Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Hermaphroditus was the daughter of Aphrodite by Hermes,” says Rui Long, her mouth busy with take-out from the Sidewalk Fish Brains Café. Outside is bright midday. “Hermaphroditus was a female with a dick. That’s where the name comes from, but hermaphrodite is like—it’s a terrible word. Now people just say intersex. That’s what I am.”

“Intersex,” I repeat, tasting the word in my mouth. It mixes well with General Tso’s Chicken and Broccoli. “Is that kind of like being differentially sexed?”

“It’s like being fully sexed,” Rui Long corrects me. “I can make a girl pregnant if I want.”

I give her a doubting look.

“I can have a baby, too,” she continues. “I’m the whole package. That’s why I say I’m something new.”

I clear my throat. “Rui Long, what you’re talking about is not new at all. Sometimes the genetics just work out that way. It’s—”

“That’s what everybody says, and it’s bullshit,” she replies, still eating heartily. “Everybody acts like it’s some kind of birth defect, and it’s not. Every intersex kid is butchered before she’s old enough to understand what’s going on. Butchered! Involuntary surgery. It’s horrible. After we’ve been mutilated, we’re put on hormone pills and told to act like a boy, or act like a girl, because anything else is too embarrassing for the family. That same shit would’ve happened to me if my momma’d been halfway right. She’s a crack ho, so I just learned to hide it. I went all the way through school without anybody knowing. You think that shit was easy?”

“I’m not saying it was—”

“It still ain’t. Nobody understands, including you.” Her eyes pin me in place. “I didn’t understand either until I heard Shatrina talking about polarity. Everything has gotten so polarized that nobody can communicate anymore. Everything is us against them. Shatrina said what we need now is something new, some kind of third alternative that breaks the stalemate. I was listening to this shit, and suddenly I’m like: that’s me. I’m the something new. I’m the third alternative. Can I have another hit that chicken and broccoli?”

“Help yourself.”

“So anyway, I went online and read everything I could find about biology and reproduction and—man, this chicken is some kind of good. Say whatever you want about these motherfucking Chinese, man, they can forevermore burn.”

Ricky Ricardo syndrome, Tree calls it, the tendency of multi-lingual and multi-dialectal people to revert to the mother tongue at moments of strong feeling. I’m not sure Rui Long has any other kind of moment.

“What did you find out?” I ask.

Rui Long reaches into her blouse and extracts the silver butterfly pendant. “This. We’re caterpillars becoming butterflies, and I don’t mean just us intersex people. All of us. We’re at the dawn of a new human.”

I recognize Tree’s terminology. Clearly this Westmont girl has spent a lot of time alone in her room with a radio and a tube of airplane glue. But I let her continue.

“Most humans are gonochoristic,” explains Rui Long. “Male, female. Polarized. Everybody’s limited to being just half the picture. Butterflies are gynandromorphous. Sexually complete. They don’t lack nothing.”

Rui Long gives me a slightly superior glance before pointing to one of the get-well pictures on the wall. Prominently featured is the yin-yang circle of cavorting fish. “It’s like that symbol. Masculine and feminine in one package. With just one fish, you got zip.”

“Well,” I say defensively, “the whole appeal of polarized sexuality is that singular moment when black fish and white meet. That can make for quite a party.”

The teenager looks at me. “You’re telling me we didn’t have a party last night?”

Point well taken. It was certainly unlike any party I’d ever been party to. At first I had trouble getting around, quite literally, being in bed with an Uncle Wiggly not my own. Finally Rui Long propped herself up on a couple of pillows and said, “Look at it. Look at it good.”

With an unhappy sigh, I turned my full attention to this young woman’s wee-wee. In the flickering candlelight, it was as pale as the rest of her, its skin seemingly quite smooth. The head was not nearly as reddish-purple as I might have imagined and little larger than my thumb pad. It looked immature, in fact, altogether a relatively wan presence within its abbreviated collar of foreskin. I was almost looking at a tender young shoot, a bud awaiting permission to open.

And it was a goddamn dick.

“Encountering our sexual issues, are we?” taunted Rui Long, watching me with interest.

“Give me a minute,” I sighed.

“Take all the time you want,” she said. “I’ll tell you what I finally decided. It’s mine. Everything I got is mine, and it’s all for playing with. I play with it all the time. You want to play with it?”

“I said give me a minute.”

