Incensed (24 page)

I decided to pull an old trick. I ducked into a 7-Eleven on the corner and picked up more soda to fill my stomach for the time being. On my way out, I coughed into my elbow, unleashing a muffled belch, and wondered where the fuck my cousin was tonight and what she was doing.

•••

I had begun to
resent the student activism. The movement had kidnapped Nancy for another night. They'd already occupied a government building, blocked off major streets and even held an outdoor concert. What could they possibly do next?

I worked open my cranky kitchen window to let out the fried-rice smell that collected near the ceiling like gloom. I pulled the retractable mosquito screen across the window frame. Cool night air rolled in over me and I shivered.

The dogs were gathered in the park making yipping sounds. Willie was facing off with a new challenger, a smallish mutt that had to have some koala DNA. It was Monday night. This was a bonus fight on an unscheduled night.

Willie patiently endured the unfair fight. He leered at his puny opponent, not bothering to dodge its many feints. The little guy soon realized that the white dog wasn't taking the fight seriously and jumped on the alpha's face.

Enraged, Willie knocked down the challenger and pinned him to the ground with his left paw. The little dog thrashed but its neck remained exposed. As the pack closed in, anxious for a kill, Willie the white dog lowered his ears and growled.

Everybody was calling for blood. Even the loser seemed to scream that the white dog didn't have the balls to do it.

Willie hunkered down and curled his lips. I, along with the rest of the dogs, expected to see an extremely bloody end to the conflict. Instead, the alpha muscled his way out of the pack and walked out of the park. His steps were resolute without seeming stiff.

They all watched the white dog leave. Its bright white fur remained visible for blocks. The forlorn loser stood up, shook off the dirt and then lay down on its side.

•••

With my search for
Mei-ling shut down, it was back to Unknown Pleasures as usual on Tuesday night. Back into Johnny mode. Fun and exciting food mode. “Hey, guys, put that on Instagram!” mode. I began to get that hollow feeling again.

Early on, after seven
p.m
., a shadow fell upon me. Literally. It was Li Ji-shen, the Chinese tour guide that I had met in the
youtiao
place. He stood over me and swayed slightly.

“Hey look,
taibazi
! I'm here! I made it to your joint!” It was all right for him to call me a dick now. We were friends and we had at least one story between us.

“Mr. Li,” I said, “you should have brought one of your tour groups with you.”

He grabbed my shoulder, jamming his thumb in my clavicle. Men like him felt the need to be a little rough when being friendly. They didn't want to come off as sissies!

Mr. Li looked back, held up a red flag and waved it. “I did bring them! They're behind me, caught up with buying pineapple cakes.” I heard the Chinese people before I saw them. Mr. Li had brought at least thirty people. No, wait. Actually about fifty people. The group of retirees seemed to be multiplying as they advanced. Both Dwayne and Frankie came out from around the counter to observe. Dwayne let out a long whistle. No wonder the Communists overwhelmed the KMT in the Chinese Civil War—they had the ability to replicate spontaneously.

Dwayne scrambled back to his station while Frankie shuffled away, lit a cigarette and pretended to ignore the tour guide.

Mr. Li put his hand back on my shoulder. “So,” he said in a slow drawl, “I'm sure you appreciate me bringing all these people over.”

“I sure do. Thank you very much. I think they'll really like my food.”

He tilted his head back and smiled. “I was thinking that there should be some compensation.”

“I always give a discount to big groups,” I said. Mr. Li withdrew his hand and crossed his arms. I knew what he was driving at, but I wanted him to say first how much of a kickback he had in mind. It gave me more bargaining power.

“I was thinking about
my
compensation. Sorry I didn't make that clear. I'm thinking that for this group, and for future groups, you could contribute to my, uh, education.” He said “education” in a way that one would deliciously deliver a bad pun.

The NT$1,000 bill featured a bunch of little kids in a classroom, their hands on a globe. One thousand NTs was about thirty US bucks. That wasn't so bad, considering it was about fifty cents a head. I was a businessman, though. I had a deep-seated need to make a not-so-bad deal better.

