Hour of the Rat

by Lisa Brackmann

  Which is pretty fucking stupid, actually. Because there’s nothing I can do to help.

  “Lookin’ good, Ellie,” he repeats.

  “Thanks.”

  “I want …” He screws up his face again. “I need … I have this …”

  I wait.

  “My brother,” he manages.

  “HE’S IN CHINA, SOMEWHERE,” Natalie explains. She’s taken over for Dog, who got all agitated when the words he wanted wouldn’t come. “We got a postcard a month or so ago from some place called … Yang shoe?”

  “Yangshuo?” I guess.

  “I don’t know.” She rolls her eyes, impatient. “Someplace with weird-looking mountains.”

  She’s a San Diego girl, I know. A couple years older than me. Thin and tan, with that whole “I jog and do yoga” body and the beginnings of hard lines on her face: around her mouth, outlining her cheeks.

  “Probably Yangshuo.”

  “Whatever.” She heaves a sigh. “The thing is …”

  She glances over her shoulder. Dog is there, hovering, scooting around in an office chair like it’s a bumper car, occasionally waving at the screen.

  She runs her fingers through her highlighted hair. “He wants Jason to come home.”

  “So why doesn’t he?”

  She pauses. Looks sideways for a moment. “Jason has some problems.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  “He’s …” Her voice drops. “He’s not stable. He’s on meds. And we think maybe he went off them.”

  “Meds for what?” I ask. “What’s the diagnosis?”

  Not like I’m an expert, but when I trained to be a medic, we covered the basics.

  “I …” She hesitates again. “Manic depression. Doug doesn’t like to—”

  “What?” Dog says. “What don’t I like?”

  “He’s a little in denial,” she whispers. “But it’s made Jason … He’s acted out before. We’re just worried about—”

  “It’s FUBAR!” Dog shouts in the background. “Jason’s not a head case!”

  “Okay, okay,” I say. “So you don’t know where he is?”

  “No.” She glances over her shoulder at Dog, then back to me. “I know it’s crazy, even asking you. I tell him China’s got a billion people or whatever, but he won’t … he won’t listen.”

  “Doesn’t fucking hurt to ask,” I hear Dog say.

  I think about it.

  “It’s not totally crazy,” I say.

  OKAY, THE ODDS AREN’T great. But it’s not impossible.

  Here’s the thing: China is a big country. Huge. With more than a billion people.

  But most of them are Chinese.

  There are a lot of Westerners who live here, for sure. And tourists. I don’t know how many, but enough so that in most popular tourist places it’s not like a Westerner is a total Martian or anything. In Beijing no one notices or particularly cares. Yeah, some old auntie might remark to her buddy on the neighborhood committee, “Hey, laowai laile!” but it’s hard to keep track when there are so many of us.

  That said, someone is still watching.

  Places like Yangshuo, a major hub on the banana-pancake backpacker circuit, known for its weird, beautiful mountains, “quaint” villages tucked along rice paddies, rivers where you can float down a bamboo raft, sucking down beer—yeah, lots of foreigners go there, for sure. But they tend to congregate in certain establishments.

  It’s possible I could find someone who’d seen Jason. Who maybe had even hung out with him. Who might have an idea where he is.

  WHAT I SAY TO Natalie and Dog is, “Yeah, it’s pretty much a long shot. But, you know, send me whatever you got on him and I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks,” Natalie says, brushing her hair out of her face again, which I think she’s doing because she’s tearing up and she doesn’t want me to see. “Thanks. It means a lot to Doug. I know you guys are friends. I mean, I know …” She blinks rapidly. “He’s said a lot of really nice things about you.”

  “Heh,” I say. “Doug’s a good guy.”

  There is a long and somewhat awkward silence. Natalie stares into the webcam, blinking now and then. In the background Dog scoots up to the screen on his office chair, puts his only arm around Natalie’s shoulders, and squeezes.

  “I’m an asshole!” he says, grinning.

