The Wounded Muse

by Robert F Delaney

  If Jake were to continue fighting, building security would show up. Then the police. Jake might be stuck in a police station filling out reports for the next 12 hours.

  “Look for it all you want,” Jake says. “You won’t find what you’re looking for.”

  Dawei stops. The sincerity of Jake’s tone seems to have struck a nerve.

  “You’ve hid it somewhere else? Maybe in your office? Or maybe…”

  Dawei blanches, his skin now completely pale and all emotion gone from his face. He approaches Jake and stands face-to-face.

  “Or maybe you really have lost it.”

  “I don’t have your screenplay. I probably threw it out. I’m sorry but you disappeared — for a long time.”

  Dawei’s mouth twists into something between a frown and a grimace brought on through physical pain. He walks slowly towards the door. He stops next to Jake’s backpack and picks it up.

  “Or maybe it’s in this bag you always have with you.”

  Jake thinks only about the possibility that Dawei will run out with it, down the fire stairs, his smaller, wiry frame moving more quickly than Jake, down to the lobby and then out to anywhere in Beijing with the data needed to finish Diane and Ben’s report.

  Jake lunges, gathering a ton of force for every enemy and obstacle he’s had to face since Qiang disappeared. The censors, the police, the PSB, the what’s-his-name legislative assistant who abandoned the cause and now, worst of all, this insane drifter who’s about to abscond with a set of data so carefully constructed. Information as worthless to Dawei as it is crucial for Qiang.

  Jake’s fury sparks a surge energy that feels super-human. In the second it takes for him to run into Dawei, he gathers enough force to send this foe, who is now everyone and everything he’s clashed with for the past month, crashing backwards into the door. Dawei’s head hits the solid metal surface with a crack and Jake sees his focus change, instantly, from a direct line on Jake to a stare into nothing. Then Dawei’s eyes close as he slides down the door, the back of his head leaving a smear of blood, like a coarse calligraphy brush, all the way down.

  Jake recoils. “Oh my God,” he whispers to himself. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Dawei. Dawei!”

  Jake crouches down and leans in to Dawei’s face to check for his breathing. The breaths are erratic. Jake can’t figure out if they’re signs of life or just some spastic physiological response to trauma that will eventually kill him. As he realizes that he’s breathing erratically himself, Jake also notices his vision going dark and blurry. He can’t figure out which wall to lean on or even how to stand up.

  Jake puts his hand on the foyer wall to regain his balance but the space spins and he has trouble gathering focus. He’s drowning in too many thoughts.

  The presence of Dawei, who’s lingering somewhere between injury and death, makes Jake want to vomit. But with no food in his stomach, he can only turn away and wretch. It can’t end here, he tells himself perhaps audibly, to clear away the thoughts and fears that have incapacitated him.

  He feels his mobile phone vibrate with a text message. He looks at the display and sees the message is from Ben.

  You need to get here NOW.>

  Jake gathers his balance, grabs his backpack with the data files and runs.

  Out in the corridor and unsure about why he’s fleeing, Jake pushes open the door to the fire stairs opposite the elevators. The steel door explodes with a bang as it slams into the concrete block wall inside the stairwell and a dim light switches on, activated by a motion sensor. The sound of the impact reverberates up and down several floors.

  Jake runs down one flight, wondering why he’s in the stairwell. Of course, the elevators have security cameras. The instinct to avoid surveillance has brought him here. It directed his movements like an involuntary reflex, driving his legs even before the logic of this move was clear.

  What does it matter though? The violence of the past few minutes, and every movement that follows, will end up reconstructed in reports and testimonies and judgments.

  Jake knows he can’t abandon Dawei in his unconscious state. He can’t have murder on his conscience. But he can’t stay in the building for another second. He needs distance from his deed to figure out what to do next.

  As he sorts through each possible scenario, between scenes of incarceration and meetings with diplomats and lawyers, all the while seeing headlines about a bloody act carried out by unhinged American journalist, a plan, the only possible plan, begins to emerge.

