29
But he doesn’t sleep.
They eat at a Chinese restaurant Mrs. Ma recommended to Ming Li after selling her the guns. The food lives up to her hopes, but the two of them pick at it. The sidewalks are almost empty, the rain blowing down in sheets, and every time a customer climbs the three steps to the door and drips his way in, the waitress mops mud from the floor. People talk anxiously in Cantonese, and Ming Li says they’re discussing the welter of contradictory instructions issuing from the government: stay, go, get your belongings and/or yourself to higher ground, just sit tight-everything’s fine. Through the streaked window, the streetlights gleam below them, reflected in the fast-flowing water that fills the street.
After a few minutes of trying to talk about something-anything-other than what’s coming, they give up and discuss it: what they’ll do, what they’ll have the others do, what they hope to get from it.
The ways it can go wrong and kill them.
“You know,” Ming Li says, “you can’t worry about protecting me. You can’t divide your attention. It’s too dangerous. Believe me, I’m not going to be thinking about you when things get moving. I’ll be focused on myself. You need to do the same.”
There’s a dark, shapeless cloud in his chest, something that feels like a million swarming insects. Everything he’s planned, everything he’s trying to do, seems transparent, clumsy, amateurish, unconvincing. It wouldn’t fool a child. These people, Murphy and Shen, they’re not idiots. Nothing is going to work. He says, without meaning to, “They’re not idiots.”
“They want something,” Ming Li says, following his thought. “Dangle the right purse in front of an American high-school girl and watch her run into traffic to get it.” She makes a motherly gesture with her chopsticks. “Eat the duck before it gets cold. Colder.”
“If I did, I think I’d heave it all over the table.”
“Take some with you.” She raises the hand with the chopsticks in the air, and the waitress is there instantly. “Wrap this up, please.”
“All?” the waitress asks.
“You’ll wind up eating it,” he says to Ming Li.
“I know.” She says to the waitress, “And could you throw in an extra order of rice?”
They sit silently again, both of them looking out the window. “It’s kind of unfair,” Ming Li says. “This weather, I mean, the flooding, all the rest of it. There are cities that could use wiping out, but this isn’t one of them.”
“Makes perfect sense to me,” Rafferty says. “We’re caught in a meaninglessness node. The weather is just as meaningless as the situation we’re in. If the city drowns, if we get hurt or killed, it’ll all be collateral damage. Nobody, anywhere, is directly responsible for this, but that didn’t stop them from setting the forces in motion.”
“Older brother,” Ming Li says, “with all due respect, please shut up. You don’t have to bring down the world order to stay alive. I mean, we don’t. It’s one guy, or maybe two, and we’re doing something about it. Doesn’t it make you feel better to be doing something about it?”
“It keeps me from being frightened,” Rafferty says, “but fear isn’t the only bad feeling there is, is it? There’s anger, loneliness, self-pity, anxiety for others, the confusion of being overwhelmed, the sense of outraged justice because none of this is right, none of it even makes sense. I’ve got all of those.”
Ming Li is wiping her chopsticks on her napkin. “That’s good,” she says. “You’re probably going to need them.”
It’s the second night in their hotel, since Rafferty couldn’t face the thought of moving again. There’s something almost comforting in the act of closing the door behind him and seeing a room he knows, with the bed in the same place and the bathroom right where he left it, and his awful fake-leather bag on the chair, and his change of clothes, wet when he put them on hangers in the bathroom the previous evening, waiting for him all dry and orderly, the wrinkles hung out of them.
He considers booting up the computer he bought. He’s barely opened it since Ming Li showed up with hers, but he can’t think of anything he wants to look at except the weather forecast, and a glance out the window gives him that: wet and then wetter, with the chance of a biblical deluge. He shucks his wet shoes, pulls out the laptop anyway, and powers it on for about a second and a half, after which it powers itself off. Dead. The power brick is at the bottom of the sodden fake-leather bag, so he pulls it out and plugs it in to charge.
There, he thinks, he’s done something. Lesson for tomorrow: no assumptions. Call everyone first thing in the morning and go over all of it. Go over it twice.
Of course he’s worried about Ming Li, even though she’s probably already asleep in her own room. How could he not be? He’s dragged her into this, even if sometimes she makes him feel like it’s the other way around, since she’s so clearly braver than he is. Going up to the second floor of that coffee place, for example, just to make sure Elson hadn’t overpowered him and put in a call for the marines. He feels himself smile at the thought, the first real smile of the day. The smiles at Arthit’s had been heavy as stone.
What in the world is he going to do about Arthit? How can he repair all that dishonesty?
Not that he’s necessarily going to be in a position to repair anything after tomorrow night.
Since there’s nothing for him to do, he kicks his discarded shoes against the wall so he can’t trip on them in the dark and falls on his stomach on the bed. Naturally, the moment he’s comfortable, he has a pressing reason to stand up again.
It takes him a moment to choose a phone that hasn’t been used for anything dangerous. He launches himself at the bed again, pushes some buttons, and closes his eyes in prayer.
Rose says, “Hello, you.”
Instantly he has tears in his eyes and all his muscles loosen. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”
“Should I ask how you are?”
“No.” He sniffs. “Okay, ask.”
“How are you?”
“You don’t want to know. But I’m doing what I can, and that’s what I can do.”
“I have faith in you. Just keep your head clear.”
“I’m clearing it as we speak.”
“Meditate. Tonight. Before you go to bed. You know, no one in the history of the world has ever done harm while meditating.”
“I promise.”
“You know,” she says. “All those little monkey voices that start chattering in your head when you have to decide something. You need to shut them up so you can hear the calm voice.”
“Got it,” he says. “Meditate.”
“Is it going to be dangerous?”
“Maybe.”
“Is there a way to avoid it?”
“Not that I can think of. Not if I want all this to end.”
“How dangerous will it be?”
“No, no, I take it back. Not so dangerous. The only person I have to be afraid of will be miles away. I should have an hour or two, easy.”
“Then what are you worried about?”
“Murphy’s Law.” He hears the words after he speaks them, and the hairs on his arms stand up.
“What does that mean? What’s Murphy’s Law?”
“It’s an … it’s an old joke.” He looks up at the ceiling, trying to frame an explanation that won’t frighten her. Frighten both of them. “From the army, I think. Murphy’s Law says that anything that can go wrong will.” She says nothing, and he adds, “But it’s just a joke.”
She draws a deep breath. “We’ll go to the temple tomorrow, Miaow and I.”
“Good,” he says. “That would be good.”
Rose says, “It will, you know.”
“I’ll tell you what,” he says. “At the very least, it’ll make me feel better.” He rolls over onto his back and looks down at his feet in their wet socks. “How is Miaow?”