“Take easy, guys,” Tom said calmly. “He’s drunk.” He was on his feet again, standing in front of the piano.
“I’m not drunk, you bastard!” Tom Meyers’ pitiful voice made Fang Chen even madder. He became so violent that he kicked his feet into different directions and howled infuriatingly like a wild wolf. The club went deadly quiet; there were shocked faces and staring eyes as the patrons quietly backed off to let the trio pass.
Before the two men could drag him away, however, Fang Chen turned his head and barked at Tom: “Leave her alone, or I’ll kill you!”
“Oh my!” the middle-aged bouncer was shocked to see Fang Chen being shoved out of the door.
He was left on the pavement when the club door closed behind him. The cab driver got out the car and opened the back door. “Where do you want to go?” he asked indifferently.
“Just drive me around, please,” Fang Chen said in a broken voice. The car started to move forward, slowly and smoothly. All of a sudden, the tears burst out like a flood. For a long, long time, Fang Chen hid his face behind the front seat and cried like a wounded dog, sadly and sorrowfully. He just couldn’t help it.
The cab driver drove him in circles around the city until Fang Chen calmed down and asked to be dropped at the door of his apartment building. “How much do I owe you?” he asked before stepping out.
“One hundred,” the driver said.
He gave him one hundred fifty. “Thank you for understanding,” he said. It was almost three in the morning, but he was so ashamed that he wished he could bury himself behind the front seat forever.
“Don’t take it too hard, man,” the driver said after taking his money. “Women come and go like seasonal birds. They aren’t worth your grief.”
But Fang Chen couldn’t accept the fact that his own wife was one of the seasonal birds flying from one place to another. How could she tell him that she had never loved him while she should have been grateful for what he had done for her? It was like somebody slapping him on the face, making him so furious that he wanted to do nothing but hit back.
“Where were you the day the defendant left for his tour?” the defense lawyer asked.
“What day was that?” he asked.
“July 21.”
“I would be in my office or in the class if it’s a weekday.” He was teaching summer school as well.
“According to my record, you weren’t in your office when one of your students visited you at one in the afternoon.”
“I could be eating my lunch or in the bathroom,” he said uninterestedly.
“She said she had waited for you at least half an hour.”
He frowned and hesitated.
“Where were you, Mr. Chen?” the defense lawyer demanded to know.
Fang Chen sighed. “I didn’t want people to know because I often take a nap in my office after lunch. I’m sorry that I took a nap when I should’ ve seen her.” He looked rather crestfallen.
“Is it true that you hated the deceased so much that you wanted her dead?”
“Objection, Your Honor, speculation!”
“Sustained.”
The defense lawyer stepped back. “Let me rephrase it. Is it true that you hated her so much that you not only filed for the divorce but wrote to the INS trying to throw her out of the country?”
“Yes,” Fang Chen murmured under his breath.
The urge to get even with Yi-yun had grown so strong that he could think of nothing but how to make her pay for what she had done. In his desperate mind, Fang Chen even thought of hiring a hit man. He gave up the idea only because he didn’t want to put himself at risk. It would be worthless to ruin his future for an ungrateful woman.
Finally, just before dawn, he fell asleep. When he woke up, the sun was already peeking through the shades, and the apartment was unusually quiet. He had developed such a headache that he could hardly open his eyes. Reluctantly, he lifted his eyelids and looked around. The bedroom door was open, and Yi-yun was gone.
It was almost noon when he finally got up and went to the bathroom. What an awful headache! He took three aspirins before wandering into the bedroom. Inside the room, nothing had changed—the bed was properly made, his old bureau was sitting in the corner, and a few paintings were still hanging on the wall except Yi-yun had taken down their wedding photo and her family photo. On the dresser, she had left her diamond engagement ring and her gold wedding ring. With a sinking feeling, he opened the closet. To his surprise, all her clothes were still there. He went to the kitchen and found a note on the refrigerator: “I’ll be back in the afternoon to pick up my belongings.”
“Fuck you!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “What, your belongings? I’m the one who paid for everything you’ve ever owned. Now, you want to take them away too?” As mad as a termagant, Fang Chen threw the note away and stormed out.
He went to the hardware store across the street and bought a new lock. “Too bad, bitch, you can’t boss me around anymore,” he said loudly when he opened the apartment door, “because I won’t compromise you any longer. If you want to leave me, fine, you can leave without taking a pin or a needle from me.”
The aspirin he took worked quite efficiently, and the headache disappeared soon after he was ready to replace the lock. In his overexcited mood, Fang Chen took the toolbox out of the cabinet and set to work. Of course you can ask your Tom to replace everything you had from me, he thought sardonically while working. Don’t regret it if he can’t afford it.
He was quite pleased when he finished the job. Gleaming inside the golden frame, the lock gave the door a beautiful new look. Satisfied, he double-locked the apartment and went to work.
Yi-yun didn’t call him during the day as he had expected. When he was back from work, his door was perfectly locked; nothing indicated that she had ever broken in.
She might have tried, or both of them might have tried but given up. They dared not to break it, or he would call the police. Thrilled by the result of his little revenge, Fang Chen smiled for the first time since his wife had uttered the D word.
