The Year of the Hydra

by William Broughton Burt

  The sky does seem to be clearing a bit. I decide to leave the balcony door open to gather a bit of cheer. Taking a deep breath, I head for the bathroom to duck beneath the black mold and pee in the general vicinity of the toilet. It’s the intention that counts.

  Lil has always maintained that I should have a housekeeper, but I’ve never quite seen the advantage in paying a stranger to wander through my apartment with a vacant stare and a squirt-bottle of chlorine. Lil’s maid is a Honduran immigrant with multiple personality disorder. Her name is Rosita. And Lupe. And Maria Luisa. I tried her at my place for one week, at Lil’s insistence. But on Friday all three wanted to be paid.

  I use my left foot to flush the toilet. Returning to the front room, I’m surprised to discover that the balcony door I left open is now closed. Even more surprising is the presence of a petite amber-hued human kneeling on the mattress. She is facing away, her blue trousers and pink panties down around her ankles and her face buried in the covers.

  “Rui Long,” I say. “So nice to see you.”

  “Come fuck my crack,” she says.

  I sigh. “Exactly how many people saw you walk into this apartment?”

  “Nobody noticed,” Rui Long’s voice replies. “Anyway, it’s done. You might as well get the good out of it.” A small hand appears between the two thighs, palm up, fingers imploring.

  A jolt of greed shoots through me. I can’t quite pull my eyes away from those honeyed little hams. Rui Long hikes her hiney a little higher, and the perfect dot at its center beckons. Someone has been reading my fantasies.

  Or. Maybe she’s been reading the letter of the law. Didn’t this sweet child recently offer to obtain the services of an attorney? And might this little conjugal visit be, in fact, a forensic-evidence-gathering foray? Helpless schoolgirl sodomized on school grounds by substitute teacher. Actually I kind of like the ring of it.

  “Pull your pants up, Rui Long,” I say, despite the ring of it. “I’m not buying. And just for the record, I require a little more foreplay than this.”

  The young woman spins around, and her long hair flies. “What? You’re turning this down?”

  I’m reconsidering, in point of fact. But Rui Long is now on her feet, kicking her trousers and panties into my face. Now she’s throwing Lillian’s smiley-face mug at my head, and I’m doing my best to duck.

  “Uh… ?” I say.

  Rui Long lifts a ceramic ashtray but before she can hurl it, her face closes in a tight grimace. The ashtray slips from her fingers onto the mattress, where Rui Long now falls to her knees. Lifting her face to the ceiling, she begins to howl like an adolescent Norwegian elkhound.

  “Noo-ooOOOoo-body wants me,” she cries.

  “Uh… ?” I say.

  “My life is over,” howls Rui Long. “I’m going to spend the rest of my life cleaning ashtrays at the Chinese phone company. I’ll never find anyone who loves me.”

  Rui Long crawls forward to hug my ankles. “Doo, you’re the only person I can talk to. Please, please don’t send me away.”

  “Uh… ?” I say, as a wet little face burrows into the opening of Lil’s bathrobe. “Rui Lon-NNNNN-nng?”

  By the time I’m able to pull away, her blouse is unbuttoned. She shakes free of it. “We can run away together,” she says.

  “You’re completely insane,” I tell the slightly outturned right breast.

  “We’ll start a new life,” she pants. “No one can stop us.”

  With this, Rui Long spins around, jacking her ass again. “I’ll give you anything you want.”

  “Jesus,” I say miserably. We’re getting really close to enough foreplay now. Unable to resist the itsy golden body an instant longer, I turn and flee into the bathroom, locking the door behind me. “Rui Long?” I shout through the door, glancing uneasily at the killer black mold above my head. “You have to leave. Do you hear me?”

  Silence.

  “Rui Long?”

  More silence. I’m just about to place my ear against the door to listen when I hear a throaty scream that approximates the distress call of a wounded civet cat. The blade of my newly purchased hatchet crashes through the hollow wooden door and stops an inch from my face. I fall backward over the toilet seat and land with my feet in the air.

  “Rui Long?”

  After three yanks, the hatchet comes free and a dark eye appears in the ragged hole. “Herrrre’s Itsy.”

