Huh. I thought Beijing outlawed donkey carts.
‘They want me to tell them everything about you,’ Chuckie says rapidly. ‘They want to know who your friends are, what you do, where you go. I tell them you, me, we just, we just …’ He trails off. His hands are shaking. ‘We just living, that’s all. Just living.’
Them.
‘Foreigners, in suits?’
‘Foreigners? Why should I worry about foreigners?’ he asks, regaining some of his typical bravado. ‘What can foreigners do to me?’
‘Nothing, I guess,’ I say, hoping this isn’t going to lead into one of Chuckie’s rants about China’s Hundred Years of Humiliation at the hands of foreign imperialists.
If it wasn’t the Suits, who was it?
‘This is China. Chinese people have stood up!’
‘So they were Chinese?’
‘Of course they were Chinese!’
Just like that, he deflates. When it comes down to it, Chuckie’s too much of a fuckup free spirit to make a good foaming-at-the-mouth fenqing.
‘Police, they say,’ he whispers. ‘But no IDs.’
He gets out a couple wrinkled ten-yuan notes and tosses them on the table. ‘My train leaves from West Train station in a couple hours. I better go.’ He looks away. ‘You should be careful, Ellie,’ he says. ‘You should not stay here.’
And that’s our big good-bye. I sit. Drink my coffee. Watch the passing scene outside the window. Wonder what the fuck I’m going to do now.
There’s a surveillance camera in the ceiling above the DVDs, one of those domed things that you see everywhere you go these days. Not just in China, in the U.S. too. For security, right?
I stare at the thing, at its unblinking black eye. Wonder who’s at the other end staring back.
They’re making tapes, I tell myself, to catch shoplifters. It’s not like there’s somebody watching me right now. Is there?
I pay for the coffee and head back upstairs.
Chuckie hasn’t taken a lot with him. The guitar amp, computer parts, books, and Yao Ming stand-up still clutter the living room.
I go into my little room. Stare at my narrow futon. Think I don’t ever want to sleep there again. Like I ever could sleep there without thinking of John, of lying there waiting for him to do whatever he wanted to do.
All of a sudden, I really want to pack up my stuff and get out of here.
I think about the logistics of this. I’ve got some clothes. A couple cheap pieces of furniture. My laptop. I mean, what the fuck do I have, anyway?
I open up the little cupboard by my bed. That’s where I keep my souvenirs. Things I thought I cared about.
Here’s a little Beanie Baby. A neon orange-and-red squid. I always loved that stupid squid. It’s just so funny. It makes me smile when I look at it. I throw it onto a pile of clothes to pack.
There’s a little jewelry box from Trey. I don’t have to open it; I know what’s inside: a gold cross necklace studded with tiny diamonds. He gave it to me a long time ago, right after we were married. I don’t wear it any more. I wonder why I’ve kept it.
I take the rest of the stuff out of the cupboard and dump it on the bed. A funny figurine Lao Zhang gave me, Mao as Buddha. A pennant from some soccer – oh, excuse me – football club called Arsenal from British John.
And here is that flat, hard box covered with dark blue flocking, about the size of a thin paperback. My service ribbons. My Purple Heart. I think: why did I bring this with me all the way to China? I don’t even want to open it. Why does it mean anything at all?
I throw it on top of the clothes. Because I still can’t bring myself to leave it behind.
I walk out of Chuckie’s place with a duffel bag and a backpack. That’s it.
By now, it’s close to five o’clock. I’m supposed to start work at Says Hu in an hour. I stand at the curb for a while, watching the cars and the buses and the people passing by me in this blur of noise – shouting in Chinese, horns going off, phones with their stupid ringtones, a loudspeaker blasting bad Hong Kong pop – and I think: I just want to be someplace quiet for once.
But for now? I might as well go to work.
I spring for a cab to take me the couple of miles to Says Hu, thinking I’ll get there early and have a beer.
The minute I walk inside, I can see that’s not how things are going to go.
British John is trying to pick a table up off the ground. It’s tilted on its side, one leg buckled under like it took a cheap cut block. A broken chair leans against the wall, beneath a dartboard.
‘Hey,’ I say. ‘Crazy night?’
‘Ellie.’
He crosses quickly to the door and locks it.
I stand there feeling the weight of the duffel bag on my shoulder.
‘Let’s have a drink,’ British John says quickly, grabbing a bottle from the bar.
‘Might as well.’
I pull up a barstool and throw the duffel on the floor and the backpack on top of that. British John pours us both shots of Jack and lifts his in a toast.
I don’t even like Jack Daniels.
‘What are we toasting?’ I ask.
British John shrugs. We clink shot glasses in silence. And drink.
‘So,’ I finally say, ‘you firing me, or what?’
British John shakes his head. ‘Ellie, it’s not like that.’
‘So what’s it like, then? Who came and talked to you? What did they tell you?’
I guess I’m pretty pissed off, because by the time I finish, I’m practically shaking.
‘First I thought they were Chengguan. Just the usual shakedown.’
Urban Management officials. A police force found in every Chinese city, mostly demobbed soldiers and thugs, officially in charge of keeping order on the streets, cracking down on illegal vendors and the like. They like beating on migrants and extorting whatever ‘fines’ they can extract to supplement their crappy salaries.
British John pounds his shot and then pours himself another. I can see the tremor in his hand, and it’s not from the booze. ‘I don’t know who they were. They asked a lot of questions. Gave me a number and told me to call them when you showed up. Told me I’d lose the business if I didn’t cooperate.’
‘I didn’t do anything.’ I hear myself saying it, and I have to admit, I sound like a sullen five-year-old.
‘It has to be something.’ British John sounds really frustrated. ‘Look, I want to help, but you’ve got to tell me what’s going on.’
I shrug helplessly. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t. It’s got something to do with Lao Zhang and some Uighur friend of his. But that’s all I know.’
British John tops off our shot glasses. ‘You can’t keep on working here,’ he finally says.
I toss down my drink. ‘Okay. Fine. Whatever.’
‘Ellie.’
I stand up. ‘What?’
British John reaches into the cash register and pulls out a wad of bills. ‘Here,’ he says awkwardly, holding it out.
‘I don’t want it.’
‘Don’t