Surprisingly, it wasn’t Martin who greeted me, but a young Chinese woman who was a couple of months pregnant. She appeared as though she’d once been beautiful under her layers of withered mascara and cheap rouge. Hard to say though, especially with the gaudy leather boots and skimpy crimson skirt.
“He’s waiting for you,” she said.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Amber,“ she replied. “A friend.”
She led me into the mall, which was filled with people who looked like they’d belong in a Starbucks, lined up for cappuccinos and non-fat blueberry muffins. They had their belongings in anthills next to them, families carting behind.
“Are these people homeless?” I asked Amber.
“This is their home,” she replied.
Martin was lounging in a furniture store full of discarded goods. His skin was tan, and there were bruises along his face and a scar on his cheek. He looked gnarled, like he’d been inside a microwave too long. His hair was a disheveled mess. Surrounding him on velvet couches and broken mattresses were about twenty girls—twenty pregnant girls—of varying ethnicities, all generally attractive.
Martin embraced me. “Thanks for coming.”
“What’s going on?”
“A lot.”
“Who are the girls?”
“I…”
There was a scream, a blonde with a big belly sprinting our way. “Martin! He’s here.”
Martin sighed. “Amber, can you take Walt for a walk? I’ll explain everything later.”
The mall was a catacomb for ambition: empty stores occupied by hordes of tenants; a dead roller coaster; different regional zones marked by shattered signs that read Venice, Thailand, and Zimbabwe like gravestones. Old ladies dried their clothes on defunct escalators and the floors were littered with trash, resembling a multi-fabric rug. The fountains I saw were reeking silos of shit. Though the sun provided light, there were bonfires and candles in darker corners. “I wanna show you my favorite artist,” Amber said.
A swarthy, emaciated male with a beret had a glass display case with what appeared to be a few dozen swirling colors in constant flux. The motion was nauseating and hypnotic at the same time. It took me a second to realize they were a swarm of roaches painted in a schizophrenia of color.
“I hate roaches,” Amber started. “But that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
The artist tipped his beret at us.
“I went to art school a long time ago,” she said. “But I don’t think I ever really understood art until I lost everything.”
“What’s there to understand?”
“It gives color to our monochrome world.”
Only a few places could afford generators. One was the mini-market. Eight security guards with machine guns and bulletproof vests patrolled the entrance. They looked ominous enough, but under their black vests, they wore pink t-shirts with smiley faces. I tried to peek inside. Amber stopped me. “Mr. Lee is a big shot around here. He has the only working phone and doesn’t appreciate people who look without buying.”
“I’ll buy something, then,” I said, grabbing for my wallet.
Her eyes tensed and she grabbed my wrist. “You brought cash here?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You can’t let anyone know. I mean it,” she emphasized. “People’d slash your throat for a quarter.”
“You serious?”
“We should start heading back.”
We crossed an old bowling alley.
“How’d you meet Martin?” I asked.
“Through Celeste.”
“Who’s Celeste?”
“A co-worker.”
“You worked with Martin?”
“I worked with Celeste,” she answered.
“Which company?”
She stopped, looked at me. “We all worked for an escort company.”
“You mean…”
She nodded. “You didn’t know?”
I glanced down at her womb. “Is Martin…”
“Why do you look so shocked?”
“I… I don’t know. He’s—well, he’s so shy.”
She laughed. “Maybe that’s why we trusted him with our future.”
Martin was talking with three of the women when I saw him again. He got up, greeted me. “You wanna talk?”
He led me to the back of the store, up a ladder. We climbed several floors to the roof. It was night.
“Interesting situation, no?” he said.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m having a lot of kids,” he replied with a snicker.
“Amber told me all the girls are hookers.”
“Yeah…”
“Look, it’s not my place to question…”
“Then don’t,” he cut me off. “Did she also tell you they have HIV?”
“No,” I said, surprised.
He walked along the roof.
“Why?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Why not?” he asked. “It was their only chance at something.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hookers with HIV? Life expectancy is almost nothing, and there’s no way they can get a job. Soon as anyone sees the check on the application…”
“It’s like a scarlet letter.”
Martin shook his head. “You can take off a letter.”
“My mom was a prostitute in Hong Kong,” he said.
“What?”
“Yeah, I didn’t know, and then one day, my sister got mad and told me everything. Told me I was the bastard son of a whore, and I was lucky her dad saved me.”
“Shit, man,” I said.
“I don’t define myself by the past so it doesn’t matter.”
“But your sister…”
“She’s not my sister. You should have seen her eyes. She wasn’t human. I hate people who are cruel to the weak.”
“American dream,” he said.
“What about it?”
“It’s a question.”
“What question?” I asked.
“Why do we work? Why do we wake up every morning? Everyone has the right to answer it the way they want.”
“How’s that the American dream?”
“You have your aspirations: you want your promotion; you want that fancy car. But what about hookers? Guys working shit jobs as dishwashers and janitors? Why are they living?”
I lowered my head.
“They don’t get to ask why,” he said.
