I feel my cheeks flush, but it’s not like anyone’s around to see me. Shit, what did Dog tell him? About how we fucked in the laundry trailer? Not exactly one of the classier moments of my life, even if I was only nineteen at the time.
You want to talk to me, you know where I am. Don’t bring anybody with you.
I sit there, staring at the message on the screen. Gulp some bitter coffee.
I don’t know where you are. And your brother’s the one you need to be talking to, or Natalie, I type. Not me.
I try to think-what else should I say? Beg the guy to come home to the States? Where he’s a wanted ecoterrorist, with the FBI on his ass?
Doug’s not in great shape, I type. He just wants to know you’re doing okay. He thinks the charges are bullshit. He wants to help.
Which is also bullshit. Not that Dog doesn’t mean it. But that a guy who’s as fucked up as Dog, who can’t think straight and is currently in the hospital, who’s lacking a million-dollar bank account-how the fuck is he going to go up against the machine that’s out looking for Jason? That wants to grind him up and throw him in jail for twenty years at least?
Look, we caught a terrorist!
I want to help if I can, I finally type. But I don’t know where you are.
Which is more or less true. I only have an idea.
I hit SEND.
And get back: Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable (state 14).
Well, fuck.
I search Help and find out the message means that the mailbox he was using is probably closed.
So the guy writes me an email. Answers once. Closes his account.
Leave it alone, I tell myself. You don’t know for sure it’s Jason. Okay, he knew some things about me and Dog, but there are ways someone else could have found that stuff out. Hacked our emails. Listened in on Skype. Found some mutual buddy of ours and just asked. I mean, who knows?
Even if it’s him, does it make sense to risk it? Risk leading Eos to Jason? Risk getting those fuckers back on my ass?
Don’t give them a trail to follow.
I think about all this, and I have an idea. Maybe it’s a really bad one.
I have a cheap cell phone I carry with me, ever since what happened last year. No GPS. No regular account. No way to trace it to me-I buy new SIM cards and minutes when I need them.
Just in case.
I wait an hour and use it to call Vicky Huang.
“I have a big favor to ask Mr. Cao,” I say.
“OF COURSE, OF COURSE!” Sidney’s gotten on the call himself. “Certainly I can help you with this.” I can picture him smiling on the other end of the line. “My jet is your jet.”
YEAH, I TAKE SIDNEY Cao’s jet to Guiyang. I’d take it to Kaili, but the airport there isn’t finished yet. I sit in the leather seat, sip some crazy overpriced Bordeaux, eat filet mignon, and think, Fuck, well, that’s another Lao Zhang painting I’m probably going to have to give Sidney for his private museum. I drink some more wine, and I think, This whole thing-the jet, the palace, Sidney’s World-it’s the stuff Lao Zhang likes to skewer in his art, and here I am, going along for the ride.
I realize something else. I haven’t logged in to the Great Community for… days? Weeks? How long has it been? Sometime in Yangshuo.
I’ve hardly even thought about it all.
I guess because I’ve been getting my ass kicked in the real world. The electronics dumps in Guiyu. The bird sanctuary. New Century seeds. My mom. Creepy John. The dog.
Except-it occurs to me as I’m sitting in a leather seat on a private jet, sipping this crazy-good, way-overpriced wine and eating my filet-what’s “real” about any of this? I think about Guiyu, about Wa Keung and Mei Yee and Moudzu, about how they live.
This relates to the kid who fixed my laptop… how?
How did I get here?
Don’t think about it, I tell myself. Think about the mission.
I GET TO GUIYANG at around 1:30 P.M. The white-gloved flight attendant waves good-bye to me as I limp down the boarding ramp, the hangar for Shining Star Aviation in the background.
I take a taxi to the Guiyang train station. Just manage to catch the 3:00 P.M. train to Kaili. It gets me there at 5:30 P.M.
The Kaili train station, not your first- or even second-tier-city train station. It’s this dumpy two-story building, ceiling fans hung by skinny poles from a whitewashed concrete ceiling, smelling like decades of cigarettes and piss. I push my way through the metal-grilled gate, stumble down the shallow cement stairs, out to the curb, blinking. Into another city where I don’t know where I am or what I’m doing.
Kaili looks kind of small, I think. The train station doesn’t even have a real parking lot, just some spaces in a half circle out in front. A little chilly. I turn up the collar of my jacket. Stand there, daypack on my back, duffel on my shoulder, looking for a cab. Not a lot of traffic. Some blocky white buildings. It hardly feels like a city at all.
IT’S A CITY, BUT a small one, for China, wedged into a space blasted out of granite mountains. Modest storefronts mostly. A larger indoor mall advertising brands I’ve never heard of that sits across what looks like the center of the city, where a bunch of streets run into each other, forming almost a circle. Occasional signs in English that make no sense, like 300 SEATS OUT OF PRINT WATERFRONT MANSION. It might be for real estate.
“Ni shi naguo ren?” the cabbie asks. Where are you from?
“Meiguo.” I am too tired and too fried to have this conversation now.
“Oh, American! I haven’t met Americans before. Not too many come here. Welcome you to Kaili!”
“Xie xie ni.”
“Every day is a festival in Kaili, have you heard that saying?”
His accent has a lilt to it, like it’s Irish Chinese or something. Mandarin isn’t the native language here.
“I haven’t. I don’t know very much about Kaili.”
The cabbie grins. He’s a few years older than me, small, receding hair. “Then I’ll tell you, every third day is a major festival.”
Good to know.
MY HOTEL IS THIS cheap place that I’m guessing used to be government-owned, and maybe it still is. There’s thousands of hotels in China that look like this: chunky, maybe ten stories, faded white walls, long halls, broad wooden railings, gilt trim. Worn red carpets. The kind of place where there’s a piece of paper stuck on the door of my room that says, “HINT! Honorific Guest, please give the product cash to stage to take care of, before sleeping invite anti the lock the door lock, the door bolt comes the door bolt, close the window and put on to put the, otherwise, the risk is complacent. Camp Dish Guest House.”
Inside, it’s two beds, a pressboard desk with a TV, an electric teakettle, and musty white curtains.
Not bad for twenty-four bucks, I tell myself.
I do what I always seem to do every time I find myself in a city I don’t know, half asleep and half hungover: throw my stuff on a chair, kick off my shoes, and collapse on the hard bed. Sleep.
I WAKE UP TO gunfire.
I’m on the floor before I know it, crouching by the side of the bed.
Firecrackers. It’s firecrackers, dumbass.
You’d think I’d be used to that by now, living in China, but they still get me every now and then.
I haul myself to my feet and hobble over to the window. The firecrackers are still going on. Maybe a new business opened up. Maybe there’s a wedding. Maybe it’s part of today’s festival.