Ghost Month (25 page)

I sprung up with one arm cocked, but the man was experienced. He smiled calmly as he shoved the table into my gut. I crumbled to the floor. The edge had cut right across my bruise.

“See that, Peng?” he said as I struggled to inhale. “That’s how we deal with people who waste our time!” He stood over me and shouted down, “And you. Get back on your shitty little moped and get the fuck out of my city!”

They showed me the back door, and I managed to struggle out to the street on my own power.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Jenny’s stand was closed. I was relieved. She would have forced the entire story out of me. I was in pain and too distressed to give a genuine smile.

I could fake talk with Kuilan. She asked me if something was wrong, and I told her I missed Julia badly.

I had to fess up fully to Dwayne, and he let me have it.

“I used to think you were smart, Jing-nan,” he said. “Now I know you’re dumb. Don’t you know the cops are just as bad as the crooks? No, make that worse!”

I thought I had recovered from taking the table in the gut a few hours before, but now I couldn’t stand up straight. It was messing with my head, and I couldn’t slip into my Johnny personality properly. When I shouted out to passersby, the effort left me gasping for breath.

“Look at him, Cat!” Dwayne continued. “You think people want to eat at a stand where the barker looks like he’s ready to drop dead?”

Frankie glanced at me and pronounced, “He’ll live.”

I dragged a chair to the front grill and dropped into it.

“I just need to rest for a minute,” I said, closing my eyes and bracing my hands on my knees.

“You need to work out and toughen up. You’re the first person I ever heard of getting beat up by a table.”

“The table had some help.”

Someone reached down and touched the back of my neck with soft fingers.

“Nancy!” I said as I looked up. I came face-to-face with Peggy Lee. Her eyebrows were raised and her mouth was screwed tight. “Nancy?” she asked. “Who’s Nancy?”

“She’s a friend of mine,” I said.

“You were expecting her?”

“Sort of. More than I was expecting you.”

“I’m glad I caught you during your break. I was thinking you could grab a bite with me.”

“I’m busier than I look, Peggy. Some other time.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Dwayne. “I know you! You were the little bird who used to come after Jing-nan all the time!”

Peggy brushed her hair over her right ear. “It’s true,” she said. “But things are different now.”

“Seems like you have the same crazy look in your eyes.”

In a futile gesture, I put up an open hand, blocking Dwayne’s face. “Peggy, I want to apologize for Dwayne’s comments. He likes to incite people. I’ll meet up with you some other time, I promise.”

“Don’t worry, Jing-nan. I like to have fun, too. I wasn’t offended.” But the look in her eyes said she would have pushed Dwayne off the curb and into traffic as soon as his back was turned.

When she was gone, Dwayne came up to me and said softly, “Do you know how expensive that necklace was? It was a Tiffany!”

“Now you whisper?” I said.

“I have a cousin in the jewelry business. The chains on that thing.” He shook his head. “You don’t wear something like that to a night market.” Dwayne mimed picking a pocket.

“That was probably the cheapest thing she had.”

“Listen to me, man. You don’t want a girl like that. Find a humble girl who knows the value of work. The old ways of getting people together were better. Your grandmother was bought and adopted by your grandfather’s family and grew up working on the farm. When she was old enough, she married your grandfather.”

“She was fifteen when she married my grandfather.”

“Things weren’t perfect, but they were better than now. Girls
chasing money only lead to trouble.” Dwayne covered his mouth and added, “Look at what happened to Julia.”

“Don’t blame the victim,” I said. “I’m fucking serious.”

Dwayne threw his hands up. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.” He suddenly put a smile on his face. “Why, hello, miss! How can I help you?”

I turned to see Nancy. She was wearing an old, outsized Echo & the Bunnymen T-shirt over Uniqlo shorts. A heavy bag—probably filled with LPs—was slung over her right shoulder.

“Hi, Jing-nan,” she said. “You never answered my text. The vinyl pop-up store had a lot of great stuff!”

“I’m sorry, Nancy. I was so busy.”

