We both heard the sound of a car idling near the hidden entrance. Wordlessly, I handed the plastic stool back to Li-min. That thing had zero potential as a weapon. It was more hazardous to sit on it than to get hit with it.
The door slid open and admitted Ju-lan’s sedan. She shut the car off but didn’t exit until the entrance was closed once more. This time she had driven herself. She had rested and changed her clothes. As she approached us, she reminded me of a mean teacher.
“Li-min, how are things?” she asked vacantly.
He scratched his knees. “Good. I’ve got the camera all set up.”
Doubting him, she picked up the camera and checked the settings. “Have you done some test shots?”
Li-min stood on his toes. “No, I didn’t. I forgot to.”
Ju-lan’s shoulder slumped. “Li-min, I hope you didn’t put this camera online.” She casually tapped through the menu, presumably to kill the WiFi connection, and my lifeline. “We’re going to record here and then upload the file from a VPN so they can’t tell where we are.”
“Ah, got it,” said Li-min.
Ju-lan raised an eyebrow. “Do you know what a VPN is?”
“Vietnamese something-something.”
Ju-lan quickly calculated that it wasn’t even worth educating him on the subject. She closed out the menu and set the camera on the tripod.
“Excuse me,” I said. “What do you plan on doing?”
“Mind your own business, Jing-nan!” she snapped.
I had nothing to lose by pressing her buttons. “I was minding my own business until you kidnapped me,” I said. She looked at me and coughed into her fist. “Look, maybe we can help each other out here if you let me in on it a little. I’m a captive audience here.”
She crossed her arms and considered the possibilities. “Okay,” she said slowly. “You are smarter than Li-min. Let’s see if you’re more useful. I’m trying to use your life to bargain for my safe passage to China. You’re close to Tong-tong and his influence could surely make things happen. Oh, I’ve been spying for China, if you haven’t guessed yet. I was tipped off early this morning that my information had been compromised, so I took off.”
“Ma de!” I said.
“I figured that you were the closest person to Tong-tong that I knew. I wanted to grab you for a bargaining chip.”
“How did you know where I lived?”
She laughed. “Please, it was so easy to kidnap you, Jing-nan!” Someone else had said that before. Peggy! Something about how my schedule was so consistent, it was easy to shadow me. Damn.
“You know what’s funny, Jing-nan? I have the chip design everyone was looking for.” She leaned over and pressed her right index finger against my forehead.
“How did you get the chip design?” I asked.
“I made the fucking chip!” she roared. “I only gave it to Ah-tien because the system here is so biased against women. There’s no way I could have gotten investors on my own. Ah-tien was my front. Other people used him as well, unfortunately. He was a front guy and a fall guy.” She put her hand on her heart. “To be honest, he really doesn’t know what the hell happened. I’m sure he’s innocent of all charges.”
“You could have helped him.”
“He could have helped me. I pulled a move the Americans call ‘schmuck insurance.’ I left out one little component in my design, just in case Ah-tien tried to cut me out of the deal. And then he did try to cut me out!”
“The chip in his version of the plan couldn’t work,” I said.
Ju-lan smiled with genuine appreciation. “Exactly. You are smarter than Li-min. I was supposed to be at the final meeting with Tong-tong.” She shook her head. “I was going to show them all the real final design. But Ah-tien never called me. He tried to play it off like he’d built it on his own. After that, the waters were a little poisoned. It wasn’t like I could find someone else to make the same pitch.” She smoothed out her sleeves with gentle hands. “Until now. I’m making the ultimate pitch for money and my freedom in China.”
“Freedom in China?” I asked. “Aren’t you deluding yourself? They just let that Nobel Prize–winner die in jail from liver cancer.”
“He played it dumb. I’m gonna play it smart. I’m just going to live like a rich woman and not talk politics.”
“How the hell are you going to get to China?”
“Tong-tong’s going to get the military to fly me to Thailand, and from there the Chinese can pick me up.” She paused to dramatically put her hand under her chin. “Oh, I’m assuming he wouldn’t want you to die. Do you think he’d want to save your life?”
Would he? Had he felt slighted by the counter-protest at my night-market stand? By my trying to secretly record his daughter in an effort to gather material about his company, his business practices and overly cushy relationship with the police? By my meddling at his warehouse, which ended up revealing potentially embarrassing information about his captivity? Most recently, he had taken offense to me yawning while he held the floor at the air force auditorium.
“Of course he’d save me,” I said. “He would do anything to help me.”
