Beijing Payback

by Daniel Nieh

  Silence sets in as we process. Four million dollars. Two students, ages twenty-five and twenty-two, with four million dollars.

  “Does it mean anything for you?” I ask her.

  She tips her head to one side, brow furrowed.

  “I don’t know, Victor. I guess I could drop out of design school and open a boutique. Or travel around the world. But I’m not ready to think about using this money. It just doesn’t feel right. I’ll file the claim and we’ll figure it out later.”

  “So you know, it might be tricky to convert it to dollars because there are some restrictions on the yuan. You might be able to buy Chinese equities— What?”

  There’s a little smirk on Jules’s face. “So that’s who you’re gonna be, huh?” she says.

  “What is?”

  “An economics major.” She says the word like it’s a synonym for necrophilia.

  “I am an econ major.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I guess so.”

  Jules’s gaze strays upward into her imagination of my future. “I know Dad was all about it, but I just can’t picture you sitting in a conference room while people do PowerPoints about corporate synergies or whatever. For like forty years of your life.”

  “Yeah, well. Not everything is fun and games.”

  She sits forward again, starts talking with her hands. “I’m just saying, you don’t have to follow whichever track Dad laid out for you. I mean, have you read a newspaper lately? What’s the point in putting your nose to the grindstone when we’re on the fast track to extinction anyway? Dad slaved away like Sisyphus at those restaurants, and look what it got him. Everything can disappear, just like that.”

  “So? You’ve got a solution to that problem?”

  “No solutions, Victor. I just want do an original something, be an interesting someone. And at the end of it all, feel like I lived on my own terms, even if I lived in a shit world. I mean, seriously, Victor, you’re still really young. Don’t you even care who you become?”

  I have never shared Jules’s negative appraisal of the world we live in, which has been pretty good to me aside from the pair of obvious whammies. Dad was born in the middle of an epic Communist disaster, and all that he did—immigrating to California, the restaurants, everything—it was all so we could have a nice life here at the top of the food chain, a life I’ve always intended to accept. So what if stuff’s a little boring sometimes, and the news is depressing? The news is never not depressing.

  But I know better than to argue with Jules when she’s in a righteous mood. One time she tore into me for a whole hour for letting my teammates call me “Rice,” which I admit is a bit racist but was basically just a hazing thing that she didn’t understand. Tonight doesn’t seem like the night that we resolve the questions of “Isn’t the world fucked?” and “Should Victor conform?” So I play defense by diverting the conversation to Jules’s weak spot: herself.

  “Sure, I think about that stuff all the time. I really do,” I say. “But I don’t have any bright ideas. What do you actually want to do? Design clothes for rich ladies? Or go back into advertising?”

  “I don’t know.” She’s inspecting her cuticles again.

  “You would make a great lifestyle blogger,” I say, suppressing a smile. “I mean, if you really focused on curation, you could have a superpopular Pinterest board.”

  She flops back onto the bed. “Please stop talking.”

  “Well then.”

  “Blow it out your butt.”

  “Okay.”

  After a minute she sits up and recrosses her legs. “I’ll be the Ping-Pong champion of the galaxy. And you will be my noble steed.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We will travel from planet to planet, spreading a Ping-Pong message of peace. I’ll feed you on Thursdays.”

  “Good night, Jules.”

  Lying in my childhood bed, I can’t help thinking about the way this house used to be, when Jules and I were nothing more than rowdy kids and Mom and Dad were nothing less than heroes: breathing, singing, hugging grown-ups, not yet a set of cooling memories, reasons to go to church or visit a lawyer. I want to go back to then, I want to go back to them, I want so much to go back and not take it for granted. Not guilt-trip Mom into buying me Jordans, not slam my bedroom door on Dad when he was trying to give me a pep talk after a bad game, but just bask, bask, bask in all that warmth.

  My nose wrinkles up and my eyes fill with tears. This goes on for a while until I sit up and find my phone and my earbuds and cue up a Mandarin news podcast from the VOA bureau in Beijing. Feuding political factions. Villages where everyone has cancer. Import tariffs on solar panels. The world’s workshop, pollution and population, propaganda and pandas—the newscasters speak Mandarin impossibly rapidly. I understand about half of it, as usual, and as usual, it lulls me to sleep within a few minutes.

