The Boy Who Escaped Paradise

by J. M. Lee

  Two weeks later, Dash went to Pudong Station to buy four tickets to Zhuhai. Kunlun and Dash were to ride in car number 9, while Yong-ae and I were to be in the next car; half of us would escape, no matter what happened to the others. When Dash returned home with the tickets, Kunlun put one in a manila envelope and handed it to me. “Deliver this to Manhattan,” he told me. “Tell her to come to Pudong Station at noon tomorrow. She should take her seat. Tell her to bring as little luggage as possible.”

  That night, I packed my things in my worn knapsack. I added three triangles, Captain Miecher’s notebook, my calculator, a few newspaper articles, and my new passport. I curled up in bed. Dash tossed and turned, the springs in his bed squeaking each time he moved.

  “I hope Macau will be great,” Dash said hopefully. “We probably can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like, just like we had no idea what Shanghai would be like when we were in Yanji.” His words twinkled in the dark.

  At the train station the next day, Kunlun wiped his sweaty arms with a handkerchief and looked up at the red clock tower. It was 11:57. The sunlight bleached the square. I placed my hands over my ears and squinted. Dash led the way, elbowing people aside. We crossed the crowded square and entered the station. Cold sweat beaded my forehead. Dash walked ahead and Kunlun pulled me along by my sleeve. The speakers blared. “Train 352 departing at 12:12 boarding on platform eight.” We took a flight of stairs down to the platform. Dash was on edge. Kunlun, too, was nervous, looking all around him. We passed cars 3, 4, and 5. The ticket in my hand was damp with sweat. The booming speakers made me dizzy. The hot air from the train hurt my head. We were at car 8. Yong-ae was inside, looking anxious. Dash and Kunlun walked a few steps ahead of me, toward the next car. I wasn’t sure if they had seen her. She gave me a tiny smile, then her eyes grew wide. She froze. I tore my eyes away from her.

  Four men had descended on Dash; both his arms were twisted behind him; he was on the ground. They were kicking him. He hunched over, his mouth filling with blood. “Gil-mo, take him and run!” he croaked. Kunlun had taken a few steps backward. Two more men came up to him and one took something from his jacket. He hugged Kunlun, then let go quickly. They quickly disappeared the way we had come. Kunlun crumpled, then straightened and looked into the train. Yong-ae was leaning on the window, tears streaking mascara down her face. Dash limped over and kneeled on the platform to pull Kunlun up. Blood trickled out through Kunlun’s hands, which were clutching his stomach. People gathered around us. Someone was shouting. Three officers ran over. Kunlun lay back and gazed at me gently. His eyes closed slowly. Two officers grabbed our arms behind our backs and cuffed us, and the third felt for Kunlun’s pulse. He shook his head. They loaded him onto a white stretcher.

  “Don’t look at her,” Dash whispered to me. “Remember, we don’t know her.”

  The train began to move as the officers pushed us toward the entrance to the station. She passed us, her eyes dazed, her face streaked in black. We hadn’t made it. One died, two were arrested, and only one was able to leave. The cuffs dug into my wrists.

  Dear Yong-ae,

  As you probably guessed, I was arrested the moment you left Shanghai. The Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Public Security put us on trial, and we got one-year sentences. The brick walls here are tall and covered in moss. Sometimes we can’t tell what the weather is like outside. We can’t tell if time is passing. We wear wide blue pants that are worn at the knees, and we live with six other men in a small cell with a heavy steel door. We have eight spoons and a hole in the ground for a toilet. We eat three meals a day, circle the yard, watch TV, then go to sleep.

  Dash has lost a lot of weight since we got here. Five kilos a month. He gets heavier the happier he is, and he gets happier the heavier he gets. I think he’s depressed. He doesn’t snore anymore; his neck lacks folds now and his chin is sharp. His bones stick out of his back. Sometimes, when he’s sleeping, he smiles. Maybe he’s smiling to say I shouldn’t worry, that we will leave soon. When we leave, he’ll be happy again and start gaining weight.

  I couldn’t do anything when Kunlun died. I clasped my hands together behind my back and prayed. I hope he found his way to heaven.

