--A Short Story by Angelica Liu

It was the first free afternoon for Professor Patterson. He had just finished all his work for the semester: grading final papers, submitting grades, department meetings... After months of academic drudgery, he could finally put these things behind and continue with Ryan’s life. At this moment, Ryan W. Patterson sat on his olive-colored sofa, waiting for a woman. His dog lay beside him languidly, not sensing this afternoon was any different from others. 

The two-seater sofa was backed against a sliding glass door that looked out onto a small patch of lawn, a narrow footpath leading to his front door, and, a little distance away, the residents’ parking lot. The sliding glass door, normally serving as a window instead of a door, was covered with white vertical blinds, the slats adjusted to a perfect angle so that Ryan, hiding behind the blinds, would not be visible to anyone walking past his door, but if he turned his head slightly and peered out through those carefully adjusted gaps, it was easy to see what was going on outside. The May sunshine gave everything a golden, dreamy glow. 

A quick thought flitted through his mind. Had such a moment ever happened before – a moment of passively waiting for a woman for whom his feelings were yet to be determined? Surely it must have happened, and it must have happened multiple times, but oddly enough, it always felt like the first time. It was the indefinability of the moment that made his heart race.     

Any minute now, under his watchful eyes, the woman whose name was Eileen would appear at the corner of the parking lot, walking down the winding footpath to his door. Her text had been sent to him a minute ago, “I’m on my way!” The tone was just like her normal speaking voice, filled with a clear, cheerful certainty. Ryan knew if Eileen had been “on her way,” she could appear in front of his door at any minute. The narrow footpath which he could see from behind the blinds wound through the leafy residential complex, weaving together a hundred or so small white-painted rental cottages. Each cottage featured a miniature front lawn, an interior staircase, two upstairs bedrooms and a downstair living room with a curtained sliding glass door in the front. Those identical-looking cottages, neatly arranged in rows, separated by green trees and small patches of lawn, comprised a peaceful village, a lovely community which provided temporary homes for people like Ryan, a new transplant from East Coast to California, and Eileen, a foreign graduate student in the nearby state university, at which Ryan taught. 

At first, they didn’t know they were neighbors. Eileen Su took Professor Patterson’s fiction writing class during her first semester. The class met once a week on Wednesday evenings in a classroom at the end of a long corridor that felt cool and damp all year round. Who was in that class? Were there any interesting characters? Did the students like his teaching? Ryan didn't remember any of that. He could only remember it was a small class, like most graduate classes, sparsely attended, easily managed but very dull. In the first class, as was customary for him, Professor Patterson invited each student to introduce themselves. It was then he had his first impression of Eileen Su, an Asian woman who introduced herself as a foreign student from China. It was her first time living in America, Su said, and before this she had never visited an English-speaking country, even though she studied English literature as her major in college. Her English pronunciation was a little stiff and had an exotic accent. Almost apologetically, she told him she might need some time to adjust, she might have a hard time keeping up with the pace of the class, and she still needed to improve her speaking and listening. However, she emphasized that her reading and writing were pretty good. After all, several of her articles had been published in English literary magazines even before she came here.         

“Don’t worry,” Ryan said, in the amiable voice of a caring professor, “I’m sure you will do great.” 

Nearly two years had passed. Ryan W. Patterson narrowed his eyes, trying to recall the very first moment he had put his eyes on Su. Her hairstyle seemed different than now. She looked more stylish, cooler, and a little more distant. There seemed to be an edge to her appearance that made her distinct even in a crowded room. There was a glow about her naked face, radiated not from the surface of her appearance, but from somewhere deeper. When she spoke, even with a strong accent, pausing every now and then in the middle of her sentences to find the right word, with her face tilted in an apologetic smile, you could sense she was sure about what she was going to say. Even when she was apologizing for her insufficiency, you could sense that she was not really sorry, and that she did not really think she was insufficient. 

And, when Ryan looked into her eyes as an encouraging professor, he was suddenly startled, and instinctively flinched, as if he had been burned by the gleam in her black eyes. It was as if his body reflexively drew back from the source of burning heat, as an instinct of self-protection. How old is she? He had been curious about that. But even at the first moment of seeing her, he had a vague idea that the eagerness and boldness in Su’s eyes had nothing to do with her physical age. 

