Lost in Translation Page 0,113

blanket from behind the backseat and spread it on the flat ground next to a pile of boulders.

She watched, hypnotized.

He walked back and opened the door on her side.

"Lin—"

He stopped her. "My name is Shiyang."

She caught her breath. This was the first time he had offered his given name. "I am called Alice."

"Alice."

She nodded. She followed him to the blanket, and lowered herself to sit on the ground opposite him, cross-legged. He sat studying her without a word for what seemed an endless time, then eventually reached over and grasped her gently by the hips, pulled her close to him, almost to his lap, carefully moving her legs until they were wrapped around his midsection.

She placed her hands on his shoulders. Fear erupted and she fought it down.

He only had to lean forward a few inches to brush her lips with his. His mouth was soft and dry like the mouth of a young boy. She kissed him back the same way, gentle, the way an inexperienced girl would, but with all the tender feeling she’d been keeping inside.

He paused, then kissed her again. This time he entered her mouth and touched her once, delicately. She bit his lower lip a little. Yes, she meant to say, I want it. So he came into her mouth again, but confidently now, and keeping a rhythm.

They kissed this way for a long time. She moved her hands over his back, his neck, his shoulders, but he sat very still. He used only his mouth. She felt she was going to explode. Then finally his hands left her waist, slid over her neck and through her hair, dropping to her chest and her small breasts.

"Shiyang," she breathed, enchanted by his name, the softness of his mouth, the longed-for feeling at last of him touching her. She arched her back to press herself into his hands. Finally after a long time his hand arrived between her legs and grasped her there, hard, right through her clothes. "Pan-wangle hao jiu," he whispered, I’ve wanted it such a long time. He squeezed gently and her whole body cramped.

Ah, they would do it now, she knew; no more turning back. When she had been a young girl, learning about sex, there had been times when she had kissed a man like this, and touched and been touched, through her clothes, and then stopped. Not anymore. She understood now that kissing like this made all the promises, gave out all the rhythms of the love that was to follow. She knew that after kissing like this a man and woman didn’t say no. They undressed each other, and lay down in the infinite night air, and did everything to each other they could imagine.

When, some hours later, they arrived back at the Eren Obo guesthouse, they slipped quietly into Lin’s room together, and spent the rest of the night in his bed. They did not actually sleep until close to dawn, and then only for what seemed like a few minutes.

When she opened her eyes the light was growing stronger in the room. She slid off and stood nude by the bed. "Wo gai zou-le, " she whispered, I should go. She pulled her T-shirt over her head, stepped into her jeans. She was probing his face. Was he happy? Did he regret it? Were they just beginning, or would he, having attained her, now get scared? As she had always done herself, with every man save Jian and then, finally —admit it—with Jian too. "Shiyang?" she asked.

"Go on," he whispered, and she could read in his face nothing but the mixture of awe, joy, and painful terror to which she knew, in her most honest heart, he had every right.

"You found this house?" Spencer stared at the picture. "You actually found this house?"

"I told you things could change," she said triumphantly, and repeated the story yet again—glossing quickly over the fact that she and Lin had taken the jeep and driven out there in the middle of the night.

Spencer didn’t seem to fix on this anyway. Instead he was locked into the image of Teilhard de Chardin and Lucile Swan, as they had stood and soberly spoken to the camera with their eyes fifty years before. "Is everybody finished eating?" He looked up, excitement pulling his face into a grin, across the breakfast table from Lin to Kong to Alice. "Why are we waiting around?"

There was a sea change in the group. A whiff of hope had