The Foreigner (15 page)

"Can I have your purse?" I asked Angel when she returned.

"My… this?" She had a red beaded silk purse with a zippered top and a braided cord slung over her shoulder. Against her dun-colored fatigues, the pouch looked odd and migratory, like an exotic bird blown off course. She was unwilling, but these were extreme circumstances. Reluctantly, she emptied the contents and put them in her pockets.

Together, we managed to get almost the whole of my mother into the silk lining. I zipped the top and hung the bag across my chest, testing. The weight rested lightly but with heft against my side.

"It’s just temporary," I told Angel, who was smoothing her blunt-cut hair behind her ears in a studied way. "Until I find her a permanent home."

Unexpectedly, Angel’s face grew cloudy with emotion, and she seized my elbow, giving it a hard, painful squeeze.

"You can’t
stay
here," she said. "I never thought you should stay here. It’s not
safe
. What if they come
back
?"

"Don’t be silly. There isn’t anything to come back for," I said but without conviction, for her words raised the specter of Poison, his gray little teeth grinning at me and the smell of cherry candies as he said, "You
have
." He didn’t know where I lived, of course, but there were any number of ways to find out. He might have followed me; Atticus might have told him, or Little P, unaware of the debt. I would have to be careful now; perhaps I was being followed; something would have to be worked out. The late hour and the alcohol made my thoughts thick, gauzy. I pawed through them heavily to hear Angel saying, "Come back with me. At least for tonight."

I had no choice, really. Angel had ridden her bike; I clambered up precariously behind her, clutching my carryall, and off we went, she pedaling laboriously as I wobbled along.

It was the hour of the night when cities show themselves. Traffic lights blinked, off-line; street dogs wandered in the alleys, carrying away trash and scraps, shitting in the gutters. The pavements gave off steam like a long, collective breath, and the smell of open drains hung in the air. In my mother’s stories about the old country, Taipei had been a land with a single train going to and from school, a church and a priest, fresh sugarcane, candy stores, earthquakes, curfew. One more death, I thought vaguely, sleepy—death of a memory, of an image.

"Quit
listing,
" said Angel, swerving. My head jerked up; I had fallen asleep. "Or else we’re going straight into the gutter."

When we reached Gongguan, the night market had all but died out, stalls shuttered, the second-run theater closed, only a few noodle shops doing small business, like candles in the dark. Angel propped the bike in the entryway, and we went up. She waved me into the apartment furtively, like a convict, without turning on the lights. She lived with her grandparents. We seemed to be treading down a hallway of books, scrolls, another little shrine with incense burning in the corner.

She slid a pair of paper doors open and paused. "There’s only the one bed," she whispered.

"Fine," I said, too tired to register this completely. The mattress lay directly on the tatami floor and smelled of camphor, the way my mother’s closet had, long ago. Time seemed to fold in on itself as I shed my suit and lay down gratefully: five years old again, drowsy with fever, burrowed in the warmth of my mother’s bed. Footsteps in the hall; voices (for my father had still been alive then) low and soothing outside the door, bodiless but palpable, as if to say that I would never be alone. Soon my mother would come and place her hand on my forehead, a gesture of tenderness that haunted me still, for I had never found its equivalent since. I would reach out and touch her face in the dark. My fingertips found a patch of warmth, and I traced it achingly.

Until the dream faded, and I became aware that it was Angel’s skin I was touching, soft, indeterminately white and silky. Unclear, even, what part of her I had put my finger to: an arm, a breast? She did not say anything, or move, though from her breathing she was clearly awake. A question hung in the camphored air. Rigid, awake, I could not answer it. She was my friend, but even loneliness could not conjure love where it did not exist. Quietly I withdrew my hand and rolled over, away from her, clinging to the edge of the mattress as if to a floating spar. She shifted tentatively in the bed, her leg barely grazing mine; the touch was gently baited, like a hook in my skin. Still, I couldn’t respond. It took a very long time to fall asleep again.

IN THE
morning, the piece of sky out the window was a thin whitish blue. I rolled over, a dull memory of distress circling the bed, weighing upon me more heavily as I dragged up toward the surface of wakefulness, until I finally remembered: my passport.

