Gold Boy, Emerald Girl Part 7

The two girls followed Mrs. Jin and the reporter to the living room and sat by the foot of the couch, as if the discussion had nothing to do with them.

"Are they in school now?" the reporter asked.

"I got them legalized after they came to live here, so they could go to school. You just have to pay a price," Mrs. Jin said, rubbing two fingers together. The girls listened to Mrs. Jin and the reporter, their eyes moving from one person to the other, not blinking.

"Where is their mother?" the reporter asked.

"I found her a job at a county hospital, was.h.i.+ng laundry," Mrs. Jin said. "She comes home once a week."

With great interest the two girls watched the reporter take notes. Mrs. Jin stood up and left for the kitchen, knowing the reporter would have questions for the girls. Mrs. Jin thought that it would look better if she were not present when the twins sang her praises, which she trusted they would do to the best effect.

The girls' mother had come to Mrs. Jin just as many other women had, with a story of a hard life and an unfair fate. She and the father of her children had been so poor that they lacked the application fee for a marriage certificate, and had no money to pay the fine for being pregnant without permission from the county's birth control office.

"Their father was optimistic," the twins' mother had said. "He thought when we had more money, we would pay the fine or the bribery. But n.o.body gets rich selling pickled pigs' ears, and the girls could not go to school unless they were registered soon. So he robbed the old woman. Silly man! I would've never let him. I would've gone to the street to become a wh.o.r.e myself had I known his plan. He thought he could solve the problem by himself, but now who knows when he'll be released."

Mrs. Jin had no hope for the husband, even though he had not set out to kill the old woman. In fact, he had called for help when she had become motionless, but that, as Mrs. Jin had suspected, did not help him much in the courthouse.

Mrs. Jin did not intend to take in the woman and her children at first. The woman's circ.u.mstances were hard indeed, but she was a mother, and a mother should never be defeated by circ.u.mstances. The second time they came into the store, however, Mrs. Jin caught the twins stealing candies when she stood up to fetch tissues for their sobbing mother. Mrs. Jin pretended not to notice, but when the three of them were about to leave, she brought out some snacks and insisted on putting them into the two girls' pockets herself. She pinched them and made sure the girls knew that she had seen them take what did not belong to them. But they showed no signs of panic. Instead, they gave Mrs. Jin the most candid smiles, as if they knew she would not have the heart to reveal their crime to their mother, who stood by the store entrance, sighing and dabbing her eyes with a corner of her blouse. Where did the girls get such shameless courage? Mrs. Jin studied their mother again-she was a dull woman, foolish-looking; the twins were much prettier, their eyes too smart for children their age. Perhaps they had inherited this from their father. The possibility that they would grow more like him, wasting their gifts on the wrong ideas, troubled Mrs. Jin. His sentence was long, so his influence on the two girls could be minimized; but she worried about the mother's inability to raise them properly.

She decided to take over their upbringing. The mother was overjoyed that someone with power and wealth would think of her own children's welfare; it was not hard to persuade her to accept a job away from them. She talked about saving every penny to pay back Mrs. Jin, but Mrs. Jin made it clear that she had no need for the money. "Save for the future," she told the mother, who was in grateful tears. "I won't always be around to take care of them for you."

When Mrs. Jin returned to the living room with a cup of tea for the reporter, the twins were leaning on the young woman, who was showing them her small tape recorder. Given an opportunity, the girls would try to charm anyone, Mrs. Jin thought with frustration. Six months they had been living under her roof now, and she had been unable to wipe away that smartness from their eyes. Sometimes she wondered if she had enough time to change them into what she wanted them to be, girls with fear and reverence for what was beyond their control in life; what a shame it would be to be defeated by a pair of six-year-olds. Mrs. Jin placed the tea in front of the reporter, and right away both girls looked up.

"Nana," one of them said. "Auntie said she is going to write a story about you so everybody will know what a good person you are."

"And she'll take our picture so everybody can see how lucky we are," the other girl said.