  Did you arrive safely in Macau? I’ll find you again, wherever you are. When we get out, we’ll come to Macau, where we were all supposed to go.

  Gil-mo

  Re: Jiang Jiajie, Suspected of Fraudulent Gambling and Murder at Macau’s Tomorrow Casino

  —Public Security Police Force of Macau

  Under the pseudonym Wei Zhenmin, Jiang Jiajie developed a fraudulent gambling technique that he deployed in the three leading casinos in Macau and was barred from entry. In December 2005, he won several hundred thousand dollars on roulette, and two months later he won $800,000 at a high-stakes illegal casino in a game that involved Saudi and Singaporean nationals. That same day, he participated in a shootout between illegal gambling rings by the coast, which produced 11 casualties, and disappeared. He is wanted by Interpol for first-degree murder.

  Rock, paper, scissors—three variables with unique values, probability, and relativity. Scissors cut paper but are crushed by rock, while paper wraps and vanquishes rock. I like to greet people with that game; nobody is unhappy even when he loses, and everyone is happy when he wins.

  “Rock, paper,” I call out.

  Angela sticks out her fist. My palm is out. We play two more times; three wins out of three for me! I win frequently. She seems to suspect that I’m cheating.

  “Mitsui Yoshizawa was a professor at Tokyo University of Science. He conducted an experiment of 11,567 rock-paper-scissors games. Rock came out 35 percent of the time, while paper was 33.3 percent and scissors was 31.7 percent. I once played 1,428 games in a row and got similar results. Theoretically, it’s a fair game, but when you opt for paper first, you have a higher likelihood of winning.”

  “What if it’s a draw?”

  “The probability that your opponent will choose the same one is 22.8 percent. So let’s say you draw with rock. If you go with scissors next, you won’t lose, since the other person will go with scissors or paper. See, it’s a very simple game theory.” When I learned about game theory in math class, I was awed by its complicated clarity. It was applied to submarine battles in World War II, and it’s equally applicable to economics, business, politics, and psychology. After all, they’re all battles. It’s just a matter of one against one, one against many, or one against everyone. Everything in life is a game. The housewife walking into a market embarks on intense haggling, the student in a classroom grapples with grades, lovers play coy games to be more adored, a boss and employee negotiate salary, and politicians tussle with the opposing party.

  Angela nods, understanding where I’m going with this. “War and hostile takeovers use noncooperative game theory. It’s just like the prisoner’s dilemma—if two prisoners are being interrogated separately and both deny their crime, each receives one year. If they both confess, they each get two. The problem is when only one person confesses; that one will be set free, but the other will be given three years. So what would the two choose?”

  I get excited. “If they both deny it to the end, they each get one year. So that’s two years total. If one person denies it and one person confesses, that’s three total. If they both confess, they get four total. So what benefits the individual doesn’t benefit the whole.”

  It’s just like the roulette wheel; it spins, and the game continues. Banks deals me something new each time he comes into my cell—evidence that I’m a murderer, a gambler, a fugitive. How do I show them that their evidence is wrong? I have to go back to the roulette wheel that will determine my fate.

  HOW TO WIN AGAINST FATE

  On April 26, 2005, Dash and I stepped out the prison gates. We left Shanghai and moved south, through cities and towns linked by the road. Sometimes we walked or ran, and other times we hitchhiked, stole bicycles, perched on top of a mound of fertilizer on the back of one truck, and hid be
tween planks of lumber in another. Dash began to gain his heft back as he began to feel freer and happier. We picked up odd jobs at each stop, working on a farm, as porters in a store, as street cleaners. Dash usually did a larger part of my job as well as his own. Roads barreled toward us and passed us by. We picked our way through alleys covered in filth, walked down streets under faintly glimmering stars, and trudged along unpaved roads blooming with dust. I grew taller and Dash grew fatter.

  In Zhuhai we hit several of the biggest bars in town. In one bar, a man sidled up to Dash and asked if he would like to gamble in Macau. Dash’s girth and his gold-rimmed glasses must have made him look wealthy. The man told us about beautiful girls who would stay with us and look after our every need. “There’s nothing quite like gambling and girls,” he said, “and it’s best to enjoy them at the same time.” He tapped cigarette ash on the floor, blowing out a cloudy stream of smoke.

