The Night Watch

by Sean Stewart

  It was unbearable that Chinatown, a culture infinitely deeper and more sophisticated, should be forced to rely on them—but when the horrors had started to boil out of Vancouver’s Downtown, spilling up to Chinatown’s very borders, they had been left with no choice.

  Li Mei said, “I think you will make a very fine leader for the Southside, one day.”

  Emily Thompson, dowdy with her scarf and crucifix, smiled pleasantly and quoted Sun Tzu. “‘What if an opposing leader approaches with his multitudes whole and ready? I say: Locate beforehand his deepest attachment and then seize it. He will comply!’”

  Several tables away, Magpie was screeching in Nick’s ear.

  —Do you think Raining has forgotten you have rounded shoulders and a little pot belly?

  —Shut up.

  —Then why bother standing stiff as a telephone pole? You have nothing to hide, Nick. She has already seen you at your worst.

  —No, she hasn’t.

  Raining had not watched him set Lark down with her feet on the Bridge. Hadn’t watched their baby daughter take a few tottering steps out along the snowy roadway, heading north. It had been a dry day, with the wind blowing. He remembered the whispering lines of snow, bending and flowing around her little boots.

  He closed his eyes.

  When he opened them again, Raining was closer, threading through the crowd with Wire beside her. She was clasping Lark’s hand. Every now and then he glimpsed his daughter’s shiny black hair.

  When he thought about Raining, he never pictured her in the sober dresses of the last months of their marriage. During the long nights since she left, she had haunted his memory in the bright, japing clothes of their first few months’ acquaintance: patchwork panels of shimmering synthetic silk, or magical wetlands dresses in dark greens and browns, running and rippled with rainbow colors, like rain-washed streets glittering with oil. Tonight she wore a scarlet jacket over a dark red dress, with gold embroidery around the hem.

  —For luck, Magpie said.

  —I know.

  Then, through a gap in the crowd, Lark saw him, and shouted something, and pulled on Raining’s hand.

  —Lark remembers you!

  Nick couldn’t believe it.

  Raining’s head turned with a flick, bangs swinging, and the quick eyes there were still the same ones that had seen in him a man deeper than he had ever seen in himself. She stopped. At a word, Wire began to drift away. Raining came forward again, leading Lark by the hand.

  —I don’t know what to say. Any ideas?

  —Knowing Raining? Magpie laughed, a dry little chuckle.

  Nick grinned. His wife had rarely obliged him to start conversations. Only to end them.

  “Daddy!” said Lark, denying either of them the chance to get in the first word. She bounced on the balls of her feet, grinning hugely. “When I was come last day in a helicopter! And Mommy and Wire, only we didn’t crash.” She shook her head. “That not a good idea.”

  Nick walked around his table and knelt so his face was level with hers. She did not hug him.

  A whole year of her life gone, infinitely more precious than the year of his own life he had lost. Looking at her—so big now!—it all flooded back to him: the endless messes at the kitchen table, the temper tantrums, the times he had tickled her until she gasped, breathless from laughing. He remembered that the sound of her laughter was the most beautiful sound in the world.

  And further back, a thousand conversations with Raining about how they would handle bedtime, what foods would be good for her—Raining couldn’t believe in a diet without fish—how they were going to survive her habit of bouncing out of bed, brimming with good cheer, at five-twenty every morning.

  And earlier, her babyhood: wondering whether she would be right- or left-handed, arguing over handling a teenager (Raining scared as hell; Nick convinced that Lark’s sunny disposition would make it a nonissue). Sober, lengthy analyses of the color of her poop. “I’ve missed a lot,” Nick said.

  Raining nodded. “Yes. You have.”

  “You knew who I was,” Nick said to Lark. He found he was grinning.

  Lark bobbed her head. “Mommy painted a picture of you last day.”

  “She did?” Nick looked at his wife, surprised and touched.

  Raining just looked surprised.

  Wire scooped up a couple of juicy cabbage rolls from the smorgasbord. She had developed a weakness for them when she had come to the Southside to help with Raining’s wedding. Delicious as they were, they were also wet and sloppy, making them difficult to eat with her eyes riveted on Raining and Nick.

