Nancy sounded sleepy when she finally answered. I suppose she could have been in bed, considering it was about four thirty in the morning.
“Jing-nan? Why are you calling me on the intercom phone?”
“Because you wouldn’t answer your cell phone.”
“But how in the world did you call in to the intercom system?”
“I’m in your lobby. Right now. Please tell them it’s okay for me to come up. The guy at the desk is looking at me like I’m crazy, and the doorman wants to beat me up.”
I handed the phone back to the desk attendant, a tall man with a short temper. He put the receiver to his ear and listened, which seemed to require an enormous effort.
“That’s fine,” he said to Nancy, “but you have to come down to escort your guest up. It’s the policy at this time of night.” He replaced the handset and rubbed down his stringy eyebrows. “You,” he said to me. “Take your elbows off the desk.”
I was so relieved I had been able to get in touch with Nancy. Plan B was buzzing Peggy Lee to ask if I could crash on her couch.
Nancy came down in a zipped-up pink hoodie and cut-off sweatpants. Appropriate dress for the glacial temperature of the lobby. When she got closer, I saw a few centimeters of a black slip peeking out like snail meat from just under the waistband of the hoodie. The doorman broke away from eying the soft parts of my throat to leer at her legs.
Nancy smiled at me and signed something at the desk. We walked to the elevators. I waited for the doors to open before saying anything.
“My house was blown up,” I whispered. “It’s probably on the news right now.”
“Oh my God!” she exclaimed in English.
I put my hands on her shoulders. “Everything I have is gone.”
She covered her mouth and nose. The elevator came and brought us up.
We got into her apartment and she ran her hands up and down my body, checked the number of ears, fingers and other things.
We sat on the couch, and I explained to Nancy what the American had essentially told me: that I had run afoul of the Black Sea gang, the one that was still cleaning house by getting rid of a faction of dissident members who had killed Julia or caused her death.
“The CIA is working with Black Sea,” I said. “They think the gang is more stable than the government.”
Nancy pointed at my nose. “Of course the Taiwanese-American’s working for the CIA,” she said. “It makes so much sense.”
I got up, walked into the kitchen and poured two glasses of iced water. “He mentioned something about you,” I called from the kitchen.
“What did he say?”
I came out and handed her one of the glasses. “He said you noticed the smell from the cooking oil they used when they installed the microphones in my house.” I took a long sip; I hadn’t realized until then how dehydrated I was.
“They were bugging your house?” She stared into her glass and turned it in her hands.
“It turned out to be a waste of time, too. I’m the guy who knows the least about the situation!” I gulped more water.
Nancy touched my hand. “Do you think the CIA burned the building down because they didn’t want anybody to find the microphones they used?”
I looked directly at her. I hadn’t thought of that.
“Ah-ding’s company makes specialty chips for intelligence operations. Ordinarily, if a chip is recovered, you can open it up and read it like a book to see who made it and who was using it. But the specialty chips melt away like solder—you can’t even tell what it used to be.”
I sucked a small ice cube into my mouth. “I hadn’t thought about that at all,” I said. “I thought they were only interested in burning the box with Julia’s stuff in it. Now I see they saw it as a two-birds-one-stone deal.
“Since my family’s gone, it somehow makes sense that our house is gone, too. It was a temporary house that lasted for three generations of Chens, so it did its job.” I swallowed the sliver of ice that was left in my mouth. “I’m glad, though, that we got to go through the yearbook together.”
“Isn’t it funny that the three of us—me, you and Julia—were all in that picture together?”
“She would have liked you a lot, Nancy,” I said. She blushed immediately.
Nancy drank some more water, then stood up. “I need to have some shrimp chips,” she said. “When I drink iced water, I need shrimp chips.” She headed for the kitchen.
“I hope you don’t mind …” I called after her. “I mean, if it’s okay with you, could I stay with you …? Until I have my own place again, of course. It shouldn’t take too long.”
Nancy padded back from the kitchen and jumped onto the couch with a bag of spicy shrimp chips. “You don’t even have to ask,” she said. She tore a side of the bag open and grabbed a handful of chips, which were formed into shapes like French fries. As soon as you bit them they’d collapse into shrimp-flavored dust. They were made out of processed wheat and palm oil that was probably poured over a shrimp armpit. A perfect snack for mindless munching.
“These are really bad for you,” I said as I shook a few into my left hand.
She blinked. “It’s one of my favorite snacks.”
“I don’t think you should be eating them anymore.”
She held the bag open. “Well, if they’re so bad for you, then put your chips back in.”
She tried to grab them out of my hand, but I shoved them all into my mouth. They were hot. I choked a little bit and drank down some water. She slapped my back.
“Serves you right. Making fun of my food.” After I managed to swallow she asked a serious question. “Is all your music gone?”
I sighed and fell back on the couch. “Everything was destroyed. Even my toothbrush was melted away.”
