"I sent a message to all my followers. One hundred and eighty. I said I will die tonight, I will jump onto the concrete below, nearly twenty floors, I will become a puddle of blood and guts. Only you came. Only you two." There was more sobbing, a burst of hyperventilation; then, breathing normally once more, Bingbing fixed her watery eyes on Lady Zhao and said with grave candor, "You are my number one friend." Turning to Ander, whom she had not met before, she affirmed, "You are my number two friend."
They agreed to stay the night at Bingbing's request, to keep her company, to keep bad spirits at bay. Bedding down at the foot of a sprawling bed with admirable pragmatism for a woman in a linen dress, Lady Zhao reassured Bingbing that there were many more eligible men in Shanghai, that to prove her skepticism wrong, Bingbing should join them for a group dinner the next day at which there would be several bachelors of high quality.
Ander, gathering some sheets for a night on the living room floor, proposed he let Lady Zhao and Bingbing go to this dinner without him, citing, in his view, Lady Zhao's tendency to socialize with intolerable people â this despite the two being friends since the summer school program they had met at four years earlier. Now in their late twenties, Ander's worst characteristics of sloth and self-sabotage had only magnified in the wake of two major calamities in his life. He was feeling socially lazy.
"Wecan talk about this in the morning. But you should go, Ander. Why wouldn't you?Staying indoors as much as you have this past week is bad for your health. That's what my fortuneteller tells me."