by Temple Drake
“Maybe you’d be better off apart.”
“Thing is, I’m fond of her.” Johnny looked down at the table. “She’s a good girl, really. She’s just got a temper, that’s all.”
Zhang slid the photo of Chu En Li across the table.
“Who’s this?” Johnny asked.
Zhang told him.
“He’s supposed to have left for Manila,” he said. “Can you make sure he’s not still here, in Shanghai?”
“That shouldn’t be a problem.”
For the next two days, Zhang hardly had a moment. Though it was Golden Week, Jun Wei had scheduled wall-to-wall meetings—the Iran deal seemed imminent—and Zhang’s evenings were taken up by long, elaborate dinners with Jun Wei and his associates. His anxieties were temporarily pushed to the far reaches of his mind, where they could not be felt. He didn’t hear from Ling Ling, or from Johnny. On Thursday night, though, as Chun Tao drove him back from a function in Hongqiao, he looked off to the left and saw a white neon sign that said WHERE ARE YOU. They were on the Yan’an elevated highway, not far from People’s Square. Like a love song when you’re in love, the sign appeared to be aimed specifically at him.
He asked Chun Tao if he had seen the sign.
Chun Tao tilted his head back without taking his eyes off the road. They were traveling at 150 kilometers an hour. “What sign was that, Mr. Zhang?”
“It was in English. On the roof of a building—” Zhang looked to his left again, but it was already behind them.
“I didn’t see any English signs,” Chun Tao said.
Zhang sat back. “Never mind.”
“I forgot to tell you,” Chun Tao said after a few moments. “That advice you gave me really worked.”
“What advice?”
“I took my girlfriend to dinner and asked her if she would marry me. Her face lit up, just like you said it would.”
“Did she say yes?”
“Not exactly. She’s planning to do a six-month business course in Beijing, and she wants me to use that time to think about the future. She wants me to be sure I’m ready.”
“She sounds very wise.”
Chun Tao smiled. “She is.”
“And if you ask her again in six months’ time will she say yes?”
“She told me the answer wasn’t in doubt. Only the question was in doubt.”
“There’s an alternative after all,” Zhang said, “just as you hoped.”
Later, when he remembered this brief exchange, he felt it had some bearing on his own predicament, and though he couldn’t establish the precise connection the feeling stayed with him for several hours.
* * *
—
On Friday night, Zhang attended a family dinner at a Hong Kong–style restaurant near Xujiahui metro station. His father had booked a private room on the third floor. There were twelve of them in all—an uncle Zhang hadn’t seen in years, and various cousins with their teenage children. Qi Jing had stayed at home, claiming she had flu. This was almost certainly a lie. It seemed more likely that she had heard he was coming, and wanted to avoid him. She still hadn’t forgiven him for interfering in her life, but she would, he thought, in time.
Towards the end of the evening, his father took him aside.
“You seem distracted,” his father said.
“I’m fine,” Zhang said.
“How’s my grandson?”
“He’s well.”
“When did you last see him?”
“It’s been a while,” Zhang said. “We speak most weeks, though, on the phone.”
His father studied him with his usual mixture of dissatisfaction and disappointment, then he poured himself a cognac and stood by the window, looking at the heavy traffic on Hongqiao Road.
“What about your mother?” he said. “Have you visited at all?”
“I’ll be going in the second week of October,” Zhang said. “How is she?”
“The same.”
Zhang nodded, then drank. An ambulance was stuck in the traffic, its blue light whirling uselessly.
“At least Qi Jing seems to have seen the error of her ways,” his father said after a long silence.
Zhang allowed himself a smile. This, he knew, was as close as his father would get to thanking him.
“The trouble is,” he said, “I’m not sure how long it will last.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“She likes younger men.”
“Don’t be vulgar.”
Zhang let out a sigh, then glanced at his watch. “I should go. I have some work to catch up on.”
As he turned away to say his goodbyes, his father caught him by the arm, his grip surprisingly strong. “Something you should not forget.”
Zhang looked at him. “What’s that?”
“Family,” his father said. “It’s all there is.”
* * *
—
The following day, as Zhang was leaving the Athens Palace, after his usual Saturday-afternoon massage, his phone rang. It was the deputy commissioner of police.
“Bad news,” he said.
Mad Dog’s body had been found at the bottom of a steep flight of steps that led down to the basement of a building. His injuries were consistent with a fall. There were no signs of a struggle. Toxicology had revealed extremely high levels of alcohol in the blood. It was being treated as death by misadventure. A tragic accident, in other words.
Zhang had come to a standstill in the middle of the lobby, and was staring at the ivory-colored grand piano. “Where was he found?”
The deputy commissioner named a small street that was no more than a minute’s walk from where Mad Dog lived. This, Zhang realized, was his chance to mention what the girl in Quik had told him, but he didn’t. He wasn’t sure why.
“I’m sorry,” the deputy commissioner said.
“Has his partner been informed?”
“I believe she has.”
