Hour of the Rat (34 page)

“E
LLIE
? E
LLIE
M
C
E
NROE
?”

A woman’s voice.

I don’t recognize her at first because she sounds nervous, almost panicked, as opposed to being her usual pain in my ass.

“Yeah?”

“It’s Vicky Huang.”

I have a moment of panic myself, thinking, Weren’t we supposed to talk in a week? Has it already been a week? I try to count up the days.

“Sorry to call you so late,” she says.

I think that it hasn’t been a week, it’s been … what, three days? Four? And yeah, it
is
pretty late, like almost midnight. And all the time zones are the same in China, so she doesn’t have
that
excuse.

“Uh, that’s okay,” I finally manage. “What can I do for you?”

A hesitation. “I just need to know …” Another pause. “Do you negotiate to sell Zhang Jianli’s work to another collector?” Her words come out in a rush, like they’re propelled by a small explosion.

“No. Why would you think that?”

A brief, nervous laugh. “So sorry! It is only that … Mr.
Cao, he … he is very anxious to secure certain pieces. For his collection. He is very serious about his collection.”

She sounds like he’s going to take it out of her hide if he doesn’t get what he wants.

“I promise you. I’m not negotiating with anyone. I’ve just been on vacation. That’s all.”

At that moment the waitress swings over. “
Zai lai yi ping pijui
,” I tell the waitress, because I really need another beer if I’m going to have this conversation.

“Where are you now? Mr. Cao is very anxious to arrange a meeting.”

“I’m in Kunming … Look, I’ll be back in Beijing in a few days. Tell Mr. Cao not to worry. Nothing’s being sold right now. And I’m sorry we haven’t been able to meet.”

Because as much as I hate apologizing to this pushy bitch, I can’t afford to piss off a Chinese billionaire potential investor.

“I’ve had some personal business, that’s all. It doesn’t have anything to do with Zhang Jianli’s art.”

“I see,” she says.

I can’t tell for sure if she believes me, but she sounds calmer anyway.

Man, people are freaks.

I
SIT THERE A
while longer, sipping my beer. I think about checking my email. I haven’t done that since I left Dali, and there’s free wireless here.

I have my laptop with me, like I always do—no way I trust leaving it in a hotel room. No matter how careful I am about using VPNs, about clearing my browsing history and running spyware and virus scans, about deleting anything sensitive off my hard drive, I just don’t know enough about how all that stuff works to be sure. Besides, one thing I do know is, people
can put all kinds of spyware and key-logging software on your computer if they have access to it, and even on a Mac that stuff can be hard to find.

For all I know, that kid Moudzu back in Guiyu could have bugged it when he fixed it. I mean, I don’t think so, but how can I know for sure?

No Great Community, I tell myself. Just email.

When I log on, there’s a message from my mom.

I lean back in my chair, sip my beer, and think about ordering another tequila shot, even though I know I shouldn’t. I mean, what am I supposed to say to this? “Way to go, Mom! So happy you found another crazy boyfriend!”

While I’m trying to decide what to drink and what to write, I launch Skype. Dog Turner’s account is green.

It’s 12:45
A
.
M
. here, 8:45
A
.
M
. in San Diego.

Not that early for most people, I guess.

As I stare at the screen, the Skype phone rings. Dog Turner.

I hesitate for a moment. I don’t know what to say to him.

I could just not answer it, I guess.

“Fuck it,” I mutter. I’m going to have to talk to him eventually. Might as well get it over with.

I hit
ANSWER
. But it’s not Dog’s face on the screen. It’s Natalie’s.

“Ellie, hi. Thanks … thanks for picking up.”

She looks like shit, but then just about anybody lit up by a computer screen looks kind of sickly.

“Hey,” I say. “Give me a second. Let me get my earbuds in.”

It’s more than the blue computer light, though. Her eyes are red-rimmed, the lids puffy. Her streaked blond hair has taken on the texture of straw.

No Dog in sight.

“Hi,” I say after untangling my earbuds. “How’s … Is everything okay?”

Because suddenly I know that things aren’t okay at all.

“Doug’s in the hospital,” she bursts out. “He had—they aren’t sure—a seizure, maybe a stroke. He just …”

“Oh, shit. How is he? I mean, is he …?”

And I don’t know how to finish the question. Because no matter what, he isn’t okay.

“They’re running tests.” She swipes the back of her hand across her eyes. “I don’t know, I’m sure he’s fine, it’s just …”

She can’t finish.

“I’m really sorry,” I say.

She looks up at me.

“Is there any word about … about Jason? Because Doug’s just so … he’s so emotional about it. That was what—I mean, he was going off about it, before he …”

She has to stop again.

Fucking great.

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I’m working on it. I can’t promise anything, but I have a few leads.”

It’s like the strain in her face suddenly dissolves, like someone had been pulling a rubber band as far as it could stretch and then let go. “Thanks,” she says. “Thanks. Even if you don’t … At least I can tell him you’re doing something. It really helps.”

A
FTER WE DISCONNECT
, I order the tequila shot. And I think, fuck, Dog. Why did you mess around with me when you
had someone like Natalie at home, who cares so much about you?

I didn’t know.

If I’d known, I never would have done it.

At least I hope not.

S
O YEAH
, I
DECIDE
to go to Guizhou. To Guiyang, to check out the last of the seed companies on Jason’s list.

It’s not like I think I’ll find Jason. It’s not like I think I’ll find out anything at all. It’s just that I can tell Dog and Natalie I tried. That I did everything I could do. Followed the last lead through to its conclusion.

I mean, what else am I going to do? Go back to Beijing and meet with Sidney Cao and Vicky Huang about art I can’t sell? Or hang out with my mom and her new boyfriend, Anal Andy?

