When I first saw her it was as the elevator opened and she was stepping back as I exited, bags of shopping in my hand. I didn't know then she and her friends had just rented the apartment next to mine, and I only took her in as she made way for me, muttering a greeting in Mandarin; I thought she was a typical cool Beijing girl, with her baseball cap and sloppy outfit, her mouth turned down at the sides and a total disinterest in who I was.
Maybe I always had the impression that the most attractive girls had no interest in who I was. I hadn't seen enough of her to register any great opinion of her relative attractiveness but something kicked inside me at the surprise of seeing someone like her, in an apartment block full of shouting middle-aged families, when the elevator door opened on the fifth floor.
The nest time we met was as I was coming home from work and punching in the code to gain access to the flat I rented. I shared a small vestibule with the neighbours' property, but since I had moved in it had been empty, as far as I knew, and although in recent days I had heard comings and goings I had only thought that it was the estate agents or landlord showing people around or moving some old furniture.
I was tired, after a long day, and I only wanted to slip inside my apartment, crack open one of the cold beers I had bought, and perhaps jerk myself off while watching porn on my laptop. As I was typing in the code so the neighbours' door opened and out she came, in a similar outfit as before, but this time her eyes met mine and we both smiled at the unexpected nature of our meeting.
'Hi,' I said in Chinese, 'Do you live here now?'
'Yes,' she said, eyes not leaving mine, 'we just moved in a few days ago. I saw you, didn't I, by the elevator.'
