The SwiftPad Takeover - An Excerpt

DIGGING UP NEW BUSINESS:THE SWIFTPAD TAKEOVER

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Chapter 8

Jim finally meets Kip again after Years of Separation

After he left the Easy Girl Bakery, Jim rode the downtown street­car toward Powell’s Bookstore, and realized that the principal reason he moved back to Oregon was because he had no real friends in California, just acquaintances. Life was passing him by and he felt as though he had no connection to it. He didn’t know what else to do, so he went home – or the closest thing he had to it. Portland was as close as he wanted to get to Benton County. Looking around Northwest Portland made him realize it was going to take a long time, but at least there were enough potential friends in the neigh­borhood – and of course there was Chubby.

He had driven up the 101 to SFO at 4 A.M. almost every Monday for the last two years, when he could just as easily have flown out of San Jose, but they had bigger planes at SFO and he was more likely to get a first class seat (based on his airline mileage) by spending an extra 30, 40 minutes driving. Besides, there was no traffic that early in the morning, and doing 70 on that stretch of 101 was almost like flying on a magic carpet, because in daylight you could skateboard as fast as drive, and the morning after he got the letter from Chubby, Jim needed a reason to do something and he realized that even though everything he had ever done with Chubby had always backfired in the most bizarre manner, he had never had more fun, before or since.

Jim Hunt had been the first to call Kip “Chubby Welles.” As teenage stoners they had watched Rodney Dangerfield allow Bill Murray (his “talent agent” in the SNL skit) to change Rodney’s name to “Chubby Welles,” and Jim started calling Kip “Chubby” after that and they extended the persona at school with Jim acting the Impresario introducing the great “Chubby” Welles, who would straighten a nonexistent tie and deliver no-respect jokes.

“I told my Dad to take me to the zoo, he said if they want you, they’ll come and get you.” Baboom.

In any event, it seemed that everything Jim and Chubby did turned out wrong at first, but then ended up OK, often because Kip’s dad owned half the land in rural Benton County and was able to pull them out of their messes. The old man’s Christmas tree farm made millions, and he had other businesses, solid waste collection and a landfill, long-term leases for logging rights on some of the best timber still standing in Western Oregon, and he had between five and fifteen loyal Mexican workers who lived and worked on his property during the winter months, ready to take advantage of any quick and profitable project that came up. Kip’s father was one of the richest men in Oregon. He wasn’t too popular with his neigh­bors though.

Kip’s mother left when Kip was 10, and remarried. She called Kip on his birthday and at Christmas but otherwise was gone for good, with minimal remorse or regret. Kip’s dad brooded alone on his compound with only his housekeeper and her husband Enrique as company. He didn’t speak Spanish and their English was muy mal.

Kip’s father liked Jim, especially when he heard he enlisted back in 1987 right out of high school. He often said it was what Kip needed, but that line of reasoning never went very far. Kip used to tease Jim that he was the son his father had never had. And of course, there was that week when ol’ man Rehain and Jim’s mom took off together and returned separately.

So Jim decided it was time to get out of the permanent gridlock in the Bay Area and get back to the Emerald Empire. He had never had so much fun in his life as when he and Chubby roamed the rural outback of Benton County, Oregon, in spite of their bizarre parents. He realized that moving back to Portland and finding Chubby would probably be career suicide, but he didn’t care, at least it would be different, and different was what he knew he needed, not the slow death he was experiencing now.

So he flew to Portland, found an apartment that overlooked the city and had a view of the mountains. It didn’t matter where he lived, as long as an airport was handy. And now that he was going back to work for the KEG, that settled the matter.

He was thinking all of this and about the letter he received from “Chubby Welles,” sitting on the streetcar at 23rd and Lovejoy, across the aisle from a pretty girl carrying a violin case. He thought about the body they found near Blue Lake outside Gresham buried near a pumping station vault. He had just got hired at the KEG fifteen years ago, when the young intern disappeared. The cops had interviewed him and were not nice about it either. A single guy, new at the company, and suddenly a pretty girl disappeared? Made sense to talk to him. But it all got dropped when they found her car in Palo Alto. He knew who was buried out there. Elizabeth, the Easy Girl, said it was probably a homeless guy…no, she was wrong about that.

