“I’ll be done in a moment,” Tianna says to Yunxun, who has just arrived.
“No problem.” Yunxun replies softly.
Tianna removes the bath robe. She sees herself in the mirror as the soft silky piece slips off her shoulders slowly, pauses when it passes her bosom, and continues to fall, gliding along the curve of her buttocks, until it reaches the floor. Like a spring silkworm emerging from its own cocoon, a mature woman’s body is revealed.
She closes the door and turns on the bath tap: Warm water gushes down like a waterfall. Her naked body stands next to the door with dewy green myrrh patterns etched in it, enveloping the room in an involuntary, dream-like state. Warm pearly bubbles permeate every inch of her soft skin; her creamy neck and arms glint with crystal, wet light. Tianna picks up the shower lotion she bought on her way back from vacation in Iceland, pours a tiny scoop of it on her palm, and applies it to her body gently.
The shower lotion is made of 21 kinds of fragrant grass and plants gathered from atop mountains 7,000 feet and higher above sea-level and mixed with Iceland’s lahar and Greenland’s ice. Its bubbly foam, yellowish, has a hint of amber to it. Immediately a quiet fragrant aroma expands throughout the bathroom and penetrates the louvered door into the bedroom. On the ruffled quilt in the bedroom, The Best Love Poems of the American People, is still open to page eighteen. Those lines seem to be basking in the quiet fragrant aroma:
My life is a hummingbird that flies
Through the starry dusk and dew
Home to the heaven of your true eyes
Home, dear heart
To you
In the living room Yunxun waits joyously. Yunxun is the owner of Sunrise Bookstore. The last Friday of last month, the busiest evening of all evenings, Tianna was seeking shelter from the rain under the small canopy in front of the store. Raindrops wetted her pear-brown hair and trickled from the tips of her hair down to her sensual shoulders. The tight-fitting T- shirt that is so hot this summer looked like the gossamer wings of a tropical apricot butterfly caught in the rain. Tianna stood there motionless in quiet despair, her hands crossed on her chest. Yunxun opened the door slightly and handed her an umbrella. She took it and, without turning her head, without saying thank you, and without promising when to return the umbrella, stepped into the restless tide of pedestrians in the street and disappeared. Last Tuesday Tianna finally came. It was a sunny spring afternoon. Clutching a purple handbag, Tianna floated into the small bookstore like a spring breeze and returned the umbrella to Yunxun. They got to know each other and a romantic relationship began.
“You’re this city’s colored Butterfly Forever!” Yunxun was fond of saying.
At this moment Yunxun’s hand is holding a rose he has just bought from a flower shop. It’s an genetically processed rose, the fresh red of its petals showing a golden edge, feeling more real than a silk rose anyway. As Tianna hums lightheartedly in the bathroom, Yunxun smiles gently. Three weeks have passed and Tianna finally agrees to go with him to see the stage show, Swan, which boasts a cast of over one hundred performers, yet draws an audience of less than twenty people. The theater is small and is located just down the street. Every time they go out, Tianna will prepare herself to grandly. It gives him endless pleasure.
A few petals fall on Yunxun’s shiny black leather shoes. The clock chimes resonantly. The muffled siren of a passing ambulance comes through the window. Yunxun feels somewhat tired. His body slips slightly against the back of the sofa, his elbow resting on a cushion. Having nothing else to do, he gazes at the rose: on its foot-long stem are thorns sparsely spread. The three dark green leaves are still soft. Yunxun breaks into a smile. Crow’s-feet slowly creep to the corners of his eyes.
Tianna is so absorbed in the bath. Two thirds of her body is covered in the snow-white foam from the shower lotion. She bends to wash her lower legs and ankles, as if she is indulging herself in a deep-valley hot spring, oblivious to the passage of time and change from day to night beyond the valley. The snow-white foam is ruined and formed again. Tianna’s body reveals itself with the same rhythm Mother Earth does as darkness and light flow into each other. The foam floats amongst her hair and in the air as Tianna hums the little song she learned when she received the entomology award at Flemingson Institute.
Yunxun sits waiting patiently. Then he lets himself sink into the sofa. He spots a pair of red-spotted beetles stuck to the book hanging above the fireplace and smiles. His hair scatters loose on the cushion, revealing the gray hair like the autumnal reed in the countryside. A few more rose petals fall. Yunsun feels even more tired. He thinks he might as well take a short nap.
Bubbly water falls from the sky and rinses off the foam on Tianna’s body. Her skin, having absorbed enough moist fragrance, feels tender and creamy like a baby. Her soft body feels lazy, listless, yet her eyes glisten with joy. The water flows away from her feet. The quiet air now throbs with the sound of water coursing. Tianna steps out of the bathroom naked, the bright red bath towel failing to cover her body entirely.
She has barely stepped into the living room when she is stunned; the bath towel slips off her body. Yunsun sits before her, and old man; his hair completely grayed, his tired face lined with deep wrinkles; his dry, bony hand dangling by the sofa like an onion peeled half way through. On the carpet a throng of ants quietly bite and chew at a withered rose.
Then, Yunxun wakes up. He struggles to straighten up, looks at Tianna, and stammers:
“My dear Butterfly Forever, if you had come a moment later I would not have been able to wait for you!”
(n.d.)