Dragon Day

Chapter Four

★

“So where is it you’re going?”

“Just to visit a friend.”

My mom pauses in the middle of her chopping-chicken, for tacos. “And you don’t want dinner?”

I shake my head, even though I love my mom’s tacos and she’s making three kinds tonight (“Chicken, potatoes y rajas, and I thought I’d try mutton”) and even has enough ripe avocados for guacamole.

“How much pepper for salsa?” Andy asks.

“Oh, throw in a few more of these little ones and another bunch of that cilantro.”

He nods and starts chopping. Their knives fall into rhythm. He’s not much taller than she is, and they’re both a little stocky.

If I were a better person, I’d think it was kind of cute.

Zhou Andian, “Andy,” lives next door. My mom’s boyfriend. I mean, no point in pretending otherwise. She spends as much time over there as she does here, but she likes our kitchen better for cooking. I figured the thing with Andy would end up being one of her typical flameouts, which would have been all kinds of awkward, given that we’re neighbors, but five months in, it shows no signs of fading.

Andy’s… not bad. He’s into this weird Christian house-church, but it seems pretty harmless-they’re not setting themselves on fire in the middle of Tiananmen Square anyway. My mom shares the whole Jesus fixation, so it gives them something to talk about.

Otherwise he likes to help. He’s quiet, even-tempered.

Added bonus: he’s not a drunk or a meth addict or an asshole.

And he really likes my mom.

“What time will you be home, hon?” she asks.

“Not sure,” I mutter. “Don’t wait up.”

She’s about to pop the quiz, I can tell, so I hustle myself out of there.

How the fuck did things end up like this?

I had my own apartment. I was making decent money, and I was even doing something kind of cool, representing “emerging” artists. No DSD on my ass or anyone else trying to fuck with me. I can’t say I left the war behind-it’s always going on in my head somewhere-but I wasn’t thinking about Iraq so much. I had this brief period where I wasn’t scared all the time, or numb. I was thinking maybe I’d actually found a place for myself.

But that wasn’t the main thing, I realize. The main thing was, I felt free.

I’d gotten over my ex-husband, Trey, sort of. I didn’t have to worry about whether I was Lao Zhang’s girlfriend or just one of a number of girlfriends he fucked, or if that was something I was even entitled to care about, because wherever he was, he wasn’t around-and when I interacted with him online, in a chat room, he was pretty much the perfect boyfriend.

And I sure wasn’t worrying about what lie to tell my mom this time.

I was unattached, and I liked it.

The army shrink, the guy I had to talk to after I got blown up, would probably tell me that I was “isolating” or something.

I sit on the subway, thinking about all this, surrounded by texting twenty-somethings, stylish women carrying shopping bags from Apple and Starbucks, migrant workers with browned faces hauling overstuffed duffels made from plastic grain bags.

I hate thinking about this kind of shit.

To get to where I’m going, I have to take the Line 2 to the 13 to the 15. When did Line 15 happen? I can’t even keep track anymore.

The segment they’ve built runs northeast, from Chaoyang District to Shunyi District out around the Sixth Ring Road, but not as far as where I need to go.

I don’t know this part of Beijing very well. When you get out close to the airport, it’s villa land, where a lot of the wealthier folks live, Chinese and expat alike. I’ve met with collectors out here a couple of times: “I want a piece that compliments my color scheme!” kind of people.

Line 15 runs aboveground on this leg. In the dark what I see are flat, empty stretches of land, patches and lines of ghostly trees, remains of older villages surrounded by construction cranes, half-built high-rises, clusters of gleaming mirrored skyscrapers. At one point I glimpse a golf course.

I get off at the end of the line, at Houshayu station. Ribbed grey ceilings, rows of industrial spotlights casting white dots on the grey marble floors, broken up by red columns, all shiny and new. Not many people. It’s just past 9:00 p.m.

No taxis either.

“Come on,” I mutter. Why are there no taxis? Don’t the folks who live past this subway stop need to get home?

They probably all drive their Audis or Beemers or whatever.

On the north side of the station, there’s a parking lot. An expanse of cars, most of which look new. I guess they belong to the fancy car dealerships across the street. A ways farther, there’s some stadium-size mall thing that might sell furniture.

On the other side of the station, a bank of trees and a broad street, with signs pointing to the Airport Expressway and some other highway. Is this the Sixth Ring Road?

There’s a bus stop, but I don’t know which bus to take.

I could make a phone call and ask for a ride. But I don’t want to do that. Because when it comes to attachments I’d rather not be dealing with, this one is high on my list.

I start to walk to the bus stop when I hear a high-pitched honk.

