EPTBeijing in the summer is hot, muggy, and generally disgusting. I once made the mistake of riding the un-air-conditioned No.1 line from the office on Financial Street to Tiananmen West to visit a music conservatory/theater for a semi-professional production of Le Figaro. I showed up soaked with sweat, and had to run into the public bath across the street and pay forty RMB for a quick shower... which was all for naught because Sylvia came from Wudaokou, even further out, and the first thing she did was run up and hug me, smearing accumulated makeup and perspiration all over my chest.
Later that evening, I took her back to her house in Muxidi, where Sylvia's mom showed me photos from their family album, including a picture, prominently framed and blown up to the size of an entire page, of Sylvia's dad shaking hands with Gordon Brown as two sets of awkward-looking wives and children looked on from the sidelines.
The next photo was of Sylvia being hung in front of The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. Below it, Sylvia's dad was holding her up high, so that it almost looked like her toddler's legs were dangling from the building itself.
Her mom spoke up. "We wanted her to go back to England for school, but..."
Sylvia answered forcefully from the other side of the house. "Mom! Why are you bringing that stuff up again?!" I noted that teenage girl angrish sounds the same, no matter what language it comes in.
Sylvia's parents desperately wanted her to become a banker. Apparently they had her whole life mapped out: she would go to a British boarding school, then get an Ivy League education, and grow up to be a banker-bureaucrat. Fate, it seemed, had cruelly decided to endow her with talents that would make her an excellent writer or literary critic rather than banker, a fact which caused no end of friction with her parents as they watched her miss academic cutoffs and flounder through quantitative classes.
Oh, and she was supposed to be a son. Apparently Sylvia's love of makeup and dressing up was borne out of being dressed in boy's clothes for the first eight years of her life.
I was woken up at 4AM the next day. It was Helen. Helen was drunk. The conversation went like this:
"I'm on the balcony."
"What?"
"Cooome overr...."
"Why?"
"I need someone to move my boss out of my apartment...."
"No."
"I'm on the balcony... the reception is so good here.... If he doesn't leave my apartment, I'm going to jump."
"Why me?"
"Because you're the only guy who I know will care... and who I can also tell about this...."
And that's how I ended up at her place at 5:30 in the morning. After moving him onto a taxi, I tried to head back up to her apartment. She didn't let me through the front door. I called her. No answer.
I felt like an idiot. She didn't show up at the English lessons that Sunday either. I asked Lee if he'd seen her. He shrugged, said no.
I got a text message from her the Tuesday after. "My 30th birthday is coming up. You're cordially invited." I wanted to tell her to go fuck herself, but I just told her that I was busy, and that was that.
I hoped.
Coming soon, Part 6: Never Wait Until the Airport to Say Goodbye
