Shanghai Nobody_A Novel

by Vann Chow

  On Friday evening, I packed my bags and Marvey helped Jessie with his. We slept at the usual bedtime in this household, 10:30 pm, and woke up at 6 am to catch our budget morning flight back to Boston, so that we could be in the airport in time for the next leg bringing us back to China.

  I did not say anything unnecessary to Marvey, like everyone, probably including you, hoped. No, Marvey and I were never meant to be. All the talk about me not being worthy, while that was true, was only an excuse. If I had wanted Marvey to become my girlfriend, I knew I only had to ask.

  Yet I did not.

  It was all nice and memorable, my time at Marvey's, being by her side, living with her amiable family, forgetting all about my usual weariness over money and girlfriend. But none of this was real. It was just a vacation, a refuge from reality, a wet dream for a Chinese boy.

  I had now experienced how they lived, in small town America. You hardly see other people when you were not at work. You have to drive everywhere. In the week that I was at their place, I only saw Marvey waved at her neighbor once and Heather talked to two Mormon missionaries and one Avon saleswoman. The rest of the time, they either watched television, or worked on some chores, or home improvement project they invented, until the storm which made it necessary, at home.

  To be honest, given that nobody was hurt during that episode of hellish weather, I could now say I was even glad that the tornado decided to stop by Alexandria, because other than that, probably nothing else interesting would have happened the whole trip, in reality that was. The online game Jessie was playing was also pretty eventful, but then I could only watch, because there was only one keyboard and I was the older one. Chinese morals dictated that the old should not fight with the young.

  To summarize in one word, I was rather bored with how Americans living outside of the big metropolitan that were always featured in exciting television series conducted their lives. No wonder Walt, from Breaking Bad, started cooking Meth and led a thug life that he would not get out of despite all the setbacks in his family life and health. A adventure-filled criminal life was clearly far superior way to lead the rest of his dying days than sitting at home, bored, in small town America.

  Of course, there was more in my mind. Not Marvey. Indeed that was strange. I dreamt of Marvey day and night when I was in Shanghai, even when I was with Shirley, the supposed 'perfect girl'. Now that I was next to the girl in my dreams, while she was still as amazing as I recall, under the 24/7 scrutiny of her parents and my adopted son, my brain automatically suspended all lustful thoughts and compartmentalized the last of my amorous feelings for Marvey. It was remarkable how I could now see her more of a younger sister, a younger friend, than a potential love object. It was not Marvey but Shirley that was on my mind.

  Yes, Shirley. Shirley, the epitome of all that was evil in Chinese society. Her angelic face, her snake-like deception, her wolfish ambush and her scorpionic instinct to kill.

  I might have appeared to be busy at a variety of things throughout my stay at Alexandria, but in my head, I was only busy with one thing, planning on how to topple her from her throne.

  Chapter 42: Gratification

  Building upon the Confucius belief that one should work hard and live frugally and a good number of years of famine under Mao's rule, the modern Chinese work ethics was one of the few exemplary characteristics of my people that we could hail proudly internationally. For a group of people with such an upbringing to have brought up the next generations of materialistic whores that worshiped money and covet power over the less fortunate or the gullible was the century's biggest mystery. Of course, this was not a phenomenon that occurred uniquely in China. Most countries had seen their fair share of moral decay. If there were no geological and language barriers, the rich of the Central Kingdom might be pals of the rich of Putin's Russian Empire.

  Certainly not everyone was corrupted, or corrupted to an intolerable extreme. The worst thing I did might be to coax the free English class from my company through my relationship with the HR lady. That was nothing sensational, and a rather wide spread phenomenon. Our pay was so little even the most righteous person would turn a blind eye to these occasional chicaneries.

  Having someone ancestral land stripped from him was a far worse violation of other'sproperty. Having cleared my conscience, I snuck up to the 15 th floor of the building where Shirley and Simon lived by the Charles River in the three hours that Jessie and I had as overlay before our flights fly out to Shanghai and got on with my first step for revenge.

  There were two types of people in this world: those who first invest all the hardwork and enjoy the fruits of their labor at the end, then there were those who seek immediate gratification from the activities they engaged in. I was unmistakably the first type. And I had had enough of people taking from my plates where I saved the best food for later. This was not going to happen again. No one was going to ever steal from me again.

  I unlocked the front door easily with the key I stole from Marvey's drawer at Alexandria, since she would not be needing it anymore now that her very good friend, yours truly, was reduced to such state by her once-employer, and I looked around. There was no one in the living room. Stealthily, I slid into Shirley's bedroom on my thick, white woolly socks worn specially for this occasion to reduce the sound of my steps, and found her tablet lying unattended on her desk.

  I lurched at it and woke it up from sleep mode without the prompt to enter any password. Shirley was careless for someone with so many secrets to hide. I pulled up her chat history with this man whose message I accidentally came across last week and exported it via email to myself. I thought there might be other conversations that might prove useful as well, so I exported a dozen more, carefully to include the one between Simon and Shirley. Five minutes later when that was all done, I logged out of my own email account, wiped my finger prints carefully with the hem of my shirt and slipped out of the house.

