“This is also bad,” Jinzhao hazarded.
“It’s just complicated. I’d love to live with Yukying, but her husband . . . and where she lives is annoying too—too many British. And if I lived with Cheuk-Kwan, I could help look after our father, but . . . well, let’s just say we’re a bit much together.”
“But they both want you to stay with them?” Tinseng nodded. “Whom will you choose?”
“I don’t know. Maybe neither. I’m not going to think about it right now. There are more important things going on, you know?”
“You can’t ignore your family.”
He snorted. “The past three years say different.”
“Tinseng.”
“Can we not talk about this?”
“Why?”
Because you can’t let things go. Because once you argued with me for three days about the test ban treaty, and you didn’t even care about that very much. Because I don’t know how long I get to hold on to you, and I don’t want to fight with the time we have left.
“Because I’m tired.”
Jinzhao’s gaze softened. Tinseng looked away. “Do they know?”
No, you really couldn’t distract Mei Jinzhao, could you? After so many years, Tinseng still hadn’t learned.
“Yukying does. Her husband, Li Yingtung, thinks I’m eccentric. He looks the other way deliberately, I think. It’s easier. If we lived together, you and I, I mean, he’d go to his grave thinking we’re good friends who want to save money on rent. The same goes for my father. He’s kind enough to pretend.”
“And your brother?”
“Cheuk-Kwan . . .” He grimaced. “He has his suspicions. I don’t know what he’d do if he had to live with it under his nose every day. His Party friends think homosexuality is a White man’s disease. Mainland China didn’t have this problem until they showed up, that kind of thing. I’ve never heard him say anything that extreme, but it’s just one more way I’m a problem, right?”
“You are not a problem.”
“You say that now.”
“I say that always.”
Tinseng’s heart clenched. “Always?” he asked, because he was weak and wanted to hear it again.
Jinzhao wrapped a hand around the back of his neck and stared him down as he repeated, “Always.”
Tinseng hid his uncontainable grin in Jinzhao’s shirt. Always, always, always.
“How do you feel about running away?” Tinseng muttered into the rumpled cotton. “Possibly disappearing forever? The countryside is nice; we could have a field of sunflowers and grow grapes.”
“Do you know how to grow grapes?”
“I’d learn.” He turned his head to the side so he could breathe in Jinzhao’s scent. “Ugh. You’re lucky you don’t have to deal with any of this. With the British giving you that stipend to help for your first three months, you could rent anywhere. Well, anywhere cheap. You’ll finally be a free man—no more dealing with my dirty mugs.”
“Mm.”
“And you’ll have your own space again. I won’t be hanging like a limpet. You won’t have to fight for the sheets.”
The hand on his neck tightened, then let go.
“Time for sleep.”
“But—”
“You said you were tired.” Jinzhao turned off the light. “And tomorrow, write back to your sister.”
One Month Ago. May 20, 1963. Paris, France.
“Change the record, would you?” Tinseng called from across the room. “I’m trying to forge this, and Buscaglione is distracting. I have to think in English.”
Jinzhao turned off the record, and Tinseng got back to his letter. It had to be good enough to trick the most cunning blackmailer in Europe.
“Shan Dao,” he called out, a test.
“Yes?” As predicted, there was no hesitation on Jinzhao’s part; after only a week of practice with his brand-new cover name, he was already flawless.
“‘When I look at Shan Dao, it’s like climbing a mountain and looking down far; far from the world,’” he quoted just to watch Jinzhao frown against his blush. He sniggered. “Come here and look at this. You’re getting very good with the name, by the way. You don’t mind if I start calling you that in bed, do you?” Jinzhao materialized by his side and pinched the top of his ear. “Okay, okay! It was just a question! Anyway, what do you think?”
Jinzhao looked at the letter meant for Lucas Grodescu: it arranged to meet him in Villefranche in order to exchange an extraordinary amount of money for some papers that had once belonged to Li Xifeng. It was the third communication they’d had with the man, and the most important.
“Good.” Jinzhao handed it back.
