by Temple Drake
“With women?”
“With everyone.”
She laughed.
“Mad Dog came up with it about ten years ago,” Zhang said. “He has all kinds of strange ideas.”
“I’d love to hear you sing,” she said. “I saw B.B. King once, when I was in America.”
“I’m not that good.”
She laughed again.
The venue was Yu Yin Tang, he told her, and they would be on stage at about ten thirty.
“I’ll be there,” she said.
The moment she ended the call, Zhang rang her back. There was no reply. Just the flatline tone of a phone that was dead or a phone that had been switched off.
I have to protect myself.
An hour later, he was heading west on the Yan’an elevated highway with Mississippi John Hurt turned up loud on the Jaguar’s sound system, the night’s sticky blackness piled high on either side.
* * *
—
Situated between a metro station and a park, Yu Yin Tang was a small place that held about one hundred people. Above the entrance was a sign that showed a polar bear playing an electric guitar. The ground floor had a distressed black ceiling and brick walls that were painted red. Between the stage and the bar was a door leading to a modest terrace that overlooked the park. Upstairs were two or three more rooms. There were brown plastic sofas, and the walls were defaced with graffiti. On one wall was a poster listing drinks. A cocktail called Fuck Me Friday cost 65 RMB.
When Zhang walked in, there was no sign of Naemi, but his band members were already at the bar. They made an unlikely pair. Gong Shen, aka Mad Dog, would be seventy in a few months’ time. He was wearing a waistcoat and pinstripe trousers, and his shoulder-length gray hair was tucked back behind his ears. He drank too much, and though it never seemed to interfere with his playing he often had trouble getting home. Once, the police found him outside a restaurant near where he lived, passed out on a heap of oyster shells. Another time, he fell asleep in an alley. When he woke up, his boots were gone. He played the double bass and the harmonica. Fang Yuan, who answered to Laser, was a drummer. Young enough to be Mad Dog’s grandson, he had dropped out of university, and he supported himself by working in a record shop that specialized in vinyl. He also played drums for a speed metal outfit called the Dense Haloes. Zhang had seen them live. It was three days before he could hear properly again.
Mad Dog saw him first. “Flower Heart! Over here.”
Laser was too deferential to call Zhang “Flower Heart.” He called him “Laoban”—boss—or “Lao Zhang.”
“What are we drinking?” Zhang asked.
“Beer,” Laser said.
“And whiskey,” said Mad Dog.
There was a girl in a red sweater behind the bar. Zhang caught her eye and ordered three whiskeys and three Tiger beers.
They took the stage at a quarter to eleven. As Zhang was tuning his 1964 Gibson, he saw Naemi in the crowd. Denim jacket, smudged black eye shadow. Her blonde hair messier than usual. She gave him a thumbs-up, then looked away towards the bar.
They began with “Stormy Monday,” very slow and jaded, the vocals not sung so much as muttered, and followed it with a sinister brush-drum version of the Howlin’ Wolf classic “Killing Floor.” By the time they finished the second number, Naemi was near the front of the stage and off to one side, leaning against a pillar that was papered with flyers. Zhang decided to play one of his own compositions, a song called “Red Rope Blues.” It told the story of a man who becomes obsessed with a girl in a massage parlor. He meets her in a bleak anonymous apartment building near Hongqiao airport after a night of heavy drinking. It is almost four in the morning. He takes off his clothes and lies down on a bed. A girl hangs above him on a length of scarlet silk that is suspended from the ceiling. She is also naked. To start with, there is distance between them as she twists and turns on the red rope, but gradually, artfully, she begins to close the gap. As she descends, he falls for her. It is her hair that touches him first. Her long black hair. She brushes his body lightly with it. Later, she uses her mouth. She is still suspended above him, though the gap has closed to a few inches. He has never seen anyone more beautiful…The next day, he thinks of her dancing in the air above him, pale as a star. He thinks about her all the time. But it is a week or two before he is able to return to the apartment building in Hongqiao, and when he asks for the girl he is told that she has left. He is offered another girl. He turns away. The red rope dangles above an empty bed. Outside, a siren wails. The early-autumn rain is coming down.
When they left the stage, they sat on the terrace with Naemi, and she told them how much she had enjoyed the set.
“You’re really good musicians,” she said, “all of you.”
Mad Dog watched her, but said nothing.
Laser asked about B.B. King, and soon Naemi was talking about how she had stayed at the Peabody hotel in Memphis, and then driven down Highway 61, stopping at famous blues towns like Clarksdale and Greenville. They were so deep in conversation that Zhang left the terrace to go to the toilet. Once he had climbed the stairs to the first floor, he stopped and looked out of a small window that was half open. A fine rain was falling through the light of a nearby streetlamp, like the last line of his song.
On his way back to the bar he met Mad Dog, who surprised him by pushing him up against the wall. Mad Dog’s mouth had widened and straightened, and he had gritted his teeth. This was a look he got when he was on his way to being very drunk. He always appeared to be bracing himself for some kind of impact.
“Listen.” Mad Dog glanced left and right to check nobody was around. “That girl you’re with…”
“What about her?” Zhang said.
