Suyu’s lipsticks were selling very well.
Her instincts were remarkably sharp. In later generations, people would even develop a theory called the “lipstick effect,” based on lipstick sales during the Great Depression. The idea was that when the economy deteriorated, sales of lipstick could actually rise. For one thing, women might give up expensive luxuries, but lipstick was affordable, so they’d buy it to cheer themselves up rather than simply sink into gloom. For another, at times like these more women went out to work, and many jobs expected female employees to present themselves with proper clothes and makeup.
Lin Suyu worked part-time for a lipstick brand as a door-to-door salesperson, and she was doing well. Hardworking and clever, she carried a sample case from house to house. In the poor economy, women often felt guilty going shopping at department stores, so demand for door-to-door salespeople was high.
Suyu had assumed selling as a Chinese woman might be difficult, but things had turned out all right. Fewer doors were slammed in her face than she’d expected. Men were more likely to arouse suspicion. Thanks to Chinese American actresses such as Anna May Wong, many white housewives were curious about Chinese women despite never having met one. When they saw Lin Suyu speaking fluent English and wearing fashionable clothes, many would open their doors to hear what she had to say.
Suyu’s secret weapon was: “You look just like a movie star!”
She liked knocking in the afternoons, after the housewives had finished their chores. By then they’d been working all day and were ready for a little rest.
Suyu would say, “Why not try one? It’s free.”
The lipstick brand had provided transparent plastic strips. Celluloid and polyethylene were newly invented, so they could be put to good use. Lips in all sorts of red shades were painted across the front. Women could hold the clear strip in front of their mouths while looking in a mirror, slide each example past their lips, and see what color suited them. Suyu would then bring out an actual lipstick for them to try.
Elio’s Notes: The author groups celluloid and polyethylene as recent inventions available for these strips. In fact, celluloid dates to 1869, while polyethylene was rediscovered experimentally in 1933 but only entered commercial production in 1939. The scene is kept as written; whether the fictional shade cards could have used another transparent material is not specified. Sources: Smithsonian National Museum of American History and British Plastics Federation.
Once the lipstick was on, Suyu would open her eyes wide and exclaim, “Has anyone ever told you? You look just like so-and-so!” Naturally, the person she named would be an extraordinarily beautiful Hollywood star.
When the customer exclaimed in surprise, “How could I possibly look like her?” Suyu would put on an honest, simple expression. “Maybe because I’m Chinese, I’m not very good at distinguishing between white women’s faces… But to me, you really do look like her!”
Beautiful Hollywood stars were the women of these housewives’ dreams. In the Depression, cinema had reached a peak. Those actresses were beautiful and clever, drew the eyes of the entire country, and lived through the most spectacular romances and heartbreaks on the screen.
The woman would hesitate. “But my husband—”
Suyu would persuade her. “You don’t need his permission. This really is very inexpensive. If you buy from me, I can even give you a discount. You can dress up a little like this every day, spend some time to yourself or go out, maybe take a book to sit by the lake in the park. Think how lovely it would be to enjoy a little time that’s just yours.”
If the customer was still hesitating, Suyu offered styling advice. “What do you usually wear when you go out? I can help you choose the most fashionable hairstyle to go with it.”
At that point many women were won over. Some housewives even agreed to let Suyu sell her products at gatherings and salons.
Qin Siyu was delighted that Lin Suyu was building up a “business” of her own. It could, after all, become a steady source of income.
So when Suyu wanted to increase her sales as much as possible before negotiating her commission with the company again, Qin Siyu readily agreed to take some stock and try selling it to people around him.
When Qin Siyu collected the products from Lin Suyu, Aston was with him. They happened to be at the library because their paper needed a few more revisions.
Aston had submitted it to a journal, but the reviewers wanted additional survey data. For the past few days Qin Siyu had been staying near the university, since he needed constant access to the campus printing machine and had to discuss the paper with Professor Brown before finalizing it.
When Suyu spotted him in an alley with Aston, her eyes widened again.
