Hour of the Rat

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

MY HEART SLAMS INTO my throat. I don’t even know how I feel when I place the familiar voice and look over and see Creepy John leaning toward the passenger window from the driver’s seat.

He opens the passenger door.

“What do you want?” I manage.

He sighs through gritted teeth. “Just, please. Get into the car.”

“Why? What are you going to do?”

“Try to fix this mess you are in. For first thing. For second…” His eyes drift down. His head cocks back. “What is that?”

“A dog. Duh.”

The dog cocks its head back, too. Bares its teeth. A growl rumbles in its throat.

I’m liking this dog.

John does his squinty-eyed look, but this time it’s like he’s getting a headache, for real. “Why you have dog?”

“Long story.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he finally says. “Just get in car.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Then maybe you get arrested here and go to prison,” he snaps. “You want to go to prison?”

I stand there at the side of the road, the dog pressing against my leg, the wind kicking up, carrying a smell that’s like a giant aquarium, moss or algae or something.

I mean, what am I going to do? What are my choices here, really?

“The dog comes too,” I say.

SO MAYBE I’M PUSHING it, but I honestly don’t give a fuck at this point.

“We need to go to… to a… an animal doctor,” I manage in Mandarin.

“Shouyi?” John supplies.

“Yeah. That.”

“Yili…” he starts.

We’re driving down the road along the lake. I don’t have a clue where John plans to take me. The dog lies in the backseat on one side, head resting on front leg, wounded side up, which is good because it’s not bleeding all over John’s new upholstery, which I have a feeling would piss him off.

“Or get me some drugs and bandages if you want,” I say. “Whatever. But I need to do something for him.” Or her. I still don’t know.

There’s no reason he has to go along. No reason he can’t stop the car and dump the dog by the side of the road. It’s not like I have any kind of power here. Not even a little.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. We find someone.”

WE DRIVE NORTH. MOUNTAIN on the left, lake on the right. Past little villages, creeks that empty into the lake, green fields, I don’t know of what.

I think about New Century Hero Rice.

“So how’d you find me?” I ask.

He gives a half shrug, like it’s not even worth answering.

“Come on,” I say. “My cell phone? My passport? How?”

“Not very hard,” he finally says. “We watch you, you go to train station, they see what ticket you buy, what train. Hotels report to local PSB. Easy for us to ask. We lose you a while in Yangshuo but find you again in Dali.”

“ ‘We’?”

“Just… you know, people. Some are… are officers. Others just… we pay them.” He shrugs again. “Many people work for DSD these days.”

“Huh. Like guys in polo shirts, driving a Buick?”

John frowns. “Buick? I don’t think so.”

Whatever.

“Why are you going to so much trouble? Don’t you guys have better things to do? Stop monks from lighting themselves on fire or arrest people cracking jokes on Twitter?”

His hands tighten on the steering wheel. “You know why.”

“Lao Zhang? I told you, I don’t know where he is.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving Beijing, then?”

He actually sounds hurt. Which is kind of funny and pretty bizarre.

“I can’t take a vacation with my mom?”

His head whips around, and he glares at me. “Vacation? You go to Guiyu for vacation? Without your mother? And she goes back to Beijing anyway.”

We hit something, a pothole, the car bounces and shimmies. John yanks the steering wheel to compensate. The tires squeal. The dog yelps from the backseat.

“I had some business to take care of,” I say.

“So you come here to do business with those guys, those guys with all the ganja? I did not think you were so stupid.” Now he just sounds pissed.

“No! No. I didn’t know anything about that. I was going there to meet someone else. He…”

I could tell him, I guess. Maybe he could even help. I mean, if there’s anyone who could probably track down a runaway foreigner, it’s Creepy John.

But I just don’t know what the consequences of that would be. For Jason/David. For me.

Trust Mr. Double-Dealing Secret Agent? I don’t think so.

“It’s a long story,” I say. “But it’s got nothing to do with Lao Zhang. It’s personal. Not anything you’d care about.”

WE GET TO SOME village that’s pretty cute: a lot of white with grey stone trim, black and white and grey nature scenes painted under the peaked roofs, carved wood and raw brick. Not a lot of white-tile disease. Middle-aged ladies wearing traditional dress: deep blue shifts and blouses under them, dark head wraps, sashes embroidered with pink flowers and butterflies.