  In the dead air of the enclosed stairwell, Jake touches his ribs where Dawei punched him and feels a sharp pain. He pulls up his shirt, but the light is too dim to discern any bruising. It might be too early for the trauma to surface anyway. To be sure, he tightens his hand into a fist and bashes it on the same spot. Then he hits the spot again, and again, and again. The surge of pain, now throbbing, causes Jake to double over. After a minute, the throbbing stops and his laboured breathing begins to steady. As he rises, Jake looks at the concrete block wall and runs a hand along one of the mortar lines. He whips his head into the wall, pounding the ridge on the side of his forehead, just above his right eye. The pain sears him, stopping his breath as he crouches down and holds his left palm over the injury.

  With his eyes shut, Jake imagines a world he can direct, one in which Qiang never existed and the insanity of the past few weeks dissolves. He recalls the moment, two years ago, when a friend asked if Jake wouldn’t mind giving his guest room to a good friend who’s moving back to China to shoot documentary films. In this newly reconstructed moment, Jake says no. He tells his friend that the room is taken. And then life proceeds as it had when his most pressing concerns were limited to the never-ending news churn and the race to send the first headline. Like a movie reel, Jake sees himself in scattered jump cuts, mingling with nameless, faceless people. Without the grounding of identifiable characters, every scene fades to black.

  Crouching against the wall and breathing heavily, Jake hears the lights in the fire stairwell click off. A warm rivulet runs down his temple and he doesn’t know if the liquid is blood or sweat. He opens his eyes and everything is as dark as the world he was trying to conjure up with his eyes closed.

  Once the pain subsides, Jake begins running down the rest of the stairs, holding one palm against the swelling that’s already beginning to disfigure his forehead. Jake takes two steps at a time, feeling as though he’s just a moment away from losing his balance and tumbling to the next landing.

  He bursts into the ground floor elevator lobby, startling a small group of people waiting.

  “Unit 1510! Unit 1510!” Jake yells as he sprints toward the security guard standing by the building entrance. “An intruder! He attacked me! I hit him hard! He may still be after me!”

  Jake doesn’t wait for the glass doors, activated by motion, to slide open completely. He clips one as he passes though and pulls the door off its track with a loud crack. He hears a crash, the shattering of glass into thousands of pieces, and keeps running.

  “Hey! Stop!” the security guard yells as Jake bounds down the steps leading to the entrance.

  This is the only way, Jake tells himself. He keeps repeating this to himself to drown out the sound of the security guard behind him.

  “Wait!” he shouts, and then yells something else that Jake doesn’t understand as he runs at full speed through the gates of the apartment grounds.

  Once the police arrive, Jake will already be underground, on the subway heading to the China World Hotel to give the data to Ben and Diane who are waiting to put the final pieces of their puzzle together and probably wondering where he is.

  This is the only way, he thinks, to save Dawei and Qiang. Even if he winds up a felon in China, he won’t have the weight of murder charges on him. He can live with aggravated assault on his conscience. Murder, he knows, will deal a psychological blow from which he’s never likely to recover.

  1:24 p.m.

  Cool air blows down
from a vent on the roof of the new subway car as Jake stares at the floor. It’s his first time in one of the new carriages, a change he’d been waiting for since the news that Line Two would be completely revitalized before the Olympics.

  These random thoughts and observations are the only things between Jake and the possibility that he’s killed someone. He needs this wall of meaninglessness to finish what he’s started. Otherwise, he will collapse under the weight of his guilt. And then two people might end up dead.

  With his backpack resting on his lap, Jake sits crouched forward with his left palm covering the side of his forehead. The drying blood glues the skin of his palm to the wound.

  When he pulls his hand away, he looks at the dark maroon stain on his hand and hears a woman sitting across from him make a comment about the blood. Something about a medical clinic or hospital. He moves to the end of the subway car where there are fewer passengers.

  Jake thinks about the attention he’ll attract by walking into a five-star hotel with a bloodied face. He reaches into his bag, rooting around the bottom for some sanitary wipes. He feels the rectangular foil packets and pulls three or four out.

