The Year of the Hydra

by William Broughton Burt

  “How amazing.”

  Maybe it’s not in fact the ma huang. Maybe my nervous and disorder medication is finally kicking in.

  Tree tugs on Xu’s sleeve. “I got to get out of the sun, sweetie. Nice to meet you, Marilyn. You take care of yourself, Julian—and remember what I said.”

  Xu and I share a handshake. As he turns away, I notice a slight limp and recall being told that Xu has a wooden leg. Not a flesh-tone plastic prosthesis. No, an old-fashioned Captain Ahab wooden leg from the right knee down. Australian Eucalyptus. Which I suppose is admirable in its way.

  “Your friend so fat!” Marilyn cries happily as we turn toward the bus stop. “Why is she so fat? I cannot believe. You and your sister so fat too, but she so fat.”

  “You have an excellent eye,” I tell Marilyn. “Too bad it’s at the center of your forehead.”

  “For what?” she asks.

  “Foreskin. Forefather. Four gates to the city, halleloo. I think that’s our bus.”

  Marilyn and I hurry to join some dozen others wedging themselves inside an already full city bus. I don’t quite make it inside, and the door doesn’t quite close, but we’re underway. I think my ass is signaling for a right turn. A couple minutes of this and Marilyn and I change buses. Finally we stagger half-dead through the gate of Shenzhen High School of Electronic Excellence. For a change, the guard isn’t asleep. He’s playing sol. At her door, I thank Marilyn for the afternoon, and she giggles girlishly. “We go eat dinner sometime. What you like to eat?”

  Involuntarily my eyes tip to the two swells beneath her blouse. “All of it.”

  “Okay,” smiles Marilyn, looking away. “We do later.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Itsy’s passport is somewhat reassuring. The official stamps on its pages corroborate her story of travel and travail. More to the point, she is precisely sixteen years old and so a consenting Chinese adult.

  Returning the passport to Rui Long’s small hands, I say, “The photo does you little justice, but what camera can capture the torment of the human heart or the lightning from a young woman’s eyes? Have a seat.”

  Upon Itsy’s arrival at this apartment scarcely a minute ago, I closed the door behind her and peered through Lillian’s emerald curtains long enough to conclude that no one had noticed her arrival or else had not cared. And why should they? Many students live with their families in this dormitory and so come and go in their white-over-blues as a matter of course.

  Rui Long drops her small amber body into the nearer settee chair and tosses her mane. “I so appreciate your letting me just show up like this, Mr. Mancer,” she says. “I am seriously going out of my head.”

  “Call me Julian,” I say, settling into the other chair.

  The schoolgirl winces. “I don’t know if I can call you that.”

  “Try it. Juuuuuuulian.”

  “Julian.” She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. I told my father I was going to the supermarket. You know how I talk to him? I hold up something. So I hold up a grocery bag and say go supermarket me now okay and split before he can start with all his evil-ass—aw, man, I don’t even know. My dad’s just so totally disapproving. His whole family just does not get that I am not a little Chinaman or whatever. My mom’s half-black and half-Thai, and my dad’s totally Chinese. I just got my dad’s side, and so what? They’re like giving me stuff to eat I can’t even recognize as food.”

  “Why’d your mother send you here?” I ask.

  “She couldn’t deal with me. I was always in some kind of mess. Finally she says my daddy sent for me. My daddy ain’t sent for nobody or nothing. He hates my yellow ass. I’m sorry but it’s true. Now I’m like, ‘How am I supposed to go to a Chinese school when I don’t speak no Chinese?’ But the guy at the embassy said my dad must’ve paid a huge bribe to get me in this school, so whatever.”

  I’ve learned already that Chinese-Americans are roundly scorned in this country, especially the young women. If you’re not expert in Chinese culture, do not come over here in a yellow skin.

  Rui Long’s school jacket sags open, and I try not to stare at the contours of the thin white blouse, assuming there’s anything there to see. Her dark eyes are blinking and darting every moment. When they hold my face for an instant, I feel as though neither eye is looking at me but at something just behind me. I almost want to turn around.

  “What do your friends call you, Rui Long?”

  “Back in Westmont, I’m Doo.”

  I stare at her. “Doo?”

  “Short for Doodle. I’m all the time doodling on something. Nervous energy, I guess.”

