【Guan Xiaoman · Wife】
While Fang Yu was in the shower, his phone buzzed three times on the dining table. The screen lit up, a WeChat pop-up: Tingting: “You coming tonight or not? I’m still holding that bottle of nail polish for you.”
I’m twenty-seven, been streaming womenswear for three years. He’s thirty, sells cars at a dealership, second year since we got our marriage certificate. His passcode is my birthday. I typed it in without hesitating.
I scrolled the chat upward, four months of it. The back room of the nail salon, Hanting room 1206, “My wife streams till midnight, I have to be back by eleven thirty.” One message from him: “Once she’s live she doesn’t hear a thing. Relax.” And a voice message I didn’t tap, because if I did, he’d see the red dot was gone.
I stood by the table and put the phone back exactly where it had been, screen down, the way he’d left it. The shower stopped. The bathroom door clicked.
I didn’t go into the bedroom. I turned into the corner of the living room walled off with clothes racks and fill lights, flipped on the ceiling light, twisted the three fill lights on one by one. In the mirror my eyelids were swollen. I patted them twice with a powder puff; if it didn’t flatten them, screw it. Phone on the stand, account “Sister Man Womenswear,” go live.
【Fang Yu · Husband】
I came out toweling my hair and the living room was already bright as daylight. Xiaoman was sitting in front of the camera with the fill lights on her face, hanging up puffer jackets, sliding them onto the rack one after another. The moment she went live, something in my chest let go.
“A customer at the store insists on picking up his car tonight. I have to run over.” “Go, then.” She didn’t turn around. Her hands kept hanging jackets.
Tingting had been going on four months. Her nail salon is on the street across from our dealership. I went in once for a phone screen protector, and that was how it started. When Xiaoman streams it’s like clocking in at a job: four hours straight, eyes only on the screen. I walk in and out and she never looks up. Sometimes I feel like this apartment is the same with her in it or not.
The phone was on the dining table. I picked it up, screen down, the way I’d left it. Tingting’s message sat at the top of WeChat, unopened. I replied “half an hour,” then tapped the voice message, listened to half of it, closed it.
Before I left I glanced at her. She was shouting at the camera: “Fam, this one’s ninety-percent white duck down, a hundred and eighty grams of fill, plenty for a Northeast winter!” Broadcast voice. Not the one she uses on me.
Last year she had me turn on location sharing, said she worried when I was out chasing customers. I turned it on and never turned it off. Hers is on too, the little green dot at home every day. I trust that.
In the elevator I replied to Tingting: “Ring the bell when I’m there.” She sent back a tongue-out face. Tingting’s twenty-nine, runs the salon alone, a beauty bed in the back room, pull the curtain and it’s a room of its own. I shoved the phone in my pocket and did the math: leave at eleven thirty, home before twelve, she hasn’t signed off yet. Four months of the same math. Never off once.
【Guan Xiaoman · Wife】
The door shut and I switched my voice back. “Fam, that was my other half, heading out on business. Let’s keep going.” The chat: Sister Man, your husband looks sharp. I said, “Sharp my ass. That’s just how he looks.”
Three hundred-some viewers tonight, fewer than usual; that’s the late show for you. I sold harder than I do in the daytime, ninety-yuan puffers knocked down to seventy-nine, and after every color sold out I took a sip of water, the cup off camera, where nobody could see my hand shaking.
Someone in the chat asked: Sister Man, why are your eyes puffy? I said, “Cried at a drama last night, so what, not allowed?” Someone else: what drama? I said, “None of your business. You buying or not? If not, quit stirring up my chat.” They laughed, and after laughing they ordered.
Ten twenty, Beifeng came in.
Beifeng is the top gifter in my room, six months running, there every night. He never drops anything big, a few little hearts a night, same every time, like punching a clock. Whenever he comes in I greet him: “Brother Beifeng’s here, busy today?” He types: “Doing the books.”
Ten forty, a sports car drove in from the left side of the screen. Engine going vroom, red, headlights flashing twice, sliding left to right, a line of text trailing behind it: Beifeng sent Sports Car ×1.
The chat exploded. Before I could even get the thank-you out, a second one. A third. Vroom, vroom, vroom. One after another, the tail of one not yet off the screen before the nose of the next came in. Under the fill lights my face went hot.
Ten. Eighteen thousand eight hundred. Even my broadcast voice wobbled: “Brother Beifeng… oh mama, Brother Beifeng what are you doing, ten of them, fam!”
