Hour of the Rat

by Lisa Brackmann

  Mostly, though, there are empty spaces where the stores should be. Steel shutters and unfinished walls. No customers.

  Music plays. And right now, just my luck, it’s “My Heart Will Go On.”

  Vicky Huang looks over her shoulder, making sure I’m keeping up. “Follow me.”

  We walk a ways, past a Häagen-Dazs. Actually, it says “Hagen Das,” so I’m assuming it’s not a real one. A lone worker lounges behind the counter, a young girl in a white-and-blue uniform, texting on her cell phone, ghostly in the bright fluorescent light.

  Maybe there’s a shanzhai Starbucks around here, too. Because I could really use a cup of coffee.

  But Vicky Huang has other ideas. She turns right, into another wing of the mall, which is just as deserted as the first one.

  At the end of it, though, is some kind of larger store. Like, if I were at a mall in the US, I’d figure it was a department store, a Macy’s or a Nordstrom or something.

  I’m not sure what this is. But it’s open. There are a lot of clothes, hanging on racks. Shoes. Handbags. Low, classy lighting. Thick carpets.

  “Ni hao, ni hao! Huanying nimen!” Two young, cute salesclerks, wearing expensive-looking black dresses, gold jewelry, and heels, come rushing over like we’re movie stars or something. Well, I figure we’re their only customers of the day, and I’m guessing they know Vicky Huang. A guess that’s confirmed when she says, “We need to find clothes for her.” She points a finger at me. “She has dinner with Mr. Cao.”

  “Oh!”

  This, obviously, is a big fucking deal.

  “Qing zuo, qing zuo!” Please sit. I do, on a leather couch between a purse display and a rack of skirts.

  They start bringing over outfits. Each more ridiculous than the last. Short, sequined dresses. Fuzzy tight sweaters. “I think this is good,” Vicky Huang announces, holding up an off-the-shoulder dress that looks like something a Greek goddess would wear—that is, if she were a hooker—and a pair of gold strappy high heels.

  “No,” I say. “No. Sorry. I can’t wear that. I … I have an injury.”

  The two salesclerks and Vicky Huang surround me, studying me. “I think you would look very nice,” one offers timidly.

  I shake my head. Stand up. “Let’s take a look.”

  We wander around the store. I hate this kind of shit. You know, I hang out with artists. I wear jeans and Tshirts most of the time. And the price tags I glimpse … crazy.

  Here, though, here’s some stuff that might be okay. I pull out a black jacket. Kind of a suit coat, long and narrow and sort of slouchy. Some skinny black pants with a low rise. A white blouse that’s pretending to be a men’s dress shirt, except it’s not. Black leather ankle-high boots.

  “Hen lihai,” one of the salesclerks says. Fierce. Sometimes that’s a compliment.

  I TRY THE CLOTHES on. As usual, I don’t look at myself in the fitting-room mirror when I’m half undressed. Seeing my leg, the other scars, I just can’t.

  But once I get the clothes on, I take a look.

  I look … not bad. Maybe even … I don’t know, kind of cool. Like I could be playing in a band or something. Or hanging out at one of Lucy Wu’s fancy openings. The black jacket hangs just so. The white blouse is open just above my bra, showing a little cleavage. I have nice tits, it’s true.

  “Let me see,” Vicky Huang demands from outside the curtain.

  I step out, reluctantly.

  Vicky Huang looks me up and down. The salesgirls flank her.

  “Keyi,” she finally says.

  “Zhen ku!” one of the salesgirls whispers, giggling.

  Pretty cool, in other words.

  I WHIP OUT MY credit card, but Vicky Huang won’t hear of it. “Not to worry,” she says. “This is Mr. Cao’s business.”

  I put up the polite argument, but I don’t argue too hard. The stuff’s Armani and Marc Jacobs. The money this outfit costs would pay my rent in BJ for like two and a half months. And my rent ain’t cheap.

  I can tell that Vicky’s stalling for time; she retreats to a corner of the shop and makes a hurried phone call, and then we end up chatting with the salesgirls, who ask if they can get us anything, water, tea, cola. “Coffee would be great,” I say. I mean, why not? And they find a pretty awful cup somewhere, Nescafé, probably, but I drink it anyway.

