The Refugee Sentinel (8 page)

The phone rang again for what, to Colton, felt like the thirtieth time. He had lost count. This time he picked up, to prevent his sanity from blowing through his ears, and almost burst into laughter after hearing the voice he had expected. How else could he react to her tenacity? Or should he be laughing at himself: a middle-aged man with a potbelly, a history of STDs and no family? Not quite your top-shelf dating material, yet this beautiful woman with great breasts, great education and two wonderful kids was stalking him. And he wanted none of her. He remembered the first year without Sarah, when he would have proposed to a stripper if she had as much as kissed his cheek in the middle of a lap-dance… of course, none of them had. Back then he would have killed for a stalker like Sylvya. But here he was today, allergic to her insistence. What was wrong with him? He waited for her to speak and bit into his lower lip to ward off a wave of cackles.

“Colton,” Sylvya’s voice was in rags. She sounded like hatred and yearning, at the same time; like a zombie attacking a human while hoping he’d kill it to rid it of its misery. “How could you be so selfish?”

He’d heard this drill before. His smile went away. “I think you should seek medical help.”

“Medical help? I am medical help, you bastard. How dare –”

“We’ve had this conversation, Sylvya. You tell me you love me and I tell you I don’t. What else is there?”

“I’m calling from outside your apartment.”

“You what?” He ran to the door, fumbling his keys for a moment then pushing it open. She was leaning against the wall, cell phone pinched between her shoulder and cheek, eyes locked on him.

“Jesus… How did you find my place?”

“I looked up your medical records at Virginia Mason.” She held her purse with both hands, like a shield. “It’s not something I’m not proud of, Colton.”

“Security downstairs should have stopped you… past curfew, no less.”

“I told the guard you were my husband. Did I lie?”

“Did you not?”

“Today… is my birthday. And I wanted no other gift,” her hands made a nervous circle in the air, “but to spend time with you. I’m sorry I caught you off-guard, but we had to talk about us.”

He groaned behind his teeth.

“Don’t,” she said. Her hand, palm-first, shot toward his face, to hush whatever words were due next. “You can’t deny a birthday wish, can you? It’s a yes-or-no answer, Colton.”

He stepped aside with a hung head.

She didn’t need another invitation and sat by a coffee table, the largest piece of furniture in the room other than a mattress and a small electric range. “What a lovely place you have. This must be a living room and a kitchen in one.”

Sitting across from her, he stared at her legs – waxed and glowing. He picked a ballpoint pen from the table, clicked and unclicked, then exhaled through trumpet cheeks. “All I can afford is this studio.”

“Does this mean we’re sitting in your bedroom?” Her eyebrows wiggled up and down.

He ignored the question. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Nothing, with this kind of tone.”

Colton looked up from her legs. She was acting coy, as if wild horses had dragged her to his coffee table. Maybe that’s what groupies did around their music idols. They looked forward to it but felt out of place when it happened. Not that he took himself this serious. If there was a celebrity at the table, it was her. She had saved his life and as much as he hated letting her inside on her birthday, anything less would have been an amateur act.

Sylvya buried her face in her palms. “I had lost respect for you,” she whispered behind her fingers.

“I’m sorry.”

“Let’s go to my place. I’d love to introduce you to my kids.”

“I don’t think we should see each other again.”

Her shoulders hunched over the table and her eyes reflected the studio’s recessed lights like fresh-water wells. “Never? Not until the day I die?”

“I’d want to see you the day before.”

The joke lit up her face and despite her visible efforts to the opposite, she smiled. “Funny.”

How smitten I would have been with you, had we met at a different time, Colton thought.

“Should I tell you what’s on my mind?” she said.

“No.”

“Well… Since I’m the birthday girl, I don’t need your permission.”

His smile went away. “I’ll be honest, Sylvya. Your love blinds you. My kindness to you doesn’t mean I love you back.”

“What do you mean?”

Colton had to hurt this woman. Hurt her enough so she wouldn’t come back. He shuddered and wished they could trade places after what he was about to say. “I don’t want to see you ever again.”

“Why not?”

His voice rose, its pitch broke before it steadied again. “Because you’ll never be my lover and you’ll make a lousy friend.”

Her lips shook. “Where is the man I fell in love with?”

“He’s dead other than in your imagination.”

She squeezed her head then wrapped her hair in a ponytail. “What have I done to make you detest me?”

