Madam Wu trots past me toward the kitchen and the mushroom nursery.
“Uh, actually—” I call after her. “Agents Barnes and Velázquez?” I say as she vanishes into the kitchen. “Madam Wu.”
Now someone else is standing in the doorway. It’s a broadly smiling uniformed guard. I accept from him a number-ten manila envelope with my name scrawled in purple ink.
“Thank you very much,” I say.
The guard gawks at the ruin of an apartment before turning away. Now Madam Wu trots back through.
“Thank you very much,” I say.
Before closing the door, I check outside. No other visitors just now. I feel the envelope disappear from my hand. Turning, I stare at Agent Barnes who’s walking back to the settee with my delivery.
“I’m sorry?”
“Just a precaution,” says Velázquez. “Have a seat, Mr. Mancer. We’ll explain everything.”
Barnes extracts from the envelope a single sheet of spiral-bound notebook paper with an attached sticky note. Frowning, he says, “Do you know someone named Tree?”
Again falling into the computer chair, I reply, “She’s closely related to Flowering Shrub, and I’m not saying another word until I know what you two are here for.”
I gaze at them, ice water in my veins. I’m not too bad at this.
“Of course,” says Velázquez, reaching into his briefcase for a glossy eight-by-ten. “Mr. Mancer, have you seen this man before?”
No safari hat. Otherwise I’m looking at Timothy Dobbins.
I shrug. “I met him two days ago.”
“Can you tell us about that meeting?” says Velázquez.
“He said his name was Dobbins, and he seemed to know a lot about my sister and myself. I didn’t feel very good about it.”
Barnes says, “Tell us about that meeting.”
I give them the sanitized version. Some guy walks up and says he’s my long-lost dad. He tells me there’s undeniable proof in the shopping bag. I refuse to look. That’s basically it. “Nutcase as far as I’m concerned,” I conclude. “I haven’t mentioned this matter to my sister, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t either.”
“What else did he say?” asks Barnes.
“I’d like to hear what you can tell me, actually.”
“We would appreciate it,” Barnes says carefully, “if you’d let us ask the questions.”
Velázquez frowns for effect.
“I don’t have to talk to you guys at all,” I say.
Barnes leans forward. “Mr. Mancer, this is a United States Department of State investigation. It would be in your best interests to cooperate.”
I lean forward, too. “If this has something to do with me or my sister, you need to come clean with me right now, and I mean right now.”
“You want to calm down?” says Barnes.
“I should have gone straight to the Chinese,” I snarl. “I should have had his ass thrown out of the country.”
“We’re working with the Chinese on this,” says Barnes.
I fall back against the back of the computer chair, and it rolls a few inches. “Who is this asshole anyway? What’s he after?”
Barnes and Velázquez exchange a glance.
Velázquez turns to me and says quietly, “Mr. Mancer, this man is not who he says he is. His name is Jerome Stiles. Stiles has been involved in intelligence and counter-intelligence in one way or another since the 1950s. We think we know who he’s working for at the present time and, while we cannot reveal that information, I will say this. Jerome Stiles is not friendly to the best interests of the United States of America.”
Both men stare.
“Since he has contacted you,” continues Velázquez, “it’s possible that he will attempt to contact you again.”
Barnes pulls out a business card.
“If he does,” continues Velázquez, “we ask that you say nothing about this interview, and further that you call us from a pay phone using the number on this card. Should you have any questions or concerns, any at all, call this number and ask for myself or Agent Barnes.” Velázquez folds his hands in his lap. “We agree that your sister does not need to know about this matter. In fact, we consider it advisable that you mention neither Mr. Stiles nor Agent Barnes nor myself to anyone.”
They search my face.
I wonder what questions I should be asking right now. Finally I say, “But why would he approach me in the first place? What possible… ?”
Wrinkled brows.
“Did he show you his so-called proof?” asks Velázquez.
“I refused to look. I guess I was a little worked up.”
The men glance at each other, and I ask myself how much they know and how much they’re fishing for. I also wonder who they work for, if anyone. Agent Barnes has the look of a county-fair pickpocket.
