The light in her room came on. It stayed on for maybe ten minutes, then went out. Her mother was the one who turned it on—and off. Normally, except on weekends, the girl stayed home, and today was only Wednesday.
She had been away last weekend, presumably at her grandmother's, as usual. The two of them came back after ten on Monday night, and something about it was different. Usually she would sit on the edge of the bed with her phone or talk to her mother; lights went out for sleep by ten thirty at the latest, and even on cleaning nights neither of them stayed up past eleven thirty. That night she shut her door and sat on the bay window, staring out. The middle-aged woman sat in the living room with the television on. They did not talk.
Around eleven twenty the woman switched off the bathroom light, pushed open the girl's door, and said something to her. I could not hear the words, but her face was all impatience. The girl climbed down from the window seat, opened the wardrobe, took out pajamas, and went to the bathroom. Her mother walked to the window, closed it as if it were the most natural thing in the world, stood there for a second or two, and drew the curtain.
Summer mornings come early; by six or seven sunlight usually lay across the girl's windowsill. She had never closed that curtain before.
At about eleven forty the bathroom light went out. She must have gone back to her room. The curtain covered the window, but through the thin gap in the middle I could see that her light stayed on until around one in the morning.
The building opposite sank into darkness. I turned and asked Xiao Ai about the weather. She told me: Chongqing would have heavy rain turning to moderate rain, northeast wind force five. Good night. But the summer felt too hard to get through, and the air conditioner never settled at the right temperature. I lit a cigarette. A bright red point appeared in the glass and then dimmed. Even with the window closed, I could still hear the wind tearing past outside now and then.
I began going over the family across the way. The mother looked to be in her thirties; the girl was probably in college; a middle-aged man had appeared there twice. The first time was last summer—a fat, balding man who looked over forty. I saw him again this July. It was after eight, just getting dark. The woman was on the living room sofa, phone at her ear, laughing as she talked. Then she took a five-minute shower and sprayed perfume on herself in the living room. Not long after, the man arrived. He sat on the sofa and put his arm around her; she rested her head on his shoulder, looking small and dependent. After about ten minutes he went to shower, then walked into her bedroom with his upper body bare.
Even then I assumed they were husband and wife, and that the husband simply worked away from home most of the year. Around nine thirty the man left in a hurry. Soon the girl came home, sat on the edge of her bed with her phone as usual, and behaved as if the man had never been there.
On Tuesday the girl's curtain stayed closed all day. No light came on in her room. The woman behaved nothing like herself. She sat on the sofa with her knees pulled up in her arms, the television flickering and casting light across the white wall behind her. She sat without moving, without even blinking.
She was probably waiting for her daughter to come home.
At around twelve forty she got up, turned off the television and the living room light, and went back to her own bedroom. The girl never appeared.
I sat on the balcony smoking. The rain grew louder. The advertisement sign in the distance blurred and turned into a halo of light. I called Jie. He sounded as if he had just got home and asked why I was calling so suddenly.
I did not know how to describe what was in my mind. After he said hello two or three times, I told him, my voice shaking: 'I suspect someone in the building opposite has killed someone...'
He was silent for a long time. Then, as if testing the ground, he asked, 'So what are you going to do?'
I did not know either. Since the car accident last summer, I had spent every night in a wheelchair, looking out the window, listening to storytelling on the speaker. One night when the moonlight was clear, I took out the astronomical telescope I had bought online and adjusted the focus. I could see the craters on the moon sharply. Then I happened to see the girl in the apartment opposite, and after that I could not stop 'watching' her life. It was a shameful thing in itself. Apart from Jie, I had never dared tell anyone. Later, when I ran into her in the compound, I never dared even greet her.
'What you're describing sounds a bit like that Hitchcock film we watched, Rear Window.'
'I think so too. When I watched it, I wondered whether one day I would run into something like that.'
After a few more words, Jie tried to comfort me. 'You said it yourself: film is film, life is life.'
When I hung up, the screen showed the call had lasted forty-seven minutes and fifty-four seconds. It was one forty in the morning. I put down the phone, told Xiao Ai to continue the storytelling, and fell asleep.
In the dream the girl came back. She wore a white dress and carried a backpack; one hand pulled a suitcase. Everything in the room was gone. She stood in the middle and stayed there for a long time, as if reluctant, as if resentful. At last she let go of the suitcase, rose onto her toes, and began to dance slowly.
After she left with the suitcase, I followed her out. By the river I saw her in a shaky, half-collapsing house. The room inside was exactly like the empty room she had left. Then I woke. Outside the window, after the heavy rain, mist was rising from the river, as if it were hiding a secret.