Angel was gone. I swung my legs over the end of the mattress and sat up painfully. It was not just my passport; all my official documents—driver’s license, social security card—had been in the little desk at the Tenderness, and were now gone. How odd that something as dry as a government document could have such a hold over you; I felt suddenly exposed—as if all these years I had been a U.S. citizen only nominally, and now that right had been rescinded, through fate, or through the invisible hand of some central intelligence.

Voices rumbled beyond the sliding doors: Angel’s thin, strident one; and a lower one—an argument of some kind. Suddenly Angel yelped and footsteps approached, sharp and canny. I leaped up and drew Little P’s knife from my carryall, clutching the bedspread around me.

"Emerson!" Angel’s face appeared as the doors cracked apart. "I’m sorry, but he kept saying… and he wouldn’t take off the—"

The doors banged as someone behind her forced them fully open. A man in a black motorcycle helmet stood in the doorway, tense. He didn’t move, only raised his head toward me in silent, chilling recognition. I knew immediately it was Atticus. His dark, mirrored visor was still down. The effect was malevolent, anonymous, and instinctively I tightened my grip on the knife, even as I said, "It’s all right, Angel. Leave us for a minute."

She wavered, uncertain, then left with a dubious, angry look at Atticus.

I motioned him into the room, then went over and shut the doors behind him.

"What is it?" I asked. "How did you find me?"

The helmet was not just faceless but voiceless; he seemed mute. His frail frame, usually so straight and proper, sagged heavily against the back of Angel’s rattan chair. I reached out and lifted the visor.

"Atticus…"

His bruised, bloodied face looked back at me, eyes bright with tears, or fever. I pulled the helmet off quickly. He had a lump on his forehead, and his scalp bled. I found a Kleenex and a bottle of water in my carryall and dabbed at the blood trickling down his temple.

"I did not wish to implicate Guo Xiaojie," he said. "So I keep my helmet on. It is bad enough without suspicions. I went to the hotel, but you are gone. I suspect you may be here."

"What happened?"

He took the tissue from me and held it to his head. His gray fingers trembled.

"I was at home," he said wearily. "Drinking coffee and eating my toast. Planning for the day. Two men come to my door, they say they are from Zhang’s campaign, they want to talk." Zhang was the Nationalist candidate in the upcoming election, a short, bad-tempered man with a strident voice who had twice evaded charges of bribery. Earlier in the month a radio host supporting his rival had been attacked outside the station, but there was no proof that Zhang had ordered the hit. "Of course I don’t want to talk. I think I know what they want. I have evidence, you know, Xiao Chang."

"Evidence of what?"

For a minute a smile seemed to flicker on his face, far away. "Scandal," he breathed, conspiratorial. "Sexual scandal implicating Zhang. This time with proof. Pictures. Witness."

"I’d rather not know, Atticus." For some reason he was making me nervous.

"Oh, it doesn’t matter," he said. "In a week, two weeks, everyone will know."

"They didn’t come about the proof, then?"

He shook his head. "Let me finish. I let them in. I thought, if they are actually from Li’s campaign, and intend to harm me, they are acting very funny. Why would they announce themselves? Not very politic,
non?
Even Zhang is not so graceless. So I open the door." He looked at me. "Stupid, I admit."

"And then?"

He dabbed his head more vehemently, not speaking. I imagined that he was replaying the event in his mind.

"Xiao P has asked you for money, has he not?" said Atticus slowly. There was an odd, mechanical note in his voice, as if the words were being drawn from him unwillingly.

"Yes," I said. It was not a question I had expected.

His fingers moved over his bruise and pressed, hard, as if he wished to intensify the pain. Beads of sweat stood out on his face.

"There are people," he said, "who have an interest in these monies. Who are not willing to let it rest simply with Xiao P."

"But Little P said I didn’t need to bring it till Wednesday."

"You have the money, Xiao Chang?"

"Yes. Some, anyway. Enough for this."

He straightened up. A shadow slid over his eyes, and he pursed his lips. "But this is, as they say, only the tip of the ice glacier. Xiao P is very much in debt. If he should need more, will he come to you, do you think?"

