Hour of the Rat (20 page)

After the ice melts and the Percocet kicks in, I retrieve Sparrow’s card from the bottom of my little canvas bag.

It says
SPARROW
in English on one side, Chinese on the other. There’s a phone number. And an address in Chinese. Something about birds.

I tap out the number.

“
Wei?
”

“Is this Sparrow?”

“
Shi
. Yes.”

“This is David’s friend.”

A pause. “
Wo xianzai meiyou kong.
” I don’t have free time now. “But if you want, you can visit me at the sanctuary tomorrow. It’s very interesting. For tourists.”

“Oh, yeah?” I look at the card again. There’s the character for “bird.” After that, one I don’t know, then the character for “prohibit,” and then another I don’t recognize with the radical for “animals.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I’ll check my schedule.”

After we hang up, I open the Pleco Chinese Dictionary app on my iPhone and trace the characters. “Birds.” The next two are “prohibit hunting.” Which means “sanctuary.”

Bird sanctuary.

“E
LLIE
? H
I
,
HON
. I
T
’
S
Mom. Just checking in to see how you’re doing. I’m back in BJ, no problem. Your apartment’s fine, except I wasn’t sure if I should tip the water man. The guy that brings the dispenser bottles? Can you let me know? In case he comes back? Anyway, hope you’re doing well. Give me a call when you get a chance. Okay? Bye. Love you!”

I stare at the phone.

Okay, I heard it ring, I picked it up, I saw that it was my mom calling, and I was going to answer it, but I was just moving kind of slowly. I’m not feeling that great, and I didn’t have that much to drink last night … did I? Just some beers, on top of Thai food. Which isn’t sitting too well either. I slept … twelve hours. More. Not like me.

Probably the Percocet. I’ve been taking a lot of it.

Is it really such a good idea to go out to Sparrow’s bird sanctuary? I’m pretty sure it’s not smart.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

Because I know I’m going to do it anyway.

I stand up and test out my bad leg. It feels better, I tell myself. I probably don’t have a DVT. Probably.

I make a cup of instant coffee, suck it down with a couple of aspirin, take a shower, and get dressed.

By the time I get out the door, it’s around noon. Not too cold, but grey and on the verge of drizzling. I should eat something, I guess, maybe just some
jiaozi
or pizza or something.

As I stand on the little street off Xi Jie, my phone rings. Vicky Huang.

I don’t want to answer it. But I’ve put her off I forget how many times already, and at least I’m in Yangshuo, where I said I’d be.

“Miss McEnroe? This is the third day. Are you available for a meeting?”

I’m so not up for this. I’m still so tired I can barely see straight.

“I … uh, sure. I have an appointment right now, though. Maybe later? Like, for dinner? I mean, are you actually in Yangshuo?”

“We have representatives. What time?”

“Seven?”

“Location?”

“I … uh … look, can we, like, figure this out later? I’m running kind of late. And if there’s a restaurant you like, feel free to name it, ’cause I don’t really know.”

A pause.

“I will research and call you in the afternoon.”

“Great. Looking forward to it,” I lie.

I head down the alley, in the opposite direction from Xi Jie, because I am really not in the mood for the crowds and the wooden-frog vendors. Though, actually, I bet my mom would like one of those frogs. They’re supposed to be good luck; they attract money or something. She’d be into that. I could buy her one of those and maybe a Yangshuo T-shirt or one of those embroidered bags.

I hesitate, and then I turn toward Xi Jie.

And see two guys up the block, staring at me.

Dark sunglasses. Zipped windbreakers, one with a white logo that says US
POLO TEAM
. Slacks. They turn away, pretending to have a conversation, like they’re considering checking in to Maggie’s Guesthouse.

Forget the frogs.

I want to turn and run, but that isn’t an option. Besides, this isn’t a country road. This is the middle of the tourist zone in Yangshuo.

So I pretend I haven’t made them. I keep walking back to Xi Jie.

I mean, what are they going to do? It’s not like they can kidnap me off the street, right?