Mrs. Jin smiled tightly, annoyed by the mock she always perceived in their eyes when they sweet-mouthed her. "Did you both finish your homework?" she said.

"Yes," they said.

"Then go practice knitting in your room." She turned to the reporter and said, "There's so much for them to learn. I want them to be prepared as best they can."

The girls left but a minute later returned with their knitting needles and yarn and sat down by the couch. The reporter watched them knit and took a few pictures; in the flash of light, the girls looked serious and engrossed in what they were doing, though they would never have remembered to pick up their knitting needles if Mrs. Jin had not told them to. She sighed. If not for the reporter, she would have told them in a sharp tongue not to put on a show. More and more now she talked to the girls harshly, which seemed to work only for a minute or two before they became their old selves, smiling at her and talking as if they were her beloved grandchildren. Mrs. Jin was happy that they had not come from her blood.

When the reporter put away the camera, Mrs. Jin suggested a tour of the house, and before the girls could make a move, she told them not to follow.

The house, two-storied, had two bedrooms on the first floor and three more on the second. Mrs. Jin led the reporter upstairs and showed her the two small rooms at the end of the hallway. Standing in each was a single bed, neatly made by Mrs. Jin herself. "These belong to the two older girls," she said. "They come home only on weekends, like the twins' mother." Strictly speaking, it was not a lie, as Mrs. Jin still hoped for the girls to return to her house. They had come at different times but left together. The older one, twenty-one and slightly beautiful, had no place to live after her boyfriend, a small-scale drug dealer, got a sentence of seventeen years. The younger one was nineteen and had told Mrs. Jin stories about her stepfather, who had repeatedly raped an eight-year-old girl, and her mother, who had helped to bait the young girl into their house. Mrs. Jin did not know if she believed the girl's tales, but both would certainly benefit from her supervision.

For a while both girls worked in Mrs. Jin's store, though she could handle the business herself perfectly. She thought she would teach them how to make a living with their hands before sending them out to the real world, but one day they left a note for her, explaining they had borrowed borrowed her money to go to Shanghai. They promised to come back to see her and return the money when they found good manual jobs, but Mrs. Jin was certain they would fall into the hands of drug dealers and pimps. It was upsetting that they had left without Mrs. Jin's a.s.sent, but she knew that soon she would find two more girls to fill the vacancies; the next time she would have to choose carefully so she would not be disappointed. her money to go to Shanghai. They promised to come back to see her and return the money when they found good manual jobs, but Mrs. Jin was certain they would fall into the hands of drug dealers and pimps. It was upsetting that they had left without Mrs. Jin's a.s.sent, but she knew that soon she would find two more girls to fill the vacancies; the next time she would have to choose carefully so she would not be disappointed.

Returning downstairs, Mrs. Jin entered the hallway and knocked on the first door before pus.h.i.+ng it ajar and saying, "Granny, it's me."

There was no answer in the room, as she had expected. Granny, who'd lived in the house for more than a year, was eighty-one and suffered from dementia. As was common, she was not alone-sitting beside her on the single bed was a slender young woman, her hand grasped tightly by Granny's thin, chicken-claw fingers.

"Granny is telling me stories about her husband," the woman said with an apologetic look, and wiggled her hand out of Granny's clasp.

Mrs. Jin nodded. All that Granny remembered and talked about was her dead husband. "I've told you not to waste your time with Granny," Mrs. Jin said. "You've heard enough of her stories."

The woman looked down at the tips of her shoes. "I don't mind," she said. "Granny likes to tell the stories."

"We have a guest in the house," Mrs. Jin said.

"I'll get dinner ready," the woman said. She nodded to the reporter and left the room without making a sound. The reporter watched her close the door.

"Who is she?" she asked.

Mrs. Jin hesitated and replied, "Susu."

"She's beautiful," the reporter said.

"Indeed," Mrs. Jin said. They were silent, as if still entranced by her beauty. It was not healthy for Susu to listen to the old woman's tales about a husband executed fifty years earlier, but Mrs. Jin had not wanted to remind Susu of this in front of the reporter.