He looked at the girl with the violin case. Who was she, he thought, was she a student, a privileged daughter, or a vagabond with most of her belongings in the old faded black violin case? It wasn’t easy to tell because the line between a vagabond youth on a voyage of self-discovery and a destitute homeless waif was not always well defined. Jim had read somewhere that there were more homeless in Portland than almost any other city in the country.

They turned south on 11th, passed Jamison Square, and the upscale Pearl District condos. It appeared to be a community of café sitters, reading Willamette Week, or for the edgy ones, The Mercury. Around the square’s fountain on this unseasonably warm winter day were urban dog walkers, shirtless and sunbathing body builders, women with severely trimmed hair, wearing cut-off black Lycra jogging tights, some managing kids with toddler tethers while others, childless yuppie poseurs or young immigrants from places that no longer seemed like home, sipped coffee and looked on with anxiety disguised as stylized contempt.

As the streetcar passed some high-end condos, Jim eyes landed on Stan, the young guy from the plane, shaking out his dreadlocks, arm around a young woman who’s perfectly spheroidal glutes and rock hard tits were painted over with torn and faded $500 jeans and a size-too-small gray “Lewis and Clark” hoodie. She was look­ing at a newspaper and then up, in front of some very high end property. There goes law school, thought Jim. Good for Stan. Love conquers all.

Jim had been born in Oregon and he knew he didn’t fit in, but then he didn’t need to, he didn’t need to belong to anything other than the silent society of all those other unconnected, untethered loners. A lot of us out there, he thought. It sucks sometimes too. He should have listened more closely to Stan on the plane. He seemed to have figured it out better.

Jim got off the streetcar at Powell’s and walked up to the Burn­side door and immediately noticed it was different from what he remembered. The Burnside entrance he remembered used to be seedier and grittier and was almost always staked out by several sad people, who had written out stories on cardboard, sometimes with a punch line, a story with pathos, perhaps a lost wallet, a dying sibling, needed medical procedures, sick children, a thrown rod in an old car. But they fixed up the door and windows around the entrance since Jim’s last visit, put in more glass and now it feels a tiny bit more corporate, and streamlined, with more cashier stations. And maybe it is a little less inviting to all of the out-of-luck people who used to camp out there. Jim felt a little strange about it, like he did all gentrification.

Jim came through the Burnside entrance to Powell’s and turned left into the door toward the literature stacks passed the novels and the poetry, row after row of Classical Greek and Latin literature, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Virgil, the two Plinys, etc., up the short steps into the detective and science fiction section. Jim stopped and found a copy of the sequel to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honorable Schoolboy, then put it back, he wanted something with more grit and maybe more…American, something easier to read too, he thought…Chandler! There must be something Chandler wrote that he hadn’t read…oh yeah, Chubby, he was here to meet Chubby. He pulled himself away from the Noir fiction and went into the coffee shop.

Kip was sitting at a table by himself even though it was pretty crowded. He was wearing a water-stained fringed Buffalo Bill leather jacket and had a couple books about old films scattered in front of him. His serrated single blade pocket knife was opened and laid on a sketch book that displayed Chubby’s almost finished dark pencil drawing of Vlad the Impaler, whose burning, recessed sinister eyes seemed more medieval and dark than any Hollywood vision ever made. Jim could sense Chubby was making some of the other patrons nervous.

“Why did we meet here?” Jim asked, as he walked over to Kip and looked down at Vlad.

“Remember the library back in school, detentions for talking during study hall? Come here, man…” Kip got up and hugged Jim. “It has been…I was just thinking about this. It has been 18 years since we last saw each other.”

“I know, I was just trying to remember, it was here in Portland, I met you at that Chinese dive…” said Jim.

“Hung Far Low, just down the street,” Chubby said. “And that’s not even there anymore. I think it moved out to Hillsboro or maybe 82nd – some place out past the buoys.”

Kip stood up and stretched. He began shoving the books into his grease-stained leather bag.

“They used to kidnap sailors to Shanghai there,” said Jim.

“Maybe.”

They continued to look at each other. “Chubby, it is good to see ya.” Kip got a little twinkle in his eye. No one had called him Chubby in years. And now, well, it began to fit, even if it didn’t when he got the nickname. “Remember when we came up here as kids? This place was like heaven. Did you look at the SciFi sections?”

“Clans of the Alphane Moon,” said Kip, holding up the PK Dick novella, laughing, “The paranoids and the depressives ran the place, just like Philomath High. Principal Smith, he should have been institutionalized. The English teachers were the schizos, the coaches, and gym teachers were manics, and then there were the Heebs, the hebephrenics.”