  A moment later I hear a dull thud against the door followed by a loud clatter on the kitchen floor. “Oww-ww,” sobs Rui Long.

  “Doo? Are you okay?” I ask, trying to rise from the floor.

  I hear breaking glass followed by more breaking glass. Rui Long is smashing everything in the kitchen. I think that last crash was the gin bottle, nearly full.

  “I can’t stan-nnHHHnnn-nd it any longer!” comes a shuddering cry.

  I think I just heard the sound of a window sliding open. Struggling to my feet, I open the door just in time to see a naked bottom exiting the kitchen window. I lurch forward to grab Rui Long around the ankles, but she yanks free and kicks me squarely on the bridge of the nose. There’s a terrible cracking sound, and I slip in the puddle of gin.

  “God in heaven,” I say to myself, seated on the floor holding my shattered nose. An instant later, I’m screaming and scrambling to my feet, as the shards of broken glass beneath me are soaked in alcohol. The moment I’m back on my feet, both my nostrils begin gushing blood.

  “God in hea-ggggh-ven,” I say, leaning over the sink, blood bubbling from my nose. I catch sight, meanwhile, of Rui Long’s naked body standing on the narrow ledge.

  “Rui Long-ggggh?” I say.

  “I can’t stand it any longer,” she gasps, looking down terrified. The excitement is giving her a woody.

  I hear the sound, four stories below, of a woman’s scream. The itsy schoolgirl was right. I should have gotten the good out of it.

  “Don’t do it, Rui Long-ggggh,” I bubble. “You’ve got your whole life ahead of yo-ggggh.”

  “With a dick,” she whimpers, “and a crack ho mama, and a daddy who hates me.”

  More screams erupt. People in neighboring buildings are coming out onto their balconies and pointing.

  “But you’re the new human,” I say, my eyes going to the chocolate Buddha at Rui Long’s feet.

  “It’s too much,” she gasps. “I can’t deal with it.”

  I’m still looking at the chocolate Buddha. “Actually, since you’re out there…”

  Rui Long teeters for a moment. Panicking, she tries to right herself but overcompensates. The next thing I know, she has launched herself through the air, screaming as she executes a near perfect flip and crashes through the fiberglass roof of Madam Wu’s balcony below.

  I stick my head out the window. Through the shattered fiberglass, I see that Rui Long has landed on her back on a deck lounger. The chocolate Buddha, spinning through the air, comes to rest seated on her belly, his silent laugh directed at her groin.

  I think this may be a good day to give my two weeks’ notice.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The setting sun framing her small shoulders, Marilyn awaits me on the rough boards of Shikou Pier. At the sight of her expectant smile, I almost turn around. If I’d been able to pick up the phone, I’d have cancelled. “Why, Marilyn,” I manage to say, forcing myself onto the pier, “don’t you look wonderful?”

  True actually. This woman’s freshly blow-dried hair is almost feathery. And below her short skirt, the two legs are golden-perfect. And the red blouse…

  “You bought the blouse,” I say, surprised.

  Marilyn laughs triumphantly. She knows she looks good. “Ju-wen, your face look so terrible.”

  The bandages cover the worst of it. Beneath the elaborate gauze and aluminum muzzle, my nose is at least as colorful as a piñata and roughly the same size. It’s a nice match for the cast on my arm, actually. There’s no need to go into the nine stitches in my rear.

 
“Is terrible,” says Marilyn, shaking her head, “this very crazy girl attack you so bad.”

  “I don’t want to discuss it.”

  “Everybody the school so surprise,” she says. “This crazy girl have the—” Marilyn makes a gesture at her groin. “How you say? The dee-eee-eek?”

  “I said I don’t want to discuss it. Where are we eating?”

  “What restaurant you want go?” asks Marilyn. “You choose.”

  “You’re choosing. I’m drinking.”

  Marilyn shifts into worry mode and the beak appears. “Chinese or Western?”

  “Chinese,” I say. That narrows it down.

  “Cantonese or Sichuan?”

  “I don’t care,” I say.

  We begin walking along the rusting waterfront, Marilyn peppering me with questions. Large restaurant or small? Outside or in? Balcony or downstairs? Fish or no fish? How I want it cook? I keep telling her I don’t care but Marilyn isn’t listening. By the time we take our seats at a Cantonese place near the ferry, I’m ready to OJ her with the waitress’s ballpoint pen.