  The cold, astringent moisture stings the wound and the pain is too great for Jake to apply much pressure. He brings the tissue down to eye level and sees it’s almost completely soiled with blood. He opens another packet. And another. And another. Finally, there’s only a hint of red on the fifth wipe.

  The doors open at the China World station and Jake steps out. He throws the soiled sanitary wipes and their foil wrappers into a garbage can attached to one of the station’s pillars and heads toward the exit that leads to the China World Tower II.

  1:32 p.m.

  A chill takes hold. Cold so sharp Dawei can see it in the form of a translucent ice blue, so distinct he can trace this horrible sensation to the throbbing well of pain in the back of his head. He remembers the heat of the impact and then a sudden drop in the room temperature. This chill reminds him of Yongfu Village in the dead of winter, of the time he was face down in the snow, at least a lifetime ago, when his school collapsed. He remembers trying to save Xiao Bei. He doesn’t remember anything about Xiao Bei after that time. She died, he thinks. He can’t be sure. He wanted to tell Xiao Bei that he tried to save her. Not because he wanted any credit for this. He just wanted her to know that someone cared about what happened to her. She was so terrified by the deafening sounds of rending metal and cracking plaster. He can still see the terror in her face. Dawei can’t conjure up memories of anything that happened afterwards. He doesn’t know if he’s been in this chilled state, in some kind of hibernation, since the school collapsed.

  Something behind Dawei moves and the well of pain at the back of his head turns into a sharp spike. He hears voices. Gruff voices, like his father’s. He doesn’t remember the last time he saw his father or his mother.

  This chill is now intolerable. He wants someone to wrap him in the heavy duvet he had on his bed in Yongfu, sometime yesterday, or maybe years ago, if ever.

  2:03 p.m.

  Diane whisks Jake into room 712 and guides the door as it shuts, preventing it from slamming. Ben, seated at the hotel room’s desk, is tapping away at his laptop.

  “Thank God, man. Do you have the data?” Ben asks, not looking up from his screen.

  “Are you okay?” Diane asks, reaching for one of Jake’s arms.

  Jake doesn’t answer. He expected her to be angry for taking so long to arrive. Instead, she’s looking at him with a concerned, empathic gaze. She must see the horror in Jake’s eyes, a wound even more apparent than the bruise on his forehead.

  “Jake, are you okay?”

  The more Jake searches for a response, the more difficult it becomes to answer. He wants to tell her everything that has transpired in the past hour but a rush of emotion welling up from his gut blocks his words and spill out in the form of a wrenching sob.

  “Oh God,” he says in a choked wail, followed by tears.

  Jake’s knees give out and he crumples onto the floor at the foot of the hotel room’s king-sized bed. Diane kneels down and wraps both arms around Jake. The warmth of her embrace triggers another sob. The outpouring of emotion pulls Ben’s attention away from his work. He walks over, crouches on one knee and puts a hand on Jake’s shoulder.

  “I’ve hurt someone very badly,” Jake manages to say as he wipes the tears from his eyes. A strand of saliva drips from one side of his mouth. Diane stands up, grabs two tissues from a box on the bedside table and comes back to wipe his mouth.

  “Jake, is it Dawei?” Ben asks.

  Dawei? Coming from Ben, the name is out of place, like a well-known character from one movie showing up in another. Two movies with different themes and artistic direction merging incongruously. Jake rewinds through every interaction he’s had with Ben. He’s sure Dawei never came up. Or did he?

  “How do know about Dawei?”

  “I’ve been monitoring the PSB’s database. I’ve found some files on this.”

  Jake looks at Ben, mouth agape, as he tries to absorb this newest revelation.

  “You found some files? What…?” he says, shaking his head.

  “It’s the same way I got the banking records from IBOC and NICB,” Ben says. “Look, you may as well know now, I spent years working as an agent, delivering technical specifications for artificial intelligence to the government here.”

  Ben’s comment silences Jake’s laboured breathing as he tries to understand where it came from.

  “This is a really fucked up time to start joking around, Ben,” Jake says.

  “Ok, I’m joking,” Ben replies as he stands and returns to his computer. “Anyway, let’s just focus.”

