天体悬浮

It was raining outside that day. Everyone else hadpacked themselves into the bunks in the standby room, fastasleep. I was by myself in the duty room, guarding the TV,tuned to an NBA game. On the TV, a black guy took flight,his body bent like a backwards bow. Then it snapped forward— regular bow-shaped now — and he slammed theball through the hoop. Such a fucking badass . . . and right Guang changed the channel. When the hell did that asshole wriggle his way in, Iwhispered to myself. Guang was the station’s driver, and he thought he couldsteal my channel whenever he wanted. The police carriedguns, Guang carried car keys, and all I carried was a nightstick and handcuffs. So of course he felt like, compared tome, he was hot shit. The phone on the desk rang. It wasover where Guang was, all he had to do was lift his handand pick up the receiver. But he acted like he couldn’t hear it. I made my way over to him and picked up the phone.“Luojing Police Station, what can I do for you?” “Where’s your station?” the person on the phone said. “I’m new, I can’t find it.” “Behind Luoxi River Bridge No. 4. You cross the bridge, it’s on the left.” The person asked: “Which bridge is No. 4?” “Left lane closed.” “Ah, got it.” The person hung up. I looked outside. Far off, through the rain and fog, the“left lane closed” sign stood at the head of the bridge. Bigbridges, small bridges . . . there were way too many bridgesover the Luoxi River. If it weren’t for the signs, you couldn’ttell Number Four apart from the rest of them. But just say “left lane closed”, and everyone in Er Town knew it washere. Right after they finished building Bridge No. 4, theysaid there was a problem with its foundation. But if theywanted to fix it, they’d have to tear down the whole bridge and build a new one. So the city roads and highways department put up roadblocks to close off half the bridge, leaving handling of the problems with the bridge foundation for when “conditions were ripe”. The day they put upthe roadblocks, the roads and highways people got careless,and brought over a couple of signs with “left lane closed” written on them. But from our side of the bridge, it looked like it was the right side of the bridge they’d blocked off. They’d never changed the signs, and years later “left lane closed” had become a local landmark. Someone pushed open the door to the duty room. He said to me: “You were the one who answered the phone justnow?” I grunted yes. He was wearing a black-green rubber raincoat, but his pants had still gotten soaked through by the rain. He asked: “Is the station head here? They asked me today to come and report.” Guang broke in: “He might not come. The station head’s not going to show up just because you said he should.” “He’s that big a deal, huh?” “Nothing to do with that, just doesn’t want to get rain on his car,” was my answer. The new person laughed, revealing a row of healthy teeth. I almost never saw good teeth in the station. Ugly ones, well, there I had all I wanted, what with everyone spending the whole day smacking on betel nuts. It was to the point where our sergeant — Sergeant Liu, who’d started out as a dentist — would from time to time get to thinking about going back to his old trade, propping open a lineup of stinking mouths for a good old - fashioned plier hate - fuck.