“We were the Heebs, weren’t we?” Jim looked at Kip with awe.

“Yeah, I guess we were. The disorganized schizophrenics, major issues in the house! It is amazing we ever escaped. Powell’s saved us,” said Kip. “I am here all the time now. It is my office away from my office.”

“We met some characters hitching up to Portland.”

“Nothing we couldn’t handle though.” Chubby made a fist and a knowing look.

“When I worked at the KEG, I walked up here half the time on my lunch hour, just wandering through the stacks looking at titles and covers, and dreaming about reading it all, but you can’t live long enough, so you have to choose.”

“It the same with women,” said Kip.

“Yeah, more so. So what are you doing now?”

Kip had always looked a bit like Orson Welles, the other reason that “Chubby” Welles had stuck as a nickname. He had the same eyes, the swept back brown hair, the cleft chin and wide cherub cheeks that still seemed boyish even at 44. Chubby did what he could to accent the resemblance. He copied his mannerisms, at least those of the young, buoyant Charles Foster from the first reel of Citizen Kane. He was big, about 6’1” at least 220 lb. But the voice, the melodious voice that once you heard would stick with you, it was one of a kind; you could never get it out of your head. It was made for radio, bold, unapologetically rich and deep, like Orson Welles.

“It’s a long story,” said Kip. “For both of us I am sure. Let’s go somewhere that we can talk without whispering. I want a beer or something…”

“OK. Lead the way.”

“Fresh start, huh? I have been staying down across Nicolai, crashing in my office, it’s cool, I got it fixed up. You got my letter? I stay with this woman sometimes, I got to tell you about her, she is…too much for me by a mile. But, SwiftPad, baby! It’s in an old warehouse, I have a little corner of it, not too private, but every­body in that building is, well we have too many people. I had a great place downtown, but it got robbed, and…Anyway, last week we hired eight or nine. There will be more soon, many more, we got money flowing! Maybe I should move out, how big is your place? Come on, my truck is outside…”

Chubby had a canvas duffel bag where he kept his stuff, books, an orange iPad, his first computer, with a black Skull & Crossbones stenciled on the back, dirty clothes. When they got to the counter he opened the duffel bag, releasing the aroma of mildew and some­thing else…he quickly pulled out the books and closed the duffel bag for the duration of the transaction. It flat-out stank when he opened it.

“I have to buy these,” he said. He had copies of R. Crumb: The Complete Record Cover Collection, the first book of The Illuminatus! Tril­ogy, and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Tantric Sex.

They got into Chubby’s truck, a 1951 Chevy pickup, and he threw his stinky duffel bag in the back.

“In your letter, you said no email. You mean, internet email?? What is that about?”

Kip looked sternly at Jim, who was smiling.

“It’s not a joke, Jimmy,” Kip said.

“I guess if you have reason to be paranoid…”

“You work for GIP for Christ’s sake!” Chubby looked ahead, working the gears on the hilly stop, and headed up toward North­west Portland, where Jim had just come from.  They ended up on 23rd, across the street from the Easy Girl Bakery, found a parking spot and Kip led Jim into the Nob Hill Bar. Jim paid for a couple of beers and they sat in the back away from the other customers.

“You ever eat over there?” asked Jim.

“Easy Girl? You kidding? Lizzy and I go way back. I met her at the Sturgis Rally ten years ago. I’m in there more than I should be; the pie is too good, gotta watch my figure.”

“She seems nice. I stopped in this morning…” They ordered beer at the bar, found a table and sat down. “So how about you? Tell me about your girlfriend.”

“It’s not just her. But yeah, we’re business partners, which is probably not a good idea.”

“What’s not a good idea, fucking or business?”

Chubby thought about that for a few seconds. “Which brings me to what I want to talk to you about.”

Jim shook his head and rolled his eyes.

“I have finally hit the mother lode! I am helping to run a soft­ware start-up, like I told you.”

“Well, I have a job. I am not looking for another one right now.”

“I am not talking about a job! First, I need to vet you. GIP? How can you work for them? Jesus, I have to say that concerns me. You are like some demon coming up to Heaven and saying, “Yeah, I’ve been working for Satan, but I think it would be cool to hang out with you guys now.” Kip lowered his head to sip his beer and looked at Jim through half closed eye slits, suddenly morphing into Sheriff Hank Quinlan from Touch of Evil.

