Eleven Twenty-Three (2 page)

“No, absolutely, come join us,” I say,
pointing at the free chair just behind the briefcase attached to
his right arm. “Have a seat. My girlfriend and I always love the
chance meeting with another expat.”

Tara gives me a look of incredulity. Her
expression is code for:
Is this normal?
I shrug, not knowing
the answer.

The man sets his drink on the table, pulls
over the chair, and sits down gingerly in it, as if the metal legs
will deform and collapse under his brisk weight. Then he delicately
rests the briefcase on the floor directly next to his heel and
brings his right arm—the one with the handcuff attached at his
wrist—up to grab his spirit. He raises his glass for a toast, and
as he does so the metal coil clinks against his chair. I look away
from the sound.

“A toast,” he says. “To chance encounters.
Gan-bay
.”

“
Gan-bay
,” Tara and I repeat in a way
that sounds as if we are asking a question, and we clink our own
tall mugs of half-drank beer against his full glass. We drink
solemnly and I’m pretty sure Tara wants this man to leave.

“By the way,” he says, “my name is Scott.
Jonas Scott.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr.
Scott,” I say, hoping he will correct me and instruct us to call
him Jonas. He doesn’t. A scattered few of the Chinese bar tenants
cheer at a goal being made on the TV above the bar. “This is my
girlfriend Tara Tennille, and I’m Layne Prescott.”

“So nice to meet you two, Layne and—and,
um—Lydia?”

“
No
,” Tara says brusquely. “It’s
Tara
. My name is Tara.”

“I’m so sorry,” he says, sitting back hard
against his seat and wiping away a single droplet from his neck
using the free hand. “I’m losing my hearing, I think. It’s Tara,
right?”

“Right…Tara.”

“I apologize,” Mr. Scott says. “It’s just a
little loud in here, is all.”

“No problem,” I say for both of us,
attempting to gauge Tara’s demeanor. “So where are you headed
tonight, Mr. Scott?”

“San Francisco at eleven twenty-three.”

“Wow, what a coincidence,” Tara says. “That’s
where we’re headed too. And then we have a connecting flight back
East. Where are you going after San Francisco?”

“Nowhere,” he says, but does not add anything
to his statement, and I peer across the bar as a middle-aged German
couple discreetly slips their pubescent son a sip of their
beer.

“We’re heading home for the holidays,” Tara
says. “In Florida.”

“Where do you two live in Florida?”

“We live in this little beach town south of
St. Augustine and north of Daytona called Lilly’s End.”

“Oh? Lilly’s End?”

“It’s where we grew up,” I chime in. “It’s
quaint like a Norman Rockwell painting but just as boring. It’s one
of those bona fide nursing home towns where old people from
Michigan and Indiana come to die.”

“Come on, Layne, it’s not that bad,” Tara
interjects predictably. “It really isn’t, Mr. Scott. Lilly’s End is
a nice place to live.”

“I’m sure it’s a charming little town,” he
says, but with a slightly menacing grin, as if he has seen how
dreadful Lilly’s End is with his own eyes and knows Tara is simply
wistful for home right now and therefore full of shit.

“Have you ever heard of it?” I ask.

“Actually,” Mr. Scott says, “I think I have.
Didn’t some surveyors accidentally dig up some Indian artifacts or
something there not too long ago? It made the news?”

“Incredible,” I say. “I’m pretty impressed.
Yeah, that
was
us, in fact. Right before we left they found
a large stone clock or something in the spot where they planned to
build a new post office. From what my mother’s been telling me in
her e-mails, the archaeologists called out there hadn’t figured out
what the spirals in the center are yet, and so the city planners
don’t want to move it.”

“Maybe they should leave it be and just build
the post office somewhere else,” he says quietly, taking a gulp of
his drink. “Maybe they should not look any further into the matter
and just leave it where it sits and forget about it.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Tara says, nodding.

“It seems to me that the world would be a
much better place if we just left the myths alone sometimes and
forgot about rationalizing everything. Some events are better left
unexplained, or better yet, explained in some kind of obscure,
Fortean manner. Things are much more interesting that way.”

