by Ryan Graudin
I don’t know if the scarlet slant of my lanterns’ light is just right or if it’s just the haunting youth of the window-boy’s face. But today I notice how the ambassador wears his years in so many places: the fine fan of lines spreading from the corners of his lids, age spots the color of fire-singed bread, veins on the backs of his thighs that writhe and bulge like eels. I’ve always known he was old, but something about it today makes me uneasy.
Pace, pace, goes my heart. Back and forth. Back and forth. A restless beast.
I can’t stay here anymore.
“Mama-san has been locking our doors.”
“What?” His jowls tighten, snarl like a moon-crested black bear. Everything about him is sharp now, shot through with anger and business. This is the side of him that makes my fingertips tremble. “Why would she do that?”
“She told me not to tell. I’ll get in trouble.” I swallow. My mouth is edged with salt and bile. “Please don’t tell her I told you.”
He does not answer my plea. “She’s kept you locked in this room? For how long?”
“I don’t know. All I want is to talk to the other girls. I get so lonely in here and there’s nothing to do!” Except stare at stars and a shell, talk to a mysterious boy.
The ambassador sits up. He looks around the room, his eyes mirroring every inch, every corner of my cage. I think this is the first time he’s really looked at it. Noticed the chip in my flower vase, the small snag in the edge of the wall tapestry. Every muscle in my body cinches when his gaze slides past the window.
“Mei Yee—I’ve been thinking. About the day I gave you the chocolates.”
The day I first saw the boy. Don’t—I catch myself—don’t think about him. Not now.
The ambassador looks at me down the slant of his nose, from a great height. “What if I took you away from here?”
For some reason his accent sounds extra foreign at this question. I can’t quite believe what I’m hearing. “Away?”
“You’ve been exclusive to me for over a year now. I don’t think it would be unreasonable for me to make a deal with Longwai.”
“W-where?” I stammer.
“An apartment. In Seng Ngoi. Close to where I work. There’s a pool. And a garden on the rooftop. There’s a gourmet food service. Guards at the door. Everything you could possibly want.”
From where I’m lying, the ambassador could be a god. He looms, stretched out like a temple idol. Golden skin, stomach round against the sheets, pushing into mine.
A pool. A garden. Gourmet food. The words feel like blessings misting my head, promises of heaven. A utopia far from this place of syringes and slaps. The thing Sing bled for—a way out—is being offered to me on a silver platter. I should snatch it, seize it before it disappears.
A week ago I would have said yes. But a week ago there wasn’t a nautilus balanced on my window ledge. There wasn’t a boy staring in, making me feel naked when I was fully clothed, promising his own way out.
Is escape enough? Is it even the thing I want most?
I don’t know.
Yes. It’s such a small, fleeting word. So easy to say. Even a nod would do.
I open my mouth. Crimson-bright drapes flare in the corner of my vision. No words come out.
“Mei Yee?” A fledgling frown hatches on the ambassador’s lips. He reaches out, strokes my arm. The touch, this barest graze of fingers, startles me out of my whirlwind head. His hand trails down, comes to rest on the curve of my hip.
I should say it. I should, but I can’t.
“I… I have to think about it,” I tell him.
The frown deepens, storm clouds roll up behind his face. Gray. “I thought you would say yes.”
I thought I would, too. But it seems that out and away are two different words.
There’s a darkness behind his eyes, his face. A flash of something that makes me shiver. His hand is heavy on my hip; fingers pressing, pressing, pressing.
“There’s someone else, isn’t there?” His accusation is a lightning bolt—sudden and splitting. “Is Longwai forcing you to take other clients?”
Those fingertips, the ones on my hip, suddenly become crush and bruise. A whimper leaves me—half surprise, half pain. He’s never touched me like this before, never hurt me.
