The scene that had seemed so dull a moment before suddenly came alive, full of captivating colors.
‘…?’ At first, Qin Siyu didn’t react.
The person lifted a leg and walked toward him at an unhurried pace.
He stopped a few steps away.
‘???’ Qin Siyu rose and pressed both hands against the glass. Aston stood on the other side, his eyes lowered and their blue hidden in shadow. They gazed at one another for several seconds, then looked down and reached for the door handle at exactly the same time.
With their hands gripping opposite sides of the handle, one pulled and the other pushed. The door separating them opened.
‘Kingsley???’ Qin Siyu exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here???’
Then he touched Aston’s hand. ‘Are you cold? It’s so late.’
Aston gave his hand a small shake. ‘I’m all right.’
Qin Siyu was utterly astonished. ‘Why are you here?’
Aston’s words weren’t a question. ‘You called my house.’
When the switchboard operator mentioned the incident to the butler just in case, for some reason Aston immediately felt it had been Qin Siyu.
The operator said that the caller had merely breathed quietly, then hung up gently.
Even in a panic, he’d still ‘hung up gently.’ That was what made Aston think of Qin Siyu.
He’d therefore called the telephone company and traced the outgoing number to a public telephone on the departure level of the Southern Pacific Railroad station.
Although it was already past midnight, he worried that something might have happened to Qin Siyu. He threw on an overcoat, summoned his driver and came to the station.
He told himself it was only because the station was nearby.
‘Sorry~’ Qin Siyu apologized. ‘I dialed by accident. I didn’t know this telephone could really connect without coins. It turns out to be postpay.’
What a strange explanation. Aston merely watched him in silence.
‘Well,’ Qin Siyu continued, feeling obliged to explain something else, ‘I was going to Sacramento to discuss an internship. Not an internship, really, a volunteer program. But I bought the wrong ticket. The discounted ticket was good only for the slow train, not the express, so I missed the last one tonight. I’ve bought a ticket for five in the morning and have to wait all night. The station turns off its lights at twelve. Only the phone booth stays lit.’
That still didn’t explain why he’d dialed Aston’s number.
Boredom? A little game?
Fortunately, Aston merely nodded and didn’t ask. Perhaps he wasn’t interested.
‘Um,’ Qin Siyu asked, ‘is your driver still waiting outside?’
‘I told him to come back for me in an hour.’
‘Are you cold?’ Qin Siyu asked again. ‘Come inside.’
San Francisco was cold at night, especially near the sea.
The station’s heating had been turned off, but the telephone booth was enclosed. Their combined body heat would be trapped inside instead of drifting away.
Aston nodded lightly, stepped in and shut the door.
With him inside, the space immediately felt cramped.
Qin Siyu checked that the door was firmly closed. ‘Let’s wait in here a while. There’s not much else we can do.’
‘Mm.’
Turning back toward Aston, Qin Siyu discovered that he was still looking at him.
His blond hair was slightly disheveled from rushing out of the house. He hadn’t followed the Aston family’s rules about appearance; at the moment he looked rather less elegant and composed than usual.
Aston stepped back and leaned against one wall of the booth, both hands in his pockets. Qin Siyu leaned against the opposite wall.
They each rested against the wall behind them. Strangely, their gazes didn’t move away. Their eyes remained fixed on one another, crossing and intertwining.
In a late-night railway station, inside a red telephone booth, the two quietly looked at each other. Cold wind continued to blow outside; inside, the light was a dim yellow.
Qin Siyu truly hadn’t expected anyone to come and keep him company.
Even if it was only for an hour, at least there was someone with him during this darkest hour.
And that person was Kingsley Aston.
His heart softened suddenly.
They said nothing else for some time. Qin Siyu simply looked at Aston, taking in his leather shoes, trouser hems, perfectly straight creases, fine buttons, expensive tie and elaborate accessories, before returning once more to his eyes.
Time trickled past, and the air itself seemed to thicken.
At one point the telephone suddenly rang, and they both glanced toward the receiver.
A few seconds later Aston lifted the brass receiver with his long fingers. A voice came through, apparently drunk, loud and argumentative. Aston didn’t intend to listen to a single word. He moved the receiver barely an inch from its cradle, glanced at it and set it down again with a sharp clack.
‘…’ Qin Siyu had nothing to say.
Silence settled over the booth once more. Their eyes met again.
After several seconds Qin Siyu asked, ‘What were you doing just now?’
‘Something boring,’ Aston replied. ‘Never mind.’
‘Oh.’
Qin Siyu really was tired. He slid down the booth wall and sat on the floor.
The space was too cramped to stretch his legs, so he bent his knees, parted them a little and rested his wrists across them.
Presented with that angle unexpectedly, Aston lowered his lashes and cast a brief glance downward.
Between his bent legs, and at his ankles.
After a while, Qin Siyu propped his chin on one hand and began humming absentmindedly.