I started seeing what he had in mind. “Your resistance to HIV—you think the babies will inherit it?” I asked.
He looked up at the stars. “That’s the hope.”
Despite the undercurrent of bitterness, there was a serenity in his gaze. “I’ve accepted my fate. I get the whole sacrifice thing now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Everyone criticized me, turned against me. Asked how could I do this immoral thing… Caterpillars shed their skin when it’s time for a metamorphosis,” he said.
“So do snakes,” I replied.
He laughed. “I’m surrounded by snakes.”
“What do you mean?”
“These pimps weren’t happy when they found out their girls were pregnant.”
“The pimps know they have HIV?”
He shrugged. “I need your help.”
“With what?”
“I have a lot of money saved away, but I can’t leave without someone tracking me. If you can take my ATM card and grab the money, I can pay off the…”
“Martin!” someone screamed.
It was the blonde I saw earlier.
“Garnaut is back,” she said, eyes round and taut, a shiver in her voice.
He followed her.
“Martin!” I called.
“Don’t let him see you!” he barked.
I lingered for a few minutes before Amber popped her head up. “Come with me,” she said.
I followed her into some vents, crawled behind h
er. She looked like a bobbing apple. Spider webs and clumps of dust covered the corners. We heard voices, peeked down through some grates. Martin was surrounded by guys in suits.
“…think this is funny?” an obese guy was asking.
“Not at all.”
“I don’t think you appreciate the situation. Each of these girls was an investment and you’ve cost me a shitload of money.”
Martin looked down, moved his feet back and forth.
“This motherfucker just doesn’t get it.”
The fat guy lifted a gun and pulled the trigger. The gunshot boomed louder than a firecracker and the blast was a hydraulic piston hammering Martin in the belly. It was both abrupt and drawn out, raucous and barely audible.
I gasped. Amber stiffened. Sweat froze along my chest. I thought of swapping stupid jokes with Martin, the time we nearly convinced two girls to sleep with us because we lied and said we were porn producers. I remembered him throwing up on strangers after getting wasted, the time I crashed his car on a snowy mountain and the way he laughed it off.
Amber shook me. I stared at her, helpless. She gestured for me to follow.
On the roof again, I took out my cell to try to dial 911. No reception.
Amber bit her lips. “Can you ever leave the past behind? Pimps, family—they think they own you. My mom and her boyfriend used to abuse me—they’d beat me till I was a bloody mess. I ran away when I turned 17. I didn’t hate her. I just wanted to forget her. But she kept on trying to find me. Have you ever been so disgusted by a memory, you just wanted it to disappear?”
I saw small fires across the city, dim lights blazing like pine cones.
“I changed my name, my job, my whole life so I could forget,” she said.
“It didn’t work?”
“No ones gives a shit about anyone but themselves.”
“My baby, he’ll have a different life from me,” she said. “And since he won’t have my sickness, I won’t let any harm come to him…”
But her resolve weakened. Her eyes were trembling. “If something did happen to me…” She hesitated. “Martin said I could trust you.”
I grimaced, nodding. “You can count on me.”
I felt a pang, shook my head, saw a flash of Martin’s body flailing backwards like a rubber doll. The ringing in my ears amplified like an avalanche.
“We have to get out of here and call the cops,” I said.
“Police never come out here,” she replied. “It’d take them days just to respond and Garnaut’ll bury his body by then.”
“I can’t just leave like this.”
“There’s nothing you can do.”
“I have to try.”
When we went back down, Martin was a lone archipelago mired in a pool of blood. His face was wan and there were bluish-green patches along his neck.
“I gotta get him out of here,” I said to Amber. “Can you help?”
She lifted his other shoulder and we stumbled towards the parking lot, Martin dripping blood. People watched confusedly, trying to figure out what had happened, not sure if they should get involved. No one did. Families went back to their scraps; kids made toy wars out of garbage; some of the elderly made condemnatory remarks along the lines of, “That’s what you get for living an immoral lifestyle.”
By the time we put Martin in the backseat, he was nearly colorless. He rambled unconsciously and we did our best to calm him. He jumped up, eyes beady.
“We’re gonna get you to a hospital soon,” I said.
“My wallet, did you bring my wallet?” he demanded.
“Where’s your wallet?”
“With my stuff. I need my wallet.”
“I’ll get it later,” I told him.
“I need it now. I have to buy their freedom! Where are the girls?”
“They weren’t there when…”
“No! Shit no! I have to get them! I have to!”
“Where’s your wallet?” I asked.
“It’s under the counter, there’s a lock.” He told me the code.
“I’ll get it.”
I was about to sprint away when Amber stopped me.
“What?” I asked.
“There’s nothing in the wallet,” she whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“Someone stole his cards when he got here.”
“Does he know?”
“I don’t know… Just don’t go back in there.”
“I can help. I have savings. I…”
But she put her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t get more involved than you are. There’s no way out after you step in.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said, turned away and ran back in.
