by P. J. Day
“I still want you real bad, so don’t forget to call me when you’re done, got that?” she told me, with a pinch of jest and a dash of seriousness.
I smiled and stood up.
“We’ll go out tonight, promise.”
“I’ll be waiting for your phone call,” she said.
I tipped the Panama hat like a dragged-out Humphrey Bogart and Holly giggled. I exited the room, anticipating stares galore from the hotel guests that were about to wonder about my mysterious and concealed look.
I stared through the glass doors in the lobby. I hadn’t been outside in the morning sun for more than five minutes since the Northridge earthquake back in ‘94. At the time, I rented a small apartment that was part of a building built in the 20s in Santa Monica. I remember waking up and seeing a small crack at the bottom of the wall that faced my bed, slowly growing longer and wider, riding up the entire center of the wall, plaster and old stucco falling off as the building shook violently, revealing the old bricks that barely kept the complex together. I remember jumping out of bed, wrapped in only my comforter, and bolting through my door. It wasn’t a particularly sharp morning sun—the type that makes you squint as if you stared directly into an oncoming headlight—but still strong enough that it left my face scalded for a week or so. I clearly recalled peeling large swaths of skin off my face that week. It was so bad that the molt ended up clogging up my bathroom sink for an entire month.
At exactly 8:00 a.m. and 17 minutes after my phone call with Alan, the black Mercedes that Alan had approached yesterday at the Peninsula now pulled up to the curb at L’Dino. The chauffeur stopped the Mercedes slowly, eventually floating to a stop. The car was so clean, so spotless, that I could actually see the furniture in the lobby reflecting on the passenger side door. Alan opened the back door and stepped out, furiously waving at me to hurry up and get in. I wrapped my scarf nice and tightly one more time around my head. My nose, mouth, and cheeks all completely covered, my sunglasses on snug, and a big ridiculous hat over my head, I ran to the car. My hands began to sting greatly; I quickly put them into the coat pockets. Alan was in the middle and Rebecca on the other side. I slid in effortlessly between the driver’s side back door and Alan’s right thigh.
“Comfy!” I commented, genuinely surprised.
I’d been in the rear seats of new model Mercedes sedans before but never one that seated three. Apparently, in the west, luxury was only built for two these days.
Rebecca smiled and let out a soft laugh under her breath. She took one look at my hat and said, “I didn’t know they held the Kentucky Derby in Hong Kong this year.”
I took off my Ray Bans and gave Rebecca a playful scowl.
I unwrapped my scarf and threw the large hat in front of us onto the Mercedes’ enormous console. I couldn’t help wondering what kind of modern conveniences it housed. I took another marvelled look around the interior and noticed that the leg room was incredible. The seats actually reclined individually to almost completely flat. They had been recessed far into the space that a trunk would usually occupy in order to create the roomy, luxurious cabin. Alan was right, the tinted windows were dark enough to obscure even the most discreet diplomats, politicians, and mobsters from the prying public, not to mention shield me from the sun.
“You weren’t wrong; guess I’m safe,” I said to Alan, as I quickly glanced through every window in the sedan.
Alan and Rebecca were both wearing their best business suits. Rebecca looked extremely sexy with her hair down, but still had a professional flair about her attire. Alan didn’t look like a dressed-down engineer either. He wasn’t wearing a tie, but his pristine, professionally starched white collared shirt, along with his fine Italian suit, gave Alan a “chief engineer of R&D” look. He stuck his fist out at me and looked at me right in my eyes. “No hard feelings?”
I looked back at him and cocked half a smile. “No hard feelings,” I said, butting my fist with his.
At that point, we all visibly relaxed. We sat back and allowed ourselves to be immersed in the shameless luxury of the Mercedes’ back seat.
“So does anyone know the reason for your PLE?” Alan asked.
“PLE?” I asked.
“Polymorphic light eruption?”
“I still have no idea what you mean by that. English, por favor?”
“Your light sensitivity... Have you been tested for porphyria?”