“I’d agree with that. I miss having the Loch
Ness monster myth,” I say, realizing how stupid what I just said
was but remaining unable to stop myself when I add, “That clock or
whatever it is will probably mean something much more prosaic and
mundane than what we all imagined it to. It will turn out to be
some kind of agricultural chart or something far less exciting than
what the townsfolk will project. I say just let it sit there and
perplex us forever.”

Mr. Scott does not respond, just stares down
at the case on the floor. Tara inspects her lap and picks at a
small white bump on her jeans that cannot be scraped away by her
fingernail. There is a moment of quiescence between the three of
us. Nervous swallows of beer and frantic glances around the bar
ensue.

“So uh, what brought you two to Shanghai?”
Mr. Scott finally asks us. His metal coil sounds like a spinning
roulette wheel when it slides carelessly against his chair as he
drinks.

“Actually, we’ve both been teaching English
in Suzhou now for the past four months. At Soochow University.”

“Very nice,” Mr. Scott says. “I’ve been told
the market for English teachers here has swelled a great deal in
the past couple of years.”

“But not the pay, unfortunately,” Tara
adds.

“Where were you two again? Suzhou?”

“Yeah.”

“The Venice of the Orient, they call it.
Beautiful city. I’ve read that the most stunning women in Asia live
there, as well.”

“I don’t think all that much of them,” Tara
says, chugging from her glass of beer. I take a large gulp of my
own but swallow only pangs of regret and traumatic flashbacks.

“But that’s what they say, anyway,” I throw
in.

“If you don’t mind me asking, it’s pretty
early in the month,” Mr. Scott begins. “Aren’t you two going home
for the holidays a bit…prematurely?”

“Well…yeah, sort of,” I admit, though I don’t
want to mention anything further. For the last twenty-four hours I
have been on the edge of screaming at the next person who offers
their condolences, and about thirty people have offered their
condolences so far. “There was a death in the family, so we’re
heading back early. We’re lucky to be able to leave at all though.
The birth of Christ isn’t exactly a headline in the PRC.”

“Or in the End, for that matter,” Tara
mutters. “Not to mention our semester here doesn’t end until
January.”

“A death in the family?” Mr. Scott repeats.
“My condolences. I’m sorry to hear that.”

I force down the scream and go on
smiling.

“It’s okay. It wasn’t anyone I was close
to.”

“So why the early trip back?” he asks, rather
rudely in my opinion. He tilts his head back and swallows
whatever’s left in his glass, including the ice. What he places
back on the table is an empty cup stained just slightly on the rim
with what looks like blood.

I notice that Tara is staring at the blood
now as well. Then she stares at me.

“It just seemed like I should be there for
the family, I suppose. My mother wants me back for the service, and
everyone at home is missing us, so it seemed like a good time to
go.”

“I’ve always noticed that death has the odd
latent effect of bringing people closer together than they would
have been if the departed still had a pulse.”

“So what brings
you
to China, Mr.
Scott?” Tara asks, in an obvious effort to veer away from the odd
area of conversation we were getting into. As she speaks, I look
for a cut lip, a gash, or a bruise, something to cause the red
stain on his glass. There’s nothing.

“Me? I was just here on business,” he
says.

He removes a cigarette from his coat pocket.
Tara and I respond to our cue and remove our own. When I can’t find
our pack of matches, Mr. Scott ignites both our cigarettes with a
butane lighter. Through the tiny blue flame, I see two elderly
Japanese businessmen examining us worriedly from the terminal
outside. One of them answers a cell phone and speaks in a hushed,
halted tone to the person on the other end.

“Do you come to China a lot on business?” I
ask, unnerved by the two stoic men hovering in my peripherals.

“No, never before this time, actually.”

At this moment, over a quarter of the bar
patrons leave simultaneously. I glance back at the plasma screen
across the room and notice that the soccer game is over. The
bartender changes the station to a CCTV news broadcast. The
oversized LED clock above the television tells us in ominous red
numbers that it is now 10:28, and flights are leaving the airport.
Tara and I will not be able to drink much longer with this man, as
if we’d even want to. Tara checks her watch and gives me a furtive
look that I am fairly certain Mr. Scott notices.

“Never?” I find myself asking him.

“Never, Layne. And to be honest, I don’t
think I will ever need to come back again. Not after this
trip.”

