Continue to ramble a few words, "You don't need to subscribe and vote, the plot of the bronze line will last until the beginning of May, and it has been uploaded to the draft box, since the content of his appearance before is gone, I guess everyone won't be able to watch it." If you really want to see it, it's good to watch db. Although the flame of the crowd is high, it also needs "the crowd", and it is useless to rely on two or three readers, but to waste your money, thank you very much. In fact, this book was barely on the shelves, and if it hadn't been agreed with an old brother, it would have been impossible to support it a long time ago.

Finally, don't spend money!

……

Bronze makes a look of interest. As he turns, he stares in the rearview mirror to see if anyone is following him. He didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. Maybe I misread the person staring at me.

Damn it.

The theater is located on the left side of the road leading to the mountains in the north of the city, and it takes only 5 minutes to drive there. The bronze drove up the spiraling ramp. As the setting sun faded, the lights lit up.

"What a beautiful view." Gong Yu glanced at the dark mountains covered with dwarf pines. They came to a steep plateau, parked their cars in the twilight, and walked towards the circular theater built on the other side of the plateau. The dress of the people around her attracted Gong Yu's attention, and she seemed very curious. "I'm really not sure if I'm wearing too much or too little." She wore a black gown with a lace shawl over her neck, and a pearl necklace prominently around her neck. "Some people here are wearing tuxedos and tuxedos, while others are wearing cashmere shirts, as if they were camping out. The woman over there was carrying a travel bag and a hiking jacket. I couldn't believe it was true. Are we all going to the same place? ”

Bronze laughed. "The amphitheater is unsheltered on all sides and is open-air on top. After the sun sets, the desert becomes cooler, sometimes even below 20 degrees. If the wind blows, the lady in the evening dress will wish she had a coat you just mentioned. During the intermission, many people go to the theater kiosk to buy blankets. That's why I brought this travel blanket that was tucked under me. We may need it. ”

They handed in their tickets and followed the ticket inspector through the bustling open field, mingling in a crowd and walking up to the second floor to a row of wide wooden doors. These doors lead to seating seats in the various loafes.

"This door is ours." Bronze said. He stretched out his hand and motioned for Gong Yu to go in first. When Gong Yu entered the door, he took the opportunity to naturally turn around and see if anyone in the venue below was watching him. Annoyed, he realizes that he has reverted to his old habits. Why should he care? There is no point in spying on him. Did his former boss think that he might have come to the theater to engage in some harmful activity? He found nothing; The people in the venue below were busy entering the theater, and no one looked up at him.

The bronze didn't let Gong Yu see what was on his mind. He sat with her on the right side of the second floor. He noticed that their seats weren't the best in the theater, but there was nothing to complain about either. For example, the part they are in is not open-air, so they can see the stars through the open-air section above the middle seat, and their back seat protects them from the cold air at night.

"If it rains, what happens to the open air in the middle?" Gong Yu said, "Is the show stopped? ”

"Nope. The actors can't get drenched in the rain. ”

"But what about the audience in the middle seat?"

"They're going to get wet."

"It's getting weird."

"There's something even stranger. At the beginning of July next year, you can go to the opening ceremony of the opera season. In the parking lot of that place, the audience flipped the tailgate of the car over to serve as a dining table for a party. ”

"Car tailgate table party? You mean it's like the kind of football game that the British have in Shanghai? ”

"There is only one difference, here they drink champagne and wear tuxedos."

Gong Yu laughed. Her laughter was infectious. Bronze was overjoyed to find that he had forgotten about being watched, and laughed with her.

The lights dimmed, and "The Legend of the West Chamber" began. The show was good. At the end of the first act, Bronze applauds enthusiastically.

However, when he looked towards the ground floor and caught a glimpse of the dim sum shop to the left of the middle seat, he suddenly froze.

"What's going on?" Gong Yu asked.

Bronze did not answer. He was still staring in the direction of the dim sum shop.

"Mr. Gu?"

The bronze felt the pressure behind the ears. He finally replied, "How do you think something is wrong?" ”

"The look on your face is as if you've seen a ghost."

