Dream of the Blue Room (18 page)

“Ni hao,” I say, not knowing how else to respond. “Wo bu hui shuo zhongwen.”

The young woman gets up from her chair and follows me. “100 yuan America,” she shouts. “You talk America, 100 yuan!”

A curtain parts on an upstairs window, and an old woman looks down at us. Then, at another window, an old man. “No, thank you,” I say, as quietly as possible so as not to attract further attention, but she has grabbed my arm and is urging me to come with her. She is surprisingly strong. “100 yuan! You call America!”

Soon lights begin to flicker on, and the windows of the houses along the narrow alley are crowded with onlookers. It seems the whole street has awakened to witness this transaction. A young man is laughing, calling from his window, “You call America!” He is naked, the dark of his pubic hair showing just above the windowsill. A bare white arm reaches around his waist, a girl’s face appears, and she pulls him back. The curtain falls into place. I jerk my arm away and begin running. Behind me, the young woman’s entreaties, the laughter of the people in the windows, the high whining sound of an
erhu
. Moments later I am alone again in the orange-tinted street, the only sound the rush of the river, the quick bursts of my own breath.

The world has become too small. Every place is a place I have been to before. Each sound is recalled from memory. Every voice, though uttering a different language, speaks with a familiar cadence. My mind begins to unwind. Amanda Ruth, Graham, Dave—each one gone from me, each one somewhere else. I think of the bodies floating on the river, the boy’s red shoe, the young woman’s upturned face, the wrinkled white soles of a bloated body passing, a hand caught in a net, all that death adrift on the river. The chips and pebbles, the burnt and rough-edged bone, that I added to the river as we passed through Qutang Gorge. I think of Amanda Ruth, the photographs of her body behind the Dumpster, her leg bent beneath her, her dark brown hair spread across the pavement, a spot of blood on her open palm—her own blood, or the killer’s? A scarf around her neck, the yellow scarf I gave her, small white flowers on a sunny background. In the photo she is wearing the scarf, but something is wrong—this is not the way she tied it. Amanda Ruth tied it loose, a single twist at the side of her neck, the ends hanging past her shoulders.

In a dream we are running down the beach, and I’m trying to catch up, the loose ends of the yellow scarf billowing behind her. I catch one end, but the scarf slides off her neck, and Amanda Ruth speeds on ahead. Exhausted, I stop, holding the scarf in my hands. Amanda Ruth keeps running, faster, faster, a figure becoming smaller against the vastness of the beach, the white sand. I call out her name, but my voice disappears in the low rumble of the river. Alone on the beach in the dark, I am struck with terror. Moss-hung oaks groan in the wind. Shadows approach, retreat, approach again. The river rises, sweeps me up. And then I am walking at the bottom of the river, my legs straining against the current. The scarf catches on the bow of a sunken ship and holds. I tug and strain but cannot loosen it. The roar of the river in my ears, the deep muck of the river bottom, schools of tiny fish nibbling at my ankles. Is it my blood in the river, or is it Amanda Ruth’s? I am trying to get home.

Invariably I wake to find that four solid walls surround me. There is no blood, no silken scarf. Always, the day moves forward.

But it is not a dream, this image in my brain—the photograph the police showed me three days after they found Amanda Ruth. Fourteen years ago I saw it, yet every detail remains with me, a darkness I can’t shake. In the photo the scarf is twisted three times around her neck and knotted, “an impressive knot,” the detective said. “Extremely difficult to untie.” Her face an unnatural color, her lips still stained with the light pink lipstick she wore, the lipstick only slightly smeared. The detective said it was “an unusual strangulation. Knots are highly uncommon. In most cases, the perpetrator will simply hold the rope or wire or what-have-you around the victim’s neck until the victim is deceased. In this case, it’s almost as if the strangler didn’t trust themselves to follow through, they tied a knot they couldn’t possibly undo, even if they changed their mind.”

I couldn’t help but notice the detective’s use of the word “they” instead of “he.” Weren’t crimes of this type almost always committed by men? I vomited into a trash can. “You’d be surprised,” the detective said, “how many killers have a conscience.”

Amanda Ruth, I try to imagine what you were thinking as you looked into his eyes. Did you see your own eyes in the face of a man you had known since childhood, since your earliest memory? Did you say his name? I see your mouth wrapped around the word:
Dad
. Or, in the moment of death, maybe only formal words were sufficient. Perhaps then you called him by another name—removed—the name of the ultimate authority—
Father
. At what moment did you know what was happening? When he first began twisting the scarf around your neck, perhaps you recalled some intimate scene from your childhood, the way he used to rock you in the red chair by the window, his face serene.
My little daughter
, he called you then. He was proud as any father, showing you to anyone who would look, shocked at his good fortune at bringing this small life into the world. When the scarf wound round a second time, maybe you thought of him as
Papa
, whom you had known in your earliest years, who could refuse you nothing, who played hopscotch and jump-rope with you in the small square of yard behind the house. Then, when the scarf began to tighten, you must have remembered something else—the man who had overturned the grill in the barbecue room of the boathouse, his face gone wild with anger.