She frowned. “I hope so,” Ju-lan said. “You better hope so, too.” Ju-lan walked back to the car and brought back a clear plastic bag that held two plastic containers of noodle soup with spoons and disposable chopsticks.
“Wait, Ju-lan, if you have the chip design the Chinese government has wanted all along, then why didn’t they just get it from you?”
The bag swayed slightly in her hands as she spoke excitedly. “I work through the disinformation network of China’s propaganda wing. That idiot who got caught was under the military’s spy operations. I didn’t even know they wanted the chip. All these divisions are run by stupid men who don’t communicate with each other, even though they share information about where their assets are! Which is how I was compromised!” She looked around for a target for her frustration. It didn’t take long to find. “Li-min!”
He jumped slightly. “What?”
“One’s chicken and one’s pork,” she barked as she set the bag down by his feet.
“I’ll take the pork,” he said.
She crossed her arms. “What are you talking about?”
“He can have the chicken one,” he said, stupidly pointing at me.
“Hell, no,” she said. “They’re both for you. One’s your dinner.”
“Dinner? I’m supposed to stay again tonight? I thought we were taking turns watching.”
Ju-lan unzipped her purse and rummaged for something. Her gun? “You expected to leave a defenseless woman alone with a man?” she said, avoiding looking at him. “Anyway, this will probably be the only night we have with Jing-nan.” She finally found what she had been looking for. A Samsung mobile phone that was popular probably five years ago, and modified to be difficult to trace, no doubt. To herself she said, “Just want to make sure this camera can sync.”
Ju-lan walked to the tripod and flipped through the camera menu. Li-min, sensing it was best to eat and not talk, hoisted up one of the soups and peeled off the lid.
He was only about 10 feet away and the smell of salt wafted over to me. She had gone to one of those cheapo outlets that oversalt their broth instead of taking the time to simmer up a proper base with bones. I was pissed at myself for salivating. Ordinarily I would find that smell utterly repulsive. I looked at Ju-lan, trying to solicit some sympathy.
“Maybe you could get me a soup, too,” I said weakly.
She finished up with the camera and chuckled lightly. “Jing-nan, you don’t want to eat soup. It’s dehydrating.” She pointed at the small pail by the wall. “Li-min, did you empty his pail?”
Li-min’s chopsticks paused on the way up to his mouth and the noodles were left twisting in the wind. “No,” he said as he observed his container of yellow soup.
“It’s not a big deal,” I said. “I’ve only pissed twice.”
Ju-lan dropped her phone back into her purse and zipped it shut. “Not a big deal? Your waste pail should be emptied with regularity. I don’t want bad smells to attract attention.” Damn, I wish I had thought about that!
Li-min looked around the room. “Where am I supposed to empty it?”
“Take your pick,” said Ju-lan as she kicked one foot toward a corner. “There are some pipe openings over there.”
“Is it all right to use them?”
“Who cares? It’s just a few times. Like I said, if everything goes all right, this is his only night.” Ju-lan swept her hair over both ears and stood in front of the camera. “Ready, Li-min?”
“You want to film right now?”
“Yeah, I don’t have all day! You can finish eating after!”
He groaned and wiped his palms against each other. Ju-lan flattened her blouse and pants.
“Ju-lan,” said Li-min, “maybe you should rehearse one time before I start shooting.”
I added, “Maybe you should take some acting classes first.”
“Shut up, Jing-nan!” she said. “You’d better stay quiet while I’m filming. Li-min? I will do a practice take before you shoot.”
He put his hands on his knees and bent over so he was looking directly at the display screen. “I’ll hit record when you do this again, but pretend I’m recording now in three, two, one . . .”
Ju-lan cleared her throat. “Hello, Tong-tong. I’m Liu Ju-lan, the real designer of that low-power chip. I want sixty million New Taiwan dollars from you and a flight to Bangkok with my special passenger here.” She swept her head toward me. “You know Chen Jing-nan, right? Your daughter’s classmate and also a friend of yours. If you don’t get me out of this country, you can . . . oh shit!” Ju-lan began laughing. “Oh, shit, I forgot something!” She jogged to her car and retrieved the gun.
“Ju-lan,” I said. “I don’t want to go to Bangkok.”
She blew imaginary dust off the gun. “You’re not going. I’m going to do a switcheroo of you and Li-min. I just need you to be my human shield until the last minute so they don’t try to take me out with a headshot.” She flicked the safety off and back on. “Li-min, forget the practice, let’s shoot the real one right now.”