“Look,” I say with a sigh, “this is a little embarrassing. My sister and I have never known our father. A few years ago, I searched very hard for his identity. Could it be,” I ask, “that I left a trail that someone, some con artist, somebody like Stiles, could follow back to me?”
“It’s possible,” says Barnes.
“If you find out anything one way or the other,” I tell them, “would you give me a call?”
I busy myself writing down the phone number of the American Teacher’s Apartment and Barnes accepts it. We all rise to our feet.
“So, what do you think of this atypical pneumonia thing?” asks Velázquez.
Both men grin icily, awaiting my answer.
“Most atypical,” I say.
“You don’t think it’s serious?” asks Velázquez.
“Atypical pneumonia is the least of my worries,” I reply. “What about you, Agent Velázquez?”
He says, “It’s the least of my worries, too.”
I turn to the chalky one. “And you, Agent Barnes? Is atypical pneumonia the least of your worries?”
“Absolutely,” he says cheerfully. “Mind if I use your bathroom?”
“Uh—”
Barnes begins walking toward the rear of the apartment.
“Actually,” I say, “it isn’t working.”
“Oh? I’ll take a look at it,” he says, still walking.
“You really shouldn’t,” I call but Barnes is already jiggling the doorknob.
He turns to me. “That’s funny. This door is locked.”
“That’s what’s not working,” I say. “The lock.”
Barnes and I share a gaze. Talk loud, show no fear, and continue with the lesson.
“We appreciate your cooperation,” says Velázquez, extending his hand.
“Sorry if I got a little hot under the collar,” I say, shaking his right hand with my left.
“Quite understandable,” says Velázquez.
As I shake Barnes’s hand, he says, “You sure about that life insurance? You can never have too much.”
We all laugh.
After the two visitors leave, I press my ear against the entrance door. A full minute later, I open it warily. There’s only a woman hanging wash. I eye her suspiciously before closing and bolting the door. I’m suddenly aware that my legs are shaking.
“You can come out,” I call to Rui Long.
She emerges fully dressed. “Who the great big shit was that?”
“Insurance salesmen,” I say. “I didn’t want any.” Wobbling to the kitchen, I uncap the Guangzhou vodka and turn it up.
“You all right?” asks Rui Long.
I don’t reply till I’ve recovered my breath. In Guangzhou, it is said, vodka is formulated from cigarette butts and previously owned footwear.
“Perfect,” I say hoarsely, pushing past her.
Back at the settee table, I lift the document delivered by the gate guard. The attached sticky note reads:
Julian,
When I woke up this morning, I found this page in my dream notebook. It came through when I was sleeping. Excited???!!
Love, Tree
> I examine the spiral-bound page. The handwriting is unfamiliar, but the two words scrawled across the top register pretty clearly. Chapter Thirteen.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Have you heard?” Nancy Drew shouts into my face. “Fief dollars under sis have and haaal the people.”
“Say again?”
“Fifty daughters,” says Nancy Drew. “Haaal the people. Have you heard thees?”
“Fifty daughters?”
“Doccccctors,” says Nancy Drew.
I close my eyes in hopes it may keep my head from exploding. It doesn’t help that I’m clinging to the grab-rail of a city bus during peak after-school rush. Children’s backpacks assail me from every direction, and the bus driver is playing “The East is Red” at a hundred forty-two decibels, quite possibly shattering my J-B Weld premolar crown.
And this is Nancy Drew speaking.
“Oh,” I say. “Doctors. What about them?”
“Yes. Fifty doctors. Have you heard thees?”
“Have I heard what?”
“Fifty doctors!” Nancy Drew replies incredulously.
“What are you telling me about the fifty doctors?” I inquire through my teeth.
“Fifty doctors and nurses haalp the people. Have you heard thees?”
“No.”
“No?” says Nancy Drew. “I very surprise.”
