Leave Me Alone Read Free Page B

graduation. I often taunted him that if he were a pig, twenty kilos would be enough to feed a family for a whole month.

    After work I drove my company Santana downtown to Old Mother’s hotpot restaurant, where I found Bighead established in a booth and hitting on a young waitress. Bighead laughably fancied himself as the literary type, just because he’d collected loads of books, mostly European and American. He bragged that he never forgot anything he read, and was always ready to give people his take on Duras’s
The Lovers
, as well as Jules Verne’s
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
When I arrived, the guy was quoting a proverb from the classics:
Husband and wife were two birds in a forest, but when disaster came they both flew away. While you’re alive she’ll be loving, but when you’re dead she’ll leave with the others.
    I drank my tea and then said, ‘It works better as
While you’re alive she’ll screw you every day, when you die she’ll screw other people.’
    The red-faced waitress beat a hasty retreat. I said to Bighead, ‘Yet again you’re scheming to ruin a girl from a good family.’
    Bighead patted his fat gut and told me that recently he’d seen Zhao Yue being intimate with some stud. ‘Now who is green with envy?’ he asked, looking at me closely with a strange expression in his eyes.
    A few days after we had rescued Zhao Yue from the gang in the woods, she had unexpectedly appeared in our dorm — dressed plainly without makeup — and said she wanted to treat us to a meal. That day she kept her head lowered the whole time and hardly spoke.
    ‘You’re being very quiet,’ I said to her, trying to cheer her up. ‘You’re putting us off our beer.’
    Zhao Yue, her eyes finally brimming with tears, just wanted to say one thing: ‘I won’t forget what you did, but if anyone finds out what happened, I will have to kill myself immediately.’
    Bighead Wang and I swore that we would never talk about it. On the road back to the dormitory, Bighead said something that moved me: ‘Zhao Yue really is a sad creature.’
    ‘Too right,’ I agreed, and even now, thinking about her tear-filled eyes I felt a little pained.

    Li Liang sent the restaurant door flying open. As he strode in he was making frantic hand gestures while yelling into his phone, ‘Quick, buy as many as you can.’
    To our amusement, we saw that he was wearing a neatly pressed business suit and his glossy hair was in a centre part.
    Bighead said, ‘The son of a bitch looks like a duck.’
    Li Liang told us that the outfit was to impress hismother-in-law. That very afternoon he’d visited his girlfriend’s family to set the date: they were getting married on 1 May.
    Surprised, I asked him which family’s daughter had unluckily fallen into his evil hands.
    He said, ‘You know her. Ye Mei.’
    My heart missed a beat and then I said, ‘Fuck me.’
    Of course, I wondered whether or not I should tell him what had happened that night I’d driven Ye Mei home.
    After toasting Li Liang with shots, I bought a round of beers. Li Liang’s expression was deliriously happy. He said that they planned to buy a villa by the banks of the Funan River. ‘We’ll live upstairs, and downstairs will be our mahjong parlour and games room.’
    I said, ‘After you get married will you join the wife-swapping club?’
    He shook his head, looking slightly wistful, but then conceded, ‘If you bring Zhao Yue along, I’ll swap with you.’
    I’d told Li Liang a few weeks ago about the wife swapping club run by Fatty Dong’s friend. Li Liang had moaned in admiration and, his mouth watering, he’d said that if he had a wife he would definitely take her there. Later though, Fatty Dong had warned me that his friend had links with both cops and gangs so we’d better stay away from the club.
    Meanwhile Bighead was hearing about the club for the first time: ‘How come you never told me?’ I placated him with vivid description, and his eyes