First Steps To Taking Over The World (2/3)
< Part 1
Thanksgiving becomes the source of some sort of strife between her and Henry, mainly because it’s stupid to celebrate it in October, she argues, and Henry tells to go fuck herself, stupid corn-eater.
“Watch your mouth, moose.”
He hits her with a spatula; Amber ducks behind an empty carton of pizza; Henry throws the spicy ramen sauce packs at her and she retaliates by taking a handful of old noodles drying in a pan and squashing it on top of his head. The look on his face when a curl falls in front of his nose is priceless and Amber is laughing so hard she doesn’t resist when he proceeds to empty a bowl of cold dumpling sound over her head. She yelps, though, when she feels the gooey liquid drip down her scalp, and that makes Henry snicker.
They take turns to the bathroom - read: race each other. Henry bolts inside and locks the door while she pounds on its, giggling breathlessly, and then she hears the rustle of his clothes falling off and even when covered in cold broth she feels her body go ‘oh’.
When he comes out she’s sitting back against the wall opposite to the bathroom door so she has a perfect low-angle shot of his naked chest.
“Yo,” he smiles. “Bathroom’s all yours… loser.”
He runs away cackling before she can catch him.
They eventually settle for a joint Halloween-Thanksgiving0.1-Thanksgiving0.2 celebration on the thirty-first of October with a bunch of people they know and, obviously, a lot of people they don’t.
Victoria shows up in the sluttiest, tightest Catwoman costume she could find and her smoky eyes smolder at everything with broad shoulders and a dick that walks by. She brought Zhou Mi, who appears to be a crossover between Willy Wonka and Howl. His pet pimples tagged along.
“Hey,” Henry whispers. “What’s with the dude dressed as a pepper?”
Henry, for his part, makes a very convincing Inuit.
“Because it’s still Thanksgiving after all.”
“You’d have been cute as a beaver too, you know.”
“Shut the f- wait, California Girl, did you just call me cute?”
Amber dressed up as other-Amber-Liu and everyone keeps asking her why she doesn’t have a costume, also isn’t she cold?
Victoria undulates up to her and mutters drunkenly in her hear:
“I gotta get myself some piece of hotshot over there!”
Hotshot Over There is a guy talking with Zhou Mi and Henry, with sad cocker eyes, a flat butt and a ninja gear.
“The one with the bad hair?”
“Shut up,” Victoria mutters, slithering up to Fug Mug.
Amber gets closer to them, just because this is going to be so funny.
“Hey,” she hears Victoria say smoothly. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Han Geng,” the guy smiles back. “Zhou Mi was just telling me about you. You’re Song Qian, right?”
Victoria opens her mouth to answer silkily, and then Amber thinks the world around them has gone deaf as this comes out of her mouth:
“Well I sure hope you’re not gay.”
“Why did I say that?”
She’s been repeating this over and over for the past hour. Amber pats her back and smothers her laugh in her sleeve.
“You were drunk. Nobody else heard. It’s fine.”
“I hate myself!”
“It’s okay, it get that all the time too.”
Though Amber is far from feeling the devastating, gut-clenching self-hatred Victoria is loudly experiencing at the moment. Quite the contrary - the party ended awesomely enough that come the morning, she and Henry and a few others had climbed up on the roof to watch the sunrise and even with the pollution it was. Awesome. Just awesome. They were buzzed and exhausted and dressed as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and yet it was-
She thinks back of Henry’s face when he said ‘Good night’ at seven am, all mischievous and cute and rumpled, and her stupid heart is stupidly happy with the stupid warmth that pours over her.
“You’re drooling.”
“Shut up.”
They’re doodling all over Victoria’s worksheet. Amber draws a cartoonish raccoon looking with wide, wondrous eyes at the proud ‘99’ mark scribbled in red at the top.
“That’s very cute,” someone says behind them.
They jump on their seats, and then Victoria squeals, because it’s Geng-Who’s-Not-Gay and he’s kind of smirking.
“Ah,” the Korean teacher says coldly. “It’s you.” If yous could be really disgusting, unwelcome aliens. “Class, meet Han Geng. He’s a fourth year and probably the worst student I ever had.”
Geng smiles charmingly, even Amber can see it, and walks up to the teacher’s platform.
“Hi everyone. That’s… not entirely untrue, I’m afraid.” He laughs and everyone laughs with him, Hamelin Flute Player style. “But I also happen to be last year’s Mister Hangul.”
There are a few whistles. Amber swats Victoria upside the head and gets pinched in return.
“And by the powers that have been conferred to me, well, I’m encouraging all of you from Korean class to apply for an exchange with Seoul National University. It’s really cool. You should try.”
