Ghost Month (34 page)

“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.

I
T 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.

I gasped.

“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.

“J
ING-NAN
!” N
ANCY 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.

N
ANCY 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.”