by Temple Drake
Arriving at a roundabout with a single, solitary tree in the middle, she watched Mad Dog take the first turning on the left, which curved off between run-down, two-story houses. She didn’t think she could delay much longer. Switching to the other side of the road, she walked faster. She kept her head down, but glanced sideways every now and then to make sure he hadn’t vanished into a building or an alley. She couldn’t afford to lose him, not now. From behind a steel roll-door came the clucking and squabbling of chickens, shut in for the night.
Once she was some distance ahead of him, she took off her wool hat and shook out her hair, then crossed the road again. He was still fifty meters away, but moving in her direction. She stood on the pavement, facing him.
He didn’t notice her until the last moment, when he was only a few feet away. Lifting his eyes from the ground, he came to a standstill and swayed a little, mouth gaping.
“What are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I live nearby. Just over there.” She gestured vaguely to the west.
The noise he made in the back of his throat suggested either that he didn’t believe her or that he couldn’t care less. Pushing past her, he moved on up the street. She turned and followed. He was leaning forwards, teeth gritted, like a man walking into a headwind.
“What is it that you have against me?” she asked.
He kept walking and said nothing. Though tired and drunk, he seemed intent on getting home. She was struck by his determination. His will. She remembered Zhang telling her that Mad Dog was indestructible. Walking next to him, she felt that indestructibility.
“I said, what have you got against me?”
He whirled around. “I’m not talking to you.” His hands were up in front of him, palms facing out. He was breathing through his mouth. They had stopped next to a shop where you could get keys cut.
“Do you think I’m a threat to Zhang Guo Xing?” she said. “Is that what’s bothering you?”
“You shouldn’t be with him.”
“It’s only for a short time. Then I’ll be gone.”
“A short time is already too long.”
She took hold of his sleeve. “Why are you being so difficult?”
“Let go.” He shook her off. “You’re not real,” he said. “You’re a ghost. You don’t exist.”
“A ghost? What does that even mean?”
Once again, he pushed past her. Once again, she followed.
They were walking away from the crossroads, away from the lights. Every now and then, between the darkened shop fronts, there was a gate made of upright metal bars that opened onto a network of alleys and passageways. The houses were old and poorly built and crammed together. Soon he would turn in through one of these gates, and then it would be too late. She moved in front of him, blocking his path, not yet knowing what she would do.
“I’m not telling you again,” he snarled, his spit landing on her cheek. “Leave me alone—”
“Or what?” she said.
He swung a fist at her, and light exploded at the edge of her field of vision, bright as a camera flash. Though he had knocked her to the ground, she picked herself up quickly. He came at her again. This time she was ready. Stepping inside the next punch he threw, she placed a hand on his chest and pushed with all her strength. As he staggered backwards, his heel caught on the raised lip of a paving stone, and he toppled into a dark space that appeared, just then, to have opened up behind him. She stood quite still. There was a gap in the railings, and three shallow steps led down to a small flat area. Mad Dog was lying slumped against the front wall of a brick building. She looked left and right. There were no people about. No cars. The street was dimly lit, trees overhead.
Approaching the gap in the railings, she saw that Mad Dog’s eyes were open, and he was breathing. He didn’t seem to be hurt—and even if he was he wouldn’t feel it, she thought, not with all that alcohol inside him. To his right, the steps led down again, but much more steeply. At the bottom was the padlocked entrance to a basement.
She leaned over him. “Are you all right?”
His lips moved, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying. She leaned closer.
“Go to hell,” he said.
Straightening up, she twisted her hair into a loose bun and pulled on her black wool hat, then she turned around. The stucco building opposite looked derelict, its ground-floor windows boarded up. It must once have been a warehouse or a factory. She decided not to go back the way she had come. At the crossroads, there were shops that were still open. There was also a man selling street food from a stall. She didn’t want to give anyone a second chance to see her or remember her. Leaving Mad Dog where he was, she set off in the other direction. Her left eye was beginning to swell up, and there was a steady buzzing in her ear. She had hoped he might listen to her, and that they might reach some kind of accommodation. A temporary truce, at least. But she had been naïve. She should have realized that his black view of her was unshakable, and that nothing she could say would make the slightest difference. After all, there was a sense in which he was right about her. He was wrong, but he was also right.
Near Linping Road metro station, she saw a taxi with its green light on. Climbing in, she sat behind the driver, out of range of his rearview mirror. She told him to take her to the Broadway Mansions Hotel. She didn’t want him knowing where she lived. She didn’t want anybody knowing. The taxi rocked and swayed through the dark streets. Whenever they slowed down or stopped, the vicious chatter of cicadas forced its way through the half-open window.
ON MONDAY NIGHT, at nine o’clock, Zhang was following the path that led to his building when he noticed a woman standing beneath one of the streetlamps that were placed at regular intervals throughout the grounds. The brightness of the light falling on her from above heightened the chalky pallor of her limbs and the red of her shift dress. Her black hair had an eerie sheen, as if it was in a display case, under glass. When he drew close, he saw that she had been crying.
