Year of the Tiger

by Lisa Brackman

Like I was welcome someplace. Like I was home.

  So, okay. That leaves the Uighur. Maybe he really is some kind of major terrorist. Which would mean my helping the Suits find him is the right, moral, patriotic thing to do.

  Ha-ha.

  Or I could just tell the Suits about the Game. Hey, look, guys! Terrorist sympathizers hatching their plots through PlayStations! That would be enough, wouldn’t it? Enough to take care of me and my family, and fuck everyone else.

  After I finish my latte, I walk over to the train station. I can’t help it. The thought that there’s this place with trains getting the fuck out of town every few minutes attracts me like some kind of drug. I walk into the main lobby, into the hordes of people going here and there, riding the escalators up and down, the migrants from the countryside clutching their cardboard suitcases and faded striped shopping bags, the giggling students sharing iPod earbuds and ringtones, the middle-class Beijingers in their Polo shirts and fake Prada, the PA announcing arrivals and departures, all punctuated by the red diode signboards blinking destinations, and I think: how far away could I get? Is there someplace I could go where they can’t find me?

  How did they find me? Can they find me when my phone is off? Can they track my e-mail to whatever Internet bar I happen to log in at? Or was it from using the ATM, from getting money out of my U.S. account?

  Or maybe it’s something more low-tech. Like Harrison Wang works for them, and he told them I was at his place, and they followed me from there.

  I stare at the red diode signboards above the escalators to the second floor. I just missed a train to Harbin. Too bad. Harbin is pretty far away. In three hours, I could catch a train to Xiamen. People tell me Xiamen is nice. Warm. It has a beach. That’s tempting. Here’s another going to Inner Mongolia. Could I get to Outer Mongolia from there? That might be far enough.

  Here’s a train to Taiyuan, in Shanxi, leaving in thirty-eight minutes.

  Taiyuan, I think. Chuckie’s family lives around there.

  Chuckie, with his seventh-level Qi sword. His hacking skills. Chuckie, who’s played The Sword of Ill Repute way longer than I have.

  Maybe he’s not part of the Great Community, but who better than Chuckie to help me get Little Mountain Tiger back in the Game?

  I watch the red letters on the signboard shuffle and reassemble. Train to Nanjing in an hour. One to Lanzhou in two.

  I think: maybe Chuckie won’t help me. I think: even if he does, maybe I won’t get anything more from the Game than I already have, which adds up to pretty much nothing.

  But what else am I going to do? Stumble around Beijing for a couple days? Wait for the Suits to pick me up in some random Starbucks?

  Right now, the Game is all I’ve got.

  And leaving town in thirty-eight minutes sounds good.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I was lucky. My leg was totally busted up, multiple fractures, shredded muscles, lacerated blood vessels, but I didn’t lose it, even after the post-op infection and complications from blood loss; they did skin grafts put in an intramedullary rod and five titanium screws to hold it all together. I had broken some ribs and fractured two vertebrae too. I had a major concussion but no long-term brain injury, at least that’s what they said. At first they weren’t sure, because for a while I had a hard time putting sentences together, and I’d get these headaches that were so bad I’d want to die. That made them wonder if some of the psych symptoms I exhibited were organic, as opposed to just me being crazy. But they cleared me of any permanent brain injury.

  I know I was lucky. I told myself that every time I saw some of the guys in the hospital. The guys with ‘polytrauma.’ That’s what they call it when you have more than one serious injury at once, usually an amputation combined with head trauma. The guys who had to learn to both talk and walk all over again. The guys who couldn’t get that far. Who would never be able to hold a real job, because their brains just wouldn’t work right any more. Smart guys, funny guys, with chunks out of their skulls, indentations like somebody’d taken an ice-cream scoop to their heads, who’d smile sometimes when they couldn’t keep up, like they knew they were missing something, but didn’t know what. The guys who were worse than that. The ones who weren’t really there at all any more, who needed tubes to breathe and tubes to suction out their mucus and tubes to pump liquefied pudding into their guts and take away their piss and what passed for their shit. I’d go by those rooms on my crutches, the pain in my leg so bad that even through the haze of narcotics I’d have tears streaming down my face and not even realize I was crying, and I’d see families in there sometimes, sitting around the bed, holding the guy’s hand, telling him how he was going to get better soon, and they were going to take him home. He’d be home, and it would all be better.