The ambassador jerks his hand away at the sound. He stares first at his palm, then at me. “Sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just that you’ve seemed different lately. And I thought…”
“There’s no one else.” This feels like a lie when I say it. Because of the boy. Because of Sing and Wen Kei and Nuo and Yin Yu. So many faces I’ll never see again if I agree. If I take the safe route. “I just need time to think. It would be hard to leave my friends.…”
The storm cloud has vanished, yet his eyes are all haze and confusion. He pulls away, and cold air ribbons over my skin, calling out gooseflesh. The ambassador dresses slowly, carefully. He buttons up his dress shirt and twists in the cuff links. His fingers are so steady as he works these small items into place. There’s not a trace of emotion on his face as he shoulders his dinner jacket and retrieves his topcoat.
“I’ll get Longwai to unlock your door.”
He’s gone, through the door without even a good-bye.
The doors open, just as the ambassador promised. Mama-san doesn’t linger. She continues down the darkened hall, undoing locks with iron twists of her key ring. I hover at the threshold and watch her. I look for her bruise, but it’s gone. Healed or hidden. I’m not sure which.
The skin on my hip is splotchy—blood that can’t be freed—pooling in shapes and shades that remind me of an exotic flower. The same flowers that freckle the other girls’ bodies. The same flowers that used to circle my mother’s wrists whenever my father gripped her too tightly.
I had them, too, my first few months in the brothel, when there was no limit on who came to my bed. Before the ambassador arrived and rescued me from all that. Or so I thought.
It was a mistake, I tell myself. He didn’t mean to.
My hip throbs with every heartbeat, reminding me that those are the same words my mother said every morning after. She wouldn’t even look at Jin Ling’s bandages or her own battered limbs. She slouched over the cooking fire, waiting for the water to hiss like a dragon caught in a pot.
“He didn’t mean to do it. He already told me he was sorry.”
But the bruises kept blooming—yellow, green, bright pink, purple, blue—a whole garden of marks to undo my father’s words.
“Why doesn’t Mother leave?” Jin Ling asked me one night when I was cleaning out a terrible split over her left eye. “We could go and start another farm. Or move to the city.”
My sister made it sound so easy: leaving. As if we could just load up the oxcart and go. And I could never find a way to explain it to her, why our mother stayed. It was just something I knew in my heart. Father was the familiar, the known. It didn’t matter that his breath stung like pine needles every night, or that his knuckles battered our flesh. We expected that.
She would never leave him. Not for the world. Not even for us.
My mother was not a person made of risk and run. Not like Jin Ling. Not like Sing.
And me… I don’t know what kind of person I am.
The girls come, one by one. Crowding my doorway like sparrows jostling for spare crumbs. I know it hasn’t been so long since we last glimpsed one another, but their faces could almost belong to strangers. Even tiny Wen Kei, the youngest, has a weight in her eyes that wasn’t there before.
“I didn’t think they’d let us out so soon,” Nuo says once we’re all in the room. “I wonder why.”
I wonder, too, what the ambassador said to sway the master’s decision to unlock not just one but an entire score of doors. Whatever it was, it worked. I have no doubt he could talk me out of this brothel altogether.
My thoughts are still a raging typhoon—speeding around and around—so loud I can barely hear the other girls as they talk about their
time behind the doors.
“And then he tried to make me…”
A pool. A garden. Gourmet food. Heaven on a platter.
“… I had to yell for Mama-san.”
Yes. Why didn’t I say yes? Any one of them would. In a heartbeat. Yes. Yes. Yes. A heartbeat.
“… haven’t slept for days… I keep hearing her scream.…”
Sing. Would she have said yes? I’m not so sure. She was all fire, all risk. Her heart might as well be my seashell. Sitting on the other side of my window. Unhindered by bars. Just out of reach.
“Wen Kei?” I speak out.
The other girls stare at me.
“Have you ever seen a nautilus?” I still stumble over the word, uncertain.
The girl’s eyes brighten. A twinkle that waltzes with the weight. “Oh yes. My father used to catch them sometimes. He sold the shells to tourists in the market. If you split the shell open, you can see how it’s grown. Whenever it gets too big to fit in its old space, it seals it off. Over and over again. Until it’s all curled up.”