Zhang thanked the deputy commissioner for all he had done, and for letting him know, then he ended the call.
Half an hour later, a taxi dropped him at the Bamboo Lounge. He climbed the stairs and pushed through the wooden Wild West–style swinging doors. The same girl was working behind the bar.
She smiled when she saw him. “It’s been a while.”
He nodded. She was wearing a raspberry-colored dress whose fabric had been worked with a fine silver filigree. Her hair hung down her back, reaching almost to her waist.
“Have you come to tell me about your life?” she asked.
He couldn’t answer. He felt bewildered. Desolate.
“Give me a large whiskey,” he said.
“Of course.” She poured the whiskey and put it on a paper coaster in front of him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “A friend of mine just died.”
He wondered if he should have mentioned it. It wasn’t a story he could tell—at least, not in its entirety. There were a few hard facts, and the rest was speculation. But perhaps that was why he had come. It would be safer if he unburdened himself to a well-meaning stranger. He might even learn something. Certain truths can only be arrived at by thinking out loud.
“It was a close friend?” she asked.
“We were in a band together.”
“You’re a musician? I wouldn’t have guessed.”
“We play the blues.”
A puzzled look appeared on her face. Obviously, the blues meant nothing to her.
He didn’t know that much about his friend, he went on, even though they had played together for fifteen years. They seldom talked about anything personal. It had been a friendship sustained almost exclusively by music.
“But perhaps that is also a kind of talking,” the girl said. “Perhaps you know him better than you think you
do.”
“Perhaps.” Zhang finished his whiskey. “All his viciousness left him when he played. All his cynicism too. It was like getting access to a pure version of the man. But his life also found its way into his playing, if that doesn’t sound contradictory. I could hear it. The reason why he was the way he was.”
“It sounds like you were actually quite close.”
What had Ling Ling said? You’re his closest friend. Zhang pushed his empty glass towards the girl. “Same again.” He saw her hesitate. “Don’t worry, I won’t get drunk—or if I do, it won’t be here.”
She poured him another large whiskey and set it down before him.
“It might sound cruel,” he went on, “but I don’t think there are many people who will miss him. He was always making enemies.”
“Who will miss him, then,” the girl said, “apart from you?”
“His girlfriend, Ling Ling. Maybe Ling Ling’s daughter. Our drummer…” He shrugged and drank.
“The child was his?”
“No.” He turned his glass slowly on the bar. “She’s only five. In a few years, she probably won’t even remember him.”
The girl adjusted the position of the bottles on the back wall. Her face, reflected in the mirror tiles, was sober, composed, and seemingly unaware that he was watching her.
“So now I know you a little,” she said eventually.
She seemed to appreciate the fact that he had repaid her confidences with confidences of his own, yet she expected nothing from him. He found this relaxing. He was different when he was talking to her. He was more considerate, and more vulnerable. He was a musician. He had no name.
Finishing his drink, he asked for the check.
“You have to go?” she said.
He nodded.
“Will you be back?”
“I don’t think this place would survive without me,” he said.
She was smiling as he turned and left.
* * *
—
Out on the street he hailed a taxi. As he headed north, towards Anguo Road, he found that he had accepted the official version of the story. Mad Dog had drunk too much, and he had fallen down and hit his head, as alcoholics often do. It was tragic, as the deputy commissioner had said, but it was also predictable. To tell the truth, it was a wonder that it hadn’t happened before. As for the tattooed girl in Quik, her evidence was circumstantial. Was it really Mad Dog who she had seen? After all, Shanghai was full of old men, as the woman outside the noodle place on Monday night had said. And the blonde? Well, Naemi was hardly the only fair-haired woman in the city—and anyway, she had an alibi: she was halfway round the world, in London. Only one thing was certain. Mad Dog was gone. He had been a man of many accomplishments, some of which—the scholarship, the writing—he had hidden, even from his friends. Zhang wondered if Mad Dog’s sour nature might not have been his way of disguising feelings of shyness and self-doubt. Like lemon juice, it had added a zest to things, and as a musician he was second to none, his playing of the double bass both rich and minimal. There would be no replacing him.
In the alley, the old man was watering his plants again, and he gave Zhang the same unblinking look. Zhang opened the gate to Mad Dog’s yard. The kitchen light was on, as usual. When he knocked, Ling Ling came to the door.
“Mr. Zhang,” she said. “Come in.”
He followed her into the kitchen, where she offered him a glass of tea. He had the strange sensation, sitting at the table, that there was another version of himself outside the window, looking in. He remembered Mad Dog telling him that, for ghosts, the past could bleed into the present, and it seemed believable to Zhang just then. He looked at Ling Ling. Though she wasn’t crying, her eyes were swollen. He told her he was very sorry for her loss. It was his loss too, of course, he said.
“It’s better to know,” she said. “The not-knowing—that was difficult.” Her voice was uninflected, monotonous, like a landscape drained of color by the moon.
“How long were you together?”
“Five years.”