  People kept telling me how brave I was. I didn’t get that. I mean, how brave do you have to be to get blown up? But I’d smile and nod anyway. I just did what I was told. Walk to the end of the rail; lift your leg; tighten your belly; four more times; come on, you can do it; pump, pump, pump! I worked my ass off, like a good little soldier.

  But the first time I really saw myself in the mirror, when I was finally able to go into the bathroom with the help of an attendant, no more bedpans and catheters, I could hardly believe the face that stared back at me. I’d lost something like twenty-five pounds, and I hadn’t been heavy to begin with. I looked like a little old man. Some shriveled-up circus monkey. My eyes were sunk into their sockets, surrounded by bruised, black lids, black holes that were going to swallow me up inside them.

  ‘Hey,’ I said to the attendant, this Haitian guy who was built like a statue. ‘Hey, I look like shit, don’t I?’

  ‘You don’t look so bad,’ he said, resting his heavy hand on my shoulder. ‘You’ll get better. Don’t you worry.’

  I was in the hospital for over a month. After the first two weeks, my mom had to go back to work. She said she could come and see me on the weekends, but I told her she should save her money. As much as a part of me wanted her there, wanted my mommy to stay and take care of me, another part of me wished that she hadn’t come. Because I could see how much it hurt her to see me like this, her little girl, how painful it was for her. I could see her eyes fill with tears as she looked at me, when she didn’t turn away in time. I didn’t want to be responsible for that.

  Trey couldn’t stay long either. He had to get back.

  I’d wanted to wait and have a real wedding, that whole princess fantasy, me all in white; but Trey had more sense about this than I did.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We should do it now. Just in case.’

  ‘Don’t think that way,’ I said.

  ‘Ellie, we have to think that way. If something happens to me, you’ll have my benefits. That’s not much, but it’s something.’

  I finally decided that he was right. That it was practical. Or maybe I just wanted to please him. It was what he wanted, after all. And I wanted to make him happy.

  A chaplain came and married us, me lying in my hospital bed, Trey in his dress uniform, my mom and his parents standing by. This was the first time I’d met his parents, naturally, and in my morphine-addled state it was hard for me to form much of an impression of them, except that I could see Trey in them both, distorted, fun-house mirror versions of Trey anyway. They smiled a lot. They seemed tense.

  ‘You just let us know if you need anything,’ Trey’s dad told me. He was an executive in an insurance company.

  ‘We just want to welcome you to our family,’ Trey’s mom told me. She sold real estate at the time.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Thanks very much.’

  Trey’s mom clasped my hand. ‘Such a brave girl,’ she said.

  The night before Trey had to report, he brought dinner for me. Mexican food. I’d been saying how much I wanted some decent Mexican food, because nothing at the hospital tasted good, and I never felt like eating. I needed to eat. I’d lost too much weight, and I needed to eat, everyone kept telling m
e, to get my strength back.

  If I could only have some Mexican food, I was sure I’d feel like eating.

  So Trey went out and got all these dishes from a local restaurant – enchiladas and burritos and chile rellenos – and served them to me on the plastic tray that swung over my bed.

  I pretended it was great, but it wasn’t. Soupy red sauce, too much sour cream, and guacamole that only vaguely tasted like avocado.

  ‘If you need anything, just call my folks,’ Trey was saying. ‘They really want to help, so don’t feel shy about it.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I said.

  I was having a hard time swallowing. The enchilada seemed to stick in my throat. I had the idea, suddenly, that the food was getting stuck on all the words down there, the words I wouldn’t say, and that was why I couldn’t eat.

  I was pretty high from the morphine at the time.

  ‘That stuff,’ I said. ‘The stuff we did. Are we going to get in trouble?’

  Trey’s fork froze halfway to his mouth.

  He took the bite. Chewed. Swallowed. ‘We didn’t do anything wrong,’ he said quietly.

  ‘We didn’t?’