“Stay away from her.”
Mad Dog’s face was only inches away, and though his eyes had narrowed they had a sudden fierce clarity, which kept Zhang from mocking him or making a joke.
“What’s got into you?” he asked.
“Something isn’t right.” Mad Dog looked at Zhang for a moment longer, then let go of him, muttered a few derogatory words, and pushed past him, towards the toilets.
The old fool, Zhang thought. He was probably just jealous. Either that or he was prejudiced, like a lot of Chinese men his age. Zhang straightened his clothes and set off down the stairs.
When he reached the bottom, he saw that Naemi and Laser were sitting at the bar.
“We came back in,” Laser said. “It started raining.”
“I know,” Zhang said.
Naemi gave him a tilted look, half challenging, half mischievous. “That song you sang,” she said. “The one about the rope. Was it autobiographical?”
* * *
—
It was after midnight, and the streets had the gleam of patent leather. The air smelled of wet cement. Standing under the soaring concrete pillars of the Yan’an highway, Zhang and Naemi watched as Mad Dog set off in an easterly direction, bent over under the weight of the double bass that was strapped to his back.
“Isn’t he too old to be doing that?” Naemi said.
“Probably,” Zhang said. “But he won’t have it any other way.”
If he ever offered Mad Dog a lift, he went on, or money for a taxi, Mad Dog always refused. The old man prided himself on not accepting any favors, not even from his friends, and if he had been drinking his pride tended to redouble. After a session at the recording studio, it would take him two hours to walk home. Once, when a moped ran into him and he had to go to hospital, it took three days.
Naemi asked if he would be all right.
“He’s staying with family tonight,” Zhang said. “His cousin lives half an hour away.” He looked off down Kaixuan Road. By now, Mad Dog was a small hunched figure in the distance. “He’s pretty indestructible.”
“I’m not tired yet,” Naemi said. “How a
bout a drink?”
“I have an early start tomorrow.”
“One drink?”
Zhang signaled to Chun Tao, who was waiting nearby with the Jaguar.
As they drove east, lightning crazed the sky up ahead, like cracks in a dark glaze. He had yet to talk to her about his passion for Yue ceramics—he hadn’t even told her why he visited the museum after hours—but he would in time, he thought, despite what he had said about the power of a secret. He instinctively felt that she would experience what he experienced.
“I don’t think Mad Dog likes me,” she said suddenly.
“He doesn’t like anybody.” Zhang remembered how Mad Dog had shoved him against the wall outside the toilets. Stay away from her. “Did he say something to you?”
She hesitated. “Not exactly. It was more the way he looked at me.”
“Don’t worry about it. He’s a bit unhinged.” He looked across at her. “Hence the nickname.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He wanders the streets on his own. Sometimes he bites.”
“Right.” She leaned back, her head against the headrest. Light passed over her face. Blue, then yellow. Blue again. It was smooth, and it kept happening. Like watching someone stroke a cat. “What about you?” she said after a while. “Do you bite?”
* * *
—
Not long after they ordered their drinks, Zhang looked up and saw his sister, Qi Jing, at the bar. She was sitting with a man who seemed familiar.
Naemi leaned close. “Do you know them?”
“That’s my sister,” Zhang said.
He stood up and walked over. Qi Jing was dressed in a miniskirt and a black gauzy blouse that showed the black bra she was wearing underneath, and her hair was dyed dark brown, with waves in it where it fell below her shoulders. Born just before the one-child policy came in, Qi Jing was eight years younger than Zhang, and she had always been something of a rebel.
She lifted her eyes to his as he approached. “Long time, no see.”
The man on the stool glanced round. He had prominent cheekbones and close-cropped hair, and a chain of gold links hung around his neck, inside his shirt. Zhang couldn’t place him.
“What do you want?” the man said.
Qi Jing told him that Zhang was her brother.
The man stared at Zhang, then nodded and hunched over his cocktail again. He didn’t bother to introduce himself. He didn’t even shake Zhang’s hand.
Zhang asked Qi Jing how she was. She said she was fine.
“You’re sure?” he said.
There was a sudden stubbornness in her face, around the mouth and jaw, and he knew her well enough to realize she wouldn’t admit to anything—at least, not while that man was sitting next to her.
But he persisted. “Are you sure?”
“You heard her,” the man said.
Zhang let his eyes drift out across the room. Deep pink lighting, like an old-fashioned whorehouse. Holograms of green rats on the walls. The Glamour Bar.
He spoke to Qi Jing again. “If you need me, I’m over there.” He gestured towards his table.
“Who’s the blonde?” Qi Jing asked.
“A friend.”
She gave him a knowing look.
“She’s beautiful, your sister,” Naemi said when he sat down again.
“She’s trouble too,” he said. “Sometimes.”
“Do you feel like a game of pool? I know a place that isn’t far from here.”
He smiled. “I need to go to bed. Why don’t you come back to my place?”
“Where’s that?”
He pointed through the window at the Oriental Pearl Tower, the huge sphere halfway up the building glowing purple. “Over there. Pudong.”