The teacher glares at him, pointing at his watch.
“And, uh, you know. More info at the student body’s office! Hwaiting!”
And in a single word that’s not even real Korean, Amber realizes that Geng probably speaks worse than Henry, which is really saying a lot. He grins at Victoria when he leaves and she spends the rest of the class fanning herself with Amber’s quiz.
“So,” he says later, charming as always. “You’re Song Qian, the catwoman who had too much to drink, and you’re Henry’s roommate Amber, the one who dressed up as a tennis player.”
They’re both a bit stunned, which is probably why they forget to whoop in or ewp in Amber’s case after Geng invites Victoria to dinner, “to get to know each other outside of sexual boundaries”.
Though Victoria does drag her to her place so they can dress her up for her date - “It’s not a-”
“Please.”
Zhou Mi gives helpful advice, no really, and helps zipping up the heretically beautiful and also heretically expensive Alaïa dress. They both wave at Victoria from the doorstep like cheesy parents when she leaves.
“So?” Zhou Mi asks Amber. “What were your plans for the night?”
She shrugs. “Gaming and pasta with Henry? Wanna crash over?”
Zhou Mi makes the puppy noise in the back of his throat so she pulls out his leash and takes him out for a walk.
“Hey,” Henry greets them. “What’s up, Mi-ge?”
“Hi Henry!” Zhou Mi smiles. “I brought you healthy food!”
Henry groans. And gets his ass kicked at Mario Brawl until three in the morning.
“Motherf- Stop teaming up against me!”
“We wouldn’t if you didn’t suck so hard.”
“Watch your mouth, Liu, or I’m gonna steal your slutty underwear and pin it to the blackboard!”
Amber makes an embarrassed noise, and pushes B+Y to kick Henry out of the arena.
“You shouldn’t say that,” Zhou Mi admonishes. “I’m sure Amber-mei only wears cotton panties.”
This time, Amber decidedly chokes on her Diet Coke.
“Shouldn’t you be going home?”
Zhou Mi stretches his long limbs all over their couch. “Can’t I stay over? What if Song Qian brings Geng-ge back to our flat?”
“Yeah,” Henry mutters, “sure, Amber’ll give you her room.”
“Fucker.”
“Bitch.”
In the end Amber does give him her bed, but only because she feels pity when she sees him folding his body in four pieces to fit on their tiny couch. She wraps herself in the fleece blanket but in the morning she’s shivering.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Henry’s voice says as he passes by, “you’re pathetic.”
She hears him pee loudly in the toilet and buries her head in the couch’s cushions.
“C’m’on,” he says when he comes back, “get up.”
Fascist, she wants to tell him. Sleep terrorist. But he’s dragging her behind him and pushing her down on his bed, right in the crease of the covers where it’s really warm. In her tiredness Amber only registers heat and a plush mattress, and she falls right back asleep.
When she wakes up it’s much later, the sun is filtering through the curtains and Henry is breathing, mouth open, and right against her neck. She twists to face him and gets a whiff of morning breath, hello. He’s barely covered by the blankets anymore so she cuddles closer until her legs touch his, naked, and he’s really not hairy because it barely tickles at all.
“Amber.”
“Hm?”
“You have cold feet.”
“Your mouth stinks.”
He groans and ruffles his hair sleepily; Amber thinks ‘cute!’ then berates her brain for being so dumb.
“What time is it?”
“I don’t know.”
A clatter of metal in their kitchen informs them that it’s past Zhou Mi-get-up time.
“I made rice!” he proclaims when they zombie out of Henry’s room.
“Look, Amber,” Henry whimpers. “Hot food. In our apartment.”
“It’s a miracle,” she agrees.
“I wanted to wake you two up to tell you, but, um. I didn’t know if, um.”
“Oh my god, ge,” Henry tells him. “Why are you so awkward?”
Zhou Mi peace-signs. “I’m Karmic-Mi! I take care not to harm any earthly creature. Awkwardness is just one of the many drawbacks of this philosophy.”
“KarMi.” Amber says. “You’re KarMi.”
Henry shoves her nose down in her rice bowl.
Zhou Mi goes home because he apparently wants to question Victoria until she reveals all the so romantic details of her evening with Han Geng, and Henry and Amber go back to their weekend routine, which means that Henry plays violin in his room while Amber makes an half-assed attempt at tidying up the place and ends up on the couch with a pile of comics.
By mid-afternoon they’re both hungry again, and Henry crawls out of his cave to find something to eat in the fridge.
“It’s empty.”
Amber holds out a can of wasabi peas: “The last of our resources, comrade!”
They munch on wasabi peas and Amber attacks Ikigami while Henry puts on some classical music and digs out a pencil and music sheets.