  I took out Yong-ae’s photograph from my pocket.

  He took a good look and grimaced. “That bitch! You know where she is?”

  I shook my head.

  He downed a glass of whiskey. “She told me she needed work,” he complained. “Her Chinese wasn’t great, but what a face! I liked her tenacity. Very northeast. I even gave her an advance and had her accompany a VIP client to Macau. She could have changed her life. But she ran off when she got there.”

  The man couldn’t know that Yong-ae didn’t want to change her life; all she wanted was to get to Macau. The next morning, we packed our bags, having promised the man we would call him once we found her. Forty-seven days after leaving prison, we arrived in Macau.

  “Attention, please,” called Dash at the entrance of Megasquare Casino. “Knives, guns, and other weapons are prohibited. No pictures!” Now known as Hu Enlai, he was an hourly security guard at the casino. His neck had regained its fleshy contours, and his hair was shiny with product.

  Customers looked around in amazement when they stepped foot on the 12,891-square-meter floor, where five hundred slot machines clattered and dumped chips with great fanfare. People surrounded dealers at tables on one side. Megasquare wasn’t as big as the Wynn Macau or the Venetian Macao, but it was a popular destination for serious gamblers as it drew fewer casual tourists. I enjoyed being a janitor, wearing a mask and rubber gloves as I mopped the hallway and wiped down machines, turning everything orderly and clean. People tended to be drawn to certain machines; those next to a pillar or near the hallway or in the corner were never as popular. I noticed that people avoided machines if they witnessed someone winning at them, probably believing that a jackpot wouldn’t hit the same machine twice, although the likelihood of hitting a jackpot on a given machine had nothing to do with what had happened in the past.

  I discovered something interesting a few weeks into my observations. When I wiped down an unpopular machine with a new detergent, more people sat in front of it, staying 14 percent longer and increasing their bets by 23 percent. But two days later, the traffic to the machine would go down to normal. After experimenting with a few different possibilities, I came to the conclusion that the scent of the new detergent was attracting customers. Dash relayed my discovery to the floor manager, who looked doubtful. I unspooled the data I had gathered, analyzing the location and manufacture date of the lowest occupancy machines, jackpot frequency, the number of guests sitting at the machines with the highest occupancy rate, average occupancy rate, guest flow, and locations of unpopular machines. I explained how the occupancy rates changed according to my cleaning schedule.

  Dash drove home the point. “If we can control how the machines smell at any given time, we’ll get even greater results.”

  The manager’s eyes glinted.

  Dash hesitated. “Or—does this not make sense?”

  “I don’t care if it does,” the manager replied. “As long as the guests sit there longer and bet more.”

  I was given ownership of the scent project, identifying scents that worked in certain locations and in specific weather. Instead of mopping, I got to check the machines and spray them with scent. I wandered the aisles of slot machines with a spritzer and a dry rag, calculating coincidences and the house edge of each individual machine, which was the sum of the prize money multiplied by the probability of the win. I calculated that the machines with three slots and twenty symbols gave us a house edge of 200 × 3 / 20. If you added each of the house edges of all of the machines derived from this formula, I could get the house edge for the entire casino. I assigned each machine its unique number and collected jackpot dates, daily average number of customers, occupation time, and average bets. Depending on the machine’s conditions, I sprayed it with the appropriate scent, allowing each machine to play to its best abilities. I stood back and watched guests rush toward the machines.

  Machine 2-57 hit a jackpot. Three men had become penniless at that very machine. A young man with dried blood crusted under his nose had dozed at it, his hand gripping the lever, and a Japanese woman won $3,000 on her first-ever visit to a casino. Slot machines weren’t fair, not really. A guest at a machine wasn’t just playing against his machine; he was facing off against all the machines on the floor. If five hundred machines had a win rate of 94.7 percent, the casino earned 5.3 percent. Clear-headed adventurers preferred blackjack, which allowed for prediction, and competitive risk-takers were drawn to baccarat, putting everything on chance.