While Naemi was reaching for her jacket, he glanced over his shoulder. Qi Jing and the man with the gold chain had left. He should stop worrying, he told himself. After all, she was thirty-four years old. Probably she could take care of herself.
* * *
—
“Come in,” Zhang said.
He held the door open for Naemi, and she moved past him, into the apartment.
“Something to drink?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine.”
He leaned his Gibson against the wall, then went over to the sound system and put an LP on. The Mexican release of Gloria Estefan’s Cuts Both Ways.
“I thought you would live in an old place,” she said as she stood at the living-room window, looking out over the city. “Somewhere traditional.”
He was pouring himself a nightcap. “Are you disappointed?”
“Not disappointed. Just surprised.” She turned back into the room. “Would you dance with me?”
He put down his drink and took her in his arms and held her close. She had removed her denim jacket. Her arms were bare. Under his right hand, he could feel the slender muscles that flanked her spine.
“I never dance,” he murmured. “I must be drunk.”
“You’re not bad,” she told him later. “You don’t try too hard.”
By then, they were scarcely moving at all, his right hand lower down, near her coccyx, his cheek against her hair. He had asked her what fragrance she was wearing. The Sacred Tears of Thebes, she said. She had bought it in Paris. She refused to tell him how much it had cost. His mouth found hers. The kiss lasted as long as one entire song. “Si Voy a Perderte.” He led her into the bedroom, where one dim lamp was burning. The record finished, and the low roar of the air conditioning took over.
Once inside her, he seemed to leave the room. He found he was skimming, birdlike, over level countryside. Beneath him were acres of wild grass that was scoured and flattened by the wind, and punctuated, here and there, by smooth gray rocks. Sometimes there was a small wooden house on its own, sometimes a few huddled dwellings, but people had made little or no impression on the landscape. It was unspoiled. In its natural state. He had no idea where he was—it wasn’t somewhere he had ever been—but that didn’t bother him. All that mattered was the flying. How happy it made him, how effortless it was.
I didn’t know I could do this, he thought.
He was filled with an elation that seemed to have something to do with innocence. He felt like a child, but ageless too.
On he flew.
* * *
—
His whole body jerked, like a penknife snapping open. It was dark in the bedroom, and Naemi was leaning over him.
“You fell asleep,” she said.
“Not while we were—”
Her white teeth showed. “No, afterwards.”
She was lying on her stomach, her hair disheveled, half covering her eyes.
“Zhang?”
“I’m here.” He liked the way she called him by his family name. It was so formal that it created, paradoxically, a whole new level of intimacy.
“I think I’m being followed,” she said.
Fully awake now, he stared at her, but didn’t speak.
She told him that a man in a green suit and a porkpie hat had come to the gallery where she worked. Even from where she was sitting, at her desk on the first floor of the office, she could tell that his interest was feigned. He might be looking at the paintings, but his mind was elsewhere. As she stared down at him, he seemed to sense her presence, and glanced sideways and upwards. Their eyes met. Though he only held her gaze for a split second, there was something in his face that told her he had seen what he needed to see, that he had come not for the art but for her. She watched as one of her colleagues—Kevin—approached the man. They had a brief exchange. Kevin walked away, returning moments later with a program of upcoming events and shows. The next time she looked the man was gone.
Zhang propped himself on his pillow. “You don’t think you’re reading too m
uch into that one quick glance?”
“Then it happened again,” she said.
Two days later, in the evening, she looked out of her living-room window. Seven floors below, on the narrow promenade that bordered the creek, stood the man she had noticed in the gallery. He was dressed in the same suit and hat, which made him seem either careless or dangerously confident. Hands in his pockets, one ankle crossed over the other, he was leaning against the painted metal railing that separated the promenade from the creek below. His eyes were fixed on the front of her building. She stepped back from the window. The lights weren’t on, and her window was one of many. She doubted he had seen her. Thinking fast, she pulled on a T-shirt, some leggings, and a pair of trainers, tied her hair back, and let herself out of the apartment. Once on the ground floor, she exited through the rear of the building. In less than five minutes, she was jogging along the promenade, back towards the place where the man had been standing.
Zhang laughed in anticipation, though he was silently cursing Johnny Yu for having been so indiscreet.
When she drew level with the entrance she usually used, she said, she slowed to a walk, pretending to be out of breath. Elbows propped on the top of the railing, hands dangling, the man was still staring up at the building. Staring, if she had it right, in the rough direction of some windows on the seventh floor. Her floor.
“Great building, isn’t it,” she said.
He turned and looked at her, and his face seemed to open wide. “I’ve seen you before.”
She had to admire the coolness of his response. It was canny. Sly. But she could tell that he was lying. Of course he had seen her before. He was spying on her. Stalking her.
“In a gallery on Moganshan Road,” she said. “Two days ago.”
“You have a good memory.” His sudden smile revealed stained teeth. “You fancied me, perhaps.”
“I don’t think it was that.”
“Oh.” Adopting a wounded look, he took out a packet of cigarettes and offered her one.
She shook her head. “Are you interested in art?”