The 89 bus was cutting through the thin dark of evening, one side window wide open, cold air pouring in. Goldie and I hung by the glass like two idiots, letting the wind slap our faces. I don't know what had us so giddy. Maybe just being out, being young, being together.
Goldie was a senior when I was in college—a campus legend. Bright dyed-blonde hair, a sweet doll-like voice that didn't match her presence, and real money. We called her Goldie partly for the hair and partly because she had the energy of a golden retriever. She was the kind of rich that didn't have to announce itself, though she announced it anyway.
The wind made me bold. I stuck my hand out the window and felt the cold slip through my fingers, something there and nothing there at once. We laughed too loud. The driver, waiting at a red light, told us to keep our hands inside. Goldie said yes, yes, yes, then turned and made a face at me.
Then she started pointing at cars in the dense traffic ahead. That one's a BMW. That's a Volkswagen. See that? Ferrari. I looked where she pointed, one after another, and thought—maybe you have to get out into the world to understand that people really are sorted into tiers.
I stared out the window. Trees in front of the buildings rushed backward, leaving hurried silhouettes. Two people in a crowd can pass each other for a few seconds, and you can invent an entire TV drama out of it. Goldie watched the street for a long time. I followed her gaze, but she wasn't looking at anything. She had fallen into memory.
My eyes drifted around the bus, and when they landed on the timer, I thought of a phone call that lasted an hour. On the other end, Goldie was choking up. She said, I thought I was over it. I thought I could joke about him with anyone. But today I saw him from a distance, and the second I turned around, I fell apart.
I tried to comfort her: It's okay. I understand how you feel. She gave a bitter little laugh. You're wrong. Nobody in the world can really feel what someone else feels.
I went quiet.
There's a line in Deep Sea Stars: 'There is no such thing as empathy. If the needle isn't in their body, they don't know how much it hurts.' Maybe that's why my cousin cried over a lost toy even after he was given a new one. Adults thought a replacement could stand in for the old one. They couldn't feel what he felt for the first toy. Goldie's feelings were like that. No one else could enter them.
The gentle recorded voice announced the stop and pulled me back. Then I realized we'd missed ours. Goldie, hair a mess from the wind, shrieked a second too late: We missed the stop? We missed the stop. I looked at her calmly. So we had to ride to the terminal, then walk back along the edge of the road.
Along the way she told me more of her love story, in pieces. I listened and thought: loving someone is a disaster. Some people survive it. Some don't.
02
Wang Xiaobo wrote: 'I give you my whole soul, along with its oddities, its little tempers, its flickering moods, its one thousand eight hundred bad habits. It's truly annoying. It has only one good thing: it loves you.'
When you're on the far side of the mountains, I'm on a lonely road with no end. I keep feeling your breath behind my ear, but never at the center of my chest. Missing someone is an illness that never quite heals.
Goldie's missing Xiaobai was terminal—late-stage, cancer-ward terminal. The only rebirth was death.
When you love someone, every direction is on the way, and every flavor is a favorite. After you separate, I can't even manufacture an accidental meeting. You disappear so completely it's as if you were never there.
When the film I Belonged to You was out, Goldie went alone and bought a seat with no one around her. I don't know whether that screening—probably full of couples—hit her with a ten-thousand-point damage, or whether it finally made her willing to let Xiaobai go.
Memories are sand in the eye. They make you tear up without warning.
When Goldie and Xiaobai were together, a single roasted sweet potato could last a whole street. She'd take a bite, hold it up to his mouth, giggle, and run. He'd catch her in seconds and return it to the rightful owner—her mouth. Their lips tasted of sweet potato. Simple, and happy.
When she craved grilled gluten, she'd drag him out no matter the hour, walk far, pay any price, all for a two-yuan skewer. He'd call her crazy. She was happy.
He indulged her tantrums; she thawed his cold face. He was famous for not smiling, but with her he laughed like a child. When the road flooded, he wore his sneakers and carried her over the cold, muddy water. During her period, he went to the cafeteria every day and brought red-date soup in a clay pot to her dorm. The time was short, but it felt like a lifetime.
Then happiness knocked, and before she could open the door, it left. Xiaobai broke up with her. To this day she doesn't know why. Maybe she knows and won't admit it.
Afterward she stopped reaching for roasted sweet potatoes. She stopped ordering the soup. She stopped acting spoiled. She stopped saying his name. But she often woke to a pillow soaked through.
You had already walked on. I stayed where I was, inside the inertia of loving you.
Goldie had never lacked money; she spent freely. So when she took a tutoring job, everyone thought it was strange. She only said, I don't want to spend my family's money anymore. I want to be independent. She carried a secret only she knew, riding dozens of bus stops every day to a tutoring job she would never have considered before.
W. S. Merwin wrote: 'Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.' After they separated, she tried desperately to turn herself into the person he wanted.
03
Kahlil Gibran wrote: 'Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.'
In her phone contacts there was a separate group for him. Once it had color; now it was always black and white. How many people on a blocklist once said goodnight to each other?
Love is like war. Lose you, and what does winning the world matter? Win you, and I wouldn't mind losing the world.
Goldie losing Xiaobai was like losing the world. She kept busy. When they ran into each other, she didn't dare reach out. Reach out and she might make a mistake; hold back and she might miss him. So she silently printed his face into memory again and again, then turned and pretended to be a stranger.
Xiaobai had said: Why are you always so willful? Not everyone is as rich as you. Without your parents, what could you do? So after the breakup, Goldie swallowed her pride and took a hectic tutoring job.
Xiaobai had said: Why can't you think about other people? Being in love doesn't mean being together every second. Why can't you be more independent? The girl I like should have something she likes to do. So after the breakup, Goldie started practicing being alone. She could carry a heavy suitcase up to the fifth floor by herself.
Xiaobai had said: Let's break up. I can't take care of you. Goldie said: Give me a reason. He didn't reply. Love had already expired.
Many reasons in love don't need explaining; both people know. But without hearing him say it, she couldn't let it go.
When did we start lowering our bottom line, adapting to the times, watching those clumsy performances? You loved me once—why did you have to act out the details? What should I become to delay your boredom? From then on, you turned and walked away. I didn't stay either.
Goldie said that all the messages she'd left him had been deleted except one. The line was: When my hair reaches my waist, I'll play an old tune for you with my bare hands. It had yellowed with time. In the end it was just a memory in the sand. Now her hair was long. She was going to cut it.
Loving you has passed the two-minute limit. It cannot be unsent. I'll leave the old me beside you; that's still a beautiful ending. We were still in sync, even in how we drifted apart. I used to turn back to look at you. Now, hearing your name, I still pause, but I don't turn around anymore. I'm happy you came. I don't regret that you left.