After a moment, Mrs. Jin pointed to Granny, who looked lost now that n.o.body was listening to her stories. "Remember I told you that the jail used to be the landlord's compound? The landlord was Granny's husband. She was his fifth wife." Then, grabbing Granny's hand, Mrs. Jin raised her voice and said, "Granny, tell us about your Mister."

"Mister liked to eat duck gizzards with mustard," Granny said. This was new for Mrs. Jin. On other days she heard the same stories repeatedly about Mister, how before he settled down he had made enough money traveling with an acrobatic troupe to become the biggest landowner in the region.

"Where is he now? What happened to him?" Mrs. Jin said.

Granny thought for a moment and twitched her mouth as if she was crying, though her eyes remained dry. "They took him away," she said.

"Where did they take him?" Mrs. Jin said.

"To the river. Do you know where the river is? They took him there and drowned him, my poor Mister," Granny said, slapping the blanket on her knees, like a wife newly bereft.

Mrs. Jin waited for a moment and said, "Granny, I heard you were his favorite wife."

Granny calmed down. "Mister says I'm the most beautiful woman in the world," she said, her wrinkled face blus.h.i.+ng like a bashful young girl's.

Mrs. Jin stepped back and said to the reporter, not lowering her voice, "What a sad thing for her to live for a man who's been dead fifty years."

"Was he really drowned?" the reporter asked.

"Executed beside the river in '51," Mrs. Jin said. "He was thirty years older than she."

The reporter looked at Granny and did not speak for a while. Mrs. Jin walked to the window to straighten the curtain and to give the reporter a moment to absorb the story of Granny. Mrs. Jin did not usually take in old women-their fates were already written out for them, and there was no room for her to make a difference. Granny was an exception. She had come when the last of her husband's other four wives died; the five wives had all refused to remarry and had remained a close family until their pa.s.sings.

"How long has she stayed here?" the reporter asked.

"Since her last relative died," Mrs. Jin said. "About a year now."

"Did you know her before that?"

"Yes," Mrs. Jin said. "I've known her almost all my life." It was not a lie-she had first seen Granny as a bride sixty years earlier. Mrs. Jin had been eight years old then, a poor peasant's daughter standing in the crowd to witness Granny being married off to the richest man in the village. The new wife was so beautiful that Mrs. Jin, young as she was, wished she could become part of the woman's life one day, but when she asked to be sold to the landlord's family as a handmaiden, her father said it was the stupidest idea she'd ever had.

Not long afterward, however, their lives intersected when Granny's husband was sentenced in a public meeting as an enemy of the new proletarian regime: Mrs. Jin's father was one of the two militiamen who had pushed the convict down to the river-bank and put a bullet into his head. n.o.body remembered such old stories except Mrs. Jin. She had waited all these years to become part of Granny's life. Mrs. Jin's lifelong loyalty, however, went unnoticed by Granny, who never recognized her as the eight-year-old admirer, or the daughter of the poor peasant who became a power figure after the revolution.

"Are Susu and Granny friends?" the reporter asked.

"I wish they weren't," Mrs. Jin said. Granny was a bad influence, a woman who let the memory of a short marriage become the only life she knew. Who would be around to take care of Susu if she let herself grow old like that?

"Do you think I can ask Susu a few questions?" the reporter said.

It was hard to refuse someone who had promised to write a story about her, Mrs. Jin thought. Besides, she felt a little tired. She had worked so hard to make a haven for Susu, who still refused to open her eyes to the future. All those reports about her request to the court for a baby must have made her believe she was justified in her grief, but it was wrong to mourn for any man like that, her husband especially, a useless, replaceable person.

Mrs. Jin had read about the case in the newspapers. The young man, twenty-three and newly wedded to his childhood sweetheart, was in an argument with his woman boss. He confessed to the police that she had slapped him a couple of times, and that made him lose his temper; she was found strangled to death in her office with him weeping under her desk, unable to move when the police ordered him to come out.

