Ghost Month (40 page)

Almost everybody in Taipei usually dried their clothes on an outdoor rack or line, but nobody left their clothes out during Ghost Month. Ghosts could slip into your clothes and then possess your body when you dressed. People resorted to washing their clothes in a tub, hand-wringing them and then draping them in several wet layers across their furniture. The clothes ended up smelling as moldy as the dead.

I tried to focus on the smell of the incense and followed it to the rear hall.

I approached the large metal column before Mazu. I figured that since my dream took place on a beach, it was probably best to let Julia’s diploma burn before the goddess who presided over the sea.

I removed the diploma from my wallet and unfolded it. It seemed smaller than I remembered. I drew closer to a large incense brazier, holding the diploma respectfully horizontal with both hands.

The brazier was about twelve feet tall, the bottom half filled with sand with hundreds of joss sticks stuck in it. Four minor gods held a large gold ingot in each hand as a handle to hoist up the top half, which looked like a big brass pith helmet. There was plenty of room to reach in and plant your joss stick or wave a charm through the incense smoke for good luck. The heat coming off was enough to burn paper.

I pulled the diploma taut and waved it over the hot white ash of the tips of the incense sticks. When the paper burst into flame, I would drop it.

Something miraculous began to take place.

Tiny brown squiggles began to appear on the certificate. They looked like bugs at first. Then they grew to form letters and words.

Someone had written on the diploma using invisible ink!

I waved the entire certificate around and made sure the diploma was heated evenly.

A few hundred words were written neatly in English on the back of the diploma.

I retreated to a meditation room on the side of the temple and sat down to read the hidden message.

Her penmanship broke down into blobs—probably because the toothpick was wearing away—as she ended with, “I will love you forever.”

I folded up the diploma and put it back in my wallet. So this was Julia’s secret message to me. Funny. I didn’t love America when I was there, either, but I was willing to stick it out for her.

I also wanted her to be happy, though. I wouldn’t have wanted
to make her sad her whole life so that I could live out my stupid promise. She must have felt bad coming back to Taiwan, even though her father told her it was the right thing to do.

My mouth felt filmy. How could I forgive myself for putting that burden on Julia?

I got my answer by looking up. There, an idol of Guanyin, the goddess of mercy, looked down upon me. Guanyin, whose statue I had turned away from in the park when I first heard about Julia’s murder. Tears streamed down my face and leaked into my trembling mouth.

Even if the goddess wasn’t real, even if it was just an idol, it represented the idea of forgiveness and let viewers reflect upon their lives.

Was it really so wrong to have temples and superstitions if, in the end, they allowed people to find some inner peace in this horrible world?

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I left the temple and stood out front by one of the waterfalls. I called Nancy.

“Hey,” I said. “I found Julia’s hidden message. It was on her diploma!”

“What does it say?” I could hear crowds of people around her.

“Basically that she didn’t really like the US and she missed Taiwan.” I put one foot up on a stone fence. “She knew she wasn’t going to see me again.”

“Did she say she loved you?”

“Yes.”

“I see.” I heard the sounds of crinkling bags.

“Nancy, what are you doing?”

“I’ve just bought some more shoes. The ones I wore last night hurt a little bit.”

“Hey, wait, you don’t have to go back to the
binlang
stand. It’s over.”

I heard her groan. “But why? I kind of got a charge out of it. It was empowering to try out my sex appeal. Besides, I already moved a research lab day to go again tonight.”

The first night had gone without a hitch. Why shouldn’t the second?

“Are you sure you want to go? There’s no reason to, now.”

“Of course I want to go! Besides, you never know what else the
lamei
knows. I could push and try to find out tonight.”

“This is the second and last time, though,” I said. “We’re pulling the plug after tonight.”

“Ohhh kayyy,” she said. Nancy was thoroughly disappointed. I hoped she wouldn’t be all mopey after tonight.

When I got to the night market, I saw that Dwayne was keen on seeing Xiaomei again. We had planned on dropping in at the
binlang
stand again to see how things were going on Nancy’s second night, but someone was more prepared than I was.

“Hey,” I asked Dwayne, “what did you do to your face?” His upper lip was clean, and his stubble was neatly configured into a perfectly straight line on either side of his chin. It made him look a little devilish.

“I broke out a facial-hair trimmer and did some sculpting.” He pointed at his face with both index fingers. “You like it?”

“It doesn’t look like you, Dwayne.”

“You look smarter,” offered Frankie the Cat.

Dwayne winced. “Tell me I look younger.”

“All right, you look younger.”

I said, “You look more civilized. Less aboriginal.”

“You little …” He raised his hands and started at me. I dodged to the left. Dwayne stopped and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “You’re lucky I don’t want to wrinkle this shirt. Or get blood on it.” I chuckled, and Dwayne caught me off guard. He grabbed my left wrist and forced my face up to his mouth.

“Look up here,” he said cheerfully and flared his nostrils. “The kit included accessories to trim my nose hairs.”

“God, get away from me!”

He let me break out of his grip too easily. He really was worried about his clothes looking good. So worried that he ripped holes in a garbage bag and wore it over his shirt to keep the grill smell off. “You’re going to sweat so badly in that thing,” I told him.