“Don’t worry, Jing-nan! I have all the best music files from the music store. Bauhaus had everything, certainly everything from Joy Division. Now I have them, too.” She crunched down some more shrimp chips.
I asked her something I’d been wondering. “Nancy, is Bauhaus owned by Black Sea?”
“Naw, not enough cash flow. Bauhaus is owned by a local jiaotou.”
“A jiaotou who’s into Joy Division?”
“Yeah, he’s a nice guy.”
I walked back into the kitchen to pour two cups of hot decaf oolong tea from the Japanese dispenser on the counter. Had to wash out that hot shrimp-chip taste.
“Are the cops going to help you?” Nancy asked when I handed her some tea.
“They’re going to investigate,” I said as I eased into the couch. “That doesn’t mean shit, though. The American already told me they won’t solve this case. Nobody was killed, so it wasn’t that serious, and they have their own relationship with Black Sea to maintain. Not to mention that German Tsai’s company is the mortgage holder.”
Nancy was crunching her way to the bottom of the shrimp-chip bag. “Who do you think burned down your house?” she asked. “Black Sea or the CIA?”
I shrugged. “Or the two of them working together. Why count anybody out?” I drank some tea, which was just the right temperature. I relished its hint of bitterness.
“Aren’t you afraid they’ll come after you again?” Nancy asked, cradling her teacup in a bird’s nest of fingers.
“No. The American said that if I stopped looking for trouble I was going to be fine. I’m just going to stay away from the Huangs’ place, that’s for sure. German already said he was going to sort everything out for me, because the fire was technically an attack on his turf, but I asked him not to make a big deal out of it on my behalf.”
Nancy licked her fingers to get the chip crumbs off them and then stroked my hair. “You lost everything,” she said.
“Well, you’re going to give me all the music files, right?”
“Oh, I wasn’t talking about that. I meant that box of Julia’s.”
“I didn’t lose the box.”
She straightened up. “You said everything in your house was burned.”
I drank some tea to prepare myself. “Julia’s box is here. It’s in the hallway closet.”
She stood up in fear. “Oh, God, Jing-nan, you have to get rid of it. That thing is dangerous!”
I held two pleading hands up to her. “First thing in the morning, I swear,” I said.
“Even before you shower.”
“Yes.”
“Even before you pee.”
“Yes.”
She crossed her arms and glanced at the clock. “Man, it’s almost five thirty in the morning! I have to sleep!” She yawned into her right elbow. “When I saw you come into the music store, I never imagined I’d be in this situation now.”
“Why don’t you go to bed, Nancy? I’m going to watch some television.”
“It’s not like we’re going to sleep together every night, anyway,” said Nancy. “Keep that in mind for the future. I have lab research to do, you know?”
“I’m so sorry I bothered you so late, but I had a good reason.”
She raised her right leg and stood stork-like. “Are you going to be up long?” Nancy asked.
“I still have to calm down a little bit.” I stood up and kissed her forehead with my wet lips. She put up her arms like a zombie and did a stiff-legged walk to the bedroom. I couldn’t help but laugh. What a funny girl.
I charged up my phone and turned on the television. I flipped through some of the twenty-four-hour cable news stations.
Taiwanese farmers opposed to the importation of American beef pelted government buildings with eggs and manure. Videos don’t lie. Farmers have good arms.
The Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions were continuing to struggle after coming off the All-Star break. A Japanese minor leaguer who was a clutch hitter at the beginning of the season was now choking on a regular basis. That reminded me of my early Little League baseball days. They used to call me Mr. Wind Power because I whiffed so much, often spectacularly.
I found a report by the woman who had come to the remains of my house, but it was another story, recorded while there was still daylight: a hard-hitting exposé of a hen with a pattern on its back that looked like the character for “love.” The farmer said he planned to auction the animal off for charity, as the character was clearly a message from the gods during this month of spiritual instability.
Another channel showed a blurry camera-phone video of something white hopping by the side of a road. It supposedly was a jiangshi, a reanimated corpse that moves by making short jumps and sucks the chi out of living creatures. During the broadcast some joker in the newsroom donned a wig that was a shock of white hair and hopped in the background.
I shivered and rubbed my hands. I was creeped out. Not by the jiangshi story, but by the fact that there wasn’t one single syllable’s mention anywhere of the fire that had destroyed my house.
I was dazed by the revelation that I was up against what seemed like a gigantic conspiracy. All I could do for a while was eat more shrimp chips like a little kid having an after-school snack in front of the TV.
Why would anybody want to kill me? What had I done that was so bad?
I couldn’t say that I hadn’t been warned, though. If people were willing to track me and beat me up on occasion, my life was probably in danger.
What had Julia done to deserve being murdered? Apparently she was spying on customers of the betel-nut stand, based on how she helped nail Ah-ding.
The American had given me a final warning to back off and lay low. He claimed that he was going to smooth things out for me and convince his clients that even though I was still alive, I had at last gotten the message.
