Leave Me Alone Read Free

know her, I’d found her to be quite shy and refined. She was gentle, sweet and loyal to me. But due to my perverse mind, whenever I thought about the condom falling out of her abscondent lover’s trousers that day, I felt depressed. Life: you just needed to see a few things clearly. You didn’t need to look into all the particulars, otherwise it became meaningless. For example, Fatty Dong had a friend who’d opened a wife-swapping club called the Same Music Private Members Club, where everyone fucked other people’s spouses and saw their own spouses being fucked by others. I didn’t believe Fatty however that ninety per cent of couples divorced straight after leaving the club.
    Although she had done nothing to be ashamed of, because of her conservative upbringing in a poor village, Zhao Yue couldn’t be candid about sexual matters. She’d always maintained that the incident in the woods was her first time, and insisted that it hadn’t entered fully. When you’re on someone’s side and they won’t admit the truth, it’s frustrating. In response I’d decided on the following strategy: to sympathise, educate, and then help Zhao Yue to understand the realities of intercourse.
    No matter if it’s the first time, or the hundredth time, it’s the same thing, I told her. You know numbers aren’t important. Whether it enters completely or just halfway, it’s still sex.
    Sociologists seem rarely to have researched the psychology of a husband being willingly betrayed. I often wondered whether my own many affairs came from a subconscious desire for revenge for that image of Zhao Yue that Bighead had luridly embellished for my imagination. But there was nothing to take revenge for because I’d had several women before Zhao Yue. That PE teacher was one of them. Even after I was going out with Zhao Yue, the teacher and I once had an extra-curricular workout on a weights machine after a PE class.
    Anyway, I didn’t believe Zhao Yue’s claim that she had a lover. Women always try to get attention by playing mind games, and so I wasn’t bothered about her imaginary entrepreneur. Zhao Yue later said she would introduce him to me. I said if she dared I would beat the crap out of him.

CHAPTER THREE
    After our General Manager was fired, Head Office sent in a team to do an audit. At the same time they carried out a bit of ‘propaganda work’. They called us to a meeting — more than two hundred people crammed into an stuffy room. A stupid prick droned on for ages. He urged us to be loyal to the company, to give more and demand less, to work but not complain. He even came out with a saying from the classics:
Diligent in our duty; indifferent towards individual profit.
    I thought, mate, we’re all wage-slaves; is there any need for such bullshit? Then I heard him mention my name.
    ‘Manager Chen is the backbone of the Chengdu branch,’ he said. ‘In the last few years he has made a big contribution. He’s not afraid to take responsibility. All we need is for everyone to follow Manager Chen’s lead and our company will achieve great things.’
    I had an ominous hunch that this was Fatty Dong’s trickery.
    That prat had naturally rushed to sit at the front with the eunuch from Head Office. He looked like an attentive grandson with his notebook spread on his knee, his fat face one big smile. When the time came to make his own report, he gave me another subtle jab in passing: ‘Manager Chen, your skills are great, but you’re not such a good team player.’ I looked at him: the arsehole was wearing an elegant pair of braces, and was bent over writing something in his notebook. I cursed him silently: Are those farts really worth writing down?
    After the meeting was finally done, Fatty Dong invited me to his office and set to work on me. He said that he’d never expected to be appointed General Manager and had protested several times that he wasn’t worthy. Apparently he’d recommended me for the position but the