The Painter of Shanghai by Jennifer Cody Epstein Page B

the comment a joke. ‘It’s the orange silk,’ she says, stepping over, running her hands down Jinling’s arms. ‘That’s the flame. See? And the purple is smoke. Take off the shawl, and poof .’ She blows lightly in Jinling’s ear. ‘You’ve blown yourself out.’
    The top girl giggles and squirms. ‘I’ll be late tonight,’ she says. ‘But wait for me – I want to see you.’ She turns once more to leave, then pauses. ‘I’ve an errand to do tomorrow after lunch. Come with me?’
    Yuliang is actually looking forward to washing her hair tomorrow. But she hears herself saying, ‘All right.’ Just as she always does when Jinling asks her for a favor: Can I borrow the dragon? or Can you embroider this bag with a lotus? She watches her friend’s figure flicker around the corner. What, she wonders, will it be this time? A new dress she needs advice on? An unplanned trip to the palm-reader? Or perhaps, for once, a surprise for her – for Yuliang?
    From downstairs the call comes: Master Feng for Miss Yuliang. Yuliang winces and twists the ring on her finger. Feng Yitmieng comes once a month, when his business is good. A small man with thin white legs he saws over hers, he reminds her of a cricket in mating season.
    ‘He’s very down-to-earth, for gentry,’ Jinling says the next day, as they zip along on their appointed errand. ‘He comes out with all sorts of things that surprise me.’
    ‘Like what?’ Yuliang asks. She grasps her seat as the rickshaw swerves to avoid what appears to be a pile of rags. But as they pass, bits of flesh and shriveled limbs take shape in it, and a head turns toward her weakly. The face is as dark and as crisscrossed with cracks as old leather. With a jolt, Yuliang also sees that it looks a bit like Xiaochen.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ the boy calls. He doesn’t look more than twelve, but his bare back is a mosaic of scars and dirt. His jacket is rolled under the girls’ feet as an added amenity. Yuliang and Jinling splay their legs to avoid it: it is crawling with lice.
    ‘Did you see that?’ Yuliang asks.
    ‘See what?’
    But the woman is already behind them. And to mention her breaks an unsaid rule: when girls disappear, you act as though you never knew them. So Yuliang just shakes her head and turns her gaze back to the street.
    At least she knows where they’re going now: they are riding to Jinling’s jeweler. The top girl has her jewelry box in her little blue bag. She wants to sell some things and to have others appraised. She hasn’t told Yuliang
    why, although Yuliang has a sinking sense that she knows already. Moodily, she lets her friend babble on about the new client she’s cultivating, the second son of a high-up family from town.
    ‘The way he talks, for example. He comes up with the funniest curses.’
    ‘Really.’ Yuliang can’t keep the skepticism from her voice. She doesn’t enjoy it , she tells herself. She never really enjoys it. After all, isn’t that what Jinling herself says? You’re only really a whore if you enjoy it … At least, with the men.
    ‘I think he’s a populist,’ Jinling adds, and frowns. ‘Or was it anarchist?’
    ‘There’s a difference,’ Yuliang says. ‘Populists are for the people. Anarchists are for nothing at all.’
    It’s something Yuliang’s uncle explained to her once, although, as with many things Wu Ding explained, she’s never been sure of its accuracy. Still, Jinling slaps her arm with feigned annoyance. ‘You always make me feel like such a simpleton. How on earth do you know these things?’ She laughs. ‘Anyway, it’s all only about fashion in the end, isn’t it? About word fashion. It’s strange, isn’t it?’ she adds thoughtfully. ‘Men can change what they’re called. They can say, “I’m a populist,” and people will call them that. And yet we can call ourselves anything – singers, entertainers, taxi dancers. In the end, they’ll always call us whores.’
    They’re unusually bitter