This is where the story should end. I keep my stall at the night market. Maybe I live happily ever after with Nancy. Maybe Nancy finds someone else. Maybe that someone else is Ah-ding when he gets out of jail. Does she still care about him? Why was I thinking about this now? I was the one who had told her I couldn’t fall in love.
After some more mindless munching, I lay down on one of the living-room couches and drew the throw blanket over myself. I didn’t want to crawl into bed and possibly disturb Nancy more tonight. The soft leather of the couch cradled me, and I rolled into its deep, dark pocket.
IT WAS A SUNNY day, not too humid, and I walked arm-in-arm with Julia, my wife of many years. Who knew where the kids were. We were laughing about something.
People were walking by. We didn’t know any of them. A woman ran out of a store and grabbed Julia by the arm, saying there was a beautiful dress inside that was perfect for her.
What can you do when that happens? If I objected, it would be tantamount to saying that my wife didn’t deserve a beautiful dress. I followed them into the store. I had to duck under some garments hanging from the ceiling as I followed them to the back.
Julia went into a dressing room and I was alone with the saleswoman, who began to lick the backs of her hands.
“Are you sure this is the dress for her?” I asked.
“Of course,” said the woman. “You’ll feel like you’ve never seen Julia before.” I saw that she had a tail, and I thought it would be rude to stare at it, so I turned and looked at myself in a full-length mirror. I was dressed in burlap head to toe—traditional mourning clothes.
“Don’t be alarmed,” said the woman.
“You tricked me!” I growled through my clenched teeth.
“It’s no trick. Look.” She led me into the dressing room. Julia was lying in a coffin wearing a flowing white dress. “Isn’t she beautiful?” asked the woman.
She pressed a button on a remote control and the coffin slid away on a conveyor belt as a furnace door at the other end flew open. Julia suddenly sat up.
“Remember to burn paper for me, Jing-nan,” she said.
“No!” I said, pressing all the buttons on the remote. The conveyor belt chugged on. Julia lay back down, and I saw her in the light of the furnace flames, shadows dancing on her chin.
“JING-NAN!” NANCY SAID AS she shook me. “You were shouting!”
I apologized and dropped the TV remote. I had slept on the couch specifically in order not to bother her, and now I’d woken her up a few hours before her alarm. I lifted the blanket and she crawled in with me. After a few minutes of fidgeting, we slunk off to the bedroom for a quickie.
NANCY HAD LEFT BY the time I woke up at 11:30. I had a vague memory of her kissing me and saying I could have something in the fridge, and to get that box the hell out of her apartment. Neatly wrapped in cellophane on the second rack, I found a to-go breakfast of youtiao, shaobing and danbing—deep-fried cruller, baked sesame flatbread and an egg crepe. I ate them with my fingers, and everything was so cold and soaked with grease, it was eerily reminiscent of raw meat. I swept the crumbs on the counter into the sink and ran the hot water over my hands.
That box. I had to get rid of that box. If somebody somehow discovered Julia’s CIA papers weren’t destroyed in the fire, there could be serious trouble. I didn’t need the American to tell me that. What was the fastest way to ditch it? The nearest dumpster, or maybe a river? Throwing the box into a river would be bad luck, though, especially this time of year.
Damn it, there was no such thing as bad luck.
I retrieved the box from Nancy’s closet, tucked in its flaps and slipped it into a shopping sack made from recycled bottles. I went down to the lobby, where I discovered that there was definitely such a thing as bad timing, if not bad luck.
“Hello, Peggy.” Surprisingly, she was wearing a skirt with her blazer. No pantsuit today. Dressed in navy blue with a white blouse, Peggy looked like a schoolgirl who could kick the principal’s ass.
“Jing-nan, how are you?”
I brushed my hair back in an attempt to cover up not having combed it. “I’m doing pretty good.”
She made a face at me like I was the ugly new kid on the first day of school. “You look like you slept in those clothes!” She broke into a smile and rocked forward on the balls of her feet in her flat shoes. “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter, considering where you work.”
I tapped my right foot, trying to come up with something. C’mon! “You’re very nicely dressed, yourself, Peggy. Aren’t you running late? Well, I guess it doesn’t matter when other people do the real work for you.”
She crinkled her nose and hid her briefcase behind her back without letting her smile down. “I started today with a conference call. A potentially big deal with Australian investors. I guess you were still in bed.”
“I was working early, too.” I made a move for the door, and Peggy walked alongside.
“So where’s Nancy?” she asked.
“She had to run.” I swapped my bag to the arm away from Peggy, but she picked up on its movement.
“What’s in the bag, Jing-nan?”
“It’s stuff for the stall. New decor.”
“Let me see it!” I was walking briskly, but Peggy had no problem keeping up. Man, this was one long lobby. The revolving doors didn’t seem to be getting any closer.
“It’s not quite ready yet, Peggy. I still need to go through a finalization process with some focus groups.”
“But I know all about Joy Division! ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart!’ You still think I don’t know?”
“That’s not the issue. It’s not good enough for you to see it. I know how demanding you are.”
