Dragon Day (19 page)

“This isn't fair,” she suddenly blurts out. “You're always hiding things. You know my life's an open book, and I get that hasn't always maybe been a good thing for you, but you never share
anything
.
You just . . . you just keep it all to yourself, and you won't let anyone help you—”

“You know how you can help? By just fucking doing what I'm asking you to do, okay?” I pour out the rest of my beer and slam the bottle onto the table. Brace my hands on the edge of the table and push myself to my feet. “I'm gonna change my shirt,” I mumble, and I limp off to my room, banging the door closed behind me.

I dig around in the top dresser drawer for my main Percocet stash. Get out the bottle, pop it open, and tap a pill onto my palm.

I hear a whimper and a scratching at the door: Mimi.

I hobble over and let her in.

“Sorry, pup,” I whisper, scratching her neck where the thick ruffle of fur is. “You don't like all this yelling and drama and stuff, do you?”

Her tail thumps on the floor.

I look at the Percocet in my hand. My leg doesn't really hurt that bad right now. It's more like I just don't want to feel this shit.

I have maybe fifty pills left. Sounds like a lot, but it's not, not really, and what you don't want to have happen is to keep taking them, run out, and then have to go cold turkey. I've done it before. It's nasty.

I split the pill in half and put the other half back into the bottle.

When I come out, I'm wearing a shirt that doesn't smell like stale sweat, and I'm feeling a little calmer. I guess I should apologize or something. I've got to figure out how to keep my cool better.

Or I could stop getting kidnapped and/or beaten up by assholes. That would probably improve my mood.

John's still sitting at the dining-room table, thumbing the screen of his smartphone. As soon as he sees me, he puts it down and stands up, like he's thinking about coming to me and giving me a hug or something.

But he doesn't. He just stands there, uncertainly, his hands clasped loosely in front of him.

Which is a good thing, because I pretty much want to smack him.

“Where's Cindy?” I ask. My mom's nowhere in sight.

“She is fetching Andy.” His hands fall to his sides. “Can you tell me what happened?”

When I finish my story, John looks grim. The only thing he says is, “I see.”

He strides over to the kitchen window, the one with a view of the courtyard parking lot. Stares out. I get the feeling he's taking an inventory of every car, every person, every object, looking for threats.

“You see something?”

“No. Does not mean no one is there.”

“Shit.” Because it hits me like a bucket of ice water. “They could've seen you come up here.”

He nods.

I think of something else. “Could they
. . .
? Could this place be
. . .
?” I point to my ear. “Can they hear us now, do you think?”

“I don't think so. Not this quickly. I check before.” He sounds like he's trying to convince himself.

You probably bugged the place yourself,
I want to say, but I don't.

John goes over to the TV and turns it on. Finds a loud variety show and cranks the volume. Cartoon sound effects and high-pitched screams of teenage girls fill the room.

“Maybe best thing for you to go with your mother to Hong Kong,” he mutters.

“No way.”

“Why? You are better off in Hong Kong than Beijing.” He's all certain, the big man who knows best. Better than I do anyway.

“Because they're watching me, John,” I say, and I know I sound really pissed, because isn't that obvious? “I go with Mom and Andy, they're gonna know about it and follow us there. I stay here, Mom and Andy can go on their own, and maybe no one will notice 'cause they're busy watching me. Maybe they won't even care.”

His expression wavers, just a little, because he hadn't thought of that, and he knows that he should have.

That's when my front door rattles, and Mom and Andy walk in.

Her eyes are red, the lids puffy. Great. I made my mom cry. Andy is close behind her, solid, slightly padded, like she could fall back on him if she had to and she'd be okay.

“Yili, ni hao,”
Andy says, like this was any other day. I'm starting to see why my mom likes him. When everything's going batshit, there's something to be said for a guy who doesn't seem to rattle, even if the calm is coming from his faith in Brother Jesus of the Righteous Thundering Fist.

“Hi, Andy. I'm sorry,” I say to my mom. “I didn't mean to
. . .
I just
. . .
Things are really screwed up right now.”

“I guess I get that.” She sniffles a little. “Why do you have the TV on so loud?”

“Because, uh
. . .
just because.”

“
Heibang
can be big problem,” Andy says with a nod.

Is he really buying my story about gangsters? I wasn't even pretending to be serious about it.

“I have car,” he continues. “We can drive to see my family in Xiamen. Xiamen is very pretty. Mimi can come, too.”

I hesitate. I'd feel better if they got out of the mainland altogether. But Xiamen's only a couple hundred miles from Hong Kong, there's all kinds of flights and even boats that go to HK from there, and if they just go to visit Andy's family, maybe it wouldn't attract as much attention as crossing into Hong Kong. They could get away with not contacting the local PSB for a couple of days to register my mom, and it's not like the different provincial authorities always talk to each other. Maybe it would be safe.