Perhaps from habit, he was humming the very piece he’d been humming before Aston arrived, the final phrases he’d left unfinished at Robert’s house.
Naturally Aston remembered it, and looked toward him once again.
Qin Siyu realized Aston recognized the tune. He tipped his head up, still supporting his chin on one hand, and smiled at him.
This time, he finished that final phrase.
Aston stood with both hands in his trouser pockets, eyes lowered.
From his place on the floor, Qin Siyu suddenly spotted a small lizard poking its head about outside the glass. Zip, zip, zip.
He stood up. ‘A little lizard.’
‘Hmm?’
Facing the glass, Qin Siyu repeated, ‘A little lizard.’
Aston, meanwhile, was looking at his waist and back.
Qin Siyu’s sweater hung loosely on him. At one point the wool seemed to itch, so he reached one hand back over his shoulder, hooked a few fingers into the collar and scratched along his spine beneath the protruding vertebra. His shoulder blades stood out and the groove along his back was pronounced. Afterward the wool settled into a small hollow there.
Because he was holding his collar up, a small patch of pale waist appeared below, barely visible.
After several quiet seconds came a rustling behind him. Aston finally straightened and walked over.
Qin Siyu shifted a step to make room. Aston quite naturally placed one hand against the glass beside Qin Siyu’s ear.
Qin Siyu glanced sideways.
The nails were smooth and obviously trimmed regularly. The fingers were long, with broad knuckles, and blue veins ran beneath the skin of the wrist before disappearing into his sleeve.
Perhaps because he’d attended a party, Aston wore a signet ring at the base of his index finger today. Gold surrounded a black gemstone, and the gold band bore his family’s elaborate design.
Qin Siyu vaguely remembered hearing that this was how old aristocratic families wore their crests. The index finger, used for pointing, traditionally symbolized power, leadership, dominance and control.
Aston’s fingers were extraordinarily long. A height of perhaps six feet seven inches would naturally make a person’s fingers longer than average, but his proportions appeared exceptional even for that.
Because Qin Siyu hoped to become a doctor, he had examined many photographs of hands during surgery, yet he’d never seen hands quite like these.
He turned his eyes back toward the window but couldn’t ignore the hand beside his ear, especially the long index and middle fingers. Now those fingers tapped lightly against the glass several times, remarkably agile.
Qin Siyu suddenly remembered a classmate mentioning that Kingsley Aston could easily span a tenth on the piano.
A faint woody scent surrounded him, coming from Aston.
The little lizard darted this way and that.
At one point it moved somewhere that the booth’s red window frame obstructed Qin Siyu’s view. Instinctively he ducked, and through their clothing, his backside accidentally bumped into the person standing behind him.
Normally Qin Siyu wouldn’t have thought much of it. But Aston’s presence was so imposing that the little space between them seemed to vanish instantly.
Aston froze.
Qin Siyu froze as well, then unconsciously made the wrong move: he turned around to see Aston’s reaction.
And Aston lowered his eyes to look at him.
They were now extremely close. When Qin Siyu turned his upper body, his shoulder brushed Aston’s chest beneath his open coat. Both seemed frozen in place, one looking up, the other down, Aston’s right hand resting on the glass behind Qin Siyu’s head.
Their gazes collided. Qin Siyu immediately decided: Pretend nothing happened.
He calmly turned back toward the glass and continued watching.
Aston lowered his gaze to Qin Siyu’s hair, which Qin had cut himself.
There was a little bald patch.
And several ridiculous tufts stuck up beside it.
Ugly.
The lizard slipped into darkness. Aston removed his hand and stepped away.
Strange, Qin Siyu thought. Really, truly strange.
If he’d been alone in the telephone booth, he probably wouldn’t have bothered with the lizard at all. He might not even have spared it a glance.
But just now… why had they been able to watch it together, so intently, for several minutes?
The same was true for the time that followed.
They seemed capable of examining any boring little thing together.
Qin Siyu stared at the rotary dial. ‘The numbers two and five seem to have the most wear. Three comes next.’
After a brief mental calculation, Aston answered two seconds later. ‘The opening letters of several nearby telephone exchanges correspond mainly to the digits two, three and five.’
Qin Siyu thought about it too. ‘That makes sense.’
At the time, callers first dialed the numbers corresponding to the abbreviated letters of a telephone exchange. When you compared the initials used by several nearby exchanges, the digits two, three and five really were among the most common.
‘Zero is very worn too,’ Qin Siyu said. ‘I know why. That’s for people calling the operator to connect long-distance calls.’
‘Mm.’
Why was this? Qin Siyu wondered. Before Kingsley arrived he’d sat here for two hours without finding any of these things interesting or even worth noticing.
Why?
Could having someone beside him really make a long night feel short?
They even studied the writing that other visitors had left on the red wooden walls of the booth.