“Miss! Miss!”

I turn. It’s a modi, a motorcycle taxi: basically, a three-wheeled motorcycle surrounded by a tin box, the kind of transport you take when you’re too broke for a taxi. Not what I’d expect to see out here in Expatlandia.

The driver is an older guy wearing People’s Liberation Army cast-off camouflage. He mimes a steering wheel. Even though it’s a motorcycle with handlebars.

These things are so totally unsafe.

Oh well, what the fuck.

I stare out the little square window of the modi, low enough to the ground so that I’m at eye level with the wheels of the massive blue trucks roaring past us, bouncing up and down on the wooden bench with every little bump in the road. It sounds like someone’s hammering on the tin-can cover surrounding me, but maybe that’s the backfiring two-stroke engine. We skid around a traffic circle, spraying gravel.

Maybe this was not such a good idea.

But finally we turn off the highway.

New construction. Cranes. A couple rows of old village buildings surrounded by a crumbling brick wall. Clusters of villas, low-rise housing. Developments with names like “Yosemite” and “Palm Beach.”

My destination: Fiji Palace Estates.

I’m hoping for hula girls in grass skirts and maybe some tiki torches, but no. It’s a cluster of high-rises, maybe ten or twelve stories each. Only two of them look completed. The others are still wrapped in green netting.

I’m looking for Number 5.

There’s a guard in a box by an unfinished wall, and once he sees a foreigner inside the modi, he barely looks at me, just waves us through.

The landscaping isn’t done, but there’s a line of skinny young trees in front of an artificial lake and, around the lake, finished town houses with designs that look like a drunken hookup between a Greek temple and a Bavarian castle.

The driver pulls up in front of Number 5.

I pay him. Grab the flimsy metal doorframe for balance, plant my good leg on the ground, and haul myself up and out. Take in a deep breath.

“Man zou,” I tell the driver. The Chinese equivalent for “Drive safely,” but what it actually means is “Go slowly.”

Too late for that.

“Yili.”

“John.”

He steps aside, and I step across the threshold. I almost stumble, which I tell myself is because my bad leg’s still cramped up from the ride in the modi. He reaches out to steady me, seems to think better of it. His hand drops.

I steady myself on a low wooden cabinet in the entry and kick off my shoes. Not because I’m comfortable with John. Far from it. But it’s rude to walk around in a Chinese home with your shoes on, and I guess I’ve been here long enough now where it’s habit with me, too.

“Slippers,” John says. He points at a shoe rack across from the cabinet. Like the cabinet, it’s plain, dark wood.

I find a pair that look to be my size. Quilted black cloth, with embroidered flowers on them.

John doesn’t look at me, and I don’t look at him. I walk past him, into the living room.

Like the rest of the complex, it doesn’t feel finished. The walls are white, bare except for one large framed piece of calligraphy, black ink on white paper in a black frame. The floors are some kind of blond wood, or maybe bamboo, or most likely Pergo. There’s a couch. Black. Plain. A table by the kitchen, with two black wood chairs. All the same stark design as the stuff in the entry.

“Nice place,” I say.

John shrugs. “You like some tea? Maybe beer?”

He knows me. He knows what I like, and it isn’t tea. I’m tempted to ask for it anyway, just to fuck with him. But I don’t.

“Sure,” I say. “A beer would be great.”

I watch John retreat to the kitchen. He’s wearing fitted black jeans and a T-shirt, his usual. Trim, taut, with some muscle. If I got up close, I’d see a white scar cutting across one eyebrow, a slight shadow of beard framing his sharp cheekbones. A good-looking guy.

His business card says his name is Zhou Zheng’an. I doubt if that’s his real name.

Either way, he’ll always be Creepy John to me.

Blame it on the first time we met. There I was, thinking I was maybe going to mess around with a cute guy at a party. I had no fucking clue what his agenda really was and what would end up happening between the two of us.

He comes back out with a large Yanjing Draft and two glasses. Hesitates. Then gestures at the table.

Good. I don’t think I want to sit on the couch with Creepy John.

He puts the glasses on the table as I limp over there, then goes back into the kitchen. Brings out a second beer. And black-and-red lacquer coasters.

He would have coasters.

We sit. He pours. I drink.

“So is this your apartment?” I ask.

John shrugs again.

“Pretty upscale neighborhood,” I continue. “I didn’t think they paid DSD spies that kind of money. Or are you just on the take like every other cop in China?”

He looks at me. I see anger, but only for a moment. He takes a big swallow of his beer.