As I pass them on the left, I think, well, yeah, actually, they
could
do that. This is China. If they’re DSD …

I keep walking.

By the time I walk the remaining half block to Xi Jie, my heart’s beating double time and I’m sweating like I’m running a race in a heat wave.

Who needs coffee when you’ve got adrenaline?

The tourists are out, Chinese and foreign, surrounding me in a comforting blanket of … well, potential witnesses. And there are enough foreigners up here where I’m not going to stand out, so maybe I can hide in plain sight. I weave through the crowd, taking a moment to glance behind me like, I hope, a clueless tourist, praying that maybe I just imagined I’ve got two Chinese rent-a-goons on my tail.

Unfortunately, no. There they are, pretending like they don’t see me pretending not to be looking for them.

Okay, I think. Okay. I’m just going to keep hobbling down the street here. Look for a cab. If they have a car, they’ll need
some time to get back to it, and maybe that will be enough time for me to lose them.

Here’s the problem: There aren’t very many taxis in Yangshuo. None here on Xi Jie, which is pedestrians-only on this stretch. I need to walk up to the intersection, then hang a left and go up to whatever that big street is, where the buses run.

Okay.

“Miss? Bamboo raft?”

A tiny woman in traditional clothes, from whatever “ethnic minority” lives around here, thrusts her laminated tourist brochures in my face.

“No thanks.”

“
Impressions
show? See Ancient Village? Rock-climb?”

“
Buyao!
” I snap. Then think.

“Oh, you can ask those guys behind me,” I say. “They want a bamboo-raft trip. Don’t believe them if they say no. They are looking for a good deal.”

“Ah, okay, okay.”

Off she goes, like a lamprey seeking a shark.

Up ahead on my left is the Last Emperor. And I think maybe I’ve got the wooden frogs on my side, because slouching by the entrance is Kobe, fedora pulled low on his forehead, unlit cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

“Hey,
lamei
.” He puts on a smile, but I don’t think he’s really that happy to see me.

“Kobe,
ni hao
. Listen … uh, can I use your bathroom?”

“Bathroom? You sick?”

“No, I …” I glance over my shoulder. There’s Mr. US Polo Team and his buddy in the generic windbreaker hovering on the corner, letting the tourists flow around them. I guess they weren’t tempted by a cheap bamboo-raft ride. “These two guys,
they’re following me. I don’t know why. Something I saw in Shantou, or Guiyu, and …”

He frowns. “Police?”

Technically, the DSD aren’t police. “I don’t think so.”

Now Kobe looks past me, trying to spot my tails. Hesitates. Maybe he’s trying to decide if it’s a good idea to get involved.

“Okay,” he says. “Sure.”

“Is there a way out the back? I need to catch a taxi.”

He nods. “Past the bathrooms. At the end of the hall. That door, it should be open. If anyone asks, tell them I said it’s okay. If you don’t see a taxi on Pantao Road, go up to the traffic circle on the way to Moon Mountain. You can find one there.”

“Thanks.” I stand there for a moment. He’s wearing the T-shirt with the pistol-packing panda, I notice. I feel as if there’s something else I should say. It’s like I want to apologize, and I’m not sure why.

“Thanks, Kobe,” I say.

He shrugs. “No problem. Come back sometime. I make you my special drink.”

As I hobble inside, as fast as I can manage, I hear Kobe engage the guys behind me, telling them, “We have two-for-one drink today! Margarita! Sex on the Beach! Here’s a discount card!”

As before, the place is mostly empty, the dance floor dark. A waitress drops a pizza on a table where two stoned-looking Westerners sit; another waitress leans against the bar, texting on her phone. I head toward the back, to the hall where the bathrooms are. To my right is the kitchen, smelling like stale grease and ammonia. Ahead of me is the door.

“Hey,
ni buneng jin nar qu!
” You can’t go there.

It’s a middle-aged woman wearing a stained apron, her hair tied up and tucked under a baseball cap with a Chanel logo, waving her hand at me as I try to duck out the back door.

