by Fritz Galt
In the stillness, he began to feel vulnerable and isolated. He was far from the squeal of bus brakes and the ring of bicycle bells. Only the occasional car meandered down the alley below his window. He reached the bedroom and found his flashlight among May’s cosmetics.
He shined the light against the four walls of the room, then played it around the rest of the small apartment. The round spotlight revealed May’s little touches everywhere—her list of phone numbers for water delivery and dry cleaning, her framed collection of miniature vases, and her toy model of a space rocket. But the place lacked her spirit, the sense of command in her voice, the frenetic pace of her life.
He flopped down on the living room couch and his hand came to rest on the telephone. Since he had lost his cell phone, he had been out of touch with the rest of the world. It was time to hear May’s voice again.
He picked up the handset.
While he dialed her cell phone number, he tried to imagine where she might be. Was she in trouble? How lost was she in America, a vast and complex foreign land? He checked his watch. It would be mid morning in the States. Perhaps she was waiting all night for his call.
He heard a ring. Then another. Every ring drew May closer to picking her phone up.
“Wei?” a voice answered. It was May alright, but sounding chirpy. He heard the crinkle of a large piece of paper and the drone of a powerful engine.
“This is Brad. Are you okay?” The question seemed odd considering the happiness in her voice.
“I am fine. Jade and I are driving to Breckenridge.”
“Where’s that? California?”
“No. We are in Colorado.”
He tried to concentrate. Okay. He could vaguely picture her now. “Isn’t that some sort of ski resort?”
“I have no idea. We are on our way. Your father says that Liang hired a model there.”
“I see.” He didn’t understand at all. “Any word from your father?”
“I am expecting him with Liang.”
Brad cast his eyes about in the darkness. “I’m not getting a clear picture of what’s happening over there.”
May’s attention was temporarily diverted to giving directions to Jade, who apparently was at the wheel. Fine. He could see that the two women were making headway. They knew where Liang was and they had somehow commandeered a car. What he really wanted was for May to beg him to join her, but he wasn’t hearing that.
“So, uh. Do you need any help over there?” He tensed, afraid of how she might respond.
“Oh, no. We are doing fine.”
“I see. But aren’t you expecting to run into trouble?” He had only to think of his own narrow brushes with death that day.
“Oh, I can handle Liang,” she said. “I have been doing that for years.”
That wasn’t exactly what he wanted to hear. He wanted her to say that Liang was a thing of the past and that she had long since put him out of her mind. He didn’t want her to think of Liang as part of a long-term, dysfunctional relationship.
He bit his lower lip. He had to admit it: he was jealous. “Okay. If you don’t need me…” He felt hugely sorry for himself.
“Oh, Brad. I tried calling you.”
His spirits leapt through the ceiling.
“…but you did not answer your cell phone.”
He nodded to himself. He didn’t want to explain the fate of his cell phone for fear of alarming her. “I need to buy a new phone card,” he lied. “I’ll call you when I get one.”
Again, May gave Jade sharply worded driving directions. If he could only harness all that energy and direct it positively at himself, he would be a happy man.
“Well, goodbye,” he said.
“Bye-bye. Wo ai ni.”
He understood that. I love you. He repeated the phrase back to her and they hung up.
So, she wasn’t exactly begging him to come to her rescue. She said she could deal with Liang in her own way. But, given her considerable feminine charms and her past history as Liang’s girlfriend, he didn’t want to contemplate what approach she had in mind.
After all, she was playing with fire. He remembered the utter destruction wrought by Liang the previous summer—downed aircraft, ruined villages, drowning people. Dealing with Liang was more like taking on an entire branch of the military. He was an armored division-load of trouble. What was he up to anyway?
Brad clicked his flashlight off. He had stayed in the apartment too long, not only because a hired gun might be staking the place out, but because all the little touches that meant May were too dear to his heart. He needed some space.
So he grabbed his passport, debit card, toothbrush and fresh underwear, threw them into a backpack, and slipped out the rear door. He had to buy a cell phone and find another place to spend the night.
Dr. Yu was dressed in an oversized woolen sweater complete with a reindeer knitted on the front.
He stood by the picture window at Terry Smith’s estate and contemplated the afternoon glow on the nearby peaks. As a scientist, he could tell that the mountains were made of ore from which constituent metals such as gold and silver might be profitably extracted. The town of Breckenridge had been created to support the mines. As an unwilling accomplice to Liang’s megalomaniacal schemes, he found it a fitting place for Liang to plunder the wealth of the world.
But as long as Liang was only interested in stopping the flow of imports into America and not interested in molesting his daughter, Yu would comply. Love, health and happiness meant far more to him than money.
Then the doorbell chimed and interrupted his thoughts.
“Get that,” Liang called from the back of the house.
Yu was not his receptionist. Nevertheless, he trudged across the room to get the door. To his surprise, it was a uniformed officer.
His heart jumped. Maybe America’s public security bureau had caught up with them and had come to put an end to Liang’s ambitions. He prepared to hand himself over to the authorities.
