Big Breasts & Wipe Hips: A Novel

rice, a platter of stewed lamb and turnips, another of tiny shrimp and celery, and a bowl of sweet-and-sour soup with snakehead fish. She handed him a pair of imitation ivory chopsticks and urged him to eat.
    Jintong had no appetite for the steaming food arrayed in front of him. Turning to the servant, his eyes puffy from crying, he shouted in anger, “What am I? Tell me that!”
    The poor girl was so frightened she just stood there with her arms hanging loosely at her side. “I don’t know, sir …”
    “You damned spy!” He flung his chopsticks down on the table. “You’re working undercover for Wang Yinzhi, you damned spy!”
    “I don’t understand, sir, I don’t know what you mean …”
    “You put slow-acting poison in this food. You want to see me dead!” He picked up the dishes and dumped their contents on the table. Then he flung the bowl of soup at the servant. “Get out of my sight, you spying bitch!”
    She ran out of the room howling, her clothes wet and sticky.
    Wang Yinzhi, you counterrevolutionary, you enemy of the people, you bloodsucking insect, you damned rightist, capitalist-roader, reactionary capitalist, degenerate, class outsider, parasite, petty scoundrel tied to the post of historical disgrace, bandit, turncoat, hooligan, rogue, concealed class enemy of the people, royalist, filial daughter and virtuous granddaughter of old man Confucius, feudalism apologist, advocate for the restoration of the slave system, spokeswoman for the declining landlord class … Calling up every degrading political term he’d learned over several turbulent decades, he launched a verbal attack against Wang Yinzhi. Tonight you and I are going to have it out once and for all. Either the fish dies or the net breaks. Only one will be left standing. When two armies clash, victory goes to the most heroic!
    Wang Yinzhi opened the door, a ring of golden keys in her hand, and stood in the doorway. “Here I am,” she said with a scornful smile. “Let’s see what you’re made of.”
    Mustering up his courage, Jintong said, “I’m going to kill you!”
    “Well,” she said with a laugh, “a spark of life, finally. If you really have the guts to kill anyone, you’ve earned my respect.”
    She walked unafraid into the room, gave the filth on the floor a wide berth, and stopped in front of Jintong. She smacked him on the head with her key ring. “You ungrateful bastard!” she cursed. “I’d like to know what you’re so unhappy about. You live in the finest hotel in town, you’ve got a servant to prepare your meals. Stick out your arms and you’ll be clothed, open your mouth and you’ll be fed. You live like an emperor, so what the hell else do you want?”
    “I want… my freedom,” Jintong muttered.
    She froze for just a moment, before bursting out laughing. “I don’t restrict your freedom,” she said after she’d had a good laugh. “In fact, you can leave right this minute. Go!”
    “Who are you to tell me to go? It’s my shop, and if anyone’s going to get out of here, it’s you, not me.”
    “Like hell!” Wang Yinzhi said. “If I hadn’t taken over the business, you’d have gone under even if you had a hundred shops. And you have the nerve to say this shop is yours! You’ve lived off me for a year already, which is all anyone could expect. Now it’s time to give you back your precious freedom. There’s the door. This room is reserved for someone else tonight.”
    “I’m your lawful husband, and I’m not leaving until I’m good and ready.”
    “Lawful husband,” Wang Yinzhi repeated mawkishly. “Husband. Do you think you’re worthy of the term? Have you fulfilled your husbandly duties? Are you really up to it?”
    “Yes, if you’d do as I say.”
    “How dare you!” Wang Yinzhi exploded. “What do you take me for, a whore? You think you can order me around any way you want?” As her face turned bright red, and her ugly lips began to twitch, she flung the keys in her hand at his forehead. A sharp pain drilled its way into his brain and a hot, sticky liquid soaked his eyebrows. He reached up to touch it and pulled back a bloody finger, just as a couple of men he knew burst into the room. One was wearing a police uniform, the other was in a judge’s robe. The policeman was Wang Yinzhi’s younger brother, Wang Tiezhi; the judge was her brother-in-law, Huang Xiao-jun. They went straight for Jintong. “What do you say, Brother-in-law?” the policeman said as he drove