More firecrackers went off somewhere up ahead. Children carrying sparklers ran through the streamers, giggling. The kids passed around Nick’s legs and disappeared into the vapor.
Making his way through the streamers, he reached an intersection where a swirling river of Asian people eddied along a narrow street. An open market offered every delicacy imaginable from live eels and dried snake skins to fine silks and cheap imported goods. Shoppers and merchants haggled in Cantonese and Mandarin. One merchant offered Nick a white sparkler. Waving his hand, Nick wove through the crowd of dark-headed people, his six-foot frame towering above most of them. Firecrackers popped, shooting upward between the tall buildings in multi-colored novas. The crowd parted for a parade of dancers in silk costumes, followed by a red dragon that snaked along the street.
Nick stood there perplexed a moment, then remembered tonight was the eve of the Year of the Dragon. How long has it been since you’ve celebrated a holiday? You could be at the office party right now, drinking with friends, bringing in the New Year.
He ignored his rational voice. It had been prodding him a lot lately, pushing him to return to work, go back to a normal life. Let go of the past once and for all. But he couldn’t. Not until he discovered the truth.
Two hookers passed, and he glanced at their short skirts that exposed long skinny legs and just a hint of cheeks. The two girls pulled their skirts up an inch, shaking their wares. He started to turn away when he noticed one girl had a tattoo on her lower back with black spikes disappearing down into her skirt.
“Excuse me.” Nick waved them over.
The two girls sauntered across the street, wagging their hips and eyeing him. “Hey, baby. You looking for good time?”
“No, I was wondering if you’ve seen this woman.” He showed them a photo of a beautiful Chinese woman in her late twenties. “She grew up in this area, Ming Trudeau.” His throat tightened at the sight of Ming’s angelic face, half Asian, half French. “She . . . disappeared six months ago.”
The two prostitutes looked at one another.
“You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”
“No, no see her.” The girls backed away.
“Wait, I’ll pay you for information.” He pulled out his wallet, but the girls ran across the street and up the steps through the entrance of a dance club.
“Damn it.” He started towards the club, which had a pink neon sign of a naked dancing girl. Maybe these girls wouldn’t talk, but there might be others. The hookers came back out with a burly Asian man in a black suit. He had a thick neck and a red Mohawk. The girls pointed towards Nick. He froze. The bouncer scanned the crowd and homed in on Nick. Red Mohawk’s face twisted with anger. He hurried down the steps.
Nick back-pedaled and elbowed through the crowd. His hand slipped into his jacket, gripping the .38 he’d purchased that morning. The merchant who sold him the gun warned about the dangers of coming here. The Hong Kong police wouldn’t even investigate in this part of the city, claiming it was controlled by the Triad Society: the Chinese mafia.
Glancing back, he saw Red Mohawk muscling his way through the crowd. He was reaching into the armpit of his jacket, pulling out something. Firecracker smoke clouded the air.
Nick tore into a full sprint, bumping into people. He reached a sidewalk clotted with onlookers watching the parade and fireworks. He ducked into the crowd, forcing his way through a throng that pressed against him on all sides. The madness of music, cheering, and pop-popping-popping filled his head. As the parade dancers passed, he ran low, crossing the street behind the dragon. Dancers waving flags spun in circles around Nick. He squeezed through the crowd lining the opposite sidewalk and dove behind the stand of a merchant selling jade statues.
Hyperventilating, sweat beading his brow, Nick pressed against a wall with the pistol drawn. He scanned the busy street. The parade continued its celebrating dance. On the opposite side of the street Red Mohawk searched the crowd then kept moving, staying on that side of the parade. He hadn’t seen Nick cross. When the bouncer was out of sight, Nick exhaled.
His entire body vibrated with adrenaline. He stared at his shaking hand. The .38 was an odd extension of his fist. He’d fired a pistol a few times in his life at target practice, but never held one with the intent of shooting someone.