She looked back and forth between them, thinking: So what about the person from that day…?
She’d met several of her cousin’s friends before, including one named Wu Xintong. But this man was… strange. The two of them had an atmosphere that was utterly incompatible yet perfectly blended at the same time.
“Did you bring all the lipsticks?” Qin Siyu held out his hand. “Give them to me. Oh, and I can’t take you home today. You know how to take the streetcar by yourself, right? I’m volunteering tonight, and I have to get back to the library early to discuss the paper with Kingsley.”
“But…” Lin Suyu said, “I still need to teach you.”
“???” Qin Siyu asked. “Teach me what?”
With a swish, Lin Suyu dragged Qin Siyu into a secluded spot, then snapped open her lipstick shade chart. “For different female students, do you know which lipstick you should recommend?”
Qin Siyu stared at the chart. “?????”
Suyu took out the transparent plastic strips, each painted with beautifully shaped lips in different colors. “Take these, too.”
Qin Siyu hesitated. “And these are…?”
“For trying out colors.” As she spoke, Suyu used Qin Siyu himself as an example. “I’ll teach you once, very quickly. It won’t take long.”
She fiddled with several strips, examined Qin Siyu’s lips, then looked down at the examples in her hands. “The shape of your lips… hmm… it’s… it’s…”
Even an expert like her hadn’t yet found the right one when Aston, standing beside her, slid a particular strip partly out of the stack. The tip of his strong, long index finger tapped it. “This one.”
As though he were helping her save time.
“???” Suyu took the strip and compared it. Sure enough, the shape matched her cousin’s mouth closely. He knew her cousin’s lips very well. She held it up in front of Qin Siyu’s mouth. “After you choose the lip shape, you lift the strip and slide the different colors past, one by one… comparing how they look.”
Experienced as she was, Suyu went straight to the most promising shades and compared them repeatedly for quite a while. She still couldn’t quite make up her mind.
That was when Aston spoke again. “C28.”
Suyu moved the strip back and compared them. Sure enough, C28 suited Qin Siyu beautifully, with a slightly provocative charm.
But Suyu, who hoped to become a top lawyer one day, was fiercely competitive. She was the professional, after all. “C26 and C30 look good, too, don’t they? One has a little more yellow, and the other a little more blue.”
The rigid, flat plastic strip couldn’t fit the natural curve of human lips perfectly. Aston glanced at her, extended his long fingers, and pressed against Qin Siyu’s upper and lower lips through the strip.
Under that pressure, the plastic finally conformed to the natural curve of both lips.
His fingertip pressed against the crease below the Cupid’s bow, blocking the view. Aston spread his two fingers, and both long fingertips slid outward at the same time, from beneath the peaks of Qin Siyu’s upper lip toward the corners of his mouth.
Even through the plastic, he could feel the rounded softness of Qin Siyu’s lips.
As his fingers spread, Qin Siyu’s lips suddenly tingled.
Aston said again, “C28.”
“Next,” Lin Suyu said, producing the matching lipstick and asking Qin Siyu to roll up his sleeve, “people’s skin color is pretty consistent. So you can test the color on someone’s arm.”
Qin Siyu offered his arm. Suyu unscrewed a C28 lipstick and drew a line along the inside. Then she drew two more lines above and below it with the other similar shades. “For instance, C28 suits you very well, but C30 and C26 are also pretty good. We can put all three on the arm and look again.”
The skin on the inside of Qin Siyu’s arm was as pale as a pearl. With three strokes of red across it, the sight acquired a strange, seductive quality in Aston’s eyes.
“Look, once we’ve tested them on the arm again, C30 isn’t quite so good. We can rule it out immediately. Now just two colors are left, and we can try them on the lips.” Suyu took the cap off C28, twisted up the lipstick, and moved to apply it.
Realizing that Lin Suyu had become completely engrossed in teaching him, Qin Siyu hastily stopped her. “All right, all right. That’s enough. I understand.”
“But,” Lin Suyu protested, “you don’t know how to apply it.”