“Bai people,” John says. I see a couple of Western tourists wandering through the narrow lanes, taking pictures with their iPhones.

No veterinarian, though.

We finally find a medical clinic. The doctor there, an older man, at first he doesn’t want to have anything to do with the dog, but John whips out his credential and a wad of cash and the doctor starts bobbing his head up and down and clasps his hands together and smiles like he can’t imagine a better way to be spending his time.

The dog doesn’t want to go with him. It whimpers and hugs my thigh. “It’s okay, dog,” I whisper. “I’ll come with you, all right?”

I make sure the doctor gives it a painkiller before he starts doing stuff. I scratch behind its ears and help hold it down when he shaves the fur around the wound, douses it with antiseptic, and loosely stitches it up. “Might need drain,” he says. “I give antibiotic injection, but hard to say.”

He doesn’t ask what happened to the dog. Just bandages it up and hands me a bottle of antibiotics at the end.

“Two times a day,” he says.

“Xie xie.” I pocket the pills. Hesitate. “Is it a boy or a girl?” He laughs a little. “Girl. You can have xiao gou if you want.” Puppies.

“Wo… wo buyao,” I say. I don’t want. I mean,

I don’t even want one dog.

AFTER THAT, I’M THINKING, I should get the dog something to eat, but it’s not like there’s a Petco here. Maybe we can just stop at a restaurant, get some chicken or beef, or something.

“To feed dog?” John asks with a hard sigh.

I shrug. “He… she… I don’t know when the last time she ate was.”

John checks his watch. “Okay. Lunchtime anyway.”

You can tell that this village gets tourists. We find a courtyard restaurant with an English sign that says WELCOME FOR YOU TRY XIZHOU SPECIAL FLAVORS! ENJOYING IN RETROSPECT THE EVERLASTING! John manages to squeeze in his Toyota out front, in the narrow lane.

I order the local fish and something called a poshu, a “roasting round flat cake by the wheat flour with all good color, joss-stick, and flavor,” that features “ethereal oil layering.” It’s supposed to be good for “go out to labor or tour of holding.” It all tastes pretty good, if not ethereally everlasting. But even though I haven’t eaten since last night, I’m not feeling much like eating. There’s the dog, lying in the back of John’s car, with the windows cracked. She seems pretty lethargic-doped up, I have to figure-so I’m hoping she doesn’t pee all over his new upholstery.

And there’s John, sitting across from me. Eating with a sort of angry efficiency.

We don’t talk. We just eat, in record time, leaving with a take-out order of some plain beef-and-rice dish that I figure will be easy for the dog to eat.

I try to pay. John won’t let me.

When we get back to the car, I open the take-out container and put it under the dog’s nose. She sniffs at it. Her tail thumps a little.

“Don’t you want to eat any of it? Come on, it’s got ethereal flavors.”

She lifts her head enough to nose at the beef and rice. Takes a couple of slurping bites. Lays her head back down, tail thumping weakly.

“Okay, good dog,” I say. “You can have more later.”

I close up the Styrofoam take-out container. Tie the flimsy plastic bag. John stands behind me, and I can feel him watching. I don’t have a clue what he’s thinking.

When I try to stand up, my leg’s buckling and I have to brace myself on the car seat, and even then I’m wobbling like one of those plates on top of a Chinese acrobat’s stick.

“Here,” John says. He circles his arm around my back, tucking his hand more or less in my armpit, and I, reluctantly, thread my arm across his back, my hand resting on his ribs. He slowly hoists me up. His hand remains there for a moment, beneath my arm, his fingertips grazing the side of my tit, then falls away.

We stand there next to the car.

“Did you hurt yourself?”

“Yeah. In Guiyu. Getting better, though.”

I ’M NOT SURE WHERE I expect us to go, and truthfully, I kind of space out for a while, something I still tend to do if I get too tired or too stressed out for too long-“dissociate” is the technical term.

Or maybe… I don’t know, after everything that’s happened, I’m finally feeling like I can afford to relax. Like right now I’m kind of safe.

