Tiger's Heart by Aisling Juanjuan Shen

Author:Aisling Juanjuan Shen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2008-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

13

I LAY SLEEPLESS on the bare mattress in my room. Wang Hui, the man who I had followed here, whom I had planned to build a castle of a life with, was gone. I was alone in the tumultuous South, like a canoe in the roaring Pacific Ocean.

The heavy cloth curtains kept out the light and noise from the streets. I got out of bed and went to a window in the hall. I looked out. The lights of a moving airplane blinked in the bed of stars. Motorcycles zoomed by on the street. I tiptoed down the stairs and stopped at Huang’s door.

I leaned against the washed-out white door. I imagined Huang lying underneath his thin cotton quilt. His blue suit must have been hanging on the back of his tall wooden chair and his leather shoes probably had been kicked onto the tiled floor. The smell of his room—linen mixed with dust—seemed to seep out into the hall like an aromatic poison, drawing me to it.

I knocked on the door shyly. I heard the sound of footsteps in slippers. The door creaked opened. Huang’s tall figure appeared. He gave me a sleepy look and then went back inside and clambered onto the bed, as if I wasn’t even there.

I followed him and stood at the end of his bed uneasily, my hands clenching the bottom of my pajama top.

His impatient voice came from the bed. “What are you doing here?”

“Can I stay with you?” I mumbled. “I can’t get to sleep.”

“Go, go, go,” he shouted brutally.

I bit my lower lip, feeling hurt. I didn’t understand how this man who took care of me like a big brother could be so cruel.

I heard him sighing. He patted the edge of the bed and beckoned softly, “Come here.”

I walked to the side of the bed and crawled in under the quilt next to him like the meekest lamb. I shrank myself down to the smallest volume I could so that I wouldn’t disturb him during the night by taking up too much space. It grew cold, and I shivered. As I pulled the corner of the quilt gingerly, he turned, and his arm fell across my chest heavily. I didn’t move and lay still for the entire night with a smile on my face, feeling like I had discovered a big diamond.

“Go. Leave right now,” he ordered as soon as he woke up the next morning.

I jumped out of the bed.

“What did you come here for?” he kept yelling. “Why are you so foolish? Do you think you can become Director Yip’s secretary if someone sees you coming out of my room in pajamas early in the morning?”

Under his bellows, I scurried out of his room like a rabbit on the run.

Two months after joining LongJiang Enterprise Group, I had learned to understand and speak Cantonese fluently, as I had promised Director Jia. By that time, Manager Huang and I had slept in the same bed for a month. We cuddled together innocently like two schoolkids.

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