Yiyun Li - Kinder Than Solitude

“What does a girl your age want?” Boyang asked. Easily he could list all the things Coco wanted, none of them too expensive. He could list a few things Sizhuo desired: to hold on to her job at a time when many young people were jobless after graduation; to find a way to move up in life — by what means? he wondered, and decided that marriage was the only possible way — and purchase a small apartment, outside the Fifth or the Sixth Ring Road; to know a few of the right people so that her younger brother could get a foothold, however unsteady, when it was time for him to enter the job market; to work with her sibling to establish some sort of settlement in Beijing, so that eventually their parents could come and live with them. Marriage and children would ensue, and by the next generation the family’s migration from the countryside to the metropolis would be complete. A familiar story, and Boyang could see that he could come in handy in that narrative. Was that why the girl had agreed to a second date? At their previous dinner, he had only vaguely spoken of his profession; he had made certain that for both dates he had dressed with impeccable but not extravagant taste, though he wondered if she could recognize the subtle difference. On so many levels, she was not like Coco, which was part of the reason that he felt unequipped to come to any conclusions yet. When one has enough protocols set up for life, anything that does not fall readily into an available protocol makes one suspect that he has been underplayed. Treacherous was not what he would call Sizhuo, yet he was treading less familiar waters, which, thrilling as it was, could also be perilous.

Sizhuo looked pensive. “I suppose I want …” She paused and looked up again. “Do you have a child?”

“I’m not married,” Boyang said. “Listen, many men my age might be monsters in your eyes, but if I had a wife, I would give her enough honor not to chase young girls around.”

“But that doesn’t mean you didn’t have a wife before, right? So it is possible you have a child?” Sizhuo said. He wished that she were being coy or even flirtatious, but her unsmiling expression made the conversation seem like a logic debate.

“Yes, it’s possible. But no, I don’t have a child. If I had one, I wouldn’t hide the fact from you.”

“But how do I know if you’re lying or not?” Sizhuo asked. “I don’t know you, so the only way is to go by your words.”

Boyang laughed. “What are you, miss? A private detective?”

“No, certainly not,” she said, leaning back so the waitress who had brought them their tea could place the set between them. When the waitress finished pouring, she lowered her eyes and said she hoped they’d enjoy the tea. Sizhuo thanked her, her eyes never leaving the girl’s face. Boyang wondered if Sizhuo was aware that his eyes had not moved from her face. When they were left alone again, Sizhuo said that people lied sometimes, and she would like to know when and why they did.

“Do you not lie?” Boyang said.

The girl thought and said she did not lie so much as she would avoid situations in which dishonesty would be required of her.

“I’d call you a lucky girl if you’ve been achieving that,” Boyang said. “For instance, here’s a question for you: you like me enough to see me a second time, is that right?”

Sizhuo blushed. Her inexperience — no, her innocence was what made him lose his head and become less tactical, yet innocence also brought her into this dilemma. It was one lesson, Boyang wanted to say, that she had yet to learn: innocence can be one’s weapon only when it’s not seen by the world.

“I don’t have an answer to your question,” Sizhuo said.

“That’s the most conventional answer people use to dodge a question,” Boyang said. “And that’s even worse than lying.”

“But if it works? Why can’t I use it if others use it successfully?”

Because he hated to see her as one of the others, but Boyang did not say that. “One thing that makes my age more advantageous,” he said, “is that it’s easier for me to catch someone lying than when I was twenty. But in any case, I’m going to tell you this and it’s not a lie: I was married once. Not anymore.” Under forty, divorced, no children, with an excellent income and spacious housing in the city, Boyang was one of the most desired men on the marriage market, a diamond bachelor . “Now, not only am I too old, but now you know that I’m divorced. Does that add to my disqualification as a suitor?”

Sizhuo looked uneasy at the term suitor but quickly regained her countenance. “No, I think it’s expected for someone your age.”

“What is expected?”

“A divorce. My friend says the only thing worse than a man over thirty-five is a man over thirty-five who has never married.”

Boyang laughed, but Sizhuo only watched him with unaverted eyes. He felt his heart sink a little. What was she doing with him — making him a specimen for her girlish study of men and their characters, so she could afterward discuss him with her friend? “Now, who is this friend of yours?”

“Someone you don’t know.”

“But she’s someone I must know!” Boyang said. “I’ll offer her a position screening job candidates for me.”

Sizhuo’s face froze for a split second, and he wondered if girls always felt jealous when another girl was being praised. “But she’s employed already,” she said.

“I can give her a better offer.”

Sizhuo shook her head and pretended to study the tea set. She had insisted on meeting elsewhere, away from the area around the Front Sea and Back Sea; why, he had asked, and she had said there were too many tourists, and they had made the place impossible to breathe.

“What are other things on your friend’s list that you’re to find out about me?”

“I’m the friend,” Sizhuo said.

For a moment Boyang did not grasp the words. Sizhuo smiled and said there was not another person she consulted with. She herself was the friend she was speaking of.

“I see,” Boyang said, but he could not see where the conversation was going. What he noticed was that the girl looked sadder and older when she smiled, a pity in a young, good-looking woman; a smile — unless it was the kind Coco and her girlfriends perfected in front of a mirror with a fashion magazine for a textbook — should be a woman’s best adornment.

“Had I been my own best friend, I’d have wanted to know the answers to those questions,” Sizhuo explained again, and he recognized a hint of placation in her voice. “Does that make sense? I wasn’t really lying.”

The girl had too much patience with the world, Boyang thought; she must never have been in a situation where impatience was an option for her, or she had never considered it her due. “So, what’s this best friend inside you whispering to you now? That I’m a bad choice for you?”

“Can I ask you a question — are we on a date?”

The easiest response would be to make a joke to defuse the girl’s uncanny persistence, but would that suffice? Would that make him a lesser person to her? Sizhuo’s eyes, when Boyang looked at them, seemed to indicate a resolve to never let a single detail pass without being seen. He wondered if that tenacity came to her naturally. “Traditionally speaking, this should be considered a date.”

“But what if we’re not traditionally speaking?” Sizhuo asked.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I want to know how you think about these things.”

“Me, or men in general?”

She seemed torn; each option put her in a situation with which she had to reconcile: in wanting his personal opinion she risked putting him in a weighty position in her life; in casting him back into an ocean of men, she would question her own unfairness.