Peter Liu - Watering Heaven

She smiles, amused. “You wanna go to the Great Wall?”

“When?”

“Right now. A bunch of us are going to party.”

“But it’s…” And I check the time. “2 a.m.”

“The night’s just begun. Get changed.”

There’s a group of about fifteen from the hotel. Lily and Rick join our taxi. Lily used to be a phone sex operator in the States until her job got outsourced to Thailand. Now she’s an animal activist whose favorite book is Animal Farm . “It’s such a moving portrayal of how cruel humans are to animals and how they can stand up for their rights,” she says.

“I think the book was actually abou—”

“I know, everyone’s already told me it’s really only about the mistreatment of farm animals. But I think it extends to all nature. You like it, right?”

Rick’s a French hippie posing as a Brazilian food critic who can’t stop hiccupping because he drinks wine and chews gum at the same time.

Outside our cab, there’s convoys of trucks from Inner Mongolia and Hebei floating between cities like dead whales carried by convex currents.

Jean says she grew up raising lizards in Texas, her dad a taxidermist who loved his job too much. She studied biology in college, took part in an exchange program helping impoverished farmers in rural China. She’s been traveling all over Asia since.

We arrive at the Great Wall (Changcheng), an interminable road that’s barely visible in the dark. Alien trees abound. I hear loud rave music. There’s a massive tent sprawling over parts of the wall. It’s a nightclub and there are thousands of people inside.

The club incorporates the Wall so that the primary dance floor is on top of it. A girl at the front door throws up in her Gucci bag; guys wear sunglasses in the night; waitresses dress in skimpy lingerie and fake armor. We climb up a watchtower, buy Maotais. The bricks are covered with graffiti and silhouettes of dancing couples.

It’s muggy and hot out, but Jean’s wearing long sleeves and a blue dress. I’m in jeans, a black silk shirt, a fake Rolex I bought at Hongqiao for two bucks.

“Did a girl really commit suicide in my room?”

She nods.

“Why?” I ask. But as I do, a moth the size of my palm lands on my shoulder. It’s iridescent, a swirl of beige and vermilion. I flinch.

“You scared?”

“It’s huge.”

She laughs, takes it from me. “When moths burn themselves in candles and bulbs, it’s because they mix it up with the light from the moon.”

“Why would they need light from the moon?”

“They use it to navigate. But most never reach their destination.”

“Why’s that?”

“They burn to death in distractions.”

“You really sell dead moths?” I ask.

“You really sell vitamins?”

The Maotais are strong. “I’m an accountant.”

“And I’m a failed violinist,” she replies. “You enjoy your work?”

“I love numbers, especially imaginary ones,” I say. “You realize the fall of society began with the concept of irrational numbers?”

“How so?”

“It quantified madness.”

(Should I have said legitimized ?)

“What are you thinking about?” she asks.

“Do blind people have porn?”

“What?”

I explain how that question compelled my cousin, Amanda, into a ridiculous pyramid scheme involving ‘malleable silicones.’ She ended up melting into excess blubber as she became the prisoner of her own volition, living in the prison cell of an unpayable mortgage and a moral repugnance designed to earn brownie points in heaven.

All possible by tricky accounting legerdemains, perpetrated by none other than… her best friend: me. We partied across Europe, backpacked through Mongolia, cruised down the Amazon. We got a gig in Hong Kong as ‘tofu mascots,’ sold makeup for pennies in Mexico, and vowed to eat a hamburger in every city in the world.

After her financial collapse, she punished herself through food, created a penitentiary of fat as a moat around her life. Last time I saw her, she’d ballooned to four hundred pounds, barely able to move.

“What about your music?” I ask Jean.

“A true musician doesn’t use passion. She transcends it.”

“You did that?”

“I got mired in the staccatos.”

I’ve always had a hard time with accents, and my Mandarin is horrible. But more and more Chinese talk to me in Mandarin and I don’t know what they’re saying. Dance areas are separated by different styles, a tango section to the west, a salsa mix in the north. I show Jean some moves and she spins around me like a mispivoted merry-go-round, orbital, then rectangular.

“What were some of your staccatos?” I ask.

“Misplaced desire,” she replies, “and frail fingertips.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s this story,” she starts, stumbles from drink. “A heavenly moth fell in love with the sun. Half of every day, they’d lie together, and her wings would cover the sun so it’d turn into night. A couple thousand years passed, and the sun fell in love with another moth. The first moth was cast out. But she still loved him and orbited the Earth, content reflecting the sun’s light to the rest of the world.”

Some of the tango dances have us leaning into one another, and she warns me, “I’m not looking for a boyfriend.”

“What are you looking for?”

She smiles. “A pet.” She bites my shoulder, a painful stab that makes me jump back, her teeth clenched.

“That hurts,” I groan.

She lets go.

“You have a favorite type of pet?” I ask.

“Pugs,” she replies. “I adore them.”

Around 4:32 a.m., Lily tells us we’re moving to our next stop, an outdoor concert for a Thai band that’s inside one of the old guard towers. All their songs are about local crimes: a man who blew up public toilets, a girl who replaced shampoo in hair salons with bleach.

One of Jean’s friends, Zheng Lei, has bought her flowers, asking nervously how she’s doing. He’s wearing an expensive suit, thick glasses. They prattle a few minutes before she excuses herself, wanting to go rollerblading. Outside, there’s the echo of drums and electric guitars blending with a choir of crickets.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she says. “Lei would be following me the whole night if you weren’t.”

“He likes you?”

“He asked me to marry him on our first date.”

“What’d you say?”

She gives me a dubious look and says, “A couple days before we were supposed to meet up for the first time, it started snowing like crazy. He gave me a call, told me he’d take me to work. I told him, it’s all right, I don’t wanna burden you, but he said he was already waiting downstairs. He brought up breakfast and that was our first date.”

“He’s devoted.”

“Is that the most important trait in a lover?”

“What do you think?”

“Lei owns a bank, is a multimillionaire, and is good-looking. But he’s soooo boring. All he ever talks about is money.”

“Being interesting is the key?”

She shakes her head. “Voluntary blindness.”

We rent rollerblades and even though the Wall is steep, with high slopes and sudden drops, we ride across as fast as we can. I stumble after a few meters, alcohol making my balancing act tenuous. She laughs at me and swirls around, making bold brushstrokes with her legs. I jump up, fall again, get up, race after her, lose control, drop too quickly, and crash into the side of the wall.

“ Oww …”

She laughs again. “You have really short legs.”

I give chase across the Great Wall but it’s hopeless. She rides through like an electrical impulse on axons and dendrites.