Hour of the Rat

by Lisa Brackmann

  Shit, shit, shit, I think. Even if this ends up not being a big deal, what are the odds I’ll get my visa renewed if I’m getting hauled in to drink tea with the fucking DSD?

  The young policeman comes trotting back and opens the car door. “Okay,” he says, as cheerful as a tour guide about to show me some special scenic spot, “we can go upstairs now.”

  IT’S A “BUSINESS HOTEL,” meaning stripped down, stained, and frayed around the edges but fairly clean. We enter through the back door, past a curtained room that’s some kind of staff facility: I glimpse cleaning supplies, stacks of towels, one hotel worker, a rosy-cheeked girl who hardly looks old enough to be working here, sitting on a metal folding chair, sewing a button on a uniform smock.

  We go up three flights of worn carpeted stairs. The air smells like stale cigarettes, the smoke permeating the walls, the red industrial carpet; you’d have to tear the whole place down to get rid of it.

  By the time we’re on the third flight, my leg is throbbing and I’m just really pissed off, because people keep fucking with me, because I can’t catch a break, because my leg really hurts, and I don’t even have a Percocet.

  Okay, I tell myself, okay. You need to keep it together. Don’t lose your temper, and don’t panic. Just calm down, listen to what they say, and don’t give them any more than you have to.

  I’ve been in worse situations than this, and I got through them.

  This is nothing.

  We walk down to the end of the hall, to a room like every other room. Room 3310. Young Cop has a key card, and I hear the insect whir as the door unlocks.

  It’s your basic Chinese hotel room. A bit larger than some of the places I’ve stayed, in that there’s room for two club chairs and a little round table on a raised Formica-covered platform by the window.

  A man sits in one of the chairs. No uniform, just a polo shirt and slacks. Middle-aged, a slight paunch hanging over his typically ugly belt with a square gold buckle, fake Gucci or Armani or something. Hair swept back in a Chinese bureaucrat pompadour.

  “Qing zuo,” he says, gesturing to the other chair.

  I sit.

  He doesn’t say anything. Just sits there and smiles at me. I fidget. Maybe that’s the point of the silence.

  “You asked me here for tea,” I finally say. “I don’t see any.”

  “Ah.” He nods. Motions to Young Cop, who quickly scoots over to the desk, where the hot water kettle is, and fills it with a bottle of Nongfu Spring water that’s sitting next to it.

  “Thank you for your cooperation,” he says.

  I shrug.

  He leans back in his chair, twines his fingers together, rocking them up and down like he’s contemplating the universe or something. I stretch out my bad leg, which has started to cramp up and is hurting like hell.

  Neither of us says anything. Young Cop busies himself with opening up the complimentary tea bags and putting them into two cups.

  The kettle hisses steam, and there’s a loud click as it turns itself off. I flinch.

  Young Cop pours water into the cups and carries them over. Sets them on the little round table with a rattle and retreats, smiling in that embarrassed way of his.

  “You two can go,” the man says to the cops.

  After that it’s just the two of us and more silence. The man sips his tea. So do I.

  He’s better at this silence thing than I am.

  “You want to talk to me,” I say. “I’m here. You want to ask me something? Or what?”

  “I am just waiting. For my colleague. His English is better than mine.” He looks at his watch, a fake—or possibly real—Rolex. “Perhaps there’s bad traffic.”

  So far he hasn’t spoken a word of English. Maybe he’s telling the truth.

  I hear the whir of a keycard unlocking the door.

  “Ah. He’s arrived.” The man turns to me and smiles. “I think you know each other.”

  The door opens.

  That’s when I realize: I am so totally screwed.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “YILI.”

  “John.”

  Yeah, I know him.

  He’s wearing a black leather jacket, a nicer one than he used to wear, a grey sweater beneath it. Jeans and low leather boots. There’s a white scar that cuts into one eyebrow, the wisp of a beard on his upper lip and chin. I always thought he was good-looking, and he’s better-looking now, something about the way the strong bones of his face have sharpened, how his dark eyes have the quality of banked coals.

