Phoenix (8 page)

I decided to head back to the bus terminal, when I heard a noise behind me. I tried to turn around, but couldn’t. Someone had grabbed my backpack.

I lunged forward, trying to break out of the person’s grip, and the pack’s straps slipped from my shoulders. I bent my elbows, barely catching the straps in time. I continued driving my body away from the thief, but it
was no use. Whoever it was was too strong. In fact, he was slowly pulling me toward him.

I heard a high-pitched laugh, and I glanced over my shoulder to see a Chinese kid about sixteen years old. His face was lean, and he had wild, beady eyes. His feet were set roughly shoulder-width apart, and his knees were bent in a deep Horse Stance, anchoring him solidly to the ground. He felt stronger than I was and based on that stance, there was a good chance he knew kung fu. Which meant that if I wanted to keep my pack, I was going to have to either be quicker than he was, or fight dirty.

Or both.

I lunged backward, shifting my hips closer to his. At the same time, I swept my right leg up and back in a powerful arc, like a scorpion raising its stinger. The bottom of my hiking boot connected with the kid’s groin, and he let out a piercing shriek. He let go of my pack, and I felt his hands grab at the hair on the back of my head.

I pivoted to my right and released my left arm from my pack sling. I swung the pack around, batting away his hands, but he rushed toward me. My left arm was already cocked behind me, and as he closed the gap, I swung an overhand left fist at his face. He saw it coming and turned his head, and my punch clipped him behind the ear.

He stopped short, his legs turning to Jell-O. I saw a fog settle over his eyes. However, he managed to stay on his feet. He was tough.

He also wasn’t stupid. He knew when to quit. He turned and ran off in an odd, loping stride.

I glanced around, but saw no one else coming at me.

I looked down at my hands and realized that they were trembling, probably from the adrenaline burst that had fueled my Scorpion Kick. While I’d been studying kung fu forever, that was the first time I’d ever had to use it in real life. It was nothing like I’d imagined. I didn’t like it. The knuckles on my left hand were sore, and my ears were ringing, also because of the adrenaline.

I took another look around, trying to calm my jittery nerves before heading back to the bus terminal, and a sign jutting out from the side of a dilapidated building farther down the road caught my attention. I couldn’t decipher all the Chinese characters, but I did recognize one. It said
BICYCLE
.

It occurred to me that a few minutes inside a bike shop might help push the attack out of my mind. Besides, I’d never been inside a Chinese bike shop. It could be interesting.

I headed for the storefront, if it could be called that. The two-story building was in bad shape, its bricks crumbling into the cracked sidewalk. Large windows were boarded over with sheets of plywood. If it weren’t for a second small sign, this one on the heavy metal front door, I would have headed back to the bus terminal without giving the building another thought. The small sign contained only one Chinese character, but I could read it. It said
OPEN
.

I gave the battered door a gentle tug, and to my surprise it swung outward smoothly on well-oiled hinges. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. Looking
around, I had to blink several times to make sure I wasn’t imagining what I was seeing. It was one of the most amazing sights I’d ever encountered.

Before me was a sea of bicycles. There were mountain bikes, road bikes, and cyclocross bikes. There were tricycles, unicycles, and tandem bikes. There were BMX bikes, load-hauling bikes, and recumbent bikes. It was unbelievable.

Most astonishing of all was that the bikes were from every major manufacturer around the world. The shops back in the United States would kill for an inventory like this. American shops were tied to contracts with specific manufacturers, which meant they could carry only certain things from certain brands. This shop obviously had no such agreements.

Standing with my mouth agape, I heard a girl’s voice ring out in English.

“Do you like?”

I closed my mouth and glanced about, but didn’t see anyone. Then I heard movement behind a tall counter toward the back of the shop and saw a small, grease-covered individual appear from behind it. The person was wearing stained coveralls, black work boots, and a Detroit Tigers baseball cap pulled low. It didn’t look like any girl I had ever seen before.

A small hand with gunk-clogged fingernails removed the hat, and a wave of shimmering sable hair spilled out.
Now
she looked like a girl.