“You should go.” Colton was out of strength to argue. His mouth opened and closed and nothing came out. How had he ever found her funny?

“I don’t think so.” Tears burnt pink trails down her cheeks. “Not after we bonded during the darkest days of your life, dear. With a bond stronger than the theatrics our society calls marriage.” She tightened the ponytail with both hands and swatted a non-existent strand of hair from her eyes. “Didn’t we? If a marriage is sacred, what we have is even better… it’s cathartic. Merging into a single being during our Mountain View days, in emotion, spirit and sex.”

He stood up and walked to the window, like a caged animal, and tossed her a glance without breaking stride.

“Do you realize what you’re doing? You lied to the guard that you’re my wife. And you claim we share a bond stronger than marriage.” His chest heaved up and down. “While I’m in your debt for saving my life, I don’t owe you the rest of it as a repayment. And to check that my ears still work, did you say you screwed me in the Mountain View hospital, while I was in coma?” His face felt like the face of someone going insane. “Do you know what rape means, Sylvya? It means jail and forfeiting your nursing license and never getting it back.”

“That’s what people do, when in love.”

Too dizzy to stand, he leaned against the window and sagged. “Leave now.” He had bought grapes earlier, from the grocery store around the corner. A half-pound, the maximum allowed, and had imagined eating them for dinner, their juice filling his mouth and trickling down his throat. He’d close his eyes and travel back to Cancun, his last vacation with Sarah, with Yana in her belly. Cancun was the last time he had eaten grapes. Ever. He’d been avoiding them since. Until today, when he was going to convince himself Earth was not a foregone conclusion. And he would toast life and mock Defiance Day. But Sylvya and her rape story had killed the grapes’ magic and he wanted the fruit out of his apartment. He wanted her out too.

“Leave. Now…” screaming this time, “or I’m calling the police.” His head hung between his knees. “I don’t want to see you. Do you understand?” Silence followed, with neither of them daring to break it. “Get out of my life. You damn –” Colton looked up ready for another drawn-out battle. He was sitting alone on the floor. She had left and he was shouting to the empty room.

Li-Mei found him alone, in the Big Daddy bar in the suburb of Woodinville. The GPS tracker on her tablet guided her north, past the drenched Seattle skyline and along the potholes littering what once was the I-5 highway. Li-Mei had never set foot in Woodinville before – the Napa of Washington, now – a Marine outpost conscripted by the ULE in case the Mayor and his police force lost control of the Emerald City. She wouldn’t have guessed Colton would be drawn to such a place. His behavioral records showed a thirst for strip clubs, hookah bars and pot joints, none of them available in your typical military base.

She parked outside the Big Daddy – a bar that an optimist would call gritty and a realist a dive. The muggy evening begged the skies for a rainy relief. She hated sweating, but welcomed the meteorological assistance, given she was about to jump into the role of a clingy Asian woman on a weekday suburban night. Li-Mei unbuttoned her plaid shirt and took it off, together with the tee underneath. Her white bra glowed in the late evening, moist flesh transmitting a dining invitation to all mosquitos within fifty yards. On her chest, she glued a fake dragon tattoo that started between her breasts, extended around the neck, and peaked next to her left earlobe. She put the tee back on, and the plaid shirt, refreshed her lips with a coat of raspberry red lipstick and walked in the bar.

Big Daddy felt cavernous and empty. A rectangular bar dominated the middle, with a dozen keg hoses dangling above the marble top, ready to deliver more alcohol than any human liver could process. An unshaved bartender sat on a beat-up stool, propping his face on his elbow and twirling a set of matches next to a half-drunk glass of beer. The place housed fewer than a dozen souls and she spotted Colton at a table in the back of the room. His hair was shorter than in the profile photos she had, but otherwise he looked identical, down to the suede jacket she recalled having seen in one of his digital folders. A crowded room would have helped conceal her approach and their ensuing conversation. An empty room was a nuisance, but something she could handle.

She sat at the bar, across from the bartender who kept twirling the matches. His stare followed her in a lazy arc and rested on her tattoo.

“What can I do you for, Missie?” His front teeth were missing but he flashed a broad grin, as if unaware of their absence.

“Make it rum and coke,” Li-Mei said with the raspiest voice she could muster. He squeezed and rattled the drink from the dangling hoses and slid it toward her across the marble top. The glass left a sweaty trail, sloshing some of its contents along the way and coming to a stop within inches of Li-Mei’s hand. She swallowed the shot, exhaled with a cough and tossed a toothy grimace at the man.

