A Cup of Light Read Free

Fan Luo Na if you prefer,” she said in Chinese. Her spoken Chinese was only fair. She’d had little practice, colloquial Chinese being somewhat removed from the literary forms in which she’d trained for her job.
    He was taking out his own card. “Gao Yideng,” he said. “My personal welcome.”
    Gao Yideng himself? She stared. Why would he come, instead of sending someone?
    â€œYour colleague is doing well,” he said. “He is out of surgery and all things were successful.”
    â€œYes. Yes, I just called also. Thank you.” As she spoke she looked at the card in her hand: the understated corporate logo of his Cloud Development Group and a short, impressive list of his titles. “It’s exceptionally kind of you to meet me yourself,” she said. “Too kind.”
    â€œIt’s nothing but my pleasure.” Amiable wrinkles fanned out from the ends of his eyes and framed the sides of his face. She saw him take her measure, her no-nonsense clothes, her spare, conservative body, and then she saw his eyes rest infinitesimally on her ears.
Didn’t expect that, did you?
She held his gaze easily.
    â€œCome,” he said. “Your luggage has been seen to. I’m sure you’re very tired.”
    His driver took the expressway to Dongzhimenwai, through an endless forest of white high-rise apartment buildings and office towers, all the same, the repeating pattern left by sudden modernization. When they stopped at a traffic light, Gao saw her rolling down the window, tilting her face to the air from the outdoors. “What is it?” he said.
    She let out a small laugh. “The Beijing smell.”
    He smiled at her. He knew that smell too. It was largely gone now, suffocated by the dust of demolition and construction. Yet the half-fetid aroma still pooled here and there. It smelled neither pleasant nor unpleasant; like garbage, progress, the past. It was seven hundred years of living and dying, all manner of putrid waste finished with a lovely overlay, the delicate
xiang
of each pale flower of culture and learning in its season. One of the city’s subtle charms.
    The shouts of vendors washed into the car, the roaring and gunning of vehicles, the bursts of recorded music from thrust-open doors. Character signs blinked and glowed in the night, advertising stores, restaurants, businesses; trees and awnings were festooned with light. They turned south on Jiaodaokou and then west into a long hutong, a narrow lane lined with stone walls rising to the old-fashioned curved roof eaves. In through a double gate, then they stopped. Already an attendant was removing Lia’s bags and walking them away to a side court.
    â€œThe driver will return for you at eight in the morning,” Gao Yideng told her from the front seat. He took out another card and wrote on it. “My mobile phone.” He handed it to her. “It’s always on. Call me anytime, dark or light.”
    â€œThank you.”
    He looked at her speculatively. She stood under the glow of the streetlamp, not unattractive, odd-looking, prim with intelligence. She also seemed strong. He would enjoy this. “Peaceful night, Miss Fan,” he said courteously.
    â€œThe same.”
    She walked away from the car, thinking, why this place? Foreigners usually stayed at big, well-appointed hotels with conference rooms and Internet trunk lines. Secrecy, she guessed. Discretion.
    Her courtyard did have charm. Four inward-facing rooms looked out from under wood-arched verandas, intricately painted in ersatz Qing style. At that moment she realized she’d have to draw on her last reserves to even walk the last few steps to the door of her room, where surely there waited at least a bed. A yawn ballooned up in her throat. She liked it well enough. It would do.
    When some hours later she opened her eyes again, in that small room in a side court in Beijing, she did not get up right away but let