The four of them all had full-time jobs. So when the weekend rolled around, if they had no other commitments, they got together for dinner. And while it didn’t really matter who paid, they each took turns with the check, and never split it.

These dinners happened too frequently for any major changes to occur in anyone’s life during the interim, so they never had much to talk about, and the conversation tended to run in circles – the American TV shows they were watching, the newest shitty movies, or the weird or funny little details of their day-to-day, including anything they came across on the way to the restaurant.

‘If he hadn’t held me back,’ Wang Tingting gestured at Peng Fei, who sat next to her, as she leaned across the table toward Li Li, ‘I would have torn her dirty lips off.’

‘Oh, come on, not with somebody that old. The way I see it, you say she had a dirty mouth, but yours isn’t exactly clean either.’ Peng Fei extended an arm across his wife’s chest, approximating how he had held his wife back on the bus, making it seem like if he didn’t, Wang Tingting would crawl over the table and claw Li Li’s face to ribbons.

‘Get out of here.’ Wang Tingting smacked her husband’s arm away, resettled herself in her chair, and huffily lit a cigarette. She seemed to still be furious with both the old lady on the bus and with her husband.

‘There wouldn’t really have been any point,’ Li Li offered. ‘All the grannies are vicious now. She was just scolding you for not giving her a seat. If it had been that old guy – the one on the news a while ago – he would have sat down right in your lap. Did you see that story?’ As he spoke, he shot a beseeching glance at Lin Yan, who sat next to him.

‘Nope, no idea,’ Lin Yan replied quickly and with confidence. She had been this way all night, curt and clean, downing every small glassful of beer in one swallow. Whenever someone toasted her, she would fill her glass, tap it twice on the table, and drain it. When no one toasted her, she drank on her own. Half of the empties on the table and by the chair legs were Li Li’s handiwork, but the other half were hers.

There was nothing unusual in this. Lin Yan liked to drink – or, more accurately, Lin Yan was a young woman who liked to drink and could hold her liquor. She picked most of the restaurants where the four friends held their weekend get-togethers. She hadn’t grown up around here, and she didn’t like to cook, so she only ate in either the company cafeteria or in restaurants, and the weekends left her frustrated for options. She had worked in this city for many years, long enough to hate it as much as she needed it. Of course, she dreamed of leaving, but she didn’t know where she would go. She was lucky to have friends like Peng Fei and Wang Tingting. Peng Fei had been a college classmate, but they hadn’t known each other back then, and had certainly never hooked up the way Wang Tingting suspected. They connected because Peng Fei had been the last of their group to stay in town. Once Wang Tingting’s suspicions dissolved, she enthusiastically invited Lin Yan into her inner circle, and the latter graciously accepted. The Pengs’ next move had been to try setting Lin Yan up with Li Li. The two immediately hit it off – not in a sexual way, but over booze. They drank and teased each other, even making jokes about the other’s physical shortcomings (Li Li had a big head, while Lin Yan blinked too much). So they weren’t a couple; they were out and proud as drinking buddies. According to Wang Tingting, odds were good that Lin Yan was still a virgin.

‘You two ought to slow down a little,’ Peng Fei said, surveying the cluttered table in disgust before looking at his watch. ‘So are we playing cards tonight or not?’

‘Of course, why wouldn’t we?’ replied the other three almost in unison.

‘Don’t forget, we have to get going early tomorrow to help your aunt’s family move,’ he reminded his wife.

‘Oh! Right, right,’ said Wang Tingting. ‘Just don’t go too late and we’ll be fine. Quick, get the check.’

A four-handed card game had been the second act of their weekend dinner dates for a while now. It started one day after they had moved from a restaurant to a teahouse – an old-style teahouse, patronized mostly by middle-aged and elderly customers. Everyone around them was playing cards; the clacking of mah-jongg tiles emanated from the private rooms. Wang Tingting asked, had they given up playing cards just because they were young? Although the rest of them felt unsure about the ‘young’ part, they all agreed she had a point. The problem was that Peng Fei liked playing ‘Throwing Eggs’, while Li Li only knew how to play ‘Eighty Points’, and Wang Tingting and Lin Yan could only remember ‘Swimming Upstream’ from childhood; so, out of consideration for the women, they played Swimming Upstream. Swimming Upstream is an ancient card game, so old that it’s doubtful anyone plays it anymore. One deck of cards, high card is the five of hearts, whoever discards their hand first ‘gets upstream’ and wins the hand. The player furthest ‘downstream’ pays the winner a forfeit. Their bets never went large – only 10 yuan per hand. But the small amount never diminished the inevitable complaining, scolding and cursing, the immodest smugness of winning, or the misery of losing.