And Creepy John. He should be back in Beijing by now. With my dog.

Don’t think about that now.

A soft sleeper to Guizhou costs less than thirty-five bucks from here. I can afford it.

I hit
REPLY
to my mom’s email.
Hi
, I type.
Glad things are going well. I have something else to do but should be home in a couple days. Make sure you check the date on your visa. It expires soon, right? If so, you can go to Hong Kong or Korea to renew it. Ask Andy to help with the travel. See you soon
.

T
HERE ARE PLENTY OF
trains from Kunming that go to Guiyang, and I find a seat on one that leaves at 12:30
P
.
M
. the next day and gets me there around 10
P
.
M
.

I find a cab. From the car window, Guiyang’s just another second- or third-tier Chinese city: lots of strange grey and tan high-rises faced with fogged mirror glass, shorter white-tile-fronted
buildings with blackened grout, apartment blocks with sagging, rusting balconies. Overhead in places there’s these crazy dull metal tubes that look like giant hamster trails—elevated roads, I guess. And even in one of China’s poorest provinces, a luxury mall advertising Gucci, with promises of Armani to come.

My hotel is in the same building as a seedy mall that smells like grease, the entrance to it around the corner, across from sagging grey and brown apartment blocks. There’s no hotel lobby here, just a security guard sitting behind a desk, then a couple of elevators in a hall with warped linoleum floors scarred by cigarette burns.

The hotel takes up the twenty-fifth to the thirtieth floors. It’s not bad. Some Japanese chain. A lot of brass plating and red-flocked wallpaper. Everything feels undersized: A tiny lobby. Narrow halls.

“
Zhege lüguan, you meiyou yige jiuba?
” I ask the desk clerk. Does this hotel have a bar? Because after ten hours on the train, my leg is just killing me, even with a Percocet.

“They have one on the fifth floor,” she tells me. Her Chinese is hard to understand; the accent, or dialect or whatever it is, is pretty thick.

“
Xie xie.
” I start to head to the elevator, and then I think about the mission. I extract the piece of paper from my wallet, the one with Jason’s seed companies.

“Do you recognize this place?” I point to Bright Future Seed Company. The last name on the list.

She studies the paper. “No, don’t recognize. The address, this place is on west side of city. Perhaps past long-distance bus station.” She smiles. “Maybe not a famous Guiyang business.”

T
HE BAR IS DARK
, with wood-slat benches, Formica tables, a couple of aquariums. I sit underneath the spray-painted
mural of a screaming bald guy, drink a Snow Beer, and try to ignore the Mandarin pop and cigarette smoke. There’s a skinny young bartender with long hair that flops over one eye, wearing a stretched-out white V-neck, a table of college-age kids, I think—a few years younger than me anyway—drinking beers and colas and eating snacks that, if they’re anything like what’s on my table, taste like jicama dipped in chili oil.

Works for me.

I’m pretty sure I’m the only white girl for miles. At least I’m the only one I’ve seen in this bar and this building. So what do I do?

I order my second beer and think about it.

Just go there, I guess. Take a look. See what happens.

If it seems too sketchy, I’m not going to make the mistake I made in Guiyu. I’ll just stay in the cab.

I
DON
’
T MAKE IT
into a cab until just before 2:00
P
.
M
. the next day. I slept in this morning. I was tired, and also I ended up hanging out a little with those guys at the other table, and two beers turned into four. They were nice, and I need to do that, make an effort to hang out with people. That’s what the army shrink told me, back in the day: “It’s easy to get overwhelmed by too much external stimulation. But try not to isolate.”

He’d be proud of me. I think about the last couple of weeks, and whatever it is I’ve been doing, it hasn’t been isolating.

The cabdriver looks at the address and considers. “Long way. Maybe forty-five minutes.”

“
Mei wenti
,” I say. No problem. I have the room reserved for another night; it’s cheap enough. I figure this last mission, to Bright Future Seed Company, isn’t going to take too long. I’ll check it out and cross it off my list of stuff I need to do. I’ll have a nice dinner someplace and see if I can get on a train to Beijing
tomorrow. Maybe even a plane, if it’s not too expensive. Because even though I don’t know what I’m going to do about all the crap on my plate waiting for me in BJ, a part of me kind of wants to get back there and … I don’t know, maybe deal with it.

Not Creepy John, I tell myself. No way. That whole thing is just too weird. Even if some parts of it make me really horny.

He works for the DSD. You can’t trust him. Plus, he’s a freak.

Think about something else. Like the dog.

I wonder how she’s doing.

Probably my mom and Andy are taking her for walks. I can picture the two of them doing that. Walking the dog. Holding hands.

They’ve got to be screwing each other by now. I mean, they’ve already dented navels.

The cabdriver wasn’t kidding—this is a long drive. Just getting across Guiyu took longer than I would have thought. Traffic in the city sucks. This is a poor province—who knew there’d be so many cars here?

Now we’re on a highway heading west. Mountains rise on either side. The road is pretty good, the traffic not bad, but then there’s nothing much out here. At first half-built housing developments—high-rises swathed in green nets and bamboo scaffolds. Broad, empty streets. Then not even the half-built communities, just billboards advertising the modern, luxurious lifestyles to come:
GOLDEN FORTUNE ESTATES
,
RISEN PHOENIX WATERFRONT MANSIONS
.

We take a turn off the main highway, onto a frontage road, pass a factory of some kind—maybe cement?—then a string of small businesses, low storefronts framed in white tile. A restaurant. A car-repair place. A new-looking Sinopec gas station.

Then, finally, a long building with a tin roof. No sign. No windows in front. A couple of cars parked on one side.