Face it, I’m not very good at taking care of much of anything.
I’m thinking this as she trots ahead of me down a narrow, grey-walled alley, then stops to sniff what must be a really interesting lamp pole from the attention she’s paying to it.
I stare at a tangled nest of wire hanging under the eaves of a grey-washed siheyuan, one of the traditional Beijing courtyard houses that are almost all gone now, bulldozed for high-rises and subways. A couple strands of the wire nest are plugged into some kind of power box, but what are the rest of them for? I seem to wonder about this kind of shit a lot. But I hardly ever get answers.
Mimi tugs at the leash. I look up and see her tail wagging. And then I see why.
“Yili.”
“John.”
He stands there in his black jeans and black T-shirt and leather jacket, weight on the balls of his feet, fists loosely clenched. It looks like he hasn’t shaved today. His beard’s not that heavy. Just a light black shadow that outlines the hollows under his cheeks, the circle of his chin.
I admit, I’m kind of a sucker for that.
Mimi noses his thigh, then his crotch before she rises up on her hind legs and puts her front paws on his hips. He scratches behind her ears as her tail swishes back and forth.
“Can we talk?” he asks, except it’s barely a request.
I shrug. “Sure. Fine.”
We go to a bar/café tucked back in the hutongs that’s nearly empty and big enough to find a private space. I mean, someone could be watching, I guess. There are surveillance cameras all over Beijing, and you never know. I see the black dome of one when we enter. But John takes a look around the newly remodeled, faux-industrial space and nods. Apparently Mimi’s no problem either. She trots by my side, hugging my hip, and no one says a thing.
We sit at a table in the back, underneath the factory-style staircase done with galvanized metal, black rubber treads, and thick cable railings. John orders tea. I order a Mexican coffee. The waiter, your typical slender young guy with lank hair drifting over his collar, knows what that is, but I’m kind of hoping John doesn’t.
Though why should he give a fuck, really?
The waiter brings us our drinks. John waits for him to retreat to the bar. Then:
“What are you doing with the Cao family?”
I shrug again. “Consulting on a museum project.”
“I told you to stay away from trouble.” I swear, his jaw’s clenched so tight that a muscle’s doing a little tap dance. “Yet you have dinner with Cao Meimei.”
I take a slug of my tequila-infused coffee. “Yeah, well, she’s part of the project.”
“The Caos are completely corrupt! Rich people like them are parasites!”
“True, but they’re the ones with money for museum projects.”
“Parasites,” he repeats, as though he didn’t hear me. “Especially the fu er dai. They don’t work themselves, just get everything from their parents. And they all profit off the backs of the workers.”
“Spoken like a true Communist,” I mutter. But it’s not like I disagree. “So you’ve been spying on me?” Which is not a huge surprise either. It’s what John does, right? The dude’s a professional stalker.
John stares at me with that black-eyed intensity that’s either creepy or sexy-I can’t decide. Which pretty much sums us up.
“I only look out for you, and you already know why,” he says.
I wish I did. I wish I could be sure. But no matter what John says, no matter how much he claims to care, I still don’t know what his game really is. I mean, he’s a Chinese secret service agent Taoist sex freak who may or may not support antigovernment dissidents and who really seems to enjoy fucking me. Or with me. Another thing I can’t decide.
“Besides, Cao Meimei may be lesbian,” he adds darkly.
“Wow, that would be shocking. Your point?”
“Just what I told you.” He’s wearing his concerned face. “You must be careful with people like these.”
Chapter Eight
★
Another night, another party. I think about buying myself a new shirt.
This time Tiantian’s the host.
Meimei called me herself to give me the invitation, the afternoon following our dinner. It’s going to be at a house Tiantian owns. And it’s happening tomorrow. “Oh, yes,” she said with a laugh. “As soon as Tiantian heard that you meet with our father, Gugu, and me already, then of course he couldn’t be left out.”
Great. The last thing I need is to get involved in some kind of weird Cao-family sibling rivalry.
But does that mean I need a new shirt? Because the new black one is too dirty to go a third night, and the white one I got in Xingfu Cun I wadded up and threw in the hamper after karaoke with Sidney in Shanghai.
“That’s a lot of late nights for you,” my mom says when I tell her about my plans tomorrow night. She’s distracted. She’s experimenting with making tortillas again.
“Yeah. Can’t be helped.”
Maybe I’ll resurrect my old T-shirt with the weeping black-and-white cartoon cat that has the caption black cat, white cat, if it catches mice, it’s a good cat. It’s a Deng Xiaoping reference. But maybe that wouldn’t go over well with Tiantian. Now, if it were Gugu’s party, it would probably be okay. He might not like contemporary art, but he sure seems to be into the hipster aspect of it all.
“Do you think I could get one of those jianbing grills?” my mom suddenly asks.
“What?”
A jianbing is like a Beijing breakfast burrito-these egg-crepe things with chives and sort of a crunchy fried skeleton of a savory waffle, spread with hot sauce and folded up into a little bag that you can take with you to keep your hands warm in the winter.
“You know, those round, stone… I don’t know, griddles? The things they cook them on. Where they spread out the crepe.”
“Oh. Yeah. Sure. I mean, I’m sure you could find one. Andy would know.”
“Because I’m wondering if I could use it to make tortillas.”
“Yeah, I mean, why not?” I’m still thinking about the whole shirt issue. I decide against the T-shirt. Too risky.
The weird thing is, Tiantian’s place isn’t far from me, just a subway stop over off Guozijian, where the Imperial University is, right next door to the Confucius Temple. Both of them are museums now. I went to the Confucius Temple once, in the dead of winter, with my ex, Trey. We wandered through these ranks of white stone tablets with engraved calligraphy on them that looked like stretched-out tombstones, freezing our asses off in the bitter winds that were blowing down from Mongolia. We were holding hands with our gloves on, and I remember the texture of the scratchy cable-knit yarn pressing against the skin where Trey’s fingers circled mine. I don’t know why I remember those details so specifically. It’s not like I care about the guy anymore.
Now it’s spring, and the weather changes from day to day. A warm night tonight. I’m already sweating into my black Sidney shirt (I had it cleaned) as I limp through the shanzhai Ming-dynasty gate that frames the entrance to Guozijian.
They’ve restored this street, added some polished granite markers and wall plaques explaining the history of the street, and spiffed up some of the surrounding hutongs. Just past the expensive but historic teahouse from the Ming or Qing dynasty (as usual, I forget), I take a turn down an alley and then down another one that breaks off at a sharp angle. Easier to find it myself than to ask a cabdriver. I wander a bit farther until I see the fancy stone lion dogs with one paw resting on a drum. A red gate with brass fittings. A murmur of erhu music from the other side.