Before he went to bed, however, he was once again seized by a sudden anger because he remembered what she had said. If she never loved him as she told him, there should have been no reason for her to marry him. Why did she do it then? It was because she needed his money and the green card, of course! What a wicked woman! She had been treating him like a fool, using him as a tool, but she wouldn’t get away from her wicked doing anymore because he would make her pay. As far as he knew, she had her temporary green card less than a year ago. It wouldn’t be renewed if she got divorced within a two-year period. The bitch, she was either too smart or too stupid to ignore the immigration rules. She forgot that her legal status depended on the stability of her marriage. Without the green card, she had to go back to China or back to school full-time.
Yes! She should definitely suffer the consequences! Even if Tom Meyers married her immediately, which he doubted would happen, it would still be a good scare. Fang Chen grinned when he thought of the possible outcome. Tomorrow, he would get on her case and call his lawyer to file for divorce; at the same time, he should inform the INS about Yi-yun’s green card scheme. I should mention Tom Meyers so they can track her down, he thought to himself. It was his luck that he knew where Tom was employed. As long as they knew where the bastard was, they would be sure to get to Yi-yun.
“Is it true that you threatened to kill the defendant in front of a crowd at a night club?” The defense lawyer continued pounding on him.
“Yes,” he said defiantly.
“If you were so mad that you wanted to kill the defendant, we can surely assume you wanted to kill your unfaithful wife as well.”
The prosecutor was up on his feet really fast. “Objection, Your Honor!” he shouted.
“Sustained. No a
ssumptions, only facts,” the judge warned the defense lawyer.
The lawyer turned to the jury meaningfully with a smirk on his face and then turned back to face Fang Chen. “But you did tell your lawyer that the deceased needed to be punished for her sin, is that correct?” he asked, looking at him slyly.
“Yes,” Fang Chen said, looking up to meet the eyes of the defense lawyer rebelliously. “She needed to be punished because of her adultery, but that doesn’t mean that I killed her!”
Chapter 14
Standing a few feet away from the casket, Ann saw her friend emerge in front of her, as pretty and delicate as a spring flower. Instead of the usual sparkling radiance, however, there were sheer sorrows in her beautiful eyes. Oh, Yi-yun, Ann cried. How could you leave me without saying good-bye? Tears poured down so furiously, Ann could hardly breathe.
It was the most heart-wrenching phone call she had made weeks ago when Tom Meyers asked her to call Yi-yun’s parents. He had identified the body, and he wanted to notify her parents, but he couldn’t speak Chinese.
Yes, Yi-yun’s parents! How could she ever forget! To bring such devastating news over the phone to her parents whom Ann had heard so much about nearly cut her into pieces. They were hardworking people and devoted to their daughter.
Her hand shook when she dialed their number given by Fang Chen who found it in his old Rolodex. When she finally answered the phone, Yi-yun’s mother couldn’t understand a word Ann had said. “What did you say about my daughter?” she kept asking. “Who are you?”
Breathing deeply, Ann repeated the terrible news twice, then a third time when Yi-yun’s father picked up the phone because his wife had dropped it abruptly. There was a dead silence followed by heart-tearing shrieks in the background.
“How can we come and get her?” Yi-yun’s father asked, sobbing. “We want to bring her home,” he said.
“You need to get a passport and a visa,” Ann said, even though it could take several months before they could obtain both. “We’ll wait for you.”
A week later, Yi-yun’s father called back. Both he and his wife had no way to acquire their passports in a reasonable time frame, and he wondered if Ann would help them to get Yi-yun cremated so they could bring her ashes home when they were able to do so. He told Ann that Yi-yun’s mother had fallen ill and had not been eating since she heard the news.
Yes, of course she would help. In fact, she would immediately arrange the wake at a funeral home so Yi-yun could be properly mourned.
She sank into the armchair after she hung up the phone, weeping. For the last few weeks, she cried every time she thought of her friend, a bubbly and fun-loving young woman. Why should she die? How could anyone kill her?
By then, Tom Meyers had been accused as Yi-yun’s murderer, and everyone knew Yi-yun was five months pregnant. If Tom didn’t want to marry her and didn’t want the baby, it could be his motive to kill.
Oh, poor Yi-yun! If only she weren’t so busy at the time when Yi-yun left Fang Chen, she might have been able to persuade her to stay in the marriage, Ann thought wistfully. Poor Fang Chen, who first lost his wife to Tom and then lost the love of his life forever. When she mentioned the request from Yi-yun’s father, he said he would pay for the funeral and the cremation.
A tearful Fang Chen was standing next to her, holding her hand. Next to them were Yi-yun’s old roommate Amy and her neighbors including Ms. White and Shao Mei. True to her character, Shao Mei had been crying loudly and shamelessly.
In addition to mourning the loss of her friend, Ann was deeply saddened as she wished she could repay Yi-yun’s help and kindness. Imagine if she had gotten fired from China Dragon the first night! In return, however, she had badly failed her friend because she didn’t offer Yi-yun any help when she needed it. Of course she didn’t know what kind of trouble Yi-yun was in, but she could have spent some quality time with her. After a few heart-to-heart talks, she might have been able to talk Yi-yun out of the divorce. There were so many things Ann could have done, if only she had known.
