by Leigh Lyn
“Ya got man trouble? Need something to cheer ya up, lady?” the boy asked.
He’d changed my epithet, having come closer and pressing his merchandise into my hand.
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
“C’mon, first one is on me, lady, my treat.”
The boy was confident. He was his own agent, his own man, the way the twins and other kids his age in Hong Kong were not.
“C’mon, lady.” He frowned upon me. “This’s the ultimate escape. You know you need it.”
Released from an institution that wasn’t that remote in their attitude toward drugs, I pressed the little foil wrapped package back into his hand and insisted I was good. I hurried along passed high-end clothing stores, hip restaurants and galleries. At the corner on the opposite side of the street, I spotted a café and crossed the road.
A sweet turret marked the street corner building. I settled down at one of the two cast-iron tables outside. Feeling safer in full view of the diners inside through the glass, I ordered a double espresso and a whiskey sour.
As the New York sun warmed my skin, I opened my laptop. I thought I had signed up for a holiday, but I seemed more entrenched than before. I was thrown by the ghost of Mary. Gobsmacked, I wrote it down lest I lose it again, or worse, ever doubted any of this had happened. I recalled another time when I had seen specters.
I was a conscientious student in Edinburgh. Working toward deadlines, I often couldn’t remember the last time I laid my head on a pillow. Going home after working overnight in the school’s studio, I passed underneath the arches of the South-bridge, an old viaduct topped with tenement buildings. A horse head came out of the gray stone wall of a building and tried to nibble at my hair. Seeing the huge mouth come at me with gigantic teeth, I froze, but the horse never got to me because the ground underneath my feet sank and kept me out of its reach.
The “hallucinations” happened in that area only, but I didn’t think much of them until one evening when I overheard excited voices coming from the kitchen. My Scottish flat-mates, Laura and Beth, were at the kitchen table on which photos were spread out.
“Look at all the toys the visitors put in the shrine for the girl ghost.” Laura pointed at a photo, which showed a candlelit alcove with a gamut of dolls, candies, toy jewelry, knickknack and other photos posted on the moldy wall behind it.
“A little girl was murdered here.” Laura pointed at our kitchen floor.
“Not here as in this flat?” I asked, doubting my grasp of the Scottish accent.
“Below us, wally. We’re right on top of the arches of South Bridge,” Laura chirped. “I’ve just been on a ghost tour through the vaults.” Her eyes sparkled with excitement.
“What vaults are these?” I asked.
“The vaults under South Bridge!” they exclaimed.
Beth explained for my benefit. “Two, three centuries ago, South Bridge was a viaduct built to span a valley in the middle of the town. It was fitted out with shops, borrowing the idea from the Ponte Vecchio and the Rialto Bridge in Italy. The blood-curdling dungeon-like ambiance of the constructed vaults did not entice patronage. Soon all proper businesses moved out and in moved the brothels, gambling dens and hideouts of criminals. It was so bad the council filled it with debris and blocked it off.
“Centuries later, a businessman who owned it by then had it excavated and discovered others had the same idea ages before him. They uncovered ghastly stuff, which chilled one to the core. That gave the businessman the bright idea of running guided ghost tours there.”
“We had to queue an hour for the tickets,” Laura said, her cheeks rosy from excitement. “Honest to God, I felt someone breathing down my neck the whole time we were there. Gravediggers used it to store the corpses before selling them to the doctors and medical students.”
“Check this!” she exclaimed, holding up another photo. “These were the vaults where Burke and Hare hid their victims.”
The photo showed a dungeon with vaulted holes in old crumbling stone walls that looked like either catacombs or ovens. “Were Burke and Hare gravediggers?” I asked.
“Guess again.”
“Medical students?”
“They were serial killers,” Laura said, with beaming eyes.
I stared from Beth to Laura and back, not understanding the enthusiasm. “And you rented this flat knowing this?”
“Oh no, I just found out! Isn’t it hilarious?” Laura laughed.
“It would be if it were them going at it on top of the washing machine last night,” I said. “Was it?”
Beth blushed a bright red.
Years later, I returned to Edinburgh and found to my amazement they had mounted the front half of a fiberglass cow coming out of the front of a building, not far from the place I saw the horse heads appear after the all-nighters. The back half disappeared into the side of the same building. So, it could have been a pun based on “Cowgate,” the name of the street. But it reminded me of the hype amongst my flat-mates about the famed spirits.
I never saw the little girl or any other spirits in our apartment. Instead, I had plenty more sleep-deprived visions of horse heads, which inspired Beth to speculate and make up tales of cattle theft and animal torture in the vaults. Of the five people who lived in the flat, I was the only one who had “sightings,” a fact that Dr. Wen might see as evidence something had come loose in my brain. Another possibility was that my roomies didn’t tell, so no one would think something had gone awry with theirs.
The hallucinations or apparitions didn’t bother me. When I was little, the appearances of human silhouettes—or whatever they were—filled me with a heart-stopping terror that paralyzed me for the minute it lasted. As I grew older, they frightened me less until they didn’t bother me at all. I even sought it out, spending a few lunches wandering around in churchyards like the Greyfriars Kirkyard. Reading the tombstone epitaphs filled me with a peculiar sentiment as I imagined the life of the deceased lying six feet under.
