Don't cry Tai lake

row of wooden and plastic basins with fish swimming in some and rice paddy eels in others. Eels were usually placed in a basin without water, Chen reflected.

Perhaps because it was past lunchtime, or perhaps because of the location, Chen was the only one lingering there, except for a white cat with a black patch on its forehead, dozing by the worn-out threshold.

Chen decided to sit at a table outside, with a bamboo container holding a bunch of disposable chopsticks like flowers. It was a warm day for May, and he had walked quite a distance. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he was grateful for a fresh breeze coming fitfully along the street.

An old man came shuffling out of the kitchen in the rear, carrying a dog-eared menu. Most likely he was the owner, chef, and waiter here.

“Anything particular you would like, sir?”

“Just a couple of small dishes-any local specialties, I mean,” he said, not really hungry. “And a beer.”

“Three whites are the local specialties,” the old man said. “The white water fish may be too large for one person. And I wouldn’t recommend the white shrimp-it’s not that fresh today.”

Chen remembered, from his Wuxi trip with his parents, his father raving about the “three whites”-white shrimp and white water fish were two of them, but he couldn’t recall what the third white was. Another local specialty he liked was the Wuxi soup buns, sweet with a lot of minced ginger. At the end of that long-ago trip, his mother carried home a bamboo basket of soup buns. He still remembered that, but couldn’t recall the third “white.” Perhaps he really was a “helpless gourmet,” as his friends called him, he thought with a touch of self-irony.

“Whatever you recommend, then.”

“How about Wuxi ribs and sliced lotus roots filled with sticky rice?”

“Great.”

“And a local beer-Tai Lake Beer?”

“Fine,” Chen said. The lake was known for its clear water, which could mean a superior beer.

It took the old man only a minute to return to the table with a bottle of beer and a tiny dish of salted peanuts.

“The appetizer is on the house. Enjoy. So, are you a tourist here?”

Chen raised the map in his hand, nodding.

“Staying at Kailun?”

Kailun might be a hotel nearby, but Chen didn’t know anything about it. “No, at the Wuxi Cadre Recreation Center. Not far from here.”

“Oh,” the old man said, turning back toward the kitchen. “You’re a young man for that place.”

The old man was understandably surprised: the center was only for high-ranking cadres, most of whom were old, while Chen looked only thirtyish.

Though the vacation had come as a surprise to Chen himself, he didn’t say anything in response, but simply took out his book and put it on the table. Instead of reading it, however, he started sipping his beer.

Life could be more absurd than fiction. In college, he had majored in English, but upon graduation he was state-assigned to a job in the Shanghai Police Bureau, where, to the puzzlement of others as well as himself, he had been rising steadily through the ranks. At the Zhenjiang Party School, some predicted that Chen had a most promising official career ahead of him, that he was capable of moving much further than his current job as chief inspector.

But here, he was quite content to be a nameless tourist on vacation, with a bottle of beer and a mystery novel. Su Shi, one of his favorite Song dynasty poets, had once declared it regrettable to “have no self to claim,” but at the moment, at least, Chen did not find it so.

The old man was bringing the dishes Chen had ordered.

“Thank you,” Chen said, looking up. “How is business?”

“Not too good. People are telling stories, but it’s really the same everywhere.”

What stories? Chen wondered. Presumably about the poor quality of the food. That wasn’t uncommon for a tourist city, where customers seldom go to a restaurant a second time, stories or not. But the ribs were delicious, done nicely with plenty of mixed sauce, rich in color and taste. The sliced lotus root, too, proved to be crisp, fresh, yet surprisingly compatible with the sweet sticky rice filling.

It was a rare privilege to be the only customer in a place, he thought, crunching another slice of the pinkish lotus root. Soon, he had a second beer, without having opened the book yet, and his mind began wandering.

So many days, where have you been-/ like a traveling cloud / that forgets to come back / unaware of the spring drawing to an end?

Shaking his head, he pulled himself out of the unexpected wave of self-pity, and took out his cell phone. He dialed Detective Yu back in Shanghai.

“Sorry, Yu, that I didn’t come back to Shanghai before leaving on vacation. Zhengjiang was simply closer to Wuxi.”

“Don’t worry about it, Chief. There are nothing but small cases here, and none of them special, either. There’s nothing for our Special Case Squad.”

“Was there any reaction to my extended absence in the bureau?”

“With your vacation having been arranged by Comrade Secretary Zhao, what could Party Secretary Li say?”

Party Secretary Li had become increasingly wary of Chen, whom he was beginning to see as a threat to Li’s position as the top Party official in the bureau. Li was headed to retirement, but-if things worked out his way-not that soon.

“Keep me posted, Yu. Call me anytime you like. I don’t think there is anything for me to do here.”

“Are you so sure?”

Chen knew the reason for his partner’s skepticism. Chen had had vacations before-unplanned, unexplained vacations-that turned out to be nothing more than a pretext for an investigation. What’s more, Chen had once investigated a highly sensitive case under Zhao’s supervision.

“Zhao didn’t mention anything to me,” Chen said. “Remember the anticorruption case? He promised me a vacation then, and I think that’s what this is about.”

“That’s good, boss. Enjoy your vacation. I won’t bother you unless it’s an emergency,” Yu said, then added, “Oh, you know what? You have a fan in Wuxi. I met a recent graduate from the Police Academy in a meeting two or three months ago. Sergeant Huang Kang. He bugged me for stories about you.”

“Really!”

“He’ll never forgive me if I don’t tell him that you are vacationing in Wuxi.”

“Let me enjoy myself in peace for a couple of days first. Once Huang knows, he, as well as others, may come over, bringing with them cases they want to discuss. My vacation would become anything but a quiet one,” Chen said. “But what’s his number? I’ll call him later, and say that you insisted on it.”

Chen copied the number into his notebook. There was no hurry. He would wait until a day or two before the end of his vacation to call.

Chen put away his cell phone and turned his attention to the book he’d brought with him. It was a novel with an interesting title: An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, and a Guangxi publisher had been pushing him to translate it. Mysteries had begun to sell well, and the contract they were offering for the translation wasn’t bad. However, in comparison to the occasional business translations that he did for his Big Buck businessmen acquaintances, it was nothing.

Chen had read only two or three pages when he noticed someone approaching the eatery. Looking up, he glimpsed a young, slender woman, who glanced in his direction, dipping her head like a shy lotus flower in a cool breeze.

She appeared to be in her mid-twenties. She was wearing a black fitted blazer, a white blouse, jeans, and black pumps, and she carried a satchel slung over her shoulder. She moved to the other outside table. She had a bottle of water in her hand, ignoring the proprietor’s sign objecting to customers bringing in their own drinks. Instead of calling for a menu, she shouted, “I’m here, Uncle Wang.”

“One minute,” the old man said, sticking his head out. “Do you have to work this weekend, Shanshan?”

“I’m just checking a new test at the office, but it’s getting more complicated. Don’t worry. At most it will be a couple of hours in the afternoon.”

Apparently she was no stranger here. The old man, surnamed Wang, was probably not a relative, or she