99 Ways to Die

by Ed Lin

  Nancy chewed thoughtfully. “A few students, the administrators and I guess Tong-tong himself and the people who run his foundation.”

  “Let me guess. This anthropology research will only reveal more cultural ties between the people of China and Taiwan.” There are often reports in media outlets run by mainlanders that Taiwanese customs have their origins in Chinese culture. That’s as ridiculous as saying that American traditions have their roots in Great Britain; everybody knows Americans drink coffee, not tea.

  Nancy pulled a few strands of hair behind her ears and let them slip out. “I don’t think there are restrictions on what people can study and conclude. Otherwise it wouldn’t be honest research.”

  I rubbed my right ear. “Maybe Tong-tong’s upcoming donation is a clue.”

  “Jing-nan, you should probably tell the cops. They should know.”

  “You’re right.” I knew where I could find at least two.

  I called Peggy. As the phone rang I watched Nancy lope off to the kitchen. She scooped the rest of the rice out of the bowl and into the garbage.

  “Hello, Jing-nan,” said Peggy. I heard the television in the background and it was the audio to our muted station. “Did you have a sudden realization or something?”

  “You know I never get those, Peggy. Is Huang on the line, too?”

  “Yes, I am, Mr. Chen,” he grunted.

  “Well, I just heard that Tong-tong was going to announce some Taida fellowships to China.” I heard a tinkling sound coming from my kitchen. Nancy was shaking corn flakes into her emptied bowl. Then she jerked open the fridge and grabbed a carton of mango-flavored milk.

  “Hmm,” said Huang.

  “This is news to me,” said Peggy. “Not that he would tell me about it. What are the specifics?”

  “He was going to sponsor students to study anthropology. In your homeland, Peggy.”

  “It’s your homeland, too, Jing-nan. If you only admitted the truth to yourself.” She sighed. “You heard this from Nancy?”

  “I did.”

  She gave a satisfied grunt before talking because she had me all figured out. “Hey, Huang?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jing-nan must have heard this from his girlfriend, Nancy, who is some Taida superstar. My dad might have just floated the idea to see what sort of response he would get. Maybe he was fishing for an honorary degree from Taida or trying to get them to name a campus lake after him. He went to Ohio State in America, and even though he did well there, it’s not a real prestigious degree to have in your bio.”

  “It’s no New York University,” I said, citing Peggy’s alma mater.

  “No, it’s not,” she sang back. “It’s no UCLA, either. Huang, did you know that Jing-nan went to UCLA?”

  “Oh, yeah?” asked the cop without a trace of interest.

  “I didn’t graduate. Well, that doesn’t matter, anyway. What about the Taida thing, Huang. Does it interest you at all?”

  He inhaled slowly. “This is new information. I don’t know if it’s useful.”

  Nancy returned to the couch, and I angled away from her cereal-crunching sounds. “Despite what Peggy says, Taida took the offer seriously,” I said. “The students are already chatting about it.”

  “The guy talks a lot of shit, Jing-nan,” said Peggy, almost exasperated. “Especially when there aren’t cameras in his face. His mouth is like an old hair dryer.”

  Huang grunted lightly. “I’ll have some of our people look into it. I’m sure one of the boys or girls could give some attention to this.” I hoped he meant lower-level cops rather than high-school interns.

  “Thank you. Peggy, I feel terrible about your father. I hope we get him back soon.”

  I heard her suck in her lips. “Thank you, Jing-nan. I’m not really that worried. I’m sure he’ll be rescued, one way or another.” She was trying hard but her voice wavered. “Listen. Jing-nan, your food was really good tonight. Have you ever thought about opening a real restaurant?”

  I stretched my legs. Was she trying to annoy me? “Unknown Pleasures is a real restaurant.”

  “You know what I mean. Being in the night market is, well, kinda scuzzy. You should have a nice, big place with banquet rooms and everything! Do you know how many famous people you could be rubbing shoulders with?”

