There was a fine drizzle, perhaps better described as a mist that hovered in the air, hot for April, not quite falling, floating up even. The taxi's engine hummed, the screen of Lady Zhao's phone lit her face unflatteringly, she jiggled her legs in nerves and impatience â the taxi was barely moving.
"Look," said Lady Zhao turning to Ander, flashing him with a picture message, "my friend Bingbing â she says this is her last self-picture ever." She then something muttered about Bingbing's clothes, about Bingbing's hair â how could Bingbing commit suicide with makeup like that, she puzzled â before stirring up an altercation with the driver. Lady Zhao, it seemed, had suddenly realized the traffic was the driver's fault, their lack of progress also his fault, and after some shouting in a local slang Ander understood none of (his Mandarin just allowing him to survive), she threw some fifties on the floor and told Ander to evacuate the vehicle, even though they appeared to be getting to where the gridlock ended.
They walked to a metro station, rode the metro, exited near Jingan Temple, Lady Zhao now barefoot and holding her heels up by her shoulders like a cigarette, striding purposefully, and pledging in deteriorating English never to give someone who lived so far from a subway station her WeChat because they caused trouble like this.
"Who is Bingbing?" Lady Zhao wondered rhetorically. "She is not even a close friend. She is at best a Best Behavior Friend. I have met her twice only, maybe three times, thirty minutes maximum, in a big group, lots of loudmouths for distraction. And I am supposed to talk her out of jumping from her apartment window? Buddha is punishing me."
Perhaps Buddha was being cruel, Ander concurred, as they arrived at the building to discover the elevators were out of order â all four of them. The two climbed the dark stairwell, Ander feeling exhausted since the leisure of unfettered self management meant he had totally screwed up his body clock. Lady Zhao only got more irritable with every step, with every out lamp, with every ping of her phone, and cursed louder and louder until she was told off by a woman sitting on the steps peeling carrots at midnight. Lady Zhao called at her, "Hurry up and drop dead," though soon after, she accepted the criticism and kept quiet until floor thirteen-B.