I picked my phone back up and attempted to finish writing my text so I could have it queued to send the next morning on our way out. I battled the mosquitoes poking their proboscises through the thin cloth as I typed out what happened, including Nigel’s failed nightingale purchase, and I thanked him for the second bouquet, meaning Ling-Ru.
My mind was churning with events from the past few days, making it difficult to get settled. Trying both bunks, I found them to be equally claustrophobic. After trying to read and failing to get comfortable, I attempted to focus my attention on quelling recurring waves of panic about being caught in the middle of two warring triads. And the threat from the SHU that I leave China immediately.
My racing mind fixed again on Li’s father’s toenails and I regretted not having brought a sleeping aid. In an effort to forget the toenails, I tried to re-create the scene that Jon was painting in his letter, a scene that I had dreamed about in the hospital in Beijing. We were on his houseboat somewhere in the Okavango Delta. It was a full moon. I was taking a bath…
—
I woke as my head hit the floor. There was a sharp pain in my side. I had dreamt of being shot at again and realized that the sensation of the impact was actually the weight of me falling on the floor.
I lay there looking up at the water-stained ceiling, reed mats tacked up to patch the worst leaks. I couldn’t remember where I was, but I knew it wasn’t my room at the Chungking Mansions, or my room in the hospital.
Then I heard snoring in the next room. Through the paper-thin walls, I could tell it was Ling-Ru. Of course, that’s where I was. On Lantau. In this claustrophobic apartment.
I climbed back into bed and lay there for a while listening to the remarkably loud chorus of frogs, katydids, crickets, and other unidentified callers of the Asian night. I intermittently swatted at mosquitoes before nodding off again.
GI Bug
I woke up in the morning feeling uncomfortable and queasy. The polyester covering the foam mattress was damp and itchy, as if embedded with fiberglass. And the pain in my rib was pointed.
I touched my rib and pulled my fingers away in pain. When the doctors warned me not to engage in physical activity, I’m sure they didn’t have the previous day’s escapades in mind.
Ling-Ru stuck her head in to announce that our breakfast saimin had arrived and I declined, knowing I couldn’t risk it. I got up, scratching at my many mosquito bites. Wrapped in a sarong that felt like soggy saran wrap, I headed to the bathroom to splash cold water on my face and take a cold shower.
Ling-Ru brought over some black tea and condensed milk from the shop, the extra sweet ritual a lingering influence of the colonials. I opened the Lipton Yellow Label tea bag and poured hot water into a mug from a thermos.
Ling-Ru threw some clothing at me and sat down at the small table in the living room. I sat on the couch to put some distance between myself and her noodle dish that slopped over the edges as the table wobbled.
I steeped my tea and watched Ling-Ru gulp down her oily, soupy noodles while the slice of Spam slid down the pile. I was happy with my decision not to partake.
Ling-Ru stopped mid-slurp. “That’s all you’re going to have for breakfast?”
I nodded as I removed the tea bag from the now reddish-brown brew and put in a spoonful of condensed milk. I took a sip. Once the jolt of the sweetness wore off, it calmed my stomach.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” She picked up the oily piece of meat and took a big bite. “It’s like you’re a million miles away.” She chewed. “And when you left the table so abruptly last night, I got worried.”
“It’s just a GI bug.” I fingered the nylon clothing that she had brought over, knowing that there was no way I could put that material against my skin right now. “And a sore rib.”
The truth was, my mind was at least tens of thousands of miles away, back in Namibia, back in Jon’s arms.
As much as I needed a walk and some fresh air, I was a little nervous about how my intestines would fare. “How far is it to Jin Jin’s place?”
“Not long. The trail goes up a ridge with a panoramic view of the island. Not too steep. Then his place is right on the beach, on the other side of the ridge.”
“You said you caught this guy with some python skins?”
“I’ve been trying to nail him at the Shenzhen border for the past year. He keeps evading us. But a few months ago, we got him.”
“What happened?”
“He got off.”
“How?”
“Triad politics, I assume.”
“You don’t think there’s any truth to Li’s suggestion that he was set up?”
“I don’t, but I’m kind of curious to go to his house.” Ling-Ru got up. “You feeling up to this?”
“Sure. I like snakes.”
“Speak for yourself.”
My stomach gurgled loudly and we both laughed. “You sleep okay last night?”
“As well as could be expected, I guess.” I swallowed some tea. “I’ll feel better when I’ve had some fresh air.”
“Good.” She dug further into her bag and pulled out a nine-millimeter Glock.
“Wow.” I held my hands up. “What’s that for?”
Ling-Ru pulled out the clip and loaded it. “You don’t expect me to go on a snake raid unarmed, do you?”
She handed the grip to me with the barrel pointing away. “Ever handle one of these?”
“First-generation Glock 17. It’s a collector’s item.”
Ling-Ru took it back. “What are you talking about?”
“My dad has one on his shelf as an ornament. Why aren’t you using a more modern one?”
“This is government issued. Works well enough for me.”
“I’m just messing with you. Admittedly, after dealing with both dangerous wildlife and humans in the Caprivi, my dad introduced me to the Gen4 Glock 41. Little bit longer barrel to deal with the recoil on a .45 mm bullet. Anything less than a .45 isn’t going to do anything against a buffalo. I was impressed.”
