Hour of the Rat

CHAPTER SIX

EXCEPT THERE’S MY MOM.

It’s not like I want her to come with me. Part of the reason I need to get out of Beijing is that she’s kind of driving me crazy.

On the other hand, I’m not comfortable leaving her here on her own. She’s only got another three weeks on her visa, and she’s going to need to make a visa run, and I feel like I should be there to help her with that.

Or not. If she fucks up with the visa, then she’ll have to go home, right?

“Is that a good idea? Taking a vacation?”

We sit across from each other at my small table the next morning. I’m sucking down coffee and nibbling on spicy peanuts. She’s eating granola. (“Are you sure you wouldn’t like some?”)

I shrug. “Yeah, I think it’s okay. I mean, like John said, the thing with the cops was a mistake.”

“Well, I know he said that.”

She regards me with a level look, and I have to remind myself, even with all her crazy-ass Jesus shit and bad taste in men, she’s pretty shrewd.

“I’m just not sure. Is it really safe for you to be traveling around on your own like that?”

“Yeah, it’s totally safe,” I say. Which is normally true. China’s a great place for foreigners to travel, even foreign single women.

It’s just that my situation isn’t exactly normal.

“I’d feel a lot better if you were traveling with someone,” Mom says.

“Why don’t you come with me?” I blurt.

Oh, shit. Why did I say that?

Her eyes dart up and meet mine for a moment. Then she fiddles with her spoon and won’t exactly look at me.

“Well, I don’t know. Do you really want me to?”

No, I think, no fucking way.

“Sure,” I say. “It’ll be fun.”

MAYBE IT’LL BE OKAY, I tell myself. As long as she doesn’t get into the Jesus stuff, my mom really is okay to be around.

Except if I am in some kind of trouble, if things turn weird, do I want her involved in it?

It’ll be okay, I tell myself. If the DSD wants to talk to me again, fine. They don’t want to talk to my mom. I don’t think.

But how am I going to go out and look for Dog’s brother with my mom hanging around?

She’s not going to understand why I want to at least try to help Dog, to make an effort. She doesn’t know about any of it. About what I did in the war, about why me and Trey broke up-well, she knows about his Chinese girlfriend, which, when I’m being honest with myself, isn’t really why we split, but Lily makes a great excuse and something my mom can get mad about on my behalf, because before that all I ever heard about was how wonderful and awesome Trey was, which made telling her we were getting divorced even harder. Like he was always too good for me, but before, I could pretend that I was better than I was, because I’d somehow managed to end up with him.

Now she thinks he’s pretty much an asshole. Believe it or not, that helps.

I’ll figure it out. I can slip away while she’s doing something else, while she’s reading her latest serial-killer thriller.

Hey, I could even tell her the truth.

As used as I am to lying, it’s not the first option that comes to mind.

“ANDY SAYS HE CAN help us with the train tickets.”

I’m sitting on my bed with my laptop, having just sent off an email to Lucy Wu telling her that I don’t think I’m going to make her opening after all. Plus, there’s another email from this Vicky Huang person, the one who’s supposedly representing the Chinese billionaire art collector.

I shrug. “I can do it. It’s not a big deal.”

“Dear Ms. Huang,” I type. “At the present time, Zhang Jianli’s work is not for sale.”

“Well, I think he’d like to help.”

I look up. My mom stands there in the doorway, hands clasped in front of her belly, blushing slightly.

“The thing is… he’s never been to Yangshuo either, and he’d like to come. I said no, since this was just supposed to be the two of us, but then I thought maybe it would be good to have a man around, and a Chinese person, just in case.”

“We don’t need a man or a Chinese person to take a simple vacation.”

I guess I sound pretty pissed off, but you know, this is so fucking typical of her. Meeting some guy, deciding he’s awesome after about two dates, and inviting him along for all the family fun.

Next thing you know, he’ll be crashing on my couch.

“Well, he doesn’t have to come,” she says apologetically.

“Whatever,” I snap. “I mean, whatever you want.”

