A Paper Son (34 page)

“Many miles,” I said. “What is that supposed to mean?”

She shrugged. “You're asking the wrong person,” she said, reaching down to tousle my hair, staying well clear of the shaved spot with the staples. “It came out of this head.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“My turn again,” she said.

“There's more?”

“One more little thing. Do you want to know about the
Crystal Gypsy
?”

“It sank?”

She nodded.

“When?” I said, but I already knew what she'd say.

“1929.”

“On its way back to China,” I said.

“Right.”

“So has it found you yet?”

“No,” she said. “Over eighty years ago, and she's still lost out there.” She reached back into her bag and produced a copy of
The Barbary Quarterly,
another one I hadn't seen yet. It was tattered and dirty, and damp. On the cover was a picture of the ship's prow, a burst of sun showing just above the deck. Its name was emblazoned on its hull in clear white letters. “It washed up on my step last night,” Annabel said. She put the journal on my chest and rested her hands on my arm. “Open it,” she said.

I did. The pages were all blank.

“We have to find Eva,” I said. “I've got to get the hell out of here, and we've got to find Eva.”

***

I did not get the hell out of there, however. I learned sometime that evening that I'd be staying at least one night. “You went swimming in storm runoff with a cracked-open head,” my doctor explained. He had white hair and wore glasses with heavy black frames that magnified his clear blue eyes. “The good news is that with all the rain, the fecal matter was probably pretty diluted. Nonetheless, I'm keeping you here until I'm confident you're not going to turn into the Swamp Thing.”

I passed the time by drifting through various medicated states, taking brief limping forays through the hospital corridors, watching stories about myself on the news, trying to keep track of all the questions I had about everything. There were reports from the hospital's parking lot: Rain-lashed correspondents held their microphones and pointed toward the hospital's upper floors. Some stood outside the lobby of my apartment building, others in front of the barriers that cordoned off the now-closed campus of Russian Hill Elementary. It was comforting, in a way—though so much was changing I could lie there in my hospital bed and travel through the familiarity of all my usual locations.

I learned things about myself, too. I learned there were about fifty reporters camped out in the hospital's lobby and in vans outside. I learned that I was conscious now, and in good condition, but hadn't been released from the hospital yet. I learned that school would be out for the rest of the week, until another facility could be readied. I wondered if Eva was watching all this somewhere. I saw an interview with Franklin. He answered the reporter's questions with precision and warmth, and then asked if he could address me directly.

“Of course!” the reporter said.

He turned to the camera and cleared his throat. “Your progress reports are due, young man,” he said, without a hint of a smile.

I also had time to contemplate my newfound fame and the attention that awaited me upon my discharge. Lucy returned and told me there were a hundred messages from TV producers on my machine at home. A newscaster on one broadcast speculated about what had happened “down there,” and told viewers they'd have to wait until I hit the talk show circuit to find out. I imagined myself describing to perky morning news anchors the underwater classroom I'd found in 1920s China, and the discovery of a clue that might or might not help me find a boy I might or might not have made up. It would be a short-lived circuit.

Sometime that evening a nurse came into my room with a slip of paper. “We've been hanging up on all your callers,” she said. “All eight thousand of them, except your family members. But this guy was insistent. Said he was your college roommate. I told him the best I could do was to pass the message to you.” Leonard's name was on the slip, along with a number. She shifted the phone onto the bed next to me before turning and heading for the door.

“Those nurses are guarding you like you're the goddamn Dalai Lama,” Leonard said, when he heard my voice. “What in God's name are you doing with yourself up there, anyway?”

“Yeah, it's been an eventful couple of days,” I said.

“I saw them interview this Annabel Nightingale,” he said. “Attractive, poised, about your age, and when the reporter mentioned your name her eyes looked like a couple bags of glitter. Not even you could fuck this one up.”

I laughed, which made the gash in my head throb. “Actually, she was already my girlfriend,” I said. “I think.”

“Well, you're not getting rid of her anytime soon,” he said.

