I Like a Man of Talent

"There's a seat over there. Sit on the inside!" "I'll sit here!" Once they boarded the minibus, Liu Dehua had everything arranged. He and Zhong Chuhong took the double seat, and Liang Jiahui sat across the aisle. Zhong Chuhong hugged her big bag, somewhat at a loss for words. Liang Jiahui held those few pages, skimmed them, and said, "Quite a lot has been changed. Huazai, you've had a huge passage of dialogue added." "Really?" Liu Dehua glanced over it too and laughed. "Mr. Chen thinks highly of me. Wow, at least twenty lines!" "What about me, what about me? Do I have any?" "You don't!" Hmph! Zhong Chuhong, who had been itching to look, lost all interest in an instant and could not even be bothered to read. Beside her, Liu Dehua went on with his invitation. "Ahong, there's a new movie out. Do you want to go see it?" "What movie?" "Beware of Pickpockets. Hong Jinbao's in it." "Hong Jinbao? He's nothing special. Not interested." "You..." Liu Dehua wanted to say something, but with so many people around he was too embarrassed. He shot a look at Liang Jiahui. Liang Jiahui returned a look that said none of my damn business—I'm already sitting across the aisle. For a while no one spoke. The minibus drove into the city. Liang Jiahui got off first, and then it continued toward Tsim Sha Tsui. There were fewer people on the bus now. Seeing this, Liu Dehua spoke again. "You live in Chungking Mansions, and I live in the Great Wall dormitory. We're both right around here, very close. If anything comes up, just come find me. I'll definitely help." "Huazai!" Zhong Chuhong could not hold back. "You're not the type I like. Save your energy!" "Hey, do you have to be so blunt?" "If I like someone, I like them. If I don't, I don't. Isn't it better to be straightforward?" "Then what type do you like?" "A man of talent. Are you one?" "I can be!" "You didn't even graduate Form Five. How could you be?" "You only graduated Form Five yourself, and you're lecturing me?" "Whatever I am doesn't stop me from liking talented people. I can't talk sense into you. In any case, don't waste your effort on me. You're so handsome, there will be girls who like you." Zhong Chuhong had spelled it out. Liu Dehua was thoroughly miserable, but he said nothing more. His romantic history was plentiful. Fortunately he was not the sort to cling and pester. Some people, though, truly could not be trusted. Almost every male lead who had shared a film with Zhong Chuhong would launch an offensive on her. Take George Lam. With that little mustache he looked honest and steady, but in truth he was quite the playboy. He already had a wife at the time, yet he still pursued Zhong Chuhong madly, often buying a portion of her favorite stir-fried beef ho fun and waiting downstairs to pay court. Zhong Chuhong deliberately came home very late just to avoid him. George Lam chased her for two years without success before he finally saw it was hopeless and backed off. Then there was Jackie Chan, who likewise hid the fact that he was married and had a child. Once Zhong Chuhong learned of it, she pulled away at once and would not get involved. The funniest was when Cinema City had tried everything to recruit her back then and did not scruple to use a handsome-man ploy, finding a good-looking new star just back from the United States to chat her up. Zhong Chuhong disliked that his mouth was full of English and would not so much as look at him. "All right, I'm getting off!" "Oh, watch your step!" Liu Dehua waved, watching her run down. In the blink of an eye she was gone. Zhong Chuhong walked a stretch and returned to Chungking Mansions. The moment she went upstairs she frowned. Two Indian men were sitting on the steps, holding a plate and dipping bread into a paste with their hands to eat. Authentic masala. No paper in the toilet. A virus that made it over there was nothing but an itch! The Indian men caught sight of her and grinned, showing white teeth. Ugh! Disgust showed on Zhong Chuhong's face. She held her breath and turned a corner, preferring the long way around to passing beside them. Whether there really was a smell or it was all in her head, she always felt that Indians reeked. Hmm... "Sis!" "Sis! Sis!" When she got home, her youngest sister ran over and yelled, "I'm so hungry!" "Then shall I make you something?" "I don't want that. Your cooking tastes awful. Give me money. I want to buy