Peng Fei, who was used to playing Throwing Eggs at work with his colleagues, had a hard time hiding his contempt for such a simple game. He stuck around at the behest of his wife, who was something of an expert at Swimming Upstream. She habitually won a stack of bills from her husband, Li Li and Lin Yan, while her defeated opponents (especially the last two) slowly boiled over with vengeful embarrassment. Yet, tonight, the tables had turned: Peng Fei had the hot hand, and Wang Tingting – to everyone’s surprise – was the biggest loser. Her listlessness at dinner disappeared amid flames of rage, and she blamed her endless bad luck on the negative energy she got from the old lady on the bus. Peng Fei, of course, disagreed, and husband and wife started a quarrel that ended with Wang Tingting throwing down her cards, snatching her handbag, and storming off. Peng Fei, finally coming to his senses, jumped up and chased after her.

The remaining two didn’t want to wait for the couple to return, but they made a show of waiting anyway, and called repeatedly to the waitress for more beer.

Emerging from the bathroom, Li Li saw Lin Yan slumped into the couch and drinking silently, totally out of place amid the exuberant chaos of the cardroom. When he sat down opposite her, he asked, ‘What are we doing next then?’

‘What do you mean?’ Lin Yan retorted.

‘I mean do we stay here, or do something else?’

‘Something else? Like what?’

‘Well, we could go home,’ Li Li replied, laboring for an idea, ‘but if you feel like it’s still too early, we could go somewhere else?’

Lin Yan swirled a few of the empty bottles on the table, then planted both feet and stood up, declaring, ‘I’m not going home.’

As they paid and left the teahouse, Li Li suggested a couple of spots to Lin Yan. A bar close by was hosting an agro-metal concert that evening; looking at the time, he figured the band had probably just started. There was also a quieter bar by the university where a bunch of bearded, bald-headed artists regularly got together for profound intellectual discussions.

‘Worse comes to worst,’ Li Li continued, seeing Lin Yan pretend not to hear the first two options, ‘we can buy some booze and take it down by the lake.’

‘Down by the lake? Ha ha!’ Lin Yan cackled as they passed beneath flickering street lamps. ‘Li Li, do you really fucking think we still need to go through all that?’

‘Shit,’ Li Li spat in resentment. ‘Go ahead, you decide.’

‘Don’t ask me, I have no idea.’ Lin Yan was almost dancing through the street. ‘I–wanna–drink! I–wanna–play cards!’

Li Li stopped to observe her. ‘You look drunk. Are you drunk?’ he asked.

Lin Yan halted, and stood rigidly on the opposite sidewalk. Then, as if calling to someone on the far bank of a river, she yelled: ‘I’m NOT!’

They wandered aimlessly through the streets like this for a long while, neither of them knowing what to do next. Eventually, Li Li plopped down on the edge of the raised sidewalk, making it clear he was too tired to walk anymore. Lin Yan turned back and sat down beside him, resting her head against his shoulders. Many a passerby would assume that this was a romantic pair.

‘Li Li,’ said Lin Yan.

‘What’s up,’ Li Li replied.

‘My grandma died.’

‘Really? When?’

‘This afternoon.’

‘That’s no big deal. If she’s dead, she’s dead. My grandma’s dead too – that was over ten years ago.’

‘Yeah.’ A pause, then Lin Yan said, ‘When I was little, my grandma raised me.’

‘What about your parents?’

‘They were always traveling. Work stuff. Geological survey team.’

‘So are you going to go home tomorrow, or soon? To see your grandma one last time?’

‘Screw it. It’s too far.’

‘When was the last time you saw her?’

‘When I went home for New Year’s the year before last.’

‘You know,’ Li Li put in, ‘Do you remember last year when I offered to pretend to be your boyfriend and go back with you for New Year’s. You going home this year?’

‘What would I do there?’

‘That’s true.’ Li Li nodded at a trash can in the middle distance.

‘I’m exhausted.’ Lin Yan went so far as to curl an arm around Li Li’s waist.

There was a motel right behind them. Li Li suggested they buy some beer and drink it inside. ‘Not for that, just to lie down a while. Sound good?’

‘Sure,’ Lin Yan agreed.

They rented a room – a standard double, two twin beds with a nightstand between them. The nightstand’s lower shelf held two pairs of white slippers packaged in plastic. But they were too tired for that; each dropped into their own bed with their street shoes on. They even turned off the bedroom light, leaving the bathroom light shining.

‘We’ll fall asleep like this,’ Lin Yan said.

‘You don’t want to sleep?’

‘I don’t.’

‘Well, what then, I mean, I don’t suppose . . .’ Li Li thought about his choice of words, then went for it anyway. ‘I don’t suppose we could fuck, could we?’

‘I knew you were gonna say that,’ Lin Yan replied. ‘Although, I guess there’s no reason we couldn’t.’

‘Exactly,’ Li Li replied as he crawled from his bed over to hers. That was as far as he went; he didn’t try anything else.

‘Oh please. You actually took that seriously?’ Lin Yan said, but didn’t push him away. Instead, she inched over to one side to give him space to lie down. ‘On that note, Li Li,’ she continued, ‘how come you’ve never had a girlfriend?’