“That works for me.”

“Listen, Perry. I'm sure you're getting all the attention you need. So I actually called to talk about me. Remember my lamentations about the death of spontaneity? Well, I'm calling from Big Bear. It was an unplanned trip. After watching you take that plunge I decided to load the family up and head for the mountains. So anyway, I wanted to thank you. You're an inspiration.” He laughed. “Of course, I first made reservations, checked road conditions, inflated all four tires and the spare to the proper pressure, and filled a cooler full of the kids' usual foods. I did let them get Frosted Flakes, though, instead of the usual Wheaties.”

“That's a stepping-stone cereal,” I said. “They'll be freebasing Twinkies next.”

“I'll teach them how,” he said, laughing. “Another thing. I wrote a poem, the first one in years. Are you ready to hear it?”

“I can't wait,” I said.

“Roses are red, peregrines are brownish, I'm glad you're still breathing, your day could have been drownish.”

“And they say poetry is a dying art,” I said.

***

Well after dark my doctor came in, at a time when my medication was wearing off and everything was getting hard and sharp and uncomfortable again. He flipped through my chart and then tossed it onto the foot of my bed. “You about ready to get out of here?” he asked.

“Yes please,” I said.

“You've got a choice to make.” The entire lobby of the hospital, he said, and all the streets around it, were still crawling with media. I could walk out into the spotlight, or I could head down through the emergency department, where a couple of off-duty paramedics had offered to spirit me away in an ambulance. It was an easy choice.

“Good decision,” he said. “It's a mob scene down there. Too many germs.” He asked a nurse to feed me a final, extra-strength round of painkillers. “In case you can't get to a pharmacy until tomorrow,” he said, and gave my left hand a firm shake. A young nurse took me down a service elevator and into an employee break room, where a pair of paramedics sat drinking sodas and playing paper football. One of them was about my age; the other looked a few years younger. They jumped to their feet as we approached.

“Hey Gabriela,” the younger of them said to the nurse, “when are you going to let me cook you that breakfast?”

“January thirty-second,” she said. She planted a kiss on my cheek and shot him a look. “It was a pleasure meeting you,” she said to me. “You've got a very lucky girlfriend.” She gave a little wave over her shoulder and disappeared through the door.

The paramedic turned to me with a wide smile. “So that's what I gotta do, huh?” he said. “Jump into a flooded building!” He extended his left hand and gave my own a gleeful, enthusiastic handshake. “Cracks me up when she acts like she don't want me. I'm Hector, though. That was some badass shit you pulled out there!”

“Yeah, maybe it was,” I said. The medication was starting to kick in. I felt tingling in my knees and around the gash in my head. I could put my weight on my bruised leg. Warmth was spreading up my back.

The other paramedic shook my hand with equal vigor. Like Hector, he seemed accustomed to shaking left-handed. His name was Naseem. “Ready to go home?” he asked.

“Definitely,” I said.

I followed them out the door, but not before they had me pose with them for a photo. We climbed inside their ambulance, with Hector at the wheel, Naseem in the passenger seat, and me in a rear-facing jump seat in the back. We pulled out onto Hyde. All along the first block news vans crouched along the curbs, waiting in the rain, weak lights glowing in their interiors. The next block was dark and quiet, as if the streetlights had all gone out, as if the rain had stopped, as if the ambulance was gliding through air, and the next thing I realized someone was shaking me by the knee and asking me something. It was Naseem.

“Hey man, you okay? You sure this is the best place for you right now?”

The ambulance had stopped and was idling alongside the curb. Through the windshield spilled the glow of the neon sign of the bar at Pier 23. Hector was watching me over his shoulder. He muttered something to Naseem about my medications.

“This isn't where I live,” I said.

“You told us this is where you wanted to come,” Naseem said. “You got a ride meeting you here or something?”

“I figured maybe you wanted to pour a couple of shots in there to kick-start that Percocet,” Hector said, his eyes smiling. “It looks like you're already kick-started pretty good, though.”

