He didn’t look at all like Timothy Dobbins.
The last time I saw that father of the long, polished car, there was someone with him. I could only see the top of her head on the passenger side. On that final day, my unsmiling father held the door open as this second person climbed out of the driver’s side and walked to where I stood. “Don’t do this anymore,” my sister told me evenly. “It hurts your head and mine, too.”
I pace along the dark, clothesline-strewn balcony, wishing I could open my fly and pee into the honest black earth as did Li Bai among his peonies and Mao Zedong among heads of state. I wish a lot of things. It still doesn’t quite register. It’s a bad nickel that won’t quite drop. I have met our—
The power went off more than an hour ago. I was pacing this same balcony, less drunk than now but every bit as hollow, every bit as shattered, asking the warm, starless, and godless sky my too-open question, when all at once every electric light within view dimmed, flickered twice, then perished. So it goes. My too-open question concerns what happens now if powers-that-be really are after Timothy Dobbins and someone really was snapping photos of our tête-à-tête at the Sidewalk Fish Brains Café? When the time comes for my debriefing, let’s hope I won’t be tied to the chair. And that no one assumes that my highly psychic sister knows everything her brother knows.
Lil hasn’t phoned since Tree was staying here. I’m told my sister has tired of the psychic distance between us. “He outright lies,” she said to Tree. I asked Tree for the exact quote, since with my sister there is a qualitative difference between, “He’s a disinformation campaign,” “He fucking lied to me,” and “He outright lies.”
She’s always felt his presence. She’s felt him all along.
Before tonight’s power failure, I went online and skimmed Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century. It’s everything that Beijing professor said it is. A bald-faced declaration of war against any society whose prosperity rivals that of the United States. The affixed names are those chanted nightly on the evening news, the men who currently run God’s Country, not that they’re essentially different from those running it before. We were overturning governments and installing dictators when Howdy Doody was a stave of wood. If anything is different in the current regime, it’s the hubris. No one sees the need to conceal it much anymore.
Then I rose from the computer, gin in hand, to pace barefoot here on the balcony in ever more ragged circles, recollecting rumors recently flowing through the neighborhood. That atypical pneumonia is a bio-weapon created and released by the dear hearts and gentle people of Dubuque and Bloomington and Tallahassee, the same crowd that gave us HIV two decades ago, and who am I to dismiss such suspicions, having already read Memorandum 200? You remember Memorandum 200, wherein our seated secretary of state announced that no more important goal exists for the US government than the depopulation of the third world. Depopulation. Such a better word than genocide.
Evidently, not only do my darkest intuitions concerning my country of origin appear to be reasonably accurate, my worst premonitions about Hydrangea Corporation may in fact be badly understated. Then there’s the matter of my whole life. As in, maybe I’ve never had one. Every significant turn in both Lil’s and my life seems now to have been a case of fraud. Worse, there’s no reason to suppose that I’ve reached the bottom of it. What if there’s more, much more, surrounding the matter of Lil’s and my inception? What if we are purposeful? If so, whose purpose might that be? A doting asshole father would be bad enough. What if it’s the people he works for? One thing seems to be certain. Someone’s going to an awful lot of trouble.
Turning to pace once more toward the shadowed staircase, I’m startled by an unexpected sight. A soundless silhouette seems to be gliding directly toward me. The silhouette is small in stature and seems possessed of a long trail of hair. The figure stops.
“Mr. Mancer?” asks a young woman’s voice.
“Rui Long?”
“Thank God you’re awake. I totally need to talk to you. I mean, I know it’s late and you’re injured and everything—how are you?”
Unexpectedly warmed, I say, “I’m better. I’m much better. Come inside. There’s no power, but Lil has candles.”
“Lil?” asks the schoolgirl, following me into the cave of the apartment.
As I fumble for candles and matches, I relate the short version of my sister’s aborted year abroad, concluding, “Our mother was just moved out of ICU. I suppose that’s a good sign. But realistically I don’t expect my sister to return here at all.”