“What’s that?”
“Malher. Second symphony.”
“It’s nice.”
There’s a pause that could lapse into longer silence, but then Henry says:
“I’ll make you listen to the rest of them, if you’d like.”
Amber hums. “I’d like that.”
Victoria tells her the whole deal about Han Geng - no really, the whole entire thing including the excruciating details Amber didn’t particularly want to know, uh, ever.
“But have you seen his hair? It’s terrible. If I were you I’d do something about that.”
Victoria tsks in a disappointed fashion. “Sometimes, Amber, I think you’re so superficial, it kills me.”
She slides a sheet of paper across the table for her to read.
“Hey, that’s-”
“Seoul Uni appliance form. You’re in, right?”
“Did your boyfriend put you up to this?”
“Maybe. But. It’d be great. You and I in Seoul.”
Amber smiles back at her. “Better than great. It’d be awesome.”
They fill in the form, sticking their tongues out, and making up stuff for the questions that don’t really matter (‘What was your dream-job as a child?).
“Uh. Uuuuh. Astronaut,” Victoria tries.
“Drug dealer.”
“I wanted to be a ballerina!” Zhou Mi chimes in. He blinks when they stare at him. “I was told it wasn’t possible because I was too tall.”
“Geng did ballet,” Victoria says.
“No-one cares.”
There’s a paragraph titled ‘Hobbies and Interests’.
“Geng said this one was important, though. You know, for cultural opening and stuff.”
Amber ponders over this as she goes home. Her hobbies and interests since she came to China could be summarized as ‘playing video games with Canadian roommate and occasionally ogling him’. She isn’t sure Korea would accept that as a valid cultural opening.
“You do stuff all the time!” Henry objects after she’s told him about the problem, ogling carefully omitted. “Like, you’re always moving around and talking to people.”
“What did you write on yours?”
“Err, hello, that I play the violin and compose music. And that I speak French.”
“I hate you, so much. Also you don’t speak French, you know the dirty pick-up lines in French.”
“Yes, but French is made of dirty pick-up lines. So I’m actually quite good at it.”
Winter comes and it gets so cold they barely get out anymore - Amber goes to Korean class and brings back notes while Henry hibernates like any self-respecting Canadian. They watch a lot of movies, too, some illegally ripped kung-fu flicks they bought at the electronic market, and when they get bored of those, jewels of the Western cinema from Henry’s personal collection, which comes in the form of a multiple-DVD folder emblazoned with a proud maple leaf.
“Dude, are you like, waiting for sarcasm to happen?”
“Absolutely. Since the day I’ve met you I’ve been wondering whether or not you could actually handle irony. From the looks of it, you can’t.”
During lazy evenings, sometimes stretching over to the night, they gorge on movies and music and books. Amber insists that they watch Rebels Without A Cause, which Henry accepts, and Dirty Dancing, which Henry vetoes.
Instead he puts on Pretty Woman and Amber seethes.
“I hate Julia Roberts.”
“I know, me too. She looks like a bad drag.”
“Then why do you wanna watch this?”
“I don’t like Julia Roberts - I like this movie.”
It’s a total lie, by the way, because Henry’s mouth goes ‘O’ when Julia takes off her dress which makes hatred burn brighter in Amber’s soul; she can’t even pretend that Richard Gere is a turn-on because he’s really not, and that movie is so awkward anyways.
Henry also happens to own Eat Pray Love and they also watch that, and Amber sobs all the way through because it’s that bad.
Sometimes, Victoria will come over, wrinkling her nose at the state of the kitchen, and they’ll watch something like Farewell My Concubine, and they cry, or Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and Amber knows the dialogues by heart and jumps a bit when she hears Henry muttering along with her and Shu Lien.
Once, Zhou Mi shows up with pastries and the DVD of some weird thing with a twisted plot and sociopaths as lead characters. He cries from the beginning to the end, while Amber and Victoria sing: ‘There is no love’ with the prostitutes and Henry laments at Takeshi Kaneshiro’s unwise career choices. It’s a good afternoon, a comfy one lulled by the beeps of Geng’s texts to Victoria’s cellphone, with stomachs full of cookies and Henry’s thigh warm against Amber’s.
After Zhou Mi and Victoria leave, they play PES because they don’t want to spoil the still fresh memory with some crappy wannabe blockbuster à la Ninja Assassin.
“Plus if we go through my entire stock,” Henry says, “we’ll end up resigning ourselves to watch some shit like Prison Break-” he shudders, “and I don’t want that to happen.”
“Understood, wise one.”
“I’ll get a refill at Christmas, though. I’ve talked my grandma into getting me the Harry Potter boxed set.”