‘You can’t really put it that way.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean I’ve just never had a steady girlfriend, someone I could bring out to meet you guys.’

‘So like fuck buddies?’

‘Calling it that seems a little demeaning – not to me, I don’t care, but demeaning to the other person.’

Lin Yan laughed. ‘You might be giving yourself too much credit. In her eyes, or theirs, you might just be a fuck buddy.’

‘Okay, maybe you’re right. So . . . you have a lot of fuck buddies?’

‘Go to hell.’ Lin Yan sat up, not in anger but because it made it easier to swill her beer.

Li Li pushed himself into a sitting position beside her as he pressed his point. ‘I have always wondered why the two of us never made out or hooked up. Why is that, do you think?’

‘Do you need another hook up?’ Lin Yan asked.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Need has nothing to do with it.’

‘Then call one up. Or call a hooker, I don’t care.’

‘Now?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’ll watch you get it on.’

‘Just stand to one side and watch?’

‘If it feels awkward to you,’ Lin Yan said as she scanned the room, ‘I can hide in the closet.’

Li Li imagined the scene: Lin Yan hiding in the closet while he and another woman made love. But as the scene was occurring in his imagination, Li Li couldn’t picture himself as the man having sex on the bed. He became another voyeur: a voyeur of a voyeur voyeuristically observing a scene of a man and a woman making love. This made him seem like even more of a pervert than Lin Yan.

‘Looks like you need a hook up more than I do,’ Li Li sighed. ‘Let me help you.’

He made a move, which Lin Yan deftly avoided; she said nothing, but turned on the light. It was a clever move, as the lights killed the conversation immediately. To spite her, Li Li turned on the television. The news was on: marine patrol on the Yangtze River had gotten a report that a young woman had jumped off the big bridge in Nanjing. They immediately dispatched a speedboat to rescue her, and eventually recovered the body from the river. But who was the young woman, and what had driven her to take her own life? These questions remained subjects of investigation. When the reporter interviewed the marine patrolman who performed the rescue, the patrolman described seeing the suicidal woman using a simile that Li Li found interesting: ‘From far off, she looked just like a plastic bag floating in the river.’

Li Li thought it was a juicy turn of phrase, and Lin Yan agreed. The two of them dissected the metaphor with enthusiasm. Then Li Li suddenly asked, ‘Lin Yan, have you ever thought of suicide?’

‘Have you?’ she replied.

Neither of them answered.

Somehow, they went right through all the beer they had bought. Li Li didn’t know what to do next, so he said he wanted to go home. Lin Yan disapproved. ‘Are you drunk?’ she asked.

‘No . . . I’m really not.’ Li Li shook his large head and said in surprise, ‘I’m actually sober.’

To prove his sobriety, he brought up the death of Lin Yan’s grandmother. Lin Yan said she had sobered up too, and told Li Li about some divorcée that Wang Tingting mentioned to her before dinner. According to Wang, the guy had just got divorced, but he had a little money, and he wasn’t bad looking, so Lin Yan ought to give him a try. Li Li smacked his forehead and said he knew the guy, too: his name was Li Ruiqiang. He remembered him because Li Ruiqiang liked wearing scarves – a thick one in winter and a sheer one in summer – and talking about Marguerite Duras and Eileen Chang. But Li Li didn’t know him very well.

It seemed that the two of them really had sobered up.

‘So go get us some more beer.’

‘If you want more, you go.’

They descended again into a back-and-forth of you go, no, you go, which inevitably involved pushing, tugging, and other horseplay, and they kept at it, laughing and making the other laugh.

The following day, Li Li recalled that he had been the one to leave the motel for more beer. He had gone to the 24-hour convenience store, woken up the sleeping cashier, and bought an entire plastic bag’s worth of bottles. But as he left the store, he noticed a taxi had just parked at the curb right in front of him, so he stepped into the back seat with the beer like nothing else had happened and went home. The bottles of beer on his kitchen table could serve as proof.

Lin Yan remembered differently. She said that neither she nor Li Li had gone out for beer. She said they found two more bottles of beer plus a bottle of whiskey in the motel refrigerator. These had gone untouched by others because they were for purchase, but they consumed them anyway, along with the potato chips and spiced fava beans that were also for sale. They even found a pack of playing cards in one of the desk drawers, so they sat on a bed, drank, and played cards. Since there were only two of them, they couldn’t play Swimming Upstream, so they switched to blackjack. Li Li hadn’t wanted to play at first, but his interest picked up when Lin Yan said they should play it strip. Once their clothing was gone and they had nothing more to bet with, Lin Yan suggested they scratch each other’s noses, the winner curling their index finger and dragging it down the bridge of the loser’s nose. Of course, they were gentle with each other at first, but then one of them started using force, and by the end they were scratching each other so ferociously they drew blood, leaving stains across the duvet.

Image © Thomas Claveirole