“Oh. Is that supposed to be an apology?”
Kelly shrugged. A moment of silence. They both looked everywhere but at each other.
Finally she spoke. “I can understand what you mean about your mother. I think.”
Zhao, probably relieved more by the silence ending than by Kelly finding him relatable on one very basic level (they both had parents!), said overeagerly, “Your mother is a nag too?”
Kelly shook her head. “No, my mom—she’s fine. Well, actually she’s terrible, but harmless. It’s more my father. He’s the head of Bashful Goose Snack Company. Papa Hui, you know. China’s richest man. The nation’s most beloved tycoon. Whatever.”
Zhao nodded gingerly, muttered some indiscernible interjection, perhaps aware for the first time of what an important and wealthy person she was—perhaps in awe.
Kelly went on, again losing control of her mouth. “And he’s not so much a nag as he is neglectful. He sent me away to the U.S. when I was only fourteen. At the time, I stupidly convinced myself that he’d made that decision so that I’d get the best possible education and then come back to China where he’d start training me to run the company. And of course I was more than happy to go to California, pay my dues in school, and also get away from—” The goose’s beady, demonic eyes—eyes that glowed red in the dark. A tingle down her vertebrae. “Never mind. But yeah, after I came back, I realized he probably just sent me overseas to get me out of his hair. I wasn’t cute anymore. I was all, like, chubby and zitty and fourteen. I wasn’t useful. Anyway, so obviously I grew out of that—the physical awkwardness, I mean. Not the uselessness. Here I am with this stupid job title, running ‘corporate social responsibility.’ Do you want to have a guess at how many ‘responsibilities’ there have been in the past two years?”
Zhao made an I-don’t-know face, which turned his ham lips out at an angle Kelly found truly revolting. She looked away.
“None,” she spat. “Not a one. Corporations here don’t give a shit about anything but money. Did you know that in America, almost all companies give money to charity? A lot of them even run their own charities.”
Zhao furrowed his brow. “Isn’t that just so they can evade taxes?”
Kelly, genuinely surprised that he possessed even this fleeting awareness of the outside world, sighed, resigned. “Yeah, well. At least it gives their CSR departments something to do.” She cradled her head in her hands, her gaze traveling the chipped laminate desktop. “Sometimes I wish the old man would just die already.” She jerked and abruptly looked up, straightened her spine. Her voice changed, deepened. “But you know I don’t actually mean that. Please, as if. He hasn’t formally left the company to anyone yet anyway—really pisses his lawyers off. I think he thinks he’s immortal or something. Hell, maybe he is. He’s healthy as a twenty-five-year-old, his doctors say. His cholesterol is lower than mine. And anyway, that’s terrible, isn’t it? Wishing my own father dead? To be honest, I’ll probably die first, at least metaphorically, of embarrassment. He’s been doing all these interviews lately with business magazines. And when I come up in the interviews, all he says is that he hopes I’ll find a husband soon. Like my education, my charity work, my management philosophies don’t mean a thing to him. All he wants is for me to find some man and to get married and to pop out a baby. I mean, what century is this? Should I ask my waxing girl at the salon if anyone there can bind feet?”
Zhao—half listening, staring out the window at a pecking bird, at fatties strolling past, at fatties also eyeing that pecking bird—nodded sympathetically.
She slapped the tops of her thighs. “Sorry to unload. All I’m really trying to say here is that I really care about these kids”—she gestured toward the window—“and I want this camp to be successful. I need it to be.”
Zhao nodded again.
Kelly’s voice strengthened. “So it’s imperative that we run a well-oiled ship.” Sharefest was officially over. But it had been necessary, that bonding. “Even if we may have our disagreements on how things should be done, we must work together. We share a common why.”
An effective leader doesn’t lead from a podium, but from the ground below his or her people.
“Okay,” Zhao said. “Sure.”
Kelly held her hand up for a high five. Zhao stared blankly at her, at her hand. A few century-like seconds later, his eyes lit up with recognition and he slapped his palm against hers. A gust of wind through the window rustled the Lays bag. Zhao’s gaze first met the bag and then Kelly’s face. Her gaze had also settled on the bag.
They both retracted their hands, placing them at rest on the desktop.
“We shouldn’t,” she said. “We should just phone in an order somewhere. Some rice and vegetables. Something nutritious. We’ve got to set a good example.”
“The local government has warned all the restaurants in town not to deliver here under any circumstances. Violators face hefty fines or jail time.”
“Well, I suppose that’s a sensible policy, isn’t it?” Kelly snorted. “Ha, couldn’t be bothered to actually fork the money over, but sure as hell could find the time to fine people and create new rules. Death and taxes, eh?”
Zhao nodded. “So back to the cafeteria then? I’m sure the cook’s got plenty of leftover blob.”
They both looked down again at the chips. And then at the still-open drawer containing cookies and crackers and a delightful assortment of high-calorie, high-deliciousness snacks.
MEANWHILE IN LOVELY FIVE-STAR MACAU…
THE OFFICIAL ADJUSTED HIS ROLEX, RAN HIS FINGERS THROUGH HIS thick head of hair, inhaled deeply, and considered the range of decisions that spread out before him. In this life, there were so many decisions, and each came stuffed with so many consequences.
He stood under low-wattage bulbs. He stood in his Armani suit. He stood and he thought.
He thought not of Zhao, whom he trusted fully to rehabilitate the minimum of two fat kids, and not of that pushy heiress, who had at last stopped calling to pester him for the address, probably turning her attention instead to the latest trend in pubic hair grooming or some other equally serious issue. He thought not of his wife at home, puttering around in overpriced dresses and nagging everyone within a hundred-meter range, nor of his mistress watching TV and drinking supermarket wine and running the air-conditioning 24/7 in the apartment he paid for. He thought not of those fat children, mere statistics, who would soon be cured of their ailment anyway. He thought not of the other officials and the warden who sat around a table nearby, awaiting his return.
No, he thought of food, just food: of the platters of sashimi before him, of these elegantly displayed, beautifully cut pieces of raw fish; of the drool that pooled around his gums. A woman bumped into him as she reached for a plate, bringing him to his senses. He was fixating too much on this spread before him. He was being shortsighted. There were places to go, places to be. Naan, hairy crab, curry, sushi, sea cucumbers, chocolate, dim sum—platters and plates and pots and spreads as far as the eye could see.
He snatched up the tongs and loaded his plate with fresh tuna, salmon, eel. He loaded and loaded and then hesitated, considering adding more to the precariously stacked mountain on his plate, but then he thought, Fuck it, this is a buffet; there are stacks and stacks of clean plates. I am a free man, I am a hungry man, and I can come back as many times as I want.
…AND THE DAMAGE DONE
AFTER ALL WAS SAID AND DONE, IT WAS UNCLEAR WHOSE HAND HAD reached into the bag first. And it was also unclear into which of the two mouths any individual snack item had disappeared, but based upon the pile of discarded wrappers in the wastepaper basket, in a matter of minutes, Zhao and Kelly had collectively consumed seven Dove chocolate bars (three white, two milk, and two dark), five bags of flavored Lays (two cucumber, two shrimp, one barbecue), two sleeves of Chips Ahoy! cookies, one packet of Bashful Goose Seaweed Bites, sixteen White Rabbit candies, seven Bashful Goose Red-Bean-Filled Snack Cakes, thirteen Watermelon Wigglers, one Bashful G
oose Sesame-Paste-Filled Snack Cake, twelve spring onion crackers, six egg yolk moon cakes, one loaf of French-style baguette bread, and three boxes of caramel popcorn. Their bodies screamed out with discomfort, their stomachs distended, and they both leaned back in their swivel chairs and dropped off into coma-like sleeps.
MEANWHILE, ACROSS CAMPUS…
WHILE KELLY AND ZHAO REMAINED COMATOSE AND LOST IN DREAMS, Camper Fourteen, a boy with cystic acne and grease-heavy hair, undressed and waddled into the boys’ communal shower. The day sweltered, and he was dripping with sweat following participation in the optional post-lunch digestion walk. He turned on the water. He squeezed a bar of soap between his sausage fingers and the soap became goo. He rubbed this goo across his chest and into his armpits, where hair had only just begun to sprout. He grunted; the water was too hot. As he shifted his weight and reached out to adjust the faucet, he lost his footing and slipped on the wet floor. His arms flailed, grabbing out for something, but there was nothing. His head cracked against the tile floor.
He lay there for many minutes, and in one of those many minutes, his ghost left his body.
Less than an hour later, Fourteen’s bunkmate, Camper Nine, his eyes still crusty with sleep from his post-digestion-walk optional recovery nap, stumbled into the shower and planted his bare sole directly into a squishy pile of Fourteen’s brains.
3.
AND THIS IS HOW IT STARTS…
A SHRILL SCREAM BLASTED THROUGH THE OFFICE WINDOW, AWAKING both Zhao and Kelly from their food comas with a start. Zhao’s eyes popped open. He cocked his head, attempting to trace the scream’s origins. “The showers,” he mumbled, his eyelids falling shut again.
“What?” Kelly slurred. She rubbed her temples. The room spun.
The insides of his eyelids changed color, and the immediacy of the situation struck Zhao with great force. He jumped up, brushed the crumbs from his crumpled shirt, and darted out the door. A second later, Kelly, coming to her own wits, followed.
Sprinting, sprinting, and at last they reached the dormitory and the boys’ shower room. Zhao knocked, but there was no answer, just the soothing sound of running water.
Kelly, stricken with a cramp, was bent over at the waist and clutching her side.
Zhao rapped again to no answer. “Hello? Is anybody there?” He grabbed his own stomach, also cramped, and shot Kelly a look. “Owww,” he said, and then again, “Is anybody there?”
There was no answer. Zhao cracked open the door.
There, in the center of the shower floor, stood Camper Nine, naked as the day he was born save for the number necklace he wore around his neck. His mouth hung agape, his body trembled, his fat rolls jiggled.
“What’s wrong?” Zhao asked, stepping into the shower room. “Was that you screaming? Say something!” He lifted his whistle to his lips.
Kelly watched from the hallway as Camper Nine pointed. On the wet floor below, at the corner shower, lay Camper Fourteen, water weakly streaming over him. His brains, like bits of ground beef, had leaked out onto the floor and were inching their way toward the drain.
Zhao dropped the whistle, which fell, bouncing against his chest.
Camper Nine shut his mouth and then opened it again, releasing the beginning of what would’ve surely been another long scream had Zhao not tackled him to the ground, pulled a small club from his pocket, and whacked him in the head. The boy’s eyes drooped shut; he went quiet.
The hot water heater hummed.
Kelly placed her hands on her hips, assuming a dominant stature. “Why the hell did you do that?” she said.
Zhao ignored her. He said, “Stay here with him.”
In shock and unable to muster up further words of protest, Kelly stepped inside the room as Zhao stepped out. “Lock it,” he ordered, and shut the door behind him. “Showers are closed!” she heard him cry to someone in the corridor. His footsteps faded. Her gaze shot from the two billowy bodies to the mildewy walls to the crusty showerheads to the dripping ceiling tiles. There was no place to settle. She didn’t belong here. She turned the lock.
There was silence, and there was sweat popping from all of her pores, and she felt everything slipping away from her—her vision, her plan, her redemption, her fame, her greatness. And then there was a moan. She looked down again at Camper Nine, whose eyelids twitched ever so slightly. He blinked a few times, shut his eyes, and then opened them again. Kelly watched gradual recognition of the situation creep over his face. Suddenly he jerked, grabbing for her, trying to pull himself upright. Panicked and remembering what the government official had said about rabies shots, Kelly backed up, pressing against the door.
The boy continued to struggle on his back. “You bitch,” he hissed. “You fucking bitch.”
Kelly’s stomach tumbled in cartwheels around her abdomen. She took a deep breath. She rolled her eyes. This was a child she was dealing with. Only a child. “Oh, please. Look, we’re not trying to do you any harm here. There’s been an accident. Administrator Zhao has gone for help. Stop trying to move. You could hurt your spine.”
Nine quit struggling and stared with clarity directly into her eyes. “Accident? He was the one who hit me.”
Wheels turned, cartoon light bulbs dinged. She stepped over to him, squatted down, and stroked his wet hair. “No, no. Why would you think that? You don’t remember, do you? Poor boy. You came in and saw your friend and you had such a fright that you passed out. We came to help you.”
Camper Nine squinted and rolled his eyes back in his head, considering this possibility. There was a knock on the door then and Kelly jumped up, accidentally nicking Nine’s forehead with the tip of her shoe. “Ouch,” he whimpered.
“It’s me,” called a voice from the corridor. Kelly opened the door and opened her mouth to ask Zhao to back up her story and tell Camper Nine all about how they were only there to help him, but she hadn’t spoken but a couple of these words when Zhao whacked the kid again with the club, knocking him unconscious for the second time.
No. Kelly rocked on her heels. No, no, no. She drew the edge of her hand into her mouth and bit down to stop herself from screaming. The dead brains kid, that was an accident, something they might be able to wash their hands clean of. But now it looked like a cover-up. Now they’d physically abused another kid—
Zhao, all unruffled and cool, interrupted her train of thought. “So I started a rumor with the counselors that the screaming was due to these two getting into a fight over a piece of contraband, specifically a Banana Peel Popsicle.”
Kelly, momentarily intrigued by Zhao’s indication of a plan, removed her hand from her mouth. She nodded and then, feeling that urge to scream bubble up inside her again, shoved it right back in. Bite.
IN LOVELY FIVE-STAR MACAU, THE GOOD TIMES NEVER END…
THE OFFICIAL ADJUSTED HIS ROLEX, RAN HIS FINGERS THROUGH HIS thick head of hair, inhaled deeply, and sipped from a glass of Johnnie Walker Blue. The room—dizzying patterned carpet, dangling chandeliers, leather sofas, karaoke TV screens—spun in amazing acrobatic feats. His phone buzzed in his pocket. He’d successfully ignored the buzzing all day. He pulled it out now. Numerous missed calls (including one from his wife and another from his mistress and yet another from a curvaceous young lady he’d met the week before at a banquet) and also a number of new text messages, including one from that damn heiress that read, “Despite your best efforts, I found it.”
His blood pressure shot to the sky. Compression in his chest. He’d assumed that the cessation in her pestering phone calls had just meant she’d given up, but this little rich girl was more insistent and more annoying than any other woman he’d known, and he’d known a lot of annoying women. He certainly hadn’t counted on her personal interest in this fat camp endeavor. She was bound only to get in the way. Wasn’t receiving an enviable salary for doing nothing good enough for her? Why couldn’t she just leave well enough alone? He stared blankly into his drink, wondering if he should say something to the others, who wer
e singing their hearts out while he mused pathetically in the corner, sinking into this overstuffed sofa, wondering if that damn heiress hadn’t just blown everything.
Sensing his despair, a girl in a skintight, sparkly black dress half walked and half danced over to him. “Why so sad?” she asked with a pout. “Your friends having too much fun without you?” She batted her long, thick eyelashes.
He looked past the girl and at the other officials and the warden, who were falling over one another, all limbs and pinstripes and hair plugs, and pawing at similarly slight and pouty young women, and wailing syrupy ballads into booming microphones. “There is so much love,” one of them slurred in impromptu spoken word. “So much.”
The official willed his blood pressure down to what he was sure was an acceptable figure. He hazily considered the definitions of the word “acceptance” and the word “fate” and decided then and there that whatever happened, at least he would have this one last trip to remember. At least he’d lived a life full of women and full of fun—unlike that of, say, Zhao and of all those other men in this country and this world too timid to ever treat themselves to a taste of success. And at least he’d established this connection with the warden, which might get him out of truly hard labor, if it really came down to that. But it probably wouldn’t come to that.
The official slammed his empty glass down on the table, stood up, grabbed the girl’s delicate hand, and marched over to join the others, losing himself to the singing, to the drinking, to the love.
WE’VE GOT A BIT OF AN ACCIDENT ON OUR HANDS
IN THE SHOWER ROOM, ZHAO WIPED HIS SWEATY PALMS ON HIS PANTS and, from somewhere Kelly couldn’t discern, produced a rope, motioning toward Camper Nine. “We’ve got to tie him up. We can’t have him escaping and talking before we figure things out,” he said. His voice was calm. “Help me.”
Kelly, at a loss, obliged. When fifteen minutes later they’d finally managed to tie the girth of the kid up completely, they slid side by side down the wall, exhausted, panting, their guts cramping, burning.
Year of the Goose Page 5
