by Ed Lin
“You can always go back by yourself,” I said.
“I need a wingman,” said Dwayne.
I wet a rag with cleanser and wiped down the front sign and counter. When I saw that Dwayne was busy doing the preliminary grilling on the skewers, I snuck over to his Wolf classic motorcycle.
I had to get him back for embarrassing me in front of the binlang girls the night before. I pulled off the Prince Nezha statue suction-cupped to the top of the tank. The prince was a boy who had divine weapons, flew around on magical shoes and was featured in the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. Most people these days probably best know Prince Nezha as a costumed character who appears at parades, protests and store openings, dancing to techno music. You can’t miss him. He’s got five mounted flags stuck in his back.
I stuck Dwayne’s idol in my front pocket with Prince Nezha’s wind-fire-wheel shoes pointing up. Let’s see how Mr. Tough Guy does without his little good-luck charm.
DWAYNE GREW FIDGETY AS the night went on. I think it was the lack of customers. At around eleven I told him that he could head off for the betel-nut stand and that I would meet him there.
I heard him fire up the motorcycle and idle the engine a little longer than normal. I was sure he was freaking out over his lost god. I had half a heart to hand it back to him, but he eventually pulled out. He must have been lovesick to drive without the prince.
He could to talk to Xiaomei all he wanted. It isn’t weird for the beauties to have stalkerish fans who shower them with gifts of money or iPhones. The lamei probably wouldn’t mind as long as Dwayne kept buying binlang and kept his hands off Xiaomei’s ass.
At around one in the morning, Frankie and I packed in the stand.
“What are you doing tonight, Frankie?” I asked.
He effortlessly pulled up the heavy rubber mats from behind the main grill. “The usual. Wash my hair, paint my toenails.”
“Do you want to go to the binlang stand with me and Dwayne?” Frankie piled up the mats in the street, where he would hose them down.
“I stay away from that stuff. Terrible for your teeth. Causes mouth cancer, too.”
I wheeled in the front grill. “You don’t have to chew it, Frankie. You can just, I don’t know, hang out with us.”
He wiped his face with the back of his long-sleeved shirt. “I hang out with you two all night! That’s enough!”
“But it would be casual, not in the work environment.”
“Work is all I know.”
Frankie was an older guy, but he certainly lived in the zeitgeist of Taiwan. People live to work and definitely to eat, too, but they never really live, period.
“It might be fun, Frankie.”
“I’ve already had enough fun. You two enjoy tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
AS I RODE TO Hsinchu City, I wondered how much I would have missed out on by clinging to the past. I was so lucky to have met Nancy. I still had to come to terms with the fact that my first love, my childhood sweetheart, was gone, and I could never replace her.
Wow, I couldn’t believe I just thought of Julia as my “first” love.
What else did I need to let go of? Probably this moped.
I could take Nancy around on a motorcycle. We could tour the island like those elderly men on bikes in that bank commercial, trying to live life to its fullest. Well, maybe not quite like them. We could go faster. My father said there wasn’t much down south except scenery and ancient history, but I had yet to really get a good look at our homeland, the fields and flooded rice paddies of the benshengren.
Maybe I should get a motorcycle like that one parked on the shoulder.
Wasn’t that Dwayne’s bike?
I pulled up next to it and checked the gas tank. There was a little circle of residue where the prince idol had been. The bike was definitely Dwayne’s. Why was it parked here, a few kilometers from the exit to the betel-nut stand?
It seemed to be in decent shape. If he had run out of gas, there were stations close enough to walk to, and he probably wouldn’t have let it come to that before filling up, anyway.
I became worried. I got back on the highway and took the next exit. I reached a small road where there was no barrier on the sidewalk and walked my moped off into the grass. I saw an unlit building up ahead, but something told me not to simply ride up to it. I parked my moped next to a tree and walked on, staying out of the misty light from the occasional street lamp.
