The club sits on the twenty-ninth floor of an office tower; after nine at night it turns away walk-ins. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows the whole city glows, cell by cell lit up, as if someone had pried the stars loose and laid them out on concrete. In the poolroom only the pendant lamps hang low over the felt; the green cloth looks damp under them, and when the cue ball rolls across it leaves a faint, shallow track.
【Zhou Yan · Poolroom Regular】When she walked in, the cue in my hand froze halfway through the air.
Her name was Chi Wan; the title the club gave her was billiards coaching assistant. But anyone could tell she wasn’t the sort who pours tea and fetches things. She had once stood on the revolving platform at auto shows, and danced the warm-up sets at night clubs — trades that had calibrated a woman’s body into a blade. One meter seventy, and in stiletto heels she pushed close to one-eighty; her long legs came out from under a cropped black blazer, sheathed in a layer of stockings so thin they gleamed, drawn from ankle all the way to the crease of her thigh, so taut that even the weave of the fabric caught a faint, watery sheen under the lamps.
She bent to bridge her cue. That narrow skirt was stretched to near-splitting by her upthrust rear, two round halves pushing up, the hem cutting into the cleft and tracing a deep, straight groove. She sighted her shot, weight pressed onto her front leg, the back leg locked straight, the line of her calf running all the way down to the stiletto. Every man in the room stopped watching the game and watched that half of her behind.
【Chi Wan · Inner Voice】I knew where they were looking. Since I was twenty I have lived inside other people’s gazes; one turn on the revolving platform and hundreds of eyes below pressed onto me like hands. I learned long ago to treat those gazes as light — shine on me, make me glow, and nothing more.
【Chi Wan · Inner Voice】Boss Shen wires a sum into my card every month, enough that I never have to bend over to light anyone’s cigarette. He runs a factory in another city, flies in two or three times a month, and the rest of the days he keeps me like the lock screen on his phone — pretty, quiet, his. What he doesn’t know is that a thing kept on a shelf can go to mold too. The lock screen looks good while it’s lit; when it goes dark, behind the glass there is only black.
Zhou Yan was a regular in this poolroom. Early thirties, shirtsleeves rolled to the forearm, a watch on his wrist that was understated but held the room. He didn’t say much while he played, but every time it was my turn to demonstrate, he’d rest his cue across the table and stand very close — close enough that I could smell the faint cedar on him mixed with menthol cigarettes.
【Zhou Yan · Poolroom Regular】I taught her a reverse-english stroke — though the truth is she plays better than I do. I only wanted a pretext to stand behind her, my hand laid over the hand that held her cue. Her hand was cool, nails cleanly trimmed, painted a nearly transparent nude. The instant I pressed close, she didn’t pull away.
His chest was against my back, his breath falling on that small patch of skin behind my ear. I held my bridge, my eyes fixed on the cue ball, but all my attention was on that hand of his laid over mine. He made no extra move — just held my wrist loosely, teaching me how to put force into the stroke. Yet that restraint burned hotter instead — far hotter than the men who grab at your rear the moment they arrive.
【Chi Wan · Inner Voice】Something in me was plucked like a string. Not because he was so handsome, but because it had been so long since a man came this close to me and still pretended not to cross the line. The last time Boss Shen touched me was nineteen days ago. Nineteen days — a kept woman counts the days as they pass.
When the demonstration was done he stepped back half a pace and handed the cue back to me, his fingertips resting on the back of my hand for one second. He said, Teacher Chi, some other day let me take you out for a drink, just the two of us. His tone was light, light enough to sound offhand. But he knew, and I knew, that it wasn’t about the drink.
【Zhou Yan · Poolroom Regular】She didn’t agree, and she didn’t refuse. She took the cue back, bent her head, and went on practicing that reverse-english stroke — the long legs under the stockings drawn straight again, the rear tipping up toward me again. That is not the posture of refusal. That is a door left ajar.
That night after work I ran into her in the elevator. From the twenty-ninth floor to the ground is a long way. In the sealed, mirrored car, the two of us, neither said a word. She stood with her back against the mirror, blazer open, and beneath it a black bandeau held her breasts firmly, its upper edge pressing out a soft ridge, the two swells rising and falling faintly under the thin fabric with her breath. She looked at me, and looked at me in the mirror too — she was on every side of me.
【Chi Wan · Inner Voice】When the elevator dropped to the seventh floor, I sent Boss Shen a message. Husband, get to bed early. Once it was sent I flipped my phone face-down into my bag. In the second the screen went dark, I lifted my eyes to Zhou Yan. I didn’t know what I was waiting for — maybe just for someone to push open the door I had left ajar.
The elevator reached the bottom; the doors opened. He stepped out first, walked two paces, and turned back. Want me to see you home? I picked up my bag and followed him out, my heels striking the marble, one beat after another, as if counting out my own way of retreat. And yet I didn’t take a single step back.
【Zhou Yan · Poolroom Regular】That day I didn’t see her all the way home, only to the ground floor. Before she got out of the car, I took her hand and pressed it, still the same, no extra move. I said, I know a crowd of friends; some other day we’ll go sing together — you come. She said all right. Just those two words. But I knew that inside that “all right” was hidden everything that came after.
【Chi Wan · Inner Voice】Back at the apartment, I took off my makeup and looked in the mirror at that face which had been shot by countless lenses. I poured myself a drink. My phone lit up on the table — Boss Shen had answered: Good girl, wait for me to come back next week. I stared at those words a long time. Wait for you to come back. But I couldn’t wait until next week. The crack was already open; the wind was pouring in.
【Zhou Yan · Poolroom Regular】Three days later I made a group chat and pulled her into it. Apart from her, everyone in it was someone I knew. I didn’t tell her that what she was stepping into wasn’t a night of singing — it was a larger sheet of felt spread out for her: green, waiting for someone to set his bridge.
【Chi Wan · Inner Voice】I watched the string of strange avatars pop up in the group, my heart beating light and quick. I should have left. A woman kept by a man, with someone else’s money sitting in her card, ought to hold on to that scrap of dignity. But I didn’t leave. I picked out an even shorter skirt for myself, and when I tried it on I turned once before the mirror to look at that upturned half of my rear. I said to the woman in the mirror, just once. Every woman who ever fell in lied to herself the same way, the first time.