I knew those two rows of lovely, regular teeth, as neat and stirring as an impeccable, white-uniformed guard of honor.

If you took a group of men and women and covered them completely, leaving only their teeth showing, I would be able to pick out Yin Nan immediately.

Those teeth suddenly flashed again, this time from out of a different shadow, in a different place.

I said, "Yin Nan, it's me, it's me."

It was silent again, then a dark form shot forward and I was caught in his embrace.

I still couldn't see his face clearly, but I could hear the familiar pulse of his urgent, rough breathing at my ear and feel the warm fragrance of his country-fresh breath on my cheek. He was thin as a starved horse, every bone in his body thrumming with tension, like overtightened lute strings.

I said, "Yin Nan, you're so thin. What's happened?"

He didn't answer. His entire body was shaking as if he was out of breath from running in place. In fact, he hadn't moved a muscle and was still clinging to me desperately. Maybe it was his mind and his blood that were racing.

I said, "What have you been doing lately? Why haven't you come to see me?"

When at last he spoke, there were tears in his voice, tears I had never heard from him before. "Niuniu, I haven't been able to tell you…"

"Tell me what?"

"You've just had that fire in your building, your mother's back in the hospital again – it's enough. I'm afraid you can't take any more, that you'll worry… I've been down in the square…"

"Involved…?"

He didn't answer me.

Finally, he said, "Niuniu, I'm going to… go away."

"Where?"

"I have to… go…"

"No! No!" My voice was raised. He pressed his lips on mine, kissing me to still my words. I bent my head backward to escape his face, saying quietly, "You can't leave me, you can't say you're leaving and then just go."

"Niuniu, I… love you, love you beyond all measure… but there's no other way, I have to leave." His tears fell on my cheeks, my lips – salty – sour.

In all the time that we had known each other, this was the first time that Yin Nan had ever used the word "love."

For the past several months, I had been feeling almost choked to death by the pressure of events in my home and outside. Now, hearing him manage to get this word out at last, I could no longer contain my feelings. The sluice gates were opened and a tumbling flood of tears gushed forth. I clung to him saying nothing, afraid that in the midst of my sorrow over losing Ho, I was losing Yin Nan, the only close friend I had left, as well.

He eased away from me slightly, and as his own tears fell, his lips and tongue brushed my cheeks, kissing away one by one my huge tears, as if he wished to drink down my sorrow.

"I love your… tears," he whispered.

We cried a long time, but our tears eventually subsided.

Yin Nan said, "I have to leave in half an hour."

I said, "Do you really have to go? Is there no other way?"

He shook his head. "I can't wait any longer. I've got to get out of here."

Again, we locked in a tight embrace. His heart was pounding like a war drum against my breast.

Clinging to his shoulder, I said, "But – where will you go? When?"

"Late tonight. Lufthansa, flight 721. Ten hours to Frankfurt, then a connecting flight, 2410, to Berlin."

There was some kind of skylight or opening in the roof of the warehouse through which a desolate, eerie thread of sunlight angled its way. Up near the ceiling it was a turbid yellow in color, but as it penetrated into the darkened warehouse, it slowly deepened in tinge, to brush obliquely across Yin Nan's face, lending his cheeks the color of rice straw.

In the half-darkness, the black lacquer glitter of his big eyes, filled with a heart-wrenching hopelessness, never left my face for a moment. I raised my hand to gently touch the lids of those eyes that made me think of the faint fragrance of ink-dark flower buds. He was leaning lightly against my shoulder, his head bent over me, so that I could feel the heat of his breath on my back, as if it were being gently massaged with warm milk. My arms were wrapped around his shoulders. I could feel his weight and his warmth as he pressed against me, his chest flattening my breasts. In the gloom, I could feel the heat of his groin tight against my thighs. I could see the shadow of his head inclining slowly toward my bosom.

I said, "Yin Nan, I want you… to remember me."

He said, "I'll always remember you."

I said, "I want your body… to remember me."

I felt his body tremble slightly, and a tremor in the pit of his stomach seemed to answer a silent call from deep within my body.

I took him by the hand and led him to the battered old wooden bench on the heap of straw.

Yin Nan seemed suddenly like an obedient little sick boy who had to have everything done for him. I motioned to him to sit down. I slowly undid my jacket, then took off my clothes and spread them on the bench. I took his head in my hands and made him slowly lie back. I pushed down his knees, straightening out his legs. He seemed almost awkward under my hands, but he offered no resistance to my will. His breathing became agitated and his long, delicate hands hung down helplessly on either side of the bench.

I touched his face lightly, his eyebrows, his ears. Slowly, lingeringly, my hands moved behind his ears, around his neck. I slid them under the neck of his undershirt to explore every inch of his back.

I felt a tremulous shiver run down his spine as he moaned my name.

I bent over him as I gently undid his clothes and his belt. He was like a willing, eager prisoner, letting me do with him whatever I wished. His eyes were half closed, his head turned to one side, his soft hair hanging down.

At last, he lay there hot and naked before me. This was the first time I had actually looked at the naked body of a man, and caressed him like this. His rib cage arched upward splendidly. In the gloom, his pale skin glowed like clear crystal.

I don't know if other women remember their first loves like this. But I cannot forget how in that abandoned warehouse the soft, white radiance of his body emerging from under his rather dirty clothes actually left me feeling faint.

I squeezed a space to sit on the bench beside him and, twisting over him, I let my fingers flow like water, unceasingly, over every curve and hollow of his tense frame.

His body, stretched out in the murky shadows like a reef submerged at one moment in passion, at the next in anxiety, could do nothing but wait helplessly as those hands rolled ceaselessly over him like waves, touching his hard hips, his thighs, his groin, and that fatal private place.

At last, I bent my body over his head, and cradling it in my hands, I lifted him gently until my breasts were touching his lips. I bumped them back and forth against his mouth like two sweet, ripe pears. A strained and aching moan escaped him as he opened his mouth to accept them. His arms jerked upward around me as he pulled my body and those sweet, pendulous pears down against him. His entire body was trembling violently as he desperately, blindly sought the way.

I took hold of him, and gently guided that lost and hungry lamb into the sweet pasture of its yearning…

Ah, his love! So young, so vital!

Our half hour was too soon over, and it was time to bid each other good-bye.

As we separated from our last burning embrace, I felt the unaccountable rush of a winter chill sweep over me. The open pores of my hot skin shrank shut at its touch.

With the approach of our last moment, I began to tremble uncontrollably.

Yin Nan had his hand on my shoulder as we made our way out of the warehouse. As I moved toward the door, I kept thinking that in another hour that hand would be reaching out in the blue empyrean, making its way westward to Europe, to that city of profound speculation and philosophy, Berlin. Never again would I be able to touch him. The heat I could feel at that moment from the hand on my shoulder would have dissipated within less than a minute, perhaps, of his last good-bye.