  “I already have Nancy to rub my shoulders.” Nancy looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

  Peggy clucked her tongue. “I’m glad I’m not in a relationship. It robs you of your ambition! Huang, are you married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you happy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you probably don’t spend much time with your wife, as a cop. That’s why you’re happy.”

  Huang gave a warning laugh. “Say whatever you want. You’re paying me to be here.”

  It was time to go. I had gotten the Taida info to the police and subjected myself to Peggy’s annoyances. With those tasks done, I said good night and hung up.

  “Did I hear that you wanted a shoulder rub?” asked Nancy.

  “I wouldn’t mind one.”

  She formed a pair of chopsticks with her index and middle finger and made like she was eating something out of the bowl with them.

  Of course Nancy was still hungry even after the cereal.

  “I get you food and then you give me a shoulder rub?” I asked. She nodded.

  I left the apartment, jogged around the corner to the nearest Family Mart and scooped out a passable bowl of beef noodles from the hot bar. Who knows how many hours the noodles had sat in hot water? A chef should never treat a starch like that. Then again, anyone who considered himself or herself a chef wouldn’t work at Family Mart.

  As I was paying, I overheard a snippet of conversation from a straight couple in their early twenties, immersed in their respective phones at an eat-in table.

  “Did you hear about Tong-tong?” the man gasped with his mouth full of food.

  “Yeah, I did,” muttered the woman. “Fuck that prick. He got what he deserved.”

  “Still, it’s embarrassing for Taiwan.”

  The woman smacked her lips in contempt. “He should have thought about that before he started throwing his money around for the Double-Nine holiday. What a publicity hound.”

  I turned my head but couldn’t bring myself to walk away just yet. I thought I could say something like, “Hey, I’m classmates with his daughter and you’re being incredibly disrespectful.” But confronting strangers won’t do in Taiwan. Here, you can only tell off people close to you. On the way out I waved to them to get their attention, and then nodded. Let them wonder what it meant.

  When I returned to the apartment, Nancy bounded off the couch and confronted me even before I had both shoes off. “Oh, thank you so much, Jing-nan!”

  I held the bag up, out of her reach. “Well, hold on, now. How are you going to compensate me for getting you this food? I sorta went through hell for this, after all.”

  She strutted to the couch, ran her fingers through her hair and delicately put her feet back on the coffee table. “I will allow you to feed me, little boy.” Nancy opened her mouth comically wide and clapped her hands in a call for service. I could only comply.

  In the early morning we showered off the crust accumulated from sleep and sex. It was a little after 5 a.m., but no sleeping in today for either of us. Nancy had to do some lab work and I was hitting the day market.

  We dressed in front of the TV. There wasn’t anything new in the Tong-tong coverage. His photos cycled through the screen, the same treatment given to newly dead celebrities. Tong-tong looked triumphant and only a little smug in each one, whether declaring a vow at his wedding, walking as one of the bearers of Mazu’s statue in the birthday pilgrimage of Taiwan’s top Taoist goddess (another bearer, behind Tong-tong, was the vice president of Tai
wan), or sitting courtside at a Los Angeles Lakers home game.

  As I did a standing breaststroke into a tank top, I thought about that couple back at the Family Mart. I could see how they could casually dismiss Tong-tong. He had money. He was comfortable. He was worthy of contempt by those who were stumbling at the yoke end of our country’s gross domestic product.

  Taiwan’s economy was sputtering along and the job market sucked for my generation of twenty-somethings. We were a people born in the years following the Tiananmen Square crackdown, and for the most part we wondered what we could possibly have in common with the government and events in China, which is what many non-businessmen in Taiwan regard as a foreign and hostile country.

  That mindset didn’t stop people from going to China to try to find jobs. Didn’t the Beatles have to go to Hamburg, Germany, to get decent gigs when they were starting out? If your parents were mainlanders and if you had no problem using “Taiwan Compatriot” forms of identification (China doesn’t recognize Taiwan passports), you could. Australia was another destination for young people. Supposedly you could make more waiting tables in Sydney than sentencing yourself to a sixty-hour workweek in a Taipei office cubicle with no paid overtime.

