The Unpicked Pear

Before she stumbled into me, my eyes had been stuck on her neck.

The petal had gotten there when we were picking prickly pears, halfway up the cliff. It was pinkish-white, edges slightly wilted, plastered motionless to a streak of sweat on the side of her neck. She hadn't noticed. I'd seen it when I looked up at the bush: the whole thing was green knots, flowers still clinging, not a single yellow one. I told her they weren't ready, sour and astringent, needed another month. She said, "You said they were edible. If you won't go, I will." I said, "Are you stupid? The flowers haven't even all fallen off." She said, "Push me from behind. I don't believe there isn't a single ripe one."

She was already clawing her way up through the weeds. The shale on these Sichuan hills is brittle, layered, crumbles when you dig your fingers in, and the grass roots are shallow, barely hold any weight. I swore and followed, afraid she'd fall. She slipped once. Loose stones rattled down, one hitting the back of my hand. I flinched, then reached out again to brace her sole.

I got close enough and realized I had nowhere to put my hands. She was wearing a loose white shirt that day, untucked but not long. I could reach it. My palm landed on her waist. The fabric was thin as paper, warm underneath. My fingers sank in a little. Soft. Not the weak kind of soft, but another kind: like freshly kneaded dough, smooth on the surface with springiness underneath, pushing in and slowly bouncing back. I didn't know how to describe it then, only that it was nothing like shoving the guys who climbed trees for birds' nests.

I didn't overthink it. I found a steady rock for my foot, braced both hands against her waist, and lifted. The shirt rode up, baring her whole midriff, pale as if it had never seen sun, with a red line just below her navel where the waistband had pressed. Higher up, something swelled beneath the fabric, the pulled-up cloth stretching over a curve. She whipped her head around, shaking the prickly pear bush.

"The hell you copping a feel, asshole!"

Her face was flushed, from heat or anger, I couldn't tell. Sweat ran from her hair, down her temple to her chin. Her neck was soaked, the petal still stuck. I stared at the petal.

"You told me to push you. Why are you yelling at me?"

"Push somewhere else."

She turned back and reached for the fruit. I tried her back but couldn't reach. Thought about her hips, but my hand stopped halfway. Finally I cupped her lower leg and lifted. Her leg was firm, wrapped in school-uniform pants, softer at the back of the knee. I could feel the pulse in the hollow there, thump-thump. My own heartbeat, in my ears, was faster.

This time she caught hold, yanking down a bunch of branches. The green fruit clinked against the rocks.

"Show me which ones are ripe."

I looked up. Her shirt had come completely free, the hem caught just below her chest. I could see everything. In that instant my neck moved first, my whole face twisting away as if burned. Before me, fog from the Min River drifted in, a gray layer erasing half the opposite ridge. My jaw clenched, teeth locked.

"Yellow ones," I said. "The big ones are yellow."

I never turned my head back.

Spring had steamed the whole valley muggy. Fog from the Min poured in through the mouth of the gorge, blanketing every clump of grass and every tree. The air had a sweet tang of mud and blossoms mixed. The quieter it got, the noisier it became: birds, the river, an occasional horn from the road beyond. But those sounds only made the valley emptier, empty enough that all I could hear was my own breathing. I kept my head angled away, watching the fog, my neck stiff.

"There aren't any yellow ones," she said, squatting on a branch and rummaging. "They're all green."

"I told you none were ripe."

She jumped down, wobbled, grabbed my shoulder for balance, then let go. After she pulled her hand away, that spot on my shoulder burned for a while.

We didn't talk much on the way back to school. She jumped off the high bank without slowing down. Behind the school, beside the drainage ditch: high bank on one side, wall on the other, only a narrow strip of mud between. She came charging down, and I threw my arms out instinctively to catch her. She crashed into me, her forehead hitting just below my collarbone. I heard her teeth clack together. She didn't cry out.

My hands froze in midair. One lifted to steady her shoulder, the other hung down, not knowing where to go. Her breath came hot against my neck. The petal was right there, stuck below her earlobe, the sweat having soaked a ring around it, the edges curled. My chin was dropping.

She sniffed. Very soft.

My chin stopped. Less than a handspan to my right, a shard of glass was embedded in the wall, catching the sun and flashing white. I stared at that flash until my neck went rigid. She pulled away. The petal was still there.

That study hall was very long. I sat two rows diagonally behind her and could see the back of her neck. The petal was gone, probably rubbed off. The skin was bare, smooth. I looked down at my work, looked up, looked again. After a while, looked again. She suddenly turned around, as if to borrow an eraser, her eyes brushing past my face. I looked down and flipped my test paper. It was upside down.

After that day, I couldn't stop glancing at that spot. Sometimes our eyes would meet, and we'd both look away immediately. She seemed different, but I couldn't say how. Same uniform, same way of slamming the table and cursing. But her sitting posture was off. The way she bent to pick up a pen was off. The angle she leaned back when laughing was off. It took me a long time to understand: she hadn't changed. I'd just seen her.

Spring ended. Finals, college entrance exams, everyone went their separate ways. No one ever mentioned the prickly pear thing again.

Twenty years.

I came back to this city that autumn with nothing left and nothing brought. Apartment given up, job quit, my boxes stored in a friend's garage. One night I walked out of an alley. It was just getting dark, the streetlights had just come on, and the sidewalk was packed with people. I didn't know why they walked so fast. I stood still for a moment. They flowed around me on both sides, no one touching me.

She came walking toward me.

I recognized her. She recognized me too, didn't slow down, walked right up and stopped. The streetlight hit her from the side. She wore a dark blue dress, a moderate neckline, crisp fabric hugging the lines of her waist and chest. A thin chain on one wrist, a small clutch in the other hand. Her makeup was meticulous: lipstick and blush in the same color family, like a page torn from a fashion spread.