“You’re going home for Christmas?”
Henry looks at her strangely. It’s probably because she blurted it out like that.
“Well, yeah.”
“Like, to Canada?”
He rolls his eyes. “I see. You almost got me there. For once I thought you actually cared.”
Haha.
She watches him fill his suitcase, slowly dropping item after item like some sort of weird, sock-smelling Advent Calendar. Henry seems to be bringing home the craziest, most pointless stuff China has to offer - which is saying a lot because come on, Pikachu-shaped lanterns? What the hell?
“Are you sure your family actually needs all of this?” she asks him one day form the kitchen, while he’s folding the clean clothes he’s taking with him - well, pulling them out of the basket and cramming them wherever there is free space. Amber has already spotted a sickening amount of checkered woolen monstrosities and she doesn’t dare take a look at the final result. When he doesn’t pick up the bait, though, she feels obligated to take a peek.
She steps in the bathroom right in time to see him ball up his fist and slip it into the cup of one of her bras, looking thoughtful.
“Huh,” he says when he finally sees her, mouth open in a silent scream. “They’re actually bigger than they look, then.”
There are a few courses of action Amber could take at the moment:
- the Girl: scream, shriek, snatch bra, run away, cry;
- the Guy: ‘Dude, bro, not cool, man’;
- the Shaolin: kick him in the face in the name of Decency, Justice, Honor and Virtue;
- the Amber Liu - not the tennis player:
“Why are you like this?! And put- just, put it down! Now! I can’t believe it. You stole my underwear? Like, who steals people’s underwear anyway? C’m’on, give it back.”
She grabs on one of the dangling straps and punches his shoulder for good measure.
“Oh come on!” he calls after her when she storms out. “You know I won’t judge you because you wear sport-ish Gore-Tex underwear. I live here too, I know how cold one’s nipples can get!”
“SCREW YOU!” she yells back.
“I didn’t steal it, by the way. It was with my laundry. That’s your fault, too, you shouldn’t leave stuff in the washing machine.”
To make himself forgiven, Henry volunteers to go out and come back with food and entertainment. While he’s gone, Victoria floods Amber’s mailbox with comments about how she should run away Right Now from this disgusting pervert.
“it’s not that bad,” she writes back, not really one to hold grudges.
“lust is blinding, i get that.”
“f. u”
“later, geng is here~”
Amber makes tea while waiting for Henry, and when she hears him walk through the door cursing the weather and the country as a whole, it’s steaming in the pot, right on time so they can sprawl on the couch wrapped in their blankets and Henry pops out a DVD that’s so obviously a pirated copy that it’s almost painful.
They slurp their lo mein noodles absentmindedly; Amber frowns when Nicole Kidman’s cute nose appears on the screen, and relaxes contentedly when it’s Jude Law’s muscles instead. Much better.
The sound of their munching is uncomfortably loud when Jude’s lips start trailing down Nicole’s naked side. Henry puts his bowl down awkwardly and Amber pointedly avoids looking at him.
It’s physical, she tells herself, a simple natural reaction because the man of the screen somehow stimulates whatever part of her brain makes her panties wet. She clutches her blanket tight between her hands, hating the self-conscious blush she can feel rising on her neck, the same warmth that’s right now curling in her belly.
Henry suddenly stands up and makes a big show of yawning something about toilet and brushing his teeth,
“I have to get up early to get to the airport tomorrow.”
Amber lets him, and when he comes back she says flatly:
“You missed Jude Law dying.”
“My plane is early,” he repeats.
“Okay, well. I’m gonna go brush my teeth too then.”
She runs away to the bathroom and splashes water on her face to make the pink splotches disappear. The good thing about toothbrushes, she thinks, is that there’s no way you can look overly serious or dramatic when you’ve got one in your mouth. They are the ultimate dummy accessory, which is why it’s totally okay for her to go say goodnight, and goodbye, to Henry in his room. Right.
“G’night,” she gurgles around a mouthful of toothpaste.
He’s busy sitting on his suitcase to zip it closed.
“Thanks,” Henry answers, raising his head. “And, you know. Have a good vacation, err, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, that.”
He rambles on and Amber feels hot burning tears in her eyes suddenly so she ducks her head and repeats: “Yeah, good night,” white foam around her lips making it strangled.
“Amber? Are you-”
“It’s nothing,” she says furiously. “I just- I’m gonna miss you.”
He laughs, a bit disbelieving, that bastard, and brushes dust off his clothes when he stands up.
“It’s three weeks,” he says. “Come on, you stupid sappy American.”
He gives her this sort of weird, one-armed guy-hug that’s so quick Amber doesn’t even have to appreciate the contact, and pats her arm when he pulls away.