Did he have any interest in her at that time, even merely the interest of a professor in one of his favorite students? No, not at all. Not in the first semester. That was his hardest time. He barely had any interest in anything. He was seeing a therapist, often late for his classes, and after class he would quickly retreat to his office, avoiding unnecessary contact with his students. Except for the mild tingling of his first eye contact with Eileen, for a long time, she had appeared to him only as an indifferent ordinary graduate student coming from China. 

Since when did things begin to change, and how?

Suddenly Ryan lunged forward, pressed his face against the blind, pushing the gap between the slats wider. On the farther side of the parking lot, a woman’s petite figure walked into his view, holding a plastic bag that appeared to be fully loaded, her eyes darting around as if searching for something. The dog —he was a small terrier with pointed ears and sensitive almond eyes—gave out a spasm of barking as Ryan bounded up from the sofa. Thrown out of his blissful detachment, and ignorant of why the afternoon had taken its sudden turn, the startled dog jumped off the edge of the sofa and onto the carpeted floor, yipping wildly.

As Ryan leapt to the door and threw it open, she was walking on the small section of the footpath that led to his door. His appearance immediately turned her questing look into a delightful smile, which, in Ryan’s eyes, made everything around them come alive: the leaves’ green and the dance of light, the beckoning gesture of the summer. 

“Hi, here you live,” she said.

Ryan smiled.   

*** 

What is it that I’m rushing towards? The question skimmed across Su’s brain, like a dragonfly skimming over the frothy water on a summer day. 

Adventure? Experiment? A start-off of a relationship?

But, isn’t it already there? A relationship simple and superficial, with clear boundaries?

So...what is this? What am I rushing into? Why not just stay within the boundaries? Where does it come from—this insatiable impulsive craving? Why would people (or just some of us?) always want to cross the border, to trespass, to peer over, to see what’s on the other side—beyond the border and below the surface, and why indulge the greed: can I know more of you, can I share more of your — even though I’m not in the position to?

But, light and springy as she glided along the narrow footpath, she didn’t seem to hesitate. A rosy flush appeared on her fine-featured face, and her dark eyes sparkled with excitement. As she carefully balanced the bag in her hand, she kept glancing around, lips slightly moving, reading the bold black numbers scribbled on the porch posts, which stood in the front of those lovely little houses she walked by. The farther she walked, the smaller the numbers grew. 

Riverfront Townhomes, a lovely rental community, was located at 101 Riverfront Street and, a bridge away from the State Univesrity. It was what Eileen Su called “home” for the two years she had been living in America. The little house she rented, unit 126, was close to one of the two major entrances. “You will first see a gate next to the rental manager’s office, but that’s not my gate. Please drive past it and park by the second gate. I will come out and open the gate for you,” time and time again, she had to instruct her friends coming to visit her for the first time, but time and time again, still some imprudent friends of hers would drive past, see the first gate happen to be open, rush in before it would close again, and find themselves trapped in the other half of the community.

“Yes. Yes. It’s quite confusing, isn’t it?” She would say to her friend on the phone, in a mock-complaining tone, while dashing to the other gate for her friend’s rescue. It would only take her a couple of minutes— getting out of the gate on her own side, walking east along the Riverfront Street to the other gate, opening it with her little remote control and getting her friend out. There were no driveways within the gated community. The farthest a car could go was the residents’ parking lot. There were two parking lots, one attached to the east gate, one to the west gate. The two parking lots were adjacent but connected only by a lawn, serving as the border which separated the community into two sides. Each side featured the same public facilities: a gate, a laundry room, a garbage dumping site. Theoretically speaking, a resident living in the west side will find no necessity to walk across the parking lots to the other side. But of course, if they want, they could just walk through the narrow winding footpath passing in the middle of the lawn. 

In the nearly two years she’d lived in Riverfront Townhomes, the necessity to walk to the other side had never occurred. She’d never wondered what the other side would look like, or who would live in the same-looking houses over there. The farthest she’d ever walked was to the swimming pool in the middle, shared by residents of both sides. But the pool had been drained for reconstruction, since the day she moved in.

What happened that made her walk down the path on the lawn, across the parking lots, and to the other side, with a blush of anticipation on her face?