“Fuck you, you fat fuck.”

“That doesn’t matter. You would be working with me,” said Kip.

“When you say working…you mean you pay people…”

“Soon, yeah, but now we have some subsidies, we are always having open dinners for everyone and we have some contingency funds…but that is changing fast. We just signed up with some investors and…”

“Kip, I need to make money. Anyway, I am going back to the power company. I start next week.”

“But you can still quit that. Or do both! This is going to be big. We will be rich! Richer than my Dad, within a year. What are your expenses? Are you supporting anyone? Any kids you know about?”

“No, but still…”

“OK. Can you keep an open mind? If I take you over there, can I say you are thinking about it?”

Jim smiled and for about 30 seconds stared at Kip, who never cracked a smile or broke eye contact.

“Yeah, I’ll think about it. What is your position in all this?”

“I told you, I am one of the founders and I squeezed some seed money from out of my trust, anyway, it is all on the up and up. Investment, depreciation, tax stuff. You know what I mean? Now we have real investors. I am designing the overall…ya see, it is GG and I who kind of came up with the concept. There are about three of us, four…no five of us running it…But if you came on board…we just formed a board of directors and like I said, money is about to flow ,my friend! And with your experience and my recommendation…”

“OK, OK, don’t get ahead of yourself. Alright. This is software, right? I mean your product?”

“Well in part. Yes. It is a…it started as a Facebook rip-off. But it is taking off…!” said Kip.

“You mean you are going to sell advertising like…”

“No. Well, yes, but…” Kip shook his head like he was tired of talking to idiots. “You still don’t get it,” said Kip. “But that’s OK. We don’t have all the answers yet either, so you can help us answer those questions.”

Jim made a face and looked away, then back at Kip.

“It’s good to see you, buddy.” said Kip. “We’ll figure some­thing out.”

Chubby's Next Adventure is Starting Now

DIGGING UP NEW BUSINESS:THE SWIFTPAD TAKEOVER

Buy the book!


I finally published my second novel, “Digging Up New Business: The SwiftPad Takeover” (SwiftPad). I am going to try to describe how I came to write it. This will be interesting for me because up until this very moment, I have not really thought about it, because I was so engrossed in the process of writing and publishing it.


I had a brilliant editor in Linda Franklin, whose input turned a blob of a manuscript into something readable. It would take a long time to explain all of the little things she did to polish the manuscript. Sometimes she seemed to understand what I was trying to say better than I did. It was my first experience working with a truly professional editor and it was a master class for me in how to prepare a manuscript.

My characters are a mishmash of the characteristics of real people I have known, but mostly they were invented out of my own musings. One real person from whom I modeled a lead character I will talk about a bit, because he had such a profound impact on me. Kip (Chubby) Rehain is based in part on Ross McConnell.

Ross is celebrated by other people who have known him.

Here

http://www.mjville.com/?cat=7

and here

http://rossmcconnell.blogspot.com/

Neither of the two links above discuss Ross's time in Oregon – he lived in a number of places – I know he flunked out of Harvard at least twice – and was in Eugene Oregon between 1978-1983 or so. That is where I met him. Anyway – I thought of him more than once or twice as I modeled the character Kipling 'Chubby” Rehain. Of course the character Kip is from a different generation than Ross and had a much different experience growing up, but I thought what would Ross do, when I wrote him. The real Ross is one of the great friends I will ever have. He died several years ago in Georgia (the one in the Caucasus, not Confederacy) and some of the circumstances are described above. As you can see he had a powerful influence on more people than just me.  Some even seem to see him in a religious context, which if nothing else shows you the power of his personality.

THE PLAN -. My first novel, Farewell the Dragon started out as a memoir, but I quickly saw that I needed to make it fiction for a number of reasons. The most important reason of course was to protect my Chinese friends from identification.

A 1st person novel based on a memoir can pose a number of technical problems, none of which I was aware of when I started, but I learned them as I went. The most obvious is that the reader can only know what the main character knows, so you have to maneuver the character so that the story flows in a way that keeps the plot going and the reader interested. The benefits of 1st person are many – it is more immediate and compelling if done right. But it isn't easy.