“Good night.”
Part 3 >
Thanksgiving becomes the source of some sort of strife between her and Henry, mainly because it’s stupid to celebrate it in October, she argues, and Henry tells to go fuck herself, stupid corn-eater.
“Watch your mouth, moose.”
He hits her with a spatula; Amber ducks behind an empty carton of pizza; Henry throws the spicy ramen sauce packs at her and she retaliates by taking a handful of old noodles drying in a pan and squashing it on top of his head. The look on his face when a curl falls in front of his nose is priceless and Amber is laughing so hard she doesn’t resist when he proceeds to empty a bowl of cold dumpling sound over her head. She yelps, though, when she feels the gooey liquid drip down her scalp, and that makes Henry snicker.
They take turns to the bathroom - read: race each other. Henry bolts inside and locks the door while she pounds on its, giggling breathlessly, and then she hears the rustle of his clothes falling off and even when covered in cold broth she feels her body go ‘oh’.
When he comes out she’s sitting back against the wall opposite to the bathroom door so she has a perfect low-angle shot of his naked chest.
“Yo,” he smiles. “Bathroom’s all yours… loser.”
He runs away cackling before she can catch him.
They eventually settle for a joint Halloween-Thanksgiving0.1-Thanksgiving0.2 celebration on the thirty-first of October with a bunch of people they know and, obviously, a lot of people they don’t.
Victoria shows up in the sluttiest, tightest Catwoman costume she could find and her smoky eyes smolder at everything with broad shoulders and a dick that walks by. She brought Zhou Mi, who appears to be a crossover between Willy Wonka and Howl. His pet pimples tagged along.
“Hey,” Henry whispers. “What’s with the dude dressed as a pepper?”
Henry, for his part, makes a very convincing Inuit.
“Because it’s still Thanksgiving after all.”
“You’d have been cute as a beaver too, you know.”
“Shut the f- wait, California Girl, did you just call me cute?”
Amber dressed up as other-Amber-Liu and everyone keeps asking her why she doesn’t have a costume, also isn’t she cold?
Victoria undulates up to her and mutters drunkenly in her hear:
“I gotta get myself some piece of hotshot over there!”
Hotshot Over There is a guy talking with Zhou Mi and Henry, with sad cocker eyes, a flat butt and a ninja gear.
“The one with the bad hair?”
“Shut up,” Victoria mutters, slithering up to Fug Mug.
Amber gets closer to them, just because this is going to be so funny.
“Hey,” she hears Victoria say smoothly. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Han Geng,” the guy smiles back. “Zhou Mi was just telling me about you. You’re Song Qian, right?”
Victoria opens her mouth to answer silkily, and then Amber thinks the world around them has gone deaf as this comes out of her mouth:
“Well I sure hope you’re not gay.”
“Why did I say that?”
She’s been repeating this over and over for the past hour. Amber pats her back and smothers her laugh in her sleeve.
“You were drunk. Nobody else heard. It’s fine.”
“I hate myself!”
“It’s okay, it get that all the time too.”
Though Amber is far from feeling the devastating, gut-clenching self-hatred Victoria is loudly experiencing at the moment. Quite the contrary - the party ended awesomely enough that come the morning, she and Henry and a few others had climbed up on the roof to watch the sunrise and even with the pollution it was. Awesome. Just awesome. They were buzzed and exhausted and dressed as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and yet it was-
She thinks back of Henry’s face when he said ‘Good night’ at seven am, all mischievous and cute and rumpled, and her stupid heart is stupidly happy with the stupid warmth that pours over her.
“You’re drooling.”
“Shut up.”
They’re doodling all over Victoria’s worksheet. Amber draws a cartoonish raccoon looking with wide, wondrous eyes at the proud ‘99’ mark scribbled in red at the top.
“That’s very cute,” someone says behind them.
They jump on their seats, and then Victoria squeals, because it’s Geng-Who’s-Not-Gay and he’s kind of smirking.
“Ah,” the Korean teacher says coldly. “It’s you.” If yous could be really disgusting, unwelcome aliens. “Class, meet Han Geng. He’s a fourth year and probably the worst student I ever had.”
Geng smiles charmingly, even Amber can see it, and walks up to the teacher’s platform.
“Hi everyone. That’s… not entirely untrue, I’m afraid.” He laughs and everyone laughs with him, Hamelin Flute Player style. “But I also happen to be last year’s Mister Hangul.”
There are a few whistles. Amber swats Victoria upside the head and gets pinched in return.
“And by the powers that have been conferred to me, well, I’m encouraging all of you from Korean class to apply for an exchange with Seoul National University. It’s really cool. You should try.”
The teacher glares at him, pointing at his watch.