TWO DAYS LATER THE three of us are on a train from Beijing to Guilin, the jumping-off point for Yangshuo.

“Honey, I can take the top bunk, you don’t have to.”

“I like the top bunk,” I mutter. Which is half a lie. I like that the top bunk feels more private, but climbing up there with my leg is a pain.

“I like top one,” Andy says. “You can be on this more comfortable one.” He pats the cushion next to him.

“That’s okay. I mean, you guys want to be together, right?”

Okay, that didn’t sound very nice the way I said it, but it’s true. Andy and Mom have been giving each other the look all afternoon, and even though most Chinese don’t go for the big public display of affection, they’ve been holding hands on and off. And now they’re sitting next to each other on the lower berth, and he’s leaning over and whispering something in her ear.

What a fucking nightmare.

I think, I’ll just drink one big beer tonight so I can sleep, and then I won’t have to be climbing up and down to use the toilet. Not too many times anyway.

My mom giggles. Andy pats her hand.

And maybe I’ll take a Percocet, too.

IT’S NOT LIKE I care that she has sex. I mean, mothers have sex, right? Not exactly a news flash.

It’s just this guy, I tell myself. Mr. Anal Constriction.

And every other guy I ever saw her with. And a few I just heard about along the way. Starting with Bio-Dad, aka Drunk Daddy #1. Thanks for the genetic material, dude. That’s about all I can thank him for.

I’m lying on my bunk thinking about all this instead of sleeping, because the fourth passenger in our compartment, the guy on the upper berth across from me, is a middle-aged businessman from Hubei who snores like some kind of asthmatic seal-that is, when he isn’t awake and yakking on his cell phone.

You’d think she’d learn. And you’d think I’d stop being surprised.

Across from me, Mr. Asthmatic Seal has settled into sleep again, snorting like a backfiring car engine, providing a counterpoint to the rattle of the wheels on the tracks.

I pull the heavy quilt up around my ears and close my eyes. I always wonder, why a quilt when they almost always overheat the compartments?

Then, from the bunk below, I hear little pulses of breaths, somewhere between pants and coughs, in rhythm.

Do I want to know?

I peer over the edge of the bunk.

In the dim compartment I can just make out the silhouettes of my mom and Andy, sitting straight-backed on the lower berth across from mine, side by side like dolls on a shelf. Panting in unison.

“Denting navel,” my mom stops to whisper.

WE PULL IN TO Guilin just before three in the afternoon some twenty-two and a half hours later, most of which I spend trying to sleep and listening to Chinese lessons on my iPod. Andy wants me to come down and sit with them on the lower berth and… I don’t know, dent navels or something, but I leave my upper bunk only when I have to use the toilet.

I’m not in a great mood. I slept like shit, my leg and hip ache, and I could use a decent meal-shrimp chips and noodles in a cardboard cup didn’t cut it. Andy and Mom, though, they’re all chirpy, like they’d spent the night in a Hilton and had a full course of room service.

Guilin is in Guangxi, a province in China’s far south, between Guangdong and Yunnan. First time I’ve been here.

It’s warmer than Beijing at least. Grey and damp, almost drizzling, but I’m okay in a jacket and a hat.

The Guilin train station looks like just about every Chinese train station I’ve been in: a big, swoopy roof topped by the giant gold characters for “Guilin,” too much slippery marble pavement, too many touts swarming on us like mosquitoes: “Lady, need taxi? Hotel? Go to Yangshuo? Tour Reed Flute Cave?”

“Buyao. Yijing youle.” Sorry, dude. We don’t want, we’ve already got.

Mom tugs on my shoulder. “Honey, why don’t we take a cab?”

“Because they cost too much and they’ll want to take us to their ‘special’ hotel. Besides, most cab drivers are crazy.”

“Andy says-”

“Forget it!” I snap. “We’re taking a bus.” A lot of the bus drivers are crazy, too, but my logic is at least buses are bigger, in case we crash.