  Hm. Well, so much for them falling tearfully into each other’s arms. Raining was stiff as a stick. It wasn’t going to be easy for them to get back together.

  Wire’s thoughts surprised her. Only a few days before, she had been saying that Nick should never be forgiven. Considering how deeply Wire felt all her opinions, their habit of changing on her was a bit distressing. Still, the years had taught her that she could never be sure what she would be certain of next. She had noticed it first with men, who seemed to change from toads to princes and back again with alarming speed. Her mother was another person about whom she had at least six decided and unalterable opinions. Slithery: that’s what life was.

  But they loved one another, she was sure of that. And Nick was good for Raining. Of course, since when had Raining ever done what was good for her? Let alone what made her happy. Wire sighed, nibbling on a cabbage roll, and studied Raining’s tense, unhappy face.

  Winter, rising from his place at the head table, made a gracious speech to welcome the delegation from Vancouver, and presented Li Bing with a ceremonial gift, a beautiful white headscarf woven from rayon and shot through with silver threads. Li Mei watched as her mother flinched only for an instant, and then accepted the terrible gift with her usual, poised grace.

  “Winter does know that white is the color of death,” Emily remarked.

  Li Mei looked at her, astonished. “Then…why?”

  “‘Therefore, when opponents are comfortable, they should be troubled; when satisfied, they should be starved; when calm, they should be moved.’”

  “But we are allies.”

  “Negotiation is a strategy as great as war. Grandfather would never surrender an edge.”

  Li Mei said, “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I thought you deserved to know. I am asking much from you and your mother, Li Mei. I hate being in debt,” said dumpy, cunning, fearsome Emily Thompson. “Balance is the prerequisite for triumph.”

  “I will be Lark’s father,” Nick said.

  Between her parents, Lark stood on tiptoe, stretching out to grab a french fry from a nearby platter.

  Raining shook her head. “We go back in three days. It’s already arranged.”

  “I’ll come with you.” There. It was said. He would be with them both. Even though he knew that there would always be times when it wasn’t good, when he and Raining would fight, when they would hurt one another. Raining would withdraw and anger would wad up in Nick’s muscles and Lark would watch it all and learn from it, to her parents’ shame.

  But he had chosen Raining now, and Lark; chosen them as wholly as he could choose anything in this life. He would have to trust that they could all remember, however bitter things got, that their lives were bound together, now and always.

  “We won’t take you,” Raining said.

  “Then I’ll hop on the next troop plane bound for Chinatown.”

  Raining cocked her head to one side, examining him. Once, the fact that she was smarter than he was had worried him. He had been very young, back then. “Li Bing could get Winter to confine you to Southside.”

  “If I can’t fly, I’ll walk.” For the first time that evening, Nick’s heart rate began to drop, turning over like the engine of a reliable car with a clear road ahead and a certain destination.

  Raining looked at him in exasperation. “You would do it, wouldn’t yo
u?”

  He smiled. “By John Walker’s shiny black boots, I swear it.”

  Lark was looking dolefully at her naked french fry. Nick dragged a bowl of ketchup over. He watched her eat. “I owe her.”

  Slowly Raining nodded. “That kind of comment sounds wonderful in stories, you know. Deathless commitment. Love-you-forever. In real life it sounds scary.”

  “Life is scary,” Nick said. “Not everything is about you.”

  “Two years ago one of Wire’s cousins left her husband. He killed her for it.”

  “Raining, don’t waste your breath. Not even the tiniest part of you believes that of me.”

  There was a tear on Raining’s cheek. She ignored it. “You have a lot of reasons to hate me.”

  “I couldn’t hate you, you dumb bitch!” His damn heart rate was climbing again—she could always do it to him if he gave her long enough. “There would be no point to that, Rain. It would be like hating the weather.” For once, Raining looked surprised: a comical consternation on her face that made Nick laugh. His stomach unknotted and something in him said, Oh, yes; another fight with Raining. Now the strangeness was past, and for better or worse they were back on familiar ground.