  Victims abounded from this rigged game. In the back alleys of the spectacular casinos wandered former guests, chased away by guards and brutalized by gangs. Having squandered everything for the promise of a quick buck, they exchanged money for foreigners, hired by casinos to lure customers in. They believed that casinos were their only chance to take back all they had lost. That was where we met Oh Hyeon-su, a businessman who had come from Seoul three years ago but was unable to return home. In the casinos, he had lost several million, some of which he had taken from his company, now defunct. He lived in a run-down place, earning $100 a day from odd jobs, obstinately wearing his old suit. He always showed up at a casino with a black briefcase, changing $5,000 chips at the cage. His goal was to win $100 a day, but mainly it was not to lose; no matter how well he was playing, he got up as soon as he was down $100. His win rate was fairly high. He sent his earnings to his college-student son in Seoul.

  Mr. Oh took to us and liked giving advice. “You have to wear a suit in a casino. Otherwise they’ll look down on you.”

  “But it’s because you don’t have any other clothes, right?” I asked.

  He laughed and smoothed his gray hair away from his face.

  “What’s the best way to win against the house?” asked Dash.

  Mr. Oh looked toward the strait, breathing in salty air. “You don’t. You can’t.”

  “Even if you win a little every day?”

  “Nobody wins against the house.”

  “So are you just lucky, or are you really good?”

  “That’s making pocket money,” Mr. Oh explained. “That isn’t winning. You’re just getting ready to lose big. You’re caught on a line and dragged around.”

  Dash let out a long plume of smoke toward the ocean. He glanced at me. “Do you think that’s right? Is there no way to win against the house?”

  “I’ll need to calculate that,” I told him.

  THE PLACE WHERE SHE LIVES

  On my days off I roamed around the strait and islands, staring at the waves, and sat in hotel lobbies, watching people coming and going. At night, I walked down dark streets back home to our small one-room place. She had to be here somewhere. Somewhere in these 29.5 square kilometers that included the Macau peninsula and the islands of Taipa and Coloane. Could we have brushed past each other in a busy street one glittering night?

  One Sunday in August, I finally saw her. She was standing in the hallway of the Prima Hotel, in front of the ballroom, smiling broadly. I ran up to her and stared, almost nose-to-nose. She was inside a frame, 60 centimeters by 1 meter, almost the golden r
atio. Her hair, dyed light brown, grazed her shoulders, and her long eyelashes and smoky eye shadow floated in the darkness. She looked older. Her low-cut dress sparkled. It reminded me of the wings of a dragonfly. Under her photo was the following, in both Chinese and English:

  10:00–10:30 p.m.

  Sarah Kang

  She wasn’t Yong-ae or Songhua or even Jialing; she was now a singer in a hotel club. Just as I was no longer Gil-mo but Jiajie, and Dash had become Enlai. I crouched in the hallway, watching the second hand of a grandfather clock ticking in a circle. The past rushed over me—the rutted, dust-covered roads; rivers sunken in darkness; sparkling tears of the imprisoned and chased; the rotting eaves that sheltered us from rain; puddles on the ground; dry lips and eyelids crusted with sleep; death spreading across fields. I stared at her, thinking that beauty wasn’t only what was new and pretty but also made of old, vanishing parts. Without the passage of time, nothing would be beautiful. I watched Yong-ae’s photograph as I waited for ten p.m. to roll around. Soon, I heard singing. I followed the sound.

  After her performance, she spotted me. “You look good,” she called, waving, pushing away the time we had been apart. Nothing in her face hinted at what had happened—not Kunlun’s death, nor my and Dash’s imprisonment, nor her journey here.

  I raised my hand in greeting. “You look like you put on a bit of weight.”

  She laughed, a hand on her sparkling black waist. “I suppose I changed a bit. People call me Sarah.” She led me by the sleeve to the elevator.

  Blood rushed to my ears until they popped as we hurtled upward. The number 28 lit up and the doors opened to a lounge. We settled by the window overlooking the dark strait. She crossed her legs, the hem of her ankle-length dress winding around her feet.