I can’t help it. I keep going: “Has your ex-fiancée been over? She sees this, maybe she’ll change her mind.”

He puts down his glass with a thud. On the coaster. “Enough,” he says.

Now it’s my turn to shrug. Okay. I’ll drink, then.

I think about getting hauled away by fucking DSD plainclothes to a crappy hotel in Outer Fengtai and about how I might not just walk away the next time.

Yeah, I’m pretty pissed off.

“So you wanna hear about my day?”

“Of course. I know you must want something. Otherwise you wouldn’t text.”

He does a good job sounding like he really doesn’t give a shit. Hey, maybe he doesn’t. Which is more than fine by me.

Except that I need him. To help me with this DSD situation, right?

“Maybe you already know,” I say, and I sound like a total bitch, even to myself.

He shakes his head.

Cool down, McEnroe, I tell myself. He’s not going to help you if all you do is try to piss him off.

Which is kind of too bad, because pissing people off seems to be one of my stronger skills.

I tell him what happened. It takes me the entire beer to get through, plus part of his. He doesn’t say anything; he just listens, watching me with a level expression. I mostly don’t look at him. Instead I stare at my hands.

When I finish, I notice my hands are trembling. Weird. I got through that whole experience without losing my shit, but I feel like I could fall apart right now, just dissolve into a million pieces.

“Do you want another beer, Yili?” John finally asks.

“Sure.” My voice cracks. “Thanks.”

He returns with the beer. Fills my glass. Hesitates and then fills his. Abruptly sits.

“That guy… he is such an asshole!” John says, and then he drains about half his glass.

I don’t know why this makes me laugh, but it does. “Yeah,” I say. “A total asshole.”

John doesn’t laugh. He’s lit up, like someone’s flipped his switch, his dark eyes bright, everything about him tense and alive. Angry.

“People like Zhang Jianli, making art, people who say truth in newspaper or on Internet, he wants to arrest people like that. Why?” His voice rises. “Why? Because they threaten China? No. Because of corruption. Because he benefits the way things are now. He doesn’t care about real security, for China. He doesn’t even know what that means.”

“Wow, John,” I say. “Keep talking like that, maybe you’ll be drinking tea with him.”

Now he chuckles. “Maybe. Maybe not. He is not even very important. Just a… a little man who wants to be a da wanr, a big shot. He thinks bothering you and bothering Lao Zhang can help make his name big.”

“So what do I do?” I ask. Because I can laugh at John, I can do my best to piss him off, and there’s no way that I trust him, but I still need help. And out of everyone I know in China, for this situation? He’s the best person to ask.

“Stay out of trouble. Don’t do foolish things. I think, if I have some time, I can maybe do something about this guy.”

“Do something?”

He waves his hand, that dismissive gesture I see Chinese men make combined with a little head shake, like when you try to get a taxi driver to take you someplace he doesn’t want to go.

I probably don’t want to know.

“Yili, but I must ask…” He hesitates.

“What?”

“Zhang Jianli. You really don’t know where he is?”

He stares at me, his dark eyes steady, his expression concerned.

“No. I don’t.” I stand up. “Thanks for the beer. And fuck you.”

I head for the door.

“Yili, please, wait.”

I half turn, and I see him reach for me, and he catches my wrist. I pull away.

“Wait,” he says again. “I just-”

My hand’s on the doorknob, and I’m twisting it to open, and his hand grabs the fleshy part of my shoulder, and he pulls me toward him. I stumble a little, and my tits brush against his hard chest, and then we fall into each other. Before I know it, his mouth finds mine, tongue slipping between my lips, and I’m trying to slip my hand beneath the waistband of those snug jeans. Finally my fingers find his nice, firm butt cheek.

I so was not going to do this.

At least he bought a bed. Okay, a futon, but it’s a queen. By the time we land on it, my shirt and bra are off, and he’s got my pants pulled down below my ass and his fingers hooked on the band of my panties. I am looking forward to those fingers. I know what he can do with them. Meanwhile I’m trying to slide his T-shirt over his head, but it’s caught on one arm, thankfully not the one with the hand that’s tugging down my underwear.

I get his shirt off at about the same time that my panties reach my knees, and I’m sucking on his nipple while his fingers stroke and probe, and meanwhile I’m doing my best to release his brave little soldier from the confines of his jeans and boxers.

“Yili,” he manages. “No, wait-”

“Would you just fuck me?” I say. “I don’t want a marathon tonight, I just-”

His finger thrusts, and I shut up.

Well, that was dumb.

I’m lying on the futon next to John, both of us sweaty and spent. His hand rests lightly on my breast, like it’s a shy cat that he wants to pet.

