She had picked the blossoms in a parking lot outside a seafood restaurant on Alexandra while waiting for a man named Yeung

The last sidewalk empty and clean led to a highway. Across the highway the fields spread out in black mud humps cut into sections by low fences, gravel roads, drainage canals thick with blackberry cane. The fields ran until they met the Fraser and the shuttered canneries and blocks of condos with their big windows looking out on the wetlands. As Xiao Xiao crossed the highway, she felt the wind that blew cleanly along it. She could smell the fields and she could smell the incense from the temple. She walked along the gravel shoulder until the sidewalk began again. She walked along the red brick wall of the temple, sheltered by overgrown junipers from a soft morning rain. As she walked up the driveway, a man in coveralls was swinging the gate open to let in a long black BMW driven by a man with white gloves. Curtains hid the passengers in the backseat. She followed the car up the driveway. On the lawn, plastic deer huddled under low trees. Men sat in the gazebo of the temple garden. They hunched over cigarettes.

Xiao Xiao went past the garden and along the inner wall of the temple. At a kiosk, an old woman sold incense. Xiao Xiao carefully lifted a thick stick out of a plastic jar and then set it down. The woman at the counter said, cheerfully and unsure: Daai heung. Xiao Xiao held the incense up to the woman and repeated the words: Daai heung. She selected a bundle of thinner sticks. There was a gas burner in a stone basin outside the kiosk. She held the incense high over the flame and let it slowly spark to life. She went along the pathway toward the temple courtyard. Three Buddhas stood in a long box. The gentle, supernaturally calm face of Guanyin was familiar. Xiao Xiao held the incense to her forehead. She liked the feeling that came to her, dizziness and a careful, self-conscious clearing of her mind. She focused on the white noise of the highway. She heard her hair falling forward and back across her ears. She went into the temple’s central courtyard and walked to the top of the stairs of the main hall. There was an incense burner at the top of the stairs and the sign above it said: Only for offerings to ancestors. She prayed in front of the incense burner and tried to think of her ancestors. When she closed her eyes, she played a memory of her grandfather in his padded jacket, sitting up in bed, being fed by his son, her father. She tried to clear the memory away and think of something more abstract and holy. She was interrupted by a memory of herself standing on the shopping street leading to the hospital. Her father was standing against a wall, smoking a cigarette. Her father said: Your grandfather is dead. She settled her sticks of incense into the dust. As she pulled her hand away, she felt a sting on the top of her hand. The ember of another stick of incense had burned her. The incense sticks she had placed fell sideways and hung on the burned down sticks at the bottom of the forest of incense. There was a dark pink welt on the top of her hand.

Xiao Xiao went out of the temple courtyard and into the garden. The garden was ugly and peaceful. There were cement ponds and bridges across them. The water in the ponds was clear. She remembered seeing turtles in the pond once. She had not been there for a long time, though. Maybe it was a year. She remembered that it had been winter when she had been here before. There were no turtles but a fat goldfish hovered over green pennies on the bottom of the pond. There was a fountain on the edge of the pond. A sign beside the fountain said: This is a fountain of enlightenment. Xiao Xiao watched the water trickling out of a plastic pipe and down a spillway of plastic rocks. She leaned across the fountain and let the water run across her hands. She touched her forehead. The welt on the back of her hand turned darker. Three girls crossed the bridge. One of the girls tried to step across the plastic rocks but almost stumbled forward into the fountain. She walked unsteadily back to the group. One of the girls kicked off her suede flats and stood barefoot. The girl stepped out of her high heels and into the flats and stepped back across the rocks. She splashed water across her forehead.

She walked back down the driveway and stood beside the highway. She caught the 403 bus. It ran in a straight line west down Steveston Highway, then a straight north line through Richmond. She got off at the bottom of Richmond-Brighouse Skytrain Station. A white man in a grey blanket was sitting on a cement block, perched above the crowd. He cried a long rap of: Please have human kindness a little sliver cold still hungry can you walk by your fellow human hungry and cold. Two old women forced their way through a crowd of girls in plaid skirts. The girls had identical straight black shiny hair cut so that it fell identically across their crisp white shirts. The rain speckled their shirts. She followed the shelter of the Skytrain track, the row of bakeries and immigration consultants and glass towers along Westminster. She went into the Public Market. It was early enough that the market was mostly empty. She smelled oranges, flowers, and refrigerated meat. She bought a bottle of Diet Coke and took the escalator upstairs. She sat at a table and laid the knobby bottom of the Coke bottle on the welt on her hand. A soft glow came from the lower level of the market, the white light of butcher cases full of pork and styrofoam, yellow halogen light reflecting off melonskins. A small brown bird beat over her head and alighted on the stair rail. She bought a bowl of rice porridge from a counter at the edge of the food court. She walked downstairs, into the courtyard outside the market. Three brown mallards floated motionless in a concrete pond. She lit a cigarette and walked down Buswell. Beside a vegetarian restaurant, there was a purple stucco block with windows covered in red foil paper. She went down the alley beside it. She paused and watched a man getting into a grey Mercedes. The man was young. He was darkskinned. His hair was neatly rolled over the top of his round head.

