MUCH TO HIS CONFUSION, Chen found himself sitting beside Yong in a black limousine, which was rolling down the once familiar Chang’an Avenue in the growing dusk.

He hadn’t expected such a grand ride upon his arrival in Beijing. On the Shanghai-Beijing express train he had decided that, rather than go through a travel agency and have his name registered, it would be better to call Yong, ask her to book a hotel for him, and have her purchase a prepaid cell phone for him to use while in Beijing. He was acquainted with some people in the Beijing Police Bureau, but he decided not to contact any of them.

Nor would he let them know he was taking his “vacation” in Beijing. With Yong, there was one disadvantage – her unbridled imagination regarding the purpose of his trip. On the other hand, she could tell him about Ling. There were questions he might not be able to ask Ling herself.

It didn’t take long for Yong to call back, saying that she had taken care of everything and that she would pick him up at the station.

What surprised him, however, was the sight of Yong waiting for him with a luxurious limousine at the exit of the Beijing train station.

As far as he knew, Yong was an ordinary librarian, riding an old bike to work, rain or shine.

More to his surprise, Yong didn’t immediately start talking about Ling, as he had anticipated. A slender-built woman in her late thirties with short hair, a slightly swarthy complexion, and clear features, Yong usually spoke fast and loud. There was something mysterious about her reticence.

After the car swerved around Dongdan and passed Lantern City Crossing, it made several more turns in quick succession before edging its way into a narrow, winding lane, which appeared to be in the Eastern City area. He couldn’t see clearly through the amber-colored windows.

The entrance of the lane looked familiar, yet strange, lined with indescribable stuffs stacked along both sides.

“The hotel is in a hutong?” he asked. In Beijing, a lane was called hutong, usually narrow and uneven. The limousine was literally crawling along.

“You’ve forgotten all about it, haven’t you?” Yong said with a knowing smile. “A distinguished man can’t help forgetting things. We are going to my place.”

“Oh. But why?”

“To receive the wind, like in our old tradition. Isn’t it proper and right for me to first welcome you at home? The hotel is really close, at the end of the lane. It’s easy, you can walk there in only three or four minutes.”

She could have told him on the phone. But why the limousine? Yong was of ordinary family background, not like Ling.

He had been here before years earlier – for a date with Ling, he recalled, as the car pulled up in front of a sihe quadrangle house. It was an architectural style popular in the old city of Beijing, and characterized by residential rooms on four sides and an inner courtyard in the center.

Stepping out, he saw an isolated house standing in a disappearing lane – most of the houses there were already gone or half gone, the ground littered with debris and ruins.

“The local government has a new housing project planned to be built here, but we aren’t moving. Not until we are properly compensated. It’s our property.”

“Are you still living here?”

“No, we have another apartment near New Street.”

So they were another “nail family,” hanging in until pulled out by force. There were stories about this type of problem in the development of the city.

In the courtyard, he noticed that all the rooms were dark except Yong’s.

As she led him into the room, he wasn’t too surprised to see Ling sitting there, leaning against the paper window. He looked over her with an overwhelming feeling of déjà vu.

In the limousine, he had suspected some sort of arrangement by Yong. Ling, however, appeared to be genuinely surprised, and she stood up. She could have come over from some business activity, wearing a purple satin mandarin dress, with a purse of the same color and material, apparently custom-made, like in a page torn from a high-class fashion magazine.

There was no “wind-receiving” banquet on the table, not as Yong had promised. There was only a cup of tea for Ling. Yong hastened to pour a cup for Chen and gestured both of them to sit down.

“My humble abode is brightened by two distinguished guests tonight,” Yong said. “Ling, CEO of several large companies in Beijing, and Chen, chief inspector of the Shanghai Police Bureau. So my ‘nail family’ has existed for a good reason.”

“You should have told me,” Ling said to her.

That was what he also wanted to say, but he said instead to Ling, “I’m so pleased to see you, Ling.”

“Now, I have to hurry back to my new place,” Yong said. “My man works the night shift and I have to take care of my little daughter.”

It was too obvious an excuse. Yong had played a similar trick once before. The memories of a similar occasion were all coming back to him.

Yong left promptly, as years earlier, closing the door after her, leaving the two of them alone in the room.

But things were not as before, not anymore for the two of them. He found himself at a loss for words. The silence seemed to wrap them up in a silk cocoon.

“Yong is a busybody,” Ling said finally. “She dragged me over without telling me why, and insisted on my waiting here.”

“A well-meant busybody,” he said, his glance sweeping over the room, which appeared little changed. There was still a basin of water in the steel-wire basin holder near the door. The large bed at the other side of the room was covered with a dragon-and-phoenix-embroidered sheet, identical to the one in his memory. And they were sitting at the same red-painted wooden table by the paper windows, against which the old lamp cast a lambent light.

That might be the very effect Yong had intended. The past in the present. Like the last time they were here – Ling, a librarian, and he, a college student. In those days, she still lived with her parents, and he, in a crowded dorm room with five other students. It was difficult for them to find a quiet place to themselves. So Yong invited them to her place, and as soon as they were here, she left them alone with an excuse.

That evening was like this evening. But to night, as in a couplet by Li Shangyin, “Oh the feeling, to be collected later / in memories, was already confused.”

“I received the book you sent from London,” he said. “Thank you so much, Ling.”

“Oh, I happened to see it in a bookstore there.”

“So you are back from the trip.” It was idiotic to say that, he knew. She thought of him on her honeymoon trip, but what else could he say to her? “When?”

“Last week.”

“You could have told me earlier.”

“Why?”

“I would have been able -” He left the sentence unfinished – to buy a wedding present for you.

There ensued another short spell of silence, like in a scroll of traditional Chinese painting, in which the blank space contains more than what was painted. There is always a loss of meaning / in what we say or do not say, / but also a meaning / in the loss of the meaning.

“Oh, did you visit the Sherlock Holmes Museum?” he said, trying to change the topic.

“Now you are really a chief inspector,” she said, eyeing the cold tea. “A cop above everything.”

That was another blunder on his part. She had a point. He was tongue-tied, as a cop or not, thinking that her response might have also referred to his role in another case, one that had exasperated her father because of its political repercussions. A case Chen didn’t have to take, yet he did. The outcome of it had strained their relationship.

“You must have done well on the force,” she went on. “My father, too, mentioned you the other day.”

“As a monk, you have to strike the bell in the temple, day after day.” He was deeply perturbed by the comment about her father, a powerful politburo member in the Forbidden City.