Mrs. Jin had not connected Susu with the man in the newspapers when she had first come into the store. Unlike the other women, Susu did not talk about what had brought her to the jail, even when Mrs. Jin asked. Mrs. Jin studied Susu; her accent was not local but from the next province, her hips narrow and her eyes clear, still like a maiden. She was beautiful in an unhealthy way, her skin bloodless, almost transparent. Mrs. Jin imagined caring for Susu as her own daughter, filling her bony frame with more flesh and putting color in her cheeks. The more Mrs. Jin thought about it, the less willing she was to let the girl slip away. She offered Susu a free room in her house, so that the young wife would not have to rent cheap accommodations in town while waiting for the trial. Mrs. Jin cooked homemade sausages for Susu to bring to the jail on visiting days and did not ask whom they were for. Eventually, Susu started to talk. She showed her wedding alb.u.m to Mrs. Jin; in the pictures the husband, slim and tall in a boyish way, did not look like a murderer.

He got a death sentence; when the appeal failed, Mrs. Jin thought the worst was over and it was time to reconstruct the young woman. Her sadness did not bother Mrs. Jin, and when Susu mentioned her hope to have a baby with her husband before his execution, Mrs. Jin was only slightly alert. Susu would come to her senses, Mrs. Jin decided; it was only the whim of a young woman struck by grief. But when Susu asked to borrow money from Mrs. Jin to hire a lawyer for the request, Mrs. Jin became scared. She had not antic.i.p.ated the determination in that frail body. Susu was wrong to bet all her future, and the future of a child, on the love of a man who had made the stupidest mistake in life. Mrs. Jin would do anything to prevent that. In the end, however, she gave the money to Susu, not ready to oppose the girl's wish in any way and thus lose her.

Mrs. Jin was relieved when the request was denied; without a child binding Susu to her dead husband, her future was a blank sheet again, full of possibilities. Mrs. Jin persuaded Susu to continue living in the house-she needed some time to recover, after all. The money Mrs. Jin had lent Susu was, in retrospect, a smart move; Susu was not a person who could ever say no to a generous and sympathetic soul.

Mrs. Jin showed the reporter the rest of the house before they came to the kitchen. Susu looked up from the cutting board, where she was chopping vegetables for dumpling fillings. "Susu, this reporter wants to talk to you," Mrs. Jin said.

"Dead is dead. There's nothing to talk about now," Susu said, without acknowledging the reporter.

"She came all the way from Shanghai for you," Mrs. Jin said, "so maybe we'll just answer a few questions for her?"

Susu glanced at the reporter. "I've never been to Shanghai," she said.

"When you feel better, we'll take a trip to Shanghai together," Mrs. Jin said.

Susu looked at the chopper in her hand for a moment and said, "We thought of going there for our honeymoon, but it was too expensive."

Mrs. Jin watched Susu, whose mind was elsewhere. It was the first time she had mentioned her life with her husband since his execution a month before. Mrs. Jin wondered if Susu would, like Granny, start to tell stories so she could remember him-Mrs. Jin wondered what she would have to do to battle against another dead man.

"I'm sorry about your husband," the reporter said. When Susu did not reply, the reporter smiled apologetically at Mrs. Jin and then said, "Your request to have a baby with someone on death row-have you realized that it has sparked a national discussion about the legal as well as the moral and social significance of your case? Can you talk a little about what you think of the discussion?"

Susu looked up at the reporter. "I don't understand your questions," she said.

"Some picture you as a challenger to the present judicial system; some think of you as a victim of the old patriarchal society in which a wife's foremost responsibility is to ensure the continuity of the husband's blood; and some-pardon me-think you were using the pet.i.tion to draw undue attention to your husband's case-"

"He's dead, isn't he?" Susu said.

"Of course I'm not saying I agree with some, or any, of these views," the reporter said. "I'm curious what you think of these reactions."

Susu looked at the chopper in her hand. "I have nothing to say," she said. "I'm sorry."

The reporter nodded and thanked her. Mrs. Jin was relieved. After all, Susu would remain a minor character in the reporter's story; Mrs. Jin herself would be the heroine.

