She burst into laughter. “One second?”
“The moment I saw you,” I said.
She held my hand. “Will you come back?”
“I swear it.”
As I took off in the airplane, I realized we’d be separated by the biggest ocean in the world. Before I left, we’d agreed to start a notebook. Faye and I would jot down our feelings, any expressions of love we had, then share them upon our reunion. I started on the plane, writing down my random musings on the chimera of love. Over the years, all my conceptions had been undergoing a drastic mutation, one abortive idea melting into another. What I’d started as a series of juvenile declarations became a book of questions, an inquiry into love’s very anatomy. But I felt so ill-prepared, like all I had was a dulled scalpel and an unfocused magnifying glass. I carried the book everywhere. Over a month, jam stains, drips of syrup, and ketchup marks bore the ubiquity of my musings. I pasted in business cards of favorite restaurants, interesting news clippings, the uncanny happenings of the world. I could feel myself becoming invisible, the depths of my loneliness, unfathomable, except through the inscrutable sextant for the soul. As it turned into three months of separation, I felt like a stump of a person, cauterized, then stitched together, a mannequin held by flimsy band-aids.
One especially cold night, I wandered through the streets of LA. Saw several homeless sprawled on bus benches. I suddenly thought of the homeless couple sleeping in their pink blanket.
The next day, I went into my supervisor’s office.
“I quit,” I said.
“You can’t leave. You just signed a contract for three years.”
“I understand, but this is something I have to do.”
“If you breach contract, you’ll never work in this industry again.”
I stared at my manager. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
I put all my stuff into storage, applied for a student visa. I ignored all the emails threatening me with legal action if I didn’t fulfill the terms of my employment. Returned to Beijing eagerly. The flight seemed an eternity and when I arrived, I ran out of the terminal. I was surprised to find a huge crowd waiting, cheering when the doors opened. Had they all read my notebook? No, they were waiting for some famous Chinese actor. Nevertheless, I waved at the throngs. I was so happy, celebrating this moment of triumph. Rushing through the swarm of teenage girls, I finally found Faye. The first thing I did was hand her the notebook.
She gave me a quizzical look before reading through the first few pages, took out a pen and started writing.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I-N-G,” she said.
“What’s that mean?”
“Con-tin-u-ing,” she replied, “we’re continuing.” Then handed me back the notebook and kissed me.
Rodenticide
I.
“I’m going to lose the election,” said Mayor Douglas Kwan, “unless I come up with something brand-new. Every piece of legislation I introduce gets a beat-down.”
Lying in a motel that charged forty-two bucks a night, he hated the buzz of halogens and their sterile gleam. But it was cheap and the most convenient place to meet the naked red-head lying next to him. Lanky and tall, with ribs like a baseball mitt, she was listening but not very amused. She did little to hide the boredom in her dull gray eyes.
“Your time’s almost up,” she replied.
“You don’t mind fucking, but you hate conversation?”
She shook her head. “I just hate politics, especially the small-town kind.”
“I have bigger things in mind, Kathy. I’ve been talking to the state chair, and there’s a seat opening for the district congress. Old Craven is retiring with a weak heart.”
Kathy yawned indifferently. Noticed a pair of rats running along the wall.
“Ain’t ever made a difference who’s in charge,” she said. “I’d be happy if someone could just get rid of all the rats in Antarsia.”
He left a couple of hundred-dollar bills by the bed stand before exiting the motel room to the parking lot and strutting to his BMW.
II.
Antarsia, named by its founder who read H.P. Lovecraft and concocted a tale about his ‘visit’ to the Antarctic, had a population of 4,298. Tim Sunders lied his way into millions, raving about lost cities buried under a Triassic layer of flora and lava. He promised troves of treasure if only he could get the funding to go back — and he got it. The only thing that kept him from fleeing with his fortunes was his getting shot stealing twenty penguins from a traveling zoo.
His son, Mark, inherited the money, which had been secretly funneled to him. Mark founded Antarsia as a tribute to his father, who had dreamt of an organic metropolis. Every building was a fractal enslaved, molded into a cacophony of mortar and bricks. Mark Sunders invited all his father’s compatriots to town, half of whom were Asian, a haven for those escaping racial prejudice in the early half of the 20th century. Antarsia became known for its surreal architecture and too many rats. The rat part came about because of a famous entrepreneur, Wang Toufa, who tried to find the cures for baldness and erectile dysfunction, convinced the two were connected. Thousands of rats were shipped in for experimentation. When the scientists failed and the lab was forced to shut down, Toufa freed all the rats. The thousands multiplied into millions and the town became a playground for rodents. Other than curious tourists or travelers who got lost, no one new ever came to town. Except for the new town hooker, Kathy Chao, and a failed film director, Larry Chao.
III.
There was no relation between the two. But Larry Chao owned a house with a back unit, and he had sublet it to Kathy Chao for the past year. Larry was in his late 30s, slightly balding, plain Chinese face, with a potbelly. He watched horror films obsessively, always without sound. “The difference between horror and comedy lies solely in the sound,” he liked to say.
Kathy’s head was shaved bald and she had over thirty wigs. She was discreet, kept fit through continual workouts on her Wii fit board, and had memorized the entire Kama Sutra. When she moved in, Larry asked what she did for a living.
“I’m a professional escort. Things have been tough in Vegas, lots of girls turning tricks since the economy took a nosedive. I figured I won’t get much competition here.”
“I don’t want clients back at your place.”
“Neither do I. They fork up for the motel room. Are you religious?”
“No, why?”
“Just don’t want you to try to convert me. Can’t tell you how many times people have tried.”
“I won’t try to change you.”
“I hope you mean that. I’ve been through two divorces and a hundred failed relationships because people didn’t mean it.”
Larry Chao liked to take walks after dinner. This time when he got back, he saw a flier on his doorknob that read, Mayor Doug Kwan has officially signed the rat termination decree into law. Get involved by, and there was a website, an email address, a Twitter link, and a phone number. He read over the bullet points outlining the costs to tourism, the risk of disease, historical trivia related to plagues they’d caused.
Kathy was sunbathing in her bikini.
“What is this?” Larry asked.
“Doug’s trying to get re-elected,” she replied.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a ‘kill all the rats’ law. You missed the hoopla at the signing. I’ve never seen so many people so excited about a new law.”
Larry stared at the flier, went back inside. A couple of rats scurried along the walls as he popped in a DVD of The Exorcist.
The rats were monstrosities, leery, suspicious, clever with oblong bodies. They’d started out as lab brown rats, mixed with the wildlife and subjected to chemical induction, mutating into mini-beasts. They had red, black, brown, and yellow eyes. Some were bushy, others bald. Their bodies elongated as they scurried along the walls, aggregating in herds, their nimble pink toes clawing wool carpets.