That was a year ago. One day at noon, she’d just walked out of the gate on her side, heading out to the university, and saw a familiar figure coming out of the other gate, just a few steps ahead of her. It was Professor Patterson, the professor of her afternoon class. She was in his class a second time that semester, but it seemed more by chance than by choice. One of her registered courses was canceled at the last minute by the professor, so the English department sent them a list of substitute classes, among which only one name was familiar to her. Professor Patterson, she had taken his class before, in her first semester. It didn’t turn out to be a likeable experience. Professor Patterson was often late and barely communicated with his students. There was always a gloomy air about Professor Patterson, with his unkempt hair, the unruly beard that covered most of his face, his tall and heavy body, his slouching shoulders. Whenever Eileen saw him walk slowly and languorously across campus, she would think of the hulk of a wrecked ship drifting in the ocean with no land in sight.  But, at least his class was easy to pass. She remembered when she picked his class again she gave out a reluctant sigh.

“Professor Patterson! Professor Patterson!” She called him from behind, but he didn’t repond. She walked forward quickly and caught up as he stopped for the red light at the crossing. She tapped him on the back. The big bearded man jumped at a start, causing Eileen to jump as well.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

First there was a flurry of apologies, and then an outburst of laughter between them. Surprised, Eileen saw bright sparkles in Professor Patterson’s eyes as he laughed. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.” He smiled apologetically and took a pair of white earbuds off from his ears, putting them into a little white case.

“What are you listening?”

“Oh, just a recording of some scripts I wrote.”

“That’s interesting.” Eileen said, “but you must be very careful not to be hit by a passing car.”

They had almost missed the green light. When they walked abreast on the pedestrian crossing, the light turned red again. A speeding car honked at them furiously and they laughed again, jumping onto the safety island together.

“See? That’s my point.”

“Phew...what a mad driver!”

On the rest of the way they figured out they both lived in Riverfront Townhomes, but using different gates.

“I haven’t got my driver’s license, so I have to walk, but why don’t you drive to school?” Eileen asked.

“I’m more used to walking. Before I moved here, I lived in NewYork.”

Immediately it reminded Eileen of a time when she and a few other students sat in a Starbucks on campus, waiting for Professor Patterson’s evening class. One student put Professor Patterson’s name into the search engine on his laptop. Immediately a totally different version of Ryan. W. Patterson popped up, and everybody exclaimed: “Wow!” What appeared on the screen was not the brooding middle-aged Professor Patterson they knew, but a much younger man whose face, which looked both familiar and strange to them, was elated with the thrill of success. There was an enchanting gleam in his eyes, in his triumphant smiles, even in those dense dark curls buoyantly framing his face, giving him the look of a Shakespearean prince. Having won a big award as a playwright at the age of 26, which was 16 years ago, he’d lived quite an interesting life in New York, a life surrounded by shows and plays, awards and interviews. “Was that really him?” A confusing voice wondered. “What has happened to his life?” “Why did he end up here?” And at last, a smart-sounding voice concluded, “I think he peaked too early. That’s it!”

“There’s something I don’t understand,” Eileen said. They had crossed the bridge and were walking in the outer area of university, around residential students’ dormitory buildings and across their parking lots.

“What’s that?” He turned his head and looked down at Eileen, a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. For the first time Eileen noticed that his irises were a vulnerable China blue, with dark brown rims.

“Well, why do you alway look like that...” she stammered. Once again, her characteristic look of quest appeared on her slightly-tilt face, as if a bunch of words were swirling in front of her and clumsily she was trying to catch one. “You look like...you look like nothing could spark you any more...”

He laughed. Not the hollow, guttural sound she'd occasionally heard in his classes, but a deeper, slightly thoughtful laugh. "Spark..." He repeated the word playfully, without answering the question. “Are you going back to China in the summer?” He asked.

“Yes. My family is there.” She said. What family? He didn’t ask.

“That’s great. I don’t have much family left. My father died a few years ago, and I lost my mother just before I moved here.”

She was shocked, partly because of what he shared, partly because of the fact that he shared it with her, that he exposed his wounds to her. She didn’t know what to do and what to say. Anything she said or did would be inappropriate in the situation, except for the most superficial “oh...I’m really sorry.”