  I was fairly lucky. Well, as lucky as an orphan could get. Yes, my parents were dead, and yes, I never got to finish my degree at UCLA. But look what I had. My own apartment, for starters, which was a big deal because most young people in Taiwan unfortunately lived with their parents until they were married. Sure, I had to pay rent, but think of all the money Nancy and I were saving by not paying for a love hotel on a regular basis.

  I had my own business, too, the old family stand, and we were kicking ass. I created food and got paid for it. Quite a bit, at times. Locals may not like the Shilin Night Market because its offerings run too touristy, but the work-alter ego I have cultivated for myself loves the foreigners. Johnny loves hearing their stories, fielding their questions about Taiwan and all Asians in general, and giving prefab answers about his personal history—all up until they pay and for maybe a minute after, depending on the size of the ticket.

  The real me is an introvert willing to engage with strangers with little else apart from the topics of proto-punk, punk and post-punk bands of the 1960s through the 1990s.

  I will talk to anybody wearing a Joy Division shirt, no matter how damaged and/or deranged they look. We’ll light up to talk about our favorite band and debate which of the studio albums were better, Unknown Pleasures or Closer. I loved the debut album enough to name my stand after it. Maybe Peggy was right. Maybe I should think about opening a big restaurant and naming it “Closer.” Then again, that sounds like “close,” as in my restaurant could do badly and close. Certainly it was an ill-omened name.

  I’ve already committee a major faux pas by naming my business after a Joy Division album. One aspect about the band that I loved was that they shied away from anything that could be even remotely construed as commercial. They didn’t put their name on the front cover of their albums and their individual names or pictures didn’t appear anywhere. The pre-Internet listener of the early ’80s had no idea who they were or what they looked like.

  That was cool.

  Then again, I had read in bassist Peter Hook’s autobiography that they all had gotten screwed out of money. Actually, they continued to be screwed because the band’s members had signed contracts they hadn’t read, much less understood, and had missed out on millions. Surely, that was no way to conduct oneself in business, even if it gave you a superhighway of street cred.

  I wasn’t one to talk about pure artistry. I sort of sold myself out by assuming my Johnny persona, but I hadn’t gone further with it. Would it be egregious to take the celebrity chef route and open a place nice enough to have candles on the tables, the kind of place with ambiance, where a person might pop the question? I couldn’t ask Nancy to marry me in the clammy confines of Unknown Pleasures, could I?

  Nancy closed the pearl snaps on her blouse and the sharp sounds jolted me out of my anxieties thought piece. I actually twitched. Then I felt ashamed about being selfish in my thoughts, wondering if I was cool enough while my old classmate’s father had been kidnapped.

  “Are you all right, Jing-nan?”

  “I’m just a little shaken up about Tong-tong.” That was true.

  She touched my shoulder. “We’re all worried about him. He was trying to do a good thing, too, for the elderly on the holiday.” She sighed with a measure of futility. “Tonight I have to write something for our department website about the Double Ninth. How our research is connected with respect for our elders.”

  “Shit,” I said. “Why do you have to write garbage like that?”

  Nancy raised an eyebrow as she adjusted her belt. “My advisor wants it online with a special acknowledgement to Best Therapeutics for supporting our department.”

  I waited a few moments. “You don’t have any recent Double Ninth experiences to draw from.”

  She evaluated what I said. “I don’t.”

  “When do you think you’re going to see your mom and the rest of your family?”

  Nancy looked into the corners of the room. “It’s not entirely up to me. Anyway, what families don’t cut each other off for a few years?”

  “Or a few decades.”

  “It hasn’t been that long.”

  “I wasn’t talking about you in particular,” I said, reaching down to scratch my knee. “I was just saying, you know, some people are like that.”