I was extremely uncomfortable hearing her say that word while wielding a gun.
Li-min hunched over the camera and flashed fingers at Ju-lan. “Ready in three, two and one!”
Ju-lan took her talk from the top. When she got to the part where she gestured to me, she narrowed her eyes. “If you don’t get me out of this country, you can plan Jing-nan’s funeral.”
She merely lifted the gun and held it limply. It was fully unnecessary to actually point it at me, I believed, and I was glad she did, too. That would have been overkill.
“Let me know soon, Tong-tong,” she said. “I’m not going to give you my personal information. Just put up a response video. By nine a.m.”
Ju-lan drew her hand across her neck and Li-min dutifully cut.
“Now what do we do?” he asked.
Ju-lan checked the camera and then hoisted it off the tripod. “You guys stay here until I come back.”
Li-min rubbed his nose in irritation. “So, I’m a prisoner, too?”
Ju-lan had already made her way to the car. “How are you a prisoner? I’m paying you and I’m feeding you! You’re not chained up like him!” She hopped in her car.
“Ma de,” Li-min muttered bitterly to his feet. “Motherfuck this shit.”
“Ju-lan,” I called. “If you’re not going to give me something to eat, could you at least let me drink something?”
She leaned out of the car and grabbed the door handle. “I don’t have access to my bank account anymore and I don’t have much cash on hand. You’ll have all you need soon enough.” Ju-lan swung the door halfway shut before addressing Li-min. “If you’re dumb enough to share your food with him, I don’t want to hear that you’ve gone hungry.”
After Ju-lan left, Li-min consoled himself by gorging himself. He polished off both soup containers, as his inner sorrows outweighed any consideration of me. When he had slurped up everything but the plastic, he ambled over to his inflatable bed, plopped down and resumed his phone game.
I made like a zoo animal and paced the length of my chain as quietly as possible, examining the floor and walls for a doorknob. No matter where I stood, I could hear Li-min sucking his teeth noisily as he continued to play.
I didn’t have my phone and the camera was gone. I had no way to get online. Unless I had Li-min’s phone. I shouldn’t even bother asking him for it. He wasn’t dumb enough to hand it over, and the request would only put him on guard.
Maybe he sensed that I was thinking of him because suddenly he asked, “Jing-nan, do you want the stool again?”
“Oh,” I said. I had been so preoccupied by thinking, sitting hadn’t occurred to me. I didn’t need to sit now, but I should never say no to having another object in my possession. “Sure, I’ll take it.”
He pocketed his phone and ambled over with the stool. I drew a hand across the links in my chain. If I were quick, I could get the chain around his neck. But I’d never be strong enough mentally or physically to hold on and choke him to death. I let the chain fall slack as Li-min drew closer and put the stool beside me.
“Here you go, pal,” he said with a sigh. “How about I empty your pail, too?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “I’d really appreciate that. I’d appreciate some more water even more.”
He kept his eyes on me as he grabbed the pail. “I’m sorry, Jing-nan. It’s all gone.” He sucked in both his lips and closed his mouth.
“Do you want to go to Bangkok?” I asked him.
“Hell, no,” he said as he walked away. “But I won’t be able to stay here, either. Wish I could.” Halfway to his intended target, an open pipe against the far wall, he set down the pail and mightily relieved himself into it.
Then he zipped up and resumed the journey. I heard his plodding footsteps turn into small splashes. I guess the floor was wet with seeping groundwater over there. Li-min expressed disgust audibly but without language.
I watched him hoist up the bucket and heard hollow echoes as he poured our blended urine into the pipe opening.
Then the plastic bucket fell with a toy thud and Li-min began to do a bizarre dance. He wriggled furiously, keeping his feet grounded and pressing his arms flat against his sides. He didn’t seem to have a good sense of rhythm but I had to admire his sheer physical exertion, even if it was completely uncalled for. I couldn’t hear any music at all, but his body seemed to be responding to something tangible. He was moving as if no one were watching, completely free. I didn’t think the big guy had it in him to express himself that way.
It wasn’t until after he made a final full-body jolt and collapsed that I smelled something burning. Hair?
I coughed as the stench passed over me.
Li-min had been electrocuted.
Was he dead or just knocked out?
“Hey, Li-min!” I called to him to see if he could respond. “You must’ve been a cheerleader in high school, right?”
He remained completely still and didn’t make a sound.
