Petals from the Sky by Mingmei Yip Page B

me to have something to eat before I take you home?” he asked awkwardly, our bodies pressing against each other in the lobby swarming with people.
    We walked back to the Kowloon Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui in silence. Once inside the lobby, Michael led me to the counter to check whether he had messages.
    He did.
    “Damn!”
    “What’s wrong, Michael?”
    “I don’t know, but it’s urgent. I need to return the call immediately.”
    “I’ll take a taxi home then.”
    “No…”
    “Don’t worry, Michael. It’s just a ten-minute ride.”
    “No. I can’t let you go home by yourself,” he said, his voice full of concern and tenderness, breaking my heart.
    But I insisted repeatedly until he gave in.
    Michael hailed a taxi in front of the hotel and helped me get in. The door closed with a disheartening thump. I turned to him and our eyes locked.
    When the taxi started to take off, he mouthed, “Take care. I love you.”
    His face was lost among a crowd thronging toward the entrance. My heart hurt with such a swelling emptiness that I wanted to cry, but no tears came.
    Did I really want the life of the empty gate?

12
    The Nun and the Prostitute
    I didn’t hear from Michael the next morning. Finally, just before eleven (his flight was scheduled to leave at two-thirty), I called the Kowloon Hotel, but the receptionist told me that he had already checked out. However, a letter had been left for me.
    I got out of the taxi at the entrance to the Kowloon Hotel, hurried to the counter, took the letter from the receptionist, tore it open, and stood in the lobby to read.
Dear Meng Ning,
Professor Fulton has suddenly fallen very sick while visiting a temple in Lhasa. I had to take a flight to Sichuan at six AM , the only way I can connect to Lhasa today. I believe things will turn out fine, so please don’t worry. I’ll call you as soon as I can.
Love,
Michael
    By myself in the lobby, I tried very hard to stifle tears as I watched tourists—faces beaming and laughing as if mocking my misery—whirling in and out of the hotel’s glass door.

    A week had gone by and I still hadn’t heard anything from Michael. I thought again of Yi Kong and realized I had not inquired about her since my visit to her in the hospital. I decided to make a trip to the Golden Lotus Temple.
    Walking down the sunny corridor lined with potted plants leading to Yi Kong’s office, I ran into a young nun clasping a stack of files in her arms and asked her about Yi Kong. She told me, with chin pressed to the folders to keep them from falling, that her mistress had flown to Shanxi to invite high monks to come to bless the Fragrant Spirit Temple after the fire.
    I asked about the damage caused.
    “Everything’s fine,” she said, her tone casual. “Except that the whole five thousand three hundred and twenty sutras of the Tripitaka were burnt to ashes.”
    “I’m so sorry!”
    A meaningful smile flashed on the nun’s face. “But doesn’t Yi Kong Shifu always teach us that everything in this world is transient?”
    An awkward pause, then she said, “Miss, before you leave, please take a look at our new Tang dynasty–style temple complex, which took Yi Kong Shifu five years to achieve.” After that, she lumbered down the corridor and disappeared down the stairs.
    I wandered about the temple complex, stopping here and there to try to figure out the locations of the old places I’d been familiar with before I’d left to study in Paris. Construction was going on all over the place. Half-finished buildings, surrounded by bamboo scaffoldings and green mesh, looked imposing but vulnerable, like huge bandaged animals. Thick-torsoed workmen in yellow hard hats, shorts, and soaked T-shirts or bodies bared to the waist, toiled with intense concentration—cementing a foundation, plastering a wall, hammering a beam, pushing a cart piled with bricks. Sweat dripped down their deeply tanned faces; their tightly muscled arms flexed and gleamed under the