Rock Paper Tiger

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I WALK OUT of the wangba, and I’m pretty shook up about being dead.

Of course, being dead isn’t permanent in the Game. I can resurrect Little Mountain Tiger if I’m willing to put in the playing time. But the whole other aspect of it, the idea that Cinderfox claimed to be Lao Zhang’s friend, that I joined their Guild, and then out of nowhere just about every bad demon in the game arrived to take me out…

Well, that’s disturbing.

I can’t even begin to sort out what it all means.

I see the green-and-white Starbucks sign, and all I want to do is sink into that familiar environment, with the wood-grain tables and the cool jazz music and the nice coffee smell and the hiss of steaming milk.

I go in, order a Grande Mochachino from the cheerful barista, and sit by the window that faces the train station.

The Beijing train station is big and brown and flanked at intervals by towers topped with pagoda roofs-another attempt to put Chinese lipstick on an architectural pig. It’s still better than the Beijing West train station, which is like the same thing but on steroids and gray, with a massive upside-down U at its center that squats there like some kind of Stalinist wet dream, as British John would put it. But hey, who died and made me Beijing’s architecture critic? Especially considering that right now I’m dead myself.

Sometimes I lose track of where I am. I’ll end up someplace and wonder how I got there. Or I’ll be somewhere and completely space out. Disassociate. Part of the fun of PTSD. It’s what happens when I’m exhausted from being hyper-vigilant.

Which is why I don’t notice the two guys coming up from behind until they sit down on either side of me.

“Mrs. Cooper,” one of them says briskly.

It’s the Suits-the GSC guys.

The thinner, younger one-Carter or Macias? I try to remember-does his best impersonation of a concerned expression. “Sorry to intrude, Mrs. Cooper. Or do you prefer McEnroe?”

“What do you want?” I say, as soon as my heart stops hammering enough for me to speak.

“You’ve been spending some time out in Mati. And with some interesting people. We were hoping you might have news for us.”

“I already told you-” I begin.

“And we don’t believe you,” says Suit #2, the bulky, meaner one.

“Why not?” I don’t have to fake sounding angry. “It’s just a coincidence that I even met the guy. You think I’m some kind of terrorist?”

“We think you have information that you’re not sharing due to some misguided loyalty to your boyfriend,” Suit #1 says. “And while we understand that, we just don’t have time for it right now.”

“What, the Uighur’s gonna set off a nuke in Manhattan?” I snark.

Suit #2 clamps his beefy hand on my forearm.

“I’ll scream,” I say.

Suit #2 shrugs. “Go ahead. You think anyone will care? Let the foreigners deal with their own problems. That’s what they think around here.”

“We really need your help, Mrs. Cooper,” Suit #1 says. “We thought, with all the time you’ve been spending in Mati, that you might be trying to help us. It’s disappointing that you’re not.”

I’m still more pissed off than afraid. “So what are you gonna do? Dress me in an orange jumpsuit? Fly me in a Gulfstream to Bumfuckistan?”

“You think we can’t take you out of here if we want to?” Suit #2 says in a low voice, fingers tightening on my arm. “You think we can’t make you disappear? Who’d blink twice if we did? You’re nothing, you get that? We can find you any time we want, and we can take you any time we want.”

“People’d notice,” I say in a small voice.

Suit #1 nods in agreement. “You’re pretty close to your mother, aren’t you? The two of you seem to communicate pretty regularly. I gather she’s been having a rough time lately, with her employment situation. And her relationship isn’t going so well either. But that’s a pattern with her, right? Bad choices with men.”

I stare at the hand on my forearm. It’s rough and reddish and has the kind of spots you get from sun and age. The weird thing is, the nails are neatly trimmed. Polished, even.

“First thing,” I say, “take your hand off me, or I really will scream. You want a scene in Starbucks? Go ahead. I’ll make one.”

Suit #1 nods slightly. Suit #2’s hand withdraws.

“I don’t know if I can help you,” I finally say. “I really don’t. Maybe I can try. But first you gotta tell me some things.”

“If we can.”

“Why do you want Hashim? The Uighur guy. What did he do?”

“It’s what we told you before,” Suit #1 says. “He’s connected to Islamic extremist organizations that are working against U.S. interests.”

“What’s that mean, exactly? He wants to blow up the Mall of America or something?”

Suit #1 hesitates, but only for a moment. “I’m afraid I can’t discuss specifics.”

Well, no surprise there.

“What about Lao Zhang?” I ask.

“What about him?”

“I mean, what do you want with him?” I feel like my gut’s stuck in my throat. “You want to take him to some recycled gulag, or what?”

Suit #2 barks out a laugh. “I wish. We lost the EU facilities thanks to that bitch from the Washington Post. Now, there’s somebody I’d like to render unto Caesar.”

“Ha-ha,” I say uncertainly.

“Mrs. Cooper,” Suit #1 says, “we all know there were some abuses in the past. But that’s not how we do things now. We’re very careful about how we proceed.” He smiles at me. “We’re just after the bad guys.”

“Lao Zhang’s not a bad guy.”

“I don’t get why you’re protecting him,” Suit #2 says suddenly. “You’re just a piece of ass to him, don’t you get that? His token white girl. He dumps you in a pile of shit and leaves. When are you gonna wise up?”

