I’ve had things like this happen to me before in China, but I only used to worry about stuff like, am I supposed to pay the driver? Am I going to end up in a hotel I can’t afford?
Now I’m thinking, what if they’re working for someone? The PSB or Creepy John?
She’s an auntie traveling with a little girl, I tell myself. They were already in the train compartment when I got there. Weren’t they?
Auntie gestures again toward the back seat.
I climb in. Auntie gets in front, riding shotgun.
Sitting in the back seat of the Santana, Meihua snoozing on my thigh, I stare out the window at the broad, anonymous streets of a city I’ve never seen. Auntie and the driver chat in the local dialect, and I can’t quite figure out what they’re talking about. “Foreigner,” I hear, and “money.”
Auntie turns toward me. She smiles, revealing a gold front tooth. Her eyes look like black stones behind her glasses.
Mouth dry, I keep my hand on the door handle.
After maybe a fifteen-minute drive, we turn down a narrow lane and stop in front of an entrance wedged between an office building and a clothing store.
A signboard in gold letters says “The Good Fortune Guest House.”
Inside, there’s a modest front desk that looks like it doubles as a bar, with standup ads for beer and Nescafé. Auntie negotiates with the clerk behind the counter, in spite of my protests that I can take care of it myself. “You know, some Chinese people try to cheat foreigners,” she whispers darkly. “They think all foreigners have money.”
A couple of minutes later, negotiations concluded, I show my passport to the clerk and am given a keycard to a room on the second floor. “Nice room, quiet,” Auntie says. “You won’t have any troubles here.” Then she reaches into her purse and extracts a card case. “You have any problem, you call me,” she says, pulling out a business card.
I take it from her in the polite manner, with both hands. I’m so embarrassed, I don’t know what to say.
“Thank you,” I manage.
Auntie smiles. “Welcome you to Taiyuan,” she says, beaming.
I make my way upstairs to my little room. Brown and tan walls, a hard, single bed, a window draped with blackout curtains, no fridge, just an electric kettle and a teacup.
But it’s mine, my own small, private space. At least for the night.
I brush my teeth with the hotel toothbrush and overly sweetened toothpaste from the miniature tube, spit out a few shed bristles. Then I take off my shoes, jeans, and bra and crawl into bed.
I probably shouldn’t feel so comfortable here, I think. After all, I gave the clerk my passport number. Assuming China’s got some central foreigner-tracking system, who’s to say that Creepy John won’t be knocking on my door tomorrow?
I have this sudden vision of him sitting on the edge of my bed in his faded Beijing Olympics T-shirt and cheap leather jacket, smiling at me.
It takes me a while to fall asleep after that.
In the morning, I limp downstairs and order up a double Nescafé, which should tide me over till I find some real coffee. Chuckie was always bitching about what a backwater Taiyuan is, but three million people live here—there’s got to be a Starbucks somewhere, or some Chinese rip-off version, Star Cup or Moonbucks or something.
Fueled by Nescafé, I smile at the desk clerk and go outside.
Pollution in Beijing is pretty bad, but Taiyuan puts it to shame. Everything is covered with a layer of sticky black dust; the sun struggles to shine through a greenish sky, and the air smells like chemical soup. A few years ago, Taiyuan was the world’s most polluted city. Now they don’t even have that distinction going for them; it’s maybe the fourth worst. What’s the point of that? No one cares about Number Four. You’re out of medal contention.
I find a coffeehouse, have a decent cup of coffee and a limp bagel, and then sit there for a while in a little booth by the window, watching people pass by on the grimy sidewalk, nurse a second cup of coffee, and try to figure out what I’m going to do.
I decide to call Chuckie. I step outside and find a public phone, duck into the egg-shaped booth, and punch in Chuckie’s number.
“Wei?”
“Chuckie? Shi nide lao tongwu.”
Your old roommate.
There’s a long pause. “Hey,” he says.
“Look, I need a favor.”
“Ahhh… .” A longer pause. “Maybe not convenient now.”
“You owe me,” I snap. Truthfully, he doesn’t owe me shit, but it sounds good. “It’s nothing that’s gonna cause you any problems.”