The twins sneaked into the kitchen like two kittens drawn by the warmth of the hearth. One of them picked up the teapot and poured tea in two cups, and the other brought them for Mrs. Jin and the reporter. "Auntie, are you going to take our picture?" the girls asked.

"Ah yes," the reporter said.

"Will you send us our picture when you go back to Shanghai?" one of the twins begged, and the other added, "We want to show the picture to our dad so he knows he doesn't have to worry about us."

The reporter promised that she would, and Mrs. Jin watched the two girls clap as if they did not doubt the woman's sincerity at all. They would never miss a chance to put on such a show, to make their presence known to the world. Mrs. Jin looked at them and then at Susu, who watched the girls with hazy eyes. None of the women had reformed for her, and Mrs. Jin wondered how long it would take her to make that happen, and whether she still had time. The thought exhausted her, and she turned to the reporter and asked brusquely if she would like to stay in the house for the night, as the last bus was leaving town in less than an hour.

The reporter hesitated and said she would rather catch the bus. Could she take a picture of them all in the yard? she asked.

The twins were the first ones to get ready. They put on the princess outfits and patent leather shoes that Mrs. Jin had bought for their first performance in school. After a while, Granny walked out of the house, supported by Susu. Granny was dressed in a black satin blouse and pants embroidered with golden chrysanthemums, the outfit that she had ordered long before for her own burial. Mrs. Jin frowned. She did not know if it was an unintentional mistake, but regardless, it was a bad omen. She patted some rouge onto Granny's hollow cheeks, adding color for good luck and hoping no harm would be done to her. She led Granny to a cus.h.i.+oned chair in the middle of the yard and then directed Susu to stand behind the old woman. The twins stood close to Susu, each clinging to an arm. Mrs. Jin studied the group, young and old; all their sufferings came from the men they had been wrongly a.s.signed by heaven. She herself could have been one of them if fate had not been lenient and given her an easier life: a father who, though born into a peasant's family, had risen to the right position through revolution; a husband who had never made a stupid mistake; and a good son who would not leave her to die in the hands of unsympathetic nurses in the old people's home.

The reporter looked through the camera and asked Mrs. Jin to join the group. She walked over and stood straight, an arm's length away from the rest. The light from the setting sun blinded her, but she did not squint. She imagined, in twenty years, the twins, Susu, and all the other women who were not in the picture but who had or would come to this house at one time or another-she imagined them looking at the picture in an old magazine and telling each other how Mrs. Jin had changed their lives. She would be happily watching over them then from the otherworld, where Granny would finally recognize her as the most loyal soul in the world.

House Fire

THEY CALLED THEMSELVES saviors of burning houses, though none of the six women, their ages ranging from mid-fifties to early seventies, had had much experience outside the worlds of their employment before retirement: small cubicles behind barred windows for the two bank tellers; large offices shared by too many people for the three secretaries; and a front room in a six-storied university building, where for many years Mrs. Lu had guarded the door to a girls' dorm. saviors of burning houses, though none of the six women, their ages ranging from mid-fifties to early seventies, had had much experience outside the worlds of their employment before retirement: small cubicles behind barred windows for the two bank tellers; large offices shared by too many people for the three secretaries; and a front room in a six-storied university building, where for many years Mrs. Lu had guarded the door to a girls' dorm.

The six women, friends and comrades for about two years now, had first met at a local park, where mothers, anxious for their children's marriages, met other equally fretful mothers. Between them the six women had four sons and four daughters, all of them unhurried by the ticking of the clock that kept their mothers sleepless at night. Shortly after they befriended one another, the women made ingenious plans in the hope that some of them would become connected by marriage and then by shared grandchildren. Meetings of their children were arranged, coerced in some cases. In the end, none of the matches produced any fruitful results. Still, the six women remained close, and when Mrs. Fan, the youngest among them, realized that her husband was having an affair with a woman whose ident.i.ty he refused to reveal, the other five women, enraged by the audacity of the husband, who was approaching sixty yet behaving like a foolish boy without a heart or a brain, appointed themselves detectives to find out the truth.