  JUST TO CLARIFY, IT’S not because I feel guilty or something that I am thinking about helping Dog out. It’s because you help your buddies. That’s just the way it is. You help the people who were there for you, is all. And Dog … well, yeah, he’s kind of an asshole on the one hand. On the other, he was a buddy to me during my first duty assignment in Iraq, in Mortaritaville. I was as young and dumb as they came, nineteen years old, a good Christian girl.

  Maybe he acted like a friend primarily to get into my pants, which I gotta say worked well for him. But when I think about those times now, mostly what I remember is that he was still my friend.

  Plus, Yangshuo is supposed to be beautiful. And warm. As mentioned, it’s ass-freezing cold here in Beijing, and the air is “crazy-bad.”

  Then there’s this: “Ellie, are you ready to go to Walmart?”

  Here’s my mom, hovering in the doorway, with a stout Chinese guy standing slightly behind her, his hands clasped in front of him like he’s a singer in a choir waiting for his cue.

  “Do you mind if Andy tags along?” my mom asks, a little hesitantly. “He needs a few things.”

  “Yes.” Andy nods vigorously. “Socks. And candles.”

  “Sure,” I say. “Fine.”

  I insist we take a subway there, even though Andy claims to have a car and my mom doesn’t understand why we don’t just cab it—“But, honey, the taxis are so cheap here!”

  “Because if we take a cab, we sit in the same fucking traffic as everyone else, that’s why,” I say, not for the first time. “And people here drive even worse than in Phoenix.”

  Plus, I still don’t like riding in cars very much. I’m better about it than I was, but I don’t like being stuck in traffic, a sitting target. That’s how you get blown up. Outside the wire you haul ass.

  Okay, I know where I am and that I’m not going to get blown up in a Beijing taxi, probably. Sitting in traffic just makes me nervous sometimes.

  We pass the random bronze statues of little kids playing on the dead grass, the tiny kiosk where the guy makes jianbing, which is sort of a Beijing breakfast burrito and one of my favorite foods ever, and trot down the long staircase to the subway.

  “Yi zhang piao,” I tell the attendant behind the Plexiglas window. I have my yikatong card, but my mom hasn’t taken the plunge, so I buy her tickets whenever we go someplace. It’s like neither of us wants to admit that she’s staying here.

  “Anal constriction,” Andy says in English, carefully sounding out each syllable. “Anal constriction is key.”

  “Oh, really?”

  We put our bags through the X-ray machine that no one pays attention to and head down another set of stairs to the platform. It’s not too crowded this time of day. We line up at the shortest queue I can spot, toward the back of the train. I watch the ads for banks, cell phones, and real estate flicker on the dark wall across from us.

  “Yes,” Andy says. “Anal constriction. And denting naval.”

  “It’s a part of the religious practice,” my mom explains. “Kind of like tai chi.”

  “What does this have to do with Jesus?” I mutter.

  “Brother Jesus wants us to be happy,” Andy explains. “With anal constriction, you can say good-bye to sad feelings. And take back your youth.” He turns to my mom and smiles. “Increases staying power.”

  She blushes a little as the rush of warm air from the inbound subway hits the platform.

  And this is another reason I need a break from my mom: the longer I’m around her and Andy, the more I feel like a pissed-off teenager. As opposed to, you know, a pissed-off twenty-seven-year-old.

>   BY THE TIME WE return from Walmart, with chocolate chips, spatulas, peanut butter, candles, and socks, there’s an email from Natalie with an attachment: a photo of Jason.

  I stretch my bad leg out on my bed, battered white MacBook propped on a pillow on my lap, and open the attachment.

  He’s a kid. Younger than me. Longish brown hair. Full cheeks and a backpacker beard. Pretty brown eyes, almost toffee-colored, with flecks of gold in them. A soulful expression, like the dude should be playing an acoustic guitar at some college open mic night or maybe pulling espressos at the local coffee joint.

  “What do you feel like for dinner, hon?” my mom asks. “Maybe tacos?” She holds up an avocado. “Look what I found at the Carrefour!”