“Are you all right?” he said.
She jerked, then touched her fingertips to the skin under her eyes. “Mr. Zhang?”
It was his turn to be startled. “Ling Ling? Is that you?”
She nodded.
“I didn’t recognize you,” he said.
He had only met her once or twice, and then only briefly. She’d not made much of an impression.
“I tried to call you,” she said.
“You didn’t leave a message,” he said. “I checked my voice mail a few minutes ago.”
“It’s about Gong Shen.”
“What about him?”
“He didn’t come home. After he went to meet you.”
“But that was two days ago—” He stared at her. “You haven’t seen him since Saturday?”
“No.” She began to cry again, soundlessly, one hand over her eyes.
Zhang suggested they talk indoors.
Once in his apartment, Ling Ling stood in the middle of the living room. Her dress was cheap and poorly made, and the shape of her toes showed through the thin fabric of her shoes. He led her to the sofa, where she sat upright with her knees together and her hands on either side of her thighs. She reminded him of someone sitting on the edge of a swimming pool, prior to getting in. He offered her a glass of water. She shook her head.
“Where’s your daughter?” he asked.
“I left her with my mother.”
“Good.”
He told her what he knew—that he and Mad Dog had left the bar on Beijing East Road at the same time, that they had walked together for an hour or so, and that when he said he was catching a taxi Mad Dog had refused the offer of a lift. This was in the early hours of Sunday morning, he said. About one thirty.
“He’d been drinking,” Ling Ling said.
Zhang nodded. “He always has
a few drinks after a practice session. We all do.”
“He usually shouts at me when he gets home.” She looked at Zhang with no expression.
He asked if she had called the police.
“I thought I would come to you first,” she said. “You’re his closest friend.”
This came as a surprise to Zhang, but he concealed it. He told Ling Ling that he would contact the police himself. He would do everything he could. In the meantime, she should go home and look after her daughter. He reminded her that Mad Dog often had trouble getting home. The time he was hit by a moped, for instance.
Ling Ling sat on the sofa without moving, and he had the feeling she hadn’t heard a word he had said.
After a few long moments, her eyes lifted slowly to his, and he felt something unexpected pass between them. It was fear. She wasn’t frightened for Mad Dog, though, or for herself. She was frightened for him.
“In the last few days, he talked about you all the time,” she said. “He thought you were in danger.”
“I know,” Zhang said. “He told me.”
Ling Ling was still looking at him with that oddly expressionless face. “I knew something was going to happen,” she said slowly, “but I thought it would happen to you.”
Later, when she had gone, Zhang stood by the window. Mad Dog was out there somewhere—lost, or hurt, or ill. He wondered what Ling Ling was thinking. His skin prickled as he recalled what she had said. I knew something was going to happen, but I thought it would happen to you. She had hoped it would happen to him—rather than to Mad Dog, anyway. It amounted to a kind of curse.
He took out his phone and called the deputy commissioner of police. When the deputy commissioner answered, he apologized for disturbing him at such a late hour.
“No problem.” The deputy commissioner spoke in a voice made gravelly by years of drinking baijiu and smoking untipped cigarettes. “How’s that nephew of mine?”
“He’s hardworking and responsible—a real credit to his family,” Zhang said. “I foresee a promotion in the near future.”
“I’m glad he’s proving of some use to you, Mr. Zhang. But why are you calling? Is there something I can help you with?”
“I’m sorry to bother you with this, but a friend of mine has been missing for nearly forty-eight hours, and I’m beginning to worry.”
He gave the deputy commissioner Mad Dog’s home address and a physical description, and he pinpointed the junction where he and Mad Dog had parted in the early hours of Sunday morning. Whatever had happened, he said, must have happened somewhere between the two locations. The deputy commissioner promised to look into the matter personally. After thanking him and wishing him a good evening, Zhang ended the call, then he picked up his keys and wallet and left the apartment.
There was a taxi parked on the street near the main entrance to the compound. The driver had fallen asleep. His head was tipped back, and he was breathing through his mouth. Zhang tapped on the window. The driver’s eyes slid open. He yawned and wound the window down. Cold air from inside the car pushed softly against Zhang’s face.
“Tanggu Road,” he said.
Half an hour later, the taxi dropped him at the place where he and Mad Dog had said goodbye. No young couples dancing tonight, just an empty paved area, and leaves shifting on the enormous, overhanging trees. As he set off up Tanggu Road, he remembered how he had found Ling Ling, standing beneath the streetlamp. At first, he had thought she was some kind of apparition. Then he thought that perhaps a woman who was disturbed had strayed into the grounds. He remembered how Ling Ling sat on the sofa, not saying anything, her face quite blank. He didn’t think it was anxiety or nervousness. It was how she was—naturally. He had often teased Mad Dog about having a girlfriend half his age, but now he saw that she might not be so easy to live with. Could that explain why Mad Dog always turned down the offer of a lift? It wasn’t stubbornness or pride. It might just be that he was in no great hurry to get home.