No sooner do I speak the words than I know they are wrong. Lillian is coming back. She has to.
“So you’re stuck in Shenzhen, same as me?” says Rui Long. I turn to see her ironic face in the candlelight. There are twin glitters in the two dark eyes. Wildly uncontrolled.
“With the Memphis blues again,” I reply. “I’m going to make myself another gin sour. I don’t suppose you ever have a nippity-nip?”
“Double,” she says. “No sugar, no ice.”
“Get out of town.”
Rui Long giggles and her voice goes raspy. “You grow up fast in Westmont, man. Really, Mr. Mancer, I have had such a day. My crazy-ass father has decided—”
“Hold that thought. I’ll be right back with medicine for the soul.”
Even from the other room, Lil’s three candles half-illuminate the kitchen, where it’s soon clear that the gin is getting really low. I manage to squeeze two more sours out of the bottle, one finger remaining for a nightcap. Then I’m down to a Guangzhou vodka I was really hoping to avoid.
Returning with drinks, I’m greeted by a soft breeze from the open doorway. The three fluttering candles on the settee table form a seeming shrine to the young goddess whose soft smile they illuminate.
Rui Long goes back to her rant, and I make an effort to listen. Truth is, I’m taken utterly away by the pale, candlelit face, its color stolen by the dancing yellow light. A strand of hair casts a threefold shadow across Rui Long’s forehead, which lurches as she speaks. Because a candle does not know how to drink gin, I watch the colorless ingénue speak, ignoring the words, absorbing the raging pheromones, the lush art-deco lips describing every contour of my longing, my crushing need to escape my own thoughts . The almond eyes dart unselfconsciously as Rui Long speaks. I see the petty rebelliousness, the deeply caked melodrama, the sad naiveté beneath the failed swagger. These I know are footnotes to a text that I can but imagine. Flowing meanwhile like an underground river beneath the visual delights roils the same unmistakable preponderance I noticed when last Rui Long warmed that settee chair. That knowing should counsel me to hold my distance. Instead, it draws me in all the more. I want to know how the ascending arc of that gravelly voice might taste inside my own mouth. I want to know the scent of those swollen lips moistened by my own meager tongue.
“… so I ran out the door and came here,” says Rui Long, perched on the very edge of the chair. “Can I use your bathroom?”
“Turn left at the kitchen.”
She sighs loudly. “Thanks for letting me vent like this. I know there’s like nothing you can do and everything, but just having somebody who can listen—you know, I pulled a Barbie rune about you. I got the Free Extra Minutes card, which is like the best card in the deck. It’s about open communication. I think I’m supposed to trust you.”
“Rui Long,” I say, “you’re talking to a sinister man. I destroy everything and everyone I come near. You might bear that in mind.”
She smiles happily. “See? Would you say something like that if I couldn’t trust you? Anyway I checked you out online. I didn’t know you were like famous and shit. Anyway I feel like I already know you from somewhere.”
“You don’t know me, Rui Long.”
“Hold that thought?”
She springs up and bounces from the room, taking all the magic with her. I’m left once more with the grotesques of my mind. I try not to anticipate the return of
the young schoolgirl with every cell in my body. I try not to see my own adolescent melodramas, my own petty authority issues. I try not to see quite so clearly the childishness beneath my own failed swagger, the easily traceable arc of moral degeneration that accompanies my ever-more-pitiful flight from myself.
Rattling the ice cubes in my glass one final time, I drain the last drop of gin onto my tongue. Maybe I should be literally running. Hauling ass down the darkened stairway, taking four steps at a time. How does one know anything anymore? Post-medication. Pre-comprehension. Transdermal. Sublingual. Semi-imprisonable.
“What’s all this?” calls Rui Long from the kitchen.
Rising, I enter the dark kitchen to stand behind Rui Long. She’s gawking at my aquarium/spore-incubator and its various bells, whistles, and three-eyed toads.
“A futile attempt to breed rare tropical fish,” I say. “I foolishly forgot to add water.”