“I said, ‘Do you like?’ ” the girl asked again. “You speak English, yes?”

“Yes,” I replied. “And I like.”

She smiled. “What exactly do you like?”

I felt my face flush, and I waved a hand toward the rows of bicycles blanketing the shop floor. “I—I was talking about the bikes.”

The girl pouted as she approached me. “Oh.” She wiped grease from her palms with a dirty rag dangling from her back pocket and stuck out her hand. “My name is Tiě Hú Dié. Welcome to the finest bicycle shop in Henan Province.”

Still embarrassed, I took her hand. It was small and warm, and holding it made me feel strange. I let go.

“I’m Phoenix Collins,” I mumbled.

“Phoenix?”

“Yes.”

“That is a girl’s name.”

I frowned. “Not according to my grandfather, and he’s Chinese.”

“But you’re American, yes?”

I stared at her. “How did you know?”

“Your accent.”

“Oh.”

“So, Phoenix is your first name?” she asked.

I remembered that people from many Asian countries gave their last name first. “That’s right,” I said.

“Then you would say that my name is Hú Dié Tiě. You may call me Hú Dié.”

She pronounced it “Hoo DEE-ay.”

“Butterfly?” I asked.

“Correct,” she said. “You speak Chinese?”

“Yí dian dian,”
I replied. “A little. What does
Tiě
mean?”

She flashed a mischievous smile. “Guess.”

“I have no idea.”

“Come on, Phoenix, guess my name.”

I fought the urge to laugh as the story of Rumpelstiltskin popped into my head. Never one to back down from a challenge, I looked her over and swallowed a lump that was inexplicably forming in my throat. I figured I should guess something nice. I asked, “Does
Tiě
mean … ‘lovely’?”

To my surprise, her smile disappeared, and she punched me in the arm. “No,” she said. “Guess again.”

I rubbed my arm. She was strong. “Um,” I said, trying hard to think of a word that paired well with
butterfly
. “How about … ‘delicate’?”

She punched me again, harder this time.

“Ouch!” I said. “That hurt. What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with
you
? Get punched by a girl, and you squirm like an eel. Guess again.”

I shook my head. What was up with this girl? Was she flirting? Did she just want attention? Regardless, I wasn’t interested. Girls were the last thing on my mind. “This is stupid,” I said. “I give up.”

“Quitter.”

“I am
not
a quitter.”

“Guess again, then.”

I glared at her.

She glared back. “Would you like a clue?” she asked.

“Whatever.”

She punched me a third time. This time I felt as if I’d been hit with a hammer.

I yelped and jumped backward. “Are you insane?”

Hú Dié giggled. “That was your clue.” She pushed the sleeves of her coveralls up all the way to her shoulders and lifted both arms in a bodybuilder’s pose. She flexed, displaying perfectly toned biceps and rock-hard triceps.
“Tiě,”
she said, “means ‘iron.’ I am Iron Butterfly.”

I rubbed my arm again. “You are
Psycho
Butterfly.”

“And you are an infant. Stop whining.”

I’d had enough of her. I turned away and headed for the door.

“Wait!” she called out. “Please don’t leave. I am only joking.”

I kept walking.

“Please? Pretty, pretty please?”

I stopped. I looked back at her. “Why should I stay here and keep getting abused?”

“I promise I’ll stop. I like talking with you. I’m sorry if I tease too much. It is just my way.”

I glanced around at the bikes once more, and an idea began to form. Why in the world would I hike to this Cangzhen Temple when I could ride there? This shop had plenty of mountain bikes. Maybe I could afford to buy one? Better yet, maybe I could rent one. It would be a lot cheaper.

“I need to speak with the manager,” I said.

“Huh?”

“The manager,” I repeated. “The boss. The head honcho. Your leader. I need to speak with him.”

She put her hands on her hips. “
I
am the manager. I am also the head mechanic, and the owner.”

I looked at her in wonder. “This is all yours?”

“Yes. Technically, my father and I own it together, but I do all the work. He is usually busy with other things. This is my shop. Just ask him when he comes back later.”