The road I was walking on wasn’t part of a real highway. It was an abandoned service road to a semiconductor plant that had closed years before, after China had stolen the jobs. Real-estate information was sloppily slapped on top of the dilapidated original sign. As I approached the parking lot, I heard something up ahead. The squawk of a walkie-talkie.
Plastic barrels were lined up along the near side of the parking lot’s border. I peered over them and saw a van about twenty-five yards away. A man smoking a cigarette was sitting on the bumper. He seemed to be playing with something small that made sharp, metallic clicking sounds that echoed around the empty lot. The night was heavy with tropical heat and curtains of humidity. The air kept getting stuck in my throat.
The man dropped the cigarette, took a small package from his pants pocket and put something in his mouth.
I sank to the ground and crawled forward, staying away from the lapping edge of a pool of light from a pair of derelict lights swaying at the top of a rusty pole.
Taiwanese trees, grasses and weeds, empowered by the humidity and rainfall, were reclaiming the land, busting through the concrete. The site was now being used as an illegal dumping ground. Large, unsalvageable junk items such as old refrigerators and dented car chassis were strewn about.
I kept my eyes on the van, which was parked on a raised, shattered-concrete section that the plants were chewing back into pebbles and sand. I was close enough now to hear grunting sounds from inside the vehicle. Familiar grunts.
Nancy! And Dwayne!
The man slapped the van and yelled, “Shut up!” I wasn’t sure if more guards were walking around.
I spat out a bug, but not before it left a taste like a rotten potato. The guy also turned away to spit. When I saw the oval-shaped sweat spot of the back of his tank top, I scurried around the rusted-out hull of an industrial-sized washing machine and moved forward. I was close enough now to hear him spit and clear his throat for another round. He looked my way briefly before hunching over to go for a full-body phlegm purge.
The man, who never stopped chewing, was about thirty years old and seemed deeply unhappy. More importantly, he probably had about fifteen kilograms on me. But all that chewing and spitting probably indicated a lifelong betel-nut habit. The government had warned us since we were kids that a habitual chewer of the betel nut hurt his esophagus, liver, pancreas and lungs. So maybe I could take this guy.
This was crazy. Even though I’d been beaten and pushed around in recent weeks, I hadn’t tried to fight anybody since second grade. The last thing I had hit was a Japanese punching-bag game at the night market, which said I had the strength of two pensioners. I had to hope that that would be enough.
I couldn’t call the cops because they hated me, and the toughest guy I knew was probably locked up in that van. With Nancy. I saw a pop-up ad in my mind of her opening her mouth and body to me. It spurred me on.
The man continued hacking. It sounded like he was trying to cough out something from his ankles. I drew closer. Soon I had my back against the van, with the man on the other side. I couldn’t hear anything from inside the vehicle. I had to hope that they were alive and well.
I needed a gun, but all I had was a belt. I slipped it off from around my waist. Sweat rolled down my back and I shivered. I kept my feet within the van’s swaying shadow.
This is it. Here we go. It’s do or die.
Repeating the most clichéd movie phrases kept fear at bay as I made my way to the back end of the van. The belt was wrapped around my right wrist, bras
s buckle dangling. I was close enough now to step on his shadow.
Hit him hard. Hit him fast.
I took a deep breath and on the count of five slowly let the air out.
I swung around the van. He turned in time to get the buckle end of my belt in the face. The guy screamed and stumbled back. Was he really injured or just surprised? I couldn’t take any chances. I had to hurt him some more.
My arm slashed through the air as I felt an adrenaline high. Any Taiwanese kid knew there was no defense against a good belting. At some point he dropped his handgun. It landed in a dried-out tire track in the mud. The guy was faster than me, but he made the mistake of diving for it. I kicked him in the stomach before he was ready to aim, and he dropped it again.
My hands swooped to the ground. It was an automatic and seemed pretty easy to use. I pointed it skyward and pulled the trigger. My arm jerked as a bullet rang out. I laughed. Then I pointed the gun at the man crumpled on the ground.
He wasn’t there anymore.
Suddenly, a sweaty and muscular inner elbow closed around my throat. My voice box was being crushed. My right hand was pinned against my side, and the gun it held was useless. I looked into the man’s bleeding eyes and smiled.
