THE SADDEST GIRL SINCE THE SONG DYNASTY

CONFESSIONS ON A ROOFTOP - PART IV

But, Ander said, she had probed unrelentingly his odd few statements, and by the end of the conversation she had revealed his subtext, had exposed his underlying will. That's when she stormed off and headed to her birthday party on her own.

"The magician actually sawed her in half? That's how she died?" Lady Zhao asked, trying to clear up her understanding of the tragedy. She then added, almost as disbelieving, "How old was she to have a magician?"

"No, that was the trick, yes, but when she was in the box she ran out of air, or something – she was in there too long, and no one heard her, or they thought it was part of the act. I wasn't there, right. The thing is, it seemed she told everyone I wasn't feeling well, like, I had the flu. At her funeral, everybody thought we had still been together. Happy. No problems."

Lady Zhao had been aware that Ander was miserable at the time – the matter had dominated their international calls to the point Lady Zhao feigned a weekly appointment to avoid meeting online so often – but what was news to her was that he had brought it up with D'Misse before she died. In the tragedy's aftermath, perhaps under pressure to maintain the narrative, Ander had reverted to proclaiming everlasting love for his deceased girlfriend, even to Lady Zhao, which she thought was strange.

"I don't get it. You say you don't ever want to date again."

"I don't know. At the time, with her around, alive, basically, the thing we had didn't seem that great. But after her death – it took her dying out of the blue to get me to realize how much I needed her." So the point was, Ander reiterated to an increasingly distracted Lady Zhao, D'Misse died thinking she was unloved, that the man she had invested "a lot" of her future hopes in didn't return the feelings.

"Hey. Fucked up things happen. There is a saying: All roads lead to beautiful mountains. Something like that. I think Liu Bei said it first. No, I'm confusing myself. Was it Kofi Annan? Is Kofi Annan from Côte d'Ivoire?"

"What?" said Ander. He paused a moment, then started again. "Zhao Lei, I have something else to tell you..." Ander gazed roughly eastward, appearing haunted. He had not expected the night to take on such gravity, so salty a flavor. Placed variously throughout the rooftop garden were signposts pointing at cities with big airports, moneyed residents, and dark histories, and Ander tapped the one aimed at San Francisco as if to check it was real, as if to reassure himself the six-thousand-plus miles it advertised was enough to separate his state of anonymity in travel to the real problems of his real life on the other side of the ocean. "I didn't turn down the job offer from A-And-Z Group."

Lady Zhao managed to say "What?" It didn't convey surprise, it was quite possible she genuinely didn't hear, but Ander treated it more as a remark than a question.