"It's not a ghost, it's a business partner who doesn't keep his promises." Bronze saw the man who had been watching him earlier today. The man, dressed in a gray coat, stood next to the dim sum shop, oblivious to everything around him, staring intently at the bronze. Bronze thought he was trying to figure out if I was going to sit here and still or if I was going to go through those doors outside. If I had left, he would most likely have told his companion that I had gone in the direction of the man. "Forget him, we must not let him spoil our interest tonight." Bronze said, "Let's go, don't you want to have a hot drink?" ”

They walked through the same door they had entered, down the hallway, down the stairs, and onto the crowded field. Huddled in the crowd, Bronze couldn't tell if anyone else was watching him. He led Gong Yu around the left side of the theater and walked towards the dim sum shop. That's where he saw the man.

But the man wasn't there anymore.

During the intermission, Bronze forced himself to make small talk to Gong Yu, and then accompanied her back to her seat. There was no indication that she was aware of his nervousness. When the second act of "The Legend of the West Chamber" opened, he finally breathed a sigh of relief for the time being, not worrying that Gong Yu would be disappointed this night. He began to concentrate on thinking about what was going on.

On one hand, he thought, his angry reaction to the disastrous operation in Shanghai was still of great concern to the intelligence bureau. They had to find out if he had somehow betrayed them in order to vent his anger and whether he had betrayed information about his clandestine activities. One thing that proves that no one paid to buy information from him was that he worked very hard as a real estate agent and that his expenses did not exceed his income.

Bronze thought, well, I'm not afraid of censorship. However, they should have done it earlier, and they could easily have remotely monitored my real estate business, my stock transactions, and the amount of money I had in my bank. Why are they still watching me so closely after more than a year? For God's sake, and in the theater.

In the dark, Bronze looks at the elaborately crafted ancient sets on the stage. He was so lost in thought that he could barely hear the gentle lyrics. Unable to resist his impulse, he turned his face to the dimly lit dim sum shop to the left of the middle seat. It was there that he had last seen the man looking at him.

The muscles in his back tensed suddenly. The man was standing there again. This time Bronze could not have misunderstood the purpose of this man, because he did not watch the opera at all, but stared in his own direction. Obviously, this man didn't expect that he had been discovered, and he thought that he was hiding in the shadows and could not be seen by others. He didn't realize that the lights on the stage were shining in his direction.

What Bronze saw next alerted his nervous system. He was surprised by the appearance of another person, it was not a ghost, but maybe it would be a ghost, absolutely unexpected, absolutely impossible! The other man came out of the shadows, stood beside the first man, and discussed something with him. Bronze said to himself, I must be blinded, this is probably an illusion caused by distance. The man was in his early 30s, had short hair, was slightly overweight, had muscular shoulders, and a thick and wide chin, but that alone didn't say much. Many people look like this.

The man gestured vigorously with his right hand, as if emphasizing what he was saying to the other person. Bronze's stomach tightened, and now he was sure his suspicions were correct. The man at the bottom was none other than the man who killed 23 Americans in Shanghai, the man who caused his resignation from the Intelligence Service. The agent in charge of directing and monitoring him was Ryan.

"I'm sorry," Gu Tong said to Gong Yu, "I need to go to the bathroom." He squeezed past the man and woman sitting next to him, got out of the row, and walked down the stairs and through the back door.

As soon as he reached the empty platform, he immediately began to run. At the same time, he carefully observed the moonlit field below, but even if there was a member of the surveillance team hiding there, he did not see it. Now is not the time to be careful. Desperate, Bronze ran down the stairs in two steps in three steps, toward the dimly lit snack shop on the left side of the opera house, in the direction he had just seen Ryan disappear.

The same anger that he had felt in Shanghai once again spread through him. He's going to grab Ryan and slam him against the wall so he can figure out what the hell is going on. As he ran along the outside of the theater, the sad music echoed in the deep desert night. Bronze thought, wishing the music could drown out the sound of his clattering footsteps as he hurried across the concrete steps. Suddenly, he became cautious. He slowed down vigilantly, leaning close to the wall. He tiptoed around the bathroom and looked into the shadow of his last sight of Ryan near the snack shop.

There was no one there anymore. He thought, how could he not have met them? If they had run along the outside of the opera house, I would have bumped into them head-on. He said to himself, unless they had a seat in the amphitheater, or they heard me coming, and hid. Where are you hiding? In a washroom somewhere? Behind the dim sum shop? Behind the wall that separates this place from the desert outside?