“Did you make it? I promise I won’t laugh,” she said, contradicting her statement by letting out a nostril-snort chuckle.
I stepped into the building’s revolving door, followed closely by Peggy. I used the microseconds I had alone to try to plan my escape from her.
When she swished out into the open air I told her that I had to go.
“Let me give you a lift!” she insisted.
“I’m in a bit of a rush, though.”
“My car is right here. I can take you anywhere!”
“I’d rather not take up your time.”
“Nonsense!” A black Yukon with smoked windows pulled up next to us. The driver, a big guy in a dress shirt and black tie, jumped out and had a little fight with the building doorman to open the rear passenger door for us. I had no choice but to climb in, keeping the bag tight against my body. The doorman won the fight to close the passenger door, so the driver hopped back into his seat before Peggy had settled in next to me. He adjusted his rearview mirror and I noticed that he raised his eyebrows as he looked me over.
“Birdy, this is my old classmate, Jing-nan,” said Peggy. “We’ve known each other since we were little kids.”
“Hello, Birdy,” I said. He nodded. I knew what he was thinking. I wanted to say, “I was visiting someone else here last night, not Peggy!”
Peggy didn’t care what Birdy thought and didn’t attempt to clarify the situation at all. In fact, she further compromised my position by stroking my arm and saying, “Are you busy tonight?”
“You know I am. I work at the family business. Just like you.” We turned off into the street, and Peggy cleared her throat. “Birdy, we’re going to make a stop before we go to the office.”
“Where do you want to go, miss?” Birdy spoke an earthy brand of Mandarin, the kind you would pick up in northern China working jobs that built up your biceps. Like Birdy’s.
“The Shilin Night Market,” I said. “Any entrance is fine.”
“Too early to go, my man! Still so many hours before it opens!”
We swung out into the street behind a swarm of bikes. The motorcycles were the adult insects, and the mopeds were the grubs.
“Jing-nan runs one of the stalls there,” said Peggy with a mixture of admiration and admonishment.
“No kiddin’. I go there sometimes. It’s a great place.”
“I run a food stall,” I said, knowing that it would have been impolite for a mere driver to ask me outright.
“You look like a great chef!” he declared as we swung onto an elevated highway.
“He is, Birdy!”
“I wouldn’t go quite that far,” I said.
Peggy turned to me and said in a low voice, “Have you thought more about my proposal for your new indoor location?”
I looked at her. From my angle I could see sky and clouds the color of rancid, fatty meat go by behind her head.
“I’ve thought about it, but I can’t see how I can go along with it.”
“How can you not go along with it? Don’t you want your business to do well? Your parents put their whole lives into it.”
“Thanks for reminding me of my parents, because sometimes I forget. Of course I want Unknown Pleasures to do well, but it’s bad luck to arrange something during Ghost Month, as you well know.” I shifted in my seat and played with the seat belt.
“Bullshit, Jing-nan. You don’t believe in that crap any more than I do. Julia didn’t, either.”
I heard the driver cough into his fist.
“Please leave her out of this, Peggy.”
“Why won’t you let me help you?”
“I don’t need anybody’s help.”
“Then what are you doing with that girl Nancy?”
I thought I saw Birdy eying me in the rearview mirror. I felt self-conscious. Why didn’t her car have one of those privacy dividers? “It’s none of your business, Peggy.”
“Christ! If you wanted to keep me shut out of your life, then why did you get in touch with me in the first place?”
“I needed your help then, to find out more about Julia.”
“And now you don’t need me or my help.”
“Kinda.”
The Yukon slowed as we took an exit back to a ground-level street. I could see we were close to Xinyi Road, which would take us to Taipei 101.
“You don’t genuinely care about me at all, do you? All our years together in school add up to nothing, right?”
“Peggy, I do care.” I didn’t know how to phrase it in a neutral way, so I tried to be as honest as possible. “But I don’t care to the point where we have to associate with each other … closely.”
“Birdy!” she shrieked.
“Yes, Miss Lee?”
“Let me out at the next corner!”
“Are you sure?”
“Just shut up and do what I say!” She turned to the window but directed her words at me. “You probably don’t even want to ride in my car with me, so I’ll go! I’ll make it better for you! I’ll make everything better for you!”
I touched her arm lightly, and Peggy rammed her shoulder into the palm of my injured hand. It stung.
We came up to the curb, and before we reached a full stop, Peggy broke out and slammed the door.
Without missing a beat, Birdy pulled the car back into traffic.
“Next stop, Shilin Night Market,” he called out. We headed down Xinyi Road and then made a left to head north on Jianguo Road, one of my traditional routes to the market.
“Is Peggy going to be all right?” I asked.
“Oh, sure. She’ll get a cab for the rest of the way. Don’t worry about her. She’s good.”
“Does this happen often?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah. All the time. The whole family’s the same way. Her aunt’s the worst. If they don’t fight during the ride, then they’re asleep or drunk.”