  Nonetheless, he still creeps me out.

  John, Zhou Zheng’an, or whatever the fuck his real name is, hesitates by the door for a moment. Then he walks to the desk. He’s light on his feet; the hitch in his step from when he got hurt last year is nearly gone.

  Lucky bastard, I think unreasonably.

  He pulls out the desk chair and sits.

  “How do you know each other?” the other man asks. He repeats the question, just to make sure I understand.

  Fuck, fuck, the fucking fuck. What am I supposed to say? What’s John told them? None of it? Some of it? Everything?

  “Why don’t you ask him?” I say. “You already know, right?”

  “Yili, it’s better if you explain.” John stares at me. I can’t tell what he’s thinking, what the expression means.

  I never really trusted him. By the end I figured he was some kind of cop. But this … I wasn’t expecting this.

  If I say the wrong thing, I’ll be even more fucked than I already am.

  Leniency for those who confess. Severity for those who refuse.

  Though if he’s told them everything … well, I guess I’m fucked regardless. And maybe not just “get kicked out of the country” fucked. More like “go directly to jail” fucked.

  My heart starts to thud in my chest, and I’m sweating beneath my sweatshirt. They can tell, I’m sure.

  I drink some bitter tea.

  “We met last year,” I say in English. “At a party. We ran into each other a few times after that. Got attacked during this riot. I thought maybe he was spying on me or something.” I don’t have to fake a pissed-off glare in John’s direction.

  John translates, but from the look on Pompadour Bureaucrat’s face, I think he pretty much caught the gist in English.

  “What reason would he have to spy on you?” he asks, still speaking Chinese.

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  John winces, fractionally.

  Dial it down, I tell myself. “I’m friends with a lot of artists. Seems like you don’t always trust them.” I speak in English. John translates, accurately from what I can tell.

  “Of course we support China’s cultural modernization,” the man says, continuing in Mandarin. “China aims to become a global cultural force. It’s a part of our current Five-Year Plan.”

  “Maybe you should stop hassling artists then.”

  He frowns, apparently not understanding “hassling.” John translates.

  “Ah. But art must still support a harmonious society. Otherwise … it would be foolish for the state to encourage it, true?”

  “That’s not the purpose of art,” I mutter in Mandarin, and then I want to laugh, hearing myself trying to make art talk.

  “So you think the purpose of art is to disrupt society?”

  Oh, shit.

  “No … I think … I think it’s just whatever the artist is trying to say.”

  “But if an artist says disruptive things and causes trouble …” He leans forward. “You think this is a good thing.”

  It’s not a question.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But this artist, this artist you represent … Zhang Jianli …” Now he leans back. Smiles and stares at me with an odd, satisfied expression. “He causes trouble.”

  It’s not like I’m surprised to hear his name. I was pretty sure from the beginning that Zhang Jianli, my friend Lao Zhang, was the reason I got dragged in here. Still, the whee
ls turn in my head, too fast, spinning fragments of thoughts, like, Did he do something I don’t know about? Did they find him? Arrest him? I try to remember the last time we chatted online, and I can’t. A couple of days ago. Not for very long. Not about anything I can even remember.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say. “He’s an artist. He makes art. I help sell it.”

  “But my understanding is you’re not an art expert. Isn’t that so?”

  I shrug.

  “So why? If he’s just an artist, why does he have you sell his work? Why not an expert?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, which is partly true. I know some of Lao Zhang’s reasoning, but a part of it I’ve never really understood. “I guess he trusts me.”

  Which is also the truth.

  “We just wonder if there’s some special reason. Some special relationship you have. Perhaps with the American government.”

  At that I laugh. “No. No relationship.”

  “But you’re an American.”

  “So?” I switch back to English. “Doesn’t mean I work for the government. We don’t have to do that.” I glare at John. “Maybe it’s different in China.”