If they were friends, she could have given him a hug. But they were not friends. He was someone who she had to address as “Dear Professor Patterson” in the emails she wrote to him, with a subject like “Assignment#4 TV Writing.” In the social context that bound them together, friendship was taboo, even though they were close in age. His age was easy to discover — he was three years younger than her, but Eileen doubted that he knew her age.

However, now things had been different. Now she had graduated and his classes were over this semester. It was the third time she had taken his class, and this time by her own choice. In the last emails they exchanged, under the subject “The Final Project,” she had noticed his signature changed from “Professor Patterson” to “Ryan.”

After crossing two parking lots to the east side of Riverfront Townhomes, Eileen found everything here was amazingly similar. Rows of white-siding cottages were surrounded by trees and lawns, with winding footpaths running through them, extending to each door. At the corner of the parking lot was a steamy, humming laundry room, which smelled exactly the same as the one on her side.

Which one is No. 26? She looked closely at the numbers on the porch posts, and suddenly a door opened from the inside. There Ryan was, standing in the doorway at the end of the path she was walking on.

“Here you live.” She said and he smiled. There was a boyish clumsiness to his smile.

Eileen heard a dog barking inside.

***

“No, Finn. Stop!”

“No, Finn. Sit!”

The initial awkwardness, the fluster at seeing each other—in a dubious circumstance like this, was deflected by the little commotion caused by that agitated dog named Finn, which was barking and leaping and making restless circles around Eileen. Ryan tried to get between his dog and Eileen, but his bulky body was not as agile as Finn’s.

“Stop, Finn! Or I’ll send you upstairs,” and then he turned to look at Eileen, as if to request her opinion. “I can put him upstairs...”

“Oh no. It’s alright. Let him stay here with us.” Eileen laughed, bending down to the dog’s level so that she could see his damp brown eyes. She noticed that the little white terrier had very sensitive eyes. “Hey, Finn!” She spoke to the dog with a smile, “I’m your friend. Remember? I will not hurt you.”

A year ago she had said the same words to the same dog, not long after she ran into Professor Patterson on her way to the university. Once, she was walking across the parking lot toward the gate. A classmate of hers was waiting outside to pick her up for a reading event at a downtown bookstore. She was surprised at the sight of Professor Patterson walking his dog on the lawn between two parking lots. She’d heard of this dog many times in Professor Patterson’s class, but had never seen him before. Despite the hurry, she stopped to say “hi,” and the dog had been as agitated as he was now, yipping and jumping and wagging its tail hysteriously. “I’m sorry. He thought he could protect me.” Professor Patterson apologized on behalf of his dog, and they both laughed at the idea—an amusing idea at the vision of such a striking, funny contrast: the little edgy dog and his owner’s solid, towery figure. Eileen had also stooped to the dog and said the similar words, “Hey, I am your friend. I will not hurt you.”

Another time, Eileen took out the trash at night. The trash deposit site was at the back of the complex, near the foot of the river embankment. Just as she was about to cross the parking lot, two figures flashed past on the other side of the parking lot. They were heading east to the lawn that was the boundary between the two sides of the community. Eileen’s heart lurched at the glimpse of the curious pair. Tottering ahead was a little shadow tied to a leash, lunging forward so eagerly that the leash was strained tight. Following behind was a tall and bulky silhouette, holding the other end of the leash, stumbling ahead as if being dragged along. Did he see me? Should I call him? Something stopped her from calling out, something in his panic steps, almost like fleeing. Before she could make up her mind, they’d fled into the darkness.

After that encounter, Professor Patterson never showed up again on Eileen’s side of the community, at least as far as she could tell.

As their eyes met Finn hesitated and held back. He turned around to a big cage which was placed against the wall, next to the olive-colored sofa. Ryan strode forward and unlatched the cage door. The dog walked meekly into it, and resigned himself for the rest of the afternoon to quietly lying on a small pad inside. 

“I think he’s just excited...” Eileen straightened up and said.

“Oh, no no no. Not like that... The vet said he’s having a toothache. I am sure that’s the reason...”

