"Where is she?" my sister asks her son as she watches the servers place small dishes on the spinning glass table top. The food is already coming out and my nephew's girlfriend isn't here yet. Not good. I glance at my sister. She's clearly getting annoyed, but then again, she is always annoyed. Honestly, I love my sister but I wouldn't choose to be around her if I could help it. Shit luck for me, since she's my boss.
"
I don't know, she should be here by now."
He responds to her in English, probably because his Mandarin is terrible. But that's to be expected I guess, since he grew up in the states. He only comes to China to visit his mom once a year, and only for two or three months. He's on a 90-day visa, so he can't stay longer. At least not consecutively. He could fly somewhere else and come back for another three months, but he doesn't. Surprising, since he's a momma's boy.
I think, anyway. I'm not one-hundred percent sure. I've never understood all that crap about visas and expats and whatever. I'm Chinese through and through. I never got to leave like my sister did- or come back once I got homesick. She's an American expat now. Her and her husband went to the states and got some fancy college degrees, learned English, worked at some tech companies, then they divorced and she came back to open a company with her new and improved mining equipment designs. It's done extremely well these last 10 years.
She's incredibly smart and deserves everything she has now. Her ex-husband is probably mad that he didn't believe in her when she wanted to leave their big salary jobs to start this company, because now she easily makes ten times what he's making in the states. She's earned it all on her own. I really believe that. But damn, why is my sister always so grumpy when she's this successful? And was giving up her Chinese citizenship for American citizenship necessary for it? Our mother would be crying if she wasn't in an urn.
Plus, my sister is a different person now, after coming back. She settles everything with money. She wears the name brand clothes. Drapes herself in gold and diamonds. Gets a massage every night after work. She even had work done on her face. She's five years my senior but you'd guess she was only in her mid-thirties.
"What do you think, James?" I stop picking at the eggplant on the glass tabletop in front of me. James. That's what she calls me whenever her son is here. Because it's easier for him and his little white girlfriend to recognize who she is talking to or about or whatever, so she calls me
James
instead of Xu Wei.
"Let's just eat. She might just be running late leaving the company. Call He Fen to check up on them." I shove some eggplant and mushrooms into my mouth to deter my sister from asking me anything else. She says something to her son in English. I have no idea what she's saying, my English is really poor despite my sister sending me to classes, I can only catch the jist of some sentences. I'm too old to learn that shit but I go just so she doesn't bitch at me and hang my job over my head. My nephew, Alec, pulls out his phone so she must have told him what I said.
He Fen is a cute little secretary at my sister's company.Her name is pretty too. Sounds like "huh fun" and means fragant lotus. I rarely see her, since I'm a part of the Northern Sales Team but she's always been a round faced, adorable little thing. Whenever Alec comes back though, He Fen goes from secretary to Hannah's keeper.
Hannah is the girlfriend who is making the food go cold right now. She seems like a nice girl from what I can tell, which isn't much since I can't talk to her. But she always smiles at me and says "hi". She even sits by me sometimes when we eat breakfast in the morning. She doesn't purposely sit by me, obviously, but she'll just grab a seat and she doesn't care who it is by. Which is refreshing, considering a lot of the younger girls here don't like to associate with the older men. They'll talk to the younger sales team members in a timid way, that playful shyness that you know is fake and is actually them flirting, but they avoid the older ones altogether. Which makes sense. We are past our prime after all, and they are in theirs.
It's not just that I'm 52 that keeps a lot of the younger people, especially the girls, away though. It's also that my sister hasn't hid my past from some of the younger employees. And young people can't keep their mouths shut even if you gave them red envelopes of cash to. So, they all know that I didn't go to college. And that I skipped school to go to the pool halls and play, gamble, smoke, and drink. And that I had gotten into my fair share of fights. I was a delinquent back then. I take better care of myself now though. And the physical work at the job sites keeps me in decent shape. If I didn't have a weathered face or a couple scars, you probably would think I was in my mid-forties. Not as good as my sister, but I didn't get a facelift or Botox so I'll take it.
Point is though, even that cute little secretary won't sit by me. She won't even make eye contact. But Hannah looks right into my soul and smiles. So she must be nice. Or naïve. Or maybe it's just an American thing. But no matter why, it's still refreshing.
She's a good looking young thing too. My nephew, he's attractive. All the young women who work here talk about him. But it's weird, at least to me. He's attractive in a pretty boy way. The women here say he reminds them of a Korean idol They're all obsessed with Koreans here. Those boyband singers who wear flashy outfits and makeup. But outside of his looks he's been spoiled by my sister. Never had to do chores. No laundry or dishes. She even hired him a personal cook. He's twenty-four but still a baby sucking on his mom's tit. I guess women like that though. A young guy with a gentle face and smooth pale skin and soft hands, sole heir to a big company. Not calloused hands or a strong jaw or skin darkened by working in the sun, not only employed because his sister took pity on him.
I see why Hannah went for him. She's been with him for four years now, from when she was eighteen until now at twenty-two. She's come to China for all four. He's good looking and is going to inherit a promising company someday. It makes sense why this pretty American girl chose him. But damn, I think she's out of his league.
She's got this long wavy blond hair. It's like what you see in the movies, what you think of when you think of Californians even though she's from some farm town in the Mid-West. She's kind of tall for a girl at just over 170cm. She's shorter than me by about 8cm but she feels taller since her legs are long. She's got what looks to be a firm ass too. She always wears snug boot cut jeans into the office and they hug her just right. She has strong looking thighs too, which is rare here. These girls all want slim legs and no ass. I've never understood that. Maybe that's because my family is from the North where people eat more and look stronger, bigger, while the company is in the South where everyone seems so small and fragile.
Hannah is somewhere in between. She's thin but tall, slim but strong looking. She's got those thighs and that ass. She's always wearing coats and sweatshirts in the office since they always come to visit in the Winter, but I swear she's got the chest to match. It's hard to tell since she layers everything, but I can just imagine she's got a good handful per tit.
I stop eating food and thinking about what Hannah's body might be like when Alec starts yelling. His English is coming out fast and he's frantic. My sister jumps up too, she always looks annoyed or pissed or stressed but right now her trimmed too thin brows are pushing in toward the bridge of her nose with worry and I don't know if I have ever seen her like that.
"What is it?" I stand, pushing my chair back loudly to get her attention.
"