“Nobody’s drunk on the way to work, though, right?”
Birdy smiled and shook his head. “The horrors that I’ve seen, you wouldn’t believe. I’m scarred for life.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Her ex-husband, the Swiss guy, what a victim he was! She hammered him every day until he assumed the fetal position. That was his only defense!”
“Maybe it was best that the marriage ended.”
Birdy coughed hard and made a sucking sound in his nasal passage. “Us mainlanders, you know, we’re not all like that. Most of us are regular people. Anybody with money and power acts crazy. You’re benshengren, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I could tell. The way your ears and nose are.” He pointed at me in the rearview mirror. “When your ancestors came over, they were almost all men, and they interbred with the native mountain women.”
“It was a long time ago,” I said. Now was not the time to tell him that the term “mountain people” was offensive to aboriginal people, not least because not all the tribes were from up in the mountains.
“You know I’m from China,” said Birdy. He pointed at his mouth. “Way up north. You can tell just by the way I talk. Also, I’m big. You people never get to this size. It’s the Mongolian blood.”
I leaned back. This could be a revealing ride. I put my hand tentatively against the back of his seat. “Say, Birdy, how long have you been working for the Lees?”
“Couple years. I’m distantly related to them, so they brought me over, hooked me up with this job. I always have to be grateful for that. Decent pay for decent work. All in all, they are not the nuttiest people I’ve worked for. You want to see crazy, you go to China.”
“I think I already saw crazy today.”
“Ha!” shouted Birdy. We pulled up to the curb outside the Shilin Night Market. “So, right here, is this about where you want to go?”
“I’m fine here.”
Birdy unhooked his seat belt and reached back for my hand. “It was nice to meet you, Jing-nan.” He was like Dwayne in that he tried to intimidate with his grip.
“Thanks again, Birdy.” I left the car and shut the door with a solid slam. He had gotten the better of me with the handshake, so I had to show that I wasn’t completely weak, that I wasn’t less of a man.
I also had to show him that I wasn’t afraid. He knew his heidaoren tattoos were visible through the slits in his sleeves.
Tattoos aren’t as common here as they are in the US, where almost everybody who is cool or wants to be cool gets them. It was a rite of passage for incoming freshmen at UCLA to get some ink on their arms by spring break.
Not everyone in Taiwan who has tattoos is a criminal, but all heidaoren, “black-way people,” have them.
The black way is the extra-legal arena where so many political and business deals are forged. The deeds that black-way people do may not be technically legal, but they are socially acceptable. Heidaoren had built my home without worrying about getting a permit. Heidaoren operate temples, nightclubs and KTVs—all cash-heavy businesses where the accounting books offer only modest approximations. Older heidaoren are elected to serve in the Legislative Yuan, parliament, and wouldn’t hesitate to throw chairs and punches to get their way. Heidaoren and supposedly completely legitimate baidaoren, “white-way people,” help each other to keep their reputations consistent.
German Tsai was a heidaoren. So was Kuilan’s son, Ah-tien. But Kuilan and her husband were baidaoren. Peggy and her family were baidaoren with heidaoren connections.
I wondered what the Lees had tasked people like Birdy to do. If I didn’t do that deal with Peggy, maybe I would find out.
I WALKED THROUGH THE still-empty streets of the market. It was a little after noon, still a couple hours before the businesses would open.
I could feel the box buckling in the bag, so I perched it on a chained stool and turned the box ninety degrees to distribute the wear and tear on the cardboard. If it broke open, it might be harder to get rid of. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. In the absence of public trash cans, a big bottomless pit would be ideal.
I found a dark back alley that looked as good as any route to explore. I followed it to the sunlight at the far end, where I found myself standing at the edge of the construction site of the Taipei Performing Arts Center.
Several dumpsters squatted around me like giant cakes powdered with dry-wall dust. One of them would be a perfect place to ditch this box and walk away.
Yet I hesitated.
After all, I was about to throw away the last belongings of the girl I had loved almost my entire life.
I shifted the bag to my left arm. It didn’t feel very heavy at all, certainly not for something that was supposed to summarize all the most important work Julia had done in her brief adult life.
Yet I had to get rid of it. Nancy and I wouldn’t be safe as long as it was around. I set the bag on the ground, put my hands in my pockets and looked around as nonchalantly as possible. A group of workers were down in the pit area, about fifty feet away, while the others were sitting in the shade of a crane. No one seemed to be actively working. I didn’t understand what they were saying to each other. Most of them were probably Thai or Filipino and in all likelihood living in the country illegally. They had enough to be worried about already and wouldn’t mess around looking through a box full of papers in English. I lifted the lid to the nearest dumpster. It was nearly empty. I didn’t need two hands to lift the box out of the bag, but I used both, anyway. It seemed more respectful to do so. I released the box and watched it slide down and kick up some dust. I folded up the bag and stuffed it into my back pocket.
Goodbye, Julia. There’s still so much I don’t know, but I think I understand everything I need to.