Eileen cast a quizzical glance at Ryan. She noticed a subtle shift in his tone, a fleeting alertness, a sudden edginess. Not until her last semester did Eileen begin to notice now and then an occasional slip from Professor Patterson’s normal and public persona, as if his suppressed self suddenly slipped through the dominant public image. Subtle and sudden-appearing incongruities in him that her eyes wouldn’t register a year ago, but now she seemed always looking for. Once it occurred in class, when he suddenly screwed up his face and made a grimace. Eileen gathered that could be the face of Ryan, generally hidden behind the older and unrevealing face of Professor Patterson. Another time it happened in their emails. Under the topic of “Letter of Recommendation,” Eileen, with an explosion of emotion, wrote about how much she thought she’d benefited from Professor Patterson’s class. His reply came sooner than usual, “Thank you, Eileen. This really means a lot to me. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this email. I need some encouragement tonight.” Eileen was sitting on her carpet, hugging a soft cushion and reading emails from her laptop. Her back comfortably leaned against a bean bag chair under the curtained slide door, where in Ryan’s living room there was an olive-colored sofa. It was a rainy autumn night. Eileen wrote back immediately, and for the first time she didn’t call him “Dear Professor.” “Hey,” she wrote, “I hope you are feeling better. Tonight is not a good weather for being down.” In the back of her brain, she pictured his solitary figure, sloppily dressed, slump-shouldered, trapped in a small house that looked much the same as hers, just a few steps away. A middle-aged ohphan with a full beard, she thought with a surge of maternal tenderness, wishing she could do something for this man. The next day, before his class started she got another email from him — this time she recognized Professor Patterson’s tone. “Thanks Eileen. I just have a head cold. I’ll be feeling better soon! Best.” Weeks had passed, when Eileen happened to run into Professor Patterson out of the classroom, and without thinking she threw him the banal question “How are you?” To her surprise, he answered with sincerity. “Thank you. I’m much better.”

Something about Ryan’s room caught Eileen’s attention. Not how it looked like—there was not much to take in from the way it looked. Unlike Eileen’s home, which was crowded with books, cushions, plants and framed pictures, Rayon’s place was clean and stark, somewhat similar to Finn’s dog crate. The only striking furniture was the olive-colored sofa, facing a flat-screen television hung on the wall above the fireplace. Eileen had a fireplace of the same design in the same place. It was an original feature to the rental house, but she didn’t have a TV. The wall above her fireplace was adorned with an artistic painting she’d discovered in a thrift store.

But no, it was something else that caught her attention. A faint sweet aroma in the room. In the center of a white porcelain plate on the mantel, she saw a burning scented candle. There was something else, too, as vague as the candle scent, a nearly imperceptible strain of soft melody floating from somewhere that was kept out of view. Eileen was touched, but all she said was: “Yeah. It’s totally the same.” She rapidly scanned the whole downstairs before heading to the dinning room.

The so-called dining room was merely a small space between the living room and the kitchen, just big enough to accommodate a rectangular dining table. Eileen carefully put the plastic bag on the table — a very plain table with brown wooden legs and a coarse-looking metal tabletop with no tablecloth covering it. Eileen began to take things out of the bag, foods that she’d just cooked in her kitchen — Chinese radish soup, broccoli and chicken, Cantonese roast duck, packed in cute colorful PVC boxes. Ryan followed her to the table and stood there watching. “Wow. These are amazing!” Every time Eileen opened a box, he exclaimed as if a young boy who’d never seen the world. 

“Do you need anything? Plates?Forks? Would you like some wine?” He sprang into the kitchen, opening and closing the cupboard doors.

“I brought wine, too. Two glasses please.”

Eileen noticed a wine rack on the side table containing a collection of wines and liquor, next to an ice bucket. Who would he open these bottles with, and in what occasion?

What Eileen had brought was actually not wine, but a fruit-flavored alcoholic beverage, a Japanese brand she and her women friends most liked to drink when she was in China.

First the efforts to calm the anxious dog, then suddenly the domestic scene, they felt their initial befuddlement slowly lulled into a reassuring joy, as if the moment would last as long as they wanted. Before, as he sat on his olive-colored sofa waiting, he had wondered with mixed emotions, What should we do? How long will she stay? He had no answer to these questions, which made the waiting even more exciting.

The two of them hadn’t discussed it beforehand. Eileen had suggested it during her visit to his office last week. That was his last office hours of the semester. “This would be our last official meeting,” she said gravely, as soon as she sat down across the desk from him, “and I’m trying to figure out how we keep touch in the future.”