A DM popped up, from him: “Inspect in person.”
I stared at those three words for two seconds, then smiled at the camera: “Brother Beifeng says he wants to inspect in person. The goods are right here, where exactly are you going to inspect them?” The chat went hahaha. Another DM: “Inspect you.”
I swiped that one away and kept selling. For the last hour my voice was louder than usual and my laugh was bigger than usual. Forty-seven orders. The late show had never sold that many.
【Beifeng · The Other Man】
Half the lights in the store were off. I was sitting behind the register doing the books, phone propped next to the calculator. I’m thirty-eight, Dongsheng Building Materials Mall, Block B, No. 17, Beifeng Tiles & Bath, divorced three years, living alone.
I’d been watching her room for six months. The first two months I kept it on like a radio; after that I actually watched. When she cusses people out her voice gets loud, when she laughs you see her gums, and she sells ninety-yuan clothes with the drive of someone selling three-hundred-yuan clothes. I don’t need clothes. I need that drive.
Tonight her eyes were wrong. Foundation covered it, but the lids were still swollen, and the first line out of her mouth floated a little. Six months of watching her; I can tell.
Today a final payment came in, three hundred twenty thousand. I opened the gift tray, sports car, 1,880 a pop, tapped it once. Vroom. Tapped again. Vroom. The sound came out of the phone speaker, bounced once around the empty store, came back. At the tenth tap I stopped. My finger had gone a bit numb.
Eighteen thousand eight hundred, enough to buy out every jacket hanging in her room. I typed “Inspect in person,” thought about it for a second before sending, sent it anyway. The way my trade puts it: money paid, goods get looked at.
Inspecting the goods is a term from my trade. Tiles arrive, you open a box, take a level to them, run your hand over the glaze, hold them to the light for pinholes. You sign for them only after you’ve looked, and you pay the balance only after you’ve signed. Today I got the order backward. Paid first.
When she read out my name her voice cracked. I heard that.
【Guan Xiaoman · Wife】
Eleven forty, sign-off, the suona blares, see you tomorrow, fam. I turned the fill lights off one by one, sat in the dark room, opened Beifeng’s DM, held the button, sent a voice message.
“Brother Beifeng, let me be clear with you. I don’t want the sports cars. The platform won’t refund them, so tomorrow I’ll raffle them off, not one cent goes in my pocket.”
“The man, I want to see. How old are you, what do you do, divorced or not, what do your hands look like. Send it over.”
He replied fast. Thirty-eight, sells tiles at the building-materials mall, divorced three years, lives alone. Then a photo of a hand resting on a slab of marble tile, the back of it dark, knuckles thick, a cut on the web of the thumb, scabbed over.
“Tile cutter,” he said.
I looked at that hand for a while. “Fine. Then I set the price. The price isn’t money.”
“Go ahead.”
“One. That suona riff my room signs off with, you’ve heard it.” “Every day.” “Save a copy. The second it plays, no matter where we’re at, stop, pants on, everyone goes home. Either of us can hit it, and once it’s hit, it counts.”
“Two. No calling me baby, no calling me streamer. It’s Xiaoman.” “Three. No more dropping sports cars, ever. Drop one and you’re blocked.”
It took him half a minute: “Deal.” Then he sent the suona riff back to me, nine seconds, and he’d renamed the file: signoff.mp3.
“One more thing. Tonight I saw my other half’s phone. Don’t ask, I’m not telling. I’m just letting you know, I’m not here for your sports cars. I’m here for me.” He replied: “Got it.” Then added: “I’m not here for the goods either.”
“Where’s the inspection.” I asked. “There’s a showroom behind my store, toilets and tubs all display pieces, nobody there at night. Your call.” “Send the pin.”
Dongsheng Building Materials Mall, Block B, No. 17. I checked the map: eleven kilometers from home, twenty minutes on the expressway.
The door. Twelve oh nine, Fang Yu walked in smelling of nail polish remover. “Customer dragged his feet,” he said. “Yup,” I said.
He washed up, got into bed, and was snoring in twenty minutes. I lay beside him with the phone screen lighting up the ceiling.
I played Beifeng’s nine seconds of suona once, volume all the way down. The second the suona started, I thought of the lights going off in the stream room. He didn’t wake.
I copied the pin and sent it back to Beifeng.
“Tomorrow night, ten. Here.”
Then I opened Fang Yu’s profile, location sharing, off. Beside me he rolled over.