“Where did you park that lollipop sports car of yours?”
Wu Dao straightened up and reached out for her hand, and was surprised when Emily stepped back, out of reach.
“I took public transportation.”
“You… on a subway,” she snorted. “What I wouldn’t pay to see that.”
“I’ve ridden the subway lots of times.”
Emily decided to let him off the hook, since the petulant expression on his face had begun to irritate her. “How is Zhi Zhi?”
“The doctor thinks he suffered a mild concussion, and he’s living the ‘quiet life’ for a few days. Xiao Xiao has practically moved into his mother’s house to take care of him.”
“She’s a good friend, I think.”
“They’ve been close since childhood.”
“Then why aren’t they… you know…”
Wu Dao covered a smile with one hand and tilted his head. “Let’s just say she’s not his type.”
“Not his type? She must be any man’s type, at least in that dress.”
“Zhi Zhi said to tell you how brave you are. He’s very grateful… and so am I. You saved us the other night… against those men… I didn’t really see much of what happened.”
“Maybe you should see a doctor,” Emily said, craning her neck to examine the back of his head for new lumps. “I didn’t do anything special.”
Wu Dao shook his head out of her grasp. “There’s someone we should go see.”
She tilted her head to consider the nature of his proposition. Two young boys eyed them from across the street, and when a third called out to them from down the block, they didn’t turn to see what he wanted. Are we that interesting? Emily glanced down the street – What do they expect to see here? – but nothing stood out to her as unusual. A smartly dressed young woman brushed past her, walking with a determined step, probably getting home early from an office job. Jiang Xi had warned her that she was about to become the most noticeable woman in China, but those boys weren’t old enough to care about such things. Perhaps they remembered Wu Dao’s sports car from the other day, and expected something even flashier to show up at any moment.
“Yeah, sure,” she said. It would be good to check on Zhizheng, and it occurred to her that she might like to see Fan Xiao again. “Let me go upstairs and change.” She looked over her shoulder from the main door and was perhaps a little disappointed that he hadn’t tried to follow. Playing the femme fatale might prove trickier than she’d expected.
“What’s clean?” she muttered, rummaging through her closet. She’d narrowed the choices down to black denim pants and a red scoop-neck pullover outfit, or navy blue slacks and a button-down shirt. A chill in the air suggested she should bring the leather Moto jacket, and that settled it for her: denim and pullover. Margie would approve of her color choices, an idea that turned Emily’s mind to how Wu Dao was dressed, and she leaned out the window to remind herself.
A charcoal gray silk shirt, buttoned low to show off a gold chain, midnight black trousers that hung breezily from his slender waist, and fashionable black slip-ons. “Probably Italian,” Emily mused. He’d wandered across the street where the boys she’d noticed earlier were perched on benches, and a few more kids had gathered around him, young, maybe fifteen or sixteen. One of them had a boom-box, and the strains of what she took to be an American pop song wafted up to her window. He extended one arm out to the side and shook it for an instant, and then let a wave flow up and across his shoulder and down the other arm, while his feet shuffled in the opposite direction. A couple of the boys tried to imitate him, and Emily couldn’t suppress a giggle.
“His casual clothes probably cost more than their parents make in a month, but he’s happy to give them an impromptu dance lesson in the street.”
By the time she made it back downstairs, still smiling at the cheery paradoxes embodied by this strangest of suitors – Could she love him? – a black sedan with tinted windows had taken up a position along the curb, a large man in a dark suit stationed by the passenger side door. Perry’s voice echoed in her heart for the tiniest instant, and she caught herself glowering at Wu Dao a little too darkly, since he seemed to flinch when he saw her crossing the street.
“You took the subway here, did you?” She smirked as he stammered out the opening phrases of some excuse, and pressed a finger to his lips before kissing his cheek. The boys who’d been enjoying his attentions a moment earlier tittered in the sort of shared embarrassment that signals the beginning, or the approaching end, of puberty.
