My Fish Pond Has One Very Loyal Customer novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: The Poster
The tea-stall aunties find out their customer is a famous swimmer, Lu Qing calls him just a customer, and the customer arrives in the rain and says the sound here does not hurt.
On Wednesday it rained.
Lu Qing went to the tea stall at the bus stop, because it had the only umbrella in Qingxi big enough to talk under.
Aunt Fen had run the stall for thirty years.
She was sixty-three and knew the business of every house in the valley before the houses did.
"Little Qing," she said, pushing a cup at him. "Drink. You're thin. Who is the tall one?"
"What tall one?" said Lu Qing.
"The one who sits in your grandfather's chair every Saturday in a jacket that costs more than my roof."
"He's a customer, Aunt Fen."
"A customer who buys nothing." She lowered her voice, which made it carry to the road. "My granddaughter says he's a ghost with money."
"Grandma," said her granddaughter from the back stool, not looking up from her phone. "I told you. He's on Weibo."
She turned the screen around.
It showed a man in a black cap, standing on a podium with a gold medal on his chest.
His hair was wet, and his mouth was set in a flat line.
Under the picture were the words: Meng Yuhe, double gold, Asian Games.
"That's him," said the granddaughter. "That's totally him. He retired at twenty-six and he never gave an interview."
Lu Qing took the phone and looked at it for a while.
"Huh," he said, and gave it back.
"Huh!" said Aunt Fen. "A golden boy is fishing in your pond and you say huh?"
"He's just a customer," said Lu Qing. "A customer is a customer, Aunt Fen. I'm not going to ask for an autograph."
"You should ask him if he's married."
"I should ask him to pay in cash, which he won't."
Aunt Fen clicked her tongue, and filled his cup again.
She leaned over the stove to tell him the rest of the news.
The Qian family's daughter was getting divorced.
The bus was late.
The rival fish seller with the truck had been selling his fish at the market again, and calling them wild.
"Wild!" said Aunt Fen. "The seller's carp are from the hatchery in Huzhou."
"Every one has the left fin nicked. They do it to tell their batches apart."
"Does anyone look?"
"I look," said Aunt Fen. "Nobody listens."
Lu Qing finished his tea.
He lifted the umbrella to leave, and a tall shape moved at the edge of the awning, and he stopped.
Meng Yuhe was standing in the rain.
His jacket was soaked at the shoulders, and the thermos was in his hand, and his face showed nothing.
He might have been there for one second.
He might have been there for five minutes.
"Saturdays only," said Lu Qing, because it was the first thing in his head.
"It's raining," said Meng Yuhe.
"That's not an argument," said Lu Qing.
"The lane's flooded. I walked."
"From where?" asked Lu Qing.
"The road," said Meng Yuhe.
Aunt Fen was holding a kettle in the air and not pouring.
Her granddaughter had put the phone down.
"Aunt Fen, this is Mr. Meng," Lu Qing said, with a sinking feeling. "Mr. Meng, this is Aunt Fen. She runs the tea."
"Come and sit!" said Aunt Fen, in a voice she had never used on anybody. "Sit, sit. You're wet through. Have a bun."
"No, thank you," said Meng Yuhe.
He looked, for a moment, directly at Lu Qing.
It was an odd look, level and short, and it seemed to be asking a question and then deciding not to.
"I'll wait at the pond," he said, and walked back out into the rain.
"He looks sad," said Aunt Fen.
"He looks like a wet customer," said Lu Qing, and went after him with the umbrella.
At the pond, the hut had a bench under its eave.
It was where Grandpa had kept his tackle, and where Lu Qing kept the green tin and the unpaid letters.
Meng Yuhe sat down on it without being asked, and put the thermos beside him, and looked at the water.
The rain was falling on the pond in a thousand small rings.
Lu Qing stood in the doorway with the umbrella dripping on his foot.
"You can fish tomorrow when it clears," he said. "Today's no good. The fish go down in the rain."
"I'm not here to fish."
"What are you here for?"
Meng Yuhe didn't answer.
Lu Qing went inside, and put the kettle on the little gas ring, and talked to it while it boiled.
He told it about the bill from the feed company, and the weir, and the duck with one foot.
When he came out with two cups, Meng Yuhe was asleep.
He was sitting upright against the wall with his hands loose in his lap and his head tipped against the post.
The rain was loud on the roof.
The pond was loud, in its soft way, with the inlet running and the reeds knocking each other.
Lu Qing stood with a cup in each hand and could not think what to do with either.
He put them down quietly.
He took Grandpa's old canvas coat from its nail, and laid it over the long wet shoulders, and tucked it, once, under the chin.
Then he sat on the step with his back to the bench so that he would not look at him.
The Pond System made a small sound.
"Customer loyalty, plus one," it said. "Host is flustered."
"Host is not," Lu Qing whispered.
Nothing else happened for an hour.
When he heard the bench creak, Lu Qing turned his head.
Meng Yuhe was awake, with the coat in his fist.
He was looking at the pond with a listening face, waiting for a sound that did not come.
"The sound here doesn't hurt," he said.
His voice was low and rough and perfectly steady.
Lu Qing opened his mouth to ask what hurt.
Then he saw the hand on the coat, and that it was shaking.
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