My hand makes a fist, like I’m not controlling it. “What do you know? What the fuck do you know about it?”

The businessman at the next table stares at us.

“Everybody calm down,” Suit # 1 says. “We’re not after Lao Zhang. We want to find the Uighur. That’s all.”

Funny, but I don’t exactly believe him.

“Okay,” I finally say. “Maybe I can help you find the Uighur. But that’s it. I’m not helping you find Lao Zhang. And you’d better not fuck with my family.”

Suit #1 gives me this wide-eyed look. “Who said anything about that?”

You did, asshole, I think; but I don’t say anything.

“All right, Mrs. Cooper. When can we expect to hear from you?”

“If you can find me any time, why are you even asking?”

He lifts his hands. “We don’t want to crowd you. We’ll give you some time to do what you need to do. Within reason.”

“A couple of days,” I say, my thoughts scrambling around in my head like panicked mice. “Till the weekend.”

“Agreed.”

The two of them rise. “We’ll be in touch,” says Suit #1.

After they leave, I sit at my table for a while, sipping my Grande Mochachino and staring out the window at the train station across the way, thinking: I just gave myself four days to do something, and what the fuck am I going to do now? Because Little Mountain Tiger is dead, which means I can’t go to the Yellow Mountain Monastery. I log on to the game, and I’ll be in Hell, and I’ll have to face Ox-Head and Horse-Face, the guardians of the Underworld, and it will take hours of playing time just to resurrect myself to a basic level, which I don’t think will get me into the Yellow Mountain Monastery, and who’s to say every monster in the game won’t show up to kill me again?

I could try resurrecting myself and going to the Teahouse where I met Cinderfox, but I don’t know if he hangs out there at all or whether it was just a convenient place to meet a low-level player like I was before.

Maybe he’ll send me an e-mail, I think. He’s got my address. I don’t have his. The invitation came from the Game, not a private e-mail address.

And if he did write me, then what?

He’s my only connection to Lao Zhang right now, and I don’t even know what that connection means.

Even if I could contact Lao Zhang, there’s no way I want to put the Suits onto him. Even if he did leave me in a whole heap of shit.

He didn’t mean to. I don’t think.

That’s the thing, the real pisser of it all. A part of me thinks Suit #2 is right.

Not that Lao Zhang meant to get me in trouble, but that it doesn’t really matter to him that I am.

How can I know? What are we to each other? Right now, I don’t have a clue.

Then I remember the painting, the portrait he did of me. I don’t get what it means, with the three-legged dog and the scared cat and all, but I remember how he made me look: strong. Calm.

That’s how he sees me. Even if I’m not.

How do I see him?

I picture him painting. I think about sitting on his couch, watching him, and how that made me feel.

Like I was welcome someplace. Like I was home.

So, okay. That leaves the Uighur. Maybe he really is some kind of major terrorist. Which would mean my helping the Suits find him is the right, moral, patriotic thing to do.

Ha-ha.

Or I could just tell the Suits about the Game. Hey, look, guys! Terrorist sympathizers hatching their plots through PlayStations! That would be enough, wouldn’t it? Enough to take care of me and my family, and fuck everyone else.

After I finish my latte, I walk over to the train station. I can’t help it. The thought that there’s this place with trains getting the fuck out of town every few minutes attracts me like some kind of drug. I walk into the main lobby, into the hordes of people going here and there, riding the escalators up and down, the migrants from the countryside clutching their cardboard suitcases and faded striped shopping bags, the giggling students sharing iPod earbuds and ringtones, the middle-class Beijingers in their Polo shirts and fake Prada, the PA announcing arrivals and departures, all punctuated by the red diode signboards blinking destinations, and I think: how far away could I get? Is there someplace I could go where they can’t find me?

How did they find me? Can they find me when my phone is off? Can they track my e-mail to whatever Internet bar I happen to log in at? Or was it from using the ATM, from getting money out of my U.S. account?

Or maybe it’s something more low-tech. Like Harrison Wang works for them, and he told them I was at his place, and they followed me from there.

I stare at the red diode signboards above the escalators to the second floor. I just missed a train to Harbin. Too bad. Harbin is pretty far away. In three hours, I could catch a train to Xiamen. People tell me Xiamen is nice. Warm. It has a beach. That’s tempting. Here’s another going to Inner Mongolia. Could I get to Outer Mongolia from there? That might be far enough.

Here’s a train to Taiyuan, in Shanxi, leaving in thirty-eight minutes.

Taiyuan, I think. Chuckie’s family lives around there.

Chuckie, with his seventh-level Qi sword. His hacking skills. Chuckie, who’s played The Sword of Ill Repute way longer than I have.

Maybe he’s not part of the Great Community, but who better than Chuckie to help me get Little Mountain Tiger back in the Game?

I watch the red letters on the signboard shuffle and reassemble. Train to Nanjing in an hour. One to Lanzhou in two.

I think: maybe Chuckie won’t help me. I think: even if he does, maybe I won’t get anything more from the Game than I already have, which adds up to pretty much nothing.

But what else am I going to do? Stumble around Beijing for a couple days? Wait for the Suits to pick me up in some random Starbucks?

Right now, the Game is all I’ve got.

And leaving town in thirty-eight minutes sounds good.