Deciding to get it over with, I inched closer to Rui Long’s crotch and studied the underside of the small animal unaccountably nestled there. As I drew still closer, Rui Long inhaled sharply. Evidently my breath had touched the tender underside of that young shoot. For a moment it trembled and seemed to struggle against itself. At the same moment, Rui Long raised her hips slightly, and I examined the taut smile of the opening of the glans, quite familiar yet somehow different, and I strained to understand what that something was. And then I knew.

“It looks… feminine,” I said, surprised.

“Of course it’s feminine,” whispered Rui Long. “It’s me.”

And it was her. Rui Long’s flesh. Rui Long’s blood. Her own coiled pleasure. Her own jittery breath. Her tiny fingertips, her raspy voice, every part was exactly her, exactly hers, precisely feminine. At that thought, a smile crossed my lips. I pursed them and blew warm air across, then around, the tender shoot, and Rui Long’s back arched. I blew into that small patch of hair, and she giggled.

What is a female? A human whose warm body-core harbors new life. A human whose breasts enlarge and fill with milk, and whose rhythms and moods are circumscribed by cycles beyond easy measure. A woman, in short. The most alive and sensuous of all earthly creatures. I gazed at the lazy spread of Rui Long’s hips and breasts. Clearly, here was a woman.

And more.

Timidly at first, the back of my hand stroked Rui Long’s belly, each stroke a little longer than the previous until I brushed that dark patch of hair and she moaned. Then my hand brushed against Rui Long’s most electric place, and in response her ribcage rose and fell. Then her eyes closed and her hand fumbled for the buckle of my belt.

From the first moment, I enjoyed the easy access I had to Rui Long’s pleasure. Even my brutish fingers were able to articulate each moment of her super-clitoris. I traced unhurried circles along its warm throat and with each little variation, Rui Long gasped, completely present with my tiniest gesture. She was utterly young, utterly transparent. I was easily able to take her to the brink of orgasm—and then stop her there, enjoying the control I held over the over-amped young body. Meanwhile Rui Long proved to be marvelously adept at touching me. Her hands knew the contours of my delight quite well. At times, our touches mirrored each other’s, listening with our hands, responding to the simultaneous inner rages of fire and blood and want. Increasingly delirious with pleasure, I touched and was touched, became wet and made wet, probably drooling generously all the while, my eyes on Rui Long’s outturned right breast as it rose and fell in the flickering light. Finally overcome by curiosity, I lowered my head and nosed aside the prodigious clit to bury my face in her scent. I remained there for some time, breathing her in. I think I can authoritatively report that Rui Long is unquestionably a woman.

Still, I was a bit daunted by the question of positions, which Rui Long found amusing. At last, I adopted a modified missionary, one knee forward and the other back, allowing my plaster cast to rest safely to one side. Suddenly a packaged condom was held up before my face.

Even so, Rui Long’s interior was shockingly warm.

I found myself easily capable of pressing my body against the underside of her prodigious clitoris. It was mere seconds before her voice erupted in delicious nonsense. Her orgasm was violent and seemingly painful, accompanied by a hoarse birdlike cry. I felt both our bellies grow warm. Then Rui Long fell limp as though dead.

About an hour later, I turned her over, enjoying how the super-clit showed between the tight buns. Minutes later, we came simultaneously, our cries hyper-comical. After a moment, we laughed at ourselves. A minute later, we laughed again.

After an hour or so of napping, Rui Long and I talked for most of the night, the difference between my age and hers gone from the flickering room. Around dawn, we began to touch once more, my fear of her body no longer anywhere to be found. She and I laughed and licked and sucked each other, our wet tongues twirling, until we both came with silly little yelps. Then we slept again. Gradually I became aware that Rui Long was lying behind me, quite close, some specific part of her anatomy nudging me awake.

“Do you mind?” she asked.

What a gal.

“Call it a mutation,” Rui Long says now, raking more General Tso’s chicken onto her plate. “I don’t know what it is. Shatrina talks about something waiting at the end of time, attracting us. All I know is, something’s gotta change, so it’s changing.”

Again she fingers the butterfly pendant, a smile on her lips. “Mosaic gynandromorphs. That’s what they call butterflies, and that’s the new human, too.”

“That particular mutation,” I say, “would seem to make men expendable.”

I know at least one feminist who would welcome that bit of news. We just spent the night among her scented pillows.

