“That’s incredible. But it didn’t work out between them?”
“No, but I don’t know the details. Her name is Wang Feng and she left for Japan. Which is all I know. He’s really something, an enigmatic Party cadre.”
“Isn’t he? As an official of his rank, I expect he can pick and choose when it comes to girls. He must have quite a number of them waiting around. By the way, do you remember the title of those poems?”
“I think I still have a copy of the newspaper somewhere.”
“Great. If you can find it, take a good photo of the text and send it to my phone.”
“Certainly, but why?”
“So I can talk to him about it.”
“I see. No problem, then. It might be a plus for you to publish his work in our newspaper. He’s now the deputy Party secretary of the city police bureau, but it’s just a matter of time before he’s the number one, according to Ji,” Yaqing said, nodding. “What a glutton you are! You have one full bowl in front of you, and you have your eye on another.”
“Come on, Yaqing. I’m merely interested in his poems.”
“But he’s a wild card,” Yaqing said, accompanying her out to the elevator. “And complicated too. You never know what he will come to you for. Your present boyfriend Xiang is a safer bet.”
Lianping, too, started to wonder about the reason behind Chen’s visit as the elevator started to go down. He didn’t have to come to the office to talk about his poems. A phone call or an e-mail would have been more than sufficient. And any of the official newspapers in the city would be eager to publish his work.
* * *
Five minutes later, she spotted him as she stepped into the lobby hall of the Wenhui Office Building.
“I have to show my ID and sign the register here,” he said. “I thought it might be easier for you to bring me through security as one of your authors.”
That was considerate of him. An official visit from the police might cause speculation, but no journalist would worry about having a professional connection such as Chief Inspector Chen.
He was wearing a light gray blazer, white shirt, and khaki pants that morning. He certainly didn’t look like a cop, but he didn’t look like one of those long-haired romantic poets, either.
“I’m so glad you could make it over today, Chief Inspector Chen. Let’s go on up. It’s much quieter, and it has a better view.”
“Thanks. Please just call me Chen. For one thing, having a cop around might not be so popular in your office.”
“But a high-ranking policeman like you is certain to be popular anywhere, particularly so at our Party newspaper.”
“Well said,” he remarked, apparently appreciating the repartee.
They took the elevator up to the café on the fifteenth floor, where they chose a table by the window.
He ordered a cup of freshly ground coffee. She ordered herself a cup of fresh jasmine tea, breathing onto the water, making the white petals ripple out against the green, tender tea leaves.
Everything is possible but not necessarily plausible, she reflected, a jasmine petal between her lips.
“I really appreciate your support of literature, Lianping. It’s an age when few people read poetry,” he started, taking a sip of coffee. “But my pen is rusted. I happened to be passing by the Wenhui building this afternoon and I thought of you. So I decided to drop in and discuss it with you.”
She couldn’t help feeling flattered. At least he’d taken her request seriously.
“So what poems have you brought me today?”
“Sorry, nothing yet. I have a special case on my hands, so I’m really busy at the moment. But I would like to talk to you about what topics would be appropriate for Wenhui.”
“Let me see, I may still have the poems you wrote for us earlier.”
She pulled out her phone and pressed a button. Sure enough, Yaqing had sent over the text. She then turned the phone over to Chen.
He took a quick look at the screen and handed it back with an embarrassed expression on his face.
“Wow, that was written years ago,” he said.
It was a group of poems entitled Trio, which she hadn’t read. She started reading the first piece, entitled “Tenor”:
Straw-stuffed, caught in the rain, too / saturated to shake in the wind, to be / is to be constructed: plastic buttons / for your eyes to keep the horizon / high-buttoned in a shroud of drizzling mist, / a carrot nose, half-bitten by a mule, and a broken ancient music box for your mouth, / wet, eccentric, repeating / Ling-Ling-Ling / to the surrounding crows at dusk. / Setting afire a straw-yellow / photograph, murmuring “Let bygones / be bygones,” as if whistling alone, / in the dark woods, I open / the window to the sudden sunlight. / Another day, when it begins to rain, / I am you again—