  I see a flash of discomfort cross John’s face, and I like that I can rattle him a little. “Yili,” he says, closing his eyes for a moment, “it is just that your husband—”

  “My ex-husband.”

  And yeah, John knows how to piss me off, too.

  “Your ex-husband. Works for a company that has government connections. Isn’t that true?”

  I don’t say anything right away. I don’t want to go down that road. Don’t want to admit what I know. It’s a habit with me, not admitting stuff.

  “He didn’t like talking about his work,” I say. “That’s one of the reasons we split up.”

  The main reason, of course, is that he took up with that bitch Lily Ping. But there’s no way I’m getting into that discussion right now.

  Pompadour Bureaucrat looks interested. Lifts his eyebrows. “You have a difference in values?”

  “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

  I can see the wheels turning in his head, slow and calculating. Like how can he make this into an advantage? Like maybe he can turn me, get me to work for them.

  Sorry, dude. I’ve been down that road too, and I’m not going there again.

  “It’s possible that we misunderstand Zhang Jianli’s intentions,” he says. “We want to have a small talk with him. Just to clear up any possible misunderstandings.”

  I nod and don’t say anything. I can play the silent game, too.

  Pompadour stares at me. Like if he stares long enough and hard enough, I’m suddenly going to start talking.

  But I don’t. I drink my tea. It gives me something to do.

  “Do you know where we can find him?” he finally asks.

  Score one for me.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I don’t.”

  Which is true.

  He frowns. “I find this hard to understand. You manage his art. But you don’t know where he is?”

  I twitch out a shrug. “He left me instructions to deal with his art however I thought best. You know, maybe show it. Sell it to people who want to buy it.”

  “But you must have some way to contact him.”

  That’s when the bottom drops out of my gut. Because I do. Not the way that John knows about, the way that used to work, back when John pretended to be a friend of Lao Zhang’s.

  Pretended to be a friend of mine.

  But if John’s told his bosses about that …

  I glance at John. He holds my gaze for a moment. Reveals nothing.

  “I have his old email address,” I say. “I can give it to you, if you don’t have it.” Then I shrug again. “Like I said, he left me instructions to manage his work and authority to do that. Until I hear from him and he tells me something different, that’s what I’m going to do. There’s nothing I’ve needed to talk to him about. It’s not brain surgery, you know?”

  Pompadour nods. “I see.”

  He takes a long sip of tea. “It really would be better for him if we could talk,” he says. “And for you.”

  “Okay.”

  I let the silence settle in again, waiting for something to break it. It’s not going to be me.

  Then I hear a little scratching noise at the door, a slither. I turn and see a business card shoved through the crack of the door. I’ve stayed in hotels like this before, and I know what this is: a business card for prostitutes.

  I want to laugh.

  “Look, are we done here?” I say.

  He appears to consider, all the while gazing at me, seeing if I’ll blink.

  “For now.”

  “Good.”

  I brace myself on the arms of the club chair, which feels too light to support my weight, and stand up. I’m trembling all over, but maybe he can’t see that, or maybe he writes it off to my bad leg.

  Whatever.

  “Thanks for the tea,” I say, and hobble to the door.

  On my way out, I glance at the glossy card on the floor, at the round-eyed model whose fake boobs are spilling out of her red halter top. I mutter a silent “Thank you” at the image. I’m not sure why.

