a scabby toad, and a loser, she resorted to coarse language and said they were talking through their asses.
“You’re handsome,” she said, gazing into my face.
“I’m a loser, it’s true,” I admitted.
“No,” she said. “You are good. You are loyal. You are reliable.”
We walked hand in hand along the evening streets and sat for a long time on a bench in a quiet part of the park. Tired, she leaned her head on my shoulder and I put my arm around her — that was when we kissed for the first time. Later, when we sat in her apartment, she revealed her tender side, detailing the ordeal of accompanying the CEO to business banquets, the lustful glances and indecent language of those high-flyers, how she loathed them but still had to flatter them with a smile and down shots in their honor, then go to the bathroom to throw up, after which she continued to toast them. That she dated the sons of city officials was all just rumor — she had only met three such young men, introduced to her by the boss, and each of them displayed his own version of the playboy style: the first was full of himself, the second spent all his time ogling her, while the third started feeling her up the first chance he got. When she resisted, smiling apologetic