“And, uh, you know. More info at the student body’s office! Hwaiting!”
And in a single word that’s not even real Korean, Amber realizes that Geng probably speaks worse than Henry, which is really saying a lot. He grins at Victoria when he leaves and she spends the rest of the class fanning herself with Amber’s quiz.
“So,” he says later, charming as always. “You’re Song Qian, the catwoman who had too much to drink, and you’re Henry’s roommate Amber, the one who dressed up as a tennis player.”
They’re both a bit stunned, which is probably why they forget to whoop in or ewp in Amber’s case after Geng invites Victoria to dinner, “to get to know each other outside of sexual boundaries”.
Though Victoria does drag her to her place so they can dress her up for her date - “It’s not a-”
“Please.”
Zhou Mi gives helpful advice, no really, and helps zipping up the heretically beautiful and also heretically expensive Alaïa dress. They both wave at Victoria from the doorstep like cheesy parents when she leaves.
“So?” Zhou Mi asks Amber. “What were your plans for the night?”
She shrugs. “Gaming and pasta with Henry? Wanna crash over?”
Zhou Mi makes the puppy noise in the back of his throat so she pulls out his leash and takes him out for a walk.
“Hey,” Henry greets them. “What’s up, Mi-ge?”
“Hi Henry!” Zhou Mi smiles. “I brought you healthy food!”
Henry groans. And gets his ass kicked at Mario Brawl until three in the morning.
“Motherf- Stop teaming up against me!”
“We wouldn’t if you didn’t suck so hard.”
“Watch your mouth, Liu, or I’m gonna steal your slutty underwear and pin it to the blackboard!”
Amber makes an embarrassed noise, and pushes B+Y to kick Henry out of the arena.
“You shouldn’t say that,” Zhou Mi admonishes. “I’m sure Amber-mei only wears cotton panties.”
This time, Amber decidedly chokes on her Diet Coke.
“Shouldn’t you be going home?”
Zhou Mi stretches his long limbs all over their couch. “Can’t I stay over? What if Song Qian brings Geng-ge back to our flat?”
“Yeah,” Henry mutters, “sure, Amber’ll give you her room.”
“Fucker.”
“Bitch.”
In the end Amber does give him her bed, but only because she feels pity when she sees him folding his body in four pieces to fit on their tiny couch. She wraps herself in the fleece blanket but in the morning she’s shivering.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Henry’s voice says as he passes by, “you’re pathetic.”
She hears him pee loudly in the toilet and buries her head in the couch’s cushions.
“C’m’on,” he says when he comes back, “get up.”
Fascist, she wants to tell him. Sleep terrorist. But he’s dragging her behind him and pushing her down on his bed, right in the crease of the covers where it’s really warm. In her tiredness Amber only registers heat and a plush mattress, and she falls right back asleep.
When she wakes up it’s much later, the sun is filtering through the curtains and Henry is breathing, mouth open, and right against her neck. She twists to face him and gets a whiff of morning breath, hello. He’s barely covered by the blankets anymore so she cuddles closer until her legs touch his, naked, and he’s really not hairy because it barely tickles at all.
“Amber.”
“Hm?”
“You have cold feet.”
“Your mouth stinks.”
He groans and ruffles his hair sleepily; Amber thinks ‘cute!’ then berates her brain for being so dumb.
“What time is it?”
“I don’t know.”
A clatter of metal in their kitchen informs them that it’s past Zhou Mi-get-up time.
“I made rice!” he proclaims when they zombie out of Henry’s room.
“Look, Amber,” Henry whimpers. “Hot food. In our apartment.”
“It’s a miracle,” she agrees.
“I wanted to wake you two up to tell you, but, um. I didn’t know if, um.”
“Oh my god, ge,” Henry tells him. “Why are you so awkward?”
Zhou Mi peace-signs. “I’m Karmic-Mi! I take care not to harm any earthly creature. Awkwardness is just one of the many drawbacks of this philosophy.”
“KarMi.” Amber says. “You’re KarMi.”
Henry shoves her nose down in her rice bowl.
Zhou Mi goes home because he apparently wants to question Victoria until she reveals all the so romantic details of her evening with Han Geng, and Henry and Amber go back to their weekend routine, which means that Henry plays violin in his room while Amber makes an half-assed attempt at tidying up the place and ends up on the couch with a pile of comics.
By mid-afternoon they’re both hungry again, and Henry crawls out of his cave to find something to eat in the fridge.
“It’s empty.”
Amber holds out a can of wasabi peas: “The last of our resources, comrade!”
They munch on wasabi peas and Amber attacks Ikigami while Henry puts on some classical music and digs out a pencil and music sheets.
“What’s that?”
