Deep in the Act: Chapter 54

Gao Zhun rested both hands on the steering wheel, looking through the front windshield at the building by the roadside. The address was given by Fang Chi. When he received the call at the gallery this morning, his whole chest was boiling over.

“Hello,” he said with deliberate coldness: “Who is this?”

The other end was quiet for a moment: “It’s me, Fang Chi,” the voice was so light it seemed unreal. Gao Zhun listened greedily. He had waited for this call through fire and water for two months, yet when he finally got it, it was so ordinary. Fang Chi said: “I wanted to trouble you, do you have time this afternoon to come pick me up? I don’t have a car right now…”

Such a clumsy excuse, but Gao Zhun’s lips immediately curved upward. He played along: “I have a lot on today. How about this, send me the time and address, and I’ll come when I can.”

The call ended. Gao Zhun breathed desperately, every pore on his skin trembling. Today he really did have a lot going on. The gallery and the company were both just getting started. He pushed off two clients and a business meeting, arrived at the place early, and waited hour after hour.

Fang Chi came out of the building at 4:30 in the afternoon, standing beneath the big sign that read “Mental Illness Treatment and Prevention Center.” Gao Zhun honked at him. He walked against the wind, clearly thinner, thin like a patient.

He got in the car, carrying the smell of wind, and closed the door.

Gao Zhun gripped the steering wheel nervously, forcing himself to appear nonchalant. He was dying to say something. Fang Chi spoke first: “You changed cars.”

“Oh, right,” Gao Zhun released the handbrake, shifted gears, and drove out along the narrow lane: “Just changed.”

Fang Chi’s demeanor had changed somewhat, lacking the old confidence, instead seeming quiet and calm: “A Sahara. Doesn’t seem like your style.”

His brows moved slightly. Gao Zhun deliberately said for him to hear: “He likes this kind.”

“He.” Fang Chi didn’t ask who “he” was. He wisely shut his mouth and said nothing. Gao Zhun somewhat regretted it. A sense of restlessness began to surface. While waiting at a red light, he lit a cigarette, rolled down the window, and took a deep drag.

Before coming, he had specially styled his hair, gone home to change into a suit, polished his leather shoes with conditioning cream. Fang Chi saw all of this. Separated by the distance of a center console, there were so many things he could say to him, like “How’s the company running,” like “Are you still afraid of the dark?” What finally came out was: “You started smoking.”

Gao Zhun glanced at the cigarette between his fingers and smiled helplessly: “Bad habit.” To dispel some bitter emptiness in the car, he turned up the volume. The CD sound rose, becoming clearer and clearer: “To please your heart, because you just drew near, by my lips I happen to need that slight warmth,

Kiss then kiss, don’t ask anything at all, losing yourself is the duty before me…”

Fang Chi understood a bit of Cantonese. The decadent lyrics made him involuntarily think of how Gao Zhun looked in the bar last night: “The song…” he loosened his collar: “Is it also something ‘he’ likes?”

Gao Zhun’s gaze drifted from the lane, turning to look at him. In his ear it sang:

“Please rest assured, I won’t regret for life, tomorrow someone even more cruel than you,

Betray me, don’t bring kindness or pity, I fall in love this easily…”

It really was a song Zou Yun liked, but Gao Zhun didn’t want to admit it: “No…” he lied. At this moment the phone rang. It was Zou Yun calling. He looked at Fang Chi, pressed his index finger to his lips, signaling him to be quiet. At the same time he twisted the volume. The singing grew softer. The last few lines of lyrics still stubbornly drilled into Fang Chi’s ear: “Whoever comes I embrace, love is instinct, no need to treat it as exclusive privilege,

Whose name will be carved into a dazzling scar, deeper than that remembrance…”

Gao Zhun answered on speaker. Zou Yun spoke with lively energy, even somewhat noisy: “Bao, I made dumplings tonight, vegetarian three delicacies, want any other dishes?”

“Make some porridge,” Gao Zhun held the cigarette, smoothly changing lanes: “That green vegetable porridge from last time.”

“How long until you’re back?” the other end asked. You could tell, he was very clingy with Gao Zhun: “The dumplings will get cold soon.”

“Traffic jam, about forty minutes.”

Three delicacies dumplings, green vegetable porridge. Fang Chi clenched his fist, his heart twitching with pain one spasm after another. Whether unintentional or deliberate, he said coldly: “I want to get out.”

Gao Zhun didn’t have time to speak before Zou Yun in the phone exploded first: “What the fuck! Who the hell are you!”

Fang Chi’s face went pale. He made no sound. Zou Yun cursed nonstop. Gao Zhun made a displeased clicking sound and directly hung up the phone.