So, with SwiftPad, I wanted to write in 3rd person as an exercise in craft if for no other reason. With 3rd person you can tell the story anyway you want, but the problem is to keep the reader interested and not fall off into a blather of narrative that gets too far away of the the character's problems – which is all most reader's really care about. . Different problems – 1st person is more immediate and compelling, but it is harder to sustain in someways. With 3rd person you can tell any kind of story you want if you can keep the reader interested.

My frame of reference as a writer is the big story, epic world shattering story. I know this is sensationalism to a degree – and I think as I mature as a writer – (in 13 days I'll be 64 but I am still very much a kid when it comes to writing) my focus will become narrower. But – maybe not. Anyway – I am at the age where I have stopped buying green bananas so lets not get ahead of ourselves. What I mean by that is that story has to have significance beyond the character's immediate circumstance. Whether it it is Nate in Farewell the Dragon looking for that archaeological artifact that will change the way people think of history, or GG creating a Social Media application that will surpass Facebook and Twitter – the story had to be big, above and beyond the character's themselves.

I wanted the story to be about a place – and since I live near Portland, that seemed like the likely spot. I certainly can't write about Beijing anymore – that city, the city of my memory and imagination is gone forever. The traffic jams are no longer populated by bicycles, but by freeways that turn into automobile parking lots throughout the day. When I was there the tallest building had about 13 stories – and it stood out as a lonely spire, like the WTC used to in NYC. Now many fifty story buildings (and higher) are densely packed in the center of the city. I almost don't want to go back, so the memory of what it was in the mid 80's stays fresh.

I live in a somewhat secluded suburb of Portland now, 'bike friendly' (I don't get in my car unless it is absolutely necessary) and close to Portland. I am not a social person, so I wouldn't hang out in coffee shops or parks, or spend weekend nights at the Roseland watching new bands much anyway. My days of crashing music venues ended in Eugene Oregon in the 80s, which as I said was a pretty good time. So when you see me, I am usually the strange guy over in the corner, you might catch his eye occasionally but mostly has his head down in a book, peeking up to observe occasionally, when others had their attention elsewhere.

I worked in downtown Portland through the late 90s and my wife worked there for the last six years. And I would spend at least one day a month just hanging out in the city, visiting Powell's Books, going to an 'arty' movie, hiking through Forest Park sometimes, or trying out a new restaurant. Mostly I wandered the streets watching, imagining I was Charles Bukowski or Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

After leaving my job in the City, I became an IT consultant, which meant I had to fly to the job. On Friday I would land at PDX returning from where ever I was working and Mary would meet me at the airport, and we would celebrate another beginning of the weekend, (which would end so so soon), eating and drinking in the City, and then we would drive back to our southern most Portland suburb to sleep and get ready for the next week.

So I am an observer of Portland. Not a distant observer of Portland but not a real close one either. I don't really have that feeling of living in town, hearing the traffic, and smelling the food carts, and the river as a background to my life. I think maybe being a frequent visitor rather than a resident helped me see things that normally would be hidden as a part of the subconscious soundtrack of life.

I wanted to write about what I know – and to say goodbye to my career as an IT consultant. Let me tell you a bit about that. Mostly I feel like I faked it for 30 years.

Not at first – when Mary and I returned from China in late 1987, I had to make a living. Zach was about to be born and I was 36 without a clue as to my next step. In my mind our return to the US was just temporary. I intended to get back to China. I had attempted a business there and failed, but I knew if I had another chance, I could make it there.

But I never went back.  After two years selling computers in Florida and after encountering Jeb! Bush who I tried and failed to sell a computer to for his 'real estate' business, Mary, Zach and I returned to Oregon, where I continued my 'IT' career.

Ten years later I was a 'Consultant' and It lasted almost twenty years after that.

The hard part of course has been navigating the technical changes that have occurred in the industry, and that is the part I faked. But it didn't matter, because soon I realized it was mostly smoke and mirrors for almost everybody else too. Maybe some other time, I'll tell you what I mean by that. But probably not, because, as I said, Digging Up New Business: The SwiftPad Takeover is my Computer business Swansong, and now I am off again on to whatever is coming next. At least before the sure and certain end of it all.

Anyway, I wanted to write about my IT experience and capture some of the feel for what IT as a job really means. That part is tricky, because technical stuff in a novel poises serious risk of becoming boring.