Although the music in the rotunda grew louder and louder, he heard a movement coming from behind the dwarf pine trees outside the walls in the darkness of the night. Could it be that Ryan and the others are peeking at me from outside the wall? Bronze felt danger for the first time. He leaned down and hid himself under the low wall.

He wanted to jump over the wall and follow the sound to chase after him, but then it occurred to him that the sound of his footsteps would remind Ryan that he had chased him. In this way, in a darker place outside the wall, he will naturally be tactically disadvantaged. Another option was to run back down the sidewalk outside the amphitheater and wait in front for Ryan and his accomplices to emerge from the desert. Perhaps, though, they'll go straight to the parking lot and drive back into town. Perhaps, what he heard was nothing more than a wild dog plowing the ground with its paws. Maybe, fuck, I shouldn't have asked myself that way, but I should have found someone who could answer my questions.

"Old Gu, don't you know what time it is?" His former boss complained. He had just been woken up from his sleep, and his voice was muddy. "You can't wait until morning—"

"Answer me." Bronze asked. He was using a coin-operated phone in a dark corner, and the field was empty. "Why are you spying on me?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Why are your people spying on me?" Bronze gripped the microphone tightly, his knuckles aching. The angry music rushed out of the theater and shook his heart.

"Whatever happens, it has nothing to do with me." His former boss's name was Ning Lei. Bronze remembered the 63-year-old's flabby cheeks. As soon as he was nervous, his cheeks flushed. "Where are you?"

"You know exactly where I am."

"Still in Santa Fe? Well, if you're really being watched-"

"Do you think I'm going to be wrong about this?" Although Bronze was very emotional, he tried his best to keep his voice low and not let it pass through the field. He hoped that the growing song of grief and anger would drown out his angry voice.

"You're too excited," Ning Lei said tiredly on the phone, "maybe it's just a routine review." ”

"Routine review?" Bronze carefully surveyed the empty field to see if anyone was coming towards him. "That idiot who did it with me 13 months ago is in charge of this surveillance team's operations, do you think it's a routine review?"

"13 months ago? You mean—"

"Do you want me to name me on the phone?" Bronze asked. "I told you then, and now I'll tell you that I'm not going to divulge secrets."

"The guy you worked with before you quit - he's spying on you?"

"You sound a little surprised."

"Listen to me," Ning Lei's old, hoarse voice grew louder, as if he was closer to the microphone when he spoke, "there's something you have to figure out, I'm no longer working there." ”

"What?" Now it's bronze's turn to be surprised.

"I took early retirement six months ago."

Bronze felt a pain in his forehead.

"My heart is getting worse and worse, and my body is no longer working." Ning Lei said.

Bronze noticed people walking around on the opera platform. He straightened up, his chest tensed, and watched as a man walked down the platform to a stop in front of the stairs leading to the field.

"I'm telling you the truth," Mr. Ning said on the phone, "and if the guy you worked with last year was spying on you, I don't know who ordered him to do it, and I don't know why." ”

"Tell them I want them to stop watching." Bronze said. The person on the platform was Gong Yu, and she was squinting her eyes in his direction. She then wrapped herself tightly in her shawl and walked down the stairs. The music got louder.

"I don't have any influence over them anymore." Ning Lei said.

Gong Yu had already descended the stairs to the edge of the field and began to walk towards him.

"You have to tell them to stop watching."

When Gong Yu walked up to him, he hung up the phone.

"I'm worried about you." A gust of cold wind blew Gong Yu's hair, and she couldn't help but shiver, and reached out to wrap the shawl tighter. "When you never came back—"

"I'm sorry, it's business. The last thing I want to do is leave you there. ”

Gong Yu looked at him in bewilderment.

The singing that came out of the theater reached the apex of grief and despair. Gong Yu turned to look at the theater. "I think this is the scene where Zhang Sheng promised the matchmaker if he climbed over the wall in the middle of the night."

Bronze felt his mouth dry, as if he had just swallowed ashes, but it was because he had lied. "Or, maybe."

"So are you going to stay and finish the play, or do you want to go home now?" Gong Yu's voice sounded a little sad.

"Home? Gosh, no. I'm here to enjoy the opera with you. ”

"Okay," said Gong Yu, "I'm very happy. ”

Just as they turned around and headed for the theater, the music reached an unprecedented level. There was a sudden silence in the theater, but then applause erupted. Another intermission. All the doors opened, and the audience swarmed out.