  That was when Marvey gave me a call. I had forgotten to turn off the sound, so I quickly dismissed it. She tried a couple of times and seeing that I did not wish to pick up, she sent me a text message.

  Annoyed, I wanted to swipe it away but accidentally opened the message. It said, “Cameras are watching you. Leave immediately!”

  Instinctively I glanced up at the corners of the room and located a dark round object. Was Marvey watching? Was this one of those security devices that notify their owners when they detected movements in the house? If Marvey was watching, then surely Shirley would be as well. I shuddered, and bolted for the door.

  “Let's go!” I grabbed Jessie, who was playing with his fingers by the flower beds around the corner from the building entrance and lunged him in my arms, together with our luggage to the nearest taxi standing at the end of the street, ignoring the unspoken etiquette of picking the taxi at the front of the line.

  “Airport. Quick please. We have a flight to catch!”

  I did not text Marvey back. It might sound absurd because she was the one who notified me of the imminent danger which would befall me if I had stayed a moment longer at Shirley's flat. Yet I felt suspicious of what saying more to her would entail, for fear that her phone was also tapped. I had forgotten that Shirley and Simon were the living treasures of their powerful father, the owner of the Sun of China Group. They were likely much targeted for robbery or kidnappings in China. I was stupid to assume that because we were outside of the country that the appearance of lack of security was the whole truth.

  The Indian taxi driver shot me a smirk and said, “no problem sir. Please wear both of your seat belts now!” And he romped on the gas.

  It was always a comfort when you went outside of your county and to finally met people who understood you on first count.

  “Airport, we are coming!” He pronounced to no one in particular, pleasant at being tasked to deliver us on our urgent business, whatever he had deduced it to be.

  Chapter 43: Special Treatment

  There were a million reasons
why one would not want to be picked out by airport security, but being picked out because one was identified as an anti-terrorism hero in current circumstances was an exception and it sped things up tremendously for us.

  Apart from the few selfies I had to take with a few of the younger security officers not quite vigilant as they should be on their jobs, Jessie and I were fast-tracked across check-in and security checks. We were sitting comfortably in the First Class lounge sipping the teas that the hostess made specially for us while waiting for boarding. Unexpectedly, we had been allowed into the First Class lounge even without someone who held the First Class card traveling with us because of my fame. I presumed that now I was behind security, there was no way she could stop me from leaving now and had the local police arrest me for break-and-entry.

  Still I was not completely relaxed. Without me realizing, I was pacing nervously back and forth the couch that Jessie was sitting on who was reading a comic book the hostess of the First Class lounge had handed him on request. With the WiFi provided by the airport, I could download the message histories that I exported from Shirley's phone and started browsing for any incriminating evidence.

  Barely did I read five rows did I realize who had entered the lounge. The loud tocks of her sharp heels coinciding with the loud thumps of my jumping heart.

  Jessie called her name out . “Miss Shirley!”

  I turned around as she undid her seemingly expensive branded shawl from her shoulders, all the while her gaze was transfixed on me in a derisive stare. Behind her, a well-dressed bodyguard followed. He had no expression.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, putting away my phone despite knowing that she would not dare to do anything in the airport.

  “I'm going to skin you alive,” she said in a heavy voice.

  Never had I heard her talk like that before. Now that I had witnessed it I kicked myself for not realizing her menacing potentials having spent so much time with her.

  I felt my legs weaken. I sat down on the couch opposite to where she had taken a place and returned her stare. Jessie noticed the tense atmosphere and turned to ask me, “are you two not in love anymore?”

  “No.” We answered at the same time.

  Chapter 44: Rush

  Our flight back was rather uneventful, because I volunteered to switch our seats with a couple and a crying baby from economy class. The passengers of the economy class as well as the couple were quite pleased at my admirable act of kindness. I just hope that the baby cried as loud and as annoying as it could in First Class, preferably in the ears of my sworn enemy.

  I let down my guards too early. As soon as I walked towards the arrival gate after picking up my luggage did I realize there were a group of black suits clad men waiting for Shirley and I, most specifically I from the satisfactory glances they threw at me through the gap of the sliding doors slamming open and shut repeatedly as other passengers poured out to the arrival hall.

  Shirley, followed by the silent minion who carried her luggage, walked pass us, stopped, turned around and gave me a cold smile before continuing her journey out to meet her hired guns. At least in America they thought I was a somebody. If I cried foul, I might get some protections in the Boston airport. Now that I had arrived in Shirley's home tuft, despite it also being my hometown, one that was overstuffed by countless of faceless, nameless, penniless fools like me it could not spare any more mercy, I think I would be handcuffed and hand-delivered into the arms of my powerful adversary and her rather menacing-looking entourage. She could really skin me alive if she wanted.

  “Why are we standing here?” Jessie pulled on my sleeves. “Let's go home! Let's go home! Ultraman is on TV in twenty minutes!”

  A poor man like me did not have a lot of resource to pull on last minute. One thing I had, however were loyal friends, especially friends from soccer who were used to seeing fights on and off fields and were not easily threatened.