Between the stucco block and a parking garage, there was an low block of apartments. She pushed open the back door. Along the dusty plaster walls of the hallway bare metal doors were lit by light bulbs hanging down on red and green wires. One of the doors opened and a woman came out and turned. The girl called to her and her voice echoed down the hallway: “Xiao Xiao’s home!” The woman had a black rubber skirt and black tights, long sharp eyes, a spiny Hunan accent, bangs glued across her eyebrows. The woman clicked down the hallway and was gone. Xiao Xiao opened a metal door at the end of the hallway. The door half-opened onto a narrow room with a narrow bed covered in a bamboo mat and white sheets. She had a plastic frame dresser covered in a nylon wrap. There was a poster on the wall of a puffy white cat wreathed with twinkling diamond graphics. A lamp sat on the floor beside the bed and its soft yellow light lit the room from below. She slid her purse under the bed, stepped down out of her shoes and lay down on the bed. She lay on the bed and fell asleep and woke up a few times. She rose and took off her leggings and her blouse and panties and wrapped a towel around herself and went down the hallway to the shared bathroom. She went into the shower. She heard the door open and the same spiny Hunan accent: Who’s in there? Xiao Xiao said: It’s me. Xiao Xiao looked around the shower curtain and saw Li Jie sitting on the toilet. Xiao Xiao said: Why aren’t you at work?

Li Jie said: Nobody there. It’s dead, these last couple days. That guy came looking for you again. He definitely wasn’t interested in me. I told him that you weren’t here. He mentioned he knows Cao Cao. Li Jie sighed and flushed the toilet and left the bathroom. Li Jie said: Not a bad looking kid. Too young for me, though. Xiao Xiao said: No idea. She got out of the shower and went back down the hallway.

She dried and brushed her hair. She opened the nylon curtain of her dresser. On the top shelf, there was a soap dish with three cherry blossoms drying. The color of the petals had faded to a grey-pink with edges stained pale rose. She had picked the blossoms in a parking lot outside a seafood restaurant on Alexandra while waiting for a man named Yeung. He was inside, talking to the manager of the restaurant. She put the blossoms in her coin purse. His driver parked at the end of the street, in the parking lot of a car wash. They walked down the street. The wind had blown most of the blossoms on the trees down across the sidewalk. Her long dress swept the sidewalk clean behind her. In his car, he gave her a Versace wallet still in the soft brown shopping bag with its gold stamp. He told her it was his birthday and the driver took them to the hotel at the airport. She sat in the lobby while he checked in. She watched the Delta jets parked below the window. He called the front desk to ask for a cake. She told him she was going downstairs to smoke a cigarette. She left the purse on the bathroom counter. She lit a cigarette and told the Filipino boy at the bell desk to call her a taxi and he waved over a black car from the queue. She went home and put the blossoms in the soap dish in her dresser.

She put on a dress with a black skirt and a white top. She walked down the hallway and into the alley. She swiped her phone unlocked. She found Lao Cai’s name and sent him a one word message. She stood in the alley. The car met her there. She got into the backseat. The driver raised two fingers in greeting. He looked at her in the rearview mirror. The car went down the alley slowly and through a parking lot and turned left on Number Three Road. The car went past the mossy million dollar homes and the redevelopment signs and the stinking drainage canals and the walls of blackberry cane and juniper. The city ended and the car entered the low green fields of Steveston.