The last image makes Nuo sigh. “Like a fern? My grandmother used to grow ferns in her garden. And radishes, and carrots, and—”
“We shouldn’t talk about home,” Yin Yu interrupts. Her voice is itchy and distracted. Hotter than usual. It makes me notice the stain of wine on her serving dress. Still wet and dark, like a wound. “All we’re doing is hurting ourselves. Nothing good can come of it. This is what got Sing into trouble in the first place… talking about home. It got in her head.”
No. It didn’t get into Sing’s head. It sabotaged her heart, fed it so it grew and grew and grew. Until she was forced to seal everything off—try for a wider, better life.
I wonder if the boy knows about what’s inside the nautilus. If those moon-clear eyes can see how my own shell is squeezing tight. How soon it will be more than I can bear.
It’s not so simple as a yes or a no. It’s not even a matter of escape. It’s a question of what I want more. The ambassador’s penthouse or whatever lies past the bars of that window. The familiar or the risk.
I’m not like my sister. I never was. Jin Ling always ran faster, fought harder. Whenever she was around, I didn’t even bother.
But I don’t want to be like my mother, either. Waking up every morning and watching the sun rise on fresh wounds, wondering in the secret chambers of her heart if there was something more. Through the rice fields and over the mountains.
And this is my race. My risk. Jin Ling’s not here to take it for me.
Maybe I’m a faster runner than I realize.
I don’t know why I thought getting the names would be easy once I found a way out of the room. As if I could just walk up to the master’s henchmen and shake their hands. The only way for me to get the names, to wander freely around the brothel without suspicion, is to ask the master for a job. A job that will get me the closest to the Brotherhood’s secret meetings. A job serving plum wine and lighting pipes.
Yin Yu’s job.
There are leaping frogs in my stomach as I get closer to the unsettled smoke of the master’s den. I’ve thought of how to ask him, so the request will sound innocent. But the master is smarter than his drooping lids suggest. How else would someone become law in a lawless place?
The lounge is almost empty. There are no clients stretched out on the couches, no long pipes spewing smoke into glazed faces. Nuo is not in the corner; the silence of her zither is deafening. I hear every one of my footsteps, creaking and sliding against weathered wood.
Master sits alone. His legs are crossed, tucked with a flexibility I’m surprised he still possesses. There’s a pipe in his hands, but it stays down.
“Mama-san says you requested to see me. Normally, I wouldn’t bother, but after my most recent discussion with your client, my curiosity is piqued.”
He tilts his head at the last word. All I can look at, all I can see, is that awful purple hook of a scar. I turn my stare down to the floor. All ten toes are curling beneath the silk of my slippers, like worms stabbed, sacrificed to find fish.
He knows. He’s smart. My fears whir; cautious, docile Mei Yee is scrambling, trying her hardest to stop me. Don’t ask. Just go back. Sit. Wait. Say yes.
I wet my lips, gather up all my scattered fragments of courage. They’re sharp, spinning, and newborn, enough to push out the words. “I was wondering if, maybe, you might let me take up some duties. I’d like to learn how to serve wine.”
“You want me to give you chores?” His eyes slit, like a cat half asleep but still watching. My neck feels akin to a chicken’s, stretched tight, waiting for a blade. I wonder, not for the first time, why I’m standing here. Why I didn’t just say yes.
I stare into the lusty gold links of his necklace. “The other girls have tasks. I don’t like feeling as if I’m not earning my keep.”
From the way his mouth is set, all crumpled and caved into the side of his face, I wait for his no. Instead, he nods slowly.
“Very well. You have fortunate timing—Yin Yu was foolish enough to spill wine on a client just this morning. Have her show you the trays and the lighting procedures. You can take her place this evening.”
He says this, and I remember the heat in Yin Yu’s voice. The stain on her dress. I wonder at how I could be so fortunate, to ask on the same day Yin Yu’s perfect service failed.
Then again, I am the lucky one.
I leave with a long, low bow, with a hope beyond hope that my luck will hold.