  As the salesgirls bag up my purchases, Vicky Huang turns to me.

  “Before you dress for dinner, maybe you would like to have a shower.”

  I’m not sure it’s a request. Besides, I stink.

  “Yeah. Thanks. That would be great.”

  And of course we end up going to a fucking spa.

  THE TWO OF US ride the escalator into the basement. It’s deserted, of course. More empty storefronts, unfinished and open, with framed entrances and nothing inside. There are signs for a Carrefour supermarket and a Watsons down at one end, but no actual stores. Maybe it’s just a promise. Or a wish.

  At the other end is the spa. Spring Victory Wellness Center.

  Well, okay.

  I’m pretty sure the workers got here about five minutes ahead of us. They wear white smocks and white caps, like nurses. One of them opens the door for us, and as we enter, I see a girl rushing around lighting scented candles.

  White walls, white towels, greenish glass. The scent of eucalyptus.

  “This way, miss!”

  I FOLLOW THEM. I have a bath. I sit in a steam room. I let them give me a massage, a facial, plus do this crazy thing with a milk bath and sea salt and a loofah. I draw the line at them giving me a hairstyle like Vicky Huang’s.

  By the time all this is done, I’m so relaxed that I just want to sleep for a week.

  Instead I put on my new outfit and agree to wear a little mascara, eye shadow, and lipstick. After I’ve done all that, I exit into the lobby, where Vicky Huang waits.

  She gives me the once-over. “Good,” she says. “I think you are ready to meet Mr. Cao now.”

  Maybe I should be a little more nervous. Vicky Huang seems to be. As she drives, she’s leaning forward, jaw clenched, hands clutching the steering wheel tight. But after everything that’s happened, I don’t have the energy. I feel like someone’s wrung me out and hung me up to dry.

  Stay frosty, I tell myself. You don’t know what you’re getting into here.

  We drive a ways through the broad, empty city. Past banks of twenty-story apartment buildings, some finished and empty, some half built, then farther out, where there are rows of houses, three, four stories tall, on narrow lots, circling an artificial lake. Empty. Then a golf course.

  Finally we arrive at a gated compound surrounded by a stone wall. Two guards man the gatehouse, wearing the same sky blue uniform as the flight attendant and the airport workers. The gate, this huge white wrought-iron thing, slides open.

  We head up a very long drive.

  In front of us on a rise is a French palace.

  I don’t mean that it looks kind of like a French palace, the way that some Chinese buildings kind of look European. I mean, it’s this huge, fucking French palace! Down to the white marble and the gold trim and the big fountain out in front with winged horses and Neptune and Venus or whoever the naked man and woman are supposed to be, and fat cherubs shooting jets of water out of their asses.

  “The home of Sidney Cao,” Vicky Huang says proudly.

  She parks in the big gravel drive, next to a fire-engine-red sports car, which looks like something Batman would drive. “Lamborghini Aventador,” Vicky says. “First in China.” She smiles. “You don’t even have one in America yet.”

  There’s a butler at the door, of course. Dressed like an English butler on a PBS show. “Welcome, welcome,” he says in English. “Please, come inside.”

  Inside, it’s even crazier.

  The entrance hall is, like, acres of white marble and gold trim. White marble stairs. White marble columns. Paintings on the walls, all kinds of … I don’t know, Renaissance things. Or whatever’s after
the Renaissance. Dudes in ruffles and long, curly white wigs. Women with even bigger white wigs and huge skirts holding weird little dogs. Statues in alcoves. More cherubs. Roman busts.

  This is so over the top that I think it might be on another planet.

  THE BUTLER GUIDES US down a long hallway. More paintings and murals on the wall, like of forests and wigged people riding horses and hunting deer. Fancy-ass carved chairs that you’d never want to sit in. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Vicky Huang says in a hushed voice.

  “Yeah. It’s really something.”

  Finally the butler pauses at a set of large wooden double doors. Pushes one open for us. “Cao Xiansheng. Ninde keren daole,” he announces. Your guests have arrived.

  I follow Vicky inside.

  It’s a wood-paneled room lined with bookshelves, a thick carpet, leather chairs, and a big wooden desk. Also, an actual fucking deer head on the wall. Like we’ve gone from the Palace of Versailles to one of those English movies starring the Queen.