  But he’s not joking. There are too many details and not a shred of humour in the comment. Ben’s intelligence includes immaculate comedic timing. Jake can also tell this from Ben’s detachment. The way he moves away from the moment doesn’t reflect a missed beat.

  He’s really a spy. Or was a spy. How might this change their circumstances? What kind of additional leverage does Ben have? Are there more reinforcements than what Ben and Diane had indicated?

  “Oh my God, you’re not kidding are you?” Jake says.

  “I started doing it at the height of the Iraq war. I was so enraged about all of the lies and the bullshit. I learned my way around the networks while I was here.”

  Of course, Jake thinks. Ben is a project director of some kind at MIT’s CSAIL lab. Computer networks and artificial intelligence. Jake hadn’t thought much about what that meant when it first came up. He probably has access to everything there. And the Canadian passport. That would allow him to get in and out of China without the U.S. government knowing.

  All of this would seem to coalesce into some form of hope. Except that the thought of Dawei extinguishes any optimistic thoughts before they have a chance to buoy him.

  “Yes,” Jake says weakly. “It’s Dawei. I’ve hurt him badly. I…I may have…I may have…”

  “Look, buddy, I know this is stressful,” Ben says. “But I also know that they’re looking for all of us right now and we need to put the data together and send all of this stuff to my people in the U.S. Let’s get some perspective and get on with this.”

  “I’m swimming in perspectives, Ben. No. I’m, I’m fucking drowning in them,” Jake yells.

  The angry response comes out reflexively, as though some flash of wisdom rushes for freedom before the chaos of Jake’s thoughts can trap it. Once out, the words help Jake face the questions that incapacitate him. Where did the violence come from? And what scares him more? Is it the consequence he faces for what he’s just done to Dawei or is it an empathic reaction to the pain that Dawei is enduring? He can only hope that Dawei is enduring pain right now. Otherwise, he’s dead. Jake doesn’t know which weighs more or how to separate them and, because of this lack of clarity, he doesn’t know who he is himself. Perhaps Qiang had figured this out. Perhaps he knew that Jake, on a fund
amental level, lacks human decency.

  Jake wants the floor to open up and swallow him but trying to escape would only undo everything Diane and Ben have accomplished so far. This pathetic emotional breakdown is nothing if not selfish. Every move he makes, it seems, puts their effort into greater jeopardy. He needs to make up for this. He needs to prove to himself that his fear isn’t just about himself. It’s not about being alone. It’s not just about what will happen to him when this is over.

  “Jake,” Ben says. “We’ll deal with the Dawei thing together as soon as we send off the data. As far as I could tell from the PSB correspondence, he’s been stalking and harassing you. I have their records on this. Whatever happens, you have a case against this guy.”

  Jake shakes his head to regain his focus, reaches around to the side pocket of his backpack and pulls out the USB stick.

  “Here it is. I was able to show twenty-nine connections.”

  “Brilliant, buddy,” Ben says. “That should be enough to paint a pretty damning picture.”

  “Let’s put this together,” Diane says as she takes the USB stick and inserts it into Ben’s laptop.

  “How much time do we have?” Jake asks. “If they’re already looking for us, won’t they be here any second? You can’t book a hotel room without ID.”

  “The room is booked under my colleague’s name,” Diane says as she searches some files. “I brought him up here from Shanghai for some client meetings. He’ll be out until this evening. I have his extra key. We’re safe here for now.”

  “Still,” Ben interrupts, “the PSB will eventually get here once they figure out that we’re trying to evade them. They’ll search for any possibility. You and your colleagues stay here a lot, right?”

  “Yes, my firm has a standing reservation.”

  “So it’s just a matter of time before they arrive, no?”

  3:45 p.m.

  A knock on a door prompts Jake to sit bolt upright and sends his heartbeat surging. He was lying on the bed with his eyes closed, in and out of a fitful sleep, trying, again, to enter a world where he had never thrown Dawei’s mementos into the garbage. A hundred times over, Jake has reconstructed that moment, rendering everything in it with such precision that the outcome he envisions might just become reality.