Zhang came to a row of shops and restaurants, only two or three of them still open. Beyond him, the road stretched away into darkness, balls of fuzzy yellow light where the streetlamps were. A man in sunglasses walked past with a white dog on a lead. There was a grating of cicadas, a burst of almost wooden sound that rose to a crescendo and then died away again for no apparent reason. It seemed hotter now than when he had got out of the taxi, even though it was already after midnight.
If Mad Dog had wanted to avoid going home, he might have stopped for something to eat or drink. He might have stopped at any one of these places. Zhang walked into the first restaurant he came to, which was empty. The young waitress was practicing with a rainbow-colored Hula-Hoop, her eyes fixed on a TV high up on the wall.
“Miss?”
She let the Hula-Hoop drop to the floor with a clatter and then stepped over it. Zhang described Mad Dog and asked if she had seen him on Saturday night. She shook her head.
Zhang tried a massage parlor, a shop selling air conditioning, and an estate agent, but nobody could tell him anything. As he walked on, he thought of how he first met Mad Dog. One Thursday night, not long after he moved to Shanghai, he called in at the House of Blues and Jazz, and sometime in the early hours of Friday morning a three-piece band took the stage. Two white Americans were playing the guitar and drums, but the man on the double bass was Chinese. Afterwards, Zhang went up to Mad Dog and told him how much he had enjoyed the set. Buy me a drink, was Mad Dog’s response. Zhang smiled. Some things never change. They started talking, and there came a point when Zhang told Mad Dog that he should be playing with musicians who were at least as good as he was. Like who? Mad Dog wanted to know. Like me, Zhang said. Mad Dog’s eyebrows lifted, and he looked Zhang up and down, but he agreed to meet a few days later, and after their first session together he grudgingly admitted that Zhang wasn’t a total disaster.
Zhang had reached a creek that ran under the road. Tractors stood on the north bank. On the other side was a row of wooden shacks with lights on in their windows. Shadowy figures moved through the squares of yellow. Next to the bridge was a simple noodle place. Four or five people stood about while a middle-aged woman tipped a bucket of slops into the gutter. Walking over, Zhang asked if any of them had noticed an old man passing by on Saturday night.
“No shortage of old men round here,” the woman said.
“He’s got shoulder-length gray hair,” Zhang said. “He was wearing a suit.”
The woman grunted.
“He’d had a few drinks,” Zhang added.
The people exchanged a glance, but no one volunteered any information. A little girl kept kicking a pink plastic ball into the air with the side of her foot.
Moving back to the road, Zhang leaned on a wall that overlooked the creek. To the east, above a jumble of dark rooftops, he could see the high-rise building that housed the Park Hyatt, its sheer sides outlined in blue neon. That was where he and Naemi had spent their first night together. Another world. Once again, he pictured her on the plane to London, hard-edged and golden, and everyone around her sleeping. Why did he find that image so unnerving? Behind him, a car sped past. A rush of air, then nothing. He was aware of one set of concerns shadowing another. Parallel uncertainties.
He began to walk again. On the left side of the road was a dreary, brightly lit restaurant, its seats covered with purple fabric. He went in and told the man behind the counter that he was looking for a friend who had gone missing.
“This place is on his way home,” Zhang said. “It’s possible he came in here on Saturday.”
The man sucked on his teeth. “I wasn’t here on Saturday.”
Someone tugged at Zhang’s sleeve, and he turned to see a wiry man with bloodshot eyes.
“I was,” the man said.
“My friend was wearing a gray suit and a green shirt,” Zhang said. “He’s about seventy, with long gray hair.”
“No,” the man said. “I don’t remember anyone like that.”
Zhang left the restaurant and moved on.
Hanyang Road was quiet, but whenever he came across a business that was open he stopped and asked about his friend. Nobody remembered him. Nobody. Perhaps, after all, Mad Dog had taken a different route home—or perhaps he had gone somewhere else entirely. The possibilities were infinite. Zhang was tiring, and he felt he had lost the scent—if he had ever had the scent, that is—but since he was close to where Mad Dog lived he resolved to keep going. Then at least he could tell himself that he had covered the ground.
* * *
—
He came to a crossroads near Mad Dog’s house. Positioned diagonally across from each other were two 24-hour convenience stores. He thought he should try them both.
The girl behind the counter in Quik wore glasses with thick black frames. Her hair was long on top and shaved at the sides, and a snake tattoo coiled round her left forearm.
“Were you here on Saturday night,” Zhang said, “at about this time?”
She stared at him with hard, unblinking eyes. “I’m here every night.”
He described Mad Dog. “Did you see anyone like that?” He saw her hesitate. “It’s all right. I’m a friend of his.”
“Gray suit, you said?”
Zhang nodded. “And a green shirt.”
“I think I saw him. But it was earlier than this—about one in the morning.”