“Fortunately, the buffalo around here aren’t likely to charge.”
“Fortunately.” I started changing my clothes. “But, I’m feeling so vulnerable lately,” I said, tightening my first-aid bandage around my middle and putting on my silk blouse.
She looked at me delicately. “You’re recovering from a gunshot wound and then were kidnapped and beat up. I think it’s okay to feel vulnerable right now.”
“I appreciate that.” I put on the shorts, thinking they’d be cooler than my pants, despite the scratchy, non-breathable fabric.
She grimaced at my clothing. “Not the height of fashion, I agree.”
“Just can’t do plastic right now. I’m really struggling with the humidity.”
After gulping down the last of the broth in her bowl, Ling-Ru got up and sat next to me. “Listen, I’ve got something I have to tell you.”
I looked at her grave expression. “What is it?”
She was having trouble starting a sentence. She kept almost speaking and then stopped.
I searched her expression again. “Did something happen this morning?”
“Catherine. Remember when Craig asked me to keep an eye on you in the hospital?”
“Yes?”
“I happened to look through your medical records during the time you were in a coma.”
“And?”
“It’s been so long since we’ve been close, I feel really awkward asking this.”
“Asking what?”
“Did you know you were pregnant?”
“Pregnant?” I was shocked. “I’m not pregnant.”
“I figured you might not know, which is why I brought it up.”
“Might not know what? What are you talking about?”
“So, they didn’t tell you?”
“Ling-Ru! Who tell me what?”
“Catherine, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you had a miscarriage the day after you arrived in the h
ospital.”
“What?”
Ling-Ru nodded. “I’m really sorry.”
“But that’s not possible.”
“Did you see an old boyfriend while you were in San Francisco?”
“No.” My mind went back to that one night on the houseboat on the Zambezi. Could it have been? I quickly counted the weeks. But there were other nights after that night. “There was someone in Namibia.”
“Had you missed a period?”
“I had, but at the time I thought it was stress.”
I shook my head as I counted the weeks again on my fingers. “That means I would have been almost two months pregnant. There’s no way I couldn’t have known.”
“In all of your travels, you probably haven’t been in tune with your body.”
“And I haven’t been that regular this past year, with everything I’ve been through.”
“The difficulties you’re having right now are probably because your body still thinks you’re pregnant. I think it takes a few weeks after a miscarriage to feel normal again.”
“A miscarriage?” I did the math again since Jon and I had been together, and the one time on the boat that we hadn’t used a condom. “I knew I had at least a week before I’d be ovulating.” I was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of loss over something I hadn’t even known I had lost. A baby?
In less than seven months, I could have been a mom. The thought seemed impossible and yet I was suddenly wondering what it would have felt like to have that kind of anticipation—not just a fantasy, but real anticipation, like counting-the-months real.
Ling-Ru leaned sideways and put her arm around me. “I’m so sorry, Catherine.”
“Did Craig know?”
Ling-Ru shook her head. “They weren’t going to tell me, either. I quickly looked at your charts when the nurse left the room.”
“I’m glad you didn’t tell him.”
“I’m not. If I had any idea he’d send you down the Ka Long the day you got out of the hospital…”
“He didn’t want to. I made him send me.”
Ling-Ru gave me a funny look. “Well, I’m just glad I looked at your chart.”
“So am I. Although, maybe I would have been better off not knowing.”
“I was of two minds about telling you.”
“I’m glad you did. You couldn’t have not told me.”
“I could have waited.”
“Until when? At least now I know why I’m feeling the way I am. The humidity is killing me.”
“I guess there’s no good time to deliver such news.”
“You know, it’s funny. When I was with Sean, I had that warm, fuzzy, nesting kind of feeling. I used to wonder about what our kids would look like and whether they’d have red hair like their father.”
“That’s right, your mom had red hair, too, didn’t she?”
“She did. But after Sean died, I no longer saw myself on a clear trajectory of a family and white picket fence and all that. And it’s not like he was the first. I’m sure you remember Jake.”
“Jake,” Ling-Ru scoffed. “Your one bad decision.”
“Yeah, well, with Jon, it was such a different feeling. It was like two adults coming together in a dream state. It didn’t feel real. Jon liked to quote Shakespeare to describe it, We are such stuff that dreams are made on, and I feel like he was right, in a tragic sort of way.”
“Why are you talking about him in the past tense?”
“I don’t know. Because that’s how it feels, I guess. It’s all just hitting me now. A baby? A family? Somehow I didn’t think that kind of life was going to happen for me so I kind of ditched it.”
“Catherine, you aren’t even thirty. Where are you getting all this? It sounds like you both love each other. Why not try to make it work?” She searched my expression. “Gosh, I thought this news would make you more bonded to him, not less so.”
“I guess I’m scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“Scared of losing what I care most deeply about. I don’t think I could face that again.”
“So, you’re never going to love anyone again because you were in love once and it ended badly? You’re not making any sense.”