“Keep ‘em coming, till I say not to,” she said. She didn’t need to look over her shoulder to sense men ogling her from the minute she had walked in. Colton was the one guy who hadn’t bitten and kept staring at his beer. Li-Mei whistled at the bartender and tilted head in Colton’s direction. “What’s his deal?”

Mr. No-Front-Teeth didn’t hesitate. “Him? Not a regular.”

“You think he’s stationed at the base?”

“Nah. I know the local boys.” Then he winked at Li-Mei. “You one of them TV people, snitching on our boys for breaking curfew and smuggling shit?”

“What if I was?”

His face twisted. “I hope you ain’t. I spit on them TV folks.”

“I’m not with the TV. I’m just a woman looking for handsome guys.”

“Don’t know about him,” his tongue licked his chapped lips, “but you can make do with me.” A yellow smile seconded his words.

“Maybe I’ll come back after he and I are done. If you can handle me, that is.”

The bartender’s nostrils flared. “I’m off at two,” he said. “And I live close.”

“I’ll be back soon, lover.” Li-Mei swallowed her second shot and headed to the back of the bar.

Colton was picking at a scratch that ran from the edge of his table to his half-full beer glass. Li-Mei sat across from him with a theatric thump. Four other empty glasses flanked the half-full one.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said, “is this seat taken?”

A shade ran over his face, as his eyes lingered on her hair. “Be my guest,” he said, with less slurring than she had hoped. Then he went back to fixing the groove.

So much for the tattoo, she thought. “How about you buy me a full one of these?” she said and flicked an empty stein with her index finger.

His eyes didn’t move. “I’m sure other men in this room would be glad to oblige.”

“That’s why I am asking you.”

Colton turned to the bartender, “Two more beers, Charlie,” then back to Li-Mei. “I’m Colton.”

“Li-Mei.” She rested her face on her cupped palms and started blinking with the flirtatious frequency she had seen in a black-and-white film in Jenli. “What brings you around these parts?”

“It’s my first time here. Looking for a change of pace, I guess.”

She leaned back, flaunting a white smile and a red tattoo. “If a military outpost is your idea of change, you must be a party animal on schooldays.”

“And you?” he said.

“And me?”

“Who are you? A colonel-major who mingles with the platoon folk?”

“Points for a vivid imagination.” She laughed with a head thrown back and a tattoo glaring at him in the husky light. “I could turn into a colonel-major for the right audience. Maybe you could bring it out in me?”

“Who knows?” he said and looked at her with an empty stare that forced Li-Mei to revisit her basics. The man loved easy women, an assertion built on the empirical data he spent his weekends in strip clubs. But he hadn’t bitten so far and she decided to change her approach. She covered her mouth.

“You’re right. What am I doing?” she said and buttoned her shirt with shaky fingers. “I find a decent guy...” still stuttering, “and I don’t recognize myself. Ever since my dad was… you know, chosen, my life has become undone, like a kite without a string.” She squeezed the back of her neck to soothe some pain there, or stiffness. “A colonel-major? I can’t even score a cashier’s gig. Instead, I book rooms in hotels to meet guys with my tits hanging out, as if…” She shook her head and turned for the door.

“Stay.” His voice stopped her. “You should stay.” He couldn’t see the smile rising on her face.

She turned around, smile gone and lips quivering. “You sure?”

Outside, crickets sang in the evening. “Were you and your father close?” he said.

By the time she returned to his table, the promiscuous Li-Mei had died. A new one, as fragile as a nun, sat down. Whatever it took for Parker to change from an orange dot to a green one by the morning.

“What brings you here?” he said, coherent still, but getting slurry. “The Seattle glitz is to the south of Woodinville.”

She glanced at the time. Eleven-thirty-pm. If she were lucky, he might be dead by one-thirty
.
Guaranteed dead by two.

“Since when is rot a synonym for glitz?”

“You’re right.” He smiled for the first time.

“I’m here looking for…” she stopped. “Here I go again, spilling my guts to a stranger.”

“Carry on.” He stretched a hand, brushing her knuckles by accident then pulling back, as if her flesh were on fire.

She exhaled through puckered lips. “I’m lonely. I was looking for… you know, men in uniform who are strong and principled… sort of like knights.”

“We all look for heroes without realizing we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

“Maybe... But what kind of hero am I? Here? In this… place.” Li-Mei swept a hand at the empty bar then buried face in her palms, muffling a whimper.

