"Where have you been?" Lady Zhao asked, waking up, peeling herself from the corridor walls, almost immediately scowling.
"What are you doing out here?"
"I left my keys and purse at work and couldn't get them. You were supposed to be back seven hours ago." Lady Zhao was on her feet and swinging her right leg at Ander, saying it was repayment for him kicking her. She decried the little time they had before Bingbing would be there, before they would all be setting off for the temples on Dar-For Mountain.
"Maybe we shouldn't go. I feel awful... Neither of us are packed or well rested. It would be best for both of us."
Lady Zhao chose first to swear graphically and at length to herself. She then asked Ander rhetorically why the Big Bang had created so many idiots (him included), before regaining composure, agreeing that having so little sleep the night before a long trip wasn't ideal, and insisting that both she and he were OK, absolutely OK. Of course they were not â her spine felt like it had been permanently and painfully realigned, and Ander wore the complexion of a prisoner of war. So Ander fell back to his true position of not wanting to go, to which she asked why he was travelling at all if he repeatedly showed so much reluctance to do anything. After Ander offered the compromise of "letting" her and Bingbing enjoy themselves on a weekend jaunt away from the city without him, Lady Zhao, once again looking ferocious, then implied it might not be worth her goodwill to let him stay in her apartment while she was away. Perhaps he shouldn't continue staying with her at all for the rest of his trip.
Ander had underestimated Lady Zhao's resolve, her commitment to this trip. He had also overestimated his ability to be stubborn in the face of potential economic sanctions. Shocked by the rapid escalation, by the prospect of paying Shanghai hotel or even hostel rates for more than a month, Ander quickly capitulated, said he didn't realize it meant so much to Lady Zhao, and that now he was aware of how she felt, of course he would go. But he then added, in the sheepish retort of a vanquished and out-maneuvered combatant, that he was rather insulted, if he was going to be honest with her, which he surely could only be at such an obscene hour, that she would set fire to their friendship over this small issue.
"It is not a small issue," growled Lady Zhao.