I’m still in my bad mood as the bus to Yangshuo pulls out of the train station’s parking lot. It’s a big bus, with decent bucket seats and a dirty video screen up in front, which probably means bad Hong Kong movies played at an earsplitting volume for the next hour. Mom and Andy sit next to each other in the seats in front of me. In the seat next to me, I get my backpack. Fucking typical, I think.

Not that I’d be good company or anything.

A few minutes into the ride, it starts getting harder for me to stay pissed off. Because even though Guilin so far looks like your typical Chinese city-green glass high-rises with cylindrical towers topped by what look like giant versions of cocktail umbrellas, stained concrete apartment blocks, white-tiled storefronts, karaoke parlors, half-constructed complexes wrapped in green plastic netting and bamboo scaffolding-there are these weird hills in the middle of it, hills that rise like giant monoliths or misshapen half-formed pottery, and a couple of them remind me of animal silhouettes, almost, and I flash on those sculptures at the Ming Tombs, only furred by green.

Also, the video screen stays blessedly dark and silent.

The farther we get out of town, the more of these hills there are, and even the predictably crazy bus driver’s attempts to maneuver around three-wheeled “mosquito” tractors and big blue farm trucks isn’t enough to totally distract me from the landscape. It’s sort of like the moon, if the moon really were made out of green cheese.

Finally we pull around a broad curve flanked by a massive granite-faced hill, into a town. The first streets are lined with low, white buildings. Lots of cruiser-style bikes ridden by Chinese and Western tourists-you can tell they’re tourists by their ambling pace, their relaxed smiles. Farther along I catch glimpses of traditional architecture, probably reproductions, more hills, a small lake fed by canals. There’s a hotel in front of the lake, a low green building with a giant TV screen a couple stories high that’s playing videos of more of these crazy mountains lit up by lasers and fireworks. Why, I want to know? Aren’t the real mountains cool enough?

This is Yangshuo.

Our bus pulls in to a narrow, steep driveway, down to the parking lot of the Yangshuo bus station, a couple stories of dirty white concrete slabs and a crowd of idling minibuses. Across the top of the building, above a stall selling snacks, there’s a red banner in Chinese with an English translation underneath. The English says YANGSHUO TO SHENZHEN MANHOLE TICKETS, YOU CAN ENJOY FREE OF CHARGE IN THE MANHOLE GO TO HONGKONG.

I almost ask Andy what the Chinese actually says, since I still suck at reading characters, but I turn and he’s all busy helping my mom with her oversize wheeled suitcase.

Fuck it.

THE HOTEL WE’RE STAYING at is close to the lake, not far from the McDonald’s and a place advertising “corn juice.” It’s cheap enough and it’s clean enough, and that’s all I really care about. My mom and I are supposed to be sharing a room while Andy has his own, but I wonder how long that’s going to last.

“What do you feel like doing first, hon?” my mom asks as she unpacks her suitcase. “It’s probably too late to rent bikes today, but Andy says the ride over to Moon Mountain is supposed to be really pretty.”

“Just taking a walk,” I mumble. “Why don’t you unpack and do whatever, and I’ll meet you guys back here and we’ll go to dinner?”

“I wouldn’t mind a walk if you want some company.”

“Look, I just need a little…” I take a deep breath and start over. “Thanks, but I’m feeling a little stressed. It helps me to… you know, just think about stuff on my own.”

She frowns. “Well, okay, hon. Whatever you need to do.”

When in doubt, play the PTSD card, which is what “stressed” is code for. Works with my mom every time.

I am such a shit.

I walk along the lake and the canal and then down to the Li River, its broad expanse swaddled by fog. It’s getting dark, but I can still see the silhouettes of the lunar hills-one that looks like a wizard’s hat, another that resembles the big toe of some buried giant poking up through the earth.

It’s not totally a lie. I’m better, I know I am, but every time I start to feel okay, something happens, sometimes just some stupid little thing, like some asshole in a bar staring at my rack or a sour smell in a latrine, and it smacks me in the gut, and I’m right back where I was.