  People were beginning to stare. Nick ignored them. “You’re not a person to me, Rain: you’re a, a frontal system. Metal fatigue! Technical difficulties! Your bitchiness is like a bad smell in my air. What am I going to do—stop breathing?”

  Raining held up her hands, blushing. “Enough!” she hissed, laughing. “Everyone is looking at you.”

  “I’m not concerned about my image,” Nick growled, but he lowered his voice.

  —Now that is true love, Magpie drawled.

  “More ketchup,” Lark said.

  Nick fetched another bowl. “Um, I think—Oh, hey now, honey: don’t just dip your fry in the ketchup and lick it off.” Lark scowled. Nick found he had his hands on the child’s arms. He took them off, glancing at her mother.

  Raining smiled. “I had forgotten what I missed about you.” Then, slowly, she shook her head. “But there’s no going back. There is no going back.”

  “I’ll keep walking after you.”

  “How good are your arches? You may be on your feet a while.”

  Nick looked at her until her bright black eyes flicked away. He said, “A wise woman I once knew told me that you have to keep walking for what you love.”

  Raining didn’t answer for a long moment. Then she glanced over at Wire, who stood at the smorgasbord staring shamelessly at them. “Yip,” Raining said. “Woof. And bow wow.”

  Wire just about peed herself laughing.

  Chapter

  Six

  Two hours later, Raining stood in the living room of one of the diplomatic chalets. Nick had come to help put Lark to bed. He had left about five minutes earlier, and Raining was calculating how long it would take for Wire to come pounding on her door.

  Two minutes for Nick to get back to the Visitors Pavilion. Then give it five seconds for Wire to spot him, a minute more for her to gulp down her current glass of blackberry cordial (no alcohol during Lent), and excuse herself from whatever man she was flirting with. Two minutes to trot quickly over the bridge and around to the chalet to find out why Nick wasn’t spending the night in Raining’s bed. Which would make it just about—

  The front door slid open. “Well?” Wire demanded.

  Raining shook her head. “I should have married you.”

  “What went wrong?”

  “Wrong? Nothing went wrong. Lark asked him to put her to bed. He came, he helped, he went away. End of story.”

  “That’s it?” Wire strode across the living room, licking the remains of some sticky dessert from her fingers. “I don’t believe it. I was watching his face while you two were talking. He’s still crazy about you.”

  “Crazy, yes. In love, I don’t think so.”

  Wire flopped down on the big couch that faced the fireplace. “Lark’s in bed, I guess. Fire, please. Roof: clear. Walls: clear above one meter. Lights down.” The gas fire leapt obligingly into being, the lights went down, and the top of the chalet turned transparent.

  Outside, snowy fields stretched to the black fringe of trees that edged the river. Overhead the sky was a fragile watercolor black, the darkness much thinned by stars. “At night the sky is so much paler than the ground,” Raining said. “I never noticed that until I tried to paint it.”

  Wire shivered. “Look at the trees: crab-backed old hags with curses hidden under their black coats. It’s the cold that puts them out of temper, I suppose.” She tugged Raining down onto the couch beside her and sat holding her arm, lacing her slightly sticky fingers with Raining’s. “Were you horribly disappointed?”

  “Lark kept asking and asking for him to come for bedtime. I knew it was a mistake as soon as I said yes. All the time we were walking over here she was pulling him by the hand. I was scared sick.”

  “Of what?”

  “My knees were shaking so badly I couldn’t stand still. I had to keep pacing once we were inside. This horrible clammy fear.” Raining looked into the little gas fire. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  “Did you think he was going to hit you?”

  “And then of course she wouldn’t go to sleep right away. Kept popping up. ‘I want another story’; ‘I want a hug’; ‘I want a glass of water, Mommy.’ ‘Can you fix my ponytail?’ So there was this agonizing time while we waited for her to go to sleep. I knew Nick wouldn’t talk about anything important while she was awake. He passed on gossip about people I couldn’t remember: Mrs. Mop-head had an affair with a gopher; Mr. Cabbage Roll took his pants off in church.”