The scene plays over and over in my head, with endless variations. In one you are gasping, pulling at the scarf wound round your neck, and you are saying, “Stop!” But he doesn’t. I place myself inside your mind in that moment when you realized he wasn’t going to let go. Struggling for breath, you remembered one cool November night when you confronted him in the kitchen. “It’s natural for a girl to love a girl,” you said. “It’s a disease!” he shouted, and hit you so hard a dark bruise lingered on your face for weeks. Under the big oak tree at school, during lunch, I had to ask you dozens of times, day after day, before you finally admitted how you got it.

When the scarf became so tight you couldn’t even gasp, surely you looked at him and pleaded with your eyes.

I think of him hunched over you, enraged—the picture in his mind clear as any photograph—a picture of you and Allison, naked in your room, his only daughter gone to the devil. It is this picture that gives him the strength to hold you down, to tie the knot, to ignore your pleading. But then, as your breaths become short, as your eyes roll up in horror, the rage turns to fear, then pity, then panic. His fingers work feverishly on the knot. But his fingers are not fast enough, he tied the knot too strong—and this is what he wanted, wasn’t it, the impossibility of return? He is crying now. “Amanda Ruth! Wait! I’m sorry,” and he tears at the knot with his teeth—thus the marks the detectives found on your neck—scratches made, they said, by human incisors—someone in a panic, trying to undo the knot. Suddenly you stop struggling for breath, your eyes go blank, and he is looking for something to cut the scarf, but there is nothing. For several minutes this goes on. He is holding you in his arms, rocking you, crying. He knows this is the end, you are gone, there is no undoing the thing he has just done.

He would like to grieve, but practical concerns take over. His wife is spending a couple of days with her sister in Montgomery. Every time there is a fight, she escapes, and doesn’t return until the thing has blown over. When she returns, she always acts as if nothing had happened. It’s not entirely his fault, he thinks; his wife should have done more to raise the girl. She should have been more strict. She lived inside those romance novels, her church, those embarrassingly cheap bottles of gin, while discipline was left to him.

Allison is gone—he can’t even remember what he said to her after he found the two of you together. He will wait until night. Very late, the streets deserted, he pulls the car behind the house and struggles to put you in. He leaves the headlights off as he drives the back roads to the skating rink, then waits on the dirt road behind the rink for half an hour before getting up the nerve to drive into the parking lot. His plan is to put you in the Dumpster; maybe you won’t be found for several days. You are much heavier than he imagined. He hasn’t held you in so many years. He remembers you as a baby, the lovely light brown of your skin, the surprising strength of your nose. How happy he was to see that nose—just like your mother’s—such a narrow American nose! He remembers putting you in the backyard swing when you were small, how you squealed in delight as the swing rose past the fence-top, your dark brown hair flying behind you, and when the swing climbed too high and you were afraid, he caught the seat with his hand, slowed you down. He remembers the high white boots of your majorette’s costume, how you pranced in front of the junior high school band on the Fourth of July, slender and proud in sequins of red, white, and blue—his American daughter, who would never suffer the pain of being Chinese. And then, another memory—your head tossed back in the boathouse—you are lying on the floor, doing unspeakable things with your best friend, a girl who has spent the night in his house too many times for him to count. He feels cheated, betrayed, disgusted. He has worked hard. He has forced himself to speak perfect English, with a slight but deliberate Southern accent. He has been a faithful husband, a devoted father, a good provider. He has done everything he was supposed to do; he has achieved success. For a moment he blames himself, thinking that perhaps he raised you too American, too independent, too full of dreams and desires.

He has just gotten you out of the car when he hears something—the distant sounds of a car approaching? No time to move you into the Dumpster. One quick last look at you, one final kiss, before he gets into his car and drives home.