“Looks like you’re sitting around talking!”

“This is Nancy!” boomed Dwayne.

“Hello.”

“Nancy, this is Dwayne, who should be working, and that is Frankie, who is actually working.” Frankie gave a small wave.

“Nancy,” said Dwayne, “how about you take Jing-nan out of here for the night? He’s not feeling well.”

“No!” I said. Taking a sick day was for the weak. It would call my manhood into question.

“What’s wrong?” asked Nancy.

“I’ll explain later. I’m not hurt badly.” I struggled to stand up and knocked the chair back by accident.

“He’s out for the night,” said Dwayne. “Don’t worry, Jing-nan, we’ll cover for you!”

“N
OW IT LOOKS EVEN
worse!” exclaimed Nancy. She poked my bruise.

“Ouch!” I said. “Stop it!” Despite the teasing, most of my pain from earlier in the night was gone. Who knew sex was better than physical therapy?

“I can’t believe you got beat up by some hooligans and then the cops … and in the same spot!” She turned on every light in the room to get a better look at my injury.

I piled two pillows behind me, sat up and looked around the room. “This is one of the plainest love hotels ever,” I said.

“It was close by. Some other time, when you’re better, we can try one with a jail theme, with the cell and handcuffs. I can pretend to be a police chief and hit you some more.”

“You would be a good cop.”

“Hey, I take that as an insult.”

I grabbed her and licked her ear. She laughed.

“It’s interesting to be with a young guy.”

“Oh?” I turned on my side to face her and winced.

“Ah-ding would have been long asleep by now, and it seems like you’re raring to go again.”

“Say, Nancy?”

“Yes?”

“Have you been with a few guys?”

“What, have I slept around a lot? Is that what you want to know?” I thought about the Hsinchu detective asking me who Julia’s johns were.

“Hey, I didn’t mean it like that! I certainly haven’t done this very often at all.”

“You think I do? That’s the second time you’ve insulted me tonight!”

“Nancy, I just felt jealous when you mentioned Ah-ding. That’s all.”

“You don’t have to be jealous of him. There weren’t deep emotions involved.”

“Just like us,” I said, quickly adding, “Well, so far.”

Her lips quivered. “Yes. Exactly.”

I brushed her hair back behind her ears.

“Still, though, it’s all right now to say we care about each other.”

“Do you still love Julia?”

“A part of me does. The younger part of me, with all the memories.”

The phone rang.

“I didn’t even know the phones worked in this place,” I said. “I wonder who it is. Nobody knows we’re here.”

“It’s probably the front desk.”

“We still have at least twenty minutes!” Feeling my annoyance surge, I answered the phone with an attitude. “Yeah?”

“Didn’t we warn you, Jing-nan?” said a voice that matched mine for exasperation. It was the Taiwanese-American. “Didn’t we say to leave it alone? Now you’ve gone and done it. That was so stupid of you, going to the Hsinchu police.”

Every emotion ran through me. I felt like a frozen fillet of fish dropped into a deep fryer—bubbling and crispy on the outside, thawing and slimy in the middle and solid ice at the core.

I was scared as hell that he’d found me. Furious that he was calling me when I was with Nancy. Tickled that I had pissed him off.

Strangest of all, I felt hopeful. After the Huangs cut me off, the Taiwanese-American was my sole connection to Julia. If anybody knew anything, it was him.

I licked my lips. If I pushed his buttons, he might tell me something useful.

“You’re that American guy,” I said. “I can tell by your stupid accent. Are you in Taiwan to work on it through immersion in Mandarin?”

I heard him cough, holding back his rage so he could speak and not scream. “Oh yeah, Jing-nan? You’re gonna be talking a lot funnier than me when I break your fucking face in half!”

“Why don’t you shoot me, the same as you shot Julia?”

“I didn’t kill Julia!” He was indignant, but he also sounded like he was telling the truth.

“You’re my number-one suspect,” I spat, pointing my finger at the receiver.

