China Mountain Zhang

'I'm never going to play pressball again,' I say, grinning, but he doesn't respond.

I start watching for bus stop signs. 'What is our bus?' I ask Haibao.

He doesn't act as if he heard.

'What number is our bus,' I say. And when he doesn't answer, 'Haibao!'

'Seventeen,' he says. 'A 17 or a 17 Special.'

It is too easy, I find a stop for the 17 and we stand, Haibao slumped against the wall with his eyes closed. The bus comes and the driver eyes Haibao's stained suit but nobody says anything. 'Nanjing University,' I say.

'Back,' he says, 'Up.'

We climb up and go back and collapse into seats. Haibao nods. I stare out the window. Eventually his head comes down against my shoulder. The bus is warm and slowly the warmth creeps into me. I doze with my head against the glass, waking when we separate from the front, then again when we join another bus. I awake the third time when our segment peals off to go up, and I know we are close to the University so I wake Haibao. He is bleary eyed.

We get off, the stop is familiar, and yet different. Just as the morning, which would usually be a beginning, is an ending to the night.

'I'll come up with you,' I say to Haibao.

'It's okay,' he says.

'No problem.' I go up in the lift with him, and when we get to the flat, I send him in for a shower. 'I just want to go to bed,' he protests, but he has no fight in him. While he is in the shower I make tea and sweeten it. I check out the bruise on my face in the mirror in Haibao's bedroom-I have a blue knot and the side of my face aches. Tea and aspirin. I take my hair down.

Haibao comes out in his bathrobe and I feed him sweet tea and aspirin, and remembering Maggie Smallwood, talk to him softly. 'It is a pretty morning,' I say and 'You are warm now, and tired, and you'll sleep well. Finish your tea, the sugar will make you feel a little better, and then into a warm bed. We'll darken the windows, and I'll call this evening.'

Then I make him drink all the rest of his tea and put him in bed. I dim the windows. I am so tired. I want to be clean like Haibao. But I sit for a moment and he says something for the first time since I asked him about the bus. 'Don't go,' he says.

'I'm here,' I say, feeling a little foolish. 'I'll stay, and I'll call you this evening.'

He closes his eyes and I sit what seems like a long time, but which is really only five minutes by my watch (I count the seconds. I decide to stay ten minutes, then seven, and then slide carefully off the bed at five.)

I dim the windows in the front of the apartment. It is easy, I've seen Haibao do it so many times, I just rest my fingertips against the glass and say 'Dim,' and when it is dark enough I take my fingers away. On the little table next to the door I see a letter signed with the red official chop of the University. I am tired and I almost leave it, but I pick it up.

'Comrade Yang:' it begins, they all begin with Comrade. 'This is to inform you that pending an official investigation from your home district, you are suspended from study-'

It is dated for Friday and it is open. Haibao has seen it, knew about, but hasn't said anything. And Saturday night he was in a better mood than I have seen him in a long time. I think of his exhilaration at pressball. How he glowed gold and white.

I assume I have misunderstood the letter, read it again. My Chinese causes me to make mistakes, perhaps it is telling him he has been cleared? No, I go through the sentences carefully, my head beginning to throb from fatigue and strain. He is suspended, they are investigating him. Maybe he hasn't read it? But why would he print it out on Friday and then not read it?

I put the letter down and go, closing the door softly behind me. I am too tired to care now, I'll call him this evening and ask him. In the lift I put my hands in my pockets and find something in the right. The gold box with the tiger-eye lid that Haibao gave me the night before.

Xiao Chen is watching the news when I open the door.

'What happened to your face?' he asks.

'Very good party,' I say, grinning. 'Except that I walked into a door.'

He shakes his head appreciably.

I shower and sleep. I awake a little before dinner. The sun is strong through the window and I am disoriented and still tired, but I know if I keep sleeping I won't sleep tonight. When I sit up all my joints all crack like old sticks.

I wander out to the kitchen and flash heat some fried rice. Xiao Chen kids me about my dissolute life, tells me I've got mail. I figure it's Peter, I owe him a letter. Guilt makes me avoid printing the letter before I eat.

It's only one page-Peter's letters run to four or five pages and use every type of punctuation available.

Ghost,

Not to fret, I have sent this to you from the arcade, it is not on my system. This is just to say thank you. I have received my suspension notification and I cannot go through Reform Through Labor. I cannot face my family.

I wish to thank you for all you have done, I believe you will understand. From the first you have always understood, even when no one else did. Even your choice of names. I think perhaps I hoped that last night would show me I made the wrong decision, but when we were almost arrested I knew that I had been a fool to wait.

Think of me with kindness.

Haibao

'What is it?' Xiao Chen asks.

I don't know what to say, I am not sure what it is. He has run away, I think. Where will he go?

I call, there is no answer. The letter is dated today and the time on it is 5:15. It is a little after 6:00, which is marked as the delivery time, meaning he sent it at 5:15 on a forty-five minute delay. He can't have left this fast, unless he sent it on his way out.

I pull on my coveralls.

'What is wrong?' Xiao Chen asks.

'I don't know,' I say, 'I don't understand this message from my tutor.'

On the arcade I pass where he would have sent the letter and catch the lift. When the lift opens the hall is full of people and there is a strong breeze. People are standing around chattering, their arms crossed, the way people stand around an accident.

There is a police tape blocking the hall right before Haibao's door and the breeze is coming through the door. It is more than a breeze, it is a strong wind. They have arrested him, I'm sure. The wind is like being up on the super structure when a building is going up.

'What happened?' I ask two women standing there.

'The person in that apartment,' she points, 'he broke his window and jumped out.'

'Jumped out,' I say, and then stupidly, 'did he die?' We are over 150 meters above ground level standing in this urban cliff.

'Oh, yes,' she says.

'He is my tutor,' I say. And then add, 'I am an engineering student.'

'Why did he do it?' she asks.

'I don't know,' I say.

We stand there for a minute and then I duck under the police tape. I should not, I should get on the lift and go back downstairs, but I have to see. The wind is strong in the doorway, it is coming from the great shattered starburst in the window. Police are picking through the pieces of glass or standing talking.

A man looks up at me, 'Hey, what are you doing here! Don't cross the barrier!'

'He, h-he was my tutor,' I stutter, 'I am an engineering student.'

'There is no tutoring today,' the officer says.

On the floor, covered with crystals of glittering glass, are a pair of shoes, neatly folded white tights and white shirt. As if he had taken them off there, in front of his window.

'How did he break the window?' I ask. The windows are supposed to be shatterproof.

'He used a softening agent on it, then heated it with a hairdryer until it was brittle,' the officer says. Then his