  “Sure. Sounds good.”

  I go back to my laptop. I have the usual pileup of email in my inbox to deal with.

  There’s a knock at the front door.

  My mom glances over her shoulder and pads off to answer.

  The water guy, maybe? Though he usually comes in the early afternoon. The security door to the building is always propped open till later in the evening, so it could be anybody.

  I hear a man, his words too faint to make out. And then my mom.

  “Ellie,” she says, a flat note to her voice. “There’s two policemen here to see you.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  I TELL MYSELF NOT to panic.

  I’m better about stuff than I was. My heart’s pounding, but it’s not so bad that I feel like I’m going to throw up. They could be here for all kinds of reasons. Checking to make sure I registered my mom at the local Public Security Bureau, maybe.

  I stand up, wincing as my foot hits the floor, and hobble into the living room.

  The two men stand in the doorway.

  “I said they couldn’t come in till you checked their IDs,” my mom hisses. “Since I can’t tell what they say. I don’t think they speak very much English anyway.”

  The two men are wearing dark blue uniforms with silver buttons, silver wings on their epaulets, and winged bars on their chests. One has his overcoat slung over his arm—the younger of the two men, tall and slender. The other is middle-aged and stocky, with a pockmarked face. He stands behind the first one, looking bored.

  “Ellie McEnroe?” the younger one says, only the way he says it sounds more like “Mack-in-arr.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you come with us, please?”

  “Why?”

  “Just for a talk. To have some tea.”

  I can see the patch on his shoulder. “Guo Nei Anquan Bao …” something something. My written Chinese sucks. But I’m pretty sure I know where these guys are from.

  “We can talk here,” I say. “I have all kinds of tea. Your choice.”

  He hesitates. Glances over his shoulder at his companion, who half raises an eyebrow and makes a tiny smirk. “I don’t think,” the younger one says, “this is convenient place. Because my English is not very good. So much better if we go talk with my … my laoban? My boss? So we can understand each other. Just a short talk.”

  I think about refusing.

  When they ask you to “drink tea,” it’s not exactly official. It’s not exactly optional either. It’s a way to try to gather information, to intimidate you. But you’re not getting arrested.

  Yet.

  Not that they’d arrest me. I’m not Chinese. They’ll just kick me out of the country, if it comes to that.

  But I’d rather it didn’t come to that.

  I shrug. “Okay. I need to use the bathroom first.”

  Now they step inside. “No time for that,” the younger one says. The older one flanks him.

  For a moment I think they’re actually going to drag me out of here. My heart’s pounding so hard I’m starting to shake. I hope they can’t see it.

  I’m tired of being scared.

  “Really?” I say in Chinese. “You want me to liberate myself in your car?”

  At that the older one lifts both his eyebrows and makes a little snort.

  I grab my canvas bag off the coffee table. Young cop starts to object. Old cop just shakes his head.

  Yeah, I’m going to make a phone call, assholes. What do you expect?

  Mom follows me toward the bathroom. “You’re not going with them!” she says. “Are you? We should call the American embassy.”

  “It’s just for a talk. Not a big deal.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Domestic Security Department. They’re like the … the … kind of like the FBI.”

  They’re in charge of tracking “subversives,” such as democracy activists, environmental crusaders, underground church members, pissed-off petitioners, miscellaneous malcontents—basically anyone with a point of view that isn’t in line with the “harmonious society.” They have plainclothes spies, a vast network of informants, I don’t know how many millions of them.

  Not that my mom needs to know this level of detail.

  “But why are they here? Why do they want to talk to you?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, though I have a pretty good idea. “It’s probably just … some of the people I know, some of the artists. They do stuff that’s kind of controversial sometimes.”

  I go into the bathroom, shut the door, and turn on the water in the sink. Get out my iPhone and touch a number.

  It rings a few times and goes to voice mail.

  Fuck.

  “Hey,” I say, in English, “I’m going for tea with the National Treasures. Thought you should know.”

  I hit the red DISCONNECT button. And then I pee. Because I actually need to go.