Through the windows I could see that the warehouse doors were open, and there was light coming from the office inside.

“I asked you to bring me here?” I said.

“You don't remember that?”

“This is real?” I said, continuing to watch the office windows. “I said to come here, and this is all real? This is happening?” Maybe I'd dozed off, and spoken to them in my sleep. It had happened before, on occasion—my sister used to tease me about it. She said I'd tried to order a pizza once. And with all the medications flowing through me it certainly seemed possible.

“We're really here, I promise,” Naseem said. “You sure you're feeling okay?”

“You definitely aren't in need of any cocktails, my man,” Hector said. “Where do you live? You got a driver's license on you? You got some parents or friends around or something?”

“Do me a favor,” I said. “Wait here for just a minute, would you?”

I jumped out and ran without waiting for an answer. I saw and heard the rain but my numb body felt no cold, no moisture.
Erhu
music enveloped me as I stepped through the warehouse's doorway. It reverberated through the cavernous room, dense as the song of an orchestra a thousand strong. A trail of wet footprints, gleaming in the dim light, led from out of the black recesses of the warehouse. I followed them into the office and up the stairs.

The cluttered storeroom had disappeared. In its place now stood a darkened theater, its walls lined with heavy deep red curtains. A disorganized collection of empty tables and empty chairs, some of them on their sides, covered the floor. On a low black wooden stage an old man sat on a stool, his fingers dancing on the strings of his instrument. He was drenched; his clothes were full of holes. There was a slight greenish tint to the deep wrinkles in the skin of his face, and a piece of seaweed hung around his neck like a scarf. A smell that was at once fresh and ancient, the way a low tide might smell during a thunderstorm, filled the air.

I sat down in one of the chairs near the stage and waited for him to finish. When he had played the song's last note he laid his bow across his lap, tipped his head forward, closed his eyes, and smiled a small smile, as though acknowledging a roomful of applause. When his eyes opened again I asked him, “Who are you? Where did you come from?”

He smiled. Most of his teeth had fallen out, and those that remained were black. He gestured for me to come closer. I rose and approached. He reached into his instrument case, pulled out a thick bamboo tube, and handed it to me with a smile. Rose's onionskin manuscript was still rolled tightly inside it, the edges of its sheets uneven and ridged like the surface of a seashell. When I touched them the paper turned to water, flooded out through the bottom of the tube, and splashed apart on the edge of the stage. I dropped down to my knees and saw, suspended in the puddles, thousands of small penciled letters sliding and drifting around one another, coming unraveled. The water poured down to the wooden floor, where it found cracks between the boards and began draining through, carrying the letters with them. Far below, I thought I could hear them all dripping into the bay. The musician nodded as if to say yes, this is what happens. He began another song. I set the tube back in his case, gave him a small bow, and returned to the ambulance.

***

Annabel gasped when I appeared at her door. “Peregrine! When did they let you out?”

“Just now,” I said. “Some paramedics snuck me out. My street is a news van parking lot. I would have called, but my phone . . . .”

In the street Hector and Naseem honked and rolled away. Annabel pulled me through the door, kicking a lunchbox that threatened to follow me in. She made me a mug of tea, settled me into a recliner in the living room with a blanket over me, and went out to get my prescriptions filled. The painkillers had reached their apex and I could feel my wrist and ankle tingling, almost vibrating. Heat pulsated softly from the back of my head, where the staples were holding me together. Warmth emanated from a dozen other spots where I had smaller bruises or cuts. I fell asleep and dreamed I was walking on the sea floor. All around me swayed giant trees of kelp with trunks thick as redwoods. Sparrows soared around me, their flight paths marked by trails of bubbles. When they opened their beaks to sing it wasn't music that emerged but tiny handwritten letters, which drifted through the water, twisting and fading.

When Annabel shook me awake it felt as though hours had transpired. Heavy rain continued to pound at the windows. It was dark but faint light from the kitchen limned Annabel's face, revealing her wide eyes. When she spoke there was a quaver in her voice.