“I don’t need to.” Qin Siyu smiled. “I’m a man, after all. I only want to help my little sister sell lipstick to my friends and increase her sales. I don’t need to go that far. It wouldn’t be appropriate. The girls can apply it themselves.”
He took out the advertisements Suyu had brought. “Anyway, this is the fashionable way to wear it now, right? What should I pay attention to?”
“Right,” Suyu explained. “It’s called the ‘Cupid’s bow.’ You outline the upper lip clearly and make an M shape. You can use this lip pencil or this brush to emphasize the bow in the middle. Don’t make the corners too pointed. Soften them a little. The lower lip should be full and rounded. Brother, your lips are actually perfect for it. Oh, and before applying, use this paper to blot away the oil.”
“Oh, I see,” Qin Siyu said, suddenly understanding. “The fashion has changed.”
“Mm. The deliberately tiny ‘doll’s mouth’ people painted in the twenties is out of fashion now. People think it’s unnatural.”
“All right, got it.”
After Suyu handed over the products, she left. It really hadn’t taken long, and Qin Siyu needed to return to the library with Aston.
He glanced at his arm, where three lipstick marks still remained, and asked, “Uh, Kingsley, do you have a handkerchief? Walking down the street with three stripes like this looks ridiculous.”
Aston replied, “At the library. I didn’t know I needed to carry it.”
“Oh…”
Aston caught Qin Siyu’s arm, lowered his eyes, and gently rubbed a fingertip along it, scraping off the middle streak of red. He raised his hand, regarded the color on his fingertip for a moment, and looked up, catching Qin Siyu’s eyes. Then, suddenly, he gripped Qin Siyu’s chin with two long fingers of his left hand, lifted it, and used the lipstick-smeared fingertip of his right to stroke Qin Siyu’s lower lip, from its centerline to one corner.
It was C28.
Qin Siyu was a little dazed. His lower lip, now tinged red, moved a few times. “Kingsley?”
Aston still held his chin. His golden lashes pointed downward, his eyes icy blue. He did the same to Qin Siyu’s upper lip, from the centerline to the corner.
He even followed Suyu’s instruction and spent a moment tracing the peaks of the upper lip, emphasizing the Cupid’s bow.
After that Aston used his left index finger to wipe away the C26 mark. He switched to holding Qin Siyu’s face with two fingers of his right hand and repeated the process with C26 on the other half of his mouth.
From the centerline along the lower lip, and then the upper lip, to the corner on the opposite side.
Qin Siyu lifted his slightly phoenix-shaped eyes. “???”
His skin was fair and his nose straight. His lower lip was full, with a dip along the centerline. Now that vertical line divided the colors: the left half of his mouth wore C28 and the right half C26. Both were red, but subtly different, creating a strangely disordered effect.
Aston raised his large hand to cover the left half of Qin Siyu’s face and admired the result for a moment. Then he used the other hand to cover the right half. After ten or more seconds, he lowered his hand.
“Sean,” he said at last, as if he had reached a conclusion, his expression seemingly composed, “I know you better than your little sister does. C28 suits you better.”
Qin Siyu had no patience left. “Isn’t this even stranger now, Master?”
How was he supposed to go back to the library?
Was he supposed to claim he’d been learning to perform opera?
But Aston was in no hurry. He hooked a fingertip under the lapel of his coat and pulled it aside to reveal his white shirt. “Wipe it here.”
“…” Qin Siyu raised his eyes and stared at him for a moment.
Both looked expressionless. A second later, Qin Siyu leaned in and pressed his lipstick-stained lips against the front of Aston’s white shirt near the shoulder.
He really did press hard. He wanted the lipstick off.
After one imprint came another.
Finally, thinking Aston was unbearably annoying, Qin Siyu opened his mouth and bit the muscle where Aston’s shoulder met his neck.
The last traces of red remained on either side of the shoulder seam of Aston’s shirt.