But Melville did it (Moby Dick is nothing if not a technical manual that could have had an alternate title of 'How to Catch Whales in the mid 19th Century'. And Thomas Pynchon's 'Gravity's Rainbow' is an Aeronautical Engineer's wet dream.) So it could be done – but by me? Certainly not, at least not yet.

Finally, well – to sell a novel, and to catch the fancy of those readers who are not true bibliophiles, you gotta spice it up. Suspense, psychological abnormality and murder have show up if you want anybody to read it. I actually have no problem with that, either technically or morally. Call me Iago if you want, but for some reason I know the drill. I suspect most people do too, even if they don't admit it.

So to sum it up, I wanted to write a novel in 3rd person, based in Portland, about the IT business with a character who is a serial killer.

But in good fiction, character is the only thing that really matters. I suppose that is not completely true, because there are many novels that are vehicles that carry the stories of societies, both real and imagined, big and small, stories that the setting or ideas overshadow the characters. But the great stories, in my opinion have multiple messages, messages about the implications of the way we live, or of political systems imposed on us, or the changes that nature and history seem to cause with little regard of people. But at the same time those great novels also tell a story about people, and their inner-lives and their relationships with other people.

To me that is the Holy Grail and while it is an act of incredible hubris to think that I can write a novel like that, there is nothing else I can think of that is worth trying. I know I have not yet done it. I am not unhappy with what I have done so far, but I know it does just scratch the surface of what I can do. (There is your hubris!). As long as I stay healthy, (and at my age that becomes a bigger “if” with each passing day) I am going to try.

So what is next? Well – questions of genre seem to be important to some people when they judge literature. In fact some genres are not even referred to as 'literature' by some of the Ombudsmen of the Odes. And the genre I am going for next is going to be the mystery story, where a slightly seedy, no longer young man, who has a known persona, and lives in a known place, is pulled into someone else's life the results of which might be life or death. A mystery story, like John MacDonald writes.

That means that 'Chubby' Rehain is not done. THE SEQUEL – perhaps titled something like 'Digging Up New Business: 'STORY NAME HERE' – is on the way. I'll not detail his circumstances, but Kip Rehain will be be much the same as we find him in 'The SwiftPad Takeover – living in Portland, with a few half-assed project on simmer, looking for a way to stay sane in a world that has given him everything except what he really needs – a reason to be. I hope to have it done by March.

I'll be posting drafts and excerpts. Like before – I not leave them up long – because I know my first efforts will 'need work' to say the least.

I can't think of a better way to spend the winter in Wilsonville, which is near but not in Portland..

Another Excerpt from Chapter 2 - Digging Up New Business: The SwitPad Takeover

Trapdoors and Easy Money – A Word from Our Killer

I wish sometimes that I had a friend I could share my story with, someone I could talk to directly, personally, without holding back. There is no one I could trust enough to really do that with, but still, I think about it and like to pretend that you are out there, listening to me.

But who would listen? Who could listen? I know when I explain it all, in the proper context, it will make sense and – while most of you wouldn’t want to emulate me or follow my road, but at least, maybe if you knew it all, you would understand it. So I am going to pretend you are here now, not as a friend, or an admirer – but certainly more than just a witness or cold observer. You are not a colleague, and not a Sancho Panza either. I can’t control what you think of me, but let’s pretend I can insist that you listen to the whole thing and that you will “reserve judgment.” I love that phrase for some reason – saving the judgment, putting it aside, not including it in the story as it unfolds. I do that. I don’t judge anyone.

You probably have to be a man to really get me – even though it is women who are the primary object of my attention. So whoever you are – maybe it’s better if I don’t know who you are – then I’ll just be frank and not assume I know what you want to hear – I’ll just talk and address you as – you.  Who can know what anybody thinks, or can guess what is in anybody’s head? I suspect you will think me Beyond the Pale – unworthy of the normal respect we give anyone who is honestly telling their story. Perhaps you will think I am impertinent and cheeky. But believe me, I am very serious. You’ll have to wait to see what I mean by that.

As to my business, I actually have several businesses, as you will subsequently learn. In a sense I am a pirate – to that, for now, I’ll admit. A pirate, in it for the easy money and protection from discovery. I sell my information and make a lot of money. It is information I sell – like I said – easy money. I am an information technologist, and it makes sense that my product is information, right? I think you will find that there is nothing that crosses my mind that hasn’t crossed yours – perhaps you decided a long time ago that what I do isn’t for you, the risks aren’t worth the reward, or that you simply don’t have the talent and nerve to pull it off. That is OK.