“You have no idea what’s going on!”

He hung up. I laughed with relief and nervousness. My hands fumbled as I tried to replace the receiver.

I looked at Nancy. She was sitting up with the sheet gathered over her body, looking sexy and scared.

“That was one of the
liumangs
, right?” she asked.

“I lied to you about my bruise,” I said. “It wasn’t from work.” I told her all about my run-ins with the Taiwanese-American. She stiffened.

“How did he find you?”

I instantly knew the answer. “It had to be the clerk,” I said. “They have all these love-hotel staff members on the payroll. How
else do you think these gangsters blackmail businessmen and politicians?”

“I don’t feel safe here,” she said. Her legs did a scissor kick over the mattress to find her panties.

“You’re right. Let’s get out of here before he shows up with his friends.” I tore through the sheets, looking for my boxers.

“I hate rushing,” said Nancy as she snapped on her bracelets, left then right. “I forget things when I rush.”

I pointed at the blotch on my stomach. “Look what they’ve done to me. It’s going to look a lot uglier on you, Nancy.”

“Who are they? Just a bunch of low-life hooligans, right?”

“Can’t be. The guy coming after me is an American.”

W
E TOOK
N
ANCY
’
S SPORTS
car to my neighborhood. It wasn’t subtle, of course, but it was safer than my moped. We circled my block twice, looking for a spot, but as expected we attracted unwanted attention.

“Pull up to the curb there, Nancy,” I said.

“We can’t park there.”

“We’re going to talk to that guy waving to us.”

“Is he a friend?”

“He’s a
jiaotou
, a big brother around here, so he is a friend.” Nancy rolled down her window. German Tsai loped over, smirking. His crew cut of white hair looked like a fuzzy halo, and his Hitler mole gleamed in the light from the streetlamp. He took the toothpick out of his mouth, snapped it in half and dropped it. “Hello, German,” I said.

“Is that really you, Jing-nan?” He was too dignified to lean down to the window, so he widened his stance and bent at the knees to get a good look at us. “Just the other day you were on your sad little bike. Now you’re here in this beautiful car with an even more beautiful girl. You been rubbing Buddha’s belly?”

“German, this is Nancy,” I said. He gave her a respectful nod. “We’re about to head home, and we’re looking for a parking spot.”

“Calling it a night already?” asked German. “It’s not even nine. You should take Nancy out for some fun. You need to show off a beautiful girl like that.”

“We’ve had enough excitement for tonight.”

“You two should go to my KTV, Best Western. It opened a month ago, Jing-nan, and you still haven’t come by. You have to give me some face. I’ve known you since you were a bump in your mama’s stomach!”

“Some other time, I promise.”

German settled things with a loud whistle. “Jing-nan! You, girl! Get out of the car!”

Three little brothers came over to the curb. Nancy squeezed my left hand.

“Are we in trouble?” she asked quietly.

“It’s all right,” I said to Nancy under my breath. “They’re
jiaotous
, but they’re my
jiaotous
.”

“I still need to park,” Nancy pleaded with German.

“We’ll take care of that,” he said. “Leave the keys in.”

Two of the little brothers stood guard by the car, ogling its curves with their mouths open. We followed the third guy, who turned his head every so often to spit
binlang
juice. I wondered where he got his betel nuts from.

The little brother brought us near the Ximending neighborhood of Wanhua District. Ximending literally means “West Gate District,” as it used to be the wilderness outside the west gate of Taipei. It was the home of movie theaters and shopping for young people. Japanese culture is big there. So are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender interests.

German Tsai’s turf didn’t extend to Ximending itself. The little brother brought us to a side alley below the southern boundary. The building entrance was set back from the sidewalk to make room for traditional guardian-lion statues sporting cowboy hats. Old-time wagon wheels leaned against their flanks.
BEST WESTERN KTV
, read an oversized sign that ripped off the font from the American hotel chain.

The little brother handed me a coupon. “Give this to the cowboy with the arrow through his hat. He’ll take care of you.”