  ‘Things look different from here,’ he finally said.

  He put his hand on mine. ‘Look, most people aren’t going to understand. They weren’t there.’

  ‘I don’t know, Trey.’

  My eyes teared up. That happened a lot. I couldn’t control it. Sometimes I didn’t even think I felt sad.

  ‘Ellie. You can’t talk about it. This is about OpSec. You violate that, you’re putting the mission at risk. You don’t want to do that. Right?’

  He spoke so soothingly. Like I was a child. And I was. Helpless. Needing to be fed. Tuck me in, Daddy.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good.’ He leaned over and gently kissed me. ‘Just get better, Ellie. That’s all you need to think about right now.’

  I saw a shrink a couple of times. That was standard operating procedure. They had this rhetoric about how the sooner you start treatment, the less likely you are to develop major psychological problems. But this was more of an evaluation. A cover-your-ass move. I got the usual questions: ‘How are you feeling?’ ‘Are you experiencing any intrusive thoughts?’ ‘Any nightmares?’ ‘Anything you’d like to talk about?’

  ‘Fine,’ I’d say, which of course was a big fucking lie, considering how much pain I was in. But the pain drove out most intrusive thoughts (as did the narcotics), and I wasn’t having nightmares. Not then. Those started later.

  The only question I’d get stuck on was that last one: Anything you’d like to talk about? ‘No,’ I’d say. ‘I’m okay.’ But I knew what was hovering at the edge of my thoughts, wanting to push its way in, and every once in a while I’d get this flash, this vision, like a snapshot, of Sneezy chained to the floor of the Admin Core, of Greif flashing her tit. Of me and Trey fucking in that horrible little room.

  I guess those were intrusive thoughts.

  I’d push them all away. I could do that then. Sometimes I could hardly remember anything about those times. I’d had this strange interlude on the other side of the planet, but it was over, I was home now, and I could forget about it.

  I just had to get better, that’s all.

  The shrink, this middle-aged major – looking back, he wasn’t a bad guy. Maybe I should have talked to him. I wonder, would I have gotten better if I had?

  But I couldn’t talk about it, could I? Not about what happened in the Admin Core. I’d get in trouble. I’d get Trey in trouble. They wouldn’t understand.

  The third and last time Major Shrink saw me, after I told him I wasn’t having any intrusive thoughts, no nightmares, I was okay, he leaned back in his chair and pushed his glasses onto his forehead.

  ‘I’m glad to hear that you’re feeling good, Ellie,’ he said. ‘You’ve been through a really rough time. Just because you weren’t in combat doesn’t mean you didn’t experience a significant amount of stress. Now, you’re a medic, so I think you’ll understand what I’m going to say. These kinds of symptoms can take a while to develop. Three, four months; it’s not unusual.’ He closed his eyes for a moment and tapped his pen on the edge of the desk a few times. ‘I’m glad to hear you’re feeling good,’ he repeated. ‘Just keep in mind, if you have any problems, there are resources available that can help you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Appreciate it.’

  I wonder now, how did he know? Could he see it in my face? In my eyes? Was it something he understood because he’d been there? Or was this just his standard-operating-procedure CYA line of bullshit? ‘Patient was informed of treatment availability. Patient reported no significant symptoms and declined further treatment.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I’m sitting on a hard seat, drifting in and out of sleep.

  It’s a ten-hour train ride to Taiyuan, arriving at 11:00 P.M. Hard sleepers are sold out, and I don’t want to pay for a soft sleeper when I’m not traveling overnight.

  The open compartment is packed, as is usual for hard seats, with everybody and their xiao didi along with this crazy assortment of bags and boxes and suitcases crowding the aisles. People stand, squat, perch on the little tables, sit on their luggage. I’m lucky to score a seat by the window. Before long the compartment smells like cigarettes and stale sweat and shit from the squat toilet two rows away.

  A middle-aged woman who’s traveling with a little kid sits across from me. Auntie obviously thinks this kid is the most adorable, talented ankle-biter ever, and okay, she’s pretty cute: red-cheeked, hair as black and shiny as obsidian, dressed in a pink jumper with little cartoon mice appliquéd on it.