“Here's what I had in mind, Mr. Li. I think I'll just give you a ticket to see a ball game.” The face of the NT$500 bill presented a bunch of Little Leaguers in mid-jump after victory. We locked eyes briefly before he broke away.

“
Taibazi
! How you mistreat your fellow countryman! We're brothers, don't you know?”

I shook my head. “I'm an only child,” I said, “and an orphan.”

“How you do me wrong!” He turned away and put an open hand behind his back, the crablike fingers running upside-down in the air. I shoved five NT$100 bills into his palm just as the advance guard of his Chinese tourists swarmed into Unknown Pleasures.

“Very scary artwork!” said a woman shivering in a coat that was too thin. Chinese tourists underdressed because they thought Taiwan was always hot.

“Black mountains, what does it mean?” asked a man, peering at my painted wall through glasses with iridescent grease marks.

Even if I wanted to speak up and say that the jagged lines were radio waves from a pulsar on the cover of Joy Division's first album, I would maybe get only a single word in.

“It's Taoist,” Mr. Li boomed. “It's the theme of endless mountains in the dark that one can overcome!”

“Oh, oh, oh,” said the Chinese masses. Mr. Li turned to me and gave me a conspiratorial grin that faded quickly. He leaned into me and said, “When Taiwan is finally reunited with the motherland, I'll remember your little insult.”

“That might be a while,” I said.

“We'll see, Jing-nan, we'll see. You think you know it all, don't you? You even tried to lie to me about that girl you were with. She's not sixteen. She's eighteen.”

My hearing cut out in my left ear as blood rushed into my head. Ever get the feeling that you're not going to like the answer to a question but you go ahead and ask it anyway? “Why do you think she's eighteen?”

Mr. Li beamed, proud that he had something over me. “Wouldn't you like to know!”

I caught a movement over Mr. Li's shoulder. It was Dwayne waving to Frankie and me. I knew Dwayne wanted help. The Chinese tourists yelled at each other joyously and pressed right up against the counter of Unknown Pleasures, fingers on the glass. Dwayne would have to withstand this assault by himself because I needed to hear more about my cousin before I could tend to my business.

“Mr. Li, please tell me how you know?” I asked nicely.

He played with the collar of his shirt. “I like you, Jing-nan. Let me give you some advice. Every man loves sex. It's in our blood. But that doesn't mean you need to be seen with the girls in public. Y'know what I mean?”

“Where did you see the girl?” I asked numbly.

“At the hotel I'm staying at—the Eastern Princess. I slipped some money to the overnight guy at the front desk for some entertainment for some of the men. He opened up a suite and two girls came in for a lez show.” Mr. Li popped a peanut candy into his mouth. He continued talking through his chewing. “We were told there would be no penetration right off the bat and that was fine. There are some really old guys in the group. They can't process much beyond tits, anyway. Me, I remember everything about a girl, and I definitely remembered one girl's face.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“Not much. After the show, I gave her money and said thank you, of course.”

“How do you know she's eighteen?” I asked again. Don't tell me that you had sex with her, because I'd have to stab you right now and repeatedly.

He frowned. “Whenever you have things like that in a hotel, they're always at least eighteen,” he said with both open palms thrust to me. “Just to make sure everything's legal. Don't you know that?”

I straightened up. “That girl is my cousin Mei-ling,” I said. “She really is only sixteen.” I was floating outside of myself.

Mr. Li cocked his head and whistled, sending peanut shards bouncing off my chest. Misogyny, judgment, and guilt all came together in his thoughts and words. “Oh, fuck, I'm sorry for your family. It was a semi-decent show but I promise I won't watch it again.”

“Eastern Princess, huh?” I asked.

“That's right.”

I began to walk away from Unknown Pleasures.

“Hey, Jing-nan!” cried Dwayne. “You're leaving on one of the busiest nights ever? One of the few times that we could actually use your help?”

“I have to do something!” I yelled. Way to go, Jing-nan. Great explanation.

“What!” yelled Dwayne.

