The Moon Opera by Bi Feiyu Page B

standing there naked, it seemed to her that he had no interest at all in her body. What exactly is a boss? At the time, pretty girls were like goods on a shelf; if something struck a boss’s fancy, he had only to signal with a nod and the clerk would take it down for him. So she stripped, and at that moment, the look in his eyes changed. The effects of her diet were plain to see and, as she could sense, plainly displeasing. He didn’t even try to hide his disapproval. At that instant, she’d have preferred a greedy, lecherous man, a sex fiend even, for then she’d simply have been selling her body. But he wasn’t. He was even more a man of stature and power as he climbed into bed—he leisurely lay down on the Simmons mattress and gestured for her to get on top. Once there, she did all the work. At one point, he seemed pleased with her efforts, for he moaned a couple of times, and muttered, “Oh yeah … oh, yeah.” What does that mean? she wondered. A few days later, he put on a foreign porn flick before she serviced him, and it dawned on her that he was parroting the sound the porn stars made. Where sex was concerned, he had gone global.
    What they did could hardly be called making love; it wasn’t even sex. She was just trying to please a man, servicing a man, and she felt so debased that she thought about stopping. But sex is so toxic it doesn’t let you quit just because you want to. She had never felt that way when making love with Miangua, so she just went through the motions, reproaching herself the whole time: this woman is a slut, pure and simple, she chided herself.
    It was drizzling as she made her way home. The wet streets glistened, filling her eyes with reflections and refractions from the taillights of passing cars. The glittery reds seemed overheated and unreal, creating a deep sense of desolation. Surrounded by kaleidoscopic lights dancing on the surface of the street, she felt she’d been defiled that evening. Though she couldn’t say how, exactly, she knew it wasn’t physical. At the head of the lane she bent over and tried to throw up, but succeeded only in producing dry heaves, terrible-sounding and foul-smelling noises.
    By the time she arrived home, her daughter was already in bed. Miangua was sunk down in the sofa with the TV on, waiting for her. She avoided his eyes, unable to bring herself to look at him. Instead, she went straight to the bathroom, head down, to shower. But the thought of how such unusual behavior might make him suspicious led her instead to the toilet, where she sat down, but with no results from either end. She examined her body, front and back, to make sure there were no telltale signs before she felt confident enough to leave the bathroom. Despite her fatigue, she put on an energetic show so her husband would not detect anything. But he did. Wondering why she was in such high spirits, he asked, “Have you been drinking? Your face is red.”
    Xiao Yanqiu’s heart skipped a beat. “You’re seeing things,” she said as lightly as she could manage.
    “No, it is red,” he insisted.
    The conversation was heading somewhere she didn’t like, so she changed the subject: “Where’s the girl?”
    “Went to bed a while ago.”
    She still couldn’t face him, for his gaze would have been her undoing. “Go on to bed. I’m going to take a shower.” She avoided the word, “sleep” but “go to bed” said the same thing. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that he was rubbing his hands gleefully. For no apparent reason, she felt a stabbing pain in her chest.
    Once in the shower, Xiao Yanqiu turned up the water until it nearly scalded her. That was what she wanted, to hurt herself. The pain, tangible and real, was mixed with a subtle pleasure, bordering on self-abuse. She let the water run as she rubbed herself vigorously, digging deep into her body with her fingers, as if wanting to extract something from it. Afterwards, she went into the living room to sit on the