Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

window filled with mannequins. Above the door, the shop’s name — Beautify You Lingerie — was written in a florid script; beneath that, the shop’s motto: Distinctive Fashions in Ladies’ Undergarments. “Well?” Sima Liang asked me. “It’s wonderful!” I said excitedly. “That’s good, because you’re going to run this shop.” What a shock! “I can’t handle anything like this,” I protested. Sima Liang smiled. “You’re an expert in women’s breasts, so who could possibly be more qualified than you at selling brassieres?”
    Sima led me through the silent automatic door into the spacious shop, where decorating work was still going on. All four walls were mirrored from one end to the other; the ceiling was a metal material that also reflected images. The foreman of the cleanup crew rushed up and bowed to us. “Now’s the time to make any changes you might have in mind, Little Uncle,” Sima said. “I don’t much care for the name ‘Beautify You,’ ” I said. “You’re the expert. What would you like to call it?” “Unicorn,” I said without a moment’s hesitation. “Unicorn: The World in Bras.” After a momentary pause, Sima laughed and said, “But they always come in pairs!” “Unicorn,” I repeated. “I like it.” “You’re the boss,” Sima said, “and what you say goes.” He turned to the foreman. “Have a new sign made right away. Beautify You has now become Unicorn. Hm, Unicorn, Unicorn. Not bad. It’s distinctive. See, Little Uncle, I said you were the man for the job. If you held a gun to my head, I couldn’t have come up with a more stylish name than that for this shop.”
    “Women won’t let you fondle their breasts just because you feel like it,” the head of the Municipal Broadcasting and Television Bureau said as he stirred his Nescafé coffee with a tiny silver spoon. His gray hair, proof of a long, hard life, was combed back neatly. His face was dark, but not dirty; his teeth were yellow, but brushed; his fingers were stained yellow, but the skin was soft. He lit an expensive China-brand cigarette and looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Are you of the opinion,” he asked, “that you can do whatever you want so long as you have the backing of a rich businessman like Sima Liang?”
    “No, of course not.” Somehow I managed to keep my anger in check and appear as respectful as possible. “Bureau Chief,” I said to this man who had made such a name for himself during the Cultural Revolution and was still as powerful as ever, “whatever it is you want to say to me, please just say it.”
    “Heh-heh,” he sneered. “This son of Sima Ku — a counterrevolutionary with the blood of Northeast Gaomi’s villagers on his hands — has become Dalan’s most honored guest on the basis of a few measly coins he’s put together. Like they say, ‘If you’ve got money, you can get the devil to turn the millstone!’ Shangguan Jintong, what were you before this? A necrophiliac and a mental patient. Now you’re a CEO!” Class hatred turned the eyes of this man they called the Unicorn bright red. He squeezed his cigarette so hard liquefied tar oozed out. “But I didn’t come here today to dispense revolutionary propaganda,” he said grimly. “I’m here in the cause of fame and wealth.”
    I listened without interrupting. What difference could it make to Shangguan Jintong, who had suffered abuse all his life? “You know,” he said, “and you won’t ever forget, that time when you and your mother were paraded through the Dalan marketplace, how I suffered in the name of revolution. That’s right, I still recall what it felt like to be slapped by you. Well, I created the Unicorn Struggle Team and had my own program, called
The Unicorn
, over the Revolutionary Committee PA system, which I utilized to air a number of instructive broadcasts regarding the Cultural Revolution. Anyone around the age of fifty knows who Unicorn was. In the thirty years since, I’ve consistently used the pen name Unicorn, publishing eighty-eight celebrated articles in national magazines and newspapers. The people associate the name Unicorn with me. But now you’ve linked my name with women’s undergarments. You and Sima Liang are so wildly ambitious, you don’t care who you hurt. What you’re doing is nothing short of insane class vengeance and a brazen defamation of my good name. I am going to expose you in print and take you to court, a double-barreled