  4

  Double move, spin move, fake spin, head fake, pump fake, ball fake, figure eight, spider dribbling, two-ball dribbling. Jump stop, up-and-under, big twenty. Pull-up, step-back, finger roll. Bounce bounce squeak squeak swish. I narrow my mind to the moment, see only the court, feel only the rhythm of the ball and the footwork. “Bǎwòzhù dāngxià shì zuì zhòngyào de—The present comes first,” Dad preached.

  Some of my earliest memories are of watching Kobe Bryant on TV at the height of his Lakers career. The Black Mamba—he was a single-minded winning machine, a grand master of his craft. Then there was CP3, Melo, Flash, King James, the Durantula, now Steph Curry—the Baby-Faced Assassin. I’d be shooting at the hoop in the street after each game that I watched, dribbling in my bedroom after dinner until Jules made Dad make me stop so she could “read in peace.”

  Basketball became my true home, the language I spoke more fluently than Chinese or English, the realm I navigated better than anyone else because I knew the timing of each streetlight and pothole. On the court, the rules were simple and explicit, as opposed to everywhere else, where no amount of effort could help me make a girl smile or discern which British boy band was lit. So I studied the game like a fiend, honing my body and my mind until I could sense ten men on the court with my eyes closed, assess infinite unfolding possibilities as a reflex, and by instinct choose the action best suited to my strengths, my limitations, my squeaky sneakers and medium-small half-Asian hands.

  And that’s why I’m here now, hiding in the place I’m most comfortable, rehearsing a role that I was last asked to play during high school. I doubt the SDSU coaches have even noticed that I haven’t been at practice in a week.

  I plant the rock at the foul line and hit the medicine ball, kettle bells, and jump rope. I stay focused throughout my strength and plyometric routines, but when I’m running the steps, I allow thoughts to enter my head and distract me from the burn in my quads, calves, hamstrings. “Yǒuxiē shì nǐ wúfǎ gǎibiàn—There are some things you cannot change,” Dad used to say. “But you can decide to not think about them. You can control your own mind.”

  Those nights when I came in from shooting in the street, he would make me sit against the wall for as long as I could, my knees bent to a ninety-degree angle. Jules called it Chinese Wall Torture. “Bié qù xiǎng nǐ de tuǐ téngbùténg—Don’t go thinking about whether your legs hurt,” he would say, his hands clasped behind his back like a general reviewing his troops. “Jīntiān nǐ wǔfàn chīle diǎn shénme ne? What did you eat for lunch today? Would Kobe Bryant give up so easy? Huh? What are you going to buy your sister for her birthday? Answer me.”

  After I collapsed onto the floor, rubbing my thighs and sucking in air through my clenched teeth, he’d look at his watch and say, “Almost nine minutes, not bad,” with an insouciant raise of his thick eyebrows, and I would run at him, tackle him, swing little fists at him, and cry, “Shénme búcuò? Kàn nǐ néngbùnéng zuò jiǔ fēnzhōng!—Who’s not bad? Let’s see if you can do nine minutes!”

  Andre is sitting on the bench when I return to the cour
t, and he rebounds for me as I hit my foul shots. He’s shown up every morning since Dad died, toward the end of my workout, to run me through some shooting drills and drive us to breakfast burritos. Even though I didn’t stay at the Quad last night, he knew he could find me here around this time.

  “You been driving, outlaw?” he asks.

  I shake my head no, nod toward the stands, where Jules is lying on her back on the top row, holding a book above her face, a sweatshirt tucked under her head. Andre sticks his pinkies in his gums and gives her a shrill coach’s whistle.

  She looks down at us, waves a hand, starts down the steps.

  “Is she smoking a cigarette?”

  “That appears to be the case.”

  “She pick that up from that dancer dude?”

  “Performance artist.” I rattle in my last shot. Ten out of ten. “He’s done, though.”

  “Jules nine,” he snickers. “Art boys zero.”

  I stagger over to the bench, sit down by my gym bag, and mop sweat from my forehead with a towel. The nausea blooming in my stomach lets me know I pushed myself close to my limit. Almost hard enough to pass out and attain oblivion. Almost.