“I know, I know. It just hurts so much to love and now that I’m there again, part of me just wants to run from it so I don’t feel the pain anymore.”
“I understand that sentiment, even though it may be the stupidest sentiment in human nature.”
“Humans can be pretty dumb.”
“You said it. I’ve just never known you to run from a complicated emotion.”
“No time like the present.”
Ling-Ru stood up and held out her hand to pull me up. “Come, let’s go for a walk.”
I let Ling-Ru pull me up. “Thanks, Ling-Ru. I’m sure it wasn’t easy having to tell me that. It’s been awhile since I’ve been able to talk to someone I can trust.”
I noticed a flicker in Ling-Ru’s expression and wondered if I had struck a nerve from our past. Ling-Ru had always had trust issues in college, but I had never done anything in our relationship to give her reason not to trust me. She blamed her inherent distrust in people on her past experiences in China and tried her best to wall off communication, even to her parents. Anytime she’d speak to them, she’d be in a dark mood for days afterward. And when an old boyfriend ended up liking me more than her, she placed an irrevocable distance between us, no matter what I did to ignore him and bridge the gap between us.
“BFFs, remember?” Ling-Ru said unconvincingly.
“Best Friends Forever.” I chortled, trying to dissolve the old chasm that had just re-formed between us. “Did we really use that term?”
“We did.” Ling-Ru held the door open for me and we exited the apartment.
“God, we were such idiots.”
Nine Dragons
We crossed the road and headed toward the ridge trail. Ling-Ru pointed to a narrow break in a patch of the tall grass leading into a dense forest and we started down a dirt trail, not wider than a single foot.
I could feel the caffeine from my tea helping to clear my head. “Do you think I should be taking Nigel’s threat seriously?”
“About leaving Hong Kong?” Ling-Ru ran her fingers through the waist-high grass on either side of her as we walked. “Let’s wait it out. See what Craig has to say on Monday.”
We followed the footpath around a few ramshackle dwellings overgrown with vines before the trail opened out into a ridge with an expansive panoramic view of the South China Sea. Old junks with red sails rocked on the blue-gray water. In the dead calm, the ocean reflected the clouds like a mirror, the silver edges of the horizon bending as if we were inside a giant bubble.
Halfway up the ridge, we stopped so I could catch my breath. Ling-Ru pointed at the jagged ridgeline behind the Hong Kong skyline. “That’s the backbone of Kowloon’s nine mythical dragons.”
I looked out at the spectacular mountain range that cut a jagged skyline in all directions. “Where are the dragons?”
“Each of the eight mountain peaks that make up Hong Kong, Kowloon, and the New Territories contains a dragon.” She pointed at the peaks again. “Kowloon means ‘nine dragons’ in Cantonese—gau meaning ‘nine’ and lung meaning ‘dragon.’ ”
“What happened to the ninth one?”
“The ninth dragon is represented by Emperor Ping of the Sung dynasty.”
“I could use a dragon right now.” I clutched my side and admired the fact that Ling-Ru hadn’t even broken a sweat. “How long have you been a ninja?”
“I’m not a ninja.”
“You were a big softy at Berkeley—well, petite softy, I mean.”
Ling-Ru smiled. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Seriously, what’s your secret?”
“What? I’ve always been more disciplined than you.”
“ ‘Disciplined.’ Not the word I might have chosen. At least not in your choices of men—or
alcohol consumption.”
Ling-Ru laughed. “I’ll give you that. But let me tell you, having tolerance for alcohol is useful in my line of business.”
“That’s the best excuse I’ve heard yet.”
“But I’m not interested in relationships for the sake of relationships anymore.”
“See, even that’s not the Ling-Ru I knew. You were always looking for a relationship.” As I said those words, I realized that there had been a disconnect between the Ling-Ru who had trust issues and the one who seemed to fling herself at men, as if she were desperate for a connection—not seeming to realize that connections didn’t normally spring out of a one-night stand.
“Maybe I’ve learned the hard way that relationships hurt more than they feel good.”
“Okay, now you’re sounding like me. Out with it.”
“Oh, no, you go first. Tell me about Sean.”
“You already know about him. His death will be on my conscience forever, but I’m trying not to dwell on it. Can we please not go there?”
“You’re too hard on yourself.”
“I froze.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know, I know, the buffalo is the most dangerous animal in Africa. Your turn?”
“Okay, there was this one guy. But he was really into the party and it kind of freaked me out.”
“The party as in the party—the Communist Party?”
“Yes. When he got transferred from Guangzhou to Beijing, he tried to fight it, but he was seen as going against the party so he didn’t persist. He basically chose the party over me.”
“Sounds like you’re better off.”
“It wasn’t easy.” Ling-Ru was lost in thought for a second and then bounced back. “What about this guy Jon?”
“I was hoping you weren’t going to ask about that, either.”
“Of course I’m going to ask about it. Do you love each other?”
“I think so.” I hesitated. “But it’s complicated.”
“I’m guessing it’s even more complicated now, knowing about the miscarriage.”
“I’m not sure I’m going to tell him.”
Ling-Ru stopped walking. “Really?”
“What good would come of it? It would just make things more confusing.”
White Gold Page 7