I had a nervous twitch in my eyes when Alan started prodding me about my inherent condition. I responded the best I could. “Umm... no one really knows. All the doctors know is that it is rare.”
Alan then grabbed my exposed left hand and started examining it closely, like a physician.
“Dude, I’m good,” I said, chuckling uncomfortably. Alan was acting more like an M.D. rather than a Ph.D.
Rebecca then handed me a large manila envelope, exactly like the one they laid at my hotel doorstep.
“You’re a fast reader, right?” Alan asked, with a wink.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll catch up.”
I had about an hour and 20 minutes to know everyone and everything about this company. If it was my responsibility to make Yi comfortable enough to let us in to tinker with their servers. I also had a responsibility to get comfortable with Guangzhou Jiyin Engineering. I had to know what direction they wanted to go as a company, and I also needed to know the direction they wanted to go globally. Using our software, Guangzhou had bigger plans in store; it was up to me to decipher it through good, old-fashioned charming.
I opened the large manila envelope and slowly pulled out a black and white headshot. It was of a Chinese man, who displayed a glowered visage, with an uncharacteristically large brow ridge for an Asian man, with a slight protruding thick lower jaw. There was also what appeared to be a tattoo on his neck. I skimmed through the file that was paperclipped to the photograph. “Havens Ling... Havens Ling? Havens? What the?” I said to Alan, with a slight chuckle.
“Yeah, doesn’t sound Mandarin or Cantonese, maybe Mongol?” Alan asked.
“He has a tattoo on his neck, and he’s also their chief engineer? Are they hiring Triads to do some shady shit, too?” I asked.
“Believe it or not, this guy knows his stuff,” Rebecca interjected.
“She’s right. Apparently, this guy is like the number one fungal resistant engineer in all of China,” Alan said.
“He looks like an MMA wrestler. Maybe he was a Buddhist monk. I’ve seen Buddhist monks with tattoos before.
“Whatever, I’m sure he’s interesting.” I looked over at Rebecca. “Does he speak English?”
“Barely.”
“Great,” I said.
As I began looking through more of the information contained in the envelope, I had a sudden realization. I forgot to call Ted to see how he was doing and how his little meeting went last night. I pulled out my phone and sent Ted a text message. I held the phone close to my chest. I didn’t want Alan or Rebecca snooping at my typing. Is everything ok, I typed. Don’t call... text... I added. As soon as I was done, Alan looked at me. “Once we cross the border into Guangzhou, you’ll need to give me your phone.”
“What?” I asked, perplexed at the strange demand.
“Rald has instructed me to do this,” Alan added.
“Not again; really? I thought this kind of stuff was over with.”
Alan looked remorseful and wasn’t trying to be a prick this time.
“It’s for security reasons. China is ten times worse at the whole snooping thing. I wish it weren’t true, but these are direct instructions from the U.S. State Department, actually.”
“The State Department?”
“It’s not what you think; they don’t know we’re doing this. It’s just an advisement, since technically, we are still conducting business,” Alan said.
I didn’t want to call Ted, who supposedly was in Singapore and I’m sure Alan would want to speak to him over the phone, possibly putting Ted in a precarious situation. As we dro
ve down the congested, main highway out of Hong Kong, I sat in the back seat, nervous and hoping Ted would reply to my text. And fast.
Chapter Five
Fifty minutes passed on the G4 highway leading into the heart of Guangzhou.
We came upon a bridge over the Pearl River. It had been around 25 minutes or so since we crossed into China at the Lo Wu border crossing. It was a smooth transition; the sleek car most likely helped things a bit, too. We gave the customs attendant in a booth our passports, and with a head nod and a flick of the finger, he let us through in around 30 seconds. China loves its current injection of capitalism; three Americans in a Benz… it can only mean another transfer of wealth and production from Cleveland to Panyu.
