A Good Fall Read Online Free PDF Page A

nose, double-lidded eyes, a delicate mouth, and silken skin. Dan was also handsome. People often complimented him on his good looks, which boasted shiny eyes, a high nose, and a head of bushy hair. There were always envious glances at him and his wife when they were together at a public place. So how could their daughter be so plain? In his mind a voice would murmur, “She’s not mine, she’s not mine.” Sometimes he imagined that Fooming was Jasmine’s blood father; at least their small eyes and round chins resembled each other. That could also explain why Gina wouldn’t stop seeing the man.
    Several times Dan had urged her to steer clear of Fooming, but she always assured him that there was nothing unusual between them and that she kept up her acquaintance with Fooming only because they were both from Jinhua, a medium-size city in Zhejiang Province. “You should have a larger heart,” she told Dan.
    Whenever he ran into Fooming, the man would grin and narrow his eyes at him. His knowing smile unsettled Dan, as if Fooming meant to say, “I know more about your wife than you do, from head to toe. I’ve made you wear horns, but what can you do about me, dumb ass?”
    Before Jasmine was born, Dan had never given much thought to Fooming. Dan used to view him as a no-account loser who, though four or five years his junior and just promoted to foreman in charge of three staffers, perhaps made no more than twelve dollars an hour. By contrast, Dan owned a real estate company and had a team of agents working for him. Almost thirty-seven, he was mature and steady. Experience and maturity, if not as magical as a sense of humor, could work to an older man’s advantage. From the very beginning, Dan believed there’d be no chance for Fooming, and several others, to win Gina’s heart as long as he himself was a competitor. Yet the scene at the bar an hour earlier had unnerved and enraged him. If only he hadn’t rushed to marry Gina after she told him she was pregnant with his child. She may have lied to him.
    A tubby man came into the pool room with a hand towel over his shoulder. He boomed, “Would you like to have your feet scraped and massaged, sir?”
    Startled, Dan sat up. “What time is it?”
    “A quarter to five.”
    “I need to go. Sorry, no pedicure today.”
    “That’s all right.” The man puttered to the next room to ask others.
    Dan climbed out of the pool and went to take a rinsing shower. On his way back to the locker room, passing by the massage area, he heard a male voice moaning in one of the small rooms whose doors were all shut. “Oh yes, oh yes!” the man kept saying.
    Then came a sugary female voice. “Feel good, right? Hmmm … nice …”
    Dan wondered if the woman was giving more than a massage in there. Probably she’d also given the guy a hand job for a bigger tip. Dan glanced at the sign standing before the entrance, which said, “For massage, please make an appointment beforehand!”
    He threw on his clothes and parka and left the bathhouse. He had to pick up his daughter at five.
    That evening, after their baby fell asleep, Dan and Gina sat down in the living room and talked. He put his tea mug on the glass coffee table and said, “I saw you playing a doggy game with Fooming Yu in the Sheraton bar this afternoon. ‘Another nut, please, before I go.’ I heard him say that and saw you feed nuts to him.”
    Gina blushed, pursing her lips. “It wasn’t even a game. There’s nothing between him and me. You shouldn’t make too much of it.”
    “How many times have I told you to avoid that man?”
    “I can’t just snub him. We’ve known each other for many years.”
    “Listen, I understand you had a number of boyfriends before we married. I don’t mind that as long as you remain a faithful wife.”
    “Are you implying I’m cheating on you?”
    “Why do you still carry on with Fooming Yu? Tell me, does he have something to do with Jasmine?”
    “He doesn’t know her. What are