Incensed

by Ed Lin

  I opened my eyes and examined the blade of the nearest wooden sword. It had a multitude of nicks and dents.

  I imagined Mei-ling training with this sword, knocking back Big Eye’s attacks while waiting for an opportunity to strike back.

  Ah, that’s what this disappearing act was. Mei-ling had deliberately planned her daring escape in Taipei. She knew what she was going to do long before the trip began.

  It made me feel a little depressed and I wasn’t sure why. Really, the failed relationship between my uncle and my cousin wasn’t any of my business. Yet these two people were all the family I had left in the world. You don’t get to choose your family but there’s something in not having that choice. We were destined to share our lives together. I thought about Big Eye making me laugh when I was a kid. Was he already a murderer back then?

  In the morning I met Big Eye at the dining table. He looked like he hadn’t slept. He stared at cross sections of kiwi fruit on his plate. The seedy eyes stared back as he put his elbows up on the table. I had been prepared to either stare him down or avoid him altogether. But I wasn’t ready to see Big Eye looking so defeated and pathetic.

  “I shouldn’t have been so hard on her,” he spoke into his right fist. “Maybe she didn’t need to finish high school. I wanted what I thought was best for her. I didn’t care what she thought.” He grabbed his phone and frantically typed away, checking his email, voice mails, and texts. “No wonder she couldn’t stand me.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, which is an odd thing to say to a killer. “Maybe she’ll come back soon.”

  He nodded and drank a full glass of spiked orange juice before speaking. “She’s not coming back voluntarily. Mei-ling has to be found. And when I find her, I’m going to put a fucking bullet in her head.”

  I took the high-speed rail back to Taipei. I accidentally sat in a reserved seat when I had an ordinary ticket. The rightful passengers were cool about it. Young man and a young woman. Maybe they were brother and sister. Maybe they were a couple. Taiwanese are so reserved in their manners in public it was hard to tell unless they were carrying a baby. And even then . . .

  I slinked down a car to an open seat in a coach car and rubbed my hands. I went over what Big Eye said was going to happen.

  It was going to be a two-pronged approach. He, Whistle, and Gao were going to use their own “channels” to try to find Mei-ling. He told me that I should check out the places that she had expressed interest in, such as the arts group in the juancun and Ximending. Just how the hell I was supposed to cover the entirety of one of the most fashionable neighborhoods in Taipei was beyond me, but I was willing to give it a shot. How could I not?

  I had had big plans for this girl. I leaned against the window and closed my eyes. Mei-ling, you and I had made plans!

  I could see the digital release of her EP and then maybe a little tour and music contract. She could have gone far but I guess the attraction to a life on the lam away from her dad was too strong. I hated to think that she was in over her head.

  Was it some guy Mei-ling’s age? Or was it an older guy like in Lolita? Maybe one of those weirdos holed up in that juancun.

  I stood outside the juancun. It looked more charming and less rundown up close. The complex reminded me of the toaster-shaped illegal house I grew up in. The toaster house had lived up to its name by burning down. Although I lost nearly everything I owned, the disaster also freed me from living with the memories of my late parents and grandfather.

  I entered the courtyard and came upon groups of grandfathers playing mahjongg at concrete tables. Younger people of both sexes were building what looked like a parade float that featured a straw effigy in a paper suit with the President’s name on it. Three young men in tank tops, apparently the lookouts, broke off from the group and confronted me.

  “Can I help you?” asked the leader, a guy with spiky hair with Beats headphones hugging his neck. He was friendly but wary. The second guy held a camera phone on me. The third seemed to stand there for moral support.

  “My name is Chen Jing-nan. I’m looking for a friend of mine, a young girl named Mei-ling,” I said. “I think she might have come here. Here’s a picture of her.” I held up my camera.

  Beats squinted as he gave a cursory look at the camera. “That doesn’t look like anybody here,” he said, curling his bottom lip. “Are you a cop?”

  I looked down at my dusty shoes, greased jeans and threadbare shirt that featured the tomb-theme artwork of Closer, Joy Division’s second album. I was going to wear that shirt until it dried up and fell off my back like a dead leaf. “Do I look like a cop?” I asked.

  Beats nodded. Really?

  “Search him,” he said and motioned to the third guy. I put my hands up and turned to the second guy’s camera.

  “Whoa!” I said. “Aren’t you being a little extreme here? Do you guys have guns or something?”

  Beats spoke up. “We’ve all had death threats here. The local police precinct has been harassing us, too. People have left dog carcasses in our courtyard as warnings, so, no, we’re not being extreme.” He pulled his right ear. “And, no, we don’t have guns.”

  I looked down and noticed that their feet were in neutral stances but ready to fly into action. As the third guy approached me, I knew that I had to let him pat me down if I was going to have a shot at looking for Mei-ling on the premises.

  “Sorry,” the third guy said in English as he crouched and ran his hands down my thighs. After he checked my ankles, waistband and the small of my back, he called out to Beats, “I recognize this guy now. I thought his name sounded familiar—he’s Jing-nan, the hero of Shilin Night Market. He’s clean, too.”

  “Wait,” the second guy said to me, “you were the one who deflected that bullet?”