For most of the time, I had more important things on my mind. It was the eighties. Deng Xiaopeng’s reforms brought changes to China, which rekindled my parents’ confidence in the Homeland. They retired from the restaurant business and, in ‘85, they returned to Hong Kong where they were happier. In ‘89, the death of Hu Yaobang, a liberal figure in the Communist Party, triggered weeks of spontaneous protests in Tiananmen Square. Martial law was imposed, tanks and soldiers were sent in, and the crackdown and massacre which followed suggested that nothing had changed after all. My father was distraught like everyone else. This time, he expressed his emotions about what happened by talking and writing about it non-stop. Despite all this, they felt more alive suffering amidst Hong Kong people than in a country where they’d never felt they belonged. It was what Dad wrote about in each of his letters toward the end of his life.
The sun had arched over to the opposite side of the street rendering the old tenement buildings in a warm amber glow. I ordered a Pinot Grigio and, rinsing my mouth with the cold crisp wine, I watched the streetlights come on. People were rushing past on their way home or to meet a friend for dinner. I fished my cell-phone out of my bag and saw a text from Ben, asking me where I was.
I texted him the location.
Stay put, he texted back
Within minutes, Ben arrived waving at the waitress, losing no time to order a drink before he sat down.
“How was your day?”
“Not bad,” I lied. “Yours?”
“Productive. Yuxi’s pieces arrived, looking good. Yuxi will be here tomorrow morning. The publicist has done a great job. Posters are up in all the right places. A few celebrities we invited RSVP’d. All the art critics and editors promised to come. There’s only one thing.” Ben paused, running his fingers through his hair while looking away.
“What’s that?”
“A rumor reached a contact of mine at the auction house that the bids on some pieces will exceed the estimates twice over.”
“
Isn’t that’s great?” I asked.
“It is. And it can happen.” Ben’s left eyebrow lifted up. “But something about it is off.”
“Why, what is it?”
Ben hesitated. “It seems too easy.”
“You did say the pieces are good.”
“I did… Never mind. It’s probably nothing.”
Ben emptied his drink and we left. After a light dinner at a tiny restaurant on the Lower East Side, Ben suggested buying a bottle of wine from an off-license and returning to the apartment to get an early night before the big day tomorrow. Having him accompany me meant that going back to the apartment was less daunting, so that was what we did.
Chapter 33
The fuzzy sound of my name trickled through my dream until it percolated into my consciousness. “Lin, wake up.”
Opening my eyes, I saw Ben hovering over me. It took me a while to register I was in Frances’ apartment.
“What’s the matter, sweetie?” I asked.
“You were shouting in your sleep,” he said, sitting down on the bed next to me.
I sat up. “What was I shouting?”
“You shouted ‘Back off’ and something about G.Y.’s operation theaters.”
“Damn!”
“Why?” Ben said. “Tell me what’s going on, Lin.”
I closed my eyes as Ben swept my sweat-damped hair out of my face. “It’s okay, Lin. You can tell me. I’m a big boy.”
I turned to avoid his inquisitive eyes.
“I won’t judge or change my feelings for you.” Ben lifted my chin so I had to look him in the eyes. “I’ve done things ten times worse than you.”
An icy draft wafted over my skin as I noticed speckles in Ben’s azure eyes I hadn’t noticed before.
“Why, what have you done?”
“So to speak.” Ben shrugged.
I felt sick to my stomach, but I took a deep breath and, at long last, let it all out. I told Ben about my nervous breakdown; how a year ago I was working so hard I lost it. I told him about the project, the Corp, and G.Y., about being hospitalized. “That’s why I have these gaffes. They said I had gone crazy.”
“Who’s they?”
“Dr. Wen. He said my sleep deprivation led to a physiological breakdown leading to a temporal but acute psychosis.”
“But you don’t believe you were crazy?” Ben asked.
“Not for a second, I was just…” I hesitated.
“You were just what?” Ben frowned.
I wanted him to understand so much, it hurt. I took another deep breath. “I knew things I shouldn’t.”
Seeing tears well up, he hugged me. “It’s okay, just let it all out.”
“They did it to discredit me. I have to prove them wrong.”
Ben bit his lower lip. I didn’t know what worried me more, the pensive look in his eyes or his silence.
“What is it you know?”
I told him everything. At the end of my story, Ben sighed.
“Let me get this right: G.Y. was genetically modifying humans and asked Corinth to add surgical and detention facilities to a science park project which you were in charge of.” Ben’s voice trailed off, and he sighed, shaking his head.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but is this based on evidence or speculation?”
My heart shrank.
Seeing the expression on my face, he looked away and sighed again. “How do you know it’s not your imagination taking you for a ride? A hallucination, like the one you had yesterday?”
“But listen, do you remember the other night when there was this piece in the evening news about local villagers spotting a ‘Yeren’? The boy with the big skull and receding jaw? That’s the result of their experiments, and it wasn’t the first one. Over the last year, I have counted a handful of sightings of mutated animals.”