“It’s OK falling apart sometimes. As long as you pick yourself up in time...”

“Are you falling apart?” She shot a teary smile designed to go straight at his savior complex. “I’m tough to compete with in the falling-apart department.” The fallen angel was proving more effective than the tattooed slut.

A self-pitying grin distorted Colton’s face. “If it makes you feel better, I’ve been struggling too… for years.” He took a sip of his beer. “Made a mistake when I was younger that wrecked my past. Now I’m fighting to prevent it from wrecking my future.”

“Defiance Day will take care of the future.”

“True. Yet we must be prepared for what happens after.”

“You’re a planner, aren’t you? You must not be from around here.”

“I used to live in Nevada.”

Li-Mei nodded, realizing she knew everything he told her, yet not in the same way he was telling it. For the first time she saw the man beyond his digital profile, valuable knowledge for eliminating a target. On the outside, she clasped hands against her chest. “Tell me more. It’s remarkable to meet someone who thinks further than two weeks from now. The rest of the world hunkers down, but you are like: no, no, no.” With each “no,” she waved a finger in front of her face then stretched a hand above her head, tracing an invisible newspaper headline. “Mr. Colton meets Defiance Day. Lives On.”

“I would have died in a Vegas hospital,” he said, “if not for a nurse who arm-wrestled Death for my life, for weeks, and won. I moved to Seattle after, to start fresh and stop the nightmares,” the sorrow on his face gave way to anguish, “and when I thought I had pulled it off, this ghost crawled out of my past, dragging me back to the beginning.”

“The way you talk, you could pass for a knight.”

“And you could pass for a comedian. Or a world-class flatterer.” He drank the last of the beer and wiped his mouth. “This knight will drink until Defiance Day and then… we’ll see.”

Li-Mei gave him a smile that belonged to her younger self, the girl from Jenli, before the training and the growing up. “How about you drive me to my hotel? I don’t feel safe by myself, after curfew.”

“Is this the itchy woman speaking again?” He started to apologize, but she spoke first.

“Sorry for bringing this up, I–”

“I acted like a jerk. Of course, I’ll drive you.”

On the outside, Li-Mei thanked him and smiled to stay in character, the corners of her mouth continuing their marathon workout. On the inside, this man’s kindness made her sick. He gave himself, piece by piece to anyone who’d bother asking. None of her other targets deserved to die as much as this man did. The closest she came to understanding his mindset was comparing his daughter to Taxi. Only, Li-Mei wouldn’t have died for Taxi. Did this mean she was less devoted to her mission than he was to his? Should she fear him? She hadn’t felt fear since the day Taxi had died on a gray morning twenty-one years ago. She shook the thought; today was different.

“Shall we?” She rose and he followed. She took his hand, her fingers prying his fingers apart. He squeezed back in return. A smile bloomed on her lips, but the skin-to-skin contact made her feel uncomfortable inside. Not that she was a virgin. She had slept with twelve people during her twenty-seven years, including different ethnicities, a girl and a threesome. She didn’t mind sex, but didn’t appreciate it either. The sloppy mess that followed was too much to bear and after repeated disasters, she demanded all her partners wear condoms. Tonight, her tally wasn’t going to go to thirteen but her target didn’t need to know that.

He opened the door for her. A shout came from behind, “Better use protection, tiger,” and laughter from drunken mouths. She closed the door and silenced them.

“I’m in the white Camaro,” he said pointing to the back of the parking lot. They reached the car and he shut the passenger door after she got in, careful not to slam it against the car’s frame. He turned on the ignition and switched into drive.

Once and again she glanced at him and planned his death as they flew toward Seattle, under the I-5 curfew sensors scanning their passports. The China Territory’s non-negotiable requirement was that the deaths of her targets appear natural or self-inflicted. Li-Mei didn’t mind. Throat slicing was what she had in mind for Colton – her favorite suicide setup because it gave her the tools to show appreciation for the victim. She would force high-quality cognac into her victims’ stomachs then drag them to a bathroom and induce vomiting until they regained their wits. Then she would slice their throats and watch them flap in an inch-deep pool of their own blood. As they died, she felt as close to them as siblings. Li-Mei had never felt such a bond with a living person.

Forty-five minutes later, Colton, with Li-Mei in the passenger seat, parked at The Fairmont Olympic Hotel.