Qin Siyu bent down to decipher some words. ‘Joe was here…’
He even crouched. ‘Bill 1932…’
Declarations of love were naturally the most numerous. Qin Siyu read aloud, ‘I love you… Kiss me…’
Below one was what appeared to be two people’s initials joined by a heart: ‘K [heart] S.’
Those people’s initials happened to be K and S too. When they saw the symbol, the two exchanged a brief, quiet glance.
There were curses, complaints, pleas for work, simple telephone numbers and advertisements of a suggestive sort.
There were even Chinese characters, phrases like ‘peace’ and ‘home.’ Qin Siyu translated their meanings for Aston.
Qin Siyu examined each one, and Aston occasionally made a remark. Again Qin Siyu couldn’t understand why this was proving so enjoyable.
It should have been a long, unbearable winter night.
How had it turned into this?
Someone had left a matchbook on the little ledge.
Not a matchbox, but a matchbook: a piece of sturdy cardboard folded over, with a row of flat matches inside and an advertisement printed on the cover.
Matchboxes were kept at home. Matchbooks could be carried around. They were thin and light, and losing one hardly mattered.
‘Kingsley,’ Qin Siyu asked, ‘do you usually use matchbooks?’
‘No,’ Aston replied. ‘Zippo introduced a lighter last year. I’d use that if necessary.’ Even petrol lighters of the older sort had become unnecessary.
Elio’s Notes: Zippo’s founder began developing the windproof lighter in late 1932, but the company’s own history dates its first production model to 1933. The chapter, set in 1933, describes its introduction as occurring the previous year; that period wording is retained. Source: Zippo, company history.
‘But you’ve seen one before, haven’t you?’ Qin Siyu tapped the advertisement on the cover. ‘It’s part of a series. There are seven different versions of this advertisement.’
He opened the card, detached a match and struck it against the strip beside the advertisement. ‘See? That’s how people light their cigarettes.’
Qin Siyu cupped his hand around the flame. Aston suddenly raised his eyes, and the yellow light illuminated their blue. The sea beyond seemed molten gold. Qin Siyu’s heart gave a sudden leap, and even the flame wavered.
‘…’ Qin Siyu extinguished the match and set it aside. ‘Has it been an hour?’
Aston raised his wrist to look. ‘About five minutes left.’
‘Then shall we wait at the roadside?’
Aston inclined his head and pushed the booth door open, allowing Qin Siyu out first before following.
The stars were extraordinarily bright that night, the Milky Way clearly visible across the sky.
As they chatted casually, Qin Siyu asked, ‘Did you manage to discuss what you wanted with Robert that day? The business partnership?’
‘More or less.’ Aston paused for a second. ‘Thank you.’
Qin Siyu shook his head. ‘I was worried I wouldn’t be able to convey those pieces properly. Knowing now that I helped you, and didn’t delay your business, is finally a relief.’
He looked upward and identified the Weaver Girl and Cowherd stars, high and distant.
‘In China, that star is called the Weaver Girl,’ Qin Siyu said. ‘The especially bright one with a bluish-white glow. Opposite it are seven stars together; the middle one is the Cowherd star. China has a legend called the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. Mr. Mei has performed it too.’
‘Tell me about it?’ Aston asked.
‘Mm.’
Qin Siyu told him the earliest version of the legend and Mr. Mei’s recent adaptation, A Match Across the Heavenly River, also called A Match on the Magpie Bridge.
Much of what he knew had actually come from the female international students.
For instance, the two stars had been paired as early as the Qin dynasty. By the Han dynasty, their personified story had emerged: separated by the Milky Way, they met on the seventh day of the seventh month by crossing a bridge made by magpies. That date might have been considered auspicious because Emperor Wu had been born on it. In those days, however, both the Cowherd and Weaver Girl were heavenly beings; there was no story of either descending to earth.
Later the story turned distasteful. The Weaver Girl became a bird-woman, a branch of the so-called ‘swan maiden’ tale, generally believed to have emerged after the Song dynasty. Yet even in the Ming dynasty, the Weaver Girl still returned to heaven after retrieving her feathered robe.
Only by the Qing dynasty did the strange episode of ‘watching her bathe’ and ‘stealing her clothes’ appear, treating the Weaver Girl almost as a reward for hard work or an inducement.
Not until Mr. Mei’s plays in the past few years had the pair become heavenly beings once more, returning to the original form of the story.
‘As we say,’ Qin Siyu recited, ‘If two hearts are bound for all time, why insist on being together morning and night?’
‘It is romantic,’ Aston commented politely after hearing the story. ‘But I don’t like it.’
‘Hmm?’ Outside the station the lights were a dim yellow, one lamp shining from either side of them so that their shadows overlapped behind them, impossible to separate. ‘Why?’ Qin Siyu asked.
‘If I love someone,’ Aston said, turning. His blond hair stirred in the moonlight. ‘I will be there. Always.’
When that person needed him, he would appear.