  When I exit the bathroom, my mom is facing the two cops, hands on her hips, like she’s daring them to take a step closer.

  I gather up my coat and a hat. “Remember that number I gave you?” I say. “The one I put on your cell?”

  She nods.

  “If you don’t hear from me in a couple of hours, call it and explain what’s going on. And if there’s no answer …”

  I think about it.

  “Yeah, call the embassy.”

  WE RIDE IN A squad car, heading southwest.

  The older cop drives. The younger one sits next to me in the back and tries to make polite conversation. I wish he’d shut up. I need to think. To get my story straight, plan what I’m going to say, what’s safe to admit and what isn’t.

  “Your Chinese is really good,” he says. “Really standard.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Where did you learn it?”

  “Here.”

  “How long have you been in China?”

  “Three years.”

  He shakes his head. “We learn English in school. I study a long time. But I don’t speak it very well.”

  “Helps to be in the country,” I say.

  He sighs. “Yes. But I think I won’t have that opportunity. Very difficult in my position.” He hesitates. “I like American movies and TV shows very much,” he says in English. “To practice English. I watch … 24. The Sopranos. Sons of …” His brow wrinkles. “Ah-nah-key. I am not sure, how to say. They are bad men. Criminals. They drive those … those …”

  “Motorcycles,” I supply.

  “Yes!” He mimes twisting the handles. “Very dangerous!” His eyes light up, and he grins.

  I keep thinking we’re going to stop. We pass the local police station. Then monumental government buildings with the state seal attached to the concrete like a giant badge stuck on awkwardly with a pin.

  But we don’t stop. We keep driving. West, then south.

  After a while I have no fucking clue where we’re going. The traffic’s so bad that the cop takes sides streets, nothing I recognize.

  Besides, no one goes to South Beijing unless they’re going to the new train station. This far south? I don’t even know what’s here.

  The farther we go, the more it looks like we’re not in Beijing anymore, like we’ve suddenly been transported to a podunk third-tier ci
ty in some interior province.

  White-tiled storefronts. Cracked plastic signage. Discount malls plastered with billboard-size ads for products you’ve never heard of, European-looking models advertising watches and shoes, everything greyed by pollution. Vendors who look like peasants with stuff to sell spread out on blankets on the sidewalk: DVDs. Socks and underwear. Barrettes and hairbrushes. Random shit.

  “Where are we going?” I finally ask.

  “Not far. Just a place … that’s comfortable. To talk.”

  And that’s when I really get scared. I think maybe they’re just going to make me disappear.

  No, that doesn’t make sense, I tell myself. If they were going to do that, would they send guys in uniforms? Would they do it in front of my mom?

  Wouldn’t they do it off the books?

  I tell myself this stuff until I’m calm again. Calmer anyway.

  We turn onto a busy street with the typical iron fence dividing it, so pedestrians can’t cross and drivers can’t make turns, and for some reason I think about what a pain in the ass those iron fences can be, like they go out of their way to make simple things difficult. We pass trucks stacked with vegetables—potatoes, bundles of celery—that rumble down a narrow street toward some huge grey cement gate with a red badge and gold characters across the top, a guard box on either side.

  Finally we get to the end of the block and turn left, into a walled, gated parking lot. In front of us is a large, blocky building, about ten stories high, the façade a combination of faux marble, metal sheets, and green Plexiglas. Red lanterns hang above the entrance.

  The pinyin below the characters spells out HEXIE ANXI JIUDIAN.

  Harmonious Rest Hotel.

  We drive past the lobby, around to the back, through a metal gate, into a little service yard. There are rows of dumpsters, a couple of battered electric scooters, a warped ping-pong table, and a clothesline with hotel uniforms hung up, inside out, to dry.

  “So we aren’t checking in?” I snark.

  The younger cop does one of those embarrassed semi-giggles. “Please wait a moment,” he says, and gets out of the car. He jogs over to a back entrance and goes inside.

  The older cop sits in the front seat and drums on the steering wheel.