“Kobe said I could,” I say in Mandarin. “Because these two men, they’re bothering me.”

She follows the tilt of my head, looks over my shoulder into the bar. “Okay,” she says gruffly. “Go quickly.”

“Quickly” in my case is relative, but I walk as fast as I can, out the back door, into a little cement alcove crowded with reeking trash cans and a couple of bikes locked to the rusting rail. Up the three stairs, slick with grease, to the street above. Follow that to a broad avenue. Okay. Here’s a bus stop, in front of a Li-Ning sporting-goods store. I’m on Pantao Road. I head up the street toward the traffic circle, on the way out of town. I don’t see any cabs. I think if I don’t see one soon I’ll duck into a store or a restaurant. Stay there or sneak out another back door. Staying is sounding good, because my leg’s really hurting, swelling against the bandage, and I think I’d better ice and elevate it, but mostly what I’m passing are shops, with open storefronts or glass windows, not great places to hide, and I see a hotel, but I think I’ll have to show a passport there, and if these guys are DSD …

A taxi. Letting off a couple of girls in front of a
shanzhai
Juicy Couture boutique. I don’t even ask the driver if he’s available, I just slide into the backseat.

“Moon Mountain,” I say. Not that I want to go there, but I don’t have Sparrow’s card handy, and what I mainly want to do right now is get the fuck out of town.

“M
OON
M
OUNTAIN
“
—
Y
UELIANGSHAN
—IS
called that because of the crescent-shaped hole in the middle of it, like someone took a giant Christmas-cookie cutter and punched it out. It’s where Mom and Andy and me went to the Italian restaurant … was it a week ago? It feels like a lot longer.

First thing I do, I switch off the GPS in my phone. Think
about it some more, and then I turn the phone off. They might be able to find me that way, depending on who these guys are.

I wasn’t really thinking too much when I told the cabbie to bring me here. It was just a place I knew that was down the road from Yangshuo proper and easy to get to. But as we drive, passing a fancy resort on one side of the road and then a huge billboard for a
NEW SOCIALISM COUNTRY MODEL VILLAGE
on the other, I realize that it’s not a bad destination. There are a fair number of tourists who come here: Chinese tour groups in buses who arrive for lunches of beer fish at farmers’ restaurants and leave afterward to go on to their river cruises or whatever, Europeans who like the “boutique hotel” where the Italian restaurant is. There are public shuttle buses that run up and down the main road outside the village, and where there are a lot of tourists, odds are there might also be a few taxis.

“You can stop here,” I tell my driver. I pay him and get out. I figure just in case those guys back in Yangshuo made this cab, better I should switch for the trip to Sparrow’s sanctuary. I’m feeling all James Bond for having thought of this.

Especially because I’m not thinking too clearly. I’m really not feeling all that great. Aside from my leg, I’m dizzy, hot. Those aren’t DVT symptoms. I don’t think. Probably just because I haven’t eaten. And I’m having a little trouble catching my breath, but that makes sense, considering that strange men are following me and I’m freaking out, right?

I should breathe into a paper bag or something.

I ignore the vendors selling flower garlands, pass the group of Chinese students on their cruiser bikes, posing for photos, walk on by a three-story farmers’ restaurant still crowded with Chinese tour groups, and go down the dirt road with stalls and shops on either side until I come to a cab parked outside some kind of paintball business called War Game (in English),
with huge signboards depicting camoed soldiers with infrared goggles and M1s, plus photos of happy customers blasting the shit out of each other.

I shudder and approach the driver, who drinks tea from a glass jar.

“
Ni hao
,” I say. “You working now?”

S
PARROW
’
S PLACE IS ABOUT
a half hour away from Yueliangshan, first up the main road, through a town that straddles the highway, then down a series of smaller roads and dirt paths that run through tiny villages and rice paddies and tombstone-shaped mountains. I have no fucking clue where we are. I’m not sure I care at this point.