  The cops aren’t in front of the hotel door, which doesn’t surprise me, because I doubt they would have let the distributor of Chinese hooker cards through. I don’t know whether they’re waiting out back for me or what, but there’s no way I want to get in that car with them again if I can help it. So I go down the long hall, past the back stairway, telling myself, Just put one foot in front of the other, until I come to an alcove with an elevator door. I take it down to the ground floor. Walk out to a lobby that’s faux-marble floors with a dark wood counter, clocks showing times around the world on the wall behind the counter, along with the current rate of exchange. Two clerks, a man and a woman, hardly more than teenagers, perch on high stools behind the desk, wearing the default navy blue blazers and white shirts. There’s a stack of flimsy Styrofoam take-out containers piled on the counter between them, and I can smell the pork and ginger. The girl’s giggling about something; the guy suddenly looks up and spots me. Smiles tentatively. He’s got to be wondering why I’m there, if he doesn’t know already. This is a pretty big hotel, but I’ll bet there aren’t any other foreigners in it.

  “Ni hao,” I say. I limp on past, not waiting for a response, and push open the Plexiglas doors, heading into the damp cold and the dark.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THIS IS SO MESSED up.

  I’ve had almost a year of things being pretty good. Okay, better than pretty good. This last year’s been the best year I’ve had … well, in a long time. It’s just that even when things are going great, I’m half expecting something to get FUBAR, so it’s hard for me to realize that things are great until they aren’t again.

  I walk down the cracked sidewalk outside the hotel, scanning the street for a taxi. There don’t seem to be many here in Bumfuck South Beijing. So I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, following the trail of yellow pavers with the raised vertical ribs. Almost every sidewalk in every Chinese city I’ve ever been in has these things. Somebody told me they’re for the blind. I’m like, Are there really that many blind people in China? But what else would they be for?

  “Yili …”

  “Fuck off, John.”

  He’s pulled alongside me in a silver car, a new Toyota. “Yili, let me give you a ride home.”

  I shake my head and keep walking. I’m so pissed off I don’t trust myself to speak.

  “Please,” he says. “I need to talk to you.”

  I halt in my tracks. Throw up my hands. “Okay.”

  Because I guess I should hear what he has to say. It’s probably all bullshit, but I’m better off knowing whatever lie he’s going to tell me this time around.

  We drive for a while in silence. I stare out the window, at the trucks heaped with vegetables trundling down
the road to the big gate.

  “They go to Xinfadi Agricultural Products Wholesale Market,” he says. “This one market has seventy percent of vegetables for Beijing. Eighty percent of fruit.”

  “Thanks for sharing.”

  “Yili, you know I couldn’t tell you the truth before.”

  “What I know is that you lied to me. You pretended to be my friend, you pretended to be Lao Zhang’s friend. And the whole time you’re just some … some fucking nark, with your fake tragic-dissident sister and your lies about giving a shit and wanting to change things.”

  He gives me his squinty-eyed, puzzled look, which I have seen many times, only a few of which when he was actually confused. “Nark?”

  “Spy. You’re a spy. For a bunch of … of …”

  I let my head fall against the seat back. What’s the point of even caring? It’s not like this is some big surprise.

  “It’s not so simple,” he mumbles.

  “Oh, really? You spied on me for the DSD. How fucking complicated is that?”

  His hands grip the steering wheel until the knuckles whiten, then relax.

  “I don’t tell them everything.”

  You know, I’d like to believe him. I really would. He saved my ass on the road that time—tried to anyway—and got the shit kicked out of him for his trouble. That means something, right?

  I wish I knew what.

  By now we’re approaching the Second Ring Road. Funny, where they took me wasn’t as far away as I’d thought. It was just the traffic that made it seem like another city.

  “So let’s hear it,” I finally say. “Your story, whatever you’re going to tell me.”

  He slowly nods.

  “They worried about Zhang Jianli and Mati Village. That maybe this place can form the basis of some opposition. Cause some troubles. So, they have people watching them, for a long time. Then, you. They know you spend time with Zhang Jianli. They know about your husband, about the people he works for. They think, maybe the US government helps Zhang Jianli, to do things against China.”

  “But none of that’s true!” I protest. “Lao Zhang’s not involved with the American government. And he isn’t political.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” John says quietly. “He thinks political thoughts, maybe he expresses them in his work, and he brings people together with different kinds of ideas. Maybe this frightens them.”