“Genetically modifying animals is perfectly legitimate, isn’t it? Besides, have you got proof G.Y. is the culprit, babe?”
“Not yet, but I know I will. Trust me.”
“How do you know?”
I felt the muscles in my jaw tighten and fought back this anger welling up inside. “They overloaded me with work until my mind snapped like an overstretched elastic band, and now anyone, including you, will wonder if I’m mad.”
Ben stared at my feet, which, next to his, looked ridiculously small. The silence weighed a ton by the time he said, “I don’t doubt you, but you should ask yourself what you gain by pursuing this if, ultimately, you can’t prove it.” Ben’s head tilted away. “Could it be that a plot of some book got stuck in your mind somehow and mixed up during your—”
I stopped him. “No, it’s not that at all. I may have underestimated how difficult it is to prove the extent of their mishap, but I’m sure I am right.”
“But you have no proof?”
“Not yet.”
Ben shook his head. “Even if you’re right, Lin, you must look out for yourself. Do you realize the danger involved if you are right?”
“They may kill me or make me disappear, but I don’t feel I should budge. I can’t…”
“You’re a drama queen, aren’t you?” Ben chuckled. I felt like giving him a piece of my mind when his cell lit up and rang. Ben looked at the caller display after which he scrambled up.
“I’ll be back,” he said, pouncing down the wooden plank treads.
Left to stare at the ceiling, I put on Ben’s dressing gown and walked out onto the terrace. Stars glistened low in the sky like a sequin scarf draped over the roof of the tenement buildings. I rubbed my trembling hands and felt relieved now I’d come clean with Ben. If only I could prove it was more than speculation. I went back inside and down to the living room where I smelled weed. I poured myself a glass of wine and wandered up to the window where I could see Ben talk on the fire escape.
“8.5 mil? Goodness, who are the bidders? Is there any way to trace them? Oh, you did already? Really?” I poked my head through the open window to hand him the glass. Shaking his head, he waved at me to go back inside, after which he continued his conversation in a muffled tone. Five minutes later, he climbed through the window and offered me a trumpet-shaped joint. I took a few dregs before giving it back.
“Who was that?” I asked.
“Someone from the auction house.”
He pulled me closer, spun me around and wrapped his arms around me. “Babe?”
“Yes, Ben?”
“It’s not that I don’t believe or trust you, but can I ask what evidence it is you haven’t got yet?”
I tilted my head sideways to look at him. “Why?”
“Because I don’t want you to do something stupid like blowing the whistle when you don’t have any proof.”
I’d be offended were it not for his sweet intentions.
“Before Roger plunged his fist into my face, G.Y.’s project manager gave me a few typical layouts for detention cells. Just a few references which I saved and filed on my computer.”
“Is it still there?”
“Maxi’s hacker friend mucked around with my laptop, after which the hard disk was erased.”
Ben closed his eyes. “Is there anything else?”
“I have it on Cloud or some other remote server somewhere.”
Ben sighed and picked up the joint from the ashtray. “You don’t remember which one, do you?”
“Not yet,” I said.
His chest heaved up as he took a few deep drags, after which he bent down to blow the intoxicating smoke into my mouth. Thin slithers of it drifted past us out of the window and into the night air. I turned around as the gown slipped from my shoulder and wrapped my arms around his neck. His soft hands glided down the side of my body as I wrapped my legs around his hips. He kissed my neck as he lay me on the wide sill.
“People can see us,” I mumbled.
“I don’t care.”
Chapter 34
The next morning, the vertical rays of a midday sun were casting stark shadows on the terra
ce when I woke up. A note on Ben’s pillow said he’d gone to work. Under it, Ben had counted out my pills on a white saucer. Feeling better than I had in weeks, I rinsed the little devils down the toilet, showered, and changed into a black dress I had brought for the opening. Then I packed my bag and left to explore the streets.
“Ni-hao, lady. Ya wanna trip?”
It was the same boy in the cap and hoodie again. I asked him his name.
“Blue Nite.”
“Thanks, but no thanks, Blue Nite.”
“Why not, lady?” He frowned as if I had turned down a charity for terminally ill puppies.
“Why are you not at school, my friend?” I asked.
He curtsied. “I’m in the college of life.”
I waved and walked off. Hip restaurants, high-end boutiques, and art galleries on the raised ground floors mismatched with launderettes, vintage clothing stores, and local groceries in the half basements, gave the area a lived-in, vibrant feel. Locals chatted where the shops had put display units and benches out on the pavement. Without a destination in mind, I passed a tiny park named after Sara Roosevelt. I turned right at the Bowery to find myself in front of a building that resembled a stack of gigantic white boxes. A digital sign over the door said New Art Museum. Remembering Ben mention it as the catalyst attracting small galleries and gentrifying the hood, I wandered in when my phone rang. It was Sam asking me to bring the package and meet him for lunch.
Arriving at the famous Katz at twelve-thirty, there was no trace of Sam. I got myself a fountain drink and settled at the last empty table. At the table on my right, three corpulent men and a kid were tackling a substantial portion of the menu. On my left, a handsome man with slick gelled-back black hair wearing a black button-down shirt and black tailored trousers was staring out the window over an Espresso.