Jesus, what the hell am I doing?
He put the gun back into his coat and kept moving in the opposite direction of the man hunting him. He looked back occasionally, but Red Mohawk appeared to be gone. A few blocks later, Nick broke off from the crowds, hearing the parade fading into other celebrations around the city. He reached a corner where a taxi cab was parked by the curb. A Pakistani driver looked up from his newspaper. “Need a taxi?”
Nick only stared, contemplating whether to get into the car. Go home. This search isn’t worth losing your life or going to jail.
If he got arrested for carrying a weapon, Nick might lose his business visa, which would cost him his job. He’d been told by his boss and fellow co-workers to drop the search. The company reps along with the police had ruled Ming Trudeau among the many lost souls whose bodies vanished in the shadows of Hong Kong.
He pulled out the only photo he had of her. Ming was wearing a strapless red gown that exposed her neck and shoulders. Her long black hair with a cherry sheen was pinned up with two sticks. The photo took Nick back to that moment: last Chinese New Year. Ming’s face had beamed with the sweetest smile, her eyes glossy. She had been tipsy from champagne. After the countdown to midnight, she slipped Nick a surprise kiss, tender and passionate. Then she pulled away, gazing up at him.
“Whoa,” he said. The room spun from his champagne buzz and the kiss that still tingled on his lips. Up to this moment, his relationship with Ming Trudeau had been all business. She was a local dealer of art and antiques. Nick visited her from time to time as a buyer for Henriksson Asian Imports. He had always thought of Miss Trudeau’s French-Asian features as exotic, but because of his company’s strict policy about dating clients, Nick had never done more than flirted with Ming. She had never shown any signs of interest, until this sudden display of affection. “Miss Trudeau, what just happened?” he had asked her.
She grinned and glanced down at her glass. “I always wondered what it would be like to kiss you.”
Nick half-laughed, half-choked. “Right, this is part of a prank. Jake and Cal put you up to this, didn’t they?” He looked around the party, expecting his co-workers to all be laughing at his expense, another gag pulled on Nick Meyers. His buddies were at the bar doing shots.
“No, it’s not a prank.” She punched his chest. “Nicky, I’m finally admitting I have a crush on you.”
“Oh, um . . .” He fiddled with his wristwatch. “Really?”
“Yes, when you stepped into my shop a year ago and I first saw your eyes . . .” She blushed and shielded a hand over her face. “The champagne is making me say things I’m going to regret tomorrow.”
“That’s okay,” he said, feeling embarrassed himself. In all his years, he had never known a woman who had a crush on him.
Ming’s brown eyes turned serious. “Every time you come to Hong Kong I . . . I’m so very happy, and every time you go it leaves a hole in me right here.” She put his hand to her chest. The warmth of her skin permeated Nick’s palm. As he felt her heart beating, his own heart beat faster.
She gazed up at him with the most alluring eyes. “Don’t you find me attractive, Nicky?”
“Well, yes, of course. I’m incredibly flattered, but I’m never in one place long enough to date. In fact, tomorrow morning I’m leaving for Bangkok.”
“But you’re coming back, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know when. I’m scheduled to spend the next few months in Thailand.”
Ming’s hand caressed his cheek. “Then stay with me tonight.” She kissed him again, her lips pressing softly against his. The warmth of her mouth spread across his cheeks. Nick had allowed their lips to linger before pullin
g back. He looked around the party. His boss, Henriksson, was looking his way. The old man raised a suspicious eyebrow. Nick turned his attention back to Ming. “Sorry, Ming, you’re a client. I can’t. I . . .” He backed away, bumping into an ice sculpture. “I just can’t.” He left the party without talking to her again.