Lao Cai had a house on a triangular section of land. The house looked out over an arm of the Fraser and over a grassy island and another arm of the Fraser. There was a gate across the driveway and it opened and the car went up the driveway. She got out and walked across the lawn and Lao Cai met her at the door. There was a narrow foyer, where she slipped off her shoes. She hugged him and kissed him on the neck. She walked looked over his shoulder at pictures of his wife and his son that hung on both sides of the stairwell. The floor was marble. Lao Cai’s voice echoed when he asked her if she wanted a drink. He put his hand on her shoulder and slid it down her arm and wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pulled her toward his kitchen. They drank glasses of red wine in the kitchen. Xiao Xiao tried to push the conversation toward the Lao Cai’s wife. She asked about his trip to Beijing. She tried to remember names and places he had mentioned to her before. He suddenly looked up from his wineglass and held up a hand and left the room. She caught him smiling as she turned to watch. He came back with a piece of white jade and a paper bag. He held the piece of jade for a moment in his palm and rolled it over and examined it. The jade was flat on the back and on the other surface there was a simple carving of a woman with a crown. Lao Cai reached for her hand and put the piece of jade in her palm. He turned her hand over and seemed to be comparing it to lightness of her skin. He held her hand closer to his face and saw the burn. He rubbed the jade piece on the welt. He looked up at her and his eyes were wet. He seemed about to say something but his face went blank and he told her roughly: Put it in your purse. Don’t lose it.

Xiao Xiao asked where he had got it. Lao Cai brightened and began talking about a man that Huang Laoshi had introduced him to in Beijing. The man ran an antiques shop and had bought the piece at an auction in Xi’an. He was going to send it to a broker in Hong Kong but was talked into parting with it. She asked him: Is it old? Lao Cai said: I hope so. Hard to say. Yes, quite old. She tried to turn him back toward the topic of his wife. She asked about the weather in Beijing. He told her about a trip he had taken to Beidaihe. He mentioned names she thought she recognized. She remembered the paper bag and took it from the kitchen counter. In the bag, there was a silk dress of pale violet the color of lotus root. They walked the polished wood stairs up to his bedroom and she took off her black and white dress and slipped the silk dress over her head. He smoothed it down over her hipbones. His hands felt warm. She sat on the bed and tried to pull him to sit beside her. She took Lao Cai’s hand and kissed his palm. He pressed his hand against Xiao Xiao’s face. She lifted his hand to her mouth and sucked his finger. She tasted blood and looked down at his finger. There was blood across the top of his fingernail. Lao Cai thought he had cut her mouth with his finger. Xiao Xiao thought she had bit him. She put his finger back into her mouth and sucked it again. He tried to pull his finger away and she playfully held it firm with her front teeth and then let it go. He wiped his finger on his slacks and moved away from her. He stood in the doorway and then walked downstairs, calling: Come on, come on. We’re leaving.

She called after him: I’m coming. Give me a minute. The walk-in closet that belonged to Lao Cai was open and his sport coats and jackets were arranged on two levels by color and weight. The other closet was always locked. It belonged to Lao Cai’s wife. The room itself was empty of her belongings. She visited rarely. Xiao Xiao had kept track and knew that she had only been here once in the last year. It had been a month or two ago. After her visit, she had found a jar of night cream in the bathroom. The next time she went into the bathroom, the jar was gone. As she went down the stairs, she looked at the pictures hung on both sides of the stairs. These pictures were the only signs that Lao Cai had another life. In the first picture, Lao Cai’s wife was seated on a stone bench in a park in Beijing. The colors were too yellow and too green on the cheap film. Lao Cai’s wife’s face had faded to a soft gold. He knew Lao Cai’s wife had just turned forty four or forty five. Xiao Xiao realized the picture was taken before she was born.

She knew their story, roughly. Lao Cai’s wife had been a folk singer. She had seen her on a VCD of an old variety show that her uncle had played. In the second picture, Lao Cai’s wife sat beside their son. The picture was taken in a studio. The picture was taken when the boy was about fifteen. Lao Cai’s son was only a few years younger than her. He was in boarding school somewhere, she thought, maybe Hong Kong — but maybe he was back in Beijing now…. She had asked Lao Cai directly about his son and he had answered her questions but his mood had darkened as the conversation moved toward his wife. The younger version of Lao Cai’s wife looked across the stairwell at the older version of Lao Cai’s wife. Xiao Xiao hated Lao Cai’s wife but she couldn’t feel anything for the young woman in the park except an unfocused sympathy.