I walked back through the dark alley. I felt at peace with myself. Finally letting her go felt like cutting off a gigantic tumor from my back that I had forgotten I was carrying.
Not a tumor. That wasn’t fair. More like a big old burden of failure to keep my promises. Everything was going to be better now.
I cheated a little, though. I didn’t get rid of everything.
I kept Julia’s diploma. I couldn’t bear to throw it away, even though it looked like crap, all crinkled and folded. It still represented an accomplishment. Her success. Her genius. I kept it folded in my wallet so I would always have it close by. Certainly the CIA couldn’t begrudge me this.
I WALKED NORTH ON Zhongshan Road and found a used bookstore across the street from Ming Chuan University, where I bought an American book of short stories. I tried to read them while sitting at a park bench, but I didn’t seem to have the patience to stick with any of them for more than a page or two. Even though the cover made no mention of it, they all seemed to be about love. I watched the elevated MRT line rumble across the street, and it looked so lonely.
I tried a new drink at Starbucks, and as I slurped it down, it hit me that I was falling in love with Nancy. How could I be? She used to sleep with a guy who was more than twice as old as she was, after all. Was she the kind of woman to get serious with?
I looked into the sad suds at the bottom of my drink and felt sheepish. She was right to point out what a hypocrite I was for taking her to love hotels and yet pretending to stand on some higher moral ground.
And what about Julia? The woman I had been planning to be with forever had worked three-quarters naked as a binlang xishi.
What a chauvinist I had been. What a lout. Who the hell was I to pronounce that being a mistress was immoral? Who was I to judge that a betel-nut beauty didn’t deserve respect? After all, I pimped food every night with a shit-eating grin.
At about 3:30 P.M., I arrived at Unknown Pleasures and met Frankie. I told him everything, and he didn’t seem surprised by any of it.
All he asked was, “Did they fix your moped?” I told him that it was in my usual parking space and that it was in great shape. He nodded, and we went about getting the place ready. Dwayne showed up about twenty minutes later.
“What are you doing here so early, Jing-nan?” he asked. “You weird me out when you beat me here.”
“What’s wrong with me being early? It’s my stall, all right?” I hosed down the street and brushed a stiff broom over the asphalt. Damned cigarette butts.
“It’s your stall? Look at the balls on this one, Frankie!”
The Cat looked up from his task and rolled his shoulders back, left and then right. “About time they dropped,” he said.
I leaned against the broom and looked Dwayne in the eye. “My house was firebombed last night,” I told him.
“What?! You’re kidding me, right? You mean your grandfather’s place?”
“It’s just a pile of ashes, scrap metal and rubble now.”
Dwayne rubbed his forehead, trying to get the image out of his mind. “I didn’t see anything on the news about a fire.”
“It didn’t make the news,” said Frankie.
I held up a fire-scorched wok. “Everything’s burned to this color now!”
Dwayne rubbed his eyebrows. “This is some evil-spirit shit.”
“No, it’s not. It was arson.” I brought the broom inside and washed my hands at the main sink.
Dwayne followed me in and pointed both index fingers at me. “You have to repent to the gods, Jing-nan!”
“It had nothing to do with them, because they don’t exist.”
“Why are you talking like this? Even if you don’t believe in them, you don’t have to piss them off! You better say sorry to Mazu!”
“Mazu, my ass!”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. I couldn’t believe how distraught the big guy was getting. He was acting like a student about to have his hands whacked with a ruler in front of the whole class.
“What is your problem, Dwayne? You don’t even believe in her. Mazu is a Han Chinese goddess.”
He put his fists on his waist like an old-time wrestler. “But I respect her. You should, too. We live on an island, so you’d better damn well respect the goddess of the sea! And you know what month this is!” He held up his left hand, warning me not to say the forbidden word. “It’s Ghost Month!” I said.
Dwayne rubbed his hands anxiously.
“Ghost, ghost, ghost!”
“Jing-nan, settle down now,” said Frankie. “You don’t like it when people force their beliefs on you, so you shouldn’t force your non-beliefs on them.”
“Do you know what really gets me?” I said, feeling my arms shake in anger. “The actual cause and effect get buried under all this superstition and incense. Gangsters torched my place, and I know because their American friend told me! That’s why it wasn’t on the news!”
Dwayne looked me in the eye. “If you were good to the gods, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“The gods weren’t good to me, so why should I be good to them?”
Frankie spoke up. “You’re insured, aren’t you?”
“We’ve got some,” I said.
The house wasn’t formally insured. An illegally built home was nearly the same as a legitimately registered address. Getting an electrical line isn’t a problem. Same thing with running water and cable television. You can get your mail delivered there, too. But homeowner insurance? Forget it. Insurance companies were already loath to cover legit homes that were shoddily built; there was no way they would extend policies to people who couldn’t even say what their walls and floor were made from.
“I haven’t seen the policy in a while,” I said. “I’m going to meet my insurance rep soon.”
“ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND LOUSY NT!” I yelled at German Tsai. I was too mad to be intimidated by him, even though we were sitting in the front seats of his car.
He seemed amused by my loss of control. “I don’t think anyone else would pay you that much for the house in that condition. This also cuts through all the red tape with the insurance company for the building next door, not to mention the lawyers.”
I pounded his dashboard. “It’s probably worth fifty times that, German!”
“You’re exaggerating,” said German. “Besides, it’s more than you make in three months. Say, I’ve got your cash right here, and remember that I brokered this deal personally, Jing-nan. Don’t embarrass me. The Black Sea are not unreasonable people.”
I sighed and stomped my right foot.
“Look,” he continued, “if you don’t want to take the money, I can just apply this to your family debt.”
I felt the blood drain from my head. “I’m still in debt?”
German chuckled. “Hell, yes, you still owe! This whole thing was set up by my dad for your grandfather’s gambling debt. The promissory note is as legit as a Sun Yat-sen note.” He rolled down his window, spat binlang juice and wound it back up. “I sympathize with you, Jing-nan, but this deal was set up before you or I were born, and we inherited the terms.”
“I lost all my music in the fire,” I said, feeling like a sulky teen. “Do you know how much that cost? That was probably twenty thousand NT right there!”
German put a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you. The debt on the last statement was about three point five million NT, right? I’m going to bring it down to three point three million NT.” I could save that much in about a decade, if I stopped eating and buying clothes and gas.
Sensing an opportunity, I said, “Just keep the debt where it is, but drop the interest.”
German leaned over, and a dull whirring sound came from his seat as he eased it back almost completely. It meant a lot less money for him, but it also gave me a realistic path to pay off the debt fully.
“All right, Jing-nan,” he said. “I think that’s fair.”
I DIDN’T HAVE MANY albums on my phone, only about thirty compared to the several thousand on my hard drive, which included live performances by Joy Division and New Order downloaded from sites that had wound down years ago. My PC library had also included songs from pre-concert sound checks I had copied from a guy at UCLA. I’ve never seen them anywhere else. I’d probably never hear them again, especially since the conglomerate corporations that owned the publishing rights to Joy Division and New Order were now vigilant about shutting down sharing sites that dared to post material from either band.
Listening to music was a huge part of my rituals for going to sleep and getting up in the morning, almost as necessary as water for brushing my teeth, washing my face and flushing away my waste. Nancy preferred to only listen to music through headphones. That was fine for me when I was in transit, but in my home (or her home), I really needed to feel the sound moving through the air, as a part of the living world and not just isolated in my ears.
Nancy didn’t have a desktop computer or a stereo system. She listened to music on her phone and laptop. I examined her video system, which had speakers that were better than the old stereo system I’d had hooked up to my computer.
I sat on the floor and picked my way though a drawer of cables in the wall unit under the television, as tangles of black cables piled up in my lap like cyborg pubic hair.
“What are you doing?” Nancy asked.
“I’m looking for a cable that will let me connect my phone to the USB port in the television. I lost mine in the fire.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Just a second.” She went to her bedroom and returned with a portable hard drive the size of a Big Mac. “You can plug this into the TV.”
“Whoa, what’s this?”
“It’s the music files from Bauhaus. I only asked for Joy Division and New Order, but there’s a bunch of other stuff on there, too.”
My fingers tingled with the excitement of finding Joy Division material that was new to me. “What’s on there?” I panted.
“I’ll show you my laptop. I already copied the entire drive.” Nancy plopped down on the couch, flipped open her computer and clicked on the music folder. She dragged her fingers across the track pad, showing me the names of the files.
It was hard to say what I hadn’t heard yet. Live bootlegs rarely listed the dates and places of the performances, and when they did the information was often wrong. I would have to hear them all, and I would.
“I went ahead and corrected a few misspellings,” she said. “I get annoyed by that. The best one I saw was the ‘Love Will Tar Us Apart’ twelve-inch single.” She looked into my eyes and laughed with her entire face and spirit.
I looked upon Nancy with nothing but love. I had nothing left, and she gave me more than I’d ever had, both musically and emotionally.
“It’s a miracle,” I told her. “Thank you so much.” I got on the ground and hugged her calves tightly.
Unfortunately, the television’s firmware wouldn’t recognize a portable hard drive of that size. We settled for listening to Joy Division playing somewhere in Manchester over her trebly laptop speakers.
Even though the music’s integrity was compromised by the quality of the speakers, Nancy agreed that it was special to hear music move through the air.
“Did you ever go to Boar Pour More’s MySpace page?” she asked casually. It was a test. If I asked, “Who are they?” I would have failed.
Luckily, I remembered that it was a band that Nancy drummed for. They had a clever name, a play on bopomofo, the phonetic system for learning how to pronounce words in the Mandarin dialect.