Has to be safer than Beijing anyway.

“Okay,” I say. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

“This isn't exactly how I wanted to meet your family, Andy,” my mom says with a little smile.

He slips his hand into hers. “I know my family like you very much.”

She blushes.

It doesn't take long
for Mom to pack a suitcase and for me to gather up another bag with Mimi's food and dishes. Mimi's dancing around, all excited, stands up on her hind paws and rests her front paws on my hips, her doggie hug: road trip!

“Wish I could go, too,” I mutter, hugging her around the neck.

Mom's just coming out of the bathroom with her Dopp kit. She sees me playing with the dog and hesitates by the door.

“You know, you can tell me the truth,” she says quietly, so John won't hear. He's pacing around the living room, scowling at his phone.

“I really can't,” I say. Not about this.

Not about a lot of things.

When she's ready to
go, Andy comes over to carry her bag, which is just a little wheeled carry-on, but she's kind of got her hands full with Mimi and the tote bag with Mimi's things.

We're all standing around the door, me and John on one side, Mom and Andy on the other, Mimi prancing in place between us.

I can tell my mom's trying not to be upset. She's got a smile on her face and everything. “I'll call you or email you as soon as we get there,” she says.

“Actually
. . .
don't. I mean
. . .
” How to put it? “I'll get in touch with you in a couple of days. Unless you have a problem, and then call me right away. Not that you'll have a problem or anything.”

She nods.

“But
. . .
when you do go online? Make sure you always use the VPN. The thing I downloaded for you so you can log on to Facebook.”

Her face twists, and I can tell she's about to lose it. She gathers me into her arms and hugs me tight, and she's crying now. I hate that. I pat her on the back, and I hold my breath, and I tell myself, You have to keep it together, you can't lose it, too, because I'm scared if I do, I'll break down completely. Curl up into a little ball and just wait for someone to come and put me out of my misery.

Finally my mom lets go. Steps back and glares at John.

“I don't know what your story is, John,” she says, “but if you have anything to do with the problems my little girl is having? I'll come back here and I'll kick your ass.”

“I . . . I,” John stammers, and then falls silent. Looks away. “I will take care of her,” he says.

“You'd better.”

Yeah, like he's done such a great job so far. But I don't tell my mom that.

“Now what?”

Mom and Andy and Mimi have left. It's just John and me, circling each other like a couple of wary cats.

He stops and massages his forehead, as if he's trying to pull out a solution with his fingers. “We should go. I can take you someplace. Someplace safe.”

There are all kinds of things I want to ask, questions swirling around in my head so fast that I can barely separate one from another.

First and foremost, how is he going to keep me safe from a guy who apparently has the fucking
PLA
to do his dirty work?

But there's no time for that right now.

I hustle into my bedroom, grab my daypack, my laptop, a light jacket, a T-shirt, and clean underwear, my Percocet, the old iPhone I keep because I can buy anonymous SIM cards for it, just in case something like this should happen, and my Beanie squid, for good luck.

God knows I'm going to need it.

C
hapter Sixteen

★

“Let me carry
your bag.”

“I can carry it myself.”

John grits his teeth. We're in the elevator heading down. An ad for cognac plays on the little flat-screen TV by the door.

“Right now we just pretend we are boyfriend and girlfriend,” he says. “Boyfriend carries girlfriend's bag.”

“Whatever,” I mutter. I hand him my daypack. “Are we gonna hold hands, too?”

“We should act like nothing's wrong.”

“Why? What difference will it make?”

“Just
. . .
” He hisses through his teeth. “Just do what I say, for once.”

Fuck you, I think really loud.

“Can we go out another way?” he asks when we reach the ground floor.

“What about your car?”

“Better to just leave it here. In case
. . .
”

In case someone bugged it, I'm guessing, while John was talking about restaurant locations with my mom.

“Yeah,” I say. Behind my building there's an alcove where they keep a couple of dumpsters and a little yard that has a long bike rack crammed with rusting Giants and a few old Flying Pigeons and some battered electric scooters. It's enclosed by a cinder-block wall with shards of glass embedded in the top, but there's a little gate with a triangular metal tube barrier that no one watches and you can slip through if you want, which has never made sense to me, but whatever.

“This way.”

We exit onto a tiny
hutong
that runs perpendicular to the alley off Jiu Gulou Dajie. If we hang a right, we can head up to Xitao Hutong and over to the Gulou subway station or keep going north to Deshengmen and the Second Ring Road to catch a cab. Or we can head south, to Gulou West and Houhai. Plenty of cabs there, too.

