Lin Page 37
 
Now his hand is at her chin, lifting her face so her eyes meet his. Shall we get started?

I don't know. This is funny.

Funny and fun. Relax. It's okay. Relax
. His head goes behind her back and he does something there to make her laugh out loud. Finally, C.J. thinks, now I know what she looks like when she giggles.

He hits fast-forward, and their heads go spastic as the time goes by -- five minutes, ten, fifteen. Still nothing, they are sitting in bed, they are trading pleasantries, they are still naked, and there is still an hour and a half to go on the video.

What are you doing? he asks himself in disgust, and ejects the CD. He has no doubt that Spring Festival 1998 is



more of the same, maybe even with a different woman. And there you go, Mr. Liu, he thinks. You wanted something, now you have it. Carol's tough-mother father won't be too pleased to see her hanging with a middle-aged lech.

He takes out one of the VCDs Liu gave him and inserts it. This one has slightly higher production values -- just slightly. There is a brief title card, written in busty valentine font: Private Sex. The scene is a faceless hotel room, the view changing between two cameras: one presumably hidden behind a mirror and facing the bed, the other mounted on the ceiling above the bed. A man and a woman are on the bed, undressing each other in leisurely fashion, and yet there is something businesslike about what they are doing, as if sex is something that must be performed within an allotted time frame. Preliminaries and foreplay are taken care of within minutes. Soon the two