  I’m still staring. “Does your father have a room for you?”

  “I stay in his auntie’s bedroom, or great auntie, or whatever in the world that woman is. In the same bed with her. I put my sleeping bag on the floor. I have to keep everything shut up inside my suitcase ‘cause this Chinese lady’s going through it every time I leave the room. I’m like shit, the winos back in Westmont live better than this.”

  Rui Long wilts. “Mr. Mancer, I’m really so sorry. I swear if I had anybody else to talk to—but from the first time I saw you, I don’t know, I just felt like you were somebody I could trust.”

  The schoolgirl’s sorrowful eyes rise to meet mine, and I go for a comforting smile. Hopefully she doesn’t spot the fangs.

  It’s certain that Rui Long doesn’t spot the gap where my missing gold maxillary first premolar crown should be. I now have a temporary. Tomorrow I re-visit Dr. Xylophone for my first fitting. There comes a time when you stop panning for gold in your rectum. A time when you by God break down and get fitted for a new crown. I can more or less afford one, as the Shenzhen Textbook Publishing Company has actually paid me in full. Just like Lil’s school, they pay out in bright new bank notes so salmon-belly pink that Mao Zedong looks occidental.

  Still, after all the dental work I’ll be left a weensie bit short of the eighty-seven thou’ I owe that debt collector. But he looked like a fellow with a good sense of humor.

  “All this is my fault,” moans Rui Long. “I so know that. But now what am I supposed to do? My momma won’t take me back, and my daddy can’t even talk to me. I don’t even have no clothes. I got two pants and one…”

  I let Rui Long ramble on, enjoying the small gravelly voice as it slides from dialect to dialect, Little Miss Valley Girl for a few lines, the Channel 6 news reporter for a bar or two, then she’s back to the palm-lined bullet-riddled streets of LA. To witness that buffalo-wing jive coming from this perfect Chinese face is a novelty I’m not sure I’ll ever quite get past.

  “… I don’t know, man,” she concludes. “Like, I pulled a rune this morning—you know the runes?”

  I nod.

  “I have the Barbie deck. Sounds really dumb, I know, but sometimes it’s just so right. I got the Mall Closed card. It’s like I can’t go forward, so I have to go back only I don’t know if that means back to Westmont or—”

  “I think your rune is telling you to focus inward on the native magic of your unique artistic voice,” I reply authoritatively.

  Rui Long’s mouth sags opens, the lips sticking together momentarily. “That’s it,” she whispers. “Focus inward.”

  “Personally I use the GQ deck,” I say. “Whatever works for you.”

  “My God,” breathes Rui Long. “Mr. Mancer, you are just such a powerful finger pointing to the moon, if you know what I mean.”

  “I think you listen to Shatrina,” I say dryly.

  “Totally. Till my momma took away my radio, Shatrina was like my guiding light and shit.”

  “You know?” I say thoughtfully. “I think you’re really stressed just now. Doo. I can see it in your aura. Lots of red and burnt-orange and just the slightest touch of mocha near the right earlobe.”

  “You read auras? Really?”

  “I’m a ninth-degree master of a little-known school of Nepalese Foot Reiki. I don’t accept students.”

  Shoving aside the
small table, I say, “Give me your syzygy, I mean your left foot. Don’t worry. I’m a professional.”

  “Geez, I’ve never had Reiki,” Itsy says giddily, raising her foot. She’s wearing heavy white sneakers with a wad of purple bubble gum on the left sole. Placing the heel between my knees, I begin to loosen the broad violet lacing, fully enjoying this now. Itsy’s nylon socks are eggshell-thin. I force myself not to speculate on her taste in undergarments.

  This is a client.

  The laces thoroughly loose, the shoe surrenders to my hands and I toss it. An oaken smell rises, that of dried leaves on a November day. Grasping the toe of the sock, I slide it off the tiny foot, place my palm beneath the sole, close my eyes, and announce, “You are a very old soul.”

  I always start with you-are-a-very-old-soul.

  Before I can say, “You have lived many lifetimes,” I’m jolted by something quite unexpected. Though my eyes are closed, I clearly see the person seated before me. Not her exterior, but a vast constellation of glowing pinpoints of light. Puzzled, I open my eyes. When I close them again, the array is still there. Before I can file this experience away under Strange But Not Presently Pertinent, I realize that the light display is richly embedded with information. Curious now, I focus for a moment on the inflow of what I can only describe as an emanation from the person before me. Suddenly the thought registers: this is a very old soul who has lived many lifetimes.