Below me an old man wearing a padded peasant jacket and a round straw hat rests a long pole across his shoulders with two fishing birds-cormorants, I think they’re called-perched at either end. He’s not fishing, he’s posing for photos. I see the flash of cameras as a European couple shoots off a few. Probably his last customers of the day. It’s almost dark.

I find a coffee place that advertises free Wi-Fi.

I NEED TO GET a hold of Lao Zhang, let him know what’s going on. I should have done it before, back in Beijing, but I didn’t feel comfortable even using my VPN once I knew the DSD was watching. Stupid, probably. Like Harrison said, they can find me wherever I go. But I feel safer somehow, getting out of town. Being someplace different.

And a random Internet connection with a virtual private network has got to be safer than trying it from my apartment.

I get out my battered laptop. Power it up. Connect to the VPN.

It takes me a few times to get a connection. The government’s really ramped up the Great Firewall since all this Jasmine shit started.

Finally I’m in. Over the Wall.

I log on to the Great Community.

It’s the same welcome screen as always: the beach, the ocean, rendered in a texture that looks like brush strokes. A three-legged dog splashing in the surf. A giant Mao statue, bleached and faded, half buried in the sand like some sort of Sphinx, seagulls nesting in his outstretched hand. Farther up the beach, the Twin Towers, leaning against each other for support.

He started it as an art project, he told me. And a safe place, for him to work, for me to visit. Like we used to have for real.

It’s changed a lot since the first time I saw it. There are others here now, other avatars. Maybe a hundred people. Artists, mostly. Writers. Musicians. Where before there was only a dumpling restaurant and a house, now there is a little village, with a nightclub, a gallery, more houses, crazy constructions that don’t fit neatly into any kind of category: windmills cobbled to nuclear plants, castles that morph into trees and mushrooms, crazy-ass shit that doesn’t make any sense to me. But then a lot of the art stuff never did.

Some of the avatars I recognize. I’ve seen them before. I think they might be people I know in real life, but I’m not sure. I don’t ask.

They make their art projects, throw parties, have concerts, lectures. Some of it’s in Chinese. Some in English. They talk about democracy, and socialism, and deep ecology. Feminism and patriarchy. Sexuality. Death. You can talk about anything you want. Go into private chat rooms and act out whatever you feel like. It’s a safe space here.

I don’t know who hosts it. No way the servers are in China. It’s gone far beyond what Lao Zhang started; there has to be some money involved to support the whole thing. Harrison, I think, is a likely patron. But if he’s involved, he won’t admit it to me. Just like I won’t admit that I know about it.

I wave to an avatar I know, Sea Horse. She’s working on a sculpture in the middle of the town square. By “working” I mean her avatar stands there, sentinel-like, as objects appear-a fat, rosy-cheeked baby and giant ears of corn at the moment-manipulated by the invisible hand pulling her strings.

I think I might know who Sea Horse really is, someone I used to know in the real world, or what passes for it. But I don’t ask. No one does here. This is a place where it’s safe not just to be who you are but also to be who you want to be.

A lot of the avatars are pretty elaborate. Sea Horse has a mermaid’s tail, a glittering silver helmet. Another avatar has angel’s wings, his hair wreathed in fire. I haven’t bothered with any of that. I’m wearing jeans and a T-shirt, like always.

It’s too hard to pretend to be somebody else.

I make my way to my house.

IT’S A STONE HOUSE, surrounded by a wooden deck, against a backdrop of pines. As I approach it, a big three-legged dog lopes toward me, barks, then halts and wags its tail. An orange cat sleeps on the stoop. I cross the threshold, and it starts to purr.

Home.

I go inside, and the place lights up. I sit on the couch, across from the huge picture window that looks out onto the beach, watch the animated waves swell and crash and send up spouts of foam. Occasionally huge goldfish surface, puffing their cheeks, mouths pursed in perfect O’s. Dolphins surf in the waves.

If Lao Zhang is online, he’ll know that I’m here.