Now was my best chance to break out. I walked to the wall, took the chain in both hands and planted my foot against the wall as if I were about to scale it, then pulled as hard as I could.
Nothing happened.
I knelt down and examined the padlock that held the end of the chain to the lag eye bolted to the wall. It looked pretty solid. If I only had something to try to pick it with.
I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled along the wall to the right. I came across crumbled cement and incredibly a 50NT coin, which I promptly pocketed.
As I reached the end of my chain, I saw two things nestled against the wall only a few feet away—a thin nail and a dead coffee-bean shaped bug on top of it.
I stretched both my arms as wide as possible and closed the fingers of my right hand on the nail. Just as I did, the bug jumped on to the back of my hand. Startled, I dropped the nail. It bounced on the ground and rolled a few inches. It was probably out of reach now.
I lay flat on the floor on my stomach. I inhaled and stretched all four limbs out. I flattened my chest and heard my shoulder joints crack. I managed to touch my right pinky fingertip on the sharp end of the nail. I couldn’t quite encourage the nail closer.
My body contracted. I had become accustomed to the smell of mold but being on the floor made me confront that odor anew. I turned my head and looked at the nail. It looked like a boat on the horizon about to disappear.
I thought about my family and how I wasn’t celebrating Double Ninth with them. We never did when they were alive and well. “Do tourists know about Double Ninth?” I can hear my father say about any holiday, really. “Do you want to lose their business?”
We celebrated the holidays by working, which is a little odd because my parents were also devoted to paying homage to the divine and ancestors. There wasn’t one morning that didn’t start with bows at the temple. All that dedication to business and worship came at the expense of the family.
Why couldn’t my mother and father both been a little taller? Why couldn’t my arms be a little longer?
Double Ninth celebrates senior citizens, which my parents never became. My mother and father had died at 60 and 61, respectively. The fact was, they weren’t my family anymore. They were now my ancestors, people who came before me and sacrificed so I would have a better life.
They sure would be disappointed if I couldn’t get that fucking nail.
I took a deep breath and held it. I clenched my stomach, my hands and even my butt cheeks. I wasn’t sure if failure would lead to my demise, but nonetheless I wanted to get out now, had to get out right now. Had to get that nail now.
Just missed it.
I exhaled and my breath was hot and wet on my sticky arms.
I shook my head to clear my mind. I’m going to reach out, grab that nail and get back to Nancy, in that order. I felt my heart swell and I trembled as adrenaline streamed through my body.
I grunted and whipped my right arm out like I was throwing the last pitch of my life. Which it could be.
This time I managed to slide my index finger against the nail. I nudged it back until I held it in the palm of my hand.
I inched myself off the floor into a crawling position. My knees and my arms shook as I stood up and walked. I grabbed the padlock and turned it over. The nail fit easily in the keyhole.
I had never picked a lock before. I put the nail in my mouth to wet it with my saliva. You know, for luck. As I sucked on the nail, I glanced to the left and saw a small pile of the same nails only a few steps away. I was already so relieved to have gotten my one nail, the sight only made me grin. Well, if I broke this one, I had plenty of backups.
I spat the nail into my right hand and jammed the sharp end into the lock. I poked the nail around. Something rattled inside, but I couldn’t turn the cylinder of the lock. I made like a dentist scraping the plaque off molars. I thought I heard something snap, but the padlock still held.
I pulled the nail to one side, trying to break the cylinder, but instead the nail got stuck. I picked up another nail and stuck it into the other side of the keyhole. I grabbed both nail heads and twisted them. To my surprise, the cylinder popped out and the padlock came away from its shackle.
I was free.
As I gathered the loose chain in my hands, I thought about that Velvet Underground song, “I’m Set Free,” and Lou Reed’s bitter lyric about being set free only to find you’ve been tricked again.
I wasn’t sure what my next step was, but man, this chain was five pounds of weight I didn’t need on my left wrist. I stuck a nail in the handcuff keyhole and rattled it around. When nothing came out of it, I stuck in another. The handcuffs hadn’t looked as well-made as the padlock, but it held better. I’d bet the key was probably a cheap piece of crap stamped out of a metal sheet.
The key! It must be in Li-min’s pocket!
As I made my way over to his prone figure, the burning smell grew progressively worse. It went from smelling like electric piss to charred chicken thighs. Nothing smelled worse to my nose than overcooked food.
