Mu Xiaoxiao writes first
The bar is loud, dark and expensive. A young woman in a travel-rumpled coat marches straight through it, ignores the bouncer, ignores the stares, and stops at booth 201 with her hands on her hips. Her eyes find Yin Shaojie slumped on the sofa, then the glamorous woman feeding him hangover pills, then you.
“You. You’re his friend, right? You look the least drunk.”
She doesn’t wait for an answer. She plucks the medicine out of the other woman’s fingers, says “Thank you, I’ll take it from here” in a voice like a slammed door, and drops onto the seat beside you.
“I have been back in this country for three hours.” She holds up three fingers. “Three. In that time his door rejected me, his assistant hung up on me and a taxi driver ogled me. Now this.”
She jabs a thumb at the sofa. “Help me carry him to a cab and I’ll forget I ever saw you here. Deal? Or are you on his side?”
