Hour of the Rat (30 page)

Occasionally I glance at its shoulder. Rusted blood mats the yellow fur, with bright red seeping beneath it. I’d like to do something about that, I think. If I had a razor and some disinfectant and some bandages, that would help, and I could do the stitches if I had to. Could I get an anesthetic? Antibiotics are pretty easy to find here, if it needs that.

Just to be clear, it’s not that I really care about the dog. I’m not a dog person. Except it kept me warm last night, and I guess I feel a little obligated.

At last we make it down to the road.

Now that we’re here, I’m not sure what to do. We stand there, the dog and me, at the side of the road. Some cars rush past. A beater Chery. A Buick. A local bus.

Bus, I think. All we need to do is find a stop. Or maybe wave one down. That might work.

A part of me feels like, what’s the point? I’m going to get caught eventually. I always feel like I’m going to get busted for something, when it comes down to it.

Then I think, Get a grip. If this was the DSD or Creepy John doing some weird-ass shit, or even some of the other creeps I’ve butted heads with the last few years from my own country, I’d have plenty of reasons to freak. And this whole thing with Eos, and Hongxing, and New Century Hero Rice—
something’s
going on there. Something a whole lot bigger than me.

But Russell? Erik? Setting me up for some cheesy pot bust?

Don’t quit, I tell myself. Keep playing.

It’s a local problem, and local police in China are really bad at coordinating with different provinces, from what I’ve heard. All I need to do is get the fuck out of Dali and out of Yunnan and back to Beijing. I’ll deal with it there.

Or, maybe, head southeast to Shenzhen, then to Hong Kong.
Get the fuck out of Dodge altogether, before the bust catches up to me.

Except there’s my mom, back at my apartment. With Andy, and a toilet that may or may not flush.

“Fuck, dog,” I mutter. “Why isn’t this shit ever simple?”

The dog sits back on its haunches and thumps its tail. I stretch out my hand. It pushes its nose into my palm, and I give it a scratch behind its ears.

“Oh, okay, I get it. It
is
simple. For you.”

We keep walking north. To the right is the lake, deep blue shifting to slate grey when the clouds blow over it, sunlight hitting the water in fan-shaped beams.

I’d heard there were lots of artists designing and building second homes around here, and now I get why. This would be a nice place to live.

That is, if I wasn’t wanted by the Dali police.

I’m thinking about all this, the dog on one side, the lake on the other, spacing out the way I tend to do, taking in the light glinting off little waves, the sharp blue of the sky, the panting of the dog.

I
don’t
take in the silver Toyota pulling up alongside me until it slows and the passenger window rolls down.

“Yili. Please get in the car.”

M
Y HEART SLAMS INTO
my throat. I don’t even know how I feel when I place the familiar voice and look over and see Creepy John leaning toward the passenger window from the driver’s seat.

He opens the passenger door.

“What do you want?” I manage.

He sighs through gritted teeth. “Just, please. Get into the car.”

“Why? What are you going to do?”

“Try to fix this mess you are in. For first thing. For second …” His eyes drift down. His head cocks back. “What is that?”

“A dog. Duh.”

The dog cocks its head back, too. Bares its teeth. A growl rumbles in its throat.

I’m liking this dog.

John does his squinty-eyed look, but this time it’s like he’s getting a headache, for real. “Why you have dog?”

“Long story.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he finally says. “Just get in car.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Then maybe you get arrested here and go to prison,” he snaps. “You want to go to prison?”

I stand there at the side of the road, the dog pressing against my leg, the wind kicking up, carrying a smell that’s like a giant aquarium, moss or algae or something.

I mean, what am I going to do? What are my choices here, really?

“The dog comes too,” I say.

S
O MAYBE
I’
M PUSHING
it, but I honestly don’t give a fuck at this point.

“We need to go to … to a … an animal doctor,” I manage in Mandarin.

“
Shouyi?
” John supplies.

“Yeah. That.”

“Yili …” he starts.

We’re driving down the road along the lake. I don’t have a clue where John plans to take me. The dog lies in the backseat on one side, head resting on front leg, wounded side up, which is good because it’s not bleeding all over John’s new upholstery, which I have a feeling would piss him off.

“Or get me some drugs and bandages if you want,” I say. “Whatever. But I need to do something for him.” Or her. I still don’t know.

There’s no reason he has to go along. No reason he can’t stop the car and dump the dog by the side of the road. It’s not like I have any kind of power here. Not even a little.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. We find someone.”

W
E DRIVE NORTH
. M
OUNTAIN
on the left, lake on the right. Past little villages, creeks that empty into the lake, green fields, I don’t know of what.

I think about New Century Hero Rice.

“So how’d you find me?” I ask.

He gives a half shrug, like it’s not even worth answering.

“Come on,” I say. “My cell phone? My passport? How?”

“Not very hard,” he finally says. “We watch you, you go to train station, they see what ticket you buy, what train. Hotels report to local PSB. Easy for us to ask. We lose you a while in Yangshuo but find you again in Dali.”

“ ‘We’?”

“Just … you know, people. Some are … are officers. Others just … we pay them.” He shrugs again. “Many people work for DSD these days.”

“Huh. Like guys in polo shirts, driving a Buick?”

John frowns. “Buick? I don’t think so.”

Whatever.

“Why are you going to so much trouble? Don’t you guys have better things to do? Stop monks from lighting themselves on fire or arrest people cracking jokes on Twitter?”