The next three months, Nick had toured Thailand, traveling from Bangkok to Phuket to meet with local artists and merchants. Every night he lay in the balmy heat of his hotel room, thinking of Ming, wondering what might have happened if he had gone home with her that night. She consumed his dreams. Trying to convince himself his desires were purely sexual, Nick had hired a few Thai prostitutes to alleviate his needs. But his chest still felt hollow. And empty sex with call girls could not replace the magic that he had felt from one kiss from Ming Trudeau.
Finally returning to Hong Kong, Nick had gone straight to her art shop. His body trembled as he stepped across the threshold. Then he saw Ming across the shop. Her cherry black hair was up in a ponytail. She seemed lost in her painting, as she brushed colored oils onto a canvass.
Nick snuck up behind her observing the masterpiece of a golden Buddha. “Excuse me, ma’am, but do you know where I can find an authentic painting by Ming Trudeau?”
She whirled around. “Nicky.” Dropping her brush, she threw her arms around his back. Her paint-smeared face pressed against his chest. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“I’ve missed you, too.” He stroked her head. She felt as if she belonged in his arms.
Ming pulled away. “Oh, no, your suit.”
He looked down at the smears of green, yellow, and sky blue on his jacket. Nick laughed. He kissed her desperately, as if her breath was the only thing that could keep him breathing. She put the “closed” sign up. Then, in a back room filled with Persian rugs, they peeled off each other’s clothes.
For the next ten months, Ming showed him a level of passion he never knew existed. During his fifteen years as an imports buyer, Nick had slept with numerous women around the world, but never felt anything that resembled love. With Ming, he felt as if he had discovered his soul mate.
Now, standing on the corner beside the taxi, Nick made his decision.
I can’t stop searching. Not now, not ever.
Ming might still be alive.
* * *
Nick kept walking. Aromas of frying egg rolls and sweet and sour sauce greeted him as he reached a block lined with restaurants. Across the street stood a building shaped like a pagoda. It rose several stories, although not nearly as towering as the surrounding high-rises. The pagoda’s rounded edges curved outward, contrasting the flat facades of the modern buildings. Red and gold tile roofing rounded its frame in nine layers. Perched at each point were red dragons, fiery tongues licking the night sky.
Nick pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket. The number above the pagoda’s main entrance, 999, matched the address printed on the paper. Ringing a chime, he stepped through the pagoda’s entrance into a musty shop. Chinese music crackled from a speaker in one corner. Behind the counter, large jars filled with knobby roots, colored herbs and powders lined the wall. Some jars contained liquid and floating mushrooms and what looked like pickled eggs. Other jars had become glass tombs to dead insects. Black beetles, dragonflies, grasshoppers, and silver crickets lay in mass graves.
Nick rang a bell at the counter. A curtain lifted back, and a petite old woman stepped into the room. She eyed him with a tilted head. “Hello, can I help you?”
“Yes, I’m Nick Meyers. I’m looking for Madame Xang. I was told I could find her here.”
“What you want?”
“To speak with her. She was my friend’s doctor. You might know of her, Ming Trudeau?” He held up the photo.
The woman stared at him blankly. “You have appointment?”
“No, please, it’s important I see the doctor.”
“I see if she have time.” The tiny woman disappeared behind the curtain.
Nick waited, listening to the Chinese music. The familiar plucked strings of pipa lutes and a konghou harp took him back to his first night at Ming’s apartment. They were lying across her bed, naked, their bodies beaded with sweat.
“What’s this?” Nick had asked, his fingers tracing a round, spiky black tattoo that coiled on Ming’s lower back. Its tail curled partly over her buttocks.
“It’s a dragon,” she said.
“I can see that. But why in the hell do you have one on your ass?”
“It’s just body art. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Nick kneaded her legs. “It’s just that . . . in America I’ve always equated tattoos with bad women. You seem more sophisticated than that. The fact that you allowed some guy to tattoo your ass . . .”
Ming looked up from her pillow. “First of all, Nicky, it was a woman who did the art, one of my sisters. And I don’t know about women in America, but in China we hold body art as sacred. Tattoos can be symbols of honor or devotion.”