But my business – it really is not so bad. I use my skill as a computer guy, hacker if you will, to invade and steal data. I have a view that stealing information is not so bad – it’s not like stealing a little kid’s bike after all. I am definitely not a hacker in the way that you think, not in the way you probably understand the word. I’m not some tattooed snarly long-hair who sleeps until noon and lives on energy drinks.

When cops used to stop people with pot in Oregon, they had to let them go if they have a medical marijuana card, which anyone could obtain with a note from their doctor. The cops said that the card was easy to counterfeit, so about ten years ago, they hired me to build a little program that could look up the names in the Med-MJ database with a special text message and confirm it – and then respond to the messages. That way they could arrest people who were not in the system. That gave me access to the entire cop communication system, in Oregon anyway. I built a little back door and with it I can spoof any cops account and send or receive orders or other info. I don’t use it much, because I don’t want to tip them off. But in a tight spot it’s handy.

The other project, which in some ways is much cooler, I did for the Oregon Arms Collectors Association, which is like a local auxiliary for the NRA. When Oregon passed a law requiring that vendors at gun shows could not sell Uzis or AK-47s to convicted felons, the OACA got their representatives in the legislature to attach a rider saying that the police had to provide way for gun show vendors to be able to check on the record of their customers in real time, so that the law wouldn’t seriously affect business. They hired me to build the application, which required that I get access to all of the criminal data, including the FBI records. I have sold it to a couple of other states too, but have stopped marketing it, because I didn’t want to show up on any anti-gun political radar. Don’t need that.

The data from the criminal databases is my product. I sell it to my other customers, former East bloc guys, mostly Russians, Central American narco guys, and others whom I am careful not to inquire too closely about. B-movie bad guys, if you catch the drift. It is all done from a distance – I don’t know them and – hopefully – they don’t know me. My business is too big to handle all by myself of course and I have partners who handle a lot of the technical details, keep the lines of communication open if you will, and I have the same deal with them – anonymous transfers, no names or places. I don’t even know where some of them are from and have met none of them. If they fail to live up to their agreements, they are cut off and left out in the ether. They are not nice guys, so I protect myself, we just wire money to numbered accounts and I give them what they need. So – I got that going for me. Like Caddyshack Carl’s deal with the Dalai Lama.

So those are some of my businesses. We’ll continue this discussion. Now – you go away. I’m busy.

Farewell the Dragon - Up on the Roof

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Up on the Roof

The sun and the vodka had their way with me when I returned to my apartment from the pool and I fell into a coma on the couch. I must have set some kind of alarm in my brain because I opened my eyes suddenly with a fear that I was late for something. It was almost 10:30 PM. I missed dinner.

Did I have a date to eat with the Long Island girls? I couldn't remember. I had been dreaming about the one with the long frizzy hair, Margie, and felt like I had missed an opportunity at the pool early. I stood in the bathroom, rubbed my face with a washcloth, and then rode my bike back to the Youyi. It was just about 11 PM, and the sky was clear with a bright crescent moon.

I walked up the three flights of stairs, poorly lit, all brown stained wood, and came out into the open sky and drunken laughter. It was a full house. The rooftop bar is a big space and when you open the door and come out onto the roof, the noise level suddenly rises. Of course when I stepped into the place it went up even higher.

The scene that unfolded was like a tableau in a passion play. Nearest the door, Zhou and Chen were holding court with Jorge, an Argentine long-haired chain smoker, and Harold, a fat English homosexual, who gave me a quick, but deep look. They were all half-listening to my so-called double Rennie, who was talking to Harold very closely and very seriously. Neither Chen nor Jorge spoke English too well, but both were nodding gravely while Zhou was staring at Rennie as he talked to Harold and she took her eyes off of him, just for a second, gave me a little smile and a tiny half-wave with her fingers, then turned back to Rennie who was going on and on oblivious to whether Harold was listening or not.

How did he get "The Job"? Rennie is Peter O'Toole's stand-in on the big movie they are making about the last Qing Emperor over at the Forbidden City. He's making tons of money he doesn't need, and to top it off he spends his evenings with Zhou. I wanted to ask him about his ex-fiancée, my boss's niece, but I had to be nice because I owed him my job. He had never mentioned the favor he gave me, even obliquely. In fact he had been nice to me. In fact, as far as I could tell, he was nice to everyone. But still, I couldn't stand him, and every time I heard him open his mouth I wanted to strangle him because he was so unaware of his own stupidity. And now that I think of it, he was probably the reason why I didn't like coming over here to the Youyi in the first place.