Their success in uncovering the mistress's name, address, and work unit did little to save Mrs. Fan's marriage. "An old man in love is like an old house on fire, which burns easily and burns down fast," went a popular joke that circulated as a text message from one cellphone to another around the city. The joke must have been made up by some young, carefree soul, but how sadly true it was. Mrs. Fan was taken aback by the intensity of the fire that engulfed her marriage: Three decades of trivial arguments and unimportant disagreements turned out to be flammable material. More appalling was the simple procedure for divorce. In the old days, the employers of both parties, the neighborhood a.s.sociation, the local workers' union, and the women's union would all be involved in the mediation, and the court, as the last resort, would not grant the divorce without making a lengthy effort of its own to save the marriage. After all, any a.s.sistance in breaking up a marriage was more sinful than destroying seven temples. But such a belief no longer held in the new era: An application speedily granted by the district courthouse soon left Mrs. Fan a single woman and released her husband to become the bridegroom of an immoral intruder.

The six friends declared war against love outside marriage. They did not need to look far before they found another woman suspecting a cheating husband, and with their previous experience, and a talent that seemed to come naturally to them, they identified the mistress within two weeks. It dawned upon Mrs. Guan, whose son was a recent graduate from a top MBA program in America, that they could turn their skills into a business, and soon, through word of mouth, their clientele expanded. As agreed by the six friends, they would work for the principle of cleansing society and fighting against deteriorating morals, so they charged less than other firms and accepted only cases in which wives were endangered by disloyal husbands and conniving mistresses. Saviors of burning houses, they called themselves, their belief being that, discovered early enough, a fire could be put out before more harm was done.

THE STORY OF six older women working as successful private investigators was, against their will and without their consent, reported by a local newspaper in a gossipy column called "Odd People at This Unique Time." What transgressor would have thought that an old granny in the street had a mini-walkie-talkie hidden in her palm, or that her most innocent conversation with one's acquaintances would reveal one's secrets? The story was soon picked up by a women's magazine, and when the city TV channel proposed a short doc.u.mentary on them as part of a month-long series on family values in the new era, the six friends decided to welcome the opportunity. six older women working as successful private investigators was, against their will and without their consent, reported by a local newspaper in a gossipy column called "Odd People at This Unique Time." What transgressor would have thought that an old granny in the street had a mini-walkie-talkie hidden in her palm, or that her most innocent conversation with one's acquaintances would reveal one's secrets? The story was soon picked up by a women's magazine, and when the city TV channel proposed a short doc.u.mentary on them as part of a month-long series on family values in the new era, the six friends decided to welcome the opportunity.

The anxiously awaited filming took place on a bl.u.s.tery day in early spring. Their complexions, Mrs. Tang explained to the woman in charge of makeup, ranged from raisins to months-old apples, so she might just as well save her powder and rouge for women with better reasons for looking desirable. Such self-mockery amused the TV crew. Even more surprising, the six women acted relaxed and natural in front of the cameras, but when complimented, they looked confused. She had no idea what the director was talking about, said Mrs. Cheng, the oldest and the loudest. If they were expected to be themselves, why the comment on their acting?

The doc.u.mentary aired on a Sat.u.r.day night and the six women became instant celebrities to their neighbors, relatives, and acquaintances. Soon it became a routine for the six friends to watch a tape of the program in Mrs. Mo's flat, which also served as the headquarters of their sleuthing business. Mrs. Mo had been widowed for twenty years, having lost her husband in a traffic accident, and at sixty-five she played tennis, belonged to a ballroom dancing club, and had a full collection of Agatha Christie novels on her shelf. With the looks of a Hong Kong film star from the forties, Mrs. Mo seemed not to belong to the group, yet it was she who had first organized the friends, inviting the other women to her flat whenever she had a day off from tennis and dancing, and later offering her home phone number as the contact for their business.