“How old are you?”

“Fourteen. How old are you?”

“Thirteen.” I looked around. “How do you find time to manage all of this? Did you drop out of school or something?”

“Do I speak English like an intermediate school dropout?”

I felt my face beginning to flush again. “Um, no. Sorry.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, then,” she said. “I want to go to college in America or Australia one day, so I work very hard on my English. I even pay for a special tutor with my own money. I do not want to spend my whole life with grease underneath my fingernails, you know.”

I nodded, a new respect growing for her. Maybe she wasn’t psycho, after all—just feisty. “Do you rent bicycles?” I asked.

“For you? Possibly.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?
‘Possibly.’ ”

“It’s just that we don’t normally rent bicycles here. I rarely sell them to individuals, either. No one bothers to come to this section of Kaifeng unless they are going to
the bus terminal. We are wholesalers. The bikes you see will be sent to bike shops across China.”

“Oh,” I said, my irritation quickly dissolving. “I was wondering how you could have so many different brands in one place. How much to rent one?”

“Pick a bike first; then we’ll see if we can work something out.”

I spotted a blue and white dual-suspension mountain bike and walked over to it. It was a beauty. I knelt down to examine the components and froze. “I hate to tell you this,” I said, “but this bike is a copy.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is not an original from the manufacturer. It was made by someone else.”

“How do you know?”

I pointed to a joint where two sections of the frame came together. “See this weld? It wasn’t done by the manufacturer. They use machines. This was done by hand. The weld probably won’t hold up to hard riding.”

“It will hold,” she said in a defensive tone.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I welded it.”

I jumped to my feet. “
You
built this bike?”

She nodded. “It is a very good reproduction, is it not? I even painted it. Look.” She pointed behind the tall counter at the back of the shop.

I walked over to the counter and saw a small spray booth for painting beyond it. I also saw a large assortment of raw aluminum and steel tubing to be bent into
bike frame sections, plus cutting torches, welding equipment, and numerous trays of wrenches, hammers, pliers, and other tools.

“Which of these bikes did you build?” I asked.

“All of them. I built the frames from scratch, then added the components.”

“But there are like two hundred bikes here, and they are all different types!”

“There are currently two hundred twenty-one.”

“Incredible,” I said. “How much do they sell for?”

“Retail price, of course.”

I wasn’t sure that I had heard her right. “You mean people pay the same price for your copies as they would for the real thing? Don’t you tell them that they are fakes?”

“My customers know that these are replicas. As for what they tell
their
customers, that is none of my business.”

“But that’s cheating.”

“No. I am honest about the origin of my bikes.”

I shook my head.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “Bike companies copy each other’s designs all the time, right down to the paint schemes. No one is stopping them from stealing my designs.”

“What do you know about bike design?”

“More than you could ever hope to know.”

I laughed. “I doubt that.”

“What do you know about bicycles?” she asked. “Seriously. What could you possibly even need a bike for?
Let me guess. Judging by your ratty hair and baggy clothes, you want to rent a mountain bike.”

I didn’t reply.

“I knew it!” Hú Dié said. “I bet you don’t have a clue where to ride. There are no mountains in this neighborhood.”

“I have information.”

“What kind of information? You barely speak Chinese.”

“I have a GPS unit.”

“Ha! That won’t even get you to the foothills, let alone actual mountains for a mountain bike. You can never count on the roads being open around here. You would have to ask the locals how to get where you want to go, and you won’t be able to speak their dialect. Many of them don’t even speak Mandarin.”

I said nothing.

“So, where is it you are going?” she asked.

“I have a better question,” I replied. “Why am I wasting my time talking with you?”

She flashed that brilliant smile of hers. “Because you like me.”

I felt my face turning red again.

“No need to be embarrassed,” she said. “It happens to most guys. I’ll tell you what: I will go with you and be your guide. I know which roads are open. It will be fun. I won’t even charge you for borrowing a bike.”

“You really are crazy,” I said. “You don’t even know me.
I
could be psycho.”

“I doubt it. You’re harmless.”

I ground my teeth. “You can’t come with me.”