John is not your boyfriend, I tell myself. He’s not even a friend with benefits. You can’t trust him. The last thing you need to be doing is sleeping with him.

It felt pretty damn good, though. I’m sure way more relaxed than I was when I got here. I don’t even feel the need for a Percocet.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs.

“Huh?”

“For asking. About Zhang Jianli.”

Things are so much better when he doesn’t talk.

I let out a sigh. “If I did know, I wouldn’t tell you. But I don’t.”

We’re facing each other now. “I just ask because… I need to be sure,” he says.

I laugh softly. Because it occurs to me that maybe John doesn’t exactly trust me either.

Fair’s fair, I guess.

“So are you? Sure?”

He slowly nods. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to him. I’ll help him if I can. But…” He reaches out his hand and touches my cheek. I feel his fingertips there, warm, a little rough. “If it’s you or Zhang Jianli, I help you.”

My stomach does a kind of flip. Part of me is mad, hearing him talk that way about Lao Zhang. Another part of me feels all teary, because, you know, I believe him. Which means he really likes me.

Don’t go there, McEnroe, I tell myself. Just don’t.

“I don’t want you making some kind of deal,” I say. “I mean, me for Jianli. I don’t want that.”

“I know.” John rolls over onto his back. “Anyway, you don’t know where he is, no deal to make.”

I lie there and think about what I’m going to say next. My heart’s pounding. Because I don’t know where he is, but I do know something.

What I say is, “Why do they even care? He’s an artist. He’s not trying to overthrow the CCP. You know that.”

“Maybe because his work has political theme.”

“Come on, lots of Chinese artists do work with political themes.”

John stares at the ceiling. “What they do with Zhang Jianli, it’s just a way to remind everyone who is master. Like with dog. With Mimi you have that leash, the kind you can let out and make long. Dog can run around. But you always can control. Can bring the dog back. She can only run so far.”

Silence fills the room. There’s this big thing that we both know that neither of us is saying.

So finally I say it.

“What about the Game? Did you tell them about it?”

The Game is a video game. Sword of Ill Repute. Kind of like World of Warcraft, based on Chinese mythology, with a lot of magic swords, wise dragons, and flying monks. Completely harmless, right? You create an avatar for yourself and go storm castles or whatever.

Except Lao Zhang figured out a way to use the Game to talk to people privately. To organize.

It wasn’t supposed to be anything political. At least that’s what Lao Zhang told me later. “The Game, it is another community. A place where you can express your personality, make friends, have common goal. No one say you have to go on quest, collect treasure. Instead maybe you can build something else. Make art. Talk about ideas. Use this Game to play your own.”

Lao Zhang was Upright Boar. I was Little Mountain Tiger. Before the Game was compromised.

John had been there, too. And I still don’t know the whole story. Whether it was all about spying for the DSD or if he really believed some of it.

And right now… I don’t know if I want to know the truth.

He lets out a sigh, a hiss between his teeth. “I had to tell them.”

I guess I’m not surprised. I’m not even really disappointed. It’s what I expected.

He turns to stare at me. His dark eyes look liquid, like water at night.

“I tell them it’s just a game.”

There’s this hard knot in my gut, and I feel like it’s uncoiling. I resist it. You can’t relax, I tell myself. You gotta keep your guard up.

“Why?”

“You need to ask me this?” He sounds pissed off.

“Well… yeah.” I sit up. My tits are bouncing around, which I figure maybe is not best for a serious conversation, since John seems to find them distracting. I pull up the sheet. I’m a little cold now anyway.

“Look, do I have to remind you about the night we met? About our first ‘date’?” I make the finger quotes. Because now I’m kind of pissed off. “Everything you told me was a lie, and then you just kept lying. So why am I supposed to believe you now?”

At this he bolts up, tense and angry again, and I shiver a little and try not to show it.

Sometimes I forget, he’s kind of a scary guy. And here I am in bed with him.

“You and me, together like this, and you still think I lie to you?” He sounds insulted. Or like he can’t believe it.

“I…” I take in a breath, and I ask myself, what do I think?

I have no clue.

I manage a shrug. “So we fucked a couple of times. You know what that means in my life? Either nothing or a great way to get screwed.” Tears are starting to dribble down my face, which makes me even madder. I throw off the sheet. Catch a glimpse of the familiar scars on my leg, the missing chunk of flesh, purple in the dim light. “I need to go.”

John doesn’t say anything. He watches me pull up my jeans, fumble around for my bra, turn my T-shirt right side out. My panties I wad up and stuff in my pocket-I’ll throw them in my bag, wherever that is. In the living room, somewhere, with my jacket. My shoes…?