“South,” John says.

“Why?”

“Other way is where car would go, maybe to get on Second Ring Road or Jiugulou Dajie. Or to go on subway. This way maybe they don't expect us to go.”

“Okay.”

We head south, down an alley lined with grey brick walls. There's a worker with a bicycle cart hauling empty Yanjing Beer bottles who looks up as we pass. He has a PLA-green cap pulled low over his head, but I can see his eyes, staring at us.

“So where are we going?”

“A safe place I know. Where Yang Junmin can't find you.”

“A DSD safe place?”

John shrugs.

“Because your boss wants to nail my sorry ass to a wall, so how the
fuck
is some DSD off-the-books shithole where you lock up dissidents you don't like
safe
?”

Okay, I'm yelling. But it's been a really lousy day so far.

“He is not my boss,” John mutters, his jaw tight.

“Oh, great, here we go with the man-of-mystery routine again.”

We're getting close to Gulou West. We turn a corner, down another little alley, past one of those tiny shoe box–size stores that sell beer and toilet paper and snacks.

And see two guys heading toward us. Young. Buzz cuts. Sunglasses and fake leather jackets.

“Keep walking,” John murmurs.

“Just . . . ?”

“Keep walking.” He places his hand flat on my back for a moment, urging me forward.

My heart's racing. I feel the pain shooting up my leg, and I tell myself, I can do it, I can keep walking, just walk right on past these guys, we'll make it to Gulou West, grab a cab, and get the fuck out, and we're just about even with them when one of the guys bumps his shoulder into John, hard.

“Watch where you're going,” the guy snarls.

John lifts his hands, chest-high.
“Duibuqi,”
he says. Sorry. He takes a step back.

That's when they rush him.

John drives the heels of his palms into the first guy's jaw, shoves a knee into his groin. First guy goes down, but as he does, the other guy drives his shoulder into John's side, a football tackle, and they hit the ground, scrambling and punching and kicking, knocking over a crate of empty Yanjing Beer bottles.

One of those rolls in my direction. I pick it up. Hold the bottle in both hands. Wait till I have a clear shot. And smash it over the guy's head.

It's not like the movies. The fucking thing doesn't break. But I hit him hard enough that he collapses for a moment, lifts his hands to the back of his head like a reflex, and that gives John enough time to roll away and slam his heel into the guy's ribs a few times. I hear a sound that might be one of his ribs breaking, and I shudder, I can't help it.

Thankfully, he goes limp. He's breathing, and he's conscious, but the fight's gone out of him.

John scrambles to his feet, my backpack still on his shoulders.

I hear a tinkle of glass, and a beer bottle rolls past my feet. Turn and see a middle-aged woman poking her head out of the doorway of the tiny shop.

“Duibuqi, gei ni tian mafan le,”
John says. Sorry to trouble you.

And we hustle ourselves down the alley, leaving the two guys moaning on the pavement.

“You'd think Uncle Yang
could afford better thugs.”

John shrugs. “They are not bad. I am simply better.”

I roll my eyes. “Well, you had a little help.”

“I did.” He gives my hand a squeeze. “You were very good.”

The two of us are making like boyfriend and girlfriend, riding on the subway out to John's safe place, wherever that is. Just laughing and touching each other, like we're an actual couple.

There's a part of me that knows I should be asking those questions, such as where are we going exactly, but I'm so wired and buzzing from what just happened that I'm mostly just thinking about how good it feels leaning into Mr. Badass next to me here.

“What about your car?” I ask.

“What about it?”

“Can't they use it to find you?”

John whispers in my ear: “Not with the plates on it. Fake.”

“Smooth.”

“The next station is Sanyuanqiao. Sanyuanqiao is a transfer station. All passengers, please prepare for your arrival.” I half listen to the recorded announcements, wondering as I always do who they got to do the English—the way she says “transfer,” all nasal like she's from New Jersey or something always cracks me up.

“We can get off here,” John says.

“We going to the airport?”

He shakes his head. “We just look for a taxi.”

We take the long escalator up to the surface, emerging into dusty yellow skies.

Riding in the cab, I'm not sure why, but everything feels heavier somehow. We were having fun on the subway, celebrating that we'd beaten the bad guys. Now the boyfriend/girlfriend act is over. We're sitting next to each other like near strangers.

We're out in that patchy no-man's-land close to the airport. You can't get here on the subway; the Airport Express doesn't make stops between Sanyuanqiao and the terminals. Not that there's much here. Just the highway and scrubby fields and skinny trees, the occasional factory.

