cactus on bay window

At eleven o'clock in the evening, I parked the car at the gate of Shuigong, a hotpot restaurant open until four o'clock in the morning.I called him while locking the car, but he didn't answer the call, and then I saw him appear at the entrance of the hall and shook his phone at me.I hung up the phone and walked towards him, only to find that he had a smile on his face, but his eyes were full of mischief.

So as soon as I entered the door, I said to him: "Lend me your mobile phone."

"Why? Your phone is running out of battery?" He looked at me puzzled, but handed the phone to me without hesitation.

I immediately opened his call log, and looked directly at the name of the missed call on the top that was stored in the phone: Chongjiao.As I expected, I guessed that the number he stored in me must not carry a normal one.I gave him a hard look, changed the two words to "Yue Ge", then returned the phone to him and said, "Let me see you scribbling my name again, and I will stuff a prickly pear under your bed. "

He smiled disapprovingly, turned and walked inside. "I've made a reservation, and I'll wait for you to order."

He took me to a corner cubicle with a window on one side and carved wooden grilles on three sides. Although it is not soundproof, it looks quite elegant. There is a small square table with an induction cooker on the floor-heated tatami mats, and a few soft cushions are thrown around.

After we took off our shoes and climbed onto the tatami, the waiter brought menus.

"You can order whatever you want, and I'll pay the bill." I threw the menu in front of him.

He glanced at me, then unceremoniously checked the menu, and asked me after ordering: "Do you want a mandarin duck pot, a clear pot, or a bone soup pot?"

"Can you eat spicy food?"

"I can eat a little."

"The bone soup pot, go back and get a plate of chili sauce to dip it in."

"Okay." After the waiter left, he said to me: "I can't see that you don't eat spicy food. I thought you could eat spicy food."

"Where did you see it?"

"Acerbic speaking..."

"You speak nicely? It makes people froze for a while."

"Then I'm at the level of Xiaokang Beef Sauce. Compared with me, you are comparable to chicken feet with pickled peppers."

"You pickled pepper pig's feet!"

"If you say you are mean, you still have to cooperate with me, alas..." He sighed pretentiously.

I glared at him, thinking that it would subvert my image to play tricks with a kid, so I didn't say anything else.

The waiter delivered the food very fast, before the buttocks were warmed up, a cart of colorful dishes, various sauces and a steaming pot of bone soup was delivered.

Seeing that the amount he ordered was enough for three or four people, I asked, "Did you have dinner tonight?"

"No. Have you eaten?"

"Well, but I don't eat much, I can eat more."

"Then I ordered a bit too much."

"It's not a little too much, it's too much. You are big-eyed. Half a portion of each item should be just right."

"It's open until four o'clock in the middle of the night. If you want to sell half a share, who's going to make money?"

"You are quite considerate of merchants. Why don't you consider me? I have to go to work at eight o'clock tomorrow, so I must treat you to dinner at midnight."

"Aren't I in a bad mood?" He muttered in a low voice.

"Yo, I can't tell, I'm in a bad mood to order so many dishes."

"Some people want to eat hard when they're in a bad mood, don't you know that?" He glanced at me.

"What a heartless person that is."

"Yue..." He glared at me and swallowed the word "Jiao". "Can you still tell people to eat well?"

"You call me Brother Yue, I won't talk about you."

"Brother Yue? He's almost a teenager, and he's almost called Uncle Yue."

"Ling Guo! You want me to pour this pot of soup on your face, right?" I dropped the saucer.

Only then did he look at me and said in embarrassment, "I can't scream."

"All of your classmates can scream, but you can't? What's the matter? If you have one more tail than others, you're not a pure human?"

"Shut up!" He suddenly became angry, with three points of irritability and seven points of anger in his eyes.

I didn't want to make him anxious, but he was really upset, so I stopped. "Forget it, I don't know as much as you, a little kid, so hurry up and eat! Didn't you have dinner?"

Then we all started to eat in silence. For a while, the heat filled the whole cubicle, and the window pane was covered with a thick layer of water mist. The other person's face was a little unclear.

After about an hour of eating, I couldn't eat anymore. Ling Guo swept away most of the beef, mutton and seafood, and ate nearly half of the vegetables. Finally, I burped and raised my head.

"Fuck! It's really a fairyland on earth." He seemed to have just realized that there was a white mist in front of him, then he turned and opened the window, looked out inadvertently, and immediately turned and lay down on the window sill and shouted: "Damn! It's snowing !"

"Huh?" I was quite surprised. Although it was cloudy when I came out, it was quite warm and there was no sign of snow at all.I leaned over to the window and looked out, and sure enough, large flakes of snowflakes were falling all over the sky, shining white under the light, like night elves.There is already a thin layer of snow on the ground. Judging by the posture, it will take less than an hour to step on it and make a creaking sound.

"This is called Christmas." I sighed.

"En." Ling Guo responded, still looking at the snowflakes flying outside, and whispered: "Is this the first snow this year? I didn't expect it to fall so heavily."

"If you don't stop after eating, I think you can build a snowman on the side of the road."

"Well, I'm going to make a snowman all the way." Then he laughed.

"Come in, open the window just after eating the hot food, and be careful not to catch a cold." I tugged at him.

Obediently, he drew back and closed the window, leaving a gap at the side.Most of the fog in the cubicle had already dissipated, so he looked at me and asked, "Are you full?"

"I'm already full, I'm not hungry."

"I'm almost done, take a break, and fight again later."

"Are you really going to wait till people close?"

"No, didn't you say to leave at three o'clock?"

"There are more than two hours left, why are you sitting?"

"It's okay to sit or lie down." He said, picked up a cushion as a pillow and really lay down.But the tatami is not that big, he couldn't straighten his legs, he was half curled up, then he looked up at me and said, "Come talk to me."

"Yo, I suddenly became an escort, eating, drinking and chatting with me."

"Accompaniment to eat/sleep and chat is the third companion." He smiled wickedly, patted the cushion next to me and said, "Come on, you can lie down too, let's talk while sleeping."

"Are you drinking too much?" I glared at him.

"Just two bottles of beer, I really don't have much. If I'm not afraid that you will criticize me, I can drink ten bottles."

"Ten bottles? Are you a drunkard?"

"It's really not, it's just that I can't get drunk, I practiced it since I was a child."

"How old were you when you started drinking?"

"Two or three years old."

I looked at him in shock: "Two or three years old? Your parents..." Suddenly thinking that his mother was gone long ago, I quickly changed my words: "Did your father ignore you? Or did he teach you?" Maybe the pain of losing a wife Let a man get drunk and dream of death and implicate the child?

There was a gloomy look in his eyes, and he said softly: "He doesn't care, my grandma taught me to drink."

"Huh?" I really don't know how to feel.grandma?An old man suffering from the bereavement of his daughter?The white-haired man sent the black-haired man, maybe she lost her mind and taught such a young child to drink.

"My grandma is fine." He said again, and smiled with the corners of his mouth curled up. Although there was a trace of melancholy, there was also a trace of happiness. "I was raised by my grandma. Without her, I would have died long ago. But now she is too old to drink with me, so when December 12 comes, I don't know whether I should visit her. Go, I'm afraid she will think of my mother when she sees me, don't go, I'm afraid she will think wildly by herself."

"Then...what are you doing today..."

"Go." He knew what I wanted to ask and answered me directly. "I watched her cry for more than an hour. When I was a child, I had something to say to her, but since she got older, I talked to her less and less. Sometimes when I looked at her, I didn't know what to say to her. Order something."

"Whatever you said when you were young, you can say now."

"When I was young, words were not nutritious. Whose child was playing and eating, why was the child beaten, who was fighting with the child, why was it raining, why did the cicada on the tree cry?" Why is it so cold in winter... are you still talking about this now? Grandma must have thought I was stimulated."

"Aren't your current studies, life, hobbies and friends the same, can you tell her?"

He glanced at me, and the melancholy in his eyes became more obvious. "She...doesn't understand, many things...she can't understand, she doesn't know what is the Internet, what is the circle of friends, what is the interest, what is the nature, what is...freedom. She is very kind and can take care of people, but she doesn't know what the society has developed into today, and she refuses to accept the changes in the world. Sometimes when I tell her, she will seriously refute me with a 'nonsense'. So slowly, I and She talked less and less, but I still loved her very much, so I was more and more afraid of seeing her, afraid that I would let her down, because I didn't become the good kid she hoped in her heart."

"What does she want from you?" I couldn't help being a little curious. This old lady who has been living in the past is logically nothing more than feudal and conservative.

Ling Guo was silent for a long time, and then said softly: "She hopes that instead of going to college, I will get married and have children, and the children will have my mother's surname, and never meet my father."

I looked at him again in shock, having nothing to say.I have handled so many divorce cases, and I have seen all kinds of weird people, but this is the first time I have heard of such a weird old man.

Seeing that I didn't answer any more, Ling Guo sat up suddenly, put his arms on his knees, put his hand on his chin, looked at me with a surprised expression, and asked, "What do you think if you were me?"

I shook my head and answered him: "If I don't come out, it's because I'm not you."

"Forget it." He leaned back in disappointment, stared at the ceiling, and said weakly: "Anyway, I have gone against her wishes and went to college. Not only am I not married and have children, but I also like girls. The child will even meet my dad. I don’t live according to her wishes at all, all I can do now is to hide as much as I can, and she won’t be angry and disappointed if she doesn’t know.”

"Does she not know about your going to college?"

"I see. I learned about it a month ago. My aunt accidentally slipped her mouth."

"Is it the boss of the past time?"

"Well. That store belongs to my grandma. Although my grandma never goes to the store and doesn't care about anything, she pays for it. Ten years ago, she had a large piece of land in the countryside, but it was moved later. If she lost a house, she still has a lot of money. A large sum of money, I don't know exactly how much it is, but I know it will be enough for her to spend several lifetimes."

"That depends on how you spend it."

"That's true. Grandma is very thrifty. She didn't do anything else with that money except buy the house of the past time. I heard that she saved it. Although the business of the past time has not been very prosperous these years, But the house is my own, and I still made a lot of money. Last month, she wanted to use the money she earned to buy me a house for my wedding. My aunt didn’t agree, so she let it go. Then she cried for several days , I didn’t even dare to go back and see her.”

"Then... what's going on with your father?" It felt like his grandma really hated his father.

He sighed and remained silent for a long time before saying: "Before my mother died, my grandma liked my dad very much. It was mainly because of me that she hated my dad."

"Because of you? Why?"