That’s when adrenaline rushes through me like an electric shock.

Safe? With Creepy John? What am I smoking?

I look out the window, try to get my bearings. We’ve been driving north, away from Dali. Now we’re heading east, around the north end of Erhai Lake. Erhai means “Ear Sea,” I think, because the lake is kind of shaped like an ear, and it’s a big freaking lake. We’re heading around the top of it. The road is dirt now, rutted, and there are wind turbines up on the hillside, and I can’t tell how much of the bumping is from the road and how much is from the gusts of wind.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“Some place quiet,” he mutters, hands gripping the steering wheel.

“Why?”

“So you can rest. So I can… so I can decide what to do.”

My heart thumps hard in my chest. “What do you mean, ‘decide what to do’?”

He winces now, scrunches up his face like he’s in pain. “Just… just how I can fix things.”

Okay, I think, okay. He’s not going to hurt me. He’s not. He saved my ass before. He took my dog to a doctor and bought it lunch.

It’s not your dog, I remind myself.

And when it comes down to it, I have no idea what John really wants.

AS WE CURVE AROUND the top of the lake and head south, the road smooths out again. Beams of light stream through breaks in the cloud like some giant flashlight, the peaks of the little waves on the lake sparkling where they hit. There are rusting boats now and again tied up at rotting wooden posts. We blow by some Westerners on bikes struggling against the wind.

“So you really don’t know where Zhang Jianli is,” John finally says.

“No. I really don’t.” I summon up the energy to get pissed off. “I thought you were supposed to be his friend.”

“I…” He looks ashamed, and maybe he actually is. “I just have to tell them something. They think you know. And I don’t want…” His voice trails off. He stares straight ahead.

“What?”

“I don’t want you to have trouble, that’s all.”

He turns to look at me, which I wish he wouldn’t do, given the cyclists and farm trucks and motorcycle carts on the road. “Just tell me what you are doing. Then I can say it has nothing to do with Lao Zhang and they will leave you alone.”

“It’s personal. Meaning it’s none of their fucking business.”

Or yours, I want to say, but I don’t.

WE PULL IN TO this village by the side of the lake. Traditional buildings in white and grey, trimmed with wood, that look like they’ve been fixed up. A finger of land that juts out into the lake and a tiny island.

Yeah, pretty fucking quaint.

“We can stay here for a while,” John says.

I shrug. Whatever. “Okay.”

AT THE EDGE OF town, there’s a couple of crazy modern buildings, all hard angles and glass. Artists’ homes, I’m guessing. We end up at one of them, which turns out to be another boutique hotel.

The room the receptionist points us to looks out over the lake. Glass, slate, and wood. A king-size bed. Hand-woven carpets. Contemporary paintings on the walls, splashes of red against white and grey. I’m still no expert, but they go with the room, I guess.

John and I stand there in the center of the room. The dog settles down by my side. I’m surprised they’re letting the dog stay here. But maybe John showed them his badge or something.

“So what now?” I finally ask.

“You can have a shower and a rest if you want.”

“You?”

His eyes don’t meet mine. “Just got to take care of some things. I come back later.”

He looks at me for a second, gives an awkward little wave and leaves, shutting the door gently behind him.

“Well, shit, dog, what do you make of that?”

The dog yawns.

“Yeah, he’s kind of a freak, huh?” I lean over and give her a scratch behind the ears. I’m not sure what to do.

I could take off, I guess. See how far I could get. But it feels kind of pointless. He’ll just find me again.

I guess I could take that shower.

I STAND UNDER THE water for a long time. It’s a nice bathroom, grey slate floors like the rest of the room, copper-clad sink, a shower with stone-studded walls, which have to be a bitch to clean but look very cool. I let the water pound my neck and shoulders for a while.

When I come out, I don’t really want to put my sweaty T-shirt and grimy jeans back on. There’s a white terry-cloth bathrobe hanging on a hook by the door. I put that on instead.

The dog’s sound asleep on the carpet by the bed. I limp past her, to the wall of windows overlooking the lake.

There’s nothing but a narrow stone walkway separating the window from the shore. Clouds have turned the water practically the color of the slate floor, with ridges of white where the wind has kicked up tiny waves, like frosting.

