Jia Jia saw her mother’s dim, orange lantern glowing at the entrance of Leo’s bar. It was not hung up, but instead sat on top of a small round table that Leo must have recently acquired. A beige cloth was set over the table and an empty ashtray was arranged next to the lamp. There was also a wooden chair, for smokers who preferred to sit down. Jia Jia touched her fingers along the contours of her face and watched her own reflection in the window of the bar. It was her, in the flesh, that was for certain. She turned around and located her apartment over the road. Her tenants were still at the table, the man drinking his beer, the woman smiling with the baby in her arms. The sound of an electric scooter grew louder and then weakened as it travelled into the distance.
At this time of the year, Beijing was particularly dry. The world of water had left no visible trace, but it stayed with Jia Jia as though running through her blood.
She lit a cigarette. The guard at the car park had been replaced by another young, shorter man. This one, like his predecessor, also had his head buried in his phone. He wore thick-rimmed glasses, the peak of his cap turned slightly towards one side. Jia Jia thought that she could see him smiling.
The door opened and Leo emerged from behind it. He had a scarf hung on his arm, which he wrapped around Jia Jia’s shoulders.
‘I saw you from the window,’ he said, taking a cigarette from her pack.
‘I came back a few days ago,’ she responded.
‘New tenants?’ Leo pointed up at her apartment window.
Jia Jia smiled. ‘They’ve just moved in. Looks like a lovely family. Are you closing the bar soon?’
‘There are still plenty of customers inside.’ He turned back to look at his bar. Tobacco and citrus from his tall, slim figure touched Jia Jia softly on the nose.
She put her cigarette out in the new ashtray and steadied her gaze on a tree in the distance. A bird had just flown back to its nest. She thought it must have ventured far, to return at this time. She drew the scarf tighter across her chest and waited, without a tinge of urgency to be anywhere or do anything, for Leo to finish his cigarette.
*
Later Jia Jia sat on the stool at the end of the counter and sipped brandy until the bar closed. The customers kept Leo busy all night. He smiled at them, took their orders, made their drinks, settled their bills. Groups of friends sat together, speaking in different accents, downing one drink after another around the low, circular tables, laughing sometimes, and then finally trickling out the door, some turning north, others south. Leo wiped the tables and waited for the next group of people to occupy them. This city was much like that, Jia Jia thought, with people coming and going, some staying briefly, others longer. And as one person left, the city waited for the next to take her place.
As the evening passed, it gradually became clear to Jia Jia what the world of water had left behind. There was something incredibly light inside her, like a cloud on a clear night, a dandelion seed in the air, a ballet dancer, Ravel’s Jeux d’eau. If the world of water had taken something away from her, it must have been something heavy.
She thought about Ren Qi, about the village, the smell of goat’s butter and incense, about what he was doing amid the field of white tulips, his face peachy from that bottle of qingke wine. She would respond to his text messages tomorrow, and tell him about the fish-man and the world of water.
Jia Jia lifted her glass a little, toasting those who were far away.
When she set the glass down, her thoughts wended their way back home. Tomorrow, she decided, she would be painting the sea.