“So what does the dragon symbolize?”
“A family I’d like to forget.”
* * *
The music ended. Nick snapped out of his reverie and focused back on the herbal jars that lined the walls. The curtain lifted and the old woman said, “Madame see you now.”
Stepping through the curtain, Nick followed her up a narrow staircase that gave him the impression they were ascending toward an attic. Another curtain, gold and silky, opened into a vast pentagon-shaped atrium with a lush garden. Green ivy with blooming orchids draped the walls. Bridges arched over ponds full of lily pads and koi fish nibbling the surface. Flowers bloomed everywhere, filling his nostrils with pollen-sweet fragrances. He paused momentarily at the bridge to take it all in. Damn, I think I’ve discovered Shangri-La. Numerous balconies with hanging ivy overlooked the atrium. High up, where exotic birds flew from nest to nest, moonlight shone through a skylight.
“You coming or what?”
Nick caught up with the woman on the other side of the bridge and followed her through a red curtain and into a dimly lit den teeming with beautiful women in low-cut dresses and kimonos. He felt several eyes on him, as the women checked him out from the couches and chairs. A potent smoke filled his throat and he coughed. There were men here, too, he noticed, sitting in the shadows, smoking from giant glass pipes. Nick recognized the smell. Opium.
He cringed with disgust. After losing his best friend, Steve, to a drug overdose, Nick had read about the addictive qualities of opium. The first few times you smoked it, the rush was filled with such intense pleasure and joy, it fulfilled every human need. But the more you smoked it, the more allusive those feelings became. Yet the need to get to that Nirvana place increased until it was an all-consuming obsession. Eventually opium addicts went on an empty quest called “chasing the dragon.” They would drop out of society and smoke themselves into oblivion, until eventually they’re bodies gave out.
Nick became starkly aware that his journey had led him into the same seedy underworld where his friend was found dead. Am I on an empty quest like Steve? Nick thought of his buddies trying to convince him to quit the search for Ming, just like he had tried to convince his best friend to quit smoking opium. No, Steve was seeking happiness from a pipe. I’m searching for a woman who was tender and loving and needed me. Still needs me.
He scanned all the drugged out men sitting slack in their chairs, eyes rolled back.
I won’t end up like them.
Out of the smoke approached an Asian woman in a blonde wig. Her sheer negligee exposed tiny brown nipples. She pressed a hand on Nick’s chest. “Hey baby, you come for fix or fantasy?”
“Uh . . .”
“He here for Madame Xang,” the guide said.
“Oh,” the blonde bowed and backed away.
Exiting the opium den, Nick and the old woman entered a hallway that was much more breathable. Ancient royal portraits of emperors adorned the walls. Pedestals supported ornate vases, fresh flower arrang
ements, and life-sized porcelain guard dogs, their growling visages etched with the highest detail of white, blue, and gold.
The woman showed him to a room at the end of the hall that was sparse except for a massage bed and a small table. On the table’s surface sat an ivory box and a vase holding a bouquet of burning incense. The room smelled like a garden of orchids. A sign at the door said, Please remove shoes. He did so, leaving them on a purple cushion outside.
“Take off shirt, lie on table,” the woman said.
“I’m not here for an appointment.”
“It is only way she see you.” She left before he could argue.
Nick unbuttoned his shirt. Did he really want to go through with this? What did he have to go back to? His boss had suspended him for “emotional healing,” and his craving for answers had become his latest addiction. Exhaling, he removed his shirt and tossed it on the floor. This was Ming’s healing center, after all, so what was the harm in seeing if this Madame Xang had a remedy for Nick’s miseries? He wrapped his .38 in his coat, making it into a lumpy pillow. He sat there, waiting. He hated these quiet moments alone with nothing to stimulate his brain. The silence only made him think of Ming.
DARK NEEDS: Three Twisted Tales of Horror Page 6