After the service, Ann kept Yi-yun’s ashes in her apartment, waiting for the parents to show up and collect them. A few weeks passed, then a few months; finally she got a phone call from Yi-yun’s father. “Her mother and I have decided,” he said, voice cracking because of the pain. “We would leave Yi-yun where she belonged.” It must have been the most difficult decision they had ever made in their life. “She’d been dreaming of living in America since she was a teenager. For so long, it had become the purpose of her life. She wouldn’t be happy if we brought her back. She belonged to America, the country she embraced wholeheartedly.” He had to stop several times during the conversation to regain his strength. His wife had been getting better, he told Ann, but they had a long way to go before they could fully recover from the disaster. “She’s our only child, you know,” he broke off.
“It is well understood,” Ann said. She promised Yi-yun’s father that she would do whatever she could to lay her friend to rest. She planned to hold a fundraiser for Yi-yun, but Fang Chen stepped in once again. He went out and bought a plot at the Mount Auburn Cemetery. In early spring when the trial for Yi-yun’s murder was underway, she, Fang Chen, and Shao Mei brought Yi-yun’s ash to the cemetery for burial. Yi-yun would have turned twenty-four on that day.
Chapter 15
The courtroom was quiet. Shao Mei took the oath and sat down. She was a character witness for the prosecution. When the prosecutor asked her for help a week ago, she didn’t hesitate for a second; it was her duty to see Yi-yun’s killer get punished, she told the prosecutor.
“Ms. Shao,” the prosecutor said, “can you tell the jury who you are and how you came to know the deceased and the defendant?”
“I came to know Ms. Yi-yun Lin the first day when I landed in the US,” she said with emotion, and her voice quivered. “I met the defendant when I went to his concert with Yi-yun about a year ago. I was a physics professor at Beijing University before I came to the US.”
She was a Beijing native, born in Beijing, grew up in Beijing, and studied and worked in Beijing. In her adult life, Shao Mei spent it all at Beijing University, first as a student, then a teaching assistant, then a lecturer and an associate professor until she was sent away to the labor camp. She made the rank when she was thirty-eight, a few months before the Cultural Revolution started.
She considered herself lucky to have survived the most terrible catastrophe of mankind as many of her friends and colleagues perished during the ten-year terror.
It was the winter of 1966 when she was arrested along with hundreds of other professors by the students turned Red Guards who occupied the campus as soon as Mao started the revolution. A year later, she and her husband, a professor at Tsinghua University were sent down to a labor camp where her son was born several years later. Due to the intensive physical labor, she couldn’t take care of him. He was sent to live with her aged parents when he was only two-months-old. Mother and son had been separated until he was three.
While being brainwashed at the labor camp, Shao Mei had been nursing a dream to leave the country because she hated her life. The politics in China had become so unpredictable over the years that every minute she could lose her freedom if she wasn’t careful. In fact, a joke could turn into a crime on a daily basis. Just look at how many innocent people got arrested or killed because they bad-mouthed Chairman Mao or the government.
Shao Mei got her chance after she was released from the labor camp. As a professor at one of the most prestigious universities in China, she was able to make connections as well as pass along her requests to her newfound foreign friends. Before long, one invitation came through, and she got the chance to leave the country as a visiting scholar. Without knowing what would happen to her in the United States, she already knew she would never go back to her native country. She just had enough of the communism and all sort
s of political movements that made her life and millions of others miserable through and through.
Yi-yun made it possible with her generosity and help.
“How can I afford a room? I only have $400!” She was almost in tears, which never happened in her life before, after a visit to the international office at school. She had spent the first night on Yi-yun’s couch. “The cheapest room in the city is $500 a month!”
“If you don’t mind sleeping on my couch for a month or two,” Yi-yun said, looking at her sympathetically. She only had one room, but she could tell Shao Mei wouldn’t be able to survive without her help.
“Mind, are you kidding?” Shao Mei burst into tears, and she couldn’t help it. “I don’t mind to go to the homeless shelter if only they would take me.” Without Yi-yun, she would be homeless in a foreign country for sure!
She moved in with Yi-yun who never even asked her for rent. Soon she started teaching private students on campus for $20 an hour. She was told that even a young American college graduate would have a hard time finding a professional job with degrees in pure physics, let alone a middle-aged foreigner who spoke very poor English.
Shao Mei was snapped out of her memories when the prosecutor raised his voice. “Ms. Shao? Can you describe the relationship between the deceased and the defendant?”
She was thinking hard. “It wasn’t a relationship of love, even though Ms. Lin fell in love with the defendant,” she said in a dull voice. “I’m pretty sure he was just using her.”
“Did you know she was pregnant before she was killed?”
“No.” The first time she learned about Yi-yun’s pregnancy was on TV, a day after they found her dead at home. She blamed herself that she didn’t pay enough attention to her young friend after her teenage son came to stay with her. With her full-time job and the attentions paid to his study, she was too busy to talk to anyone.