Two days later, he will be questioned by the police. He will give them my name, and Allison’s. He will cast suspicion on both of us. Because he is married to a Callahan, they will momentarily give him the benefit of the doubt. They will bring Allison back from Montevallo for questioning, and then they will call me in as well. They will talk to Amanda Ruth’s high school teachers, the pastor of her church. A few days after that, Mr. Lee will be sitting in the living room when the police arrive. He will be drinking a Coke, watching the evening news. Mrs. Lee will answer the door, then watch from the kitchen as her husband is taken away. The reporter for Channel 5 will thrust a microphone in his face as the police escort him into the station. He will be unshaven, with dark circles under his eyes, and he will be looking at the ground. A reporter for the
Greenbrook Daily
will drive up to Montevallo and talk to Amanda Ruth’s friends. “Lesbian Killed by Angry Father,” the headline will read. The very first paragraph of the article will label Mr. Lee Chinese, despite the fact that he has spent most of his life in America, speaks perfect English, and flies the stars and stripes every Fourth of July.

From then on, no article or newscast will mention Amanda Ruth without mentioning the word
lesbian
. The pastor of the Lees’ church will deliver a sermon that is widely quoted, in which he says, “The wrath of the Lord came down upon that family.” He will refer to “the disease that is sweeping the nation.” Parents will be warned to pay close attention to their children’s friends. A public service announcement will air daily on local stations. “Are your teenagers dating?” If the answer is no, parents will be encouraged to find out why.

My own parents will look at me over dinner as though I am a stranger. When they take me to the airport to catch a plane back to New York City, my mother will hug me as if she never plans on seeing me again. People in the small airport will recognize me from my photo in the paper; they will point and whisper and refuse to meet my eyes.

Then, at 30,000 feet, salvation: the flight attendant will look at me blankly when she asks, in a thick Long Island accent, what I’d like to drink. She will pour me a club soda that crackles over little cones of ice, and I will feel elated by her utter indifference, knowing that when she looks at me she sees only another passenger, not a misfit or a murderer.

Stepping off the plane at La Guardia, I will see Dave standing in the terminal, waiting for me. His hair will be tousled, a single dark curl falling over his forehead. I will walk into his arms, into the sweet dark anonymity of a New York City night.

TWENTY-FIVE

On day twelve we stop at Fengdu, known throughout China as the City of Ghosts. Fengdu is famous for Mount Minshan, the portal through which souls are rumored to pass on their way to hell. But it will soon be a city of ghosts in the modern sense as well; with the completion of the dam, this place will be entirely underwater. The city has already been evacuated, its three million inhabitants moved to a new, higher city on the opposite side of the river.

Our ship docks at old Fengdu to take on nonhuman cargo that it will carry upstream—boards from disassembled houses, scrap metal, bicycle parts, a myriad of things that were left behind in the rush to evacuate. Graham and I stand on deck watching the porters struggle up the ramp with their goods. A small duffle bag rests by Graham’s feet. “What’s that for?” I ask.

“This is my last stop.”

“But we’re not scheduled to disembark here.”

“I’ve already made arrangements. I want you to come with me.”

The city is strangely quiet. Save for a few sampans along the riverbank and the workers bringing goods on board, it feels entirely abandoned. “There’s nothing here,” I say.

“Do you remember when you said you’d do anything for me?” He fixes me with a stare I can’t shake. “This is all I ask.”

I take his trembling hands. “Why here?”

“Just trust me.”

A man driving an overloaded rickshaw up the ramp loses his balance, the rickshaw topples, and a chair and several pans go sliding toward the water. Matt Dillon, out of uniform, scrambles to help him.

“It’s going to be awkward,” I say, “with Dave.”

Graham smiles. “You’ll come with me then?”

“You knew I would.” I lean into him, feeling foolish, adventurous. We stand this way for several minutes. A ragged breath escapes him. I look up, and he turns his face away. “Are you in pain?”

“Quite the opposite.” He laughs. “Just astonished by my own good luck. Go talk to Dave. Pack a few things. I’ll wait here.”

Dave is in the lounge with Stacy, playing cards. I pull an extra chair up to their table. Stacy tugs at her earring. “Want to play?”

“No thanks. I just need to borrow Dave for a minute.”

“What’s up?” he says.

“I need to talk to you.” There’s a long pause. Dave looks at Stacy.

“Oh,” she says. “Of course. Be back in a few.”

“Well?” Dave says to me.

“I’m getting off the ship.”

He frowns. “Here?”

“With Graham.”

“But you can’t.”

“Why not?”

“What about our flight home?”

“I’ll catch up.”

Dave stares at his cards. He flips them over, faceup, one by one. “Do you have to do this?”

“Yes.”

He picks up the deck and taps it twice against the table, arranging the stack into a tight rectangle. “You’re making a mistake.”

“Are you saying you want to move back in?”

He forms a perfect bridge with the cards. They make a soft whirring sound as he shuffles them into place. “I’m just saying that you shouldn’t do something crazy to get back at me.”

I stand to leave. “Good-bye, Dave.”