Sherlock Holmes was more to her husband's taste, commented Mrs. Tang, who was married to a retired army officer, whenever she saw the hostess's Agatha Christie collection. Mrs. Mo smiled tolerantly. She was aware that some of her friends envied her freedom. Now and then Mrs. Cheng and Mrs. Lu discussed Mrs. Mo's long-widowed situation with her, asking why she had not thought of remarrying and expressing admiration at her bringing up a daughter all by herself. Mrs. Tang, the least tactful of the six women, never missed the opportunity in these conversations to mention her own healthy and well-pensioned husband. Such petty compet.i.tion, which also occurred when the women brought up their children's incomes, usually amounted to nothing more than harmless bantering. They were not about to give up the friends.h.i.+p that had made them famous late in their lives.

After the program was broadcast, however, their business slowed down. Perhaps prospective clients feared that the women's covers had been blown and it was unwise to hire them now, Mrs. Guan wondered aloud; or else they thought they could not afford the celebrity price, Mrs. Lu added. There was no real pressure for them to make money, in any case, said Mrs. Tang, and Mrs. Fan agreed, adding that their main goal was to raise the awareness of out-of-wedlock immorality, and that their TV doc.u.mentary had made their stand known to more people than their fieldwork ever could. Such rounds of talk to ease any worry or doubt were repeated every day, though none of the six friends would admit that she was upset or disappointed by the fact that they were not sought out as they had been. While the talk went on, Mrs. Mo would brew tea and come round with a plate of nuts: green tea and pistachios on some days, red tea and cashews on others, since the tastes of the group were divided on many small things. The nuts were ground and taken in small spoonfuls, as several of the members had dentures, and when all was settled, Mrs. Mo would put the tape into the VCR player and turn on the TV.

After days and now weeks of watching, rewinding, and watching again, Mrs. Guan still felt a thrill the moment the blue screen flickered and the theme music started. Such a joy was shared by all six friends, and every viewing was accompanied by new comments and laughter. Familiar by now with every shot, they watched the program more for random glimpses of themselves. See Mrs. Cheng chat up two guards at an upscale flat complex, her cheerful nosiness not eliciting any suspicion on the young men's part. See Mrs. Lu hover patiently over a pot of watered-down tea on a bench outside a Starbucks where the cheating husband is holding an intimate conversation with a chic young woman. Thirty years of guarding the girls' dorm had taught Mrs. Lu a few things about shameless females, and every time she saw the young actress's hand covered by the middle-aged actor's hand, Mrs. Lu would relate yet another story about one of the girls from the past who had come back to the dorm after lights-out, lips too wet and cheeks flushed unnaturally. The girls would knock on Mrs. Lu's window and beg her to let them in, and often she yelled at them and said any day now she would report them to the university and they had better be prepared to move into the street with the rest of the wh.o.r.es. They had never taken such a threat seriously, as all of Mrs. Lu's yelling was of little use unless she could catch a pair of naked bodies in bed. Did you ever? Mrs. Fan asked one day, with obvious interest, and Mrs. Lu answered ambiguously that she might have successfully expelled a girl or two, but such decisions by the higher-ups were kept from little people like her. The discussion of the degenerating morals of the younger generation was then replaced by laughter over Mrs. Fan's secretive phone call to a wife about the cheating husband's whereabouts. Their little hen had some visitor in her nest, Mrs. Fan said over her cellphone, a cheap, bulky model that few people used anymore, her coat flapping in the wind, while in the background could be seen a blurred image of a man entering his mistress's building. Where on earth had the TV people got that hen line from, the friends laughed, as they had never used such codes in their work. Amid the laughter, Mrs. Fan sighed. No wonder her ex-husband wanted a younger woman, she said, pointing at the fine lines in her face magnified by the close-up shot, which she had paused for the friends to see. The other women stopped laughing, and Mrs. Mo, the one who dealt with any uneasiness with a perfect gesture, broke the silence and said that, husband or not, it was more important to have a fun life of one's own than to serve a king at home. Mrs. Fan nodded, and then reported that she had heard from her children that their father had just lost his new wife to a younger man and they wondered if she would be willing to go back to him for everybody's sake. But why would she want to have anything to do with that man twice divorced by now, Mrs. Fan said. It was not totally untrue, though her children's suggestion of a reunion had been rejected not by Mrs. Fan but by her ex-husband.