  “That’s me,” I said, playing to the camera that he still held up. Something touched my left side and I flinched. It was Beats. He was patting me hard on the back.

  “Gan!” he said. “You’re the first celebrity to visit!”

  Now that I had the full approval of the gatekeepers, other people freely approached.

  “Jing-nan,” said Beats, “I don’t know who you’re looking for but, seriously, it’s been months since anyone new has come in.” He cleared his throat. “Actually, we’ve been losing more people than we’d like to.”

  “You know my name,” I said to Beats, “so what’s yours?”

  He shook his head. “None of us are telling outsiders our names. We have to protect ourselves and our families.”

  An elderly man at a mahjongg table pulled off his baseball cap and fanned his face.

  “What does it matter?” he yelled. “The government already knows who we are! Sooner or later they’re going to knock this place down. You might as well have some fun, not waste time building an effigy of the President to burn.”

  “That’s not for a parade?” I asked Beats.

  He nodded grimly. “We’re going to set it on fire and stream the video online to show how the government is taking away our freedoms.”

  The elderly man spoke up again. “Start a fire for what? People are just going to think you’re irresponsible! You want to make trouble, why don’t you join up with those idiot students who occupied the Legislative Yuan? Don’t do it here where we all have to live.”

  “Well, it doesn’t really concern you, so don’t worry about it,” was Beats’s weak reply.

  “I’m glad I didn’t spend my youth doing useless things,” said the man. “I was in the army. I had fun and those memories are still great!”

  As the old soldier’s companions laughed out loud, Beats could only shake his head.

  When I was at UCLA, I’d discovered that many people had the wrong idea about how Confucianism worked. Americans thought that younger generations of East Asians were completely deferential to older generations. That
’s not true at all. We can challenge the thinking of our parents’ generation. Just not verbally.

  The effigy burning would go on. So would the mahjongg game.

  “Why are you so sure that it wasn’t Chong who whisked away Mei-ling?” asked Nancy. We were walking through Ximending a little after noon. The place was dead. It wouldn’t begin to come to life until the late afternoon when the middle- and high-school kids started crawling in. The young people drove business in the area, especially the rich kids treating less-fortunate members of their entourages to food, movies, or other entertainment.

  “First of all,” I said, “nobody ‘whisked away’ my little cousin. She was at least a part of the plan, if not the mastermind of it. And second, I know for sure it wasn’t Chong.”

  We stopped walking. “Tell me how you know.”

  I looked into her eyes and held her hand.

  “Oh my god! Big Eye didn’t!”

  I opened my eyes wider. She punched my arm.

  “Gan,” I groaned.

  “Jing-nan! You have to tell the police he killed Chong!”

  “That’s a good one, Nancy. ‘Tell the police.’ First of all, I don’t have any evidence. Secondly, I don’t even know how he did it. And third, it could complicate the safe return of Mei-ling. Anyway, Big Eye’s right-hand man is a cop—the big guy—so you could say ‘the police’ already know about it.”

  I wanted to continue walking but Nancy remained rooted. “Why did Big Eye kill that boy?”

  “Well, I had nothing personal against him, but Chong was no angel, you know?” I rationalized. “He and his buddies had done jobs for Big Eye. They weren’t boosting their community and actually they contributed to the negative perception that the country has about immigrants. I hate to say it, but Chong knew he was playing a dangerous game.”

  “Your beloved uncle is now a murderer,” Nancy said through clenched teeth.

  “He may have killed before.” I quickly revised that to, “He probably has.”

  She grabbed the insides of her elbows and put her head down. “What a nice family you come from, Jing-nan.”

  “I’ve never asked you much about your family. Are they so much better?” I really had no idea.

  Nancy lifted her head slightly and looked away from me, across the street. “They sure aren’t criminals.”

  I could have brought up her old sugar daddy, the former semiconductor executive who was now doing time for bribery. The guy who gave her the fancy apartment and souped-up sports car. I wondered if he would try to reclaim them both when he was released.

  I didn’t want to say anything to hurt Nancy, though. She was clearly in shock after finding out about Chong, at least as much as I was. But there was another young life at stake.

  I put my arms around Nancy’s strained shoulders and said, “Big Eye and his whole crew are awful people. I know that. But the important thing now is to find Mei-ling as soon as possible because she might be in trouble.”

  Nancy nodded. “Yes,” she said. “She’s not in a good place.”

  We began walking again and soon came upon the triangular plaza between Hanzhong Street and a side lane of Emei Street. This was the prime stage in Ximending for a band to set up on the sidewalk and play.

  When I was a kid, right here at this intersection was where I saw bands from all over the world playing everything from Mandopop to American country to reggae. As a self-righteous and all-knowing young jerk, I stood there and scowled even if I liked the music. I had to maintain my cool, after all.

  Not so long ago I stood at this triangle and watched a band of middle-aged men covering the Moody Blues. The singer would have looked like my father if he had only stopped smiling. During the long instrumental breaks in “Nights in White Satin,” he continued to stand front and center, waving his hands in the air and staring up at the stars.

