Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

his gang down the western edge of the square; they ran off to the south.
    While the fight was going on outside, I spotted Ximen Huan, in dark sunglasses, sitting at a window inside the Immortal, a bar next to Come Back Inn, casually smoking a cigarette. Your wife, who watched the fight with her heart in her mouth, never did see him, but even if she had, she’d never have believed that her fair-skinned boy could have been the instigator. He reached into his pocket and took out one of the latest cell phones, flipped it open, punched in some numbers, and raised it to his mouth. A few words were all he spoke before sitting back and continuing to enjoy his cigarette, with grace and expertise, like the gangster bosses in movies from Hong Kong and Taiwan.
    Now let me relate another incident involving Ximen Huan, this one occurring in your yard after he’d spent three days in the local police station over a fight he was involved in.
    Huang Huzhu was so enraged she tore at his clothes and shook him.
    “Huanhuan,” she said through tears of anguish, “my Huanhuan, you don’t know how you disappoint me. I’ve done everything I could and sacrificed so much to be here and take care of you. Your father has spared no expense to give you everything you need to go to school, but you pay us back by . . .”
    As his mother stood there crying, Ximen Huan coolly patted her on the shoulder and said nonchalantly:
    “Don’t cry, Mother, dry your eyes. It’s not what you think. I didn’t do anything wrong. I wasn’t to blame, no matter what they said. Look at me, do I look like a bad kid? I’m not, Mother, I’m a good kid.”
    Well, this good kid went out and danced and sang like a paragon of innocence. And it worked. Huzhu’s tears were quickly replaced by smiles. Me? I was disgusted.
    When Ximen Jinlong heard the news, he came running, fit to be tied. But his son’s honeyed words quickly had him smiling too. I hadn’t seen Ximen Jinlong in a long time. Time had not been kind to him — rich or poor, everyone ages. His hair was much thinner, his eyesight much dimmer, his paunch much bigger.
    “Don’t worry about me, Father. You have more important things to worry about,” Ximen Huan said with a fetching smile. “No one knows a son better than his father, as they say. You know me well. I have my faults: I’m a little too much of a smooth talker, I like to eat, I’m sort of lazy, and pretty girls drive me crazy. But how does that make me any different from you?”
    “You might be able to fool your mother, son, but not me. If I couldn’t see though this little act of yours, I wouldn’t be able to get anything done in this society. Over the past few years, you’ve done all the bad things you’re capable of. Doing something bad is easy. What’s hard is spending your life doing only bad things. So I think it’s time for you to start doing good things.”
    “What a great way to put it, Father. From now on I’ll turn bad things into good ones.” He nestled up to Jinlong and adroitly slipped his father’s expensive watch off his wrist. “This is a knockoff, Father. I can’t have my dad wearing something like that. So I’ll wear it and suffer the loss of face for you.”
    “Don’t give me that. It’s a genuine Rolex.”
    Several days later, the local TV station broadcast the following newsworthy item: “Local high-school student Ximen Huan found a large sum of money, but instead of pocketing the ten thousand yuan, he turned it over to his school.” The shiny, genuine Rolex watch never again adorned his wrist.
    One day Ximen Huan, the good kid, brought another good kid, Pang Fenghuang, over to the house. By then she’d become a fashionable young woman with a nice figure, a languid look in her eyes, and a wet look to her hair. We all thought she was a mess. Huzhu and Hezuo, definitely of the old school, could not stand the way she looked, but Ximen Huan whispered to them:
    “Mama, Aunty, you’re behind the times. That’s the fashionable look these days.”
    Now I know it’s not Ximen Huan or Pang Fenghuang you’re concerned about. It’s your son, Lan Kaifang. Well, he’s about to make an appearance.
    It was a splendid autumn afternoon when your wife and Huzhu were both out. The youngsters had asked them to leave so they could hold a meeting. They sat at a table stacked with fresh fruit, including a sliced watermelon, which had been set up under the parasol tree in the northeast corner of the yard. Ximen