  Rising from his desk chair is Sidney Cao.

  “Huanying, huanying!” Welcome!

  I guess I don’t know what I expected, but probably not this. Sidney Cao’s a normal-looking middle-aged guy wearing a golf shirt, slacks, and a designer belt—Gucci, with the interlocked Gs. He has receding hair, high and bony cheekbones, a prominent nose with a bump at the bridge, and crooked front teeth.

  He comes out from behind the desk and extends his hand to me. I take it.

  “Thank you for coming!” he says.

  Then he does this little bow, kisses the back of my hand, straightens up and grins.

  “I, uh … thanks. For inviting me, Cao Xiansheng.”

  “Please, call me Sidney,” he says in English. Then, “Have you eaten?” he asks in Chinese.

  FOR DINNER IT’S JUST me and Sidney, and I think we’re back in France. Pâté. Oysters. Little tart things with sweet onions and cheese. Baby lamb chops. I lose track pretty fast. There’s too much food, and it arrives too quickly, carried in by a young … waitress? Maid? Along with bottles of French wine, three of them, that Sidney holds up and announces as they are brought to the table by the butler guy: “This one very rare. Very rare! Come, you must try!”

  Yeah, okay. But for once I’m trying to be smart. The last thing I need is to get bombed off my ass in the Palace of Versailles. At least not till I figure out what’s going on. So I sip and I nibble and I nod as Sidney narrates the names of the dishes, the origins of the ingredients, the complicated preparation, and, especially, the quality. “Lamb from New Zealand! Fed just on grass. Like my name! Cao! Means ‘grass’!” He laughs.

  The dining room, maybe they were going for medieval: tapestries on the wall of knights and ladies playing lutes, and I think I spot a unicorn. We’re seated at one end of a long formal table with silver candlesticks and way too many little plates and pieces of silverware. Sidney doesn’t really seem to know what to do with them all either. “This kind of eating, I am still not expert,” he confesses. “But I enjoy trying new things.”

  “Great,” I say. Me, I’m trying to figure out how to steer the conversation around to maybe the two dead guys in Guiyang. “So I’m not that familiar with your business,” I finally say. “I know you work with … chemicals?”

  Sidney waves that off. “Business not so very interesting. I no longer worry too much about it.”

  “I see,” I say, even though I don’t. “But … you’re interested in … seeds?”

  “Seeds?” He frowns. “Ni weishenme wen wo?” Why do you ask?

  “I, uh …” My heart starts thumping hard. Like maybe I just stepped in it. But if I have, it’s too late now. “Well, I was at a seed company. When your … your workers picked me up. And I thought …”

  “Ah. I just wanted to make sure …”

  The waitress maid has entered with a fresh platter. Sidney Cao claps his hands. “Time for cheese course!”

  WE EAT SOME CHEESE. There are a bunch of different kinds: some hard, some runny, some stinky. There’s also more wine, and port.

  “So you like cheese?” Sidney asks.

  “Sure. Yeah. I like it fine.”

  “I think this is a Western taste. I am trying to learn to like. But still not very sure.”

  “Sidney, can I ask you a question?”

  He smiles. “Of course! You can ask me anything you like.”

  “Why did you bring me here?”

  He doesn’t say anything. Just frowns.

  So I plunge ahead. “I mean, you went to a lot of trouble. And I really appreciate it. But … it was … kind of extreme.”

  He leans back in his chair. Sips his port. He seems truly puzzled. “For the art, of course.”

  “FOR A FEW YEARS now, I collect art,” he explains as we walk down another overdressed hallway. “First I buy old Chinese painting and calligraphy. Tang Ying. Shen Zhou. Qi Baishi. Because this is my culture, and I like this work. Then European. Vermeer. Goya. The impressionists. I have Monet, I have Cézanne. Very beautiful. I like them very much.”

  We’ve come to what looks like an elevator, with shiny brass doors. Sidney pushes the button.

  “Then I think I should buy more modern things. Picasso. Warhol. Jackson Pollock. Other works of this nature. Maybe I don’t understand as well, but I know they are important to the development of artistic tradition.”

  The doors slide open. Sidney gestures for me to enter and follows me inside.

