Ghost Month (35 page)

“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.”

“O
NE 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.”