snacks!" "Didn't I already give you some yesterday? Oh, you spend money all over the place! I'll go tell Mom, and from now on you won't get a single cent!" At that, her sister immediately started acting cute and trying to get on her good side. Zhong Chuhong pinched and squished her face hard, but still gave her a few dollars. Her father did renovations and her mother sold clothes. Their income was decent, better than Qiu Shuzhen's family circumstances, but with so many children their standard of living was only middling. "Ai, every day is like going to work!" "That Huazai is a year younger than me, and he still wants to chase me? I don't like younger guys!" She took off her denim jacket, kicked off her sneakers, and lay down on the bed in her jeans to rest. Her mind was a jumble: one moment Ghost, the next the Hong Kong Film Awards, then worry over whether she could return to Shaw Brothers, and then Chen Qi's figure surfaced. "Weird guy!" That was her two-word verdict on the man. Their brainwaves did not match at all. At that thought she casually fished the script out of her bag and muttered, "Why give Huazai so many extra lines? Why not give any to me? I'm more experienced than Huazai, at least. I've already made three films..." Zhong Chuhong flipped through the thin few pages, reading Chen Qi's revisions in fits and starts. It was the scene of the female lead and the spirit medium talking through the door. "Aiya, it's not that he's still alive. He's turned into a ghost!" "You'd better leave, or I'll call the police!!" The female lead was named Hongdou. Yes—Chen Qi had chosen it on purpose. The plot before this had not changed. Hongdou refused to believe it no matter what. Then Ah Jie passed through the wall into the room, looked at his grief-stricken, broken lover, and said, "Tell her the shirt on her was stained by my coffee. Her earrings were the Christmas present I gave her..." That line had not been changed either, but everything after it had been completely rewritten. "That Christmas was the hundredth day since we'd met. It was the first time I gave her a gift. I had no idea what to give, or how to win a girl over. She said the earrings were so ugly, but she put them on happily." "Tell her not to drink anymore. Lately she gets dead drunk every day. She doesn't have to miss me like that!" "The Margaritas she mixes are wonderful, but actually I prefer a Gin Fizz. I never told her." "And tell her to drink less ice water. Her health was never good to begin with..." As Zhong Chuhong read, she suddenly went still. Her eyes widened, and her gaze, like water, lingered over those dozen or so words. "Tell her to learn to cook soon. I always did the cooking. She still has decades left to live. How will she manage if she can't cook?" "Tell her to stop always wearing denim. It's actually pretty unfashionable. She looks so lovely in red." "Those sneakers ought to be retired too. I really wanted to see her wear high heels just once. Too bad I never got the chance." "There's still a loan on the place. If she can't keep it up, sell it. What I regret most is not buying insurance sooner. Remember to buy a policy from Bobo—the classmate who sells insurance after graduation. Throw a little business his way." "That temper needs changing too. At the company, who's going to indulge you..." "Come to think of it, we met at school, dated a few years, got engaged, bought a place, found decent jobs. I never thought something like this would happen. I didn't even have time to say goodbye to you. You really were so good. You didn't mind my bad temper, didn't mind my bad habits, didn't mind what my family was like. You always stood by my side. I often thought of being with you, just like this, and before we knew it we would have grown old together, white-haired..." There would be some artistic shaping here. Although the spirit medium was relaying the words, the picture would become a conversation between the male and female leads. Since his death, the female lead had been sunk in gloom all day, drowning her sorrows in drink. Before this scene she was crying in the room, because the male lead had gone so suddenly that there had been no time for a farewell, and he had left nothing behind. Chen Qi had added this scene. Zhong Chuhong finished reading it too. At the end, the script read: Hongdou slowly slid down and sat in a heap, long since crying so hard she could make no sound.