  “And then I hear more and more about new Chinese artists,” he continues as the doors close. “Many becoming famous. Work selling for big money. But mostly foreigners buy this work.” He pushes the DOWN button. “I decide since I am Chinese I must support my countrymen and keep some of this art inside China. Because, you know, in the past, foreigners take art out of China all the time. They are like robbers.”

  I know enough about this stuff now to know that a lot of foreigners were robbers, pretty much. I mean, you can’t live in Beijing for more than a week without hearing how the “Anglo-French forces” looted and burned the old Summer Palace. But there’s also the part where, during the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards smashed the “Four Olds” of traditional Chinese culture, which included a lot of art. And how some contemporary Chinese artists are getting rich while others are hassled and censored, even arrested.

  But, I’m thinking, not the time to get into that whole discussion, right?

  The elevator opens onto a short hall, which compared to everything else in this place is pretty plain: white walls, painted concrete, I think. Soft lighting, grey carpet. No windows. We might be belowground. I can hear the hum of circulating air.

  “This just temporary,” Sidney says.

  At the end of the hall are two Plexiglas doors. Sidney opens one and gestures politely for me to enter.

  As I do, the lights come up.

  White walls. Paintings. Sculptures and smaller pieces in center exhibits.

  A gallery space.

  “Wow,” I say.

  “Do you like?” Sidney asks. He sounds almost anxious.

  “I …” I take a few steps in. It’s huge. I can see another gallery beyond this one.

  Not a gallery. This is a fucking museum.

  “It’s amazing.” And I mean it.

  This first gallery is the traditional Chinese art he talked about. Landscape scrolls. Porcelain vases. Horse statuettes. Calligraphy. The next, Renaissance and neoclassical European. After that the Impressionists, then into the moderns. All the artists whose names he rattled off, he’s got their stuff hanging on the wall.

  He’s even got a Warhol Mao.

  Finally, the last gallery: contemporary Chinese art.

  Yue Minjun. Ai Weiwei. Fang Lijun. Zhang Xiaogang.

  I can’t begin to add up what this collection is worth. I don’t know enough to even start. But I do know that what this guy has in his basement is better than most museums in China. Maybe most museums in the world.

  From behind me Sidney says softly �
��So, you can see why I must have work by Zhang Jianli.”

  By Lao Zhang.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “THIS CIGAR IS FROM Cuba! You can try it. With this rum, very good.”

  “I, uh … sure. Thanks.”

  We’re back in the library, or study, or whatever this room with the giant dead deer head on the wall is supposed to be. Vicky Huang has joined us. She’s not sampling the cigar, but she just knocked back a shot of Cuban rum like a pro.

  I think about all that wine we left on the table. I bet someone on the kitchen staff is having a nice night.

  I’m still trying to take it in, that this guy had me followed all around China and even killed people so he could buy art that he likes. Or is obsessed with. It’s kind of hard to tell.

  I guess if you’ve got this much money, so much that you’ve built an entire fucking city that no one lives in, hey, why not?

  “So,” Vicky Huang says, getting out her iPad, “now we can arrange for private viewing of Zhang Jianli artwork.”

  “To complete the collection,” Sidney says, clasping his hands.

  How can I explain the situation? “No” doesn’t seem to be a word in either of these guys’ vocabularies.

  Instead I stall.

  “It’s an amazing collection. I’ve never seen anything like it. Not in somebody’s house, I mean.”

  Sydney smiles proudly. Sips his rum. “I think maybe it is my life work,” he says.

  Yeah, I think. A life’s work in an empty city that no one will see.

  “And I really want to … you know, support that. So as soon as I can sell you some work, I promise you’re first on the list.”

  Both of them stare at me, their expressions frozen, Sidney’s in midsmile. The skin prickles between my shoulders.

  I’m remembering that this guy has people killed.

  I make a command decision.

  “I could … uh, donate a piece.”

  Sidney frowns. “Donate? You mean give?”

  “Yeah. You know, for the collection. Since it’s your life’s work.”

  “You cannot give!” Vicky Huang hisses, outraged, half rising from her chair. “Then it is worth nothing!”

  Fuck. Apparently giving something to Sidney Cao is, like, some kind of face-stealing sneak attack.