Leave Me Alone Read Online Free PDF Page A

guilt and pity, and a kind of inexpressible tenderness. I lay there until she’d pressed all the air out of me, then I patted her arse and asked her to get up. Ye Mei rose obediently from the bed, dressed herself and gave the mirror a silent, beautiful smile. Then she pushed open the door and left without saying a word.
    On the road back to Chengdu the next day after her abortion, I stopped the car and bought Ye Mei a pair of farm chickens. I told her that she should feed them well. She seemed moved. Recently, I thought I’d started to learn how to be considerate to others, perhaps because I was gettingolder. While Richard Clayderman played on the car stereo, Ye Mei slept deeply like a child.

    It was already after six when I reached our home. I said to Zhao Yue, ‘What’s the name of that hotpot place you mentioned? Let’s go together this evening.’
    Zhao Yue looked surprised. ‘Don’t you need to entertain clients tonight?’
    ‘No more entertaining’ I said. ‘Tonight I want to devote myself to my wife.’
    She laughed. ‘Too bad that I have to go to a dinner party.’ And, snatching her leather handbag she clattered off down the stairs in black high heels.
    Thus abandoned, I became first bored, then unbearably depressed. I had this nagging feeling that I had been snubbed. Soon I’d got through all the beer in the house and almost worn out the TV remote control. Slightly deranged, I called Zhao Yue and demanded to know what time she’d be back.
    ‘Don’t wait up,’ she said, ‘I want to stay a bit longer.’
    Hearing this I felt angry and I then called Li Liang to demand that he come to Dong Dong disco with me.
    ‘You loser, don’t you have anything better to do?’ he said. Then I heard him saying to someone else: ‘Son of a bitch wants to go to Dong Dong disco.’
    Of course, he had to be talking to Ye Mei.
    Dong Dong disco is one of Chengdu’s most famous places. Originally it was a civil air defence shelter. After Chengduopened up to the outside world, one part of the shelter became an underground market, while another part now housed several hostess bars. They claimed to be discos but I’d never actually seen people dancing there. Men went there to hold a girl close and let their hands and their minds roam. At the end of a song they’d hand over a 10 yuan tip and consider the transaction over.
    I’d just walked into the disco when this tall girl I’d encountered there before embraced me and said that she hadn’t seen me for a long time. I patted her butt and told her that I wasn’t dancing today, just looking. Immediately she turned and threw her arms around some fat guy instead. The two seemed to be stuck to each other like glue as the girl swayed and rubbed her hips rhythmically against Fatty’s crotch. Fatty slobbered and his two pig’s trotters went groping up and down her body. The girl smiled at me with a ‘Look what you’re missing out on’ look. Suddenly I remembered the huge black mole on her back. It was definitely enough to make a man soft.
    At that moment all the lights went out and the disco was full of ghostly shadows. My eyes couldn’t get used to it. I staggered around until someone gently pulled at my sleeve, asking me to sit down. I sat, and in the gloom a face gradually became clear to me. My breadstick lover was smiling at me.
    After graduation, Li Liang lived at my house for a fortnight, then rented his own place in Luoguo Alley. By then I was depressed at home and so I moved in with him. At the mouth of the alley was a snack restaurant. It was therethat I first encountered my breadstick lover. She had only recently moved to Chengdu from her village. She wore old, faded clothes, and even in July she kept her buttons tightly fastened as she toiled over the fried breadsticks in their seething pots.
    ‘Aren’t you hot?’ I asked her.
    Her face turned red, which made me think of a girl on our class’s study committee, Ning Dongdong … The night before our