“You have a daughter—”
“She wasn’t his, but he grew to love her as if she was.” Ling Ling paused. “I think he was happy to have a daughter.”
“I don’t think I ever saw him happy,” Zhang said. “I can’t really imagine it.”
“He saw it as a form of weakness. But sometimes he gave in to it.” Ling Ling rose from the table. “Would you like more tea?”
Through the open doorway, Zhang could see into the next room, where Mad Dog’s spare double bass leaned against a green wall. In its hard case, which gleamed in the half-light, it reminded him of a huge insect, wings folded for the night. Before Ling Ling moved in, Zhang had often called round with his guitar, and the two of them had jammed together, sometimes for hours.
“What was it like to live with a man who was so much older?” he asked.
“I never thought about it.” She brought the tea to the table and sat down. “I’m not someone who thinks very far ahead.”
“That’s probably a good way to live.”
“I don’t know any other way.”
They fell quiet.
Ling Ling went to check on her daughter, who was asleep in the bedroom. Zhang bent over his tea and blew on it. As he lifted his eyes, he noticed a bookshelf on the far wall, beyond the double bass. He got up from the table and threaded his way through pieces of furniture, cardboard boxes, and piles of neatly ironed clothing. While scanning the shelves, he came across something unexpected. The book had a matte-black cover, and red characters on the front and down the spine. Its title was A Handbook of Ghost Culture in China, from Ancient Times to the Present Day. Inside was a photograph of the author, Mad Dog as a much younger man. He still had the same sour curl to his top lip, but his hair was cut short and showed no trace of gray.
“You can have that, if you like.”
He turned to see Ling Ling in the doorway behind him, her arms folded.
“Are you sure?” he said. “I don’t have any use for it.”
Thanking her, he took the book back to the kitchen with him, and they sat down again.
“You were the last person to see him,” Ling Ling said.
He nodded. “So far as we know.”
He told her that when he and Mad Dog left the bar, Mad Dog seemed to want company.
“Was that unusual?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Normally, he would insist on walking home alone.”
“But this time he wanted you to walk with him?”
“Yes.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps he was a bit drunker than usual. Perhaps he felt unsteady.”
Ling Ling stared down into her tea.
“It was so unlike him to ask for something,” Zhang said. “He never asked for anything, not in all the years I knew him. He didn’t want to be in debt to anyone, not even his friends. He was his own man. I respected that.”
“Perhaps it was selfishness,” Ling Ling said.
Zhang looked at her.
“Not allowing people to do things for you,” Ling Ling went on. “Not allowing them to feel good.”
“I never thought of it like that.”
They fell quiet again. Outside, in the yard, a cat let out a low and mournful howl.
“He was drunker than usual, though, you think,” Ling Ling said at last.
“It’s hard to say.” Zhang finished his tea. “I feel bad. Maybe I should have forced him to get into the taxi. Maybe I shouldn’t have given him a choice.”
Ling Ling looked at him, but said nothing.
“We had walked for about an hour,” Zhang went on. “I felt tired suddenly. It had been a long week, and it was late. When a taxi stopped for me, I offered him a lift, but he wasn’t interest
ed. He said he preferred to continue on foot, and that the night air would do him good.” He paused. “That was the last thing I heard him say—”
A dizziness came over him, and he felt for a moment that he might faint. He asked if he could use the toilet.
“Do you remember where it is?”
He shook his head.
She led him down a narrow corridor. In the yard, there was a concrete outhouse with a weak bare bulb, electric wires dangling. He pulled the door half shut behind him and turned on the tap. Tepid water trickled out. It didn’t smell too clean. He brought the water up to his face a few times, then turned the tap off again and stood with his hands braced on the edge of the sink and his head lowered. The stray cat howled again, closer this time. The swirling sensation passed. He returned to the kitchen, where Ling Ling was sitting at the table, as before.
“Tell the funeral people to contact me,” he said. “I’ll take care of everything.” He put his business card on the table.
She seemed to have become immobilized, as she had been in the grounds outside his building, and on the sofa in his apartment. His card lay in front of her, untouched. He couldn’t imagine the kinds of thoughts that were going through her mind. Maybe none. He picked up Mad Dog’s book on ghosts and left.
In the taxi, it occurred to him that Ling Ling might see his offer to pay for the funeral as an attempt to buy her silence. He knew more about Mad Dog’s death than he was letting on. He was implicated, somehow—or even guilty. She might see it as the sort of grand gesture a person only makes if he has something to atone for.
Did he have something to atone for?
* * *
—
He woke at half past five in the morning. Sleep was all around him, sticky as cobwebs, heavy as clay, and he had to fight his way free of it. He forced his eyes open. Was that his alarm? No, the sound was wrong. He reached for his phone. Someone was calling.
“Mr. Zhang?”
“Yes—” The word came out strangled. He cleared his throat.
“It’s Torben Gulsvig.”
Zhang put his feet on the floor and sat with the phone pressed to his right ear.