I have the piece of paper that Daisy gave me, and I hold that out in my hand.
Kitten Girl stands up, as does Office Woman. The two of them study the paper.
I glance around. Past the first row of circuit-board campfires are other workstations, if you can call them that, thin wallboard stretched across plastic milk crates, covered by plastic bowls, surrounded by plastic bins, small ones like you’d buy to organize your office supplies, large ones like you’d use to do your laundry. Each one holds different pieces of plastic or metal or wire: transistors, capacitors, relays, microchips.
“This is the address,” Kitten Girl says. “But no seeds here.” She giggles, like it’s a really funny notion.
Office Woman frowns. “Shi. But… I think sometimes…” Then she shakes her head. “Buqingchu.” Not clear.
“Weishenme buqingchu?” I ask. Why isn’t it clear?
“I’ve seen boxes with that name come here,” she says. “I think maybe is a mistake.”
“Do you think anyone here might know?”
“Maybe. Xiao deng,” she says. Wait a moment.
I hear a honk from outside. The cabdriver has rolled down the passenger window. “Hey!” he calls out.
I hobble over to the cab.
“I need to get back to Shantou,” he says.
“Weishenme? I thought we had an agreement.”
“Sorry,” he says. “Family problem. If you want, I can take you back with me.”
I hesitate. I’m thinking what are the odds anyone here is going to tell me anything useful? Plus, my chest hurts, my throat hurts, and my head’s pounding, just from trying to breathe.
“How hard is it to find a cab back to Shantou?” I ask.
“Not hard. You go to downtown, plenty of cabs there. You can take local bus to downtown. Easy.”
I guess I must look pretty pissed off, because then he says, “Okay, when I drive through Guiyu, I send a cab back for you.” He catches my look again. “Really! I promise!”
I shrug. “Okay. Whatever.” And I pay him.
A waste of time, I’m pretty sure. But I’ve come all this way. I might as well see it through.
I hang around outside the workshop, upwind of the exhaust fans, though I’m not at all sure that the air is any better out here than it is in there. Thinking, if I wanted to get something to eat, would that be a good idea? Could you trust any food prepared in this place? Probably I’d be better off buying nuts or chips, something packaged. Maybe a beer, as long as it’s not local.
It feels like I’m there a long time, but it’s probably only ten or fifteen minutes before a man comes out of the workshop. He’s short and squat and bald, and I don’t like the pig-eyed look he gives me.
He stands there, his fists clenched like stones.
“You looking for New Century Seeds?” he asks.
Is this a trick question?
“I am,” I finally say. Thinking, okay, nothing’s going to happen to me here, right? On a street, in broad daylight, with a couple people on the sidewalk, going into another workshop, stopping at a snack stand to buy Cokes.
“Not here,” he spits out. “Old address. They moved.”
I can’t place his accent. I’m not that good. Not proper Mandarin, but I don’t think he’s local either.
“Oh,” I say. “Do you know where…?”
“No.”
I can’t say it’s unusual for a business to come and go so quickly. Happens in China all the time. And who knows how old Jason’s information was?
“Okay. Thank you.”
I start to turn, to walk away, to think about where that bus might be, so I can get back to Shantou. Back to my life. Such as it is.
I stop. It’s like I can’t help it.
“I’m looking for a foreigner,” I say. “An American. His name is David. Have you seen him?”
The guy’s piggy eyes narrow to slits. “You his friend?”
My heart pounds hard in my chest. I should have kept my mouth shut, I can tell. I swallow, and my throat’s raw and swollen, like there’s rocks in it.
“No. I’m his family’s friend.”
He says nothing. Then he gives a little shrug. “Don’t know him. Not here.”
I manage a smile. “Thank you,” I say again. “Sorry to bother you.”
We stare at each other a moment longer. Then I turn and take a few stumbling steps down the street, the muscles between my shoulders clenched, waiting for a blow.
But nothing happens. I keep on walking.
Okay, I think, okay. That was dumb. There’s something going on here, and I don’t know what it is, but I’m pretty sure that I’m lucky to be getting out of here in one piece. I’ll tell Dog what I know, and he can do whatever, report it to the American embassy or hire someone professional. Someone else can figure it out. I’ve done my duty, I’ve been a good buddy, no one’s gonna argue that. I’m just going to get my fool ass back to Beijing, see what kind of life I’ve got left, and take it from there.
I’ve been walking without really looking where I’m going. Now I take a moment to see where I am.
Ahead of me the buildings thin out, looking more derelict, less permanent. I hesitate. I’m trying to remember how we got here, and I can’t be sure, but I don’t think this is the way back to beautiful downtown Guiyu.
On the other hand, if I go back the way I came, I’ll run into Mr. Piggy, and I know I don’t want to do that.
So I keep walking. I think I see a sign for a local bus up ahead. Maybe that will take me back where I need to go.
Or maybe another taxi will magically appear to whisk me back to Shantou.
I’ll just keep walking, I tell myself. Long enough for Mr. Piggy to think I’m out of his business. Walk to the next town if I have to. This is China, and it’s not like I’m walking into wilderness here. There’s always another town down the road.
Just keep walking and it’ll all be fine.
My leg’s throbbing. My mouth’s beyond dry. Next snack stand I come to, I’ll buy a Coke or something. And take a Percocet.
But I’m not seeing snack stands. Instead I’m walking out into the country. Into polluted, brackish rice paddies. Pungent smoke rises on either side of me, from burning trash, I guess. There aren’t any solid buildings anymore. Now there are shanties with roofs made out of tarp, walls of the same wobbly blue tin fencing that surrounds every construction site in China. The most solid things are the piles of electronic scrap flanking the road, mountains of computer casings, of monitors, of circuit boards.
Mud, and ash, and plastic.
Workers sit on plastic stools in the shanties, burning circuit boards, stripping wire, sorting transistors. A few of them glance up as I pass, some curious, some wary. A motorcycle rumbles by, then a battered truck, its bed loaded high with electronic scrap. No magic taxi.
The sky’s the color of lead. I don’t know if that means rain or if it’s just from the crap in the air.
Fuck, I think. How long am I going to have to walk to get out of this?
Another car, some beater VW or Chinese Chery, hurtles down the road. Unlike the last couple of cars, it pulls off to the shoulder, screeches to a halt.
Three guys clamber out. Two of them have metal rods about a yard long and two inches thick. And they’re all heading toward me.
I want to run, but I don’t. I can’t run that fast. But mainly it’s like I’m frozen in place, a scared little rabbit about to be some tiger’s lunch.
Flight or fight. I do neither.
“What are you doing here?” one of them shouts, the one without a rod.
“I’m just leaving,” I manage.
“This is forbidden area! You’re not allowed!”
By now they’ve closed the gap. They form a semicircle around me. To my back is a wall of junked monitors.
“I didn’t know,” I say, lifting up my hands. “I just want to find a bus to Shantou.”
“Give me your backpack,” he says, but before I can even decide what to do, one of the other guys swings his rod and smashes it into my bad leg, right above my knee.