Maybe it was Li-min’s thighs that were overcooked. I stood at a healthy distance from his body. If he were breathing, it was too shallow to be visible. His shirt seemed to be tighter than before. I squatted and rubbed my fingers against my palms and tried to discern what was in the scene before me. I didn’t worry about losing my balance and tumbling forward. My squat was rock-solid. I’m from Taipei and I work in a night market.
His body lay on its back in a pool of water so thin even the most playful toddler would barely get a splash out of it. His clothes were essentially dry, apart from a big wet patch around his crotch. Li-min’s eyes were wide open in shock. Some saliva bubbles had formed between his lips, which looked bluish and very dead.
Was there a live current running through his body? If I touched him and felt a shock, would I be able to retreat, or would I be unable to break away from the dance of death?
I returned to the area of my former captivity and came back with a handful of nails. I stood on a dry section of the floor and threw a nail that glanced off his shoulder. I didn’t see any sparks.
I’ve been pretty lucky so far, and if the ancestors were indeed supporting me, I didn’t think my streak was about to end here. I held my breath and quickly jabbed Li-min’s arm. It was as stiff as a statue, and luckily it didn’t electrocute me. I pressed my entire hand flat against it. Nothing.
Li-min was definitely dead. I began to feel a little creeped out that I had touched a dead body. I had never done that. “Sorry, Li-min,” I whispered. He might have done a lot of bad in his life, but he was kind to me. Well, he did still owe me from knocking me out.
Newly galvanized, I slid my hand down his chest, aiming for his right front pocket. The second I felt anything like a tingle or even a static shock, I was going to leap back and roll away. Lessons learned in grade-school calisthenics would serve me well.
My fingers crossed the belt and entered the pocket, encountering something bulky. I pulled out a thin wallet without much fuss, impressing myself. I could have been an accomplished pickpocket.
I flipped open the wallet. Li-min had about NT$300 and an MRT card. His government ID was made out to Liu Li-min. Was he Ju-lan’s brother, or another relative? That would account for her contempt for him and his ability to absorb the blows without reaction.
My sleeping shorts had one pocket and I shoved the wallet into it.
I crouched down and sent my fingers into his pocket again. I encountered a second object—his phone!
I was so excited that my hand and then my entire arm began trembling. Wait, that wasn’t my nerves. Or rather, it was my nerves, but it was a live current making my arm jerk uncontrollably.
I think my hand was clamped tightly around the phone, making my fist a little too large to pull out of the pocket. I felt my heart speed up.
With all my strength, I pushed off my legs. My hand tore free and the phone went flying. As I crashed hard on my left shoulder, I watched the phone smash against the fake wall that concealed the exit. I heard it hit the ground and the faint echo of a piece of plastic breaking off and coming loose.
I stood up and looked at the body. The key was probably in his other pocket or a back pocket, but there was no way to check them safely. I walked slowly to the phone, delaying disappointment.
It was worse than I thought. The entire plastic backplate of the phone lay about a foot away from the unit itself. I picked up the partially exposed phone gingerly in case it had a residual charge. Then I pressed the power button.
The screen lit up to the game that Li-min had been playing. He didn’t have a password lock on it. I exited the game. He didn’t have a browser on this stupid thing but at least a text-messaging app was here.
It was no surprise there wasn’t phone reception. My only hope was getting on WiFi. I recalled that Li-min wasn’t a tech-savvy guy. I opened up the phone’s settings and it asked if I wanted to set up email on the device. Instead, I went to the WiFi option and connected to the Taipei 101 Parking network I had discovered earlier.
When I had that connection secured I opened the messenger app. The phone emitted a doorbell—Li-min’s alert sound—and a message popped up. Battery at 5%.
Gan!
I opened the chat window and punched in Nancy’s number. Shit, were her last two digits 89 or 98? I hadn’t had to type them because my phone knew them, freeing extra brain cells to store more music. I paused for a moment. I had entered her phone number in my contacts on our first date. I hadn’t punched them in since.
I wrote, nancy its jing-nan i am being held in an underground garage near taipei 101 not sure where but track the signal in this text love you and sent it to both numbers.
I then sent a second message, i was kidnapped by that woman ju-lan the b&b woman!
A message popped back from the 89 number as the power level ticked down to 1 percent: we saw the video, frankie is helping them look for you.
Then the phone died.
Going through the dead man’s bundle of belongings gave me a ghoulish thrill. I found the phone AC adaptor in the right pocket of his jacket and separate bags of baby carrots and peanuts in the left.
Charging the phone was a necessity but I lost my mind a little bit when I saw the food.