She laughs. “Mr. Mancer, you are so totally ‘shroom-farming.”
“Am not.”
“Are too. You’ve got the vermiculite and everything. I hope you’ll let me know when it’s harvest time.”
As Rui Long speaks, the back of my good left hand describes the faintest outline of her pert bottom. The two taut swells are as high and tight as a gymnast’s.
“Umm, are you sure this is completely ethical?” asks the schoolgirl, a hint of a smile in her voice.
“I’m certain of it,” I say, left hand now rising from the dip of her waist to a tiny shoulder blade. A moment later, my fingers have outlined her left breast.
The gravelly voice drops to an ironic register. “Mr. Mancer, I don’t suppose you’d have any dope to smoke?”
“Hard to come by,” I whisper, my hand now arriving on the firm belly. “Join me in the front room?”
“First make me a real drink.”
“Gladly.”
“And don’t put your hands on me again unless I tell you.”
My left hand freezes and withdraws. “No sugar, no ice, right?”
“And more gin this time,” says Rui Long, exiting the kitchen in a saunter.
I give her the Guangzhou vodka. Like I said, never trust me. I pour myself one, as well. Now I’m lurching into the candlelit front room where Rui Long is seated imperiously, one blue-uniformed knee crossed smartly over the other. Her school jacket is hanging on the back of the chair.
“Let’s get something straight,” she says. “You’re world-famous and everything, and I’m just nobody, but you keep your hands off my body. Understand? If it weren’t for that rune, I wouldn’t even be here.”
“Got it,” I say, holding out her drink.
After a moment’s reflection, Rui Long accepts the drink. “My mama’s boyfriends used to do that shit. I hated it. Old men putting their hands on me. Mister Mancer. Julian. Whoever the fuck you are.”
The itsy schoolgirl gives me a stare as she takes a long drink. “Maybe you have some kind of answer for me, and maybe you don’t. The thing is, I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody like you, okay? What you don’t know is, you’ve never met anybody like me.”
There is a challenge in the stare.
“Actually,” I reply, “I’m developing a rather clear sense of that.”
We drink in silence for a minute, watching the three flames sway in the breeze from the open door. Tree’s theories on Indigo children come to mind. Special kids, she calls them. Curtain-climbers for God. Knee-huggers for Jesus. Highly advanced spiritual entities that crap their pants thrice a day. Tree says those children have to deal with the same growing pains as everyone else only more so, as they never quite fit in, never quite see the world through the same half-lidded eyes as those around them. Curious, I close my own eyes to see whether I might still catch sight of that constellation of lights I once viewed in Rui Long’s presence. There’s nothing now. Nothing to feel beyond that bothersome background hum, that odd sense that I am in the presence of—what? Something well beyond my estimation and easily within my grasp? I find that quite alluring. Here is a bright-eyed ravaged angel, her wings not yet fully open, who imagines she can get away with toying with me. I’ve given fair warning.
“I’m not an Indigo,” says Rui Long. “That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? I used to think that was my problem. I wasn’t inferior to everybody else—I was superior. Now I think I’m just different.”
Ding.
I hear a small sound on the balcony. A cat, most likely. Still I rise and close the door. No sense advertising the fact that a female student is drinking bad vodka in the American Teacher’s Apartment in the middle of the night. I turn to Rui Long. “How did you manage to get past the gate guard?”
“Waited till he took a pee,” she says.
I nod. Ralpho said the presence of the guards makes me relatively safe here. I’d say relatively is the key word.
The second drink seems to have hit our little schoolgirl. She launches into a rant about her messed-up childhood. I let her talk, glad to not be alone, comforted by the soft light from my sister’s too-scented candles. They make of this shabby collection of angles and absurdities a nearly enchanted space—but it’s Rui Long who brings the magic. I would be so desperate if she weren’t here with me.
“Do you ever tell the truth?” asks Rui Long, clumsily setting her empty glass on the table. “I mean, really? I don’t think there’s anything more important than the truth. It doesn’t matter what we do ‘cause nobody’s watching, but it matters a lot what we say because the universe is always listening. Do you, like, get that?”