I very fatigue. I break eye contact with Nancy Drew. For reasons that presently elude, she and I are en route to Guan Shanyue Art Museum. I’ve barely completed today’s classes, and this vacuum-tube of a girl shows up breathless with two tickets and the grin that ate Shanghai. “We go now paint museum okay!”
People are staring at me. More than the usual number, I mean. I wonder whether it could have anything to do with my country’s having spent the previous twenty-four hours bombing Baghdad into the early- to mid-Mesolithic.
Nah.
“Do you like thees?” asks Nancy Drew, pointing through the bus window at an anonymous department store.
I ignore her.
“Tell me a funny story,” says Nancy Drew.
I ignore her a little more. I was hoping that an outing might help me clear my head. Here I am rehabbing from perfectly normal police-inflicted trauma when my dad shows up with a syringe, a horned schoolgirl puts her dick up my ass, and I receive a page of not-bad prose from a dead queer. “Quite understandable,” said Agent Velázquez. For him maybe. One has to wonder just a little as to what possessed our little Truman to end his protracted pout exactly now? If I have somehow proven myself, I’ve no idea how, though I did recently violate a mutant, which may have played to his interests.
“Do you theenk my English not very well?” asks Nancy Drew.
“Your English is adorable,” I tell her.
“A dull lull?”
“Exactly.”
I was also hoping a little outing would provide an opportunity to grow some new skin, as I’ve none whatsoever between my navel and my knees. Rui Long reports being in more or less the same condition. Girl can’t get enough of me. She returned to her father’s apartment last night just long enough for a change of clothes and a really fine argument. She was back at the American Teacher’s Apartment before midnight. With her toothbrush.
“Uh, Itsy, you can’t live here,” I said, to which she replied, “I told you not to call me that. And I’ll be out of here before morning.”
Or that was the plan. The current one, should it manifest and I personally hope it does, is for Rui Long and I to keep our body parts pointed in different directions while she figures out what comes next in the exciting saga of Westmont Girl Seeks Roots, Finds Tuber. This morning she told me I might think about cleaning the bathroom. I informed her that Tree had cleaned the bathroom quite competently scarcely a week ago. “Who’s Tree?” asked Rui Long. “Never mind who’s Tree,” I replied. “Just be out of here by dawn. And stop doodling on the toilet paper.”
In truth, I can’t help but feel a fresh wave of arousal at the thought of our little Two-Fer. The girl is mad as a hatter, of course, but since when did that constitute a problem in bed? In a little over a day, she and I have added at least three chapters to The Kama Sutra and, skin regeneration allowing, may yet be looking at a free-standing Volume Two. I think we’ll call it “Two in the Hand, Three in the Bush.”
“I theenk you very quietly,” says Nancy Drew, inclining her face. “Why you so quietly?”
“I’m always quiet,” I say, turning away from a withering gust of garlic breath. Nancy Drew’s mother is among the many who believe that a clove a day keeps atypical everything away.
“Oh?” says Nancy Drew. “Whyy-yyyy?”
I let the question pass, knowing that another will come along shortly.
It does.
“How much you pay this shirt?” asks Nancy Drew, tugging on a sleeve.
Eat my calf-length argyle socks.
“Do you like kai xin gou?” she asks.
“Do I like what?”
“Kai xin gou present I give you,” says Nancy Drew.
She must be talking about the bell-pepper-looking thing on the kitchen windowsill. I really should think about watering it.
“This plant is mean your haaa-aaht,” says Nancy Drew. “Make your haa-aaht very happy, I think. We go down now.”
The bus lurches to a stop, and Nancy Drew darts out the rear exit. I manage to stumble out behind her just before the door hisses to a close. The bus roars away, spewing a brown cloud, and I gaze straight up hoping against hope for a little cheery Mediterranean blue. Instead is the usual East Hudson pewter.
“What do you see?” asks Nancy Drew.
“I was looking,” I reply irritably, “at the sky.”
“Ohhhh?” She gazes up and blinks, seeing nothing.
Nancy Drew’s going through an awkward year.