“What is it?” Liang called.
“Just pranksters,” Yu returned in Chinese. Perhaps he could stall Liang long enough to turn himself in. He closed his eyes and held out his wrists.
Instead of handcuffs, he felt a heavy weight on the palms of his hands. He opened his eyes. It was a package.
“Aren’t you the police?”
“No,” the man said, and gave him a look. “UPS Express Service.”
Yu looked at the initials stitched into the man’s cap. “United States Police Service?”
“No. United Parcel Service.”
How disappointing. So why the uniform?
The guy handed him a small instrument with a computer screen. “Just sign here.”
Yu set the package down and waved into the screen.
“No, I need your signature.”
“Oh, I see.” Yu reached in his pocket for a pen.
“No, use the stylus.” The man showed him a plastic stick attached to the machine. “Put your name right here.” He indicated a blank on the screen.
“Can I touch the computer?” Yu placed the stylus on the screen and a blotch appeared. He quickly laid down the strokes of his name and set the stylus back in its holder.
“So you’re not with the government?” Yu said.
The man shook his head and double-checked his signature. “Japanese?”
“Simplified Mandarin.”
“Whatever.” And the man turned to leave.
Yu watched him slog through the snow back to his brown truck. Maybe the man was with the government and collecting his signature for evidence.
But no. It wasn’t China. Americans didn’t care about you unless you did something wrong.
Liang wedged behind him through the doorway and picked up the package. “Ah, this is from Smith.” He brought Yu back into the house.
They settled in the dining room where the sunlight was brightest. Outside, the occasional skier flashed by. Liang ripped the package open and reached inside. He pul
led out an oblate spheroid, clearly made from the skin of a pig.
“What is that for?” Yu asked.
Liang tossed it into the air and caught it. “This is your next totem. An American football.”
More sports equipment from Smith? Were all Americans obsessed with sports, or was it just Smith? Yu stared dubiously at the flattened object. “The ball must have gotten flattened in the mail.”
Liang smirked. “That’s the way it’s made. See, you throw it like this.” To demonstrate, he threw it in a spiraling arc across the room. It bounced off a stuffed deer head mounted on the wall. “Touchdown!” Liang threw both arms in the air. “That’s how you play.”
Yu tried to imagine a field of deer and people lobbing spheroids at them. How was he ever going to summon up a spirit to talk with this subject?
The package contained a printed letter with no signature or chop. Liang translated it for him in Chinese. “Smith wants you to send the same message that you sent before. This time to the Governor of California.”
“He wants to stop all international shipments into California?”
“That’s right. All air, surface and sea freight.” Liang tossed him the football.
Yu caught it with both hands. “If you are meant to throw this ball, then why is it called a football?”
Liang shrugged. “I have no idea. Now begin your meditation.”
Yu sighed and studied the pigskin. How could he talk to a man he never knew about shipments into California? He let his thoughts sink into the pebbly surface of the ball. He inhaled the leather’s scent. He could see Americans running around a field throwing deceased swine at innocent fawns. Within moments, he was communing with the spirit of football and transmitting his orders.
This would all be worth it in the end. The United States might close its borders to the world, but that was a small price to pay for his daughter’s safety and the chance to return to his lab.
It was late evening in Beijing and Brad had yet to buy a cell phone and find a place for the night.
He slipped out the back exit of his building, which put him in an off-street commune of single-story buildings. The quiet alleys formed a network of workshops, tailors, bakeries, single-room restaurants, teahouses, bars and chicken coops.
Red lanterns swung from occasional eateries and illuminated his way. At one point, he had to step aside for a deliveryman to pedal by with his cart of coal briquettes.
He caught a whiff of cigarette smoke. He froze and stepped back between two buildings. Was someone tailing him? Then he looked upward and saw an old man standing on a balcony in his pajamas. There was an orange ember at his lips that glowed brighter with each suck of air.
Nearby, a bird ruffled its feathers in a cage. Brad rubbed his arms for warmth and continued down the alley. He had to duck under a clothesline where children’s open-crotch pants hung frozen stiff.
It was a wonder that he wasn’t born Chinese. He might have waddled around with a frozen crotch all winter, too. Being born American was a statistical improbability, given that Americans were such a small minority in the world. What had he done to deserve his citizenship? What responsibilities did it bestow on him? He felt at home in China, but why was he there when so many Chinese sought a way out?
His original reason for coming to China was to rescue May and her father from that greedy pig who was out to take over the Chinese government. But it was more than love that drove him to China. He had been goaded by his stepfather, the late Professor Richter, who had expelled him from his graduate teaching position at the University of Arizona. And he had been aided by a ticket and visa from a man the world knew as Igor Sullivan, but he had come to learn was Bradley West, Senior of the CIA.
It was time to take a long, hard look at why he was still hanging around China. Sure, he had found a professional home as Dr. Yu’s research assistant. But in the end, he had to concede that Earl was right. He was being led around by his libido. His only real tie to China was May. And she was no longer there.