“Um, okay,” I say. Mr. Scott motions for yet
another drink from the waitress, and I take the opportunity to
break away. “So Tara, do you want anything else, or do you want to
go back to our terminal now?”

“Let’s go back soon so we don’t miss any of
the boarding calls. I also need to go into my bag and take one of
my pills before the flight.”

I motion for our check and immediately begin
rummaging through my pockets for the last Yuan we have left after
making the conversion back to American dollars to pay for our
drinks. The drum and bass music in the lounge shrinks down to
barely discernable levels, and I can hear someone’s baby screaming
in Mandarin from the terminal outside.

“I don’t think they will be boarding for some
minutes,” Mr. Scott says. “I can buy you two another drink, if
you’d like.”

“Oh, thanks for that,” I say. “But no. Tara
worries. We really should be heading back, I guess.”

“Look, I’ve got to ask or I’ll hate myself
later,” Tara suddenly blurts, glancing at the coil leading down
from his wrist. “But, I just have to know, Mr. Scott—”

“You want to know what I do for a living?” he
asks pleasantly.

“Yes, very much so. I mean, if you can tell
me, that is.”

I laugh nervously at her shocking breach of
barroom-spy protocol and await an answer. I fear the worst.

Mr. Scott must notice my alarm, as he looks
at me and says, “It’s okay, Layne. No big deal.”

“Oh, good,” I genuinely sigh with relief.
“Sorry about that, though.”

“It’s fine. Tara, I am actually a
professional courier.”

“Wow,” she says, inhaling thoughtfully on her
cigarette. “I’ve always wanted to meet a courier ever since I was a
kid. This is
great
! So you deliver important packages around
the world and stuff?”

“Sort of. It’s complicated.”

“And did you make a delivery here in
Shanghai?” she asks.

“Not just yet,” Mr. Scott says, concentrating
on the burning orange embers of his cigarette.

“Did something go wrong?”

“No, not at all, Layne. I just haven’t made
the delivery yet. It wasn’t time. But soon, I think.”

Tara and I ponder this for a long moment, but
I can tell that neither of us wants to pursue it any longer. It
seems like a bad idea to mention the finally obvious truth: that
his delivery will be somewhere in this airport, and that the black
briefcase on his wrist is the package to be delivered. Further,
that it must be delivered very soon, if he is to make the 11:23
back to the States.

“Well, we certainly have met some fascinating
people here in China, haven’t we, Layne?” Tara says, nodding while
stubbing her cigarette out.

“Indeed,” I agree. “This will be quite a
chapter in our future Chinese memoirs.”

I slowly rise from my chair and wait for Tara
to do the same.

“Well, we have to be going now, Mr. Scott,”
Tara says. “But it was
so
nice to meet you.”

“Yes,” he nods. “So nice to meet the both of
you, as well. I never thought I’d meet the next guy to—”

He catches himself and falls silent, focusing
on the wall behind our table, at the strip of missing wallpaper and
the exposed gray underneath. I exchange a quick glance with my
girlfriend and look back down at the shadowy man sitting across
from us. His eyes are on me now, as if he is fascinated with my
every movement in the same way I am fascinated with his.

“The next guy to do what?” I find myself
pressing.

“Who…has the courage to live abroad for a
year the way you do,” he says, stubbing his cigarette out. “I’m in
awe of that kind of adventurous spirit. I was absolutely terrified
of the world when I was your age.”

“Oh.”

“So maybe we’ll see you on the plane?” Tara
says, trying to sound hopeful.

“It’s certainly possible, Tara,” he answers.
“Chance encounters, you know? Or, as my father used to say about
meetings such as these: ships that pass in the night.”

A wind sweeps through the bar like a
ferocious beast. The candles at two separate tables go out. I
swallow the cliché.

“Right,” I say, backing away from him. “Ships
that pass in the night.”

10:40:20 PM

That last fleeting memory of my father plays
in static and garbled sound in my head, like the damaged recording
of a wedding for a couple now long deceased. It’s of the night in
the sushi restaurant. But I can’t hear the argument between us when
I remember those moments. I only discern the silent pleas of
another boulevardier hiding behind useless reputation and his own
deflated ego.