He laughed as he tossed charcoal under the main grill with gloved hands. “So what? Girls like sweat. It causes a chemical reaction in their brains when they smell it.” I shook my head. “What do you know? You’re not a man of the world.”

I put my hands in my pockets and walked to the front grill. The inside counter was now between me and Dwayne. “I wanted to tell Nancy to call tonight off,” I said. “She’s getting her kicks out of it, so she’s doing it just one more time.”

“What!” said Dwayne as he shucked off his gloves. “After I went through all this trouble to look good!”

“I already know enough about Julia to realize it’s all in the past. It’s not that she doesn’t matter to me anymore, but it’s over.” I looked up at the sky. “My future is with Nancy.” I noticed Frankie smiling and nodding.

Dwayne washed up and began skewering meats. I was surprised by the hurt look on his face. “What about my future with Xiaomei, Jing-nan?” asked Dwayne. “Isn’t that important? She could be the one.”

“You can always go back by yourself,” I said.

“I need a wingman,” said Dwayne.

I wet a rag with cleanser and wiped down the front sign and counter. When I saw that Dwayne was busy doing the preliminary grilling on the skewers, I snuck over to his Wolf classic motorcycle.

I had to get him back for embarrassing me in front of the
binlang
girls the night before. I pulled off the Prince Nezha statue suction-cupped to the top of the tank. The prince was a boy who had divine weapons, flew around on magical shoes and was featured in the classic Chinese novel
Journey to the West
. Most people these days probably best know Prince Nezha as a costumed character who appears at parades, protests and store openings, dancing to techno music. You can’t miss him. He’s got five mounted flags stuck in his back.

I stuck Dwayne’s idol in my front pocket with Prince Nezha’s wind-fire-wheel shoes pointing up. Let’s see how Mr. Tough Guy does without his little good-luck charm.

D
WAYNE GREW FIDGETY AS
the night went on. I think it was the lack of customers. At around eleven I told him that he could head off for the betel-nut stand and that I would meet him there.

I heard him fire up the motorcycle and idle the engine a little longer than normal. I was sure he was freaking out over his lost god.
I had half a heart to hand it back to him, but he eventually pulled out. He must have been lovesick to drive without the prince.

He could to talk to Xiaomei all he wanted. It isn’t weird for the beauties to have stalkerish fans who shower them with gifts of money or iPhones. The
lamei
probably wouldn’t mind as long as Dwayne kept buying
binlang
and kept his hands off Xiaomei’s ass.

At around one in the morning, Frankie and I packed in the stand.

“What are you doing tonight, Frankie?” I asked.

He effortlessly pulled up the heavy rubber mats from behind the main grill. “The usual. Wash my hair, paint my toenails.”

“Do you want to go to the
binlang
stand with me and Dwayne?” Frankie piled up the mats in the street, where he would hose them down.

“I stay away from that stuff. Terrible for your teeth. Causes mouth cancer, too.”

I wheeled in the front grill. “You don’t have to chew it, Frankie. You can just, I don’t know, hang out with us.”

He wiped his face with the back of his long-sleeved shirt. “I hang out with you two all night! That’s enough!”

“But it would be casual, not in the work environment.”

“Work is all I know.”

Frankie was an older guy, but he certainly lived in the zeitgeist of Taiwan. People live to work and definitely to eat, too, but they never really live, period.

“It might be fun, Frankie.”

“I’ve already had enough fun. You two enjoy tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

A
S
I
RODE TO
Hsinchu City, I wondered how much I would have missed out on by clinging to the past. I was so lucky to have met Nancy. I still had to come to terms with the fact that my first love, my childhood sweetheart, was gone, and I could never replace her.

Wow, I couldn’t believe I just thought of Julia as my “first” love.

What else did I need to let go of? Probably this moped.

I could take Nancy around on a motorcycle. We could tour the island like those elderly men on bikes in that bank commercial,
trying to live life to its fullest. Well, maybe not quite like them. We could go faster. My father said there wasn’t much down south except scenery and ancient history, but I had yet to really get a good look at our homeland, the fields and flooded rice paddies of the
benshengren
.

Maybe I should get a motorcycle like that one parked on the shoulder.

Wasn’t that Dwayne’s bike?

I pulled up next to it and checked the gas tank. There was a little circle of residue where the prince idol had been. The bike was definitely Dwayne’s. Why was it parked here, a few kilometers from the exit to the betel-nut stand?

It seemed to be in decent shape. If he had run out of gas, there were stations close enough to walk to, and he probably wouldn’t have let it come to that before filling up, anyway.

I became worried. I got back on the highway and took the next exit. I reached a small road where there was no barrier on the sidewalk and walked my moped off into the grass. I saw an unlit building up ahead, but something told me not to simply ride up to it. I parked my moped next to a tree and walked on, staying out of the misty light from the occasional street lamp.

The road I was walking on wasn’t part of a real highway. It was an abandoned service road to a semiconductor plant that had closed years before, after China had stolen the jobs. Real-estate information was sloppily slapped on top of the dilapidated original sign. As I approached the parking lot, I heard something up ahead. The squawk of a walkie-talkie.