Rui Long’s dark eyes fly to mine, the one on the right missing wide-right. Rui Long is slightly cockeyed. “Men are obsolete. Where’s all the violence and rape and murder and shit coming from? Men. Where’s all the wars and bombs and chemical weapons coming from? Men. Where do all these new inventions come from that poison the whole motherfucking world? It’s coming from the goddamn men, and I think that’s exactly what this mutation is about. Getting men out of the picture is necessary, fool, if we’re going to survive.”

“I’m feeling you,” I say defensively.

Rui Long calms herself. “Well, I do prefer men in bed. I don’t have much of a thing for women personally. Except for Halle Berry. I could like go for Halle Berry. Anyway that’s the story. We’re moving from gonochorists to mosaic gynandromorphs. Freaks like me are the first wave.”

“You aren’t a freak, Rui Long.”

Still chewing, Rui Long takes my one good hand and places it on one side of her head. My fingertips feel something beneath the raven hair. A small, hard lump of some kind.

“What’s that?” I ask.

Rui Long moves my hand to the opposite side of her head. I encounter another small, slightly pointed lump. Curious, I part Rui Long’s hair and examine what appears to be a bony structure of some kind. Almost a budding—

“Rui Long?”

The schoolgirl bursts into laughter. “If you could see your face. I don’t know what they are, but it feels pretty good when you touch them. At least they aren’t growing. I can just see myself with fucking antlers.”

I draw closer and take a good look. At each side of this child’s head are what indeed appear to be vestigial—I can’t even think the word. Begins with an h.

“Still say I’m not a freak?” asks Rui Long, amused.

“Well… ,” I begin, hoping something will follow. It doesn’t.

Rui Long says tauntingly, “You think you’re such hot shit, and you don’t know nothing about this world. You want to finish this noodle stuff?”

“I’m stuffed with noodle stuff.”

“Me, too.”

She surrenders her fork and I my personal wooden chopsticks. We fall side-by-side onto the mattress still sprawled on the floor. This room is post-tornadic. I am post-tornadic.

“How am I supposed to get out of here?” asks Rui Long.

I sigh and lace my fingers behind my head. “You’re stuck here for now. You can slip out after dark.”

“My dad is having a shit fit.”

I glance at Rui Long’s half-clothed body in this littered shambles of an American Teacher’s Love Shack and ask myself what manner of fit her father would be having if he walked in right now.

At the thought, a loud banging erupts at the metal door, and Rui Long and I turn to gape at each other. A moment later, I’m on my feet and Rui Long is crawling double-time toward the bathroom. Now I crash into the settee table, and Chinese take-out flies through the air, a chair crashes to the floor, and my cast hits the floor lamp. Shit. Cradling my right arm, I look down and discover I’m not wearing any pants. All I see on the floor is Rui Long’s blue-and-white uniform, wrong side out and sprinkled with herb-seasoned chicken. The loud banging comes again. Now I hear, “Mistuh Maaaaan-suh? Hellllo?”

I recognize the voice of Nancy Drew, whom I tutor twice weekly. I now want to kill her twice weekly.

“What do you want?” I shout through the door.

“Oh. Mistuh Maaansuh. How are you?”

“Fine. Thank you. And you?”

“You vaawy waalcome. Mistuh Maansuh. Want tomaaaaaaaah-low go see big paint museum with you okay.”

“See what?”

“Tomaaah-low go see painting museum four o’clock with you okay.”

“See what painting museum?”

“Okay, bye bye. Oh. Mistuh Maansuh?”

“Yesss-ssss?”

“USA is have the wahhhhh.”

I listen to Nancy Drew’s footsteps fade along the balcony.

Rui Long’s face appears. “She gone?”

“Yes,” I say, still cradling my throbbing right arm.

“What did she want?”

“Something about an art museum. And I think World War Three. Can you help me with this mess?”

“Jesus, look at this,” says Rui Long, hooking her hair behind her ears.

Before we can begin, another knock comes at the door.

“What?” I shout irritably.

“Julian Mancer?” comes a man’s voice.

Rui Long scurries away, carrying her chicken-strewn uniform with her.

“Yess-ss?” I say through the door, scanning the apartment once more for my pants.

“Uh, could we talk for a moment?” comes the voice. “I’m Agent Jim Barnes of the US Department of State, and I have Agent Raul Velázquez with me.”