  One wouldn’t think that a bunch of old farts in suits trotting out the songs of the ancients would play well to smoking teenagers but the audience was fully engaged. Boys with their ties pulled loose and shirttails out. Girls with their skirts rolled up at the waist. Me in my long London Fog trench coat with the belt and belt loops ripped out and “HATE” scrawled on the back, just like Ian Curtis. I stood in the Doc Martens boots I was still breaking in.

  Julia had stood at my side. When I think about her, I think about her looking like she did that night. Pupils big, dark and mysterious as black holes, a small smile on her face, dark red lipstick that she would rub off before going home. She pulled her hair back over her ears and wiggled them slightly.

  “Okay,” I said. “You win.”

  “I knew I could make you smile!” she said, as she punched my arm. “You don’t have to frown to impress me.”

  “I’m doing it for me.”

  “I know you’re happy inside, though, and that you like this music more than you think.”

  “Why?”

  “I see your head moving with the music.”

  “Ha, that’s my head nodding because it’s putting me to sleep!” I crossed my arms. I knew the band was playing the full album version—almost eight minutes long—rather than the edited version that was released as a single. I nudged closer and took her hand. This is a daring thing to do in public but the crowds provided us cover.

  “Are you scared?” Julia asked.

  “No way, baby.”

  “Your hand is sweaty.”

  I twisted to the side until I felt my shoulder bones crack. “I’m really hot in this coat.”

  She squeezed my hand. “Yes, you are.”

  “This is odd, isn’t it?” I asked her. “Of any music we could be hearing tonight, it would be this.”

  Julia laughed. “What would you rather hear? Maybe the Sex Pistols would be better?”

  “No, they wouldn’t be.”

  “At least this music is kind of sexy.”

  I let go of her hand, pulled out the key to the love hotel and pressed it to her side. “Well, if you think it’s so sexy, why don’t you offer your virginity to that stud who’s singing?”

  She stepped on my foot, right on a blister right between the big and second toes. These damned new Doc Martens!

  “Oh, fuck!” I yelled out in English, making the audience gasp. The singer was a pro, though. He improvised a long cooing sound and the crowd was lulled back into his fuzzy world.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Julia.

  I wiggled my toes. The sock felt wet. “You popped my blister,” I said through clenched teeth. “I think I have to sit down.”

  “Maybe we should go to the room now,” she said casually. I nodded and we walked away.

  I couldn’t help limping. “This fucking blister’s right where the shoe creases. How the hell am I supposed to walk?”

  Julia slid under my right elbow and helped me walk. “Think of it this way. It’s only fair that I popped your blister because you’re going to pop my cherry.” We both laughed and shuffled our way to the love hotel.

  “You know,” I said, “when we’re old, you’re going to have to help me into bed. Men’s bodies fall apart faster.”

  “That’s a long time from now,” she said. “We’re going to have the rest of our lives together.”

  “Dammit. I think the hotel’s a walkup.”

  “No elevator?”

  “No.”

  She supported me as we staggered up five flights of stairs. I wobbled like a drunk. I looked down at her face and when our eyes met I knew that we would be together forever.

  Nancy asked, “Are you hungry, Jing-nan?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Why do you keep staring at that McDonald’s?”

  “It wasn’t there before. Something else was.”

  “What do you expect?” she said as she snapped open her purse and began to rummage inside. “Noth
ing stays the same, especially not in this neighborhood. Gum?” I shook my head and she popped into her mouth a block of Japanese gum, a brand that is more artificial color and flavor than sugar.

  “Those are so bad for you,” I said.

  Nancy waved my words away. “They taste good and chewing helps me think. Hmm. Now why was Mei-ling so interested in Ximending?” she asked herself.

  We continued down the street and found ourselves approaching The Red House.

  The octagon building was built by the Japanese more than a century ago, yet it looked futuristic and edible. A gigantic layered red-velvet cake with white icing.

  It’s one of those places I visited on a field trip years ago but haven’t been inside since. Tourists love it, particularly the combination of Eastern and Western elements in the architecture. Which is which, I couldn’t tell you.

  Its former lives included stints as a public market, an opera house, and a movie theater. Now it was a city-owned teahouse and tourist shop in the main rotunda with a series of artist shops in the cruciform wing attached to the octagon.

  Nancy and I were compelled to enter the building.

  Two bored young women behind the counter of the teahouse acted like the government employees they were, chatting away and chasing off potential customers with scowls.

  “Excuse me,” I asked the meaner-looking one. “Have you seen this girl recently?” I held up my phone, the display screen facing her.

  She jutted out her chin. “Maybe,” she said, rubbing her nose. Her fingers had an inordinate number of rings on them and a tattoo along the index finger.

  “Could you keep an eye out for her?” asked Nancy.

  “No, I can’t,” said Mean Girl. The other employee giggled. “Want to order something?”

  “That’s funny,” I said. “You two don’t seem the type to take orders.”

  Other Girl said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Nancy and I walked away.

  “What a bunch of awful kids,” said Nancy.

  “I used to hate customers when I was young,” I said, looking over the teahouse’s empty tables. “This is a bust. I can’t imagine young people coming here to this government-run dive and I really doubt Mei-ling had any interest in this place.”