Or was it just May? Why did he soak up all the details of the country with such zeal?
He certainly wasn’t a bright-eyed Red Guard revolutionary. Did his enthusiasm simply stem from growing more familiar with a culture and society? Was his soft-focus view of life a manifestation of his dream to settle down forever with May in a place where she felt most comfortable? Or did he delight in China because he was taking one last look around and mentally preparing to leave?
He stepped over a pothole and passed a newspaper kiosk that sold glamour magazines and the communist line. Soon he was at a main thoroughfare called Workers’ Stadium Road.
It felt like he was taking one giant leap into the future. One massive building after another lined the road. Mingling with the evening crowd, he passed by a business complex and stopped in front of a new hotel. He reached for the money clip in his pocket. He was down to a few yuan. Where could he stay for that little money?
At the next intersection, he glanced around cautiously. If he wasn’t careful, he could be hammered by a taxi, bus, or some arrogant muckity-muck in a sleek black Audi. He waited for the light to change, then let the pushy drivers and bicyclists finish turning into his path, and finally found a break forged by a critical mass of pedestrians loosed from the curb. Among the streaming mass, he caught random snatches of the Beijing dialect along with Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese.
Once safely on the other side of the street, he looked in both directions. Billboards illuminated one side of the sidewalk and gaudily lit trees and bushes lined the other as far as the eye could see. Cyclists flowed by silhouetted against the logjam of traffic that jockeyed for position a full block from the next intersection.
He could see his breath in the seductive warmth of neon signs. After meeting and falling in love with May, he hated to be alone. He would never go into a restaurant by himself again. Without her, his life seemed pitiful and meaningless. He certainly would never have lived in Beijing. Yet there he was like a fish washed up on a distant shore. She had left him high and dry.
He swung up the wide tile entrance toward a shopping mall that he and May had frequented. There they had sampled every restaurant and shopped for Christmas and Chinese New Year presents. It had supplied him with the hiking boots he was now wearing and the lingerie he hoped she wasn’t.
But rather than floating from display to display as he often did with her, he headed straight through the department store with single-minded purpose. He was there to buy a cell phone. He crossed the atrium where escalators zigzagged up for five floors and steered through the Gucci bag section to a back escalator. Women were leaning over cosmetic counters checking out their complexions. Middle-aged businessmen and high-level salarymen, their pockets lined with bribes and kickbacks, were purchasing sophisticated Swiss watches to give away as bribes and kickbacks to others.
Some Chinese lived the high life, while others barely scraped by. The shop girls sold Chanel on the shop floor, then squatted against the walls in the basement and slurped weak broth for dinner. It only seemed like a matter of time before the creaky Chinese social structure collapsed.
The escalator took him down directly to a counter where cell phones were sold. All the major name brands were there with the latest bells and whistles. He didn’t want extra capabilities such as camera, music, video and Internet, even if he could afford them. Those were for the next generation, those wired kids five years younger than him. He got a sense of how his late mother might have felt when she decided against the remote control when purchasing a new television. He could almost forgive her for that.
All he wanted was the standard mobile phone at the cheapest rate. He bought the bottom-of-the-line model with a 250-minute international card to go with it. The cashier had to yank the debit card out of his hand to ring it up.
That would wipe him out for a week. Why had he listened to Earl and thrown his phone out the window? Not only did he have to learn how to use a new phone, but he also had to reprogram
all the old numbers, most of which he had forgotten.
At last he stood there, buried in the department store, phone in hand.
Reach out and touch someone.
Huh? Oh, it was Xenhet checking in. “If only I could touch her. She’s miles away.”
Er. With your cell phone.
“Oh, yeah. Got it.”
“Mister,” the shop girl said. “You have to press the telephone number first.”
Brad stared down at the instrument in his hand. Damn, he had to stop thinking out loud.
He hurried back to the escalator and took it up to street level. Was he as dumb as he looked?
“Don’t answer that, Xen.”
He swept through the cosmetics counters and caught his reflection in a mirror. He still wore his digging outfit that was smeared with blood and coated with dust from the long ride on the train’s roof. If it weren’t for the competing smells of different perfume brands, his body odor would dominate the room.
What was he doing there? He didn’t belong.
You ain’t teched. You’re just lonely.
Granted. He was all alone in a land where he recognized no one. Maybe a face or two out of 1.3 billion. Even Dr. Yu was gone.
He was hit with an overwhelming urge to hear May’s voice. He wasn’t so worried about her safety or whether she still needed him. All he wanted to know was if he still belonged in China.
He clicked through the various features of the phone. The electronic phonebook was empty and so was his memory. If he really concentrated, he could summon up May’s number and perhaps one or two others. His fingers remembered her number before his mind did. He punched it in and headed outside for a clear connection. On his way out, he passed a Starbucks. The concoction of aromas churned up the acid in his empty stomach.
A cold gust of wind sandblasted him just as he heard her pick up the phone and say, “Wei?”
At last, the sound of her voice. He felt at home again.