  Wire giggled.

  “I jumped around the room like I was scratching for worms, trying to think how I was going to get rid of him. And then, finally, the chalet told us Lark had gone to sleep…and Nick left! The bastard.” Raining cackled. “No pregnant pause, no prepared speech. Not even a goodnight kiss. He just left. I’m to call tomorrow if Lark wants to go out to a park.”

  “Smart man!” Wire said, impressed. “Well done, Nick. You were crushed, right?”

  “Flattened,” Raining said. “I am not, it has been observed, an easy woman to satisfy.”

  Wire laughed. “You never want to be satisfied. You want to be provoked. You two could put it back together if you would just stop talking, you know.”

  “If he were to reach out and touch my cheek,” Raining said. Then she shrugged. “Or maybe I’d kill him.”

  An hour later Raining sat drawing in her room. The banquet was over. Wire had gone to bed in the next room. She and Raining had been quartered in the smallest chalet so the other envoys did not have to put up with Lark.

  The room lights were bright near Raining, dim on the far side of the room where Lark lay asleep. The frame on the wall was showing an A.Y. Jackson she particularly loathed, with two other Group of Seven landscapes as the alternates. From her years in Southside she knew the desk monitors could pick up remote feeds from her Companion to Art, so she uploaded John Martin’s “Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion.” Let the room’s soothing, tranquillity-inducing algorithms choke on it.

  After a brief and unsatisfying prowl, Raining lay back on the bed with her hands behind her head. Immediately the lights dimmed, and the bed, initially stiff and somewhat springy, began to soften, almost imperceptibly, into a pleasantly warm and supportive surface.

  “Quit that,” Raining growled. “I’m not ready to go to sleep yet.”

  So sorry.

  Though the house was vocally equipped, the room printed its reply neatly on the wall, just to the left of the picture frame. Not wishing to disturb Lark, naturally. Raining noted that the wall had changed hues, tinting itself ever so faintly brown-gold, to harmonize with Martin’s “Sadak.”

  “And bring the lights up,” Raining added. “I don’t want it soothing. I want it edgy.”

  I’m not very good at edgy.

  “Troubled?
”

  Sorry.

  “Melancholy?”

  Regretfully, no.

  “Belligerent?”

  Definitely not. May I suggest ‘Wistful’?

  Raining grunted. “Look, why don’t you just turn yourself off?”

  Why don’t you? the room answered, nettled.

  Raining reminded herself that there was no point fighting with objects; they never knew when to give up. Instead she uploaded Francis Bacon’s hideous screaming “Pope II” to the picture frame. Optimize that.

  “Bed?” she murmured, sitting down again. “As for texture, what I really find relaxes me is Stippled.”

  Stippled? Confirm?

  “Stippled.”

  Obediently the bed broke out in slow, bending goose bumps beneath her. It was rather like sitting on a thousand fingers. Odd.

  She picked up the Companion and began to draw.

  When Raining had turned seriously from pencil to paint at age twelve she found the same thing that made her drawings excellent made her first attempts at painting disastrous. She had trained her eye to be exquisitely sensitive to contour: she thought of objects in terms of their outlines. Unfortunately, paint did not take well to such handling.

  Disgusted with her initial work, she had asked the Companion to teach her what was meant by the often-used phrase “painterly.” It responded with great zeal, dragging her headlong into Hals’s “Governesses of the Old Men’s Home in Haarlem,” Van Gogh’s “The Yellow Cornfield,” works by Cezanne and John Singer Sargent…

  It was devastating.

  She didn’t look at another Old Master for the next three years. Instead, she went back to her strengths, and began painting birds. It was then that she fell in love with Audubon, with his meticulous attention to detail, the liveliness of his characterizations, and above all his not infrequent mistakes. Every artist needs a master she can admire, and occasionally exceed, and Audubon was Raining’s first. Eventually she graduated to the vastly superior watercolor technique of the great bird painter J. Fenwick Lansdowne, but Audubon still had her heart.