The five women studied Mrs. Fan, who smiled back and rea.s.sured them that she had long since pa.s.sed the heartbroken stage; she might have to go out and find a younger man so that her husband would stop daydreaming about a reunion. The joke was hesitantly received and then Mrs. Mo hit the play b.u.t.ton, and more of their glorious moments lulled them back into happy oblivion.

THE SIX WOMEN hadn't had any cases for a while when they got a phone call from a man who called himself "Dao." Not that they minded the chance to relax, the friends had been reminding one another, though after the phone call even Mrs. Mo, the calmest of the six, showed unusual animation. They had never accepted a case from a man before, but in his initial call he mentioned their TV doc.u.mentary, and that alone was enough for them to make an exception. hadn't had any cases for a while when they got a phone call from a man who called himself "Dao." Not that they minded the chance to relax, the friends had been reminding one another, though after the phone call even Mrs. Mo, the calmest of the six, showed unusual animation. They had never accepted a case from a man before, but in his initial call he mentioned their TV doc.u.mentary, and that alone was enough for them to make an exception.

The women invited Dao to the tea shop where they met all their clients, in a room separated from the main hall by a bamboo curtain. By now the young girls who served their tea regarded the women with awe and studied the newcomer across the big table with open curiosity. For a long time Dao seemed preoccupied, placing his teacup on the green checked tablecloth, then moving it a few squares down as if trying to position a chess piece, never looking up at the six women. Mrs. Cheng and Mrs. Tang s.h.i.+fted in their chairs and Mrs. Lu exchanged a look with Mrs. Guan. Many of their female clients had sounded hesitant when they first called, but once they had made up their minds to come to see the women, their stories gushed out before an invitation had even been issued.

"If you feel it easier to answer questions than just talk, we will certainly help," Mrs. Mo offered, her voice gentle and soothing. There was a girlish excitement in Mrs. Mo that Mrs. Tang was sure only she had detected. She thought of reporting this to her husband, as had been her habit for the past forty years, but more and more now the old soldier immersed himself in conversations with Sherlock Holmes, as if senility had turned him into a close friend of the famous detective. Her husband's obsession had been a major motive for Mrs. Tang to become a detective herself. She hoped for more attention and respect, but the doctors warned her that her husband's condition would only worsen, that memory loss and personality change were to be expected. She might as well enjoy her days with her friends instead of diligently gathering topics to discuss later with a husband who had always been too stingy to partic.i.p.ate in conversations and who had, by now, stopped listening.

Dao looked up at Mrs. Mo and then at Mrs. Fan, who as always began to talk about a painful experience of her own with an encouraging smile. It was natural to be angry with the cheating spouse as well as with the perpetrator, Mrs. Fan said, using the words of the marriage expert her children had paid for her to visit-something she would never have admitted to her friends, as they congratulated themselves as the sole agents of her recovery. Natural, too, to be confused and ashamed, Mrs. Fan continued, yet he should know that such emotions were unhealthy in the long run.

"Thanks, aunties," Dao finally said, and Mrs. Mo thought that despite his vagueness, he respected their ages and addressed them properly; such old-fas.h.i.+oned manners were less common in his generation. "My problem is, I don't know where to start."

"Start with your wife," Mrs. Lu said. "Does she still live with you or has she left for someone else?" The man thought about the question for an excruciatingly long time. Mrs. Tang, already losing patience, picked peanuts from the plate and lined them up in front of her in formations.

"There must have been something in your mind that we could do for you when you called us," Mrs. Mo ventured.

"We specialize in marriage crises, as you may or may not know," Mrs. Cheng said. "And trust me, we've seen all sorts of marriage problems in our business."