"Old classmate."

"Old classmate."

We walked along the river for a long time. The summer wind was sticky, carrying the smell of water, brushing against our faces like a damp towel. The path below the embankment had sparse lighting: one lamp every ten meters, some broken. We walked back and forth through patches of light and dark. She said she'd spent over a decade in Shanghai doing exhibition planning. I said I'd been everywhere, doing projects, all kinds. She talked about an exhibition. I talked about a construction site. We took turns, no gaps between.

Then we both stopped at the same time.

We realized we'd both been choosing only the good things to say. I told her about places I'd been. She told me about shows she'd seen and people she'd met. Like we were swapping résumés. Light flickered on the river. Pleasure boats coming and going, the reflections shattering and reassembling.

She let her back sag. Elbows on the railing, spine curved, her chest line dropping as she let out a long breath. I didn't know what to say. After a while I let my back sag too, leaning beside her on the railing, watching those scattered lights on the water. The railing was iron, baked by the sun all day, still hot against my palms at night.

She turned her head to look at me. The corner of her mouth lifted, but her eyes weren't smiling.

"I thought about coming to find you. Several times."

I put on a startled look. "Find me for what?"

She didn't take the bait. She rose on one toe and kicked the other foot back and forth. The skirt pulling tight, her high heel clicking on the flagstones.

"How are you?"

"What do you mean, how?"

She laughed, shook her head, kept kicking. She seemed like her old self again, but not quite.

"I mean," she said, "how do you feel seeing me?"

"Of course I feel great. After all these years—"

She laughed out loud, a breathy sound. "You're still like this. So you."

I didn't get it. "Like what?"

She turned around, leaned back against the railing, arching her spine. Her chest thrust forward, the shoe dangling from her toes, swinging, not falling. She stared at me.

"Tell me, how do I look now?"

"Good," I said, nodding. A fish turned over in the river, a splash.

"At least I'm better off than you, I—"

She didn't let me finish.

"I'm fucking seducing you." Not loud, no expression. Her chin was slightly raised, watching me.

My hands rested on the railing, my knuckles pressing against the iron pipe, faintly numb. Another pleasure boat passed, the light shattering once more.

"I was seducing you back then too."

She stepped closer, raised her hand, and rubbed her thumb across the button just below my collar. Once. Twice. I looked down: a smudge of lipstick, pale beige, had transferred onto the button.

I reached to wipe it off. It didn't come off. She rubbed it again with her thumb, harder this time, her nail scraping the button with a faint rasp. Still there.

I grabbed her wrist, spun her around, pressed her against the railing, lifted her skirt from behind and reached under her shirt. She tilted her head back against my shoulder, her breath hot on my neck, just like twenty years ago. The railing dug into my stomach, hot even through the fabric.

Later we were in the car. She lay on the bed with her eyes closed, breathing heavy, her hand clutching the corner of the pillow, knuckles white. I pried her hand away. She opened her fingers, then clenched again. The curtain wasn't fully drawn, and a blade of streetlight slanted in, cutting from her collarbone across her hip.

She rolled onto her side. I followed that line of light downward.

Around her waist was a ring of pale white lines, like marks left by elastic that had been on too long. Her skin wasn't smooth. Under the light I could see a fine network of textures, like cracks in a dry riverbed after the water recedes. She rolled onto her back, and I saw it. Right in the middle of her lower belly, a thin white line, very faint, extending about two inches below her navel. A C‑section scar. I didn't ask.

Eyes still closed, she said, "Is it what you imagined?"

I didn't answer. I reached out and touched that white line, dragging my fingernail lightly across it. Her belly twitched. She caught my finger with her hand, pressed it down onto the scar, and held it there.

Her scent had changed. Before, it was heat mixed with sweat and grass. Now it was something sweet and cloying: perfume, wine, body heat stirred together, too thick to dissolve. I leaned in and smelled the skin below her collarbone. Still sweet.

But her legs were still warm. When she turned, her knee bumped my thigh, the same weight as when she'd jumped off that high bank twenty years ago.

I thought of that spring. The way she'd crouched in the prickly pear tree hunting for ripe ones, her shirt pulled up below her chest, her whole belly exposed. That was the first woman's body I'd ever seen. Later I saw many, but that one had stayed in my head, like a photograph at the bottom of a drawer, glimpsed every time I rummaged but never pulled out.

The one lying next to me now was different. The scar on her belly, the lines on her waist, a tiny black mole beside her shoulder blade, a mosquito-bite scratch on her inner knee. I reached out and touched each one. When I finished, I touched them again. She didn't flinch, didn't speak.

Three minutes. Maybe five. She pulled her hand out from under my fingers, sat up, and put her clothes on. The zipper caught halfway. She twisted her arm behind her back and fixed it herself. When she stood, her knee cracked, a soft click. She walked to the door, hand on the handle, not turning it.

I leaned against the headboard. The blanket was rumpled where she'd lain, a hollow shaped like her waist and hips. I reached down and pressed my hand into that hollow.

She looked back at the hollow, then at me.

"That's it," she said.

"Mm."

The door closed. I kept pressing the hollow, running my fingers along its outline. The blanket slowly rebounded: first the dent shallowed, then it became a loose fold. The fold stayed, but the shape was gone.

I pressed again. Nothing remained, but the small indentation from my own fingers, and that too soon bounced back.

The streetlight outside was still on. I sat for a while, threw off the blanket, and went to the bathroom to wash my face. I turned on the tap, whoosh. I looked up at myself in the mirror. There was an old cut on my chin from shaving the night before, scabbed over, nearly ready to fall off. I picked at it. Didn't get it all. A tiny piece of scab stuck to my fingernail.

I stared at that piece of scab for a long time.