“Malher. Second symphony.”
“It’s nice.”
There’s a pause that could lapse into longer silence, but then Henry says:
“I’ll make you listen to the rest of them, if you’d like.”
Amber hums. “I’d like that.”
Victoria tells her the whole deal about Han Geng - no really, the whole entire thing including the excruciating details Amber didn’t particularly want to know, uh, ever.
“But have you seen his hair? It’s terrible. If I were you I’d do something about that.”
Victoria tsks in a disappointed fashion. “Sometimes, Amber, I think you’re so superficial, it kills me.”
She slides a sheet of paper across the table for her to read.
“Hey, that’s-”
“Seoul Uni appliance form. You’re in, right?”
“Did your boyfriend put you up to this?”
“Maybe. But. It’d be great. You and I in Seoul.”
Amber smiles back at her. “Better than great. It’d be awesome.”
They fill in the form, sticking their tongues out, and making up stuff for the questions that don’t really matter (‘What was your dream-job as a child?).
“Uh. Uuuuh. Astronaut,” Victoria tries.
“Drug dealer.”
“I wanted to be a ballerina!” Zhou Mi chimes in. He blinks when they stare at him. “I was told it wasn’t possible because I was too tall.”
“Geng did ballet,” Victoria says.
“No-one cares.”
There’s a paragraph titled ‘Hobbies and Interests’.
“Geng said this one was important, though. You know, for cultural opening and stuff.”
Amber ponders over this as she goes home. Her hobbies and interests since she came to China could be summarized as ‘playing video games with Canadian roommate and occasionally ogling him’. She isn’t sure Korea would accept that as a valid cultural opening.
“You do stuff all the time!” Henry objects after she’s told him about the problem, ogling carefully omitted. “Like, you’re always moving around and talking to people.”
“What did you write on yours?”
“Err, hello, that I play the violin and compose music. And that I speak French.”
“I hate you, so much. Also you don’t speak French, you know the dirty pick-up lines in French.”
“Yes, but French is made of dirty pick-up lines. So I’m actually quite good at it.”
Winter comes and it gets so cold they barely get out anymore - Amber goes to Korean class and brings back notes while Henry hibernates like any self-respecting Canadian. They watch a lot of movies, too, some illegally ripped kung-fu flicks they bought at the electronic market, and when they get bored of those, jewels of the Western cinema from Henry’s personal collection, which comes in the form of a multiple-DVD folder emblazoned with a proud maple leaf.
“Dude, are you like, waiting for sarcasm to happen?”
“Absolutely. Since the day I’ve met you I’ve been wondering whether or not you could actually handle irony. From the looks of it, you can’t.”
During lazy evenings, sometimes stretching over to the night, they gorge on movies and music and books. Amber insists that they watch Rebels Without A Cause, which Henry accepts, and Dirty Dancing, which Henry vetoes.
Instead he puts on Pretty Woman and Amber seethes.
“I hate Julia Roberts.”
“I know, me too. She looks like a bad drag.”
“Then why do you wanna watch this?”
“I don’t like Julia Roberts - I like this movie.”
It’s a total lie, by the way, because Henry’s mouth goes ‘O’ when Julia takes off her dress which makes hatred burn brighter in Amber’s soul; she can’t even pretend that Richard Gere is a turn-on because he’s really not, and that movie is so awkward anyways.
Henry also happens to own Eat Pray Love and they also watch that, and Amber sobs all the way through because it’s that bad.
Sometimes, Victoria will come over, wrinkling her nose at the state of the kitchen, and they’ll watch something like Farewell My Concubine, and they cry, or Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and Amber knows the dialogues by heart and jumps a bit when she hears Henry muttering along with her and Shu Lien.
Once, Zhou Mi shows up with pastries and the DVD of some weird thing with a twisted plot and sociopaths as lead characters. He cries from the beginning to the end, while Amber and Victoria sing: ‘There is no love’ with the prostitutes and Henry laments at Takeshi Kaneshiro’s unwise career choices. It’s a good afternoon, a comfy one lulled by the beeps of Geng’s texts to Victoria’s cellphone, with stomachs full of cookies and Henry’s thigh warm against Amber’s.
After Zhou Mi and Victoria leave, they play PES because they don’t want to spoil the still fresh memory with some crappy wannabe blockbuster à la Ninja Assassin.
“Plus if we go through my entire stock,” Henry says, “we’ll end up resigning ourselves to watch some shit like Prison Break-” he shudders, “and I don’t want that to happen.”
“Understood, wise one.”
“I’ll get a refill at Christmas, though. I’ve talked my grandma into getting me the Harry Potter boxed set.”
“You’re going home for Christmas?”