Of course, I have no way of knowing if that’s true.
“Okay,” he finally says.
CHUCKIE AND I arrange to meet at a karaoke bar on the fringes of Taiyuan. Karaoke bars usually have a lot more than just karaoke going on. Prostitution, drugs, bribery—they’re the Amazon.com of vice. A lot of the time karaoke places are hole-in-the-wall joints, attached to hotels, next to restaurants and discos, set apart by the letters KTV outlined in neon.
This one is more ambitious. It’s called “The Parthenon,” and it looks like a Greek temple—that is, if the temple’s architects had dropped a lot of acid before they built it. Marble columns with flashing strings of green and red diodes snaking around them, naked statuary lit by colored spotlights, and a fountain that dances around vaguely in time to the latest Taiwanese pop blaring from the outdoor speakers.
I pay the taxi driver, thinking this might be an appropriate occasion for a Percocet.
Inside is a large main room, a dance floor encircled by booths, with a long bar cutting the space practically in half. Illuminated plastic signs at the back of the room, where the private rooms are, read KTV. It’s still early, and the place is pretty empty. The DJ plays Mandarin rap in a mash-up with the Carpenters. I decide it’s definitely time for that Percocet.
I’m supposed to meet Chuckie at the bar. I try the local draft, called “Yingze Cleaning Flavour Beer.” I’m a little disappointed that it tastes like any other bland Chinese lager.
I’m about halfway through my pint when Chuckie shows up.
“Hey, Chuckie. Hao jiu bujian.” Long time no see.
“Yili, ni hao. How’s it hanging?” he adds in English.
“Dude, you don’t say ‘how’s it hanging’ to a girl,” I say, exasperated. “Because you’re asking about, you know, which side of the pants your jiba and dan are hanging on.”
Chuckie’s face flames red. “Oh. I thought this was same as hanging out.”
“Well, maybe, sometimes,” I relent, because this really isn’t the time for me to try and upgrade his English slang. “You want something to drink?”
“Beer is good.”
I order two more.
“So, how’s Taiyuan?”
“Okay,” he says nervously. “Kind of boring.”
The beers come. I lift my mug. Chuckie lifts his in return, leaning back on his barstool and eyeing me over the mug’s rim.
“So, Yili,” he says. “You say you need some help from me. Right now, maybe it’s bad time for me. But tell me anyway.”
Good, he’s not in the mood for keqi hua either.
“Okay, here’s the deal. You know my character in Sword of Ill Repute? Little Mountain Tiger?”
Chuckie nods.
“Well, she got killed. I need you to help me bring her back.”
Chuckie takes a swallow of his beer, frowning. “So, that’s easy. You just have to play some rounds in Hell. Meet Horseface and Ox-head. You know how to do that.”
“I don’t have time.”
People are starting to arrive, groups of students and middleaged men accompanied by much younger women wearing stilettos and short skirts. I figure they’ll be ordering up the Courvoisier or Dom Pérignon or whatever overpriced bullshit middleaged Chinese yuppie guys buy to impress their hooker girlfriends.
The music’s changed too: it’s harder-edged, faster, and the volume’s cranked up to t
he point where I start to get nervous. I chug the rest of my first beer and start on the second. I can do this. I just need to have the rest of this conversation, and then I can get out of here.
“See, Chuckie, the thing is, my character was a lot higher ranked than before. And … I kind of need her to be that highranked again, and right away.”
I can tell that Chuckie’s having a hard time absorbing this, considering that I’d never shown much interest in the game before. “What level?”
“Ummm … eight … I think.”
“Eight? But you only … you are just level one or two before.”
“Yeah. But, you know, I, um, played a lot after you left Beijing, and—”
“You can’t just become level eight after so little playing time,” Chuckie protests. “Takes maybe a few months of playing, and playing many hours.”
“Yeah … well … it just kind of happened.”
Chuckie stares at me, aghast. “You cheated?”
“No, I didn’t cheat. Somebody helped me out. That’s not cheating.”
“This is what ruins games!” Chuckie says furiously. “You can just buy what you want, not earn it.”
