Don't Cry Tai Lake Read Free

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.”
    â€œOne minute,” the old man said, sticking his head out. “Do you have to work this weekend, Shanshan?”
    â€œI’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 would not have prefixed Wang with Uncle.
    The old man shuffled out with a steaming plastic container, which must have been microwave-warmed. She had probably left her lunch here earlier in the day, and it might have been a common arrangement. In the course of the economic reform, state-run companies had been shutting down their employee canteens as a money-losing business practice. So she probably had to find a way of eating somewhere else.
    She opened the plastic container and inside, on top of white rice, lay an omelet with lots of chopped green onion. She pulled a pair of bamboo chopsticks out of her satchel.
    â€œThe green onion is fresh from my own garden,” Uncle Wang said with a toothless grin. “I picked it this morning. Totally organic.”
    Organic —an interesting word to say here, Chen thought as he sipped his beer in silence.
    â€œThat’s so thoughtful of you, Uncle Wang.”
    Uncle Wang went back into the kitchen. The two of them were left alone.
    She started eating in a leisurely manner, adding a small spoon of hot sauce to the rice. She pulled a crumpled newspaper out of her jean pocket and began reading. A frown started to form in her delicate eyebrows. Chen caught himself studying her with interest.
    She was attractive, her oval face framed by long black hair and animated with a youthful glow. Her mouth subtly curved under her delicate nose, and there was a wistful look in her clear, large eyes.
    The characters printed on the satchel said: Wuxi Number One Chemical Company. Perhaps she worked there.
    Occasionally, Chen liked to consider himself a detached aesthetic, like the persona in those lines by Bian Zhilin: You are looking at the scene, / and the scene watcher is looking at you. It was an ingenious way to describe one’s scene-eclipsing beauty. Bian was a contemporary poet he had studied in college, but was something of a Prufrock in real life. Chen considered himself different from that. Still, there was nothing improper, he reassured himself, in a poet watching in detachment. Not to mention that, as a detective, he was in a natural position to observe.
    Chen laughed at himself. A worn-out cop on his first day of vacation couldn’t automatically switch back into being a vigorous poet.
    He was in no hurry to leave. Having finished the ribs and lotus root, however, he thought it might not appear proper for him to sit too long with nothing left on the table. So he rose and went over to the rice paddy eels squirming in the plastic basin close to her table. As he squatted down, examining, touching the slippery eels with a finger, he couldn’t help taking in her shapely ankle flashing