  Stop it.

  “You have lived many lifetimes,” I say gravely but before I can continue, another realization intrudes, one less prescient than present. I know that the essence of this creature is severe and magnificent and not to be trifled with.

  I file this information away under Stranger and Even Less Pertinent.

  “Hold the arms of the chair,” I order Rui Long.

  She complies and I pull foot, chair and all, toward me. Itsy’s naked heel now rests a scant inch away from something else severe and magnificent and not to be trifled with.

  Rui Long giggles, enjoying this. “What else do you see in my aura?”

  “Shhhh.”

  My fingers search for a pressure point along the second metatarsal, generally effective for stimulating the right nipple. I still can’t say exactly what slumbers beneath that white poly-cotton blouse of hers, or rather how much of it. But I’m always willing to learn. Ah. Here’s the pressure point. My fingertip circles it soothingly, imagining the supple corona of a rising nipple.

  “Close your eyes,” I command, “and take a deep breath.”

  The two almond eyes roll closed.

  “Deeper. The biggest breath you can take.”

  Rui Long inhales and the open jacket parts a bit more. Two rising nipples appear through the thin poly-cotton. They are lower on her chest than expected. Pleasant discovery.

  “Wow,” she says. “I’ve never felt so…”

  “Shhh,” I say, pulling Itsy’s foot slightly closer.

  Oops. Too close.

  The almond eyes open and blink, and the foot vanishes from my lap. “I gotta go.”

  “What? In the middle of your Nepalese Foot Reiki session?”

  “I think my dad’s looking for me. I mean, I know he is.”

  Quickly pulling on her sock and shoe, Rui Long bends to tie a violet shoelace, her thick hair nearly reaching the floor. I fight the urge to reach out and touch the glossy tresses. This is a very beautiful girl. Too bad she’s sprinting for the American Teacher’s Door.

  “Thanks for the Reiki and everything, Mr. Mancer. I just—see you in class, okay? And I’ll remember what you said about the native magic and stuff.”

  “Feel free to come again any time you feel—”

  The door slams behind the itsy schoolgirl.

  “—troubled.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  When I left campus at lunch today, Phoebe’s Buick was at the curb. The driver’s window motored down, and Phoebe said, “Why you don’t call me? I leave you two messages.” The dark shades concealed her eyes but not her implacability. I muttered an excuse, not a very good one even by my standards.

  “I want to tell you something,” said Phoebe, “but not chase you around like some schoolgirl. You want talk to me, I eat dinner at Shanghai Hotel tonight. You come, you don’t come, I don’t care.”

  Up went the window and off she drove.

  Women. What can I say. Listen politely to one or two of their hard-luck stories, and you see what it gets you. Besides, I have plans tonight.

  I’m standing outside the open doorway of the American Teacher’s Apartment, coddling my fourth gin sour of the evening and watching the sun put itself to bed in the pink hydrogen sulfide soup of the west. It’s been a day. After Lil’s four English Conversation classes—and my brush with Mrs. Sternbaum—I bused over to Primary School Focus Youth Shenzhen to help Tree with her balky satellite uplink. I carried along a few common fuses, which turned out to be all the situation required.

  “Buy yourself a good voltage regulator,” I told Tree. “Chinese voltage is all over the place.”

  “Praise Jesus Janus Aphrodite,” she cried. “I could see myself walking into the hardware store and asking for a satellite uplink. Sit yourself down. I’ll pour you some iced tea.”

  I willingly pulled back a chair. Tree’s iced tea is not the typical exercise in prudery one encounters in restaurants these days but a liberally sugared and lemon-wedged delight of rattling ice cubes and wistful dreams of Old South front porches in late June. “I can only stay for a few minutes,” I told her. “I’m working on a little project in Lil’s kitchen. Making better use of the space.”

  Much better, in fact. Last night I’d walked home from Studebaker Supermarket with a small aquarium, a pair of disposable latex gloves, some stainless-steel tweezers, a veterinary syringe, five glass jars with lids and a package of freshly milled rice flour. This evening’s plan involves hanging my strongest reading glasses on my nose, pulling the latex gloves onto my hands, lifting Ralpho’s spore-print delicately from its envelope with the stainless-steel tweezers, and injecting myself with the rice flour. Actually I need to check the online instructions once more, but with spring fast approaching with its daily thundershowers, how long can it be before mushrooms are sprouting from beneath my underarms? More than the usual number, I mean?