“Hey, you lent Ming Lu your whatever-the-fuck-level Qi sword! How’s that different?”
Chuckie slams his beer mug on the bar. “It was for specific quest! That is part of this game!”
“Okay, so this was part of a specific quest too,” I retort. “And things got fucked up, and they need me for this quest, and you gotta help resurrect me!”
“So, what kind of quest?” Chuckie asks.
Oh, shit.
Chuckie ran all the way to Taiyuan to get away from whoever was threatening him in Beijing. To get away from me. He’s not exactly thrilled to see me as it is. If I tell him any portion of the truth, he’ll probably bolt to Tibet.
But lying to him? I can’t do it. For one thing, I suck at lying.
“It’s important,” I say. “And it’s really better if I don’t tell you what it’s about.”
“I don’t understand,” Chuckie says with a frown. “If this is for the Game, you can tell me. Maybe I can help you on the quest.”
Is Chuckie a part of the Great Community? It would make sense. It’s his Game too.
But what if he’s not?
I take a deep breath. “I can pay you.”
Chuckie bows his head, practically resting his chin on his beer mug. I’m pretty sure he’s deeply offended.
“’Cause I got these cool weapons,” I continue. “This really tall staff that shoots Qi energy. And, um, this tortoiseshell shield. And I get those back once I’m resurrected, right?”
Chuckie’s head pops up. “Turtle shield? You got a turtle shield?”
“Yeah.”
“That protects against almost anything,” he breathes in wonder. “So, how did you die?”
“Nine-Headed Bird.”
“Ah.” Chuckie nods in sympathy. “Almost impossible to kill Nine-Headed Bird. You must use turtle shield and Mutual Rings, if you have them. And call for phoenix intervention.”
“Oh. Phoenix intervention. Forgot about that.”
I’m feeling a little calmer. Probably because the Percocet’s kicking in. “Look, Chuckie. You can have my turtle shield just as soon as I’m through with this quest. I promise.”
Chuckie sighs heavily. He doesn’t like it. But you know what they say: every man has his price.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
TREY CAME HOME five months after I got blown up. He was still a soldier, so he found an apartment for us near his base, in one of those sixties or seventies tilt-up complexes with parking underneath, held up by skinny metal poles. Before that, I’d been living with my mom, which hadn’t worked out too well. It was a long way to the VA Hospital from where she lived, and every time I rode in a car I worried about getting blown up again.
Trey’s and my apartment was pretty basic, a cheap, two-bedroom place with shiny beige walls and pressboard wood paneling. Minimally furnished, half from Wal-Mart, half from thrift stores. It was clean, at least, thanks to Trey, who, whatever other shitty things I could say about him aside, was always neat and tidy and made the bed every day—well, he made it on the days I’d get out of it, at least.
The one thing I insisted on was a high-speed Internet connection. I’d gotten kind of hooked on Web surfing during my recovery. It was an activity that pretty much fit my level of concentration, which is to say transitory and fragmented. Plus there was always the possibility of some kind of connection. That one of my buddies would write me. That dog Turner, or Kim, or Mayer. Pulagang or Torres, Palaver or Madrid. And then I could write back. And we could maybe talk about how we were feeling and what we were going through, but we could still hide, from each other and the world.
We had about six months together before Trey was redeployed. That time was okay. We were both trying. I went to the base for physical therapy, three, four times a week. I wasn’t ever going to be a hundred percent, but the PT helped, and it gave me something to do. Trey kept the house clean, brought me little presents now and again.
But it seemed to me that we had a lot of silence between us. Because what we had in common was the war. Was Camp Fucking Falafel. And neither one of us wanted to talk about that.
It was like before, where we’d fuck and not talk about it. Except that the fucking part, which was one thing we really had going for us before, wasn’t the same. I was still pretty messed up, and Trey would treat me like a piece of spun glass, because he never knew what was going to hurt me.
I didn’t like leaving the apartment. Hated having to do pretty much anything. Shopping, forget it. I’d get too nervous. Paying bills, hated that. Taking out the trash, could barely manage it. Doing dishes, making the bed, no way. Too much effort.
