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One day he got an idea. He would ask for her phone number so that they could be texting pals. He got the idea from a conversation he’d overheard at his lunch spot. Two men were talking about an article they’d read about technology and dating. He thought it was a risk to ask for her number and knew that asking straight out would give him away. He did not want her to know that he was in love with her. He wanted to divulge that information slowly, in increments, step by step as he wooed her into his arms. Or better yet, he would keep his love for her a secret their entire lives and allow her to think it was she who had seduced him. She the one hopelessly in love, so lucky to have him. He imagined himself across from her at the dinner table, years later. She gazes at him with almost nauseating devotion. He eats his rice straight backed, unconcerned, secretly enraged with happiness.
He decided he could not do it. Asking for the woman’s cell-phone number was like asking for her hand in marriage. He knew he would be rejected. He went to the arcade and stood in line and paid for his time and smelled her hair and watched her count the money and his heart ached. Her phone was lying on the counter. If only he could snatch it for a moment, he thought. But there was no chance. He took his seat behind the computer and pined. He watched her work. He watched her use her phone. On his way out he saw what he couldn’t believe he had missed before. The arcade had a flyer with a coupon for one free hour of playtime between midnight and six a.m. on weekdays. The arcade phone number was on it. He took a flyer. He would call the number later. If the woman didn’t answer, he’d know it wasn’t her cell-phone number. But he could pretend to be a policeman, or some higher-up statesperson demanding to speak to the arcade manager. He could say she was in violation of a code, and that he’d need to speak to her immediately. He could call when he knew she wasn’t there. He had a plan. He practiced over and over again what to say.
“This is Lieutenant Liu. Give me the manager.”
“Give me the manager’s direct number.”
But the next morning he went to the arcade and stood in line and paid for his time and watched her fiddle with her earring and make change and his heart nearly broke in half. He was impatient. He went and sat behind a computer in the far corner and called the number on the flyer.
“Wei?” answered the woman.
She had answered on her cell phone.
He nearly jumped for joy. He had her, he felt, in arm’s reach.
“Wei?” he heard again. She was behind the counter, scribbling on a pad, phone to her ear, undisturbed. He waited a few more seconds, then hung up. He quickly e-mailed his brother, who was a military man in Suizhou. He wrote that he’d met the most amazing woman in the world, and that he’d probably make her his wife within a year. Then he wrote, “She is old, and not very pretty.” He wrote that because he knew that it was bad luck to boast.
He left the arcade and made his way down the back alley, past the ravine, toward the restaurant where he would have a special lunch that day. Everything looked so beautiful. The sun, the sky, the dry brown brittle roads. A red banner announcing the opening of a new grocery store lit his heart on fire as he crossed the little footbridge. He bought a pack of the most expensive cigarettes. He bought a can of orange soda and a small bottle of baijiu. At the old temple flophouse he dropped to his knees and said a prayer of thanks for the woman’s cell-phone number.
Now that he had the woman’s cell-phone number, he would send her a text. But he didn’t know how to start off the exchange. “Who’s this?” he considered texting. “I just found your number saved in my phone. But I don’t know who you are.”
But that was no way to begin the romance of his life. He racked his brain for a good opener.
“I’ve seen you at the arcade.”
“I see you around and think you’re beautiful.”
“I think you’re beautiful and would like to get to know you better.”
“I find you attractive.”
“I like watching you count money.”
“You have nice hair and nice hands,” he thought of texting.
None of these were good openers. He decided to wait until the perfect line struck him, rather than to rush into a sloppy exchange that might trip him up. More than anything in the world, perhaps more than winning her heart, he did not want to appear awkward.
“I will go to the brothel,” said Wu to himself and went out and walked to the bus and waited.
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Now, he knew full well that any normal man in his position would simply ask her out to dinner. But that seemed to him to be the worst possible tactic to employ. If he gave her an opportunity to reject him, he was sure she’d take it. “You have seen my face,” he considered texting.
His downstairs neighbor was also waiting for the bus.
“Brother Wu,” he called to him. “What’s your direction?”
“I am going into town to speak with some higher-ups,” lied Wu. “We are working on hiring a cleaning crew for Hu Long Road. It will take some real convincing to allocate more funds for this project. It is not my job, but someone has to speak up.”
“You’re an asset to our community,” said the neighbor. He looked despondent. His wife’s prawn claw must be getting him down, Wu thought, at once sympathetic and cruel.
“How is the wife, the baby?” he asked.
“The baby is sick. My wife cannot nurse, and the baby food we give it makes it shit water. I’ve done something to anger the gods,” said the neighbor. He held up his hands, palms up to the sky. Wu hadn’t been around this sort of superstitious type for a while. He’d forgotten they existed. His own prayer earlier that morning had not really been one of gratitude, but like a child’s birthday wish. He’d wished to one day hold the woman naked in his arms and lay her across a moonlit bed.
“Where are you headed?” Wu asked his neighbor.
“To the doctor,” he said. “To buy more medicine.”
Wu had run out of things to say. He looked at his phone, as though already expecting a reply from the woman at the arcade. He still hadn’t thought of what to text her. He thought, Maybe the neighbor knows.
“Tell me, neighbor,” he began. “How did you get your wife to marry you?”
“We sat beside each other in grade school,” the neighbor said simply. “We lived nearby, and our mothers played mah-jongg at night, so we played together, we were friends. We were friends first. And then the rest,” he said. “She has a sick hand, you know.” He looked at Wu out of the corners of his eyes.
“I hadn’t noticed,” lied Wu.
“It made her desperate, I think, to settle for any man.”
This gave Wu an idea.
He turned to the neighbor. “I wish you both the best, and your little boy,” he said.
“The child is a girl,” said the neighbor.