  Tree took a seat at the table and I said, “So what’s the story with you and that Xu guy?”

  “Mister Xu,” she replied crisply (still sounds like shoe), “has put my entire library of broadcasts on the website. You can listen, you can download, you can do anything you want. I’m extremely indebted to him.”

  “I’d say,” I said, rattling my ice cubes, “that either the faint scent of romance is in the air or someone’s burning a truck tire. Tell me, dear. Does that wooden leg have any common household uses?”

  “Mr. Xu,” said Tree, “may be the world’s number one authority on Chinese astrology and numerology. And he knows a great deal about the Fibonacci sequence—more, in fact, than you. You owe it to yourself to talk to him.”

  “Ah,” I said, “Mr. Xu and Mr. Fibonacci have met.”

  Fibonacci, for the uninitiated, actually Leonardo Pisano Bogollo, was the first modern thinker to notice that nature moves in predictable lurches. A typical seedling, for example, begins by making one leaf, then two, then three, then five, then eight, and so on, exactly the same sequence every time. What fascinated Fibonacci was that the next number always equals the sum of the previous two. This remains perfectly constant, even when the numbers reach into the hundreds of thousands. Not rocket science, perhaps, but pretty cool for thirteenth-century Italy.

  Tree continued, “Our Mr. Xu has established absolute correlations between the Sequence and the development of human intelligence. His work shows that we are at the brink of a huge step forward. You know how when you plot the Sequence on the number grid, it makes a spiral?”

  “I do.”

  “And that the spiral exactly matches the growth pattern
of a nautilus shell?”

  “And a sunflower,” I said, “and planetary motions, and I think the national debt.”

  “Well, Mr. Xu says there are very clear numerical landmarks that show where we are right now, and—”

  “Which is where?” I interrupt.

  “You know exactly where,” said Tree, feigning astonishment. “We are at the Three-three-three.”

  I set down my frosted glass. “Tree. Listen to me. There is no Three-three-three in the Fibonacci sequence. I don’t know where you got that whole big wad of goo, but it’s something less than fully baked, if you don’t mind my saying. Besides which, Lillian is on the other side of the world and there’s not one thing we can do about it.”

  “The devil may be in the details,” said Tree, smiling, “but the angel is in the intention.”

  “I love all these little slip-joints in your theories,” I complain. “If something doesn’t tie together—hey, just insert a little Uncle Remus or nose hair of Nebuchadnezzar. Or better yet, conduct a little more in-depth research with our Mr. Xu and his wooden—what body part was it?”

  Tree has another Mister back in Memphis, should you care to know it. Mr. Carter. I’ve never met the man, but Lil swears he’s a mortician. “Let the dead bury the dead,” Tree is said to have declared some years back when she picked up her purse and walked out on him. Evidently neither of the two seems capable of divorcing the other. Lil tells me they’re actually very close in their way.

  I’m a senior Assumptionist nun in my way.

  I throw down the last of my fifth gin sour, gazing at the grey-brown goo of a western sky that recently promised me a sunset. Hurrying to set the empty glass in the sink, I wheel and grab my keys. Darkness is setting in and I need to make one more run to Studebaker Supermarket. I’m a bit low on gin. And ma huang. And vermiculite, which is supposed to be good for really frisky mycelium growth.

  Exiting the gate, I wave to the two guards—both of them are awake and wearing pants—and walk past the spot where Phoebe’s Buick intercepted me earlier today. I can’t help but skirt around it. I don’t know what’s with that woman. Or with me. The ground seems to have subtly shifted beneath my feet. I find myself wondering why men put up with the negativity of a Phoebe Sternbaum. It’s hard to say, but something seems to happen to a woman when she hits that spot around thirty-two, thirty-three, somewhere in that faded and jaded spot. She’s pissed about it and now her needle-like eyes are surveying the room in search of a man to blame it on. God help you if you happen to be sitting there. I don’t think I was really seeing that before I looked up to discover that lively little sprout of a Rui Long perched on the edge of the American Teacher’s Settee Chair.