I heard Frankie bark in response. “C'mon, Dwayne, we can handle this together!”

I raced up the
escalator at the Jiantan MRT stop. I paced the platform, my heart and head pounding. What to do?

Eastern Princess is a recently built hotel in the Xinyi District meant to cater to the sensibilities of Chinese tourists. It was in the shadow of Taipei 101 and a shuttle bus ran between the hotel and the direct entrance to the tower's luxury shopping levels. Eastern Princess was also next to the National Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall so the Chinese could pay tribute to the father of their nation and pray (or as close as Chinese people can come to praying) that Taiwan would be returned to the fold soon to complete the revolution Sun had sparked.

Silently observing both the Eastern Princess and Taipei 101 is the elegantly named Martial Law Era Political Victim Memorial Park. Set in a hillside to the south, and within shouting distance of the hotel, the “memorial park” is actually a graveyard of enemies, both perceived and real, of the Chiang Kai-shek regime. Frankie the Cat could have easily ended up in one of those cramped graves, marked with a brick-sized stone.

Eastern Princess was supposedly built on former execution grounds. Superstitious Taiwanese never wanted to build anything on the land out of fear of ghosts, and so the land sat neglected until a developer came along and proposed to build the hotel to accommodate Chinese tourists. The permits were issued and the building went up in record time, constructed mostly by foreign laborers who were ignorant of the area's ghoulish past.

The train's doors opened,
springing me out of my thoughts. I could try to go to Eastern Princess myself and find out who was in charge of procuring entertainment for guests. I chuckled bitterly. What were they going to tell me? Not only was I not staying there, they would know right away I wasn't Chinese.

At best I would get a brush-off. At worst, a double-teamed beating in the trash-compactor room.

No wonder Mei-ling said she was in a place I couldn't go! You had to be a Chinese tourist to get in! At this point, I needed to call it in to a man with connections.

I remained on the platform as the train's closing-doors chime rang out. I watched the train leave the station before dialing Big Eye.

“Jing-nan,” he said in a flat voice. I could already feel his eyes boring into me.

“Big Eye, I think I know where we can find Mei-ling.”

It seemed an eternity before he spoke. “Where?”

“The Eastern Princess hotel. Someone I know saw her there.”

“She's staying there?”

Oh, shit. I had to choose my words carefully. “She was performing there.” That wasn't a lie. “She had a show.”

“Singing her crappy songs for Chinese people,” he murmured. “I hope they're paying her well.”

“If you send someone there the front desk can probably locate her.”

“Eastern Princess, huh?” It was rare to hear indecision in Big Eye's voice. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

His throat roared like a coffee roaster. “What do you mean ‘pretty sure'? Yes or no, are you sure?”

“Okay! I'm sure!” Mr. Li, for the sake of my life please don't make a liar out of me.

“Hah,” said Big Eye. “Out of all the fucking places. That's Black Sea turf. Wood Duck's faction. He's still sore about the money I took from him. I mean, won from him.”

“I'm sure he'll help you get your daughter back.”

Big Eye gave a falling grunt. “He's a bad guy.”

“He's a human being.”

“No, he's not. You don't know him at all, Jing-nan. He's the most ruthless bastard ever. One time the seat of his pants ripped and a top guy of his laughed. He threw that guy off a cliff.”

I bit my lip. “Maybe if you give him his money back, he'll help you.”

I heard him slap his table hard enough to rattle his glass. “What! You never give the money back! That's not an option! First of all, it's an insult to suggest that someone is sore over money, even if they really are. Secondly, there's no such thing as a refund in our culture. You know that! You run a business!”

I couldn't help but nod. My father taught me to think of the cash box as a black hole that a shiny penny's glint couldn't escape from. If the customer's mad about their food, give him three of something else in exchange.

“I called you as soon as I found out,” I lied. “Now I'm going to get out of your way and let you handle it.”

I heard his fingers typing on a keyboard. “Hold on, Jing-nan. Where are you right now?”

I began to walk to the down escalator. “I'm at work.”

“No you're not. You're at a train station.”