His hands tighten on the steering wheel. “You know why.”

“Lao Zhang? I told you, I don’t know where he is.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving Beijing, then?”

He actually sounds hurt. Which is kind of funny and pretty bizarre.

“I can’t take a vacation with my mom?”

His head whips around, and he glares at me. “Vacation? You go to Guiyu for vacation? Without your mother? And she goes back to Beijing anyway.”

We hit something, a pothole, the car bounces and shimmies. John yanks the steering wheel to compensate. The tires squeal. The dog yelps from the backseat.

“I had some business to take care of,” I say.

“So you come here to do business with those guys, those guys with all the ganja? I did not think you were so stupid.” Now he just sounds pissed.

“No! No. I didn’t know anything about that. I was going there to meet someone else. He …”

I could tell him, I guess. Maybe he could even help. I mean, if there’s anyone who could probably track down a runaway foreigner, it’s Creepy John.

But I just don’t know what the consequences of that would be. For Jason/David. For me.

Trust Mr. Double-Dealing Secret Agent? I don’t think so.

“It’s a long story,” I say. “But it’s got nothing to do with Lao Zhang. It’s personal. Not anything you’d care about.”

W
E GET TO SOME
village that’s pretty cute: a lot of white with grey stone trim, black and white and grey nature scenes painted under the peaked roofs, carved wood and raw brick. Not a lot of white-tile disease. Middle-aged ladies wearing traditional dress: deep blue shifts and blouses under them, dark head wraps, sashes embroidered with pink flowers and butterflies.

“Bai people,” John says. I see a couple of Western tourists wandering through the narrow lanes, taking pictures with their iPhones.

No veterinarian, though.

We finally find a medical clinic. The doctor there, an older man, at first he doesn’t want to have anything to do with the dog, but John whips out his credential and a wad of cash and the doctor starts bobbing his head up and down and clasps his hands together and smiles like he can’t imagine a better way to be spending his time.

The dog doesn’t want to go with him. It whimpers and hugs my thigh. “It’s okay, dog,” I whisper. “I’ll come with you, all right?”

I make sure the doctor gives it a painkiller before he starts doing stuff. I scratch behind its ears and help hold it down when
he shaves the fur around the wound, douses it with antiseptic, and loosely stitches it up. “Might need drain,” he says. “I give antibiotic injection, but hard to say.”

He doesn’t ask what happened to the dog. Just bandages it up and hands me a bottle of antibiotics at the end.

“Two times a day,” he says.

“
Xie xie.
” I pocket the pills. Hesitate. “Is it a boy or a girl?” He laughs a little. “Girl. You can have
xiao gou
if you want.” Puppies.

“
Wo … wo buyao
,” I say. I don’t want. I mean,

I don’t even want
one
dog.

A
FTER THAT
, I’
M THINKING
, I should get the dog something to eat, but it’s not like there’s a Petco here. Maybe we can just stop at a restaurant, get some chicken or beef, or something.

“To feed dog?” John asks with a hard sigh.

I shrug. “He … she … I don’t know when the last time she ate was.”

John checks his watch. “Okay. Lunchtime anyway.”

You can tell that this village gets tourists. We find a courtyard restaurant with an English sign that says
WELCOME FOR YOU TRY XIZHOU SPECIAL FLAVORS
!
ENJOYING IN RETROSPECT THE EVERLASTING
! John manages to squeeze in his Toyota out front, in the narrow lane.

I order the local fish and something called a
poshu
, a “roasting round flat cake by the wheat flour with all good color, joss-stick, and flavor,” that features “ethereal oil layering.” It’s supposed to be good for “go out to labor or tour of holding.” It all tastes pretty good, if not ethereally everlasting. But even though I haven’t eaten since last night, I’m not feeling much like eating. There’s the dog, lying in the back of John’s car, with the windows
cracked. She seems pretty lethargic—doped up, I have to figure—so I’m hoping she doesn’t pee all over his new upholstery.

And there’s John, sitting across from me. Eating with a sort of angry efficiency.

We don’t talk. We just eat, in record time, leaving with a take-out order of some plain beef-and-rice dish that I figure will be easy for the dog to eat.

I try to pay. John won’t let me.

When we get back to the car, I open the take-out container and put it under the dog’s nose. She sniffs at it. Her tail thumps a little.

“Don’t you want to eat any of it? Come on, it’s got ethereal flavors.”

She lifts her head enough to nose at the beef and rice. Takes a couple of slurping bites. Lays her head back down, tail thumping weakly.

“Okay, good dog,” I say. “You can have more later.”

I close up the Styrofoam take-out container. Tie the flimsy plastic bag. John stands behind me, and I can feel him watching. I don’t have a clue what he’s thinking.

When I try to stand up, my leg’s buckling and I have to brace myself on the car seat, and even then I’m wobbling like one of those plates on top of a Chinese acrobat’s stick.

“Here,” John says. He circles his arm around my back, tucking his hand more or less in my armpit, and I, reluctantly, thread my arm across his back, my hand resting on his ribs. He slowly hoists me up. His hand remains there for a moment, beneath my arm, his fingertips grazing the side of my tit, then falls away.

We stand there next to the car.

“Did you hurt yourself?”

“Yeah. In Guiyu. Getting better, though.”

I ’
M NOT SURE WHERE
I expect us to go, and truthfully, I kind of space out for a while, something I still tend to do if I get too tired or too stressed out for too long—“dissociate” is the technical term.