The city was enormous. Daunting, in fact. Guangzhou’s topography seemed relatively flat, which gave it an air of perpetual growth. Factories spread out as far as the eye could see. A patchwork quilt of pollutants draped over the city in a brown haze, like a proud byproduct of unrestrained progress and growth, unshackled by concurrent regulations of morally relativistic societies that could impede a people hell-bent on the future, who see themselves as a whole rather than a one.
“Goddamn, it’s like staring into an anachronistic past, isn’t it?” I said to Alan and Rebecca.
“Anachronistic?” asked Alan.
“Yeah, it’s like Dickens meets Philip K. Dick. It looks too industrious to be healthy, don’t you think?”
“You’re right. How can people put up with breathing this shit?” Alan said. “Thank goodness we live in a cleaner country.”
“No, I think we just do a better job of hiding all our contamination,” Rebecca said.
“Nonsense,” Allen retorted.
“No way. Listen, I heard if you are knowingly polluting over here and you get caught, it’s an automatic death sentence,” Rebecca said.
“She’s got a point. There still hasn’t been a proper response to the whole children’s Tylenol or BP fiasco has there?” I said.
“Um, I don’t think both those situations were done out of intentional malice or on purpose, that would be bad for business.”
“Okay, fine, negligence at the very least; yet, no one has been investigated or prosecuted for the gross negligence,” Rebecca added.
“It’s apples and oranges. In fact, this whole conversation hasn’t been consistent from the start.” Alan then took a deep breath and continued, “Yes, both countries pollute; however, in China, the government is the economy and vice versa in the States; those in government want to be part of the economy.” Alan paused. “Look, it’s complicated and I really don’t want to get into it. We have more pressing matters to worry about.”
“So, you’re saying the free-market is self-correcting pollution away? I doubt that,” I added.
Alan just ignored me and decided not to take the argumentative bait.
“I’m getting a headache,” Rebecca said loudly.
“Jack, give me your phone,” Alan said, abruptly changing the conversation.
Ted didn’t text me during the entire car trip to Guangzhou. I probably sent him a dozen more texts, hoping he’d answer back; none were returned. With much hesitation, I handed my phone to Alan. He then took the back panel off, taking out the battery and the SIM card. He then placed all the components with the phone into his brown, slightly worn satchel. He did the same to Rebecca’s as soon as we crossed the bridge into Panyu, which is an industrial section of Guangzhou, where Guangzhou’s Jiyin Engineering main location was. Then the Mercedes stopped in front of an outdoor swap meet.
“We’re here,” Alan said.
“Thank God; my legs are absolutely throbbing, and I need to use the ladies’ room,” Rebecca said tiredly.
Alan grabbed his cell phone from his coat pocket. He looked at me and said, “Last time I’ll use this.” He speed-dialed a number. “Hello, Yi. We just got here.” Alan’s conversation paused for a moment. “Okay, we’ll be outside waiting.” Alan hung up the phone and then did the same thing to his phone as he did to ours, and placed it in his brown satchel as well.
“So why are we meeting them so friggin’ far from our stay?” I asked, exiting out of the car first.
“They want us to play by their rules. It’s a different ballgame over here; we lost all of our rights, our upper hand, our privacy, as soon as we crossed their border,” Alan said.
“It’s the best homefield advantage on earth,” Rebecca added, as she walked around the backside of the Benz, meeting up with us on the sidewalk in front of the outdoor market.
The more I thought about it, the more everything made a little more sense. When a company had the backing of an entire nation, it is practically indestructible and omnipotent. They can do whatever they want to anyone without repercussion and with neverending blessings. It finally dawned on me what was at stake. We weren’t conspiring against a single company but an entire country; arguably, the second greatest industrialized country on earth at this very moment. No wonder Ted chickened out—he was smart enough to foresee what I felt as soon as I stepped out of the car and stared at the arched sign that said clothing market. The same market Ted had shown me from the Google Maps search before we both flew to Hong Kong.