"Don't you want another drink?" Bronze asked.

"Seriously, right now I want to drink some wine."

"I'll drink with you."

The bronze accompanied Gong Yu through the dark gate and into the flower-filled courtyard. They stopped at the gatehouse, the lights on the second floor were on, and Gong Yu didn't turn off the lights when he left. Once again, she reached out and wrapped her shawl tightly around her. Bronze can't tell if it's out of nervousness.

"You're telling the truth, even though it's July, it's a cold night." Gong Yu took a deep breath and smelled something. "There's a scent in the air that smells like Artemisia."

"Probably the evergreen shrubs on both sides of your driveway, which are also Artemisia."

Gong Yu nodded. Now Bronze was sure she was nervous. "Well," she held out her hand, "thank you for spending this wonderful evening with me." ”

"You're welcome." Bronze shook her hand. "And, I'm sorry to leave you alone in the theater."

Gong Yu shrugged. "I'm not angry. Actually, I'm used to this kind of thing. My husband used to do this kind of thing. He always interrupted his evening social activities to answer business calls or go on the phone. ”

"I'm sorry if I evoke painful memories of you."

"It's not your fault, don't worry about it." Gong Yu looked at his feet, and then looked at the night sky. "For me, it's a big step. Last night and tonight were the first time since he died—" She hesitated. “…… Going out with another man. ”

"I understand."

"I often wonder if I can handle this," Ms. Gong said, "not just to date someone else again after 10 years of marriage, but, yes—" she hesitated again. "Fear that doing so would be unfaithful to him."

"Even after he died." Bronze said.

Gong Yu nodded.

"The ghost in the relationship." Bronze said.

"That's right."

"What else?" Bronze asked, "How do you feel now?" ”

"You mean, in addition to recalling a nervous teenage girl standing at the door saying goodbye to the person she had dated," Gong Yu smiled. "I thought," she became serious. "It's complicated."

"I dare say so."

"I'm glad I took this step." Gong Yu let out a long sigh of relief, "I don't regret it at all. I'm telling the truth. Thank you for spending this amazing night with me. "She seems to be happy with herself." Hi, I'm not too old to take the initiative to invite you out with me. ”

Gong Yu laughed. "I love being invited. If you allow me, I'd like to ask you back for once. ”

"Okay," Gong Yu said, "after a while." ”

"After a while." Bronze agreed. He knew that she meant that she needed a little distance.

Gong Yu took out the key from a small and delicate wallet and inserted it into the keyhole. The timberwolves howled from mountain to mountain. "Good night."

"Good night."

On the way home, Bronze watched to see if anyone was spying on him. He didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. In the days that followed, he remained vigilant, keeping an eye out for anyone watching on him, but his efforts were fruitless. Ryan and his surveillance team are gone. Perhaps, after Ning Lei passed on his message, they canceled the surveillance activities.

Everything seemed to be going slowly, but when Bronze looked back, he felt that time had flown by. In the days that followed, he often met Gong Yu and gave her guidance on trivial matters, such as which food store was the best, which post office was the closest, and what were the real bargain shops besides the luxury travel goods stores near the square.

Gu Tong took Gong Yu and hiked up the mountain along the stream. They passed through the Wilderness Gate residential complex and made it all the way to the top of the mountain. Although her body has not yet adapted to such a high altitude, the fact that she can walk for up to three hours is enough to prove that she has good physical fitness. Bronze also took Gong Yu to visit the large market at the foot of the theater mountain, where only even numbers were open. They went to visit the ruins of the cave house. They were tired of eating national food, so they went to the inn to taste the meatloaf dipped in gravy. They also often make homemade barbecues at the residences of Gong Yu or Bronze. Then, at 11 a.m. on Thursday, September 1, Gong Yu and Bronze met at the Santa Fe Property Deed. After Gong Yu signed the deed, she handed over a check, thus gaining her ownership of the house.

"Let's celebrate." Gong Yu said.

"If I said I had to go on a few more dates, you'd hate me."

"I'm not saying celebrate right away." Gong Yu touched him with his elbow. "I may have taken up some of your time, but I have to admit that once in a while you have to run for survival. I mean tonight. I'm tired of eating white meat all day long. Let's make a vow, barbecue two large pieces of juicy bone-in lamb, and I'll roast some potatoes and mix a cold dish. ”

。