The General's daughter, Chen, simply stared at me with a catbird grin. I addressed her in Chinese and put my hand on their table as if to bless it and tilted my head, kind of like Ronald Reagan does, as if to say I'm not ignoring you even though I am walking away. I started to look around again when…

"Have some drink!" Boris was standing right in front of me holding out a small glass like you find in cheap motel bathrooms, half filled with something as clear as water and no ice. I drank it in a quick gulp. The men at his table all stood and cheered like I just won the Soviet Clean and Jerk championship. Dagmar rolled her eyes. Boris ushered me to a chair and I couldn't give them the Gipper brush-off because it would look like I was mad at Dagmar, and I'd be damned if I was going to let her know I gave a shit…

"We think you are the best American!" Yevgeny was standing unsteadily. I was toasted as the "Best American" all around. I drank again with good cheer. Dagmar gave me a glassy-eyed look that said, "Please break into the castle and save me." It was strange to be the sober one, but I quickly began to fix that problem.

"You know," said Boris, "we will be friends soon." He stopped and looked around for approval then went on, "The Muslim!" He spat, but it ran down his chin. This got everyone laughing for probably a minute. Boris wiped himself off, took another drink and continued…"You will be sorry you give them rockets in Afghanistan." He looked deep into my eyes and shared a "Slavic Moment of Transcendence" with me, something deep and profound and based completely on vodka. I did my little Gipper head tilt. As I sat down, I saw the two traveling American girls from Long Island, sitting with Ibrahim and a couple of his Arab buddies. I waved.

"Nathan – you don't travel?" Boris was a big guy, handsome in a Russian way, with pretty good English. I had another shot of vodka. The Russians don't let you get to know them. They always traveled in threes. If two of them were together it looked conspiratorial and one Russian walking alone was probably an escaped lunatic. But sitting publicly at a table with three or four Russians, drinking vodka was OK. Even in Stalin's time Americans had done that.

"I'm working for a Canadian company. I had business, so I stayed in town."

"Who assigned you to that?" asked a little guy with a squashed face and a blond flattop.

"No one needs to assign, Demetri – it is free enterprise," said Yevgeny, his Clark Gable mustache and slicked black hair groomed straight back. He smiled at me, sad eyed and ironically as though I were complicit in something that only he and I were aware of. Dagmar sat next to him, drinking quickly and pouring herself another.

"Yes," I said. "Hired. Fired, that's how it works. It's just a job."

"Just a job," repeated Yevgeny and for some reason it was funny to everybody at the table. Dagmar made a face, stood up and excused herself with a forced smile and walked over to sit with Erika, at a table with Sandor and Monique the French girl. Yevgeny's face reddened. He pushed the chair that Dagmar had been sitting in out to the middle of the floor and scooted in next to Demetri the Flattop. Yevgeny was an 105amazing diver, and his body was sculpted like a Greek statue, but now he looked cramped and twisted, as he took a cigarette without asking from Flattop's package and waited for his comrade to fumble and find a lighter. "Look around, Nathan – tell me – who are the spies here?"

"You mean other than you guys?"

Guffawing and nervous mumbling rippled down the table. "Really. You all work for the state, right?"

I had their serious attention now. "Yes," said Boris.

"Aren't you supposed to report what you know?"

"You've lived here how long now?" asked Yevgeny. He started coughing and it turned into a small fit.

"You sound like Myshkin's consumptive friend Ippolit," I said, name dropping characters from Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. This got them all to smile. "I've lived here a little more than two years," I said.

"Are all of the Chinese spies?" he asked.

"All of the Russians aren't spies in Moscow. But you are in Beijing. That is different," I said.

"And you…?"

"Yes, but I don't work for the United States. I'm…" I stopped, not sure what I wanted to say. Oddly, no one pushed me to finish, they were looking out at their own thoughts.

"Who else is a spy?" asked Boris after a second.

"Well, Sandor. Probably. Maybe," I said, for some reason. I wish I hadn't.

"Yes. Definitely," said Yevgeny. "Hungarians. And Jewish, yