The light strips of the streetlamps leaked down from between the high walls on both sides of the narrow alley.
I straightened my skirt. Dianzi walked behind me.
Passing through a narrow alley in Modu, we caught a glimpse of two men huddled in the corner of a fire lane.
One of them raised his phone. The screen showed the login interface of another company's internal system. His fingers jabbed rapidly at the screen as he opened a file of competitor quote details and photographed it page by page.
The other man crouched nearby keeping watch, clutching an unsealed envelope in his hand. The edges of a stack of cash poked out from the opening.
The one taking photos finished the last page, flipped his phone screen around, and showed it to the other man. "All the data's here. I know their base price for next week's bid better than they do."
The lookout slapped the envelope against his chest. "You won't be shortchanged."
The two men walked out of the fire lane one after the other, turned the alley corner, and melted into the flow of people on the main street.
The alley fell quiet. Only the camera above the fire-lane door still glowed with its red indicator light. The indicator light blinked every few seconds, its red glow blurring into a small hazy circle in the damp air.
We kept walking, threading through several more alleys just as narrow, and turned onto the main street.
The main street was lined with dense office towers. Their glass facades reflected the glow of the streetlamps.
Everyone had an access card clipped to them. The white lanyards swayed at their collars.
Someone tore open a sugar packet outside a convenience store and poured it into their coffee.
Someone crouched on the edge of a planter, stirring instant noodles with disposable chopsticks.
The glass facades reflected the streetlamp glow, framing everyone in the same picture, like an oil painting that hadn't yet dried.
In a few corners of the painting, the colors were dripping, falling into puddles on the pavement and spreading into small gray ripples.
——Everyone is running inside the system. Those who run fast get bonuses. Those who run slow get termination letters. No one asks who's chasing them.
Those two had stood in that fire lane for less than five minutes. Five minutes was enough to calculate next month's mortgage. Also enough to calculate the rest of their lives.
Turning the corner of the main street, the white light of the convenience store spilled through the glass door, carving a rectangle on the ground.
Near the window, a young woman had spread her resume across her lap, slashing red lines across it one after another. She pressed hard. The paper tore in several places.
Someone beside her knocked over her coffee. The lid rolled to the corner of the table. The dark brown liquid spread slowly across the floor, like a tiny swamp.
She looked down at it for two seconds. She didn't wipe it up. She flipped the resume over and kept editing.
We walked back along the main street. The cubicle windows in the office towers were going dark one after another.
The wind from the river channeled through the mouth of the alley, carrying the chill of the water, pressing our skirts tight against the sides of our legs.
The distant ferry horn sounded one long note, its trailing echo scattered by the wind.
Dianzi walked beside me, her steps half a beat slower than when we had arrived. She looked back at the convenience store. The glass door was still lit.
The young woman had already put her resume away in her bag. The empty coffee cup's lid was still resting on the table, the dark brown liquid now dry, leaving a pale gray ring on the floor.
She stood up, slung her bag over her shoulder, pushed the door open, and walked into the wind. Her hair was blown across half her face.
She walked to the entrance of the office tower, swiped her card, and the gate beeped. The door opened. She walked in. The door closed behind her.
One more cubicle window lit up. That window stayed lit for a few seconds, then went dark, then lit up again, as if someone were testing a faulty switch.
We turned the alley corner. Behind us, the convenience store's white light was still on, carving that rectangle on the ground.
The wind lifted scraps of torn paper from the ground—the pages of her resume, slashed through with red pen.
The scraps spun twice under the streetlamp, then plastered themselves against the iron door of the fire lane.
That piece of gum was still stuck to the iron door. The red indicator light above the lens had gone dark.
One corner of a torn page caught on the edge of the gum, lifted gently by the wind and falling back, like a moth that couldn't take flight.
Late at night, under the office towers, a janitor pushed a blue cleaning cart out through a side entrance. The cart's wheels rumbled dully across the stone slabs.
He parked the cart at the entrance of the office tower and pulled a black trash bag from inside. The bag was semi-transparent, stuffed with shredded paper, empty coffee cups, and disposable chopsticks.
He tied the bag tight and tossed it into the back of the cart, then pushed the cart toward the next building.
The cart's wheels jolted over a crack in the stone pavement, and the trash bag slid off the edge of the cart bed, hitting the ground.
The mouth of the bag loosened, and shredded paper was blown out by the wind, spinning under the streetlamps.
The janitor stopped, bent down, tied the bag shut again, and wedged it back into the cart. He pushed the cart onward.
The tail light of the cleaning cart flashed once at the mouth of the alley and vanished.
A few scraps of paper he hadn't picked up were left on the ground. The wind blew them against the iron grating of a drain, where they caught and stayed, gleaming white under the streetlamp.