Professor Patterson looked at Su. How old is she? He was curious again. There was something unusual about her. She could speak in a manner that was serious and heedless at once, and she had a look that both had a girlish boldness but had a mature woman’s poise. He wondered whether it was her foreignness that made her different from the rest. There was always a mysterious mist about her, an exotic personal past that was beyond his imagination.

“Of course, of course.” Professor Patterson tore off a piece of paper from a notepad near him. He scribbled down every way she could reach out to him: his personal phone number, his personal email address, his Facebook account. Eileen watched him. There was a childishness to his handwriting— he writes left-handed. There was a childishness to his thick big fingers, and the white and ragged edges of his round fingernails. Did he bite at those fingernails?

The only thing he didn’t write down was his address, which she had already known. Eileen folded the piece of paper with professor Patterson’s personal information on it, slipped it into a book and put the book into her bag. Then, she stood up as if her mission had been fulfilled. But, before she left, she politely inquired, “I am thinking of paying you a visit sometime, as a neighbor, and I hope we can do it before you leave for the summer. Is that alright?”

Thus, in a quasi-official way, they had their first personal meeting arranged, at 5 pm next Monday, the evening before Ryan would leave for his summer. Even though his parents were no longer alive, still he kept the habit of spending the summer in their old house in Montana.

Ryan was touched that Eileen had prepared for the meeting with such thoughtfulness. Foods are always soothing, and the act of eating itself relaxed their nerves. They began to chat like old friends, starting from literature and writing, from their favorite writers, and to the program they were both involved in. He wanted to know who she’d come close to in the program, and whether she was still seeing them even after the program had ended. He seemed to frown when Eileen told him she’d regularly go out writing with some writing groups downtown, and then smiled hearing that now she’d dropped from most writing groups and preferred writing in solitude. They talked about their respective plans for the upcoming summer. Ryan was planning to travel to several cities across United States. He had a new film and a documentary to shoot, one in June and one in July. “How exciting! Sounds much more fun than teaching!” Eileen commented, feeling happy for Ryan.

“How about you? Are you going back to China?”

“Of course I am going back home. But I haven’t decided the specific day yet. I don’t like making plans...”

“Do you want to go back?”

“I have to.”

“Are you the only child?”

“Yes, I am.”

“So am I!” At first, Eileen couldn’t understand Ryan’s excitement. Most of her peers in China were the only child, and she’d always enjoyed being the only child. It dawned on her only later, that being an only child must have meant something different to Ryan. Perhaps as a young boy he would always feel a little different from other kids, a little lonely.

Then suddenly Ryan ventured, “How old are you?”

Eileen paused, looking up at him with bright eyes. She was not surprised at all, just a bit amused by his boldness. I was going to share with him more about me, about my past, about who I am in the other reality. She had thought of this on her way here, because it’s a step you cannot get around if you try to establish a personal relationship with someone, even for a short-term relationship, even in such an alienated place. She had indulged herself with the privilage of anomity since she was in United States. She was merely a transient visitor to their world, thus being entitled to living in a perfect tense of present. People knew her purely as her being here and now. No one, except for only a few who she gradually bonded with, ever showed interest in knowing about her past. But obviously, now here was a man who wanted and requested to know more about her. She knew she couldn’t get it around, so she had prepared to be open with him. What she was going to tell him would make all the difference.

“I am...”

She didn’t finish the sentence because Ryan interrupted her almost immediately.

“You are 45 years old, and you were born in nineteen seventy nine,”

Eileen was startled. There was something in Ryan’s eyes, something bordering between zestfulness and craziness. It was like a sudden explosion of his other self, the one generally hidden beneath the surface of Professor Patterson. He recited her year of birth with such an eager fluency, as if it were something smoldering inside for a long time and now he had to get rid of it.

“How did you know...” Eileen stammered.

“It’s in your Facebook profile.”

“Well...I did’t realize...I don’t even use my Facebook account.”

“I was born ...” Ryan continued, and this time Eileen interrupted him.

“I know how old you are, you are two years younger than me...”

Ryan smiled. He didn’t appear as shocked as Eileen had been. 

“Do you have any kids?”