That can’t possibly be good.

My feet are still bare and my shirt unbuttoned, but both legs are more or less inside a pair of trousers when I yank open the door.

Two thick-necked Westerners in dark suits. Matching moustaches. Matching smiles.

“I have plenty of life insurance already, boys,” I tell them.

Both men laugh and hold up shiny gold badges for my inspection.

“I’m Agent Jim Barnes,” says the chalky one, “and this is Agent Raul Velázquez.”

“Do come in. Sorry about the mess. Bachelor housekeeping and all.”

The two agents pick their way through Chinese take-out.

“I can make you some very bad tea,” I offer. “Otherwise it’s boiled tap water with or without cockroach.”

“I’m good,” they each say.

“I’m good, too,” I tell them, nodding. “Isn’t it good to be good?”

“Could we sit for a moment?” asks Barnes.

“Bed or mattress?”

Velázquez rights the overturned settee chair. The two men seat themselves. Barnes looks at my cast and says, “Seems you’ve had yourself a little accident.”

“Seems.” I drop into the computer chair. “I hear we are a nation at war.”

The two men nod soberly.

“Actually, it’s an operation,” says Velázquez.

There’s a hole in Barnes’s left earlobe where a stud should be, and Velázquez’s shoes are awfully pointy at the toes. If these guys are from State, I’m a senior auditor for the IRS.

“With or without anesthesia?” I say. “Actually I’m mad as hell about all those weapons of mass destruction, aren’t you?”

Clearing his throat, Barnes says, “Mr. Mancer, we’d like to ask you a few questions about—”

There’s a knock at the door, and our heads pivot in unison.

“Excuse me,” I say.

I open the door to discover Madam Wu in her powder-blue cat’s-eye glasses. Between two potholders is a covered dish. “Is General Tso’s chicken!” she exudes.

“Wow,” I say. “Did you ever read my mind.”

Madam Wu trots past me toward the kitchen and the mushroom nursery.

“Uh, actually—” I call after her. “Agents Barnes and Velázquez?” I say as she vanishes into the kitchen. “Madam Wu.”

Now someone else is standing in the doorway. It’s a broadly smiling uniformed guard. I accept from him a number-ten manila envelope with my name scrawled in purple ink.

“Thank you very much,” I say.

The guard gawks at the ruin of an apartment before turning away. Now Madam Wu trots back through.

“Thank you very much,” I say.

Before closing the door, I check outside. No other visitors just now. I feel the envelope disappear from my hand. Turning, I stare at Agent Barnes who’s walking back to the settee with my delivery.

“I’m sorry?”

“Just a precaution,” says Velázquez. “Have a seat, Mr. Mancer. We’ll explain everything.”

Barnes extracts from the envelope a single sheet of spiral-bound notebook paper with an attached sticky note. Frowning, he says, “Do you know someone named Tree?”

Again falling into the computer chair, I reply, “She’s closely related to Flowering Shrub, and I’m not saying another word until I know what you two are here for.”

I gaze at them, ice water in my veins. I’m not too bad at this.

“Of course,” says Velázquez, reaching into his briefcase for a glossy eight-by-ten. “Mr. Mancer, have you seen this man before?”

No safari hat. Otherwise I’m looking at Timothy Dobbins.

I shrug. “I met him two days ago.”

“Can you tell us about that meeting?” says Velázquez.

“He said his name was Dobbins, and he seemed to know a lot about my sister and myself. I didn’t feel very good about it.”

Barnes says, “Tell us about that meeting.”

I give them the sanitized version. Some guy walks up and says he’s my long-lost dad. He tells me there’s undeniable proof in the shopping bag. I refuse to look. That’s basically it. “Nutcase as far as I’m concerned,” I conclude. “I haven’t mentioned this matter to my sister, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t either.”

“What else did he say?” asks Barnes.

“I’d like to hear what you can tell me, actually.”

“We would appreciate it,” Barnes says carefully, “if you’d let us ask the questions.”

Velázquez frowns for effect.

“I don’t have to talk to you guys at all,” I say.

Barnes leans forward. “Mr. Mancer, this is a United States Department of State investigation. It would be in your best interests to cooperate.”

I lean forward, too. “If this has something to do with me or my sister, you need to come clean with me right now, and I mean right now.”

“You want to calm down?” says Barnes.

“I should have gone straight to the Chinese,” I snarl. “I should have had his ass thrown out of the country.”

