But I watch him walk away, watch his hips swing, and look back to see Liu Wen grinning.
Into the golden glow. There are the five balls; one black lacquer, one red lacquer, two silver and in the center, a golden ball, almost invisible in the glow. Liu Wen flicks the silver ball directly at me and I barely manage to avoid taking it. I ricochet the red ball off the edge hoping it will come back towards me and Haibao hooks it in a long gliding curve and captures it and we drop out of contact. So fast.
"My point," Haibao says. He is all edge and excitement, and I think, this will be his night.
And it is. Even Liu Wen and I together can't stop him.
Every time we break contact Haibao is more exhilarated. His color is high, sweat beads along his upper lip and his wisps of hair lay wet at his temples in fine black curves like pen strokes. His hands rest lightly on the table edge, fingernails pink with perfect white half-moons. He doesn't move and yet like a cat, perfectly relaxed, he has the air of something on the edge of motion.
We break contact and Haibao says, "Seven," and I am clenching the table, my palms wet. He smiles, perfect white teeth, golden skin, white clothes and all wrapped in golden light. White and gold and electric. Liu Wen looks at him hungrily, and so do I.
Haibao looks down at the table, the light under his eyes and carving his normal flat face into planes and high cheeks. His eyes are hooded. Liu Wen opens his mouth as if to say something-I know what he is going to say, to stop the game, and I want him to say it and I don't because I want the game to end but I don't want Liu Wen to get Haibao-and we drop back into contact.
I score four points and never once touch the golden ball. Liu Wen scores more often, but is hit with the silver too many times. He scores six points only by taking the gold ball. And immediately after that, Haibao, at seven points, reaches past where Liu Wen and I are playing with the black lacquer ball and effortlessly sets the red spinning into the gold. I reach reflexively for the golden ball, and Liu Wen sends the black careening to cut it off but I end up interfering with the black and it collides with the red and both skid off on tangents towards empty parts of the table. And Haibao effortlessly takes the golden ball.
We break contact. Haibao's head is thrown back, his eyes closed, his back slightly arched. His hands remain resting lightly on the edge of the table. He sighs, a shudder more like a sob, then opens his eyes and looks at us and smiles. "Ten points," he says.
Liu Wen starts to say something, clears his throat, "Do you want to keep playing, Zhang? I'm sure they can find a table for you." He isn't looking at me.
I should be good, I should disappear, as Liu Wen did the last time, but I wait, because it is Haibao's night. It is Haibao's choice. I swallow. He looks at Liu Wen, and then at me, and then back down at the table. I am reminded of the boy who led us here, and the way he didn't look at me. I think I have read something in Haibao's look, my heart begins to hammer. He will choose me. Choose me, Haibao.
The lights on the table flicker, and the lights above us dim, for a moment I see the bare bones of the building, normally hidden by a scrim of light and color, and this is an old, not very attractive place. The light comes back even brighter, distantly I hear the sound of glass shattering.
We look towards the sound, through the opening we see other people listening, and then I see someone yank off their contact.
"Turan soucha!" Liu Wen hisses, 'Police raid!' He peels the contact off and flings it, it jerks at the end of the cord and swings. Liu Wen does not wait to see if we are coming, but goes into the room next to ours.
Haibao is motionless.
"Come on," I say. Liu Wen will know how to get out of here.
Haibao looks at me.
I grab his hand and pull him into the next room, I think I see Liu Wen. People begin shouting and pushing past us towards the entrance, but I am counting on Liu Wen to know a back door. We are buffeted by a two men and a woman running into us. I can't see Liu Wen, so I go in the direction I think he went. There is a service door, and I know I have found the exit, I open it.
A stairwell going up.
"Fuck," I say in English. Behind me the sound has changed. A woman screams. And some of the shouts have a different timber, the voice of authority. Reform through Labor, or that old-fashioned penalty, a bullet in the back of my head. I panic and take the stairs, Haibao a weight I pull behind me. It's only one flight up to another door, a heavy industrial door, the kind they don't make much anymore. I try it and it opens and we are in a huge, dark space. Along one edge, far to our left I see a faint line of light.
The ceiling doesn't seal against the wall, that's the light from the club below us. I put one hand against the wall and start to jog to the right. This is the godown, the space could be huge, but there would have to be an office and from the office an entrance.
Haibao is breathing hard, sobbing for breath. "Zhong Shan," he whispers, "Zhong Shan-"
"Hush," I say in English and run hard into a pole, face and shoulder. The pain staggers me, brings tears to my eyes.
"Zhong Shan!" he says loudly.
"Xing xing," I say, it's okay. Madre de Dios, I think, Mother of God, help us. "Watch the pole," I say, and guide him around. Then go more slowly along the wall. I find a door, try it, it's locked. Of course. We keep on and get to a metal stair going up. "Careful," I say. Xiao xin, in Chinese, 'small heart.'
It seems to me that our feet are very loud on the stairs. We go up twelve steps, a door? A landing. Up twelve more steps. Around the landing. Up twelve more steps. I'm a construction tech and I've built a godown. I know I've fucked up; this is the stairs to the catwalks and the grid they use to hang the tackles to move heavy things. My check throbs. I have a grip on Haibao with my right hand, and hold on to the railing with my left.
The stairwell rings mutedly with our footsteps and we climb blind in the dark. At the back of the catwalk maybe there'll be another set of stairs to the loading bay. Madre de dios, I pray in the language of my mother, who believed in Mao Zedong and Kirkiegaard. We had a tortured Christ on a crucifix in the hall when we lived in Brooklyn. Dios te salve, Maria, llena eres de gracia, Hail Mary, full of grace. We are at the top, the landing is different. I feel the railing find the catwalk. I can't do it in the dark, can't walk an industrial catwalk.
I follow the railing to the wall, nothing else, we are standing on a square platform with the wall behind us, the stairs to our right, the catwalk in front of us. The only thing to do is to go back down.
Below us there is sudden surprisingly distant square of light. It is the door we came in. I sit down, pulling Haibao down against me, and a moment later lights flicker across the walls and ceiling, heavy search lights. I pull Haibao's head against my chest and he draws up against me. Perhaps we should make a break for it, run across the catwalks. At worst they will shoot us or we will misstep and we will fall and die. If they come to the stairs that is what we should do.
I can't do it. I can't move from this spot. If they climb the stairs they will find us here.
Their voices are distorted by space and distance. They will find us wrapped here in each other's arms and there will be no question of guilt or innocence. I don't really believe any of this. I have been picked up by a policeman once, when I was fifteen, for loitering, being out after curfew at Coney Island. He knew what I was there for, but just gave me a lecture and called my mother. And I was beaten up by nighthawks once in almost the same place where I was arrested. Both times I had the same sense of unreality.
I am rocking, rocking Haibao tight in my arms, but I can't stop myself.
The lights have stopped but I still hear voices. Sigue I whisper, I can't think in Chinese, when I try to think of Chinese it comes out Spanish. 'Go on'. Do it. Arrest us. Anything, just make it end.