“Hard to find a cab now,” John finally says.

“I’ll find something,” I mutter.

“I’ll take you. Just to the subway, if you want.”

I almost say no, just out of habit. But it’s closing in on ten thirty. I might not even make the last train home.

“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”

He ends up driving me all the way back, in his nice shiny Toyota, because yeah, I missed the last train. As long as he doesn’t try to come upstairs, I think, as long as he doesn’t do that and my mom doesn’t see him, because my mom thinks he’s cute and nice and that I should be going out with him. Hah. She has no idea who he really is. I’m thinking about what he did to me the night we met, and what the fuck is wrong with me for ending up in bed with him not once but twice? That’s just beyond fucked up, I think.

Though he did wash my dishes. And save my ass. And take care of my dog.

At least he doesn’t talk on the long drive back. It’s like a replay of the last time, I think. We have some fun-I mean, it’s weird, but basically good. He acts like it’s a big deal. I get mad. He gets mad. Then we end up not talking to each other and finally go our separate ways.

This is bad, I tell myself. I have to stop doing shit like this.

We’re almost to my place, heading west on Dongzhimen, the red lanterns in front of all the hotpot restaurants on Ghost Street still lit, when John breaks the silence.

“I will do what I can, about this situation.” He sounds formal. Like it’s the end of a business meeting or something. “Just remember what I tell you. Give me some time. Don’t look for trouble.”

“I don’t exactly look for it,” I mutter.

John actually snorts. “No. Always these troubles just find you.”

I almost snark back. Yeah, like that whole thing with Lao Zhang and the Uighur and the Game was something I looked for. Like I wanted to get blown up in Iraq, or get involved in my ex-husband’s shit, or even come to China in the first place.

But then there’s the other stuff, the stuff I did seek out, or when I stumbled on it, I didn’t run far enough or fast enough.

Like I needed the buzz.

“Believe me, I don’t want any more trouble,” I say.

It’s not until John turns up Jiugulou Dajie, the main street that leads to the hutong where my building is, that I finally have to say it. I’m not sure why I feel like I do. Just… I don’t want to be keeping so many secrets anymore.

“Zhang Jianli says he’s coming back to Beijing.”

John’s head whips around, and he almost misses my alley. “What? You talk to him?”

“Email.” Which is only sort of a lie. “I don’t know where he is. I really have no idea. But yeah, we email sometimes.”

“Tamade.” Your all-purpose Chinese expletive. John scrunches up his face like he’s getting a sudden headache. “Why? Why does he come back?”

“He felt bad I was having problems, I guess.”

“He is here now?”

“I don’t think so. Not that I know of anyway.”

“If he is somewhere safe, he should just stay away.”

“I know. I told him not to come. He won’t listen.”

“Did you tell him what happened today?”

I shake my head. “I tell him that, it’ll just make him come back faster.”

We’ve reached the gate in front of my building, manned by the usual night guard, a middle-aged guy named Dongfeng with a thatch of greying hair and sleepy eyes who spends a lot of time playing Angry Birds on his smartphone.

“When he comes back, Yili, you have to tell me,” John says.

“Why? So you can turn him in?”

John stares straight ahead. “I don’t want to.”

“But you will.”

“Someone will.” He grinds the heels of his palms against his temples. Maybe he really does have a headache. “I have to think of way… think of way we can be safe.”

“Who? You and me?”

His hands drop. “All of us.”

I almost believe him.

“But mostly you.” Now he does look at me, but it’s so dark that I can’t really see his expression. “Because you have connection to Zhang Jianli, if they think you lie…”

I shudder. And then I shrug it off. “They’ll kick me out of the country. Whatever.”

“Maybe,” he says.

Or maybe not.

Getting kicked out of China could be the best-case scenario.

“Maybe I can find out what they want from Zhang Jianli, what they say he did,” John says, and he’s making an effort to sound calm. Like it’s no big deal. “He is just an artist. Maybe it isn’t so bad.”

I don’t know who he’s trying to convince: me or himself.

“It doesn’t matter what he did.” Suddenly I’m so tired that I can’t even hold my head up anymore. “It’s whatever they want it to be, right?”

Because if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that sometimes there’s no reason for any of it. Sometimes it’s just wrong place, wrong time. Somebody with power gets a bug up his ass. Like that musical where the hungry guy steals the loaf of bread and the cop gets the hard-on of all hard-ons over it.

John rests his hand on mine, just for a moment, then pulls it away, like he’s embarrassed.

“Try not to worry, Yili.”

Right.