Henry looks at her strangely. It’s probably because she blurted it out like that.
“Well, yeah.”
“Like, to Canada?”
He rolls his eyes. “I see. You almost got me there. For once I thought you actually cared.”
Haha.
She watches him fill his suitcase, slowly dropping item after item like some sort of weird, sock-smelling Advent Calendar. Henry seems to be bringing home the craziest, most pointless stuff China has to offer - which is saying a lot because come on, Pikachu-shaped lanterns? What the hell?
“Are you sure your family actually needs all of this?” she asks him one day form the kitchen, while he’s folding the clean clothes he’s taking with him - well, pulling them out of the basket and cramming them wherever there is free space. Amber has already spotted a sickening amount of checkered woolen monstrosities and she doesn’t dare take a look at the final result. When he doesn’t pick up the bait, though, she feels obligated to take a peek.
She steps in the bathroom right in time to see him ball up his fist and slip it into the cup of one of her bras, looking thoughtful.
“Huh,” he says when he finally sees her, mouth open in a silent scream. “They’re actually bigger than they look, then.”
There are a few courses of action Amber could take at the moment:
- the Girl: scream, shriek, snatch bra, run away, cry;
- the Guy: ‘Dude, bro, not cool, man’;
- the Shaolin: kick him in the face in the name of Decency, Justice, Honor and Virtue;
- the Amber Liu - not the tennis player:
“Why are you like this?! And put- just, put it down! Now! I can’t believe it. You stole my underwear? Like, who steals people’s underwear anyway? C’m’on, give it back.”
She grabs on one of the dangling straps and punches his shoulder for good measure.
“Oh come on!” he calls after her when she storms out. “You know I won’t judge you because you wear sport-ish Gore-Tex underwear. I live here too, I know how cold one’s nipples can get!”
“SCREW YOU!” she yells back.
“I didn’t steal it, by the way. It was with my laundry. That’s your fault, too, you shouldn’t leave stuff in the washing machine.”
To make himself forgiven, Henry volunteers to go out and come back with food and entertainment. While he’s gone, Victoria floods Amber’s mailbox with comments about how she should run away Right Now from this disgusting pervert.
“it’s not that bad,” she writes back, not really one to hold grudges.
“lust is blinding, i get that.”
“f. u”
“later, geng is here~”
Amber makes tea while waiting for Henry, and when she hears him walk through the door cursing the weather and the country as a whole, it’s steaming in the pot, right on time so they can sprawl on the couch wrapped in their blankets and Henry pops out a DVD that’s so obviously a pirated copy that it’s almost painful.
They slurp their lo mein noodles absentmindedly; Amber frowns when Nicole Kidman’s cute nose appears on the screen, and relaxes contentedly when it’s Jude Law’s muscles instead. Much better.
The sound of their munching is uncomfortably loud when Jude’s lips start trailing down Nicole’s naked side. Henry puts his bowl down awkwardly and Amber pointedly avoids looking at him.
It’s physical, she tells herself, a simple natural reaction because the man of the screen somehow stimulates whatever part of her brain makes her panties wet. She clutches her blanket tight between her hands, hating the self-conscious blush she can feel rising on her neck, the same warmth that’s right now curling in her belly.
Henry suddenly stands up and makes a big show of yawning something about toilet and brushing his teeth,
“I have to get up early to get to the airport tomorrow.”
Amber lets him, and when he comes back she says flatly:
“You missed Jude Law dying.”
“My plane is early,” he repeats.
“Okay, well. I’m gonna go brush my teeth too then.”
She runs away to the bathroom and splashes water on her face to make the pink splotches disappear. The good thing about toothbrushes, she thinks, is that there’s no way you can look overly serious or dramatic when you’ve got one in your mouth. They are the ultimate dummy accessory, which is why it’s totally okay for her to go say goodnight, and goodbye, to Henry in his room. Right.
“G’night,” she gurgles around a mouthful of toothpaste.
He’s busy sitting on his suitcase to zip it closed.
“Thanks,” Henry answers, raising his head. “And, you know. Have a good vacation, err, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, that.”
He rambles on and Amber feels hot burning tears in her eyes suddenly so she ducks her head and repeats: “Yeah, good night,” white foam around her lips making it strangled.
“Amber? Are you-”
“It’s nothing,” she says furiously. “I just- I’m gonna miss you.”
He laughs, a bit disbelieving, that bastard, and brushes dust off his clothes when he stands up.
“It’s three weeks,” he says. “Come on, you stupid sappy American.”
He gives her this sort of weird, one-armed guy-hug that’s so quick Amber doesn’t even have to appreciate the contact, and pats her arm when he pulls away.
“Good night.”
Part 3 >