We pull off the highway. Close to the interchange, there's this massive concrete building painted a yellowish shade of beige. It's about three stories, and I would've taken it to be a factory or a school of some kind that was built in the Soviet days, except for the fountain out in front surrounded by a circle of yellow-beige concrete columns and topped by a yellow-beige concrete ring. That and the rooftop sign that spells out
airport harmony garden hotel
.

“Wait a second—” I say as we pull in to the drive.

John shoots me a look. “We can discuss in a minute.
Ni keyi dao houbian ting che,
” he tells the driver. You can stop around the back.

I'm liking this less and less. I'm thinking maybe I should just stay in the cab and have the driver drop me someplace else. But I don't.

John pays the guy, and he gets out, and I slide out after him.

We're in a small parking lot behind a secondary building, a ragged tennis court to one side. “Wait here a moment,” John says. “I have to make an arrangement.” He trots off toward the main building. I stand there, pissed at myself for going along with him. The two times that Pompadour Bureaucrat had me picked up for tea, it went something like this. Some crappy hotel on the fringes of Beijing. Going upstairs through a side entrance. Never checking in and not knowing if I'd be checking out anytime soon.

But this is different, I tell myself. This is John. I don't know exactly what his deal is, but he seems to care about me, right?

There are two guys playing tennis in the late-afternoon sun. One wearing jeans, neither very good. I watch them play, the guy in jeans swatting with an awkward hop at a ball that sails past his head and a giggle when he misses.

I stare at the cracks on the tennis court, at the frayed net.

Finally I turn and see John jogging toward me.

“Okay,” he says. “We can go inside now.”

Even though the hall is dark, I can see stains in the worn brown carpet, that the faded white walls are dingy with decades of cigarette smoke. It's a lot like the hotels Pompadour Bureaucrat had me brought to, except worse, maybe because there's so much more of it. The halls are wide and strangely empty. Maybe it's off-season for detaining dissidents.

We pass only one person, a thirtyish man in a cheap leather jacket and dark slacks, Ray-Ban-style sunglasses perched on his forehead. He and John exchange a glance, or am I imagining that? He sure looks like a low-rent undercover nark anyway.

John stops in front of a room close to the end of the hall. Gets out a key card. I hear the little whir as it unlocks. He steps inside, and I follow.

A faded yellow runner over a greying quilt on a bed that I already know is a thin foam pad on top of plywood. Dusty beige curtains. The whole place stinks of mildew.

John stands there, an uncertain look on his face.

“So,” he finally says. “You can stay here awhile. I will take care of things.”

“Awhile? How long? And what things?”

“Just
. . .
a day or so. I come back for you.”

“Jesus,” I mutter. “So you're just gonna leave me here while you go do whatever it is you're gonna do?”

He gives a little half shrug. I guess that's all the answer I'm going to get.

“You need to eat some things, you can go to the canteen. They put it on room. You can . . . you can go to . . . to
jianshenfang
, to
. . .
to gym.” There's this weird helpless note to his voice. That's when it hits me.

“You don't really have a plan, do you? Awesome.”

“I can manage something. You must trust me.”

“Oh, must I?” I plop down on the bed. The mattress is hard enough to send a jolt up my spine.

It's not like I have a lot of choices. I don't have a working phone—well, I have one with no minutes and another that I'm pretty sure is hacked. I do have my laptop, though. I unzip my backpack and pull it out.

John lets out a short, sharp sigh and shakes his head.

Of course there isn't going to be Internet in a secret black-jail detention hotel room.

“Fine. Whatever.”

“Yili—”

I hold up my hand. “Don't. Just . . . just go. Go manage something. I'll wait here.”

He stands there a moment longer, like he's looking for something from me. I have no idea what.

“Sorry,” he mutters, and leaves.

Yeah, you should be sorry, buddy, I think. I may not know John's whole story, but how is he going to deal with a pissed-off Uncle Yang?

I hope the TV works. Maybe there's an American movie on CCTV-6.

I fiddle with the remote. Nada. Just a black screen.

“Fucking great.”

There's a teakettle at least. I can make myself a cup of coffee. I usually have a couple of Starbucks VIAs in my messenger bag.

I pull the bag out of my backpack. Slip my hand into the outside pocket. Feel around for the little tube of coffee.

That's when my fingertips feel something else through the rough canvas fabric, something in the small interior zip pocket. Something round, like a coin. Except it doesn't feel exactly like a coin somehow. Too thick.

I unzip the pocket and jam two fingers inside, feeling for the thing. I find it and fish it out.

Yeah, it looks like a coin. An old one-yuan model. And yeah, they're heavier than the modern version. But not like this.