I ate the warm and slimy carrots first. A piece got stuck in my windpipe and I coughed until I managed to spit out the phlegm-covered offending bit. Then I resumed eating, even though my throat was sore, because I was so famished. Carrots never tasted so sweet and yet when I broke into the peanuts, I found that I was much more hungry for protein. Peanuts were something I had banned from my kitchen years ago. Tourists have all kinds of allergies and the peanut ones were the worst. Consequently, I haven’t eaten peanuts in ages. Wow, they were good!
I was a little thirsty after so I sucked out the last drops of moisture from the carrot bag.
I took the charging cord from the jacket and tried to match the plug to the port in the phone. There didn’t seem to be a port. I had a thought and picked up the phone’s backplate. The port was attached to its bottom panel.
I put the phone back together and squeezed. I felt it snap together in one section but as I opened my hand, it came apart and a fingernail-sized curved wire fell out into my palm. I hoped it wasn’t important.
There were plenty of four-cluster outlets around the garage. I wasn’t really sure why. Did they expect people to charge things as they stood by their parked cars? Or maybe the construction company owed an electronics supplier a favor and overbought. I held the phone together in one hand and plugged in the prongs with the other.
Either the phone couldn’t be charged, which was entirely possible, or the outlets were dead, also entirely possible. I moved on to the second and third clusters. Maybe they were all dead.
Just to exhaust all possibilities, I unplugged the cord from the phone port and cautiously touched it to my tongue while the other end was plugged into the wall. Another shock to my system wouldn’t mean anything at this point.
Nothing. No spark, no shock. What could I do at this point? It was not like I could pull the fake wall open.
Or could I?
I walked up to the wall and quickly found the seam of the moving door. I pressed against it and I swore I could feel it give just the slightest. I managed to get a fingerhold in. I wedged in one hand and pulled like I wanted to tear my arm off. It squeaked open an inch more. I stuck in my other hand and encouraged it to open another inch. Now a small but thick metal tab stuck out from the sliding wall. I peeked in and saw that it was connected with the mechanism within the door itself.
I wound my chain around the tab and grabbed the ends like reins. I thought about the long arc of my short life so far. It wasn’t going to end now. I was going to pull this fucking door open all the way. I pulled the ends of the chain as if I were endowed with the strength of every water buffalo that strained to pull a plow to feed all my ancestors in Taiwan.
The wall inched along until I heard something inside it crack like a metal bone. I stumbled as everything came to a halt. I resumed the stance and pulled until the chain links burned angry red Olympics logos into my hands but I made no progress. A little more than a foot was all I was going to get. Actually less, when you took into account the random tabs of metal that stuck out from both the sliding door and its sheath.
Was there anything I should grab before attempting to leave the room for good? My eye went to Li-min’s jacket. Why not? I could always ditch it if I didn’t need it.
I tossed it through the gap in the door. I also passed through the tarp I had slept on. I wanted to push out the inflatable mattress as well, but reconsidered. I’d have to deflate it to get it through and there was no way I was going to waste my breath reinflating the whole thing again.
I looked through the gap at the jacket and the tarp. The gap itself was probably only two feet long. Shit, what if I couldn’t get through it? I cracked my knuckles. No. I would make it out.
I gathered up the chain and tossed it underhand through the gap and began to slide out my body, leading with my left side.
Something sharp drew across my abdomen and my calves. This was just the beginning of my passage and I could only hope that minor superficial pains would be all I experienced. I pushed on and I got to an area that opened up slightly. I began to breathe easier. Then I encountered similar obstructions in my midsection and legs. Then my left leg stepped through to the other side.
I heard something from above. Was that a car? It could be anybody, not just Ju-lan. Then again, this garage didn’t seem to get much traffic.
I became frantic and pushed my body against the pain. The car was getting louder. I was almost entirely free when my shirt got caught above my right shoulder blade. It hurt more when I tried to go down so I stood on my toes and tried to cartwheel out. My shirt began to tear. I got both arms out on the other side and pulled myself through. My shirt tore.
The car sounded like it was right on top of me. It was relatively dim and this room was twice as big as the one I had left. Two vehicles were parked here. One was a hatchback and a delivery truck was parked directly in front of it. I gathered up the jacket and the tarp and decided to head for the hatchback.
Wait! The sliding wall was still a little open! I didn’t want Ju-lan to know right away that I had escaped. I shoved the door back but it wouldn’t budge. Then I slammed my body against it and the wall snapped shut. I bolted for the hatchback as I heard the car make that final turn.