  Andre’s in front of me, idly balancing the ball on the back of his hand.

  “What would you say to coming to practice today? Might feel good to get back on the grind.”

  “I dunno, Dre. I haven’t been there in a week.”

  “Every streak must end. Plus Coach says you can play tomorrow if you practice today.”

  “Huh. Okay.”

  Andre puts his hands on his hips. “Okay like ‘Okay, I’ll be there’?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jules flounces up with a big grin on her face, but it’s not hard to tell that she’s been crying.

  “Hi, Dre.” Her eyes scan the rafters. “Hi, Dre. Hydrate. Victor, you should hydrate.”

  “Officer on deck,” Andre announces, and they salute each other, a ritual of origins long forgotten.

  I finish changing my shoes, straighten up. “Jules, I need to show you something at the Quad.”

  “Have you ever watched this guy train?” she asks Andre, ignoring me. “It’s like the montage from Rocky IV.”

  “Yeah, sure,” says Andre, “but which half of the montage? Rocky or the Russian?”

  “Well, he’s methodical like Drago, but he’s short like Stallone.”

  “Thank you. Here, you can carry this.” I roll the medicine ball into her twiggy arms.

  When we arrive back at our triple in the Quad, the door to Eli’s bedroom is closed, and some kind of awful butt-rock is emanating from it.

  “Uch,” Jules says, flopping onto the couch. I go to my room and retrieve the case from under my bed. When I come back to the common room, Andre is arranging hummus, pita chips, and cans of coconut water on the coffee table.

  “And voilà. Snack is served.” He bows like a maître d’, one forearm behind his back.

  “I mean, OMG.” Jules touches the palms of her hands together. “Do the little coeds who make it this far just pee themselves in delight?”

  Andre makes a thoughtful face. “There was one girl who did that.”

  I hang back for a moment, watching them munch and joke around, satisfying their animal needs for companionship and nourishment. Jules has known Andre so long that she can be her weird self around him and put Dad out of her mind for a while without feeling guilty. Andre slept over most Saturday nights of our childhood, years in which the three of us were fixtures in the breakfast nook, passing the cereal and watching SNL sketches on Jules’s laptop. Stuff like that doesn’t happen anymore now that we’re allegedly adults, and it strikes me how death has brought my only version of family together for this moment.

  Perhaps Dad would be touched.

  “Jules, Perry Peng gave me the key to Dad’s locker at this massage place in Temple City. I found this briefcase there.”

  I put the case on the table, pop the latches, and open it up. “He said Dad wanted me to have this stuff, but he didn’t say why.”

  It takes a second for Jules to register the contents of the case, to identify these objects so incongruous with our environment and our lives. A look of total dismay spreads across her face, and she brings a hand up to her mouth. She lifts the PPQ out of the box with her thumb and forefinger like it’s a bag of dogshit and places it on the table. Then she flips open the passport.

  “What is this?” She looks at me beseechingly. “Victor, what the fuck is this stuff?”

  I shrug, helpless. “I don’t know. There wasn’t a note or anything.”

  She sets the passport down and sits still for a minute with her hand back over her mouth. She breathes deeply, her other hand on top of her head, and we watch her think.

  “Those cops who took our statements—we should tell them,” she says.

  “But this passport is some kind of fake. What if that gets Dad in trouble?” I say.

  “Gets Dad in trouble?” Jules’s eyes flash. “Victor?”

  “I mean, I don’t know, the insurance policy? Jesus, I have no fucking idea, Jules!”

  She stares at me for a quiet second, then looks down, and I know that my voice was too loud, my rage is showing.

  “Neither do I,” she says to her lap.

  We sit there for a long moment, and silence settles over us like a quilt, our minds roving over memories and questions as our eyes rove over the dorm carpet. A little piece of me feels good that it’s the same for everyone—we’re all lost here together—but the rest of me is unaware of anything except the pain bubble and the bottomless pit, the one Dad will never come back from. Then the music unmuffles as Eli’s door swings open and he walks out of it, unshaven, in sweats and a Bluetooth headset.