Fang Chi was somewhat surprised. Before he could ask, the phone rang again. Gao Zhun hung up a second time. This back and forth happened five or six times. Zou Yun went quiet for ten minutes, then called again. Gao Zhun answered, with not a trace of guilt: “Cooled down?”

The other end was probably still simmering with anger, making no sound. Gao Zhun said: “Don’t wait with the dumplings.”

“Is he still there?” Zou Yun asked in a muffled voice, then said bashfully: “Well, I was wrong, okay…”

Gao Zhun laughed: “Who the hell are you to me, you don’t need to apologize to me.”

Fang Chi’s eyes suddenly widened, but he didn’t move, didn’t even dare turn his head to look. His scalp tightened then relaxed, his fingers trembling so much he could barely hold a fist.

“Alright, wait if you want, cut the mushy talk.” Gao Zhun hung up cleanly and crisply. This time the car was truly quiet. You could hear the humming engine. Fang Chi was like a withered branch sprouting new buds, gaining confidence: “I want to get out.”

Gao Zhun glanced at him sideways and suddenly sped up the car: “Can you all stop throwing tantrums at me?”

These weren’t nice words, but Fang Chi turned toward the window, the corner of his mouth secretly curving upward.

A ten minute drive, and from far away you could see the building where Fang Chi’s treatment room was. Gao Zhun began to slow down. He couldn’t bear it, privately lingering over this fleeting time together. Slowly he stopped by the roadside. He waited silently for Fang Chi to get out. The metallic sound of the seatbelt unbuckling, the creak of the leather seat when sitting position changed, his heart ached so much he was almost in tears. Suddenly, Fang Chi said: “Today… is Wednesday.”

Gao Zhun turned his head abruptly, his eyes burning with silent fire.

The fluorescent light buzzed on. Gao Zhun stood behind Fang Chi, squinting slightly. The white walls reflected the light, making the room seem even brighter. The desk piled with files, the large red recliner in the treatment area, the lonely clothes rack, even the position of the air conditioning vents, nothing had changed. It was as if time had stopped at yesterday.

“Our Wednesday,” Fang Chi said naturally, as if there were nothing special about it. He brought over two chairs, arranged them, still at that old angle: “Wednesday, let’s draw a period.”

Period. Gao Zhun didn’t like periods. He sat down in his chair. He treated it as his own, but how many patients had once sat here: “There’s no need,” he said: “I’m already better.”

Fang Chi also sat down, holding paper and pen: “Can you tell me about your recent private life?”

Gao Zhun burst out laughing: “Private life,” he provocatively crossed his legs: “You mean sex?”

“Yes,” Fang Chi pushed up his glasses: “Romantic escapades.”

Gao Zhun’s face darkened, carrying an icy cold demeanor: “The first time…” his lips opened and closed. There were words chewing at the edge of his lips, chewed through before he spat them out: “It was a doctor, like you, wore glasses,” he recalled that day numbly, hugging his shoulders, feeling somewhat cold: “We went to a hotel, he really liked licking me…”

Fang Chi recorded mechanically, strokes deep then shallow: “Did you feel pleasure?”

“Pleasure,” Gao Zhun didn’t even think: “How could it not be pleasurable, we made love nonstop, the whole night through.”

Fang Chi didn’t look up: “Did you then associate it with your traumatic experience?”

Gao Zhun shook his head: “That night I realized, what trauma was there to speak of? It was just my ass getting plugged by a man. Was I supposed to go seeking death and life like some chaste and virtuous woman?”

What he used wasn’t a question, more like some kind of hypnotic self persuasion. Fang Chi noticed, his gaze had gone empty: “Later then, you became addicted to this kind of life?”

“All kinds of men,” Gao Zhun smiled lightly, but uncrossed his legs, his posture somewhat shrinking: “Living in a drunken dream…”

At this subtle moment, Fang Chi precisely inserted: “Including Justin?”

Gao Zhun shuddered, looking at him blankly. Fang Chi’s face was so pale, yet carried a burning heat, making him realize he seemed to have been lost for so long. Tears suddenly welled up. He hurriedly covered his eyes: “Ran into him by chance at a bar…” he stubbornly recounted: “He really knew how to play, got corrupted in Zurich…”

Fang Chi put down his paper and pen, wanting to caress him, yet not daring: “Don’t live this kind of life anymore, don’t get entangled with those men.”

Tears flowed uncontrollably. Gao Zhun wiped them messily: “There has to be someone…”

“That person then,” Fang Chi lightly touched his arm, then drew him into his embrace: “How long have you known each other?”

Gao Zhun bit his lip and said nothing. Fang Chi coaxed him gently: “Is he very good to you?”