“I tried, but it looked like it had been taken down,” I said. “I found one picture in a Google search of you drumming, though.” Nancy paused the music and clicked on a bookmark that was supposed to be a shortcut, but a message confirmed the band page was gone.
“Damn it, I’ll bet Pei-pei, the singer, took it down.”
“How long did you have blonde hair?”
She put a few strands of hair through her mouth and chewed it. “Just a month. I had to try it.” Her face sank a little. “Man, I told all these people at Bauhaus to check out our page.”
“Sorry you had to find out it was down through me.”
“Aw, it’s not such a big deal.” She was glum enough that I could tell it was.
“Can you play me some of the Boar Pour More song files?”
Her face got even longer. “Pei-pei has them, of course. She was going to have them remastered.”
I grabbed her right hand. “Don’t worry,” I said. “You’ll go on to do better things.”
“I’m going to start another band sometime soon. Hey, Jing-nan, you can be the singer!”
“No, I’d be terrible!”
“You’re a great singer, and you have charisma, too!”
“Well, you don’t want to be in a band with a singer who works at night. How would we ever book any gigs?”
“Maybe you don’t have to work at night.”
“No, I have to be there, Nancy.” I laughed nervously.
“You could sell the stand and get a day job. Who cares if you make less, right?”
I took a deep breath. Clearly, Nancy and I would be seeing a lot of each other in the near future. We were going to be in a committed relationship, if we weren’t already in one. But it was still too early to tell her about my family-debt situation.
“Nancy, it’s not my dream job to run a night-market stand, but it is a dream job for Dwayne and Frankie. I would never want to let them down.”
“Are you sure? They don’t look very happy there.”
“Those are the faces they were born with. I feel bad for them.”
I STEPPED INTO AN elevator to find that the air-conditioning unit was broken. I immediately broke out into a light sweat. I had expected more from a high-class building like Nancy’s. I was about to step out to catch another when a white-gloved hand reached out and gently blocked my exit, also obscuring my view of the man’s face.
“Sir, this elevator was called for you,” he said. The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
“So what?” I asked.
“Sir, you need to stay in it.” The man stepped in with me and pressed a button to close the door. I still couldn’t see his face, because he kept his back to me, but his uniform and cap were in good shape.
The doors closed, and the walls became transparent. Stars surrounded us. Why was I having such strange experiences with elevators?
“Can I breathe here?” I asked. “We have oxygen, right?”
“Sir, of course.”
I looked down at the earth. As we rose I saw the West Coast of the continental US beneath us.
“That’s where I went to school, for a while, anyway,” I said.
“Sir, look over there by that light,” said the man.
“Is that the sun?”
“Sir, some people call it that.”
We were drawing closer to the light, and I felt the car heating up.
“Can’t we do something about the temperature?”
“Sir, only the lady can.”
“You mean Julia, of course. Let me ask her for help.” I saw her in the distance, asleep on the floor of her own elevator car, also bound for the sun.
The conductor pointed at the emergency call box on the elevator. “Sir, you may ask her for help.”
I pressed the button and watched Julia slowly stir in her car and then answer the intercom.
“Jing-nan, is that you?” She didn’t bother to cover up a huge yawn.
“Yes! Julia, I need your help!”
“Where are you? Have you been out here the whole time?”
“I’m behind you. Listen, can you do something about the air conditioning? It’s broken.”
“I could, but I don’t have the money to send a repairman there.”
“I have money. How do I get it to you?”
“Just burn it and I’ll get it.”
“Do you mean burn notes as if you were a dead person?”
“It’s similar to that. You and I don’t believe in such things, but this is how it works out here. There’s no other way.”
I opened a smaller panel at about waist height, revealing a single flame the size of a tiny pilot light. This was going to take a long time. I sat down cross-legged, threw open my wallet and slowly burned the first bill.
“Did you get that, Julia?”
“I did, but it’s not enough. I need another hundred NT.”
I had trouble with the next bill because it was wet with my own sweat. As I struggled, out of frustration I said, “This is the worst elevator I’ve ever been on.”
“You’re not on an elevator,” said Julia. “You’re in a coffin, Jing-nan.”
I tried to stand up, but the elevator had shrunk to the size of a coffin. I didn’t have enough room to even turn my head. Where had the man who was with me gone?
“I don’t want to die!” I bleated.
“We all have to die, Jing-nan. I’m just ahead of you. Now burn me money so I can help you!”
“It’s just making it hotter in here, Julia.”
“If you’re not going to send me money, then I’ll have to go to work for it.” The intercom clicked off.
I looked at Julia. She shed her clothes and then began to swivel her hips around. She was completely naked. “Binlang, binlang!” I could hear her cry through space.
I pounded on the wall. “Stop it, Julia! I don’t care about the air conditioning! It doesn’t matter! Just stop what you’re doing!”
The elevator man’s face, now upside down, came in close, until we were touching noses. “I wanted to warn you, Jing-nan, but you were destined to take that ride.” The man was Ah-tien.
I woke up with my elbows and head pushed up against the headboard.