  It’s my fault for playing peek-a-boo with the kid. After that, Auntie offers me some of her sweet and spicy peanuts, and little Meihua climbs up on my lap, unafraid of close contact with the foreign devil.

  ‘Meihua, don’t bother the foreign miss,’ scolds Auntie.

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ I say, though to be honest, having her there is making my fucking leg hurt and I end up taking one of my last Percocets with a swallow of Auntie’s lukewarm tea. After that I hardly notice Meihua. I just doze, drifting in a warm, waveless sea.

  We roll into Taiyuan as scheduled – one thing about China, the trains are nearly always on time. My leg buckles when I try to stand up; the muscles wake up like they’ve been lit on fire.

  ‘You’re not well? Let me help.’

  Auntie takes me by the arm and guides me down the train compartment’s steps, even though I’m only carrying my little backpack and she’s got a rolling suitcase, a giant shopping bag, and a shoulder duffel.

  Since Auntie has her hands full, I take Meihua’s hand, and the three of us exit the train station.

  Taiyuan smells like coal dust and is bathed in yellow light from the low-sodium street lamps. Taxis wait in line by the curb, the drivers mostly napping in their seats, a few smoking cigarettes and drinking tea in glass jars where it’s probably been steeping since this morning.

  It’s not too late for the touts, though, and a bunch of them swarm me, not quite touching me but coming close, saying things like ‘Miss! Miss! Need good hotel? Nice price!’

  ‘Stop bothering her!’ Auntie snaps. She turns to me. ‘Where are you staying tonight?’

  I make a noncommittal response. I’ll figure out something.

  Auntie whips out her phone and starts rattling away in the local dialect.

  ‘Okay,’ she says when she gets off. ‘I have a nice room for you. Very good price. My friend is the driver. He comes in a minute.’

  ‘You are very kind,’ I say, ‘but –’

  She pats my hand. ‘Don’t worry.’

  This guy in a black VW Santana shows up, Auntie’s friend: middle-aged, skinny, face seamed by lines blackened by the coal dust, like he’s some kind of comic-book drawing.

  ‘Please, get in,’ Auntie says, gesturing toward the back seat, with its white seat covers. ‘We’ll take you to the hotel.’
r />   I’ve had things like this happen to me before in China, but I only used to worry about stuff like, am I supposed to pay the driver? Am I going to end up in a hotel I can’t afford?

  Now I’m thinking, what if they’re working for someone? The PSB or Creepy John?

  She’s an auntie traveling with a little girl, I tell myself. They were already in the train compartment when I got there. Weren’t they?

  Auntie gestures again toward the back seat.

  I climb in. Auntie gets in front, riding shotgun.

  Sitting in the back seat of the Santana, Meihua snoozing on my thigh, I stare out the window at the broad, anonymous streets of a city I’ve never seen. Auntie and the driver chat in the local dialect, and I can’t quite figure out what they’re talking about. ‘Foreigner,’ I hear, and ‘money.’

  Auntie turns toward me. She smiles, revealing a gold front tooth. Her eyes look like black stones behind her glasses.

  Mouth dry, I keep my hand on the door handle.

  After maybe a fifteen-minute drive, we turn down a narrow lane and stop in front of an entrance wedged between an office building and a clothing store.

  A signboard in gold letters says ‘The Good Fortune Guest House.’

  Inside, there’s a modest front desk that looks like it doubles as a bar, with stand-up ads for beer and Nescafé. Auntie negotiates with the clerk behind the counter, in spite of my protests that I can take care of it myself. ‘You know, some Chinese people try to cheat foreigners,’ she whispers darkly. ‘They think all foreigners have money.’

  A couple of minutes later, negotiations concluded, I show my passport to the clerk and am given a keycard to a room on the second floor. ‘Nice room, quiet,’ Auntie says. ‘You won’t have any troubles here.’ Then she reaches into her purse and extracts a card case. ‘You have any problem, you call me,’ she says, pulling out a business card.

  I take it from her in the polite manner, with both hands. I’m so embarrassed, I don’t know what to say.

  ‘Thank you,’ I manage.