Lao Cai was waiting in the backseat. The car carried them through late afternoon commuter traffic. Lao Cai’s driver went down a road crowned with plum blossoms. The street was sheltered from the wind by condo blocks and the blossoms were fading to a shampoo pink against the dark grey branches. Lao Cai looked up through the sunroof. Xiao Xiao put her arms around him and leaned into him. The car rode alongside a wide drainage canal and a railway line overgrown with juniper. The driver turned the car down an alley and they stopped in a dirt parking lot behind Number Three Road. The parking lot smelled liked cooking grease. A man in blue rubber boots and an apron smoked a cigarette and walked along the edge of the lot. He stopped in front of a silver Quattroporte and watched his reflection in the windshield. She had never seen the restaurant from the back but from the front, it was just as unremarkable, a dull green facade stuck between a taikwondo school and a thrift store. As they walked in the back door, she smelled hot fragrant oil and the dank odor of seafood aquariums. One table in the middle of the dining room was set. A young man in a suit rushed to Lao Cai’s side. The high collar of the waiter’s starched white shirt brushed his jawline as he spoke in diffident Cantonese. Lao Cai followed him to the back of the dining room, where several bottles of red wine were pulled from a rack and lined up on an unset table. Lao Cai said, to himself: We’ll see where Huang Laoshi sits and then… whatever after that. Huang Laoshi only drinks Lafite. He turned to Xiao Xiao: Everyone will be here soon.

She walked to the back door and along the side of the building. She stood on the corner of Number Three Road and smoked a cigarette, watching the traffic build. She went back in the front door and saw that the guests were arriving. There was a man named Guan, who was Lao Cai’s friend when they were in the army together, and a girl named after a flower but she forgot which one. The girl stood in the back doorway and greeted another girl and another man. The girls were both wearing short beige dresses. Both of the men wore brown sport coats and grey slacks. Huang Laoshi entered alone. Lao Cai motioned for Xiao Xiao to sit and the waiter to bring the bottle of wine. A few more couples entered and were led to their seats. Another waiter brought a tureen of soup and small dishes of cucumber and jellyfish, chilled prawns, a terrine of pork hock in gelatin. The table slowly came alive with chatter and the clatter of porcelain on glass.

Lao Cai talked quietly with Huang Laoshi and Xiao Xiao sat silently and did not eat. The man to her right put a prawn on her plate and she smiled at him. He introduced himself as Guo Baoguo. Cao Cao was seated to his right. Cao Cao was the woman that had introduced Xiao Xiao to Lao Cai. She had given Xiao Xiao her first job. She made arrangements for the girls that worked at the nameless purple building. Xiao Xiao had not seen Cao Cao in a couple months. The last time had been after a text message inviting her for coffee at a private club in Steveston. Cao Cao had explained to her, bluntly, that Lao Cai’s wife would be in Vancouver and that she would visit for a week. Xiao Xiao had cried and told Cao Cao that she thought she was pregnant. Cao Cao told her that any message for Lao Cai could be passed through her but only if it was very urgent. She wrote a letter to Lao Cai and told him that she would always be loyal to him. She wrote in the letter that her doctor had told her that she was pregnant. She took the bus to Cao Cao’s office and gave the letter to her. A week later, she received a text from Cao Cao, letting her know that Lao Cai’s wife was gone. She called him and he sent his driver for her. She did not ask Lao Cai if he had received the letter.

Cao Cao was older than Guo Baoguo, Xiao Xiao thought, maybe twenty years his senior. Guo Baoguo seemed boyish in this room of brown sportcoats and arguments over real estate. He was the same age as the girls at the table. His jacket had been slipped over the back of the chair. He was wearing a tan vest and a pale blue shirt. Cao Cao peeked behind him at Xiao Xiao. Cao Cao said: I see Lao Cai is treating you well. Cao Cao looked down at the silk dress and raised her eyebrows. Cao Cao turned back to the table and ripped the head off a prawn, put the collar to her lips and sucked. Guo Baoguo was pretending not to listen. Cao Cao rubbed Guo Baoguo’s thigh and said to him: She’s a good girl. I can always tell.

Guo Baoguo turned to Xiao Xiao. He said: How often do you go to the temple? Xiao Xiao looked at the table and then at him and then at the table: The temple? I’m busy. I never have time. She leaned into Lao Cai, who was talking to Huang Laoshi. She knew that Huang Laoshi, like most of the men here, had known Lao Cai when he was in the army. He had been the first to leave the army and the first to go into business. He had personally staked Lao Cai when he set up his own export business. Huang Laoshi rarely left the Mainland now, except on short trips. In the three years since Xiao Xiao had known Lao Cai, she had only met Huang Laoshi a handful of times. She knew very little about him. She had heard gossip. She knew him mostly as distraction for Lao Cai.