  “Beer,” I say pointedly.

  “What kind?” asks Marilyn.

  “I don’t—Hsingtao.”

  “Light or dark?”

  “I—dark.”

  “Warm or cold?”

  “Cold.”

  “Large or small?”

  “Quick.”

  That last part is in vain, of course. The waitress stands there taking down the entire order, meaning at least ten minutes of increasingly heated discussion.

  “You want fish?” begins Marilyn, and I push away from the table.

  Near the kitchen door is a cooler filled with beer bottles, and I yank a longneck free. There’s no opener. Grimfaced, I enter the kitchen where three aproned men look at me in horror.

  “You should see the other guy,” I tell them, setting down the longneck and using my one good hand to mime a bottle-opener. Still staring, the youngest chef walks over, takes the chilled bottle from my hand and pops off the cap on the edge of the counter.

  “Shi shi,” I thank him and turn it up.

  As the three watch, I drain the beer, set down the empty bottle and exit the kitchen with a muffled belch. On my way back to the table, I pull two more bottles from the cooler.

  “Fish will be fine,” I tell Marilyn, seating myself.

  She asks, “How you want cook?”

  “Yes,” I reply, handing one of the bottles to the waitress. “Cooked.”

  By the time our order is a matter of public record, I’m well into beer number three.

  “I order you soup,” says Marilyn.

  “Perfect.” I smile and my muzzle flexes.

  Marilyn’s phone rings. It’s her fourth incoming call. Marilyn’s ring tone is “Listen to the Rhythm of the Falling Rain,” one note nearly a full half-step flat. As she answers, I glance at the next table where four men hunch forward, sucking down noodles. One of them has chopsticks in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. At least most of the people here have stopped staring at me. Marilyn’s voice is hushed and urgent as she speaks into her phone. I’ve no doubt she’s providing her friends with regular news updates.

  The moment she hangs up, Marilyn leans forward and begins grilling me. Why this crazy American girl attack me in my apartment? Why she jump off the building without the school uniform? Why she have the dee-eee-eek? There’s no putting Marilyn off. Now that my three point five Hsingtaos have met the pain medication that preceded them, I’m willing to humor her, going through the same story I’ve already laid out for Joe and the headmaster. This neurotic Western devil of a defective Chinese girl seems to have developed an unhealthy attraction to me. All too common, unfortunately, as I am somewhat famous in the States. (At this, Joe turned to the headmaster and said, “Horrywood Squares,” and the headmaster looked at me with new eyes.) What could I do but try to avoid her primitive advances and—well, the splintered bathroom door tells the tale. When it was finally clear to the deranged young woman that her affections would never be returned, she decided to end it all.

  So foo-rish.

  As for the dee-eee-eek, I’m as much in the dark as everyone else. But delicate young girls who take too many strong American street drugs—what are they to expect? At this, Joe and the headmaster nodded in unison like dashboard dogs, and now Marilyn gasps and wags her head. Before she can come up with another question, her phone chimes again and she answers eagerly. I wave to the waitress for another beer. I was right about the whole guanxi thing. At the conclusion of my debriefing, the headmaster asked for my autograph, and not long thereafter Rui Long was inexorably exorcized from Shenzhen High School of Electronic Excellence and turned over for prompt deportation.

  Best thing all around.

  My hand goes to my throat for the eighty-first time today. I try not to remember a certain recent lucid dream.

  Marilyn sets down her phone just as the soup course arrives. There’s a chicken’s foot in each bowl, claws and all.

  Marilyn stirs her chicken’s foot around with a ceramic spoon. “When a girl is older,” she tells me, only it comes out odor, “sometimes she must do something. I don’t know how you say. One time every month, she must do this. I think mahhhn-, mehhhnnn-….”

  I’m not saying it for her.

  “Mehhhhnnnnn-. Mehn-something. Do you know this?” asks Marilyn.

  I know this.

  “After this time every month, she eat this soup to build her up. I just finish this time, so I eat this soup.”

  I gaze down at my chicken’s foot.

  “How much you pay?” asks Marilyn, pointing to the fake jade ring on my left pinkie. It still doesn’t symbolize world peace.

