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China business. Right now, we still can’t do too much long-term planning. I hope God guides us and makes our daily work productive.”
    “God”—what a fine cliché. If there really were a God who ran the universe, why should I be here begging you for a cup of soup? But I didn’t dare express my skepticism.
    I laughed awkwardly and bantered, “May Almighty God bless and protect you.”
    “Bless and protect us. ”
    Joseph suggested that we pray for the work we were about to commence. As he mumbled away, I worried about my meeting with Chrysanthemum a little later. She had helped me find a lawyer to sue those two companies that previously had a cooperative arrangement with me. I wanted to sue for the damages caused by their one-sided termination. If there really were a God, let him reach out with his justice and help me win my lawsuit.
    Obviously, God hadn’t heard the call from my heart. The lawyer made his purpose clear from the start and sternly advised me to raise a truly frightening sum of money for the process attorney’s fee: twenty percent of the amount I was claiming. Only after a prepayment of fifty thousand yuan would he get to work. Before that, he couldn’t be bothered even to hear my grievance. Whether or not the people involved had been treated unfairly was apparently not important. “If I’m taking your money it means we’ll win this litigation. We lawyers are housepainters. We can make black white, and white, black.”
    If I had that much money, why would I have had to scatter my staff to the four winds? Money was the thing I most needed now. Beibei was in America studying at a private school, and I had to come up with the tuition for next semester. I was thinking of how to tell her to change to a tuition-free public school. The lawyer saw me hesitate and, putting down his business card, took his leave. Chrysanthemum and I just sat there, stupefied, before we recovered our senses. She patted my shoulder, saying, “This lawyer isn’t sympathetic at all. We’ll get another.” My heart, which had been burning with a desire for revenge, had now cooled down. “No need,” I said with a bitter laugh. Our expectations for sympathy from that lawyer had been a delusion. He spoke for his employer only, and it didn’t matter if that person were a devil who wouldn’t hesitate to commit the Ten Evils. Where had our most basic common sense gone to?
    I accepted the check Joseph held out to me. It was as if I heard “Go!” at a racecourse. My work had now officially begun. The very instant I put the check in my purse I thought of the lawyer I had met the day before. If I didn’t have this check I wouldn’t be investing my time or energy in Joseph’s venture. This world is run on money.
    I thought I ought to tell him the truth—that I really wasn’t a Christian—just in case my behavior exceeded propriety and offended him. For example, as everyone knows, Christians advocate “turning the other cheek.” I couldn’t do this. There was no way I would renounce an old grudge. If I didn’t have the money for a lawyer and the lawsuit, I would still think of side-alley and backdoor ways to get back the profits I had lost.
    “Joseph, I have to apologize. I’ve got to tell you, I am still not a Christian. But before I die, I would like to find a church and be baptized, because my mother’s parents were Christians, and so is my mother. Just in case after death there really is a soul and I couldn’t find them there, I would feel so lost and lonely.”
    Joseph stared at me wide-eyed. He looked just like his mother, Lucy, with that same pair of dark eyes. “How can you think that? How would you know when you’re going to die? What if there’s no chance of being saved? At this hour, at this very moment, you can accept Jesus Christ as your savior.”
    I shook my head firmly, “I haven’t got what it takes to be a Christian. I’d rather not have God watching me.”
    Joseph seemed to be still thinking