“I have a boy, 18 years old. He’s going to college in the fall, Boston University.”

“Wow.” Ryan was shocked. Even knowing her age, still he was stricken by the fact that she had an adult son. It was hard enough to connect her with a mother. She seemed to live such an independent, carefree life, the happiest person he had ever known of his age who seemed to truly enjoy a solitary life. Once he took an adventure, taking Finn to the western side of the complex. He had been curious about the other side every since he knew Eileen was living there. It was late night. He thought he would be safe. But just as they headed back to their own side, a door was open across the parking lot from them, and a woman’s petite figure appeared at the suddenly lighted doorway. His heart knocked violently in his chest. Impulsively he lowered his head and dared not to glance in that direction. But before he could turned his eyes away, he had recognized her characteristic bouncy steps, and heard her humming merrily. God! Why is this woman always so happy?

A beat of silence, and then Ryan said, “So, you were married.” Not a question, but a statement. Ryan himself was once married but it didn’t last long. He had a girlfriend a year after his divorce, but it was also a short relationship. No kid. No parents. He was totally alone.

Slowly Eileen replied, “No. I am married.”

They looked at each other, across the table. There was a stillness in the air.

“You ARE married?” Finally Ryan responded. How could that be possible?

“Yes. One day I will go back to China. ” What Eileen was really thinking was —It’s only a vacation to me—the life I’m living here and now is a life within a life, a bracketed life, but one day it will expire, and I will have to return to my real life that is out of the brackets. When the clock strikes midnight, Cinderella will lose her magic slipper.

“What did your husband do?”

“He’s a banker. He’s the general manager of a local bank in China.”

“Did he ever visit you since you were here?”

“No, he cannot. Because of his position, he cannot freely go abroad.”

“Oh...” Ryan found himself speechless. He could not think of any more questions.

They had almost finished their dinner. Most of the plates were empty now. Silently they began to clear the table together. Ryan sat closer to the steel trash can. Eileen passed the plates to him so that he could scrape off the remains into the can. They did this slowly, and scarcely exchanged any words. A casual observer might have mistaken them for a married couple who had done this as a daily routine. With the table now cleared, they sat stiffly and exchanged a look. As if an agreement was made in that look, Eileen began to put all the boxes she had brought back into the plastic bag. Ryan stood up from the table. “I’ll walk you home,” he said, like a gentleman.

They walked back along the footpath Eileen had taken. This was the first time they had walked together along the path. They talked while they walked. Ryan told Eileen he had to sell the old house his mother left him. He had to move on. “My aunt will not be happy about it.” He said, “but I have to...I want to settle down here, to start a new life.”

Eileen listened, not knowing what to say. At that moment, they happened to walk past a little house that looked exactly like their own. Normally, the curtains on those windows would be drawn. But this house was different. The window of the second-floor bedroom was not curtained, completely revealing its interior to passers-by. For a second, they stood very close to the window, and it was not very high. They could almost see everything inside, and feel the breath of the life that was going on in that room. There was a TV on the wall opposite to the bed, some colorful images flashed on the screen. An orange mountain bike was leaning against the chest of drawers below the TV. Some unfolded clothes were scattered on the bed. Eileen’s heart beat fast. There was an intimacy about this glimpse, almost tantatizing. Standing in such a proximity to someone else’s life, you cannot resist the impulse to glimpse in. But within a second they had passed it, and Eileen felt both a relief and a pang of loss.

“I believe you will make the right decision,” Eileen heard herself say, when they finally stopped in front of her house.

“You live here?” Ryan glanced over and recognized the door.

“Yes.”

Ryan leaned over and gave Eileen a hug as a goodbye. It was a formal hug, as if he had tried very hard not to really touch her. It was also awkward, given the huge difference in their height. Gently and hesitatingly, Ryan put his long arms around Eileen’s shoulders, his beard brushing against the crown of her hair. To Eileen, as his giant figure loomed over her, the light in front of Eileen’s eyes was blotted out, as if she were stricken by a momentary blindness.

“It was nice seeing you tonight.”

“Have a wonderful trip tomorrow.”

They turned around almost at the same time. Ryan walked back toward the borderline between the two sides of their complex. Eileen reached for her key and unlocked the door.

Neither of them thought to look back.