It was a strong but amateurish grip. A puppy could twist out of this one. Years of roughhousing at work with Dwayne had trained me to slip my neck out of nearly anything.
I stomped on the man’s right instep and jabbed my left elbow into his gut. His arms flew open, and he hit the ground hard on his back. My buckle prong had gotten him in the left eye, and some of the eyelid was torn away.
“Hey, fatso!” I said, making sure my voice still worked. “I’m going to shoot you if you don’t do what I say. Now get up and open the van.”
The man picked himself up and said, “Don’t call me ‘fatso.’ ”
“Well, you attacked me.” He opened one door of the van. It wasn’t locked.
“You attacked me first!”
“That’s true, but I’m one of the good guys. You’re one of the bad guys.”
He opened the second door and an overhead light came on. I finally saw Dwayne and Nancy, bound and gagged on the carpeted floor. Dwayne’s face was scraped up and bleeding, but the big man didn’t seem seriously hurt. Nancy’s short skirt had ridden up to her waist, exposing her nearly transparent panties. Her top was little more than a thick bra. One of her lacquer-red high heels had snapped off.
I made a fist with my left hand and bit into it. How did everything get so fucked up so fast?
The bleeding man waddled over and took a seat on top of a knocked-over soda vending machine, holding his shirt to his face. His bared chest displayed brush-stroke tattoos of mythical beasts and naked women.
“Don’t move!” I said to him.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, switching hands on the shirt. A two-headed, arc-shaped dragon quivered above his breasts. “This is so fucking embarrassing,” he muttered.
Keeping him in view, I climbed into the van and stepped carefully around Dwayne and Nancy. Their wrists and ankles were bound with hemp rope tied in knots so complicated they seemed to have four dimensions. If I tugged the wrong way, I could cut off circulation. Luckily their mouths were shut with cheap duct tape that slid off their sweaty faces with a tug.
“We have to get the fuck out of here, Jing-nan,” said Dwayne. “Black Sea is coming to kill this guy!”
“Dwayne’s right,” gasped Nancy. “The guy out there is the last member of Everlasting Peace. He was holding us hostage!”
“Hey!” said Dwayne. “That bastard’s on the phone.”
I looked up in time to see the gangster toss something aside. He slid off the vending machine and leaned against it. I jumped out of the van and pointed the gun at his good eye.
When I got up close I asked, “Did you kill Julia?”
“Who’s that?”
“You know!”
“I don’t know who the fuck she is and I don’t fucking care!”
I felt a sudden rage that tore my scalp diagonally.
“I! Loved! Her!” I grunted, slamming the butt of the gun against his head with each syllable. He dropped his bloodied shirt and turned around to try to prop himself up. Instead, he fell to his knees.
My brain sensed victory, and the adrenaline surge ebbed. My entire body trembled. I tried to catch my breath as my vision dimmed.
I screamed at the stars. Then I looked down at the man. He was sobbing, but I felt nothing for him. I pointed the gun at his head. Kill him. Why not? All his other Everlasting Peace buddies were dead.
Then I noticed a funny red dot dancing on my chest.
“Drop it, Jing-nan!” a voice commanded in Mandarin. It was the Taiwanese-American.
“Is he the one who killed Julia?” I yelled, unsure where the dot and his voice were coming from.
A second red dot danced on my gun hand. Then the brightest flashlight in the world blinded me.
“Jing-nan, it’s all over. Drop the gun!”
I looked into the light and brought up my left hand to shield my eyes.
Suddenly there was a commotion. I heard grunting and a cut-off shout. The flashlight was knocked away. I dropped to the ground and crawled toward a group of metal drums, bracing myself for the sound of a gunshot.
Once I was past the drums, I tumbled into a cement ditch. I could see the Everlasting Peace guy standing in the light, both hands raised but unsure whom to surrender to.
“Everybody?” he said as he looked around. “Don’t shoot—I give up!”