  “Whoa, hey,” he says, and disappears back into his room. The butt-rock stops and then he returns. “Hey Jules. I’m really sorry about your dad.” He comes around behind me and starts massaging my shoulders. “You two hanging in there okay?”

  “I guess so,” says Jules.

  My eyelids flit closed.

  Eli circles back around the couch and scoops up some hummus with a pita chip. “Are you playing against Lafayette tomorrow?” he asks me.

  “I think so.”

  “Because, if you recall, some time ago we were talking about having people over tomorrow night. But it’s totally cool if you don’t want to.” Eli shifts from foot to foot. “I mean in light of the circumstances. I would one hundred percent understand.”

  “A jock party, how droll!” Jules exclaims, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. The devil-may-care mask returns to her face as she bundles away her grief and confusion. “Can I come? I could do with some binge-drinking.”

  “For sure you can come,” Eli says. “If it’s cool with Victor for us to do it.”

  “And if you come to the game,” Andre adds.

  “No offense to your lifelong passion or anything?” Jules lights up at the opportunity to express an opinion. “But I’m not superkeen on group glorifications of mock combat, with all the grunting and charging and shrieking bimbos. It just makes me think of Rome. Did you know humans are the only species that celebrates violence? There’s no fighting for sport in nature.”

  “There are gang rapes, though,” Eli points out. “Penguins gang-rape each other all the time.”

  “Pardon me?” Jules pauses with a pita chip halfway to her mouth.

  “I saw it on the BBC. They do it to the guy penguins, too.”

  “Okay. Anyway,” Andre cuts in, “we’re not having any penguins or gang rapes at this residence unless it’s cool with Victor.”

  Three faces turn to me. Who gives a fuck, I want to say, but instead I say, “It’s fine.” I put the money, gun, and passport back in the case and close it. “I’m gonna take a walk.”

  Even February is flip-flop weather in San Dimas, but the pleasant sunshine feels wrong on my skin, an insult to the icy numbness within. I pop in my earbuds, head out of the Quad, stroll the tree-lined stre
ets of the campus. The carefree people around me are flirting over iced coffees, tossing Frisbees, making plans for weekend nights filled with racy possibilities, while anguish nags at me like a strobe light in my peripheral vision, a clawing in my stomach that just wants to grow and grow. How long until it goes away? When will the latest little good news outweigh the big old bad news? When that day comes, Dad’s death will be no less upsetting. Just less vivid. I’ll just have moved on. I’ll be an ordinary guy who used to live in a personal hell but now feels pretty normal. Seems bogus.

  “It’s only life,” I mutter to myself. Only life stretched ahead of me: graduation, some job, some girl, some kids. True love? My father was stabbed to death. Mom and Dad would have loved grandkids. Would I love kids? Until two weeks ago I was only interested in the rest of the basketball season. That mock combat that Jules was ranting about gives me purpose when I get up in the morning. The apparent thinness of my life makes room for a fat sense of despair, but I can vanquish it with a shrug. Would it be better to love more things? More things to love, more things to lose.

  As I make my way back to the Quad, my mind makes its way to the aluminum case stashed under my bed. I try to comfort myself with Andre’s assessment: I can’t act without more information. There’s nothing to do, and I’m hungry. I want lunch. Maybe this is what happens. Maybe someone kills your dad, and the pain throbs and throbs, and then you eat a hamburger. But the black fury inside me pushes back, sets my teeth against each other, and I squeeze crescent marks into the calluses of my palms with my fingernails.

  The San Dimas air is dry, clean, and citrusy, and above my head some tardy swifts wing south in a V. On the sidewalk by the door to the Quad there is a tall, barrel-chested man wearing an Angels cap, a Hawaiian shirt, and khakis. As I walk up, he flicks away a cigarette and sticks out his right hand. With his left hand he flashes a badge.

  “Victor Li? My name is Richard Lang. Detective Lang. San Dimas Sheriff’s Office. Can I ask you a few questions?”

  5

  As we stroll around the Quad, Lang asks me mostly the questions you’d expect: where I was on the night of the crime, had I noticed anything unusual at the house, and so on. He seems pretty relaxed about interviewing me about Dad getting killed.