Death of a Red Heroine

make it there in fifteen minutes?”
    “I’m still in bed. You really want me to come running to you barefoot?”
    “Why not? See you in half an hour then.” He put down the phone.
    It was an intimate allusion between them. Arising from their first meeting. He was pleased with the way she had said it over the phone.
    He had met Wang about a year earlier. On a Friday afternoon, Party Secretary Li told him to go to the office of the Wenhui Daily , saying that a reporter named Wang Feng would like to interview him there. Why a Wenhui reporter should be interested in seeing a junior police officer, Chen could not figure out.
    The Wenhui building was a twelve-story sandstone edifice located on Tiantong Road, commanding a magnificent view over the Bund. Chen arrived there about two hours late, having been delayed with a traffic violation case. At the entrance, there was an old man sitting at something like a front desk. When Chen handed over his name card, he was told Wang was not in her office. The doorman was positive, however, that she was somewhere in the building. So Chen took a seat in the lobby, waited, and started to read a paperback mystery, The Fallen Curtain . It was not much of a lobby, just a small space for a couple of chairs in front of an old-fashioned elevator. There were not too many people coming and going at the moment. Soon he was lost in Ruth Rendell’s world until a clatter of footsteps caught his attention.
    A tall, slender girl was walking out of the elevator with a pink plastic pail over her bare arm. Wenhui must have a shower room for its staff, he thought. She was in her early twenties, wearing a low-cut T-shirt and shorts. Her wet hair was tied up with a sky-blue kerchief. Her wooden slippers clapped crisply against the floor. Probably a college student doing an internship, he thought. She certainly scampered like one. And then she stumbled, pitching forward.
    Throwing away the book, he jumped up and caught her in his arms.
    Standing on one slipper, her hand on his shoulder for balance, she reached one bare foot out to the other slipper which had been flung into the corner. She blushed, disengaging herself from his embrace. It took her only a second to regain her balance, but she remained deeply embarrassed.
    She did not have to be, Chen thought with a wry humor, feeling her wet hair brushing against his face, her body smelling of some pleasant soap.
    In traditional Chinese society, however, such physical contact would have been enough to result in a wedding contract. “Once in a man’s arms, always in his arms.”
    “Wang Feng,” the doorman said. “The police officer has been waiting for you.”
    She was the reporter who had summoned him there. And the interview afterward led to something he had not expected.
    Afterward, he had joked about her coming barefoot to him. “Coming barefoot” was an allusion to a story in classical Chinese literature. In 800 B.C., the Duke of Zhou, anxious to meet a wise man who would help him unify the county, ran barefoot out of the hall to greet him. The phrase was later used to exaggerate one’s eagerness to meet a guest.
    It did not apply to them. She had happened to fall, walking out of the bathroom, and he had happened to be there, catching her in his arms. That was all. Now a year later, he was walking toward her again. At the intersection of the Bund and Nanjing road, the top of the Wenhui office building shimmered behind the Peace Hotel.
The morning’s in the arms of the Bund, her hair dew-sparkled . . .
    The Bund was alive with people, sitting on the concrete benches, standing by the bank, watching the dark yellow tide rolling in, singing snatches of Beijing operas along with the birds in the cages hung on the trees. A light haze of May heat trembled over the colored-stone walk. A long line of tourists stretched out, leading to the cruise ticket offices, near the Bridge Park. At the Lujiazhui ferry, he saw a swarthy sailor coiling the hawsers as a small group of students looked on curiously. The boat appeared crowded, as always, and as the bell rang urgently, men and women hurried to their destination, and then to new destinations. A tunnel project was said to be under construction beneath the river, so people would soon have alternative ways to get across the water. Several petrels glided over the waves, their wings glistening white in the sunlight, as if flying out of a calendar illustration. The river, though still polluted, showed some