Stubbornly, Gao Zhun struggled free from his embrace. Fang Chi was like a jealous husband who cared too much about face, getting to the bottom of things: “Where did you meet, at those… bars?”

“Known each other a long time, longer than you,” Gao Zhun smiled brilliantly, tears streaming as he looked at him. Because of his guilty conscience, his chin lifted high: “Parking garage, a midnight, in that Cayenne.”

Fang Chi didn’t understand. About a dozen seconds later, he reacted. His eyes went round, staring at Gao Zhun in disbelief. Gao Zhun felt as if someone had stripped him bare. The fluorescent light overhead seemed to brighten a hundredfold, a thousandfold, maliciously exposing him, stabbing him. He prepared himself to endure, to endure Fang Chi’s blame, or perhaps his contempt. Fang Chi’s whole body shook, to the point that the metal chair was clattering. Gao Zhun waited resigned to his fate, but Fang Chi only angrily took off his glasses, turned his head, and wiped tears with the back of his hand. He wiped several times but couldn’t wipe them clean. He tried hard to suppress it, but in the end his shoulders shook as he wept bitterly.

This broke Gao Zhun’s heart even more than merciless cursing. He panicked all at once, not knowing what to do. Fang Chi’s back twitched facing away from him. He trembled, trying to embrace that thin back, wanting to warm it with his whole chest. But grief seems to be contagious. He sobbed even harder than Fang Chi.

“I’m sorry…” he said, and almost simultaneously, Fang Chi said the same. The two spoke in unison.

They pressed close together, at a loss, drifting with the current in a boundless sea of bitterness. Those moments of heart fluttering in days past, those probes and ambiguities, that love and that hate, flashed by like a revolving lantern. Until Fang Chi pushed him away, stood up, and walked into the bathroom covering his face.

Gao Zhun half lay over the chair, chasing that back through tear blurred eyes. At the sink, lightly patting water. Gao Zhun suddenly had a greedy thought, which was to be together, to be together with him.

“You can go,” Fang Chi said, accompanied by the cold winter sound of water: “Treatment is over.”

Gao Zhun froze, his face twitching with grievance. But Fang Chi couldn’t see. Precisely because he couldn’t see, Gao Zhun could luckily pretend, pretend to be a man of loose morals: “Before leaving, won’t you sleep with me once?”

Fang Chi twisted the faucet shut, made no reply. Gao Zhun’s heart emptied. He tried several times before lighting a cigarette. He staggered up, walked to the window, and looked mournfully at the bustling crowd outside. Behind him Fang Chi came out, stopping a few steps away: “Leave him, stop degrading yourself.”

Gao Zhun laughed. Just leave one last memory, he thought. He quietly smoked for a while, then turned around, looking at Fang Chi with a ravaged arrogance, provocatively: “You won’t sleep with me, yet you won’t let me sleep with others. What do you want?”

Gao Zhun fished out his keys and opened the door. It was already past midnight. But the lights were on inside. Zou Yun sat on the worn sofa, the ashtray filled to the brim with cigarette butts: “You’re back.” He stood up, rubbed his eyes, missing him terribly yet avoiding him, carefully glancing at Gao Zhun.

Gao Zhun brushed past him, going to pull the suitcase in the corner. Zou Yun asked flatly: “You slept with him?”

Gao Zhun stopped, turned to look at him. Zou Yun lowered his head: “Sleep then sleep. Hungry? I kept the dumplings warm.”

Gao Zhun sighed: “I came back to…”

Zou Yun knew what he was going to say and interrupted loudly: “I bought you a pair of shoes,” he had been through too much, his neck stiff, pointing at the TV cabinet. There sat a pair of white sneakers, neatly placed: “They’re genuine…”

“I don’t even wear that kind of shoe.” Gao Zhun only glanced at it, pulling the suitcase out from the corner.

Zou Yun watched him anxiously, watching him pull clothes from the wardrobe piece by piece and stuff them into the suitcase: “Can’t you not go?” he asked, like a child who didn’t know how to keep someone: “You go out and play, I don’t care, as long as you don’t leave!”

“You got that right,” Gao Zhun spoke incoherently, clutching that pile of messy clothes: “I slept with him. I thought sleeping once would be enough. But after sleeping I realized, I want to sleep with him my whole life!”

The implication was, Zou Yun was the extra one. He understood this, showing a wounded expression. But in a turn he smiled again, shamelessly pulling at Gao Zhun: “One night, just one night,” he pushed the suitcase away from in front of him: “I’ll help you pack, you go take a shower.”

Gao Zhun looked at him with a complex expression, perhaps pity, perhaps helplessness, and slowly let go of his hand.