  “I’m not telling you,” I say, hiding my hands beneath the table.

  “Is not real jade, this one,” she says. “Just somebody make this Guangzhou. Next time I go with you, get the real jade.”

  “Thanks. So much. Marilyn.”

  After the soup comes steaming tofu stuffed with ground pork in an MSG-free brown sauce. I’m surprised at the flavor, which is almost northern Italian. There’s also a leafy vegetable of an almost emerald green in a kuzu sauce, followed in short order by a flaky herb-roasted sunfish. This place isn’t bad.

  Halfway through the tofu, Marilyn locks her eyes onto mine and asks, “Why you divorce your wife?”

  Asians. Indirect. Inscrutable.

  “Very difficult to say,” I stall. It depends a little on which wife we’re discussing. I decide to answer in the global. “Personally I think that marriage isn’t the best of ideas.”

  “You not get married again?” asks Marilyn.

  “No.”

  I can see the wheels turning.

  “You only want some girlfriend?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “You want sex her?”

  “Yes.”

  How you want cook?

  Marilyn also wants to know if I have a Chinese girlfriend, a girlfriend in America, is she beautiful, am I faithful, do I want sex a Chinese woman, all this in exactly the same tone as do you want fish?

  Unsteadily I wave for another beer. Why can’t they just bring them two at a time? “Yes, no, goddamn right, what’s your sign?” I reply.

  Marilyn sighs with dismay. “I don’t understand so many women have the sex. Just some boyfriend do this, but maybe she get the AIDS. You know about this?”

  I nod. Beijing only recently got around to telling the Chinese about HIV, those of them not already dead of it. The government admits to around forty-four thousand fatalities thus far, which should put the actual number somewhere over a hundred thou.

  “Always I just stay home,” complains Marilyn. “I am so boring but have son, can’t just go play some fun, some boyfriend. Also this hurt me so bad, my husband divorce. I don’t want this again. Better just stay home.” She sighs petulantly.

  “That’s always the choice, isn’t it?” I ask, helping myself to more sunfish. “Death o
f boredom or ritual disembowelment.”

  “Is what?” asks Marilyn, eyes sharpening.

  “Be lonely,” I say, “or get hurt.”

  She nods. “Which answer you choose?”

  My thoughts drift to a snowy British woman due to call me five days ago. Nearby Shikou Ferry, it occurs, could have me at her doorstop in less than an hour. I have enough of a buzz to answer Marilyn, “It’s better to love even if it kills you, which it undoubtedly will.”

  Marilyn sighs. “Chinese men go see the American movie, always get some idea just make big problem. Want sex her. Want put it in—what is it?” She’s pointing at her rear. “I say, why you want do this, so crazy? You like do this?” she asks and awaits my answer.

  I set down my personal wooden chopsticks. “Not right now.”

  Marilyn laughs. “But you like some other time?”

  I close my eyes and open them again. “I’m afraid you mistake me,” I say measuredly, “for someone of far cruder sensibilities.”

  Marilyn says, “I think you embarrass. In China everybody just laugh. Don’t laugh, nobody know you embarrass, just keep ask you some more.”

  “To Americans,” I inform her, “it’s very embarrassing to be embarrassed. You’d rather no one knew.”

  “Why?”

  “Americans are supposed to be cool. Experienced. That sort of thing.”

  Marilyn shakes her head. “Chinese not cool. Not experience. Nobody care about that.”

  “What do Chinese care about?” I ask.

  She smiles slowly. “Good food.”

  I raise my glass. “Good food.”

  Her expression changes. “So hard find good food. This restaurant have one good dish. The other place one good dish. Chinese people I think very difficult, understand food too good maybe.”

  Understand pain medication pretty good too also. I finish my glass of Hsingtao, or maybe I just poured it in my lap.

  “When you go back America?” asks Marilyn.

  “Tomorrow would be nice,” I say.

  “Mmm, you miss your family.”

  I stare at her. The Chinese never tire of proposing this to me, and I never tire of wondering what they could possibly be thinking. Our mother has slipped into a coma, by the way. Tree gave me the news. That’s how you say it. She’s slipped into a coma. One’s mother never slithers or lumbers into a coma.