“We’re working with the Chinese on this,” says Barnes.

I fall back against the back of the computer chair, and it rolls a few inches. “Who is this asshole anyway? What’s he after?”

Barnes and Velázquez exchange a glance.

Velázquez turns to me and says quietly, “Mr. Mancer, this man is not who he says he is. His name is Jerome Stiles. Stiles has been involved in intelligence and counter-intelligence in one way or another since the 1950s. We think we know who he’s working for at the present time and, while we cannot reveal that information, I will say this. Jerome Stiles is not friendly to the best interests of the United States of America.”

Both men stare.

“Since he has contacted you,” continues Velázquez, “it’s possible that he will attempt to contact you again.”

Barnes pulls out a business card.

“If he does,” continues Velázquez, “we ask that you say nothing about this interview, and further that you call us from a pay phone using the number on this card. Should you have any questions or concerns, any at all, call this number and ask for myself or Agent Barnes.” Velázquez folds his hands in his lap. “We agree that your sister does not need to know about this matter. In fact, we consider it advisable that you mention neither Mr. Stiles nor Agent Barnes nor myself to anyone.”

They search my face.

I wonder what questions I should be asking right now. Finally I say, “But why would he approach me in the first place? What possible… ?”

Wrinkled brows.

“Did he show you his so-called proof?” asks Velázquez.

“I refused to look. I guess I was a little worked up.”

The men glance at each other, and I ask myself how much they know and how much they’re fishing for. I also wonder who they work for, if anyone. Agent Barnes has the look of a county-fair pickpocket.

“Look,” I say with a sigh, “this is a little embarrassing. My sister and I have never known our father. A few years ago, I searched very hard for his identity. Could it be,” I ask, “that I left a trail that someone, some con artist, somebody like Stiles, could follow back to me?”

“It’s possible,” says Barnes.

“If you find out anything one way or the other,” I tell them, “would you give me a call?”

I busy myself writing down the phone number of the American Teacher’s Apartment and Barnes accepts it. We all rise to our feet.

“So, what do you think of this atypical pneumonia thing?” asks Velázquez.

Both men grin icily, awaiting my answer.

“Most atypical,” I say.

“You don’t think it’s serious?” asks Velázquez.

“Atypical pneumonia is the least of my worries,” I reply. “What about you, Agent Velázquez?”

He says, “It’s the least of my worries, too.”

I turn to the chalky one. “And you, Agent Barnes? Is atypical pneumonia the least of your worries?”

“Absolutely,” he says cheerfully. “Mind if I use your bathroom?”

“Uh—”

Barnes begins walking toward the rear of the apartment.

“Actually,” I say, “it isn’t working.”

“Oh? I’ll take a look at it,” he says, still walking.

“You really shouldn’t,” I call but Barnes is already jiggling the doorknob.

He turns to me. “That’s funny. This door is locked.”

“That’s what’s not working,” I say. “The lock.”

Barnes and I share a gaze. Talk loud, show no fear, and continue with the lesson.

“We appreciate your cooperation,” says Velázquez, extending his hand.

“Sorry if I got a little hot under the collar,” I say, shaking his right hand with my left.

“Quite understandable,” says Velázquez.

As I shake Barnes’s hand, he says, “You sure about that life insurance? You can never have too much.”

We all laugh.

After the two visitors leave, I press my ear against the entrance door. A full minute later, I open it warily. There’s only a woman hanging wash. I eye her suspiciously before closing and bolting the door. I’m suddenly aware that my legs are shaking.

“You can come out,” I call to Rui Long.

She emerges fully dressed. “Who the great big shit was that?”

“Insurance salesmen,” I say. “I didn’t want any.” Wobbling to the kitchen, I uncap the Guangzhou vodka and turn it up.

“You all right?” asks Rui Long.

I don’t reply till I’ve recovered my breath. In Guangzhou, it is said, vodka is formulated from cigarette butts and previously owned footwear.

“Perfect,” I say hoarsely, pushing past her.

Back at the settee table, I lift the document delivered by the gate guard. The attached sticky note reads:

Julian, When I woke up this morning, I found this page in my dream notebook. It came through when I was sleeping. Excited???!! Love, Tree

I examine the spiral-bound page. The handwriting is unfamiliar, but the two words scrawled across the top register pretty clearly. Chapter Thirteen.