It was a moderately-sized outdoor market, lined with thatched roofs made of some sort of plastic composite, not straw, but most likely a collection of crude recycled plastic strips banded together with adhesive. Under the collective covering, a mishmash of merchants sold everything from knock-off designer eyewear to a various collection of video game consoles; one was named ‘Xboy 1080’; another was called the ‘Sony Praystation 3:16,’ Oddly enough, with such grandiose technological boasts in their names, they only seemed to play 8-bit games.
We continued walking through the marketplace. Rebecca inadvertently stubbed her toe on a block of cement that someone was using as a table to hawk pirated DVDs. The shopkeeper said something in Mandarin; of course, without Ted, none of us knew what she said, but it was a definite snap at Rebecca for knocking over the merchandise.
“Dammit, where is this place? I need to use the restroom, and now my toe is probably swollen as big as a pear,” she said in frustration.
Alan paced back and forth through the main aisles in the marketplace, intently looking for something or someone Yi told him to identify.
“I swear, this is the last time I come out here. They keep moving this place everywhere.”
“So, where did Yi tell you to go?” I asked.
“He said to look for a guy with a shaved head and a suit. He’ll be standing by a red pole. I guess it’s the only red pole in the entire marketplace.”
I started pacing the aisles with Alan. Standing on my tiptoes, dressed as a gothic Bigbird, all in black, face covered, wearing a giant, black-feathered hat. I could tell the shopkeepers were getting annoyed with our frantic behavior. Then an older man, wearing a lab coat, who was tending his pill stand, whistled at us. All three of us walked in rapid succession to the man’s stand.
In broken English he told us, “They are on the other side... other side.”
The man pointed toward the clearing between the other side of the marketplace, where I picked up the smell of competing aromas. Fruits, vegetable, and a plethora of live critters were all collected in old, grimy, rot boxes, openly marketed to hardy, indiscriminate customers. A man lifted a soft-shell turtle, examining its underbelly for parasites, making sure there were no surprises at the dinner table this evening. I squinted a bit through my sunglasses and saw the man in the suit next to the red pole waving at us from a distance.
Alan and Rebecca paced quickly through the clearing. I ran, fearing further sun exposure. My hands felt sizzled and seared, my ears as red as freshly picked turnips. I waited for Alan and Rebecca to catch up. I bent over, hands on my knees, looking up at them. I was beginning to enter a weakened state. The indirect ultraviolet exposure was beginning to take a toll on me. It was so hot underneath my scarf, too. The sweat that was forming around the lining o
f my scalp, which was right underneath the rim of the hat, began to stream down my face and neck, soaking my scarf.
“I so need to sit down,” I told Rebecca and Alan.
“Come on, we’re almost there,” Alan said, pointing to the man next to the pole, just a few yards away.
We all walked up to the stocky Chinese man. He was of average height, with a goatee, built tough, and in a nice suit. He asked us to follow him with a sudden flinch of his head. Not one word escaped his mouth, just a nod or two. There were two slender sheetrock walls that had been erected behind a lady selling mangosteen. She smiled at us as we walked by behind her, probably used to the foot traffic that occurred at all times of the day. We followed the man down the steps that led to a large, metallic black door.
“Watch your step,” Alan instructed as we walked over some empty produce boxes that were randomly strewn about the stairs. There were an intercom and a keypad on the wall right next to the door. The man in the suit pressed a button on the keypad and spoke through the intercom, saying just one word in Mandarin. There was a sharp beep; then we could hear the door unlock.
“What’s your name?” I asked the man.
“Al,” he responded in a slight accent.
“Anyone notice a pattern here with some of these names?” I asked Rebecca and Alan, jokingly.
Al led us through the thick metallic door. He stood at the frame and waved us through. He closed the door behind us and went on to continue his daily routine of swap meet watchman: a day of vigilance and amazing bargains.
We entered a small lobby. It was mostly empty, except for some furniture, a few paintings and some planters. Alan walked up to one of the four paintings that hung on the wall.
“This is actually some nice impressionist artwork; you guys think they’re originals?” he asked.
I took a quick glance at the painting as I began to sit down on the lobby’s nice, modern, black leather couch.
“I really can’t tell... it looks original,” I said.