Graham leads me through the empty streets. That first night on deck, I would have laughed if anyone had told me that, less than two weeks later, I’d be following this man through the streets of an unfamiliar city. Once the ship is behind us, it is as if we have entered an abandoned movie set. Nothing moves. Nothing breathes. Doors hang open on their hinges, and curtains flutter through the windows of empty apartments. Trash litters the streets. A skeletal dog scavenges in the dirt, comes running when it sees us, wagging its tail, sniffing at our ankles. “We have a friend,” Graham says. He takes a package of dried fish from his duffle bag and feeds it to the dog piece by piece.

We walk a mile or more without encountering any people. Then, through the doorway of a temple I see an old monk sleeping with a candle by his side. Incense sticks lie in bundles around his feet. The platform where the carved Buddha should be is just a flat surface scattered with pamphlets.

Finally we arrive at a hotel, the dog panting at our side. There are no cars parked in front, no bicycles. The door is open. A young girl sits at the desk, sipping tea from a large brown mug, turning the pages of a magazine. At the sound of our footsteps she looks up. “Ni hao,” she says, her face showing no emotion or surprise. She says something and gestures to the dog. Graham speaks firmly to it. The dog paws the ground, stands obediently outside. Graham carries on a conversation with the girl, translating for me as they talk. Apparently this hotel, which opened twenty years ago, will close two weeks from today. The only reason it is still in operation is to house the occasional inspectors who come to make sure that the evacuation order for Fengdu has been followed. “People caught living in their old houses or working their old plots of land are arrested,” Graham explains.

The girl points to a brochure tacked to the wall behind the desk. The drawing on the cover depicts a grand hotel suspended above the words,
We proudly welcome guests to Hotel Tien, world class number one
hotel of China
. “New hotel is on other side,” the girl explains in English, pointing toward the new settlement rising high on the opposite bank. “Everyone stay at new hotel, even President Jiang Xemin.”

We show her our passports, fill out several forms in triplicate, and pay cash for the room before she reaches beneath the counter and retrieves a large metal key. It dangles on a makeshift ring fashioned from a twisted length of coat hanger. “Be very careful,” she says, sliding the key across the counter. “Fifty dollar fee if you lose.”

Graham gets directions to our room, thanks the girl, and picks up his duffle bag. “Follow me.” We pass through the large lobby, which is empty of furnishings save for a surprisingly plush chair upholstered in bright green fabric. At the end of the lobby is a doorway with no door. The hinges remain, rusting against the flaking paint. We pass into a long unlit hallway, at the end of which is an elevator. I push the button but nothing happens, then push it again and am rewarded by a loud metallic rumbling. The elevator descends slowly, like a mechanical beast awaking from hibernation. Finally, it clamors to the ground in front of us, but the doors don’t open. I push the button several times to no avail, then we walk back down the long hallway, through the lobby to the desk, where the girl is twirling her hair and talking on the phone. The dog, still standing outside, sees us and begins wagging his tail.

Graham asks the girl a question. She looks up, shrugs her shoulders, shouts at Graham for a full minute, then resumes her telephone conversation.

“This way,” he says. I follow him out the front door. A middle-aged woman stands in front of the restaurant across the street, smoking. She shouts to us good-naturedly, and Graham replies, waving.

The dog tags along at our heels. I reach down and pat his head. “What did the girl at the desk say?”

“Elevator’s been broken for five years.”

“Why didn’t she tell us that to begin with?”

He laughs. “I asked her exactly the same question.”

The stairs are all the way around on the back side of the hotel. The warped wood shifts so much beneath us I fear the stairs will collapse.

At the entrance to the third floor there is a vending machine, empty except for a single ancient package of dried ginger candies. Three chandeliers hang from the low ceiling of the corridor, but none gives off any light. There are no numbers on any of the doors. Graham leaves the remaining fish snacks on the floor by the vending machine, and the dog settles down to finish them off. We try each door, one after another. At the sixth door, our key works. When we turn on the light, a roach scuttles across the threadbare carpet. The room is clean and sparse. It has two lamps with dark yellow shades, two small beds, a dresser, a spindly wooden table, a desk, and a chair. On top of the table are two tea bags and a gleaming silver thermos filled with steaming water, but no cups. A red rotary dial phone sits on top of the dresser. A single naked bulb is suspended above one bed by a length of wire.

Graham stands at the foot of the beds. “We can pull them together.”

I squeeze his hand. “Or just sleep close.” I pull down the blankets on both of the beds, but it turns out that only one of them has sheets. “I win,” I say, feeling almost shy all of the sudden, like a young bride on her honeymoon.