Chapter 16 Chapter Sixteen

You drove me into town that day.You say it's a rented car from Helty, you're a receptionist;I glanced at you and said, people like you are called "amateur literature lovers" in our mainland, but in my stomach I thought you were purely "full-fed"!Putting energy and money at the same time, not trying to do anything just to satisfy interest, which is rare in our mainland. In my glance, I saw your long eyelashes brushing the green trees on the side of the road.Your long eyelashes remind me of another woman.She is darker and thinner than you.She crushes me into her novels from time to time, and I often do it in revenge or in return.So for a moment I thought it was her sitting next to me.

Yet in a split second you're expertly steering the car onto the freeway.You didn't forget to tell me to fasten my seat belt when you changed gears.You are always so careful and thoughtful.Your careful cooking made me miss you strongly when I opened the box you packed for me in front of my wife after I returned home. We looked at the rushing road ahead and chatted.Of course you came to the United States from Taiwan, which I knew at a glance.Why do you ask? "What is the difference between girls in mainland China and girls in Taiwan? Why can you tell at a glance?" I said that this is the same as publications in mainland China and Taiwan.The difference lies in the style of the binding design, the difference between simplified and traditional characters, the quality of the paper, and so on.You laugh again and ask what are the obvious differences in their content.I said that I can understand the publications in mainland China at a glance, including their most obscure allusions, the most vague hints and the most tranced winks, while I still need to read carefully the publications in Taiwan.

You smiled at the time, but I don't know what it means.Yes, I still need to read carefully.For a long way you didn't speak.We let the silver-gray Ford run wild.It ran as well as the horse I used to ride on the herds.While watching the noisy beech plants, I smell your faint perfume.I caught a glimpse of your creases behind your ears as you turned into the street.I guessed your age.Later, you have no scruples in front of me, you don't need to hide it, you naturally take off your artificial eyelashes like taking off earrings, and I know that you have reached middle age. A few nights later, you told me that you had a premonition when you were driving, as if you knew the possibilities and impossibilities of our future.I listened to you telling me, promised me, and thought that maybe I was really old.The sign of old age is the failure of premonition.I once had a premonition but never thought it was you, because I always felt that you were too far away from me.I lament that frustration, disillusionment and lovelorn have worn away my latent instincts; this woman, that woman, and all the women have blunted my sense of taste.I imagined that my tongue had probably become a metal rod.

But I thought again, do you have a premonition every time you meet a man?To be honest, when I sat next to you, I only discovered that a woman is not about being pretty or not, but about whether she can arouse a man's lust. You see, wasn't I still calm and objective back then?