“I, like, get that you’d better stay here tonight.”
“There’s a lot of truth in lies, though,” says Rui Long, rubbing her eyes tiredly. “And there’s a little lie inside every truth. It gets soooo complicated.”
“You can have the mattress or the box springs,” I tell her, standing, “but you’ve got to be out of here before dawn. You can hang around the basketball courts till the other students start showing up. Then my advice is to go back to your father’s.”
“I’m not going back there.”
“As a matter of fact, you are. I’ll take the mattress. Help me move it.”
Rui Long’s eyes search mine. “Can I ask you something?”
“Ask.”
“But you’re standing up.”
“I listen very well standing up,” I say.
She waits.
Sighing, I drop into the settee chair. My arm hurts more when I’m tired.
“There was something on your webpage,” says Rui Long, “Julian. God, it’s weird calling you that.”
“Call me Doo,” I say.
She stares, uncomprehending.
“I’ve been called Doo my whole life,” I tell her.
In mock slow-motion, Rui Long grabs her head with both hands. “Oh, my Goddddddd! We’re Doo and Doo! See what I mean? There’s something about—I don’t even know but shit, here’s the thing. I saw something on your website. You said there’s an inverse relationship between emerging truths and devolving—what was it?”
“Devolving systems based on subtractive processes.”
“But why inverse?” asks Rui Long. “To me, it’s like the exact opposite of inverse.”
I rise. “I’ve already reached my conversation quota for the day. Help me with the mattress.”
“You know,” says Rui Long, rising, “I think you’re telling the truth when you don’t even know it. It’s when you think you’re really saying something that you’re just making shit up. You know?”
“Have you been talking to my sister? Help me with this. I only have one arm.”
Clumsily, we each grab one corner of the American Teacher’s Mattress and yank. The mattress doesn’t budge.
“You’re going to have to really pull,” I say.
Nimbly, Rui Long drops to the floor and places both feet against the side of the bed. Again we give a mighty pull, and the mattress slides onto the floor. One of the candles goes out.
“Where are you?” I say.
“Help!” she cries.
I lift a corner of the mattress, and Rui Long crawls out, laughing. I watch her jack her little ass before rising to her feet. That was for me, I muse. Rui Long, still turned away, combs her hair with the fingers of both hands.
“You want to know what’s really true?” she asks the wall.
The itsy schoolgirl turns to face me. “Sit down.”
There’s something new in the scratchy voice. I let myself fall into the settee chair.
Her eyes fixed on mine, Rui Long begins to unbutton the white school blouse. I watch the small fingers do their work, beginning at the tiny throat where dangles a silver butterfly pendant. The blouse falls partially open, and I see the bony notch of her sternum. In the candle light, Rui Long’s skin is Chinese-perfect. A shake of her small shoulders, and the blouse cascades to the floor. The two breasts are small but oddly heavy, their broad bases surrendering against the thin bones of her chest before suddenly and dramatically presenting the dark nipples straight forward. It’s as though my eyes are pulling at them. I notice with satisfaction that the right breast is slightly larger than the left and a bit turned out.
The almond eyes blink slowly as Rui Long’s hands reach down, sliding beneath the elasticized waistband to ease the uniform pants past the swell of her hips. Rui Long’s thumbs hook her panties, as well, and a moment later both pants and panties are pooled at her ankles. Another surprise. A modest patch of hair marks the spot where Rui Long’s thighs meet, and emerging from that small, dark patch is a diminutive and partially erect penis.
There’s always a catch.
“Umm… ,” I begin.
“It’s not what you think,” whispers Rui Long.
“You can put your pants back on now, Roy Long.”
“Julian. Doo. Listen. I’m something new.”
“Nice breast job, by the way. You really had me going for a—”
“Look at me,” says Rui Long.
With difficulty, I return my eyes to the slight youth before me who, I cannot deny, cuts a splendid figure in the gently swaying candlelight.
The Year of the Hydra Page 26
