Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind Read Online Free Page A

unnecessarily bright, red, flat cap. He had wanted Toni to buy a colourful hat at Heathrow airport, but she refused point-blank. “I’ll find you,” she said, “with that nuclear button on your head.”
    He hugs her. “It’s getting dark already.”
    “I’m fine. Everyone’s friendly.”
    “Don’t accept any invitations for coffee or anything. You just don’t know. We’re new to all this.”
    “How did it go with Mr. Lu?”
    “Great. Let’s celebrate. I’ve found a restaurant.” He points to a road leading away from the Bund. “Down there.”
    “Has he chosen a painting?”
    “We’ve narrowed it to three, and he’ll decide at the weekend. So . . . we’re going to Suzhou tomorrow, and he’s booked another hotel for us.”
    “It won’t be as amazing as this hotel.”
    “I thanked him. I said you love it.”
    “What’s he like?”
    “Urbane, polite, knowledgeable.”
    “Urbane?”
    “A sophisticated man about town. He’s done piles of homework, too, which was a bit embarrassing. I had to pretend I knew as much as he did.”
    “And did you ask him my question? Why didn’t he ask a Chinese artist to do the job?”
    “No point. He wanted the Dominic Munroe signature on the painting.” And in a deep, self-mocking tone, “Copyist to the English aristocracy.”
    “Do I have to meet Mr. Lu?”
    “You should say hello if he drops by the hotel in Suzhou.”
    “Okay. If you think so.”
    “You’ll like him. He smiles a lot.”

    They walk away from the Bund along East Jinling Road, which is lined by tall stone buildings. Electric scooters speed past them, and Toni points one out to her dad. A young man, an office worker in a grey suit and white shirt, sits forward on his scooter with two male passengers tucked behind him, riding pillion, wearing the exact same colour of suit and shirt. All three men are laughing, heads back. Toni and her dad twist around and watch them as they swing out into the traffic on Zhongshan East Second Road.
    “Thank God the bikes are all electric here,” says her dad. “Can you imagine, back in Florence, with this number of bikes?”
    “At least you could hear them coming.” She stops. “Dad, look at these shops.” Haberdashery businesses occupy the street-level shops, all selling more or less the same textile accessories—reels of ribbons, decorative edging, fabric tape.
    “Dad, I want to buy some embroidered tape. Will they sell just a few centimetres?”
    “I doubt it. Looks like wholesale. Hey, I reckon we’ve time to go to the fabric market tomorrow before we catch the train. I’ve got the address. How about that?”
    “Brilliant. I want to pimp another denim jacket, better than this one.”
    As they walk farther from the Bund, the pavement becomes more uneven, and the small textile businesses give way to bakers, tobacconists, silk-duvet fabricators, barbers. There’s a rotten smell from a stinky-tofu stall, so they rush past, cut off right and pass through a forest of concrete pillars that carry the Yan’an Elevated Road.

    “Here it is.” The Shanghai Laolao Grandmother Restaurant.
    Toni throws a worried glance at her dad.
    “Don’t worry. I checked online. They’ll have a picture menu.”
    “And with your brilliant Mandarin . . .”
    “Yeah, we’ll be fine.”
    Her dad has learned how to say in Mandarin—which isn’t a huge amount of use as people here speak Shanghainese— One bottle of beer and one Coca-Cola, please. They join a melee inside the restaurant entrance, and within moments they’re pulled away by the manager, who seats them in a cubicle close by the entrance. A waitress immediately deposits a large, ring-bound, plasticized menu on the plain laminate table.
    “Did you see her shirt?” Her dad tries to catch sight of the waitress. “Can you see? It’s totally creased. Looks like it’s been stuffed in a bag for two years.”
    Another waitress rushes past, wearing a similarly creased shirt of the same gunmetal grey.