I wait. Order another cup of coffee-I mean, a real cup. The coffee place is decorated like it’s French or English or something-uneven wooden tables, puffy chintz cushions, old coffee grinders, prints of gardens and flowers on the walls. The coffee’s good, too. They do designs in the foam of their cappuccinos. The other customers, some hip young Chinese, maybe from Hong Kong or Shanghai, a family from France, sit and drink their coffees and chat and laugh, leaning back in their chairs, enjoying themselves. A couple of the kids play a board game, Pictionary, I think. On vacation. Like I should be.

Outside, the fog has thickened into drizzle. I can see the drops suspended in the halo of light from the streetlamps.

Halfway through my second cup of coffee, Lao Zhang knocks on the door.

Monastery Pig, I guess I should say. That’s the name he goes by here.

I used to be Little Mountain Tiger, but I changed it. That was a different game, one I want to leave behind.

Now I’m Alley Rat. I was born in the Year of the Rat, and rats are a good sign in China, they tell me: clever and quick and good at surviving. Rats and cockroaches, right?

Lao Zhang’s gone for simple in his avatar, too. He’s wearing a beanie, a black T-shirt, and cargo shorts. All his work goes into the pieces he creates for this place. Like my house.

A text box appears over his head. YILI, NI HAO.

NI HAO, I type.

My house is a private chat room. I still don’t know what the fuck to say after HI, HOW’S IT GOING?

Lao Zhang sits next to me on the couch. SOME GOOD MUSIC LATER TONIGHT, he says. IN THE WAREHOUSE.

COOL, I type, distracted.

HAVE TO USE PASSWORD, BECAUSE THEY HAVE SOME LIVE STREAM. MAYBE VIDEO. ISN’T THAT RISKY?

MAYBE A LITTLE. BUT I WANT MORE PEOPLE TO COME HERE. TO SHARE THINGS. THAT’S WHY I BUILD IT.

Time was we had a real place to be. An actual village. With houses made of brick. People made of flesh. We could sit down and eat real dumplings together and drink beer.

But that place got chai’d. Bulldozed under. Now there’s a cluster of high-rises called Harmony Village Gardens, where nobody lives. The units bought up by speculators or not bought at all. Subsidized by the government, maybe, by bad loans at state-owned banks. A ghost village.

WE HAVE A PROBLEM, I type.

TELL ME.

I keep it short. About me drinking tea with the DSD. About Harrison’s fear that they’ll charge us on economic crimes.

And about John, whom Lao Zhang knew by another name, before. Who I sure hope isn’t here in the Great Community, under a different name entirely.

After I finish, Lao Zhang is silent. Or rather his avatar sits still on the couch, occasionally blinking, which is a default feature for the avatars here.

THANKS FOR TELLING ME, he finally says.

THE MAIN THING IS, IF YOU NEED MONEY, WE CAN’T SELL YOUR WORK RIGHT NOW.

I DON’T NEED MONEY. I AM WORRIED ABOUT YOU.

I get this nice warm flush. Because, you know, some guy acts like he cares about me.

NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT. I DON’T THINK.

OKAY. And then silence.

Out in the virtual ocean, Chairman Mao surfs an animated wave, wearing baggy swim trunks patterned with marijuana leaves.

I NEED TO CONSIDER, Lao Zhang types.

CONSIDER? WHAT I SHOULD DO.

THERE’S NOTHING FOR YOU TO DO, I type. I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, THAT’S ALL.

YOU SHOULD BE CAREFUL, he types.

No shit.

I COULD LOG OUT from my house, but I decide to leave through the town square. The sculpture that Sea Horse was working on has taken shape. The rosy-cheeked baby has gotten bigger, nearly as tall as the giant ears of corn. And there are bees now, huge bees that buzz the stalks and corn silk. The baby holds up a basket filled with husked corn, except some of the kernels are bulbous. Misshapen. A single bee lies belly-up on the pile of corn, its legs twitching. Other dead bees surround the base of the corn statue.

SEA HORSE, NI HAO, I type. WHAT’S WITH THE BEES?

Sea Horse stands next to the baby, blinking.

YOU’LL SEE, she says.