Red Rose

Author: Furong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-12-01
Features: When I arrived at the Hilton, it was a quarter past seven. I asked the doorman, and the Western restaurant was on the ground floor. I quickly glanced at myself in the mirror of the lobby wearing a white long down jacket—it seemed bulky and exhausting. It was so warm in the heating, was I dressed too much? (Dressed like this to eat Western food, was it too foolish?) The Western restaurant was dazzlingly luxurious, with a few scattered tables of guests, mostly well-dressed foreigners. Liu Guoqing sat at a table by the long window wearing yesterday's baseball cap, leisurely flipping through an English newspaper. He wore an olive green Daks T-shirt-style thin wool sweater on top, with his leather jacket and silk scarf casually draped over the chair behind him. Seeing me, he seemed quite pleased. He put down the newspaper and smiled gently, "I thought I'd be waiting until midnight." He looked more composed and confident (at ease and self-assured) today than yesterday on the street. I smiled faintly, taking off my down jacket, "Lucky me today, the director didn't ask for a second revision." I glanced at the snow-white tablecloth, covered with bright silver knives and forks, one set after another, dazzling the eyes. He looked at me as if he understood, "Is your director hard to please?" I nodded and couldn't help but complain, "Sometimes he gets moody, making us revise the same scenes three or four times. It makes us want to grind our teeth." As I spoke, I was inwardly surprised: Huh, why was I venting my frustrations to him the moment we met? It was as if we'd known each other for a long time. He smiled gently again, revealing his pearly white teeth (they looked like they'd just been washed), leaned forward, and seemingly out of nowhere, produced a large bouquet of flowers wrapped in cellophane from the other side of the table. "I should have given this to you yesterday, but you were busy." It was a large bouquet of fresh roses, at least forty or fifty stems, pale pink, with petals like jade, elegant and nearly transparent. I froze for a moment before taking them. "Thank you," I said, then couldn't help but ask, "They're beautiful. Are they Taiwanese jade roses?" He smiled but didn't answer, raised his eyebrows, looked at me, and his eyes seemed to hold a hint of surprise. I smiled self-deprecatingly, "I've seen this rose in a magazine. It's very expensive, over two or three hundred yuan per stem." He was willing to spend so much—he must be rich. "I picked it out for a while, thinking the pink might suit you. Little girls like pink so much." I continued to smile self-deprecatingly, "Actually, I'm not that young either." He didn't speak, looked at me, and smiled with a meaningful expression. He leaned forward again, took out a small Daks briefcase from his side, opened it, and took out a small pink velvet phone pouch, handing it to me. "I lost my phone. Use this for now. I've already put a card in it." I froze for a moment, hesitantly taking it. The phone pouch was velvet, and it felt incredibly smooth. The phone inside was also a soft pastel pink, a Nokia 3105 model. I shook my head, "Thank you, but I can't accept this." So much pink—did he really see me as a little girl? "Why?" "I don't accept gifts without merit." I said firmly, taking the phone back and placing it back in the velvet pouch, then pushing it back toward him.