All families had their bizarre manifestations. I was no different and my principal hope was for the panacea of amnesia: never recollecting, never remembering. There was that fox in Chinese lore who spent his entire life committing acts of kindness. When he reached heaven, he was granted any wish he wanted. He asked to become rain, existing in a million drops before splattering away into oblivion.
When I got to the locker, it was just as Amber said: an empty, tattered wallet. I picked it up, laughed at the stupid irony of it. Which was when one of the hookers saw me and yelled, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Martin asked me to…”
But she had a knife in her hand…
Which brings us to the present: it’s 6 a.m., I’m inside an abandoned shopping mall, and a hooker’s chasing me with a kitchen knife.
I would love to tell you how I outran her or pulled some slick maneuver to ditch her in one of the stores. I would love to tell you my happy resolution, my reunion with Martin and how we rescued all the girls. Unfortunately, the hooker had some friends who tripped me up. I stumbled on the ground, scraped my elbows and knees. She grabbed Martin’s wallet, saw my own, tried to snatch it. There was a screaming sound, I turned and saw a knife coming towards me. I lifted my arms, wondering Is this the end? The blade plunged into my forearm and jammed on the bone. I cried out in pain, blood draining out. My first instinct was to close my eyes and curl up, but then Martin and his hookers flashed across my mind. I had to resist the pain, had to survive.
I forced myself to my feet, remembering something Amber said. My only hope was to sprint towards the mini-market. I ignored the knife in my arm, ignored the globules of blood spilling out. The meters seemed like miles and I suppressed wanting to know where the thieves were. Instead, I begged my ankles for egress, forced every muscle to contract until the soles of my feet felt like deadweights. I finally spotted bodyguards and raced straight for the market door, crashing through.
An old Asian man I took to be Mr. Lee demanded, “What do you think you’re doing?”
I collapsed to the floor. “Can I make a phone call?”
“Do you have money?”
I lifted up my wallet and waved some cash. Mr. Lee gestured affirmation towards the guards who pointed their guns outwards.
I was safe.
I bartered away everything I had for that phone call. It took the authorities two hours, but after imploring the operator, the medics arrived. They couldn’t save Martin. But they patched up my arm. “You’re lucky,” an EMT said. “Any longer, and we’d have had to amputate your arm.”
I looked at Martin’s corpse. I didn’t feel that lucky. But then I saw Amber and her womb.
“I’m going to name him Martin,” she said.
“What if it’s a girl?”
She seemed surprised, as though she hadn’t considered it. “Any suggestions?”
I shook my head, comforted by the thought that she had a choice. Then gave into my fatigue and watched the world fade to black.
An Empty Page
BANGKOK, THAILAND - I was a bacterium spliced into a billion-celled organism called Habit. Habit died and reincarnated as Huo Yu. Huo Yu—A.K.A., me—was taking a vacation from Beijing in Thailand for the Chinese National Holiday. I’d just visited some ancient Thai te
mples built in traditional architecture filled from one end to the other with Buddhist sculptures. All the doorways had blocks at the base, designed so they’d trip up evil spirits who could only slide straight without being able to step over impediments. With every step I took, taxi drivers were trying to lure me in, promising ‘lifetime opportunities to cash in on precious gems,’ and amazing tourist packages to watch sex shows that would ‘revolutionize’ my life. I ignored them, wishing for blocks of my own to ward off all the distractions.
The streets were lined with vendors, a variety of fruits on exhibit like the biggest watermelon in the world, squash and basil that granted virility, chilis that made your tongue burst—the smaller, the spicier. Lemon grass and kaffir limes contributed to the international canal of curry flowing through the intestines of everyone passing through the city. Hidden in the nooks of the thanons were the fraternity of merchants who sold rambutans that could make you look a decade younger and boiled durian that made your hair grow back. H1N1, hepatitis, and pneumonia fought a perpetual war for dominance of my life while tuk tuks got into racing matches with their noisy engines. I took the Skytrain to get back to my hotel because it was the quietest way to go—relatively speaking, that is.
I hopped aboard, sat down on one of the seats. Rush hour had passed and it was almost empty. I watched the trains, each one a moving billboard selling commercialized happiness. On the seat next to mine, there was a worn-down book with a cheap ebony cover, blisters over the corners, withered edges yellowed by soda and time. The train came to a stop, several students in dark blue and white uniforms sauntering in. I picked the book up, curious about its contents, and flipped through the first few pages.
There were random writings from random people, every page different. One was a love letter to a butterfly. Another had instructions on how to cut up a chicken using sugar crystals to make chicken wings sweet. There was a disturbing page with only one sentence: I caught HIV from a hooker. Another had a ripped image of a male covered in pink lipstick. There were advertisements for porn, night clubs, restaurants, and Internet services. Religious creeds and declarations from different sects were interspersed throughout, written in a variety of different languages. I flipped through a hundred pages, read directions to treasures of the senses and secret confessions from tortured expatriates who felt there was no such thing as home. Lovers wondered about the horoscopes of their companions; the blind complained about songs that described color; a woman wondered if dreams could be exploited to make money.
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