As we approach the steps of Guan Shanyue Art Museum, several uniformed kids saunter past and one glares at me and imitates the whistling sound of a bomb. The others follow suit.
I haven’t heard a single word from Lillian. I suppose she’s busy venting about the war to that mutt boyfriend of hers, though I suspect most of it is over his head. Tree keeps saying I should call Lil, and I suppose I should but that means first preparing an itemized list of what I’m apologizing for. Women want the details, and they want them right.
Nancy Drew leads me into the art museum, a smugly modern building with vaulted ceilings and stepped echoes. She has promised, if I understood correctly, a nice collection of neoclassical nature paintings. Which could fit right in, career-wise. “Do you write for this magazine?” Miriam recently asked me on the phone. “No pressure or anything. I’d just like to know.”
Never work for a woman with her hair in a bun.
Actually Chinese painters as a whole are a surprise. They take far greater trouble than their Western counterparts, which I expected—but without forfeiting expression, which I didn’t. And they do everything. Every style, every approach. Nancy Drew and I enter the first exhibit room, and out comes my journal, which I’ve learned to balance on my cast. Next to Tree’s smiley face.
“What do you wiiiite?” asks Nancy Drew.
“Notes.”
I may have to write a real article this time. I move a little closer to a very old scroll—too close, it appears, for an alarm sounds. A moment later, a uniformed guard attaches to me, but I scarcely notice, occupied as I am by a cluster of ghostly images from Huang Ge, whose one foot is in traditional Chinese landscape painting with its insistence on line and discipline, and the other in French Impressionism. When this country opened its doors to the outside world in the seventies, nothing astonished Chinese artists quite so much as the Impressionists. Unless it was the Carpenters.
The guard is still attached to my hip, and I turn to give him an evil stare. He is flat-nosed, crew-cut, and it would appear determined to lose as few pieces of neo-traditional Chinese art to colorless Westerners as possible.
“Do you like t
heees?” Nancy Drew calls from the next room.
I tell the guard’s flat nose, “Nancy Drew is calling me.”
I now stand before a large and airy landscape by Yuan Rong Cueng, whose soft grayscale touches make of each mountain crag a billowing cloud yet an inescapable singularity. Next are the tiny, meticulous fan-shaped landscapes of Song Dai. In one of his images, a tiny traveler gazes straight up at a sun-paled moon, ignoring the lush landscape of forested slopes, austere cliffs, and frothing streams that tumble all about him.
Nancy Drew and I enter a room of lurid nature paintings in the Palace style, including several by Muo Xiao Suong, known for his dragonfly-festooned idealizations of nature, each impossibly bright. You can almost smell the thunderstorm that just passed through. The guard has wandered off somewhere, and I’m tempted to inch a bit closer to a particularly vivid Muo but think better of it. Instead I follow Nancy Drew through another four rooms of traditional landscapes and dentist’s office crap and cock-obvious Commie propaganda, and it’s all pretty decent. Especially to a Westerner accustomed to posture-ism as art. Take that, Cy Twombly.
Actually, I may have overdone the ma huang today. But I say that every day.
“Hmmm.” At eye level between two canvasses is a rectangular air-return vent. “Very interesting,” I say, stepping closer to study the vent, and Nancy Drew stares at me.
“No, not this,” she scolds, pulling me along.
A good eye for art, that girl. In the States, the air-return grate would carry a title and a price tag. In the USA, if your local art museum doesn’t have a porcelain toilet suspended by a wire, the only possible question is why.
We enter a room of mawkish comrade paintings. Tacked onto otherwise proto-traditional landscapes are rows of handsome, smiling soldiers marching along in well-fitting unis. I begin to move toward the exit—when I hear the sound of spoken English.
I turn to see three women huddled before a large still life. One is a blond Westerner who tans too much, the second a Chinese in a crisp business suit, and the third a pale foreigner with abundant dark-brown tresses. I begin to walk zombie-like toward this third woman as though drawn by a silken thread. When I reach the spot where she stands, she turns upon me an eye of blue and an eye of green.
The Year of the Hydra Page 28