Where was the American? How many more people were out there? I had to hope that Dwayne and Nancy were safe in the van.
I grabbed the gun with both hands and stretched my arms out.
I hoped I had enough bullets left to shoot the next thing that moved.
“Okay, okay!” the American said. “Jing-nan, you win! We just want to talk to you.” He was speaking English, his voice heavy with resignation.
“I don’t wanna talk!” I yelled.
“Look, I know you have another guy out there with our guns, so I’m just going to turn on the headlights with the remote. You’ll see we’re unarmed.”
I had another guy? What the hell was going on out there?
A cone of light materialized. It must have been casual day at the office. The American was wearing a grey linen suit over a white T-shirt. His hands were raised. A big man, his pockmark-faced driver, stood next to him, rubbing his right wrist.
“You did a number on Yang,” the American continued. “He deserved it, though. We thought we were coming into a hostage situation and we find you, Jing-nan, and your idiot friends here.” He and his driver walked over to where the Everlasting Peace guy stood.
The driver slapped the gangster’s head. “It’s all because of you, Yang!”
The three of them stood in the headlights of the American’s truck. The van with Dwayne and Nancy in it was just behind them. The ditch I was in was parallel to the truck but completely covered by darkness.
There was someone else lurking out there, armed with the American’s guns. But whose side was he on? Mine or the gangster’s?
I called out from the dark. “Hey, scrape face! Go untie my friends!”
The driver made two fists, but the American gruffly ordered him to do so immediately. Then he addressed me.
“I’m sorry things happened this way, Jing-nan,” he started, “but you shouldn’t have come down here and put poor Nancy through this.”
“The lamei is with Black Sea, and she was friendly with Everlasting Peace!” I heard Nancy call out. Her voice was of the perfect timbre to transform the van into a giant speaker. “She gave me up! She had our picture from the KTV!”
The American spoke up. “She’s right, Jing-nan. It’s a betel-nut stand run by Black Sea, but we have our people there, too.”
I called out, “What do you mean, ‘our people’?” This was weird. A game of Marco Polo without a pool—but with guns.
/>
“Well, it doesn’t matter now, since we’re going to pull out, so I’ll tell you. A lot of the older military guys go there. They developed a taste for betel nut when they were stationed on the islands offshore China in the sixties. We’ve incentivized them to come.”
“They let the generals touch the women’s tits and asses!” Nancy chirped in Taiwanese. Yang smiled and nodded.
“Anyway, a lot of these older guys are in high enough positions to be recruited as spies for China. Unfortunately, China has been very successful at it. We’ve been running this stand to evaluate them, see who they’re associating with, find out more about their lives. Sort of a tag-and-release program. Julia was one of our best. She dug out a lot of information and was personally responsible for rooting out two traitors.”
The driver came back into the light with Dwayne and Nancy, who hobbled on one good heel. When she got close enough, Nancy kicked Yang in the stomach and he went down.
Dwayne held her back from doing anything worse. “C’mon, now, Nancy. We’re winning right now. Let’s not blow it.” He took assessment of the situation. “Jing-nan!”
“Yeah!” I said.
“I think we’re safer in the van. Just in case.” Just in case some bullets start flying.
“You’re right!” They both left the light.
“Well,” said the American. “I guess this wraps everything up. You got your friends back. We’ve got the man we wanted. How about we all just leave now?”
I licked my lips and rose to my feet. “How do I know you’re not going to come after me again, you lousy American?”
“You’re safe now, as long as you go back and mind your own business. If you ever see me again, you’re in trouble.”
I stepped into the light, brandishing the gun at waist level. “If I shoot you right now, I won’t ever see you again, will I?”
He showed me his palms and looked at me dead-on, betting his life that he could convince me to stop. “You don’t want to shoot me. You’ll start a shit storm so bad it will rip you and all your friends to pieces.”
I felt someone touch my shoulder. “Don’t do it, Jing-nan,” Frankie whispered. He was hiding in the shadow of a car’s removable bench seat propped up on its short end. Each of his hands wielded a gun.