  She nodded. “I know. This thing I’m writing, though, it’s more like a service piece to thank the drug company for its support under the guise of the holiday.”

  “What holiday are you going to soil in order to thank Tong-tong for his donation?”

  She tucked her shirt into her slacks. “I would never do that. I don’t want anything bad to happen to him, but I would draw the line at thanking him. At least Best Therapeutics is saving lives, so it’s more than just a business.”

  Did Tong-tong ever save someone’s life? Probably not. A Buddhist would say, maybe that’s why his life was in danger now.

  Wait, did I ever save anyone’s life? I sort of saved Dwayne and Nancy, but actually it was Frankie who saved all of us in the end. I wondered if it would come down to Frankie saving Tong-tong. No way. The cops would handle this one.

  Nancy was already dressed. “I’ll be back here before you.” She kissed my forehead. “This time, bring back food.”

  I shoved a few cloth bags into the biggest one. “You’re still mad about me not bringing leftovers last night?” I asked.

  She dismissed me by tousling my hair. “Don’t be silly. If I were mad, I wouldn’t even be talking to you.”

  Chapter 4

  We caught the first MRT train just after six in the morning at the nearby Jiantan station and rode south with sleepy business people who had sleep-inducing real jobs. Four stops later Nancy had to transfer to get to Taida.

  “Watch yourself,” I said. I gave her a little shoulder wipe as she left. Taiwanese frown upon public displays of affection. That’s why she kissed me back at the apartment. We didn’t even hold hands in public. Why would anybody? Two people walking close together already meant they were in love. No need to spell everything out to the general public and embarrass yourself, your parents and your ancestors. You never knew who was looking and who would gossip about it, after all.

  I transferred two stops later to get to the Gongguan Day Market.

  The day market is held in the same blocks as the Gongguan Night Market, which in all honesty is a half-decent enterprise, even if it can’t hold a fried drumstick and thigh to the Shilin Night Market. The day market, with all the fresh produce, is where the action’s at.

  My strategy at the day market is to walk through every block before buying anything. It’s the best way to find the lowest prices and also the most intere
sting things on offer. A guy can only carry so much, after all.

  A while ago, before I’d taken my vow to be circumspect, I’d regrettably filled my bags with mundane but good produce before coming upon the sexiest small pumpkins I’d ever seen. They would have looked beautiful cooked, bursting with orange and branded with grill marks. On social media, these pumpkins would have racked up their own fan page. The vegans—and there were more of them every damned month—would have loved them. Strangely, the vegan tourists all seemed to be rich. Maybe they were saving a bunch of money from not eating meat or buying leather goods.

  I stood at the curb to fortify myself mentally before I entered the day market. I took a deep breath and said to no one and nothing in particular, “Please let me find something great.” It was the closest I ever came to praying with sincerity, since I didn’t believe in any of Taiwan’s legions of goddesses and gods. I used to think less of people who knelt down before these idols and asked for help. Now I know that they are only seeking comfort and there’s nothing wrong with that.

  My own “prayer” is really meant to address my subconscious and encourage my creative process. Seriously. I mean, once in a while, the image of my high-school girlfriend flashes through my head, but apart from that, there are no otherworldly presences in my life. She’s dead now, after all, and the dead don’t come back.

  I rubbed my hands in anticipation and strolled to the first two stalls. I noticed that buckets of chrysanthemums adorned nearly every corner. What better way to celebrate the Double Ninth than to wear flowers and decorate the home with them?

  I heard a rattling and focused on Buddhist beads dancing on a woman’s wrist as she sliced lotus root for samples. The scene gave me an epiphany.

  I should offer a vegan option every night.

  Unknown Pleasures could be highlighted by travel blogs as a joint that has vegan fare. It could be a whole new revenue stream.

  I had to find something inspiring for the stall’s first vegan offering. Something distinctive. Something great. Something that could be liked and shared infinitely online. Nothing’s dumber or more tasteless than random vegetables spiked on a skewer. I needed something to really stand out.