11 DAYS
DAI
My whole body bounces as I stand by the rusted-out cannon, full of wild, untamped nerves. Up and down. Up and down. I wish Tsang would hurry his ass up. We never seem to get here at the same time. One of us is always late.
I see his cigarette first. Bobbing through Seng Ngoi’s almost-dawn dark like a firefly from hell. The very first time I saw Tsang—the night I drew the marks on my apartment wall—he was smacking the pack of cancer sticks against his palm. Pulling out the perfect one and setting it ablaze. That was many weeks, many charcoal lines, many clandestine meetings ago. I’d bet the number of cigarette butts he’s left at the Old South Gate would add up to cartons.
I stop bouncing, hold my breath when Tsang gets closer. Smoking is one of the few vices I never really took to. Probably because my father forced me to smoke an entire pack when he caught me lighting up in the rock garden. By the time it was over, I was the greenest, sorriest eight-year-old in Seng Ngoi.
It makes me wonder what my life would be like if he’d taken that approach for everything else.
“What’ve you got for me?” My handler hasn’t even stopped walking.
“Longwai isn’t budging. He’s keeping me in the lounge. I’ve still got the boy doing runs.…” I trail off, wonder if I told the truth. Jin’s gone now—leaving just enough cat fur in my apartment to give my allergies hell. Not that I’m surprised. He’s one of the smartest kids I’ve come across. He probably figured out what I was up to and ran.
I wish he’d thought to snitch my first aid kit. That wound of his is going to need another cleaning.
“What about the whore?”
Whore… Tsang’s talking about the window-girl. It takes me a moment to realize this. To reconcile this brutal, bat-bashing word with the girl who’s been on my mind the past few days. I keep remembering the look that washed over her face when I set out the shell. The joy and longing. One hundred percent concentrate.
She looked at the nautilus like it was sunlight on a string. The most beautiful, pure thing in the universe.
She looked at me the same way. Like I was someone worth seeing. A goddamn hero. It was a stare that made me want to stand straight, look the part.
Too bad she’s wrong. For both of us.
“I’m testing her.” I spit the truth out like a bad pill: no hero here. “She’s trying to find out their names.”
“Still?” Tsang growls.
“I gave her four days.”
“F
our days!” He sucks a sharp breath. His cigarette flares, lights his face like anger. “That’s awfully generous.”
“It’s what she needed.” Four lines. It’s a lot for me to give, but what I’m asking for is worth so much more.
“You’ve got to move faster. Get rid of the boy. You don’t need him anymore, and the last thing I need is you getting gutted for a failed drug run. Focus on the whore.”
Get rid of the boy. Focus on the whore. Up and down. Up and down. Maybe if I jump hard enough I can shake off his words. I go faster. Up, down. Up, down.
“Are you even listening?” Tsang’s cigarette is down to the nub, which means he’s getting crabbier than usual. His eyes gleam with its last ashes as they watch me jumping. Up, down.
“I need both of them.” Plan A and Plan B. “The boy is my only way into the brothel. I’ll need that when the girl comes through.”
“Why not let the whore do it all?”
My feet land flat on the ground. Stay there. I stare straight at Tsang. At the orange fire choking in a wreath of smoke. Almost dead.
“Stop using that word,” I tell him.
Tsang’s features twist into a smirk. He starts to laugh. “Sounds like someone’s got a crush. Now there’s a match made in heaven: a prostitute and a—”
“We done?” I cut off my handler. His cigarette winks out on cue.
“Next time we meet, I want results.” Tsang plucks the dead, smoking thing from his lips. Tosses it into a grimy puddle, where it hisses its own pitiful eulogy. “Stay focused, Sun Dai Shing. Your time is running out.”
MEI YEE
Yin Yu’s fingers were too tight on everything when she showed me the lacquered cabinet of servingware. Her knuckles were so white and strained I feared the decanter would shatter under her touch.
Serving wine and lighting pipes are simple tasks, but Yin Yu treated them as if they were the most sacred things in the world. She handed me a shimmering, holly-red serving dress, and endless instructions spilled from her mouth:
