G

4am. She takes the lift down.

The doors close and there she is in the mirror: housecoat, blue plastic slippers, hair flat on the left from the pillow. Seventy-three years old. She presses G. The button glows orange. Fourteen goes dark.

14

The building at 4 am smells of fifty-three families. Tangerine peel on eleven. Herbal soup on eight, goji berry and wood ear mushroom, something bitter underneath she has been trying to name for three years. Garlic on six, fried at midnight, the oil still in the shaft. The baby on nine, milk. The boy on twelve, cigarette smoke through the window he thinks nobody smells. Incense on three, three sticks at dawn.

The empty flat on four, the smell of a room where nobody sleeps. She noticed the day the daughter carried out his chair.

13

Her handprint on the wall outside 13B, 2018, the shape of a palm still visible through the paint.

She puts her left hand where his shoulder is, was, is.

12

The cha chaan teng on Kweilin Street, 1974, one milk tea between them, condensed milk and Ceylon, she drank first, he drank what she left, the cup still warm from her hands.

Her right heel hits the floor.

She spins. Housecoat lifting, slippers squeaking on the turn, her free arm cutting the air. The 12 going dark, the 11 lighting as she turns back.

11

Her eyes closing. She is twenty-three years old. She is always twenty-three years old in here.

10

Shoulder drops, chin lifts. Right foot crosses left foot.

9

The lift shudders on nine. Three years. Management came. Left.

The night market on Yen Chow Street, he bought her a paper bag of hot chestnuts, she burned her fingers, he blew on them. She married him two years later. She would marry him again. She would marry him in this lift going down at 4am with her eyes closed.

The mirror. The lift. Her.

8

Corridor in Guangdong, 1973. Radio on a stool. His mother’s slippers under the door. Volume low.

She dips.

He holds her.

She stays in the dip, the lift going down, her body tilted.

7

She comes up, arms opening, the housecoat sash swinging out, the fluorescent tube stuttering once.

Left hand back on his shoulder.

The back of his bicycle, 1982, her arms around his waist, the engine oil smell of his shirt, the road uneven, her chin against his back.

6

Forty-one years of a half a beat. The noodle factory flat. The Guangdong flat. The Tuesday in March.

She finds him.

They move together, barely room to turn, his hand always warmer than hers. She said: you are too warm. He held her closer. She let him.

5

The lift shudders on five. She rolls through it.

1989. She threw a bowl. Not at him, at the wall beside him. The blue one from her mother. He looked at the wall where the bowl had been. He did not look at her. She bought a bowl the same color the next day. It was not the same bowl. It is still in the cupboard.

She cannot remember what the fights were about.

Once she left. Took the MTR to her sister’s in Kowloon City, sat in the kitchen there until 11pm, came back. He was asleep. Or pretending to be asleep.

4

Feet doing things that have no name. The body saying I am still here I am still here.

New Year 1987, the three of them at the table, her son twelve, the good plates out, the fish placed whole in the center, she turned it so the head faced him. The oldest grandson’s first day of school, 2018, his shirt too big at the shoulders, she folded the collar down before he left.

3

The night before he went into hospital for the last time he asked her to cut his hair. The kitchen. The towel around his shoulders. The scissors her mother gave her, black-handled. She was very careful. Too careful. She kept stopping. He said: it’s fine, keep going.

This is also a kind of dancing.

2

Pei Ho Street wet market, November 1983, century egg congee from the stall at the north end, thirty cents, pork bone broth and spring onion and the cold coming off the concrete before the sun. He met her there sometimes when his shift started late. They stood at the counter not talking. Fish smell. The winter melon uncle shouting prices.

She did not know then that this was happiness.

The 2 goes dark.

1

G

Lift slows. Her feet slow with it. Her arms come down. She opens her eyes.

Doors open: security guard asleep, chin on his chest, pen in his hand.

She stands in the open lift. The G glowing orange. She presses 14. The G goes dark. Doors close.

The 1 lights up.

The 2.

The 3.