"Hold on to the railing," I say. Haibao does what he's told. I wish he would think a little for himself, I am cold and I ache and he's acting like a child. Damn it, I ought to leave him here, let him find his own way out.

Anger is good. Anger is better than what Haibao is feeling, than apathy or, what did Maggie Smallwood call it? Perlerorneg, the awareness of the futility of it all. Despair. Underneath my anger I am all too aware that I've been just as paralyzed as Haibao is now.

There is something exhilarating about being the one who is intrepid. I think, I have done it, I have saved us. We go step by cautious step across the catwalk and I am exhausted and angry and full of a hard, terrible joy. We have survived. Yes, it was luck as much as anything else, but we made our own luck. The chain and tackle system dangles in lines and shadows all around us, the light slowly brightens above us. There is a purity of form and line; reality, hard lean reality is very beautiful.

We take the stairs down. I'm so tired my knees are shaking, but Haibao follows me without complaint. The door to the loading dock is bolted shut, but it isn't meant to be safe from the inside. And then we are outside and we walk away, not going around the front but climbing the fence in the morning halflight. I make a stirrup of my hands and boost Haibao up, then climb the chain link and drop, shaking with fatigue, on the other side. Haibao's white suit is streaked with rust like old blood, but we come out on a street two blocks away.

And then, it is all too normal. It is Sunday morning.

"It's okay," I say to Haibao. "We're okay."

He nods, listlessly.

"I'm never going to play pressball again," I say, grinning, but he doesn't respond.

I start watching for bus stop signs. "What is our bus?" I ask Haibao.

He doesn't act as if he heard.

"What number is our bus," I say. And when he doesn't answer, "Haibao!"

"Seventeen," he says. "A 17 or a 17 Special."

It is too easy, I find a stop for the 17 and we stand, Haibao slumped against the wall with his eyes closed. The bus comes and the driver eyes Haibao's stained suit but nobody says anything. "Nanjing University," I say.

"Back," he says, "Up."

We climb up and go back and collapse into seats. Haibao nods. I stare out the window. Eventually his head comes down against my shoulder. The bus is warm and slowly the warmth creeps into me. I doze with my head against the glass, waking when we separate from the front, then again when we join another bus. I awake the third time when our segment peals off to go up, and I know we are close to the University so I wake Haibao. He is bleary eyed.

We get off, the stop is familiar, and yet different. Just as the morning, which would usually be a beginning, is an ending to the night.

"I'll come up with you," I say to Haibao.

"It's okay," he says.

"No problem." I go up in the lift with him, and when we get to the flat, I send him in for a shower. "I just want to go to bed," he protests, but he has no fight in him. While he is in the shower I make tea and sweeten it. I check out the bruise on my face in the mirror in Haibao's bedroom-I have a blue knot and the side of my face aches. Tea and aspirin. I take my hair down.

Haibao comes out in his bathrobe and I feed him sweet tea and aspirin, and remembering Maggie Smallwood, talk to him softly. "It is a pretty morning," I say and "You are warm now, and tired, and you'll sleep well. Finish your tea, the sugar will make you feel a little better, and then into a warm bed. We'll darken the windows, and I'll call this evening."

Then I make him drink all the rest of his tea and put him in bed. I dim the windows. I am so tired. I want to be clean like Haibao. But I sit for a moment and he says something for the first time since I asked him about the bus. "Don't go," he says.

"I'm here," I say, feeling a little foolish. "I'll stay, and I'll call you this evening."

He closes his eyes and I sit what seems like a long time, but which is really only five minutes by my watch (I count the seconds. I decide to stay ten minutes, then seven, and then slide carefully off the bed at five.)

I dim the windows in the front of the apartment. It is easy, I've seen Haibao do it so many times, I just rest my fingertips against the glass and say "Dim," and when it is dark enough I take my fingers away. On the little table next to the door I see a letter signed with the red official chop of the University. I am tired and I almost leave it, but I pick it up.

'Comrade Yang:' it begins, they all begin with Comrade. 'This is to inform you that pending an official investigation from your home district, you are suspended from study-'

It is dated for Friday and it is open. Haibao has seen it, knew about, but hasn't said anything. And Saturday night he was in a better mood than I have seen him in a long time. I think of his exhilaration at pressball. How he glowed gold and white.

I assume I have misunderstood the letter, read it again. My Chinese causes me to make mistakes, perhaps it is telling him he has been cleared? No, I go through the sentences carefully, my head beginning to throb from fatigue and strain. He is suspended, they are investigating him. Maybe he hasn't read it? But why would he print it out on Friday and then not read it?

I put the letter down and go, closing the door softly behind me. I am too tired to care now, I'll call him this evening and ask him. In the lift I put my hands in my pockets and find something in the right. The gold box with the tiger-eye lid that Haibao gave me the night before.

Xiao Chen is watching the news when I open the door.

"What happened to your face?" he asks.

"Very good party," I say, grinning. "Except that I walked into a door."

He shakes his head appreciably.

I shower and sleep. I awake a little before dinner. The sun is strong through the window and I am disoriented and still tired, but I know if I keep sleeping I won't sleep tonight. When I sit up all my joints all crack like old sticks.

I wander out to the kitchen and flash heat some fried rice. Xiao Chen kids me about my dissolute life, tells me I've got mail. I figure it's Peter, I owe him a letter. Guilt makes me avoid printing the letter before I eat.

It's only one page-Peter's letters run to four or five pages and use every type of punctuation available.

Ghost,

Not to fret, I have sent this to you from the arcade, it is not on my system. This is just to say thank you. I have received my suspension notification and I cannot go through Reform Through Labor. I cannot face my family.

I wish to thank you for all you have done, I believe you will understand. From the first you have always understood, even when no one else did. Even your choice of names. I think perhaps I hoped that last night would show me I made the wrong decision, but when we were almost arrested I knew that I had been a fool to wait.

Think of me with kindness.

Haibao

"What is it?" Xiao Chen asks.

I don't know what to say, I am not sure what it is. He has run away, I think. Where will he go?

I call, there is no answer. The letter is dated today and the time on it is 5:15. It is a little after 6:00, which is marked as the delivery time, meaning he sent it at 5:15 on a forty-five minute delay. He can't have left this fast, unless he sent it on his way out.

I pull on my coveralls.

"What is wrong?" Xiao Chen asks.

"I don't know," I say, "I don't understand this message from my tutor."

On the arcade I pass where he would have sent the letter and catch the lift. When the lift opens the hall is full of people and there is a strong breeze. People are standing around chattering, their arms crossed, the way people stand around an accident.