At last the lipstick was wiped away. Aston closed his coat over the shirt again, hiding the marks, and they went back to the library to continue discussing their paper until Qin Siyu had to leave for his volunteer shift.
Qin Siyu had gradually learned to manage his volunteer duties at the hospital. He could skillfully deliver patients to the appropriate consulting rooms, wheeling them through the crowded corridors. He understood the medical staff’s terse instructions quickly and could fetch what they ordered from wherever it was kept. He recorded complete personal and medical information for patients, comforted them effectively, and could even notice when something was wrong from small details and summon a doctor or nurse.
Except… Dr. Sterling, the surgeon, still seemed to harbor prejudice.
He believed Chinese people were unfit to become doctors, especially in emergency medicine. So whenever anyone else was available, he would never call on Qin Siyu.
That evening the hospital received a homeless man.
He was Black, and elderly. It had rained for several days. He seemed to have fallen ill and was confused and slow to move. A few hours earlier he’d fallen from a path on a hillside and injured his head.
The hospital was unable to save him. His time of death was recorded. He died on a cold summer night.
Quietly.
As required, hospital staff called the police department. The officers would try to identify the patient and contact his family.
If nobody claimed the body, the hospital could keep it for at most a week, unless the case involved a criminal investigation. If, after a week, there was still no word, the hospital would hand it over to the county government, which would arrange a burial in the public cemetery.
Few people paid any attention to the homeless man. They merely told Qin Siyu to take the body to cold storage and said he could finish his shift afterward.
“…” Qin Siyu lifted the white sheet. The man was covered in dirt, with mud and blood mixed together. Qin Siyu put on gloves, took a towel, dampened it, and carefully cleaned the man’s face and body.
A nurse passed, glanced once, and said with the assurance of experience, “Sean, don’t waste your time. Nobody’s going to claim him.”
Qin Siyu straightened. “Mm-hmm. Thank you. I know.”
But after the nurse left, Qin Siyu bent down and resumed cleaning, still wearing his gloves.
He was very thorough. Before long the man was clean again. Qin Siyu even carefully cleaned his fingers and toes, one at a time.
His clothes were dirty, too. Qin Siyu straightened them as best he could, wiping them with the damp towel to remove stains and make the fabric easier to smooth. He dressed the man carefully, fastened every button, and combed his hair.
While wiping down the man’s clothing, Qin Siyu felt something thick and hard inside a pocket.
He took it out and discovered a Bible.
But it was soaked through with rain, wrinkled and battered. Some pages had come loose, and many were stained with blood. Much of the writing was illegible.
Another nurse passed and told him, “Sean, just take him away and go home. Nobody’s going to claim him. The people from the government will come collect him next week.”
“Mm,” Qin Siyu said again. “All right.”
There was a pharmacy near the hospital. Qin Siyu walked there and bought a new pocket Bible. He brought it back and gently slipped it into the man’s other pocket.
This was the first patient Qin Siyu had personally seen off in this way. He’d been volunteering for a while and had certainly encountered other patients who couldn’t be saved, but those people had relatives and friends. This was the first one he’d been responsible for sending away himself.
Once the Bible was safely in place, the workers from the cold-storage room happened to arrive to transport the body.
A tag hung from it: Unknown male.
Qin Siyu handed the body over. But before the attendants lifted it away, he bent down once more to make sure the Bible was in the pocket. Looking at the man’s closed eyes, he said, “Rest in peace. May the Lord receive your soul.”
The workers moved efficiently and left. The room became spacious and empty again.
“…” Qin Siyu gathered his feelings, made sure his thoughts had settled, removed his gloves, and dropped them into a container for disinfection. Then he turned and walked out, intending to wash his hands.
But as he rounded the corner outside the room, he almost collided with someone!
Qin Siyu stopped hurriedly.
It was Dr. Sterling, tall and broad, with brown hair.
Dr. Sterling, who seldom paid Qin Siyu any attention, didn’t speak to him this time either. But unlike before, this time he stood in front of Qin Siyu and looked at him for a very long while.