As I stand there, a big white bird flaps down and lands on the walkway, almost in slow motion. It takes a few steps, lifting its legs and putting them down with a weird sort of hesitant precision. Like it’s testing the ground ahead. It looks like Boba. I wonder if it’s the same kind of bird. A crane, or whatever.

Fuck, I’m tired.

I pull back the comforter on the bed and slide under the sheet. I swear, the mattress feels like a cloud.

I WAKE UP WITH a jolt. The dog, barking. It’s dark but there’s a light on. Someone standing in the room.

“It’s just me,” John says.

I let out a held breath and sit up. “It’s okay, dog,” I say. I reach out and find the scruff of the dog’s neck; she’s standing guard next to the bed.

John’s dark against the entry light. I can’t see his face. He’s got a duffel bag slung over each shoulder, a sack in his hand.

I switch on the lamp on the nightstand. “What time is it?”

“Just after seven.”

I smell food.

“Some dinner,” he says.

One of the bags he’s carrying is my duffel-olive canvas, from my deployment. His is black. He drops them on the luggage rack by the wardrobe.

“You picked up my stuff?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem. Are you hungry?”

I nod. “A little.”

He stares at me for a moment, and I remember that I’m not wearing anything except the hotel bathrobe. “I… uh, give me a minute to change.”

I find the baggy drawstring pants I’ve been using for pajamas and a cleanish T-shirt, the one from the Mati Village coffeehouse I used to like, with Lei Feng holding a steaming mug of coffee. I change in the bathroom. The pressure bandage I’ve had wrapped around my leg lies on the floor in the corner. It reminds me of a shed snakeskin, like I used to see sometimes when I was a kid and I’d ride my bike out in the desert. I pick the bandage up, but I don’t try to put it back on. My leg feels a lot better, I tell myself. Instead I roll it up neatly as I can and put it on the shelf where the towels are stacked.

When I come out of the bathroom, John has the food laid out on the little table pressed up against the window overlooking the lake. Dumplings and some green vegetables. Vinegar peanuts. And a couple bottles of Dali Beer.

“Looks great,” I say.

“I have this for the dog,” John says. He holds up a bag of Iams kibble and a leash and collar.

“That’s really nice of you.” I don’t know what else to say.

HE RIPS OPEN THE dog food and pours some onto the empty sack that had carried our dinner. The dog digs in, seeming to like this better than the ethereal-flavor beef, or maybe she’s just feeling better than she was. “She probably needs some water,” I say. John frowns. It’s like he’d thought of everything but he hadn’t thought of that, and it bugs him.

Finally he grabs one of the hotel teacups and fills it with water. “Not so good,” he says. “I find something better later.”

After that we both sit down at the little table.

I eat a couple dumplings. Drink some beer.

“So the… the thing in Dali,” I say.

John shrugs. “I take care of it.”

“What does that mean?”

“I tell the PSB they make a mistake. That you have nothing to do with these guys.”

“Oh, yeah? So it’s over? I don’t have anything to worry about? Or are you gonna keep this in one of your files, just in case you need me to do something? Help you find Lao Zhang, maybe? Or fuck over some other artist who says things you don’t like?”

A muscle in John’s cheek twitches.

“This problem you have in Dali is just a local thing,” he says. He sounds calm. Cold, almost. “It did not go any further than here. And it is gone now. You want to go back to Dali, to Lijiang, to anyplace around here, you can. The local PSB understands now you are a friend to China. You won’t have any troubles.”

I really don’t know what to say to that. I drink my beer. John pours me more and then refills his own glass. Downs it and opens another bottle.

“Why are you doing all this?” I finally ask.

He puts the bottle down. “Because we are friends.”

The way he looks at me-steady, serious, not putting on one of his confused, clueless acts-I almost believe him.

WE FINISH EATING. THEN we drink the rest of the beer. It’s not until we’re on the last bottle that I start thinking about the other times I’ve drunk beer with John.

Both times turned out pretty weird.

“Are you tired, Yili?” he asks, watching me.

“A little.”

He stands. Tidies up the take-out containers and the paper plates, stuffing them in the plastic bag and tying the bag shut.