My cell phone beeped suddenly.

"Probably. I guess." I sat down on the bed, all at once nauseated by the conversation. "I don’t know that it’ll do much good.
He’s
the wealthy one, now—almost. The motel is his, or will be." A twinge of guilt as I thought of the papers in my carryall. "My mother left me a parcel of property here in town. Somewhere in Songshan. I was planning to go see it next week. But she grew up there. It has sentimental value. I don’t want to sell it if I don’t have to."

Atticus walked agitatedly over the tatami, a strand of bloodied hair like a gash across his forehead.

"Property," he echoed, incredulous. "In the city? Here?"

"Yes."

His frail chest heaved up and down lightly now, like a bird’s.

"Why?"

"I wish you had not told me this," he said, his voice rising, no longer the bleak, robotic monotone. He crossed quickly to the sliding doors, as if to check that they were secure, and then he came over to me.

"Xiao Chang, you must listen," he whispered. "I will keep my mouth shut, but do not tell anyone else that you have a property to liquidate."

I drew back, startled. "But… why? It’s too late, anyway. Angel already knows. She had to help me locate the real estate agent."

He sighed. "How can you be from the San Francisco city and not understand property worth? Do you not see how valuable this would be in a city like Taipei? They have to build to the sky as it is. Guo Xiaojie is no problem, I think; you may trust her. But nobody else, do you understand?"

We both blinked. I pulled away from him.

"No, I don’t understand." I stood up and pointed Little P’s knife at Atticus. "I’m tired of being scared without any explanation from you! Any proof! You hint at things, you deliver these pronouncements, but it’s like you’re… daring me or something! Like a game. Play detective. Connect the dots."

Atticus blanched. "Believe me," he said, "I am never more serious in my life, Xiao Chang. It is no game. And I would not risk it if you were not a friend."

He was sincere; I believed what he said; and yet, there was something not quite honest in him when he called me his friend, said he risked everything for friendship. He picked up his helmet and put it on.

"Get out of here while the time is still good," he said softly at the door. He flipped the visor down. "Going," he said and was gone.

My cell phone beeped again. Distracted, I looked down at the little glowing message.

$8000?
it said. Then,
YOU NEVER TO FORGET.

I FOUND
Poison in a little back room of the Palace, watching
The Sopranos
on a busted television. He was alone, for once, and subdued, sprawled on a banquette in his undershirt and flip-flops, eating a bowl of pork and rice. I did not knock; he sensed someone in the doorway. Slowly he stopped chewing. I could see the back of his neck tense. Then, in one swift movement, he whirled around to face me, back to the wall.

"Your brother not home," he said and waved the remote; I suppose he meant to defend himself with it.

"I’m not here for Little P."

"Uncle go with him."

"Not here for Uncle either."

"So?"

In his boxers, he looked like a white spider, cunning, sickly, and thin. Without Big One and his entourage, he seemed diminished, and unexpectedly, I felt a kind of pity. I looked around at the stained ceiling, the broken TV, the shop light that swung dangerously low and precarious from a wire. Even the Remada in its earliest years had been better than this. A cheap Impressionist print hung incongruously beside the television—Monet’s
Water Lilies
. Someone had bought the print and put it there; the fact seemed to speak of a dreaminess somewhere in the Palace, an ill-defined longing for water.

"You like this business you’re in?" I asked.

He blinked, thrown off. "What mean?"

"This KTV. The karaoke."

"Wo xihuan."
But he didn’t sound convinced. He darted a narrow glance at me, wary. "Like or not, what matters?"

"Your English is very good," I said. "Surely you didn’t learn it just to run a second-rate karaoke den."

I don’t think he knew the term
second-rate
; he seemed uncertain whether or not to take umbrage.

"Architect," he muttered. "I like to be the architect. Pei Ieoh Ming."

"So why didn’t you?"

"Have not the school." He looked at me directly this time, eyes blazing. "Must to the U.S. for the school. No money to go. The architect is also no money, say my father. Is right. Is no money."

He kicked a take-out carton halfheartedly out of his way and wiped his greasy mouth on his shoulder. A dilapidated fan sputtered in the corner.