  A mere message in our chat group and the whole team appeared at the airport except one or two who were otherwise engaged. We were at least fourteen, with everyone on the rooster and what not, all of them wearing our soccer team's blue and gray stripped uniforms. The wife of the captain was there, too, carrying bouquet of flowers for my home-coming.

  “Welcome! Welcome! Adept in air, agile on land. Pudong Hero, strikes eleven! Strikes eleven!” Everyone in our soccer team, Pudong Hero chanted loudly as Jessie and I walked out of the gate to the dismay of Shirley's hired hands. Our team had won ten games so far this season. The additional strike was due to their creative counting of my extra strike-down of the violent man on the flight to Boston, likely broadcasted as well by the local media.

  The team huddled together as I approached. The captain gave me a heartfelt embrace and the rest of the group hustled us into the big tour bus that goalie Wong occasionally borrowed from his work to drive us to our games at the temporary parking area. From the back window of the bus, we watched Shirley watched us from her unmistakably luxury ride parked only a few space behind, her men crowding the sides of the car, waiting for orders of what to do.

  “The whole team of Pudong Hero Number 4 is here. She wouldn't dare doing anything funny!” Our left defender, Brother Chong, said. “Besides, Brother Fei and his squad is here.” Brother Fei, a city patrol, a policeman of sorts, was one of the people I thought missing from the group. I was grateful he turned up as well.

  Just as GoaleeWong started driving away, we saw Brother Fei and his team swept down on the group that had aggregated around Shirley's car.

  We sat relaxed on our seats and they started asking me about the events that transpired when I was in America. As soon as I got to the main point, we heard the sound of screeching tires behind us.

  “They are chasing us!” Little Buddha, the smallest guy in the team who was our striker exclaimed.

  Then there was a loud bang on the right side of the bus. A car the same model as the one that picked up Shirley was hit us.

  “Do they not want to live?” Brother Chong said. “Our bus is five times the size of their car.”

  Samuel, our trainee, a boy who studied a few years in Sweden and got himself an English name asked, “what did they do to Brother Fei?”

  “You should ask what do they want to do with us!” Midfielder Lui corrected him. “Do they want to get everyone killed on the road?”

  The driver from the other car rolled down his window and mouthed the words for “Stop the car” multiple times.

  “John, what in the world did you steal from her?” Goalie Wong asked me. “I want to know if I am going to die for the right cause.” He swiveled the bus around a sharp bend at the crossroad and headed towards the highway. The car that was following us missed the entrance and went straight ahead to another direction. Another car stepped into our view just when we thought we lost our pursuers.

  Goalie Wong's question came at the right moment. Without hesitating for another second, I pulled up the most popular online forum in Shanghai, opened a new titled “Dirty secret of the Burn Pit group” , write a short description and dumped all the chat histories that I had not the time to check myself on it with my anonymous account.

  Jessie, the brat that spent too much time watching crime television series and movies, immediately knew what he had to do. He fired up his smartphone camera and start shooting a video of the chase.

  Chapter 45: Broadcasted

  We circled the city for about an hour, trying to run away from our pursuers when Goalie Wong cursed at his bus, “Dammit! I'm running out of gas.”

  “Already?!” Brother Lui climbed from his seat to the front of the bus to converse with the now panicking driver. Goalie Wong just finished a three day trip from Hangzhou to Shanghai. He got to the airport as soon as he dropped off his passengers at their hotel. There were no time to pump any gas in. The thing with big buses were that their meters went down very fast towards the end, and it was hard to gauge how long gas would last.

  “I wasn't expecting a car ch
ase, okay?” He shouted so that everyone could hear him.

  “Where are we now?” Brother Lui scanned left and right.

  “About five kilometers from the soccer field.” There were only five soccer fields opened to amateur teams in Shanghai, despite the size of the city. Any land that was not occupied by government buildings, public recreational areas, skyscrapers nor existing residential buildings would soon be converted to an area for commercial purpose by its owner. Pudong Hero Number 4, along with the rest of the Pudong Hero teams, could maximum get two slots at the University soccer field in a week. There were barely any slot for practice.

  “You don't mean we are driving towards the university?!”

  “I don't know where else to go! I couldn't lead them to our houses, could I?”

  “It's good.” I shouted from the back of the bus. “Go for it! The university is good! Park your bus at the field!”

  The field was next to a row of campus housing. On such a warm summer days, a lot of students had come out of their dormitory to chill with their friends as they watched whatever game that was playing at the moment in the field.

  “What's the plan?” Little Buddha asked me.

  “Go to the center of the field!” I cried.

  “The center?” I heard he said in disbelieved. “Do you want to get beaten in public?”

  “That's the whole point.” I replied, praying that this would be a wise decision.

  As soon as we parked the bus, I carried Jessie on my shoulders and we ran towards the center of the field. At the beginning the teams playing soccer there at the moment were confused. Some stopped on their tracks to look at what we were doing, others started cursing and came towards us, that was until they saw a group of suspicious men in suits climbed out of their Mercedes parked obliquely next to our bus abruptly and streamed on to the field after us.