Guo Baoguo said: How did you burn your hand? Guo Baoguo reached out to touch her hand and she moved it away and then put it on the table and splayed her fingers. Guo Baoguo took her hand and squeezed her fingers. He held her hand up. Guo Baoguo said: I saw you at the temple this morning. I go there most mornings. I like to walk there. Xiao Xiao said: Oh. She looked at Cao Cao, who was talking to someone across the table. Cao Cao laughed and showed her teeth. Xiao Xiao blushed. She looked back at Guo Baoguo. She looked into his eyes, which were a light brown that made her think of a sickly child. Xiao Xiao said: I go there sometimes. If I’ve got something on my mind.

The wine glasses were removed and replaced with short glasses for baijiu. Lao Cai cleared his throat and made a wordless toast. He drained his glass. Lao Cai stood and called for another toast: To Huang Laoshi! Xiao Xiao raised the glass to her lips. Lao Cai turned to her. His eyes were wet. He put his hand on her back. He picked up his chopsticks and reached across the table and tore at the quail. Xiao Xiao reached across and held the quail steady with her chopsticks and Lao Cai scraped off a lump of meat. He held it over her plate but his hands were unsteady and it fell into her tea cup. He put his hand on her back again and then stood and looked down at her. He lifted his glass. The table fell silent. Lao Cai lifted his glass again: If this is my last meal as a free man… if this is our last meal together…. He tapped his glass on the table: Drink up. He drained his glass and set it on its side on the table. Xiao Xiao looked at Lao Cai. She wanted to ask him what this meal meant, what the toasts were about. She saw Cao Cao glancing at her. She pushed her chair back, rose and tapped Lao Cai on the shoulder. He did not turn. She went out the back door and lit a cigarette. Cao Cao followed her. A jet flew low overhead.

Cao Cao said: Did he tell you? Cao Cao moved away from the wall and walked into the parking lot. Xiao Xiao didn’t say anything. Cao Cao said: I guess not. I hoped he would. Lao Cai is going back to Beijing. He can’t come back. He can explain it to you. Xiao Xiao looked in through the backdoor at Lao Cai, who was still talking to Huang Laoshi. Xiao Xiao knew that Cao Cao was not lying and was not trying to be cruel. Cao Cao put her hand on Xiao Xiao’s shoulder: You saw Baoguo at the temple this morning?

Xiao Xiao shook her head. She moved away from the door, dropped her cigarette. She said: I’ll go with him. Cao Cao shook her head. She said: You can’t stop him. Be a good girl. He has a family. You both have responsibilities. Xiao Xiao said: I’ll go to Beijing.

She crossed a parking lot. Cao Cao followed her for a few steps and stopped. Xiao Xiao went down the alley. Her apartment block was there. She opened the door and went down the hallway to her room. She took off the dress and put on a denim skirt, a sweater. She put took her clothes from the plastic dresser and put them in the suitcase tucked under her bed. She placed the blossoms on top of her clothes and closed the lid. She went down the hallway and into the alley. She saw Guo Baoguo waiting for her at the end of the alley, standing beside his grey Mercedes. He walked across the parking lot and tried to reach for the suitcase’s handle. His hand met her hand. She moved away from him. He jogged along beside her. Guo Baoguo said: You can’t go now. I just met you. He smiled and tried to reach for the suitcase again. He said, again: You can’t go now. Cao Jie told me about what happened. I want you to know that I can look after you.

Xiao Xiao said: Why?

I tried to meet you at the temple. Cao Cao said you would be there. I went to your room after. Cao Cao said you were staying there.

Xiao Xiao walked across the parking lot, away from him. She walked around the corner and took the escalator up to the Skytrain platform. She took the train to the casino and another train to the airport. She walked through the cathedral terminals, past the goodbye hugs and the food court with its shuttered shops and Filipina girls with transparent purses. She went to the Air China counter and told the girl at the counter she wanted to fly to Beijing. She took Xiao Xiao’s American Express card. She examined Xiao Xiao’s passport. She printed out a ticket. Xiao Xiao walked along the front of the terminal. A line of black town cars stopped for her as she crossed the street.

There was a park below the parkade. Three totem poles rose against a concrete wall. There was a pond and a waterfall coming down mossy boulders. She took the white jade out of her purse. She realized now that it was a parting gift. She held it in her palm. She touched it to the burn on her hand. She held it over the pond and thought about dropping it. She thought about the sound it would make and who would find it. She put the piece of jade back into her purse.