I look around, at the big room, the king-size bed. And I think, What the fuck? Are we going to be sharing this bed?

My heart starts to pound, and I’m not sure why. Because yeah, he’s creepy, but he’s also pretty good-looking.

I stand up, too, bracing myself on the table.

John tosses the bag in the trash.

“I, uh… I need to give the dog her antibiotic,” I say.

He nods. “I will let you sleep.”

With that he slings his black duffel over his shoulder and heads to the door. So I guess he has his own room. I follow. You know, to be polite.

He pauses by the door. “Tomorrow… I can take you someplace. Wherever you need to go. If you like.”

“Thanks. I…” The truth is, I don’t have a clue what I’m going to do tomorrow. “Anyway, thanks. For… you know. Helping me with the dog.”

We’re standing pretty close together, but I still don’t exactly expect it when John leans over and kisses me.

He does it fast, presses his lips against mine and then draws back. Like he’s nervous. The clueless, slightly awkward guy I met at that party a year ago.

I don’t know why, but it pisses me off.

“That the best you can do?”

His face darkens. He takes a step closer; we’re standing toe-to-toe. And then he kisses me for real, his body up against mine, my tits against his hard chest, his one hand tangling in my hair, the other running down my back till it cups my ass.

And yeah, I guess this is what I wanted.

I WANT THE LIGHTS out, but he wants one turned down low. “Because you are beautiful,” he says softly, “and I want to look at you.”

“I’m not.” Hearing him say that makes me get teary, which is stupid, and I know it. But I’m a mess. I don’t like looking at myself, especially my leg. Why would anyone else want to look at me, unless he’s some kind of freak?

“You are wrong,” he says. “And I can prove it to you.”

We’re lying on the bed, and he rocks back, resting on his calves and heels. His dick is standing at attention, like a good little soldier. Not the biggest one I’ve ever seen, but it’s nice. Trim and hard, like the rest of him. I like the neat black hair around it, too. I reach my hand out.

“No, Yili,” he says.

“No?”

He stretches out next to me, his face close to mine. “You know about Dao?”

“Taoism?”

“Yes.”

His fingers start tracing light patterns all over me, from the crease of my jaw down to the hollow of my neck, onto my nipple, along my ribs, and it’s making me crazy.

“I… uh, just, ren fa di, di fa tian, tian fa…” It’s this Taoist rhyme I learned in Chinese class.

“Tian fa dao,” John supplies. “Dao fa ziran.”

Man follows Earth, Earth follows Heaven, Heaven follows the Way, the Way follows Nature.

“Yeah. That,” I manage.

“You know what Taoists believe?”

“Uh…”

“Taoists believe that man is yang. Man must preserve essence.”

“Essence?”

“You know,” he whispers.

I can guess.

“Women, women are yin. Men only have so much yang essence. But women, women have always their yin. In this way women are stronger than men.”

His hand moves lower, and I am not feeling strong.

“Taoist say it’s very good for man to… to get yin from woman. But she only release yin if he pleases her. So he should be inside her as long as he can. And please her many times.”

“Are you a Taoist?” I ask.

He grins. “I practice.”

AT ONE POINT THE dog starts whining and comes over to the bed. “It’s okay, dog,” I tell her, but she keeps whining. Maybe she only understands Chinese. “Uh, dou hao. Xiuxi! Shuijiao!” Finally she settles down again. Which is good, because John does not seem to be settling down anytime soon.

He gets my yin once, twice, and it’s not until we’re trying something called “Mating Cicadas” (it’s a lot better than it sounds) and a third dose of my yin that John’s jade stalk gives it up inside my red pearl.

“Wow,” I finally say.

“I can do better,” he tells me.

I MANAGE TO GET out of bed, clean myself up, put my pj’s back on, because even though John’s seen pretty much all there is to see of me, I still don’t like being seen. The dog’s lying on a rug near the bathroom. When she sees me approach, she looks up and thumps her tail. “Good dog,” I whisper. “Hao gou.” I hold out my hand, and her wet nose nuzzles my palm.

By the time I get back to bed, John is sound asleep. I settle in next to him.

I lie there, exhausted, but not quite ready to sleep.

I just had the best sex of my life, with Creepy John.

And he doesn’t even snore.