Though I liked going to the base, actually. I liked entering through a guarded gate, liked being protected by razor wire and guns. Seeing guys in their battle dress, seeing Humvees, going to the PX; all that stuff felt familiar. Safe.
Just throw in some mortars and IEDs, and I would’ve felt right at home.
TURNS OUT I’M going to have to pay Chuckie some real money in addition to a virtual turtle shield. “Not for me,” he insists. “For some other guys.”
I’m not thrilled about somebody else being involved with this. “What other guys?”
“Some other guys. Don’t worry. They do this all the time.”
“I’d have to give them my password?”
“Soon as they finish, you can change it.”
“I don’t know.”
At that, Chuckie takes a big swallow of his Cleaning Flavor beer and shrugs. “Maybe, if this is too much trouble, we should not do it.”
I’m tempted to agree with him. Give some stranger my password? Maybe I should forget the whole thing and run like hell to Outer Mongolia. I could live in a yurt. Ride camels.
Chuckie must see the doubt on my face, because something shifts in his. Maybe he’s thinking about that turtle shield slipping from his grasp.
“Look,” he says, “these are okay guys. Friends of mine. You can come meet them. Bring them some Jack Daniels or something. You’ll see.”
“Okay,” I finally say. “Okay.”
I ride with Chuckie on the back of his moped, which can’t go very fast with the two of us on it, so at least it’s not too scary. We stop at a little 24-hour market run by Koreans, and I buy a bottle of whiskey. Then I hang on to Chuckie’s waist, and we ride down Taiyuan’s wide coal-choked streets.
Eventually, we come to what looks like an older area of town: random twisted pipes, rusting oil cans, and busted chairs piled in front of cement and white-tiled-front buildings, cracks and holes in the Day-Glo-colored plastic signs, everything greasy with black grime. There’s a night market here, tumbling out of an alley, a burst of music and noise, sizzling meat and garlic.
We drive around the back of the market. Chuckie parks the bike and locks it to a rack. Trash spills out of bins. Th
ere’s one pathetic sodium light over a doorway, bathing the entrance in a sickly yellow glow.
“This way,” Chuckie says, and he leads me through the door and down a flight of stairs.
In China they don’t believe in lighting hallways unless they have to. Apparently we’re supposed to make our way here by the light that seeps out from under the doors of the occupied offices. Or, given the hour, we aren’t supposed to be here at all.
But here we are.
At the end of the hall is a double door. Chuckie raps his knuckles on it a couple times. After a minute, the door opens. A skinny guy wearing a stretched-out V-necked undershirt, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, claps Chuckie on the shoulder. “Hey,” he says. “What’s up?”
“Not much.” Chuckie gives a nod in my direction. “Li Ke, this is a friend of mine, Yili. She has a little problem. Maybe you can help her.”
Li Ke nods noncommittally, and we follow him inside.
It’s a big room, divided into cubicles, maybe a hundred or so, and at first I’m thinking particularly sleazy Internet bar, because every cubicle has a computer with a guy sitting in front of it, and there’s a lot of noise from various games: music and combat sounds and animated screams and laughter. Cigarette smoke hangs in the air; there are junk-food wrappers and soft-drink bottles lying on the ground, and the place has this funky smell of smoke, sour sweat, stale grease, and mildew.
The weird thing is—and it takes me a few minutes to figure this out—nobody looks like they’re having any fun. They’re just sitting there in front of the terminals, hollow-eyed and bored, punching keys and toggling joysticks like they’re transcribing medical records or something.
Meanwhile, Chuckie leans in close to Li Ke’s ear and explains my problem.
Li Ke shrugs. “Sure,” he says. “We can do that.”
He pivots and heads down an aisle, taps a guy on his back, mutters some explanation, and points in my direction. The guy stands, sees me, smiles in an embarrassed way, and nods at me like a bobble-head doll.
“What is this, Chuckie?” I ask in a whisper.
“Gold farm,” Chuckie says tersely. “They play for you. Kill monsters. Get you gold and spells and treasure. Then you can move up levels.”
Rock Paper Tiger Page 18