“But I really did…” He followed as she led him away, and when the passenger door of the sedan clicked shut, the noise of the neighborhood went quiet.
“Don’t dig yourself a deeper hole,” she said, before kissing his lips.
“After the incident outside the club, my father has insisted on protecting me,” he said, with a nod to the two men in the front seat.
Margie would probably tell her that Chinese girls aren’t so forward. The thought irritated her – as if Margie knows what a Chinese girl would or would not do – and her mind turned toward the other person who’d been trespassing on her personal life. What if Nyquist ordered her to kill Wu Dao… or anyone else for that matter? Her eyes narrowed as she sized up the bodyguards from behind, and the rumble of the tires on the Ring Road drowned out the low purr of the engine. They seemed prepared to protect him against threats originating outside the vehicle, but probably not from a threat originating in the back seat. Could they prevent her from chopping Wu Dao across the throat, crushing his windpipe… or slipping a dagger between his ribs?
Perhaps they carried firearms under their suit jackets – guns were tightly controlled in China, but exceptions were sometimes made for security personnel, and she had no doubt the Wu family’s bodyguards would have an exception. Would she ‘neutralize’ the guards first, and deal with Wu Dao after, and how might she do that from the back seat? Large as they were, it would be difficult for them to subdue her across the barrier of the seats and headrests, unless they were prepared to shoot at her inside the car, and she felt confident in her ability to prevent this eventuality. Maybe she could even use the passenger’s gun to shoot the driver, cause a rollover and hope she survived it in better shape than the others.
She glanced at Wu Dao and her mood softened, and when he began to speak, she squeezed his hand to distract him. She found him beautiful, his long hair flipped casually into a curl along the nape of his neck, and draped in front above one eye, half-concealing his brows and framing his dark eyes. Somehow, she’d charmed him, too, though she had no idea how, nor what she might have to do to retain his interest.
“You are the strangest girl… all the others I’ve known are happy to chatter at me, so full of information they want me to have, but you…” Emily pressed a finger to his lips, just to get him to stop talking. He pulled it down and examined her hand for a moment. “… you say almost nothing, and often a faraway look glazes your eyes, as if you… I don’t know… as if you were not a creature of this world, and had no earthly cares on your heart.” She extricated her fingers from his grasp and caressed the back of his neck, before pulling him close enough to rub her nose against his, to press against his cheek and kiss him again on the lips.
“Shut up, you vain thing. Let me just drink you in. The sun is near to setting and we’re young. Let’s not waste it in idle chatter.” She kissed him again. “If there’s something you want to know, just ask me.”
Wu Dao stared at her for a moment, almost in disbelief, while he tried to focus his thoughts. “Who are you?”
“Don’t you already know? You’re the one who chose me, remember, that evening when we danced.”
“But, that was only to…”
“I know. You were in a mischievous mood, and felt like ‘tweaking’ President Liang, and maybe your father, too. I was nothing more than a means to that end.” Wu Dao hung his face at these words, and she knew she’d struck home. “Don’t worry. I t
ook you for a fickle, empty headed playboy.”
“… and now you think something different?”
“Now I think nothing at all. I just take you as I find you, one moment to the next.”
“You sound just like my grandfather. He also thinks nothing at all, and takes things as he finds them in each moment. That’s why he doesn’t get along with my father, who is always scheming for something better.”
“I imagine that leaves you in a strange no-man’s-land between them.”
“Yes, it does. But I still don’t understand you. The other night, Xiao Xiao said you defended us like a tiger. Where did that come from?”
“Not a tiger,” Emily said, her eyes turning dark. “A tiger would have killed those men.”
“But how do you even know how to do those things?”
“Have I mentioned that I come from a long line of Marines? That’s what I’ve been trained to do.” This was a lie, of course, but there was surely no point in giving a more accurate answer. The sun continued its daily climb down from the zenith, and the sky dimmed briefly in honor of a passing cloud, and the car turned north across the Qinghe River, away from the racket of the city. Emily reached over the front seat to touch the driver’s shoulder. “Where are we going?”
“Changping,” the man grunted.
“But that’s nowhere near Zhi Zhi’s place. Are we going sightseeing?” She turned to Wu Dao and searched his face. “Where are you taking me?”
“My grandfather asked to meet you.”
“I see. Is this where I get the talk?”
“The talk?”
“You know… where your grandfather tells me I’m not good enough, and I should stop trying to seduce you into a marriage beneath your station.”
“Seduce me? Is that what you were doing? I’m usually the seducer in these situations.” Emily punched him in the shoulder, and turned away to contemplate the upholstery. “Besides, my grandfather is not the ‘station’ type, whatever station means. Class, right… or something to that effect?”
She was no longer listening, her mind having turned back into an earlier path, contemplating Nyquist and how she might respond to any unsavory orders he might wish to give her.
Not far from the entrance to the valley of the Ming Dynasty Tombs in Qangping, Wu Yutian kept a pottery studio behind an unprepossessing storefront, in a commercial district outside an exclusive neighborhood. The front window sparkled over an outdoor display, several shelves of deep brown orb-shaped jugs. Each was marked by a spiral pattern threading from the corked neck to the base and a matte glaze. A sign off to one side indicated a price, ten yuan, and a tin box with a slot appeared to be the receptacle.
“He works on an honor system, I suppose,” Emily said.
“Grandfather’s never been interested in that side of the business.”
“I’m not surprised. It’s just the pots he cares about, right?”
Wu Dao nodded and pulled the door open for her. One fixture provided all the light in the main room, enough for Emily to recognize the elderly gentleman she’d seen at Wu Wei’s party the other night, seated at a pottery wheel, putting the finishing touches on one more orb-shaped jug. His fingers pulled at the spinning clay from the inside, one hand sliding along the outside while two thick fingers pressed the inside surface, coaxing it to arch up and over. Finally, only one finger could fit through the narrowing neck, and as he withdrew it, he allowed the thumbnail of the other hand to carve a tiny, descending groove into the outer surface, forming the familiar spiral.
Emily and Wu Dao stood by the door, watching for a polite opening as the old man finished the pot and cut it from the wheel. But he paid them no attention, though he must have noticed their entrance. With patient care, he placed this last pot on a tray alongside several others, removed his apron, and stood over a sink in the corner to wash his hands.
“He has a boy to finish the glaze and fire them,” Wu Dao whispered, apparently not quietly enough. The old man turned and stared at the two of them. “Grandfather, allow me to introduce Tenno Michiko…”
“Thank you, Daozi,” he said, his eyes fixed on her. “I know who she is.”
“This is my grandfather, Wu Yutian,” he said for Emily’s benefit, and he seemed for once not able to command his usual, easy social grace.
“Leave us, Daozi. Perhaps you can be of some assistance in back.” Wu Dao immediately complied with a nod, and carried the tray of pots away.
Emily wished to start this conversation with the appropriate expression of respect, but found herself at a loss to know how to begin. Fortunately, Wu Yutian did not leave her in suspense for long, and seemed to have little patience for any social niceties.
“Have you worked with clay, Miss Tenno?”
“Not since I was child. Do you always make the same pot?”
“If only that were possible. The wheel spins and the pot takes shape. I no longer think about it. My hands press and cajole the clay and it responds in the ways it must.”
He’d given this explanation many times, that was easy to see, and probably weighed the reactions of many to it. Perhaps it was a test, and she wondered how to respond. He gestured to her to cross the open space at the front of the studio, to join him by the wheel. The floor tiles had a dull sheen from years of clay dust drying to form a crust, only to be swept out at the end of the day.
“Training is like that, too,” she said, still standing by the door. “The teacher demonstrates a technique and the students imitate him, striving to make their movement resemble his. But each one only attains mastery when he allows his movement to resemble itself.”
“Your name carries bad memories, and I can barely bring myself to say it without clenching my teeth.” The old man studied her face as he spoke, searching for a reaction. “My grandson tells me your wu shu is strong, guniang, but he knows nothing. Show me.” Emily was relieved to hear him refer to her as ‘young lady’. Even though it was out of fashion, at least guniang contained no hidden reference to prostitution, as the more current xiao jie did, at least to the ears of young people. She could believe Mrs. Gao intended no slight, but as for this old man, she wouldn’t have been so certain.
“There is nothing to show, Wu Yutian. I strive only to take people as they come, as enemies… or as friends. I try to assume nothing.”
“But you do not succeed, do you?”
“It is an infinite task.”
“… and in the meantime, you prepare yourself for enemies and friends, studying prescribed forms, mastering an array of techniques. Show me yours.”
When she didn’t respond, the old man took a long, low step to the left, and positioned his open hands like spades, one out low, the other by his ear. Is he demonstrating his own forms? Three more steps, alternating low or high, carried him closer as he described a trajectory that would bring him opposite her, his hands swirling to a new position each time. One more step, a lower lunge than the rest, now directly in front, and he thrust his hand between her legs.
Emily pulled back, and hesitated… two thoughts vied for her attention: slap him or fight back, strike him for real or merely as a demonstration, which she’d resisted so far, though she hardly knew why. Was his style, whatever it was, based on violating every sense of decorum? If so, perhaps it was more honest than what she’d studied, since she always knew to play on the social reticence of her opponents, doing what they wouldn’t or, at least, doing it before it occurred to them. This was one of the ways she knew to win a fight, to be nastier than everyone she met… and here was Wu Yutian being nastier than she’d expected. She concluded there would be no harm in giving the old man a demonstration, after all.
In the time it took this reflection to play out in her mind, which turned out to be less than the time it took him to seize a dangling wrist with his other hand and fling her over his hip and across the room, Emily managed to clutch at his sleeve and, with a sharp tug, right herself in the air to land on feet and hand. While he attempted to free himself f
rom her grasp, she pulled herself up and snaked an arm across the back of his neck, finally releasing him to ready a strike.
Wu Yutian managed to spin away before Emily could strike or gain a firmer hold on his neck, and pivoted into a kick aimed at her head. She leaned away, feeling the air current in the wake of his foot, and kicked at the back of the other knee, hoping to drive him to the ground. He seemed to mock her, sneering as he played on the knife’s-edge ambiguity between merely sparring, holding the full force of his strikes, and fighting in earnest. Perhaps she was the one who’d lost track of the distinction. The old man crooked his knee before her foot could contact it, falling forward into a low crouch supported by one hand, which allowed him to swing the other foot around to strike at her face again.
The speed of his reactions caught her by surprise – perhaps another effect of erroneous expectations – and she only narrowly avoided his foot. Now standing behind his crouching body, she looked for the second kick and stepped between his legs to prevent it, only to find that he’d seized her ankle and yanked her off-balance between his legs. Before she hit the floor, Emily managed to shove him forwards with her free leg, and he tumbled away and sprang back to his feet.
Now facing each other again, Wu Yutian took a long low step to the left, and thrust one flat hand out to the side and held the other high. Each subsequent step traced one stretch of a perimeter that seemed to have been divided into eight segments, and each position developed a unique stance. Emily breathed in and out, as slowly as possible, savoring the peculiarity of the situation – the grandfather of her latest fling seemed to have chosen an odd and quite aggressive way to express his disapproval of the situation… if indeed he really did disapprove. The ambiguity of his actions was impossible to interpret, and this seemed to be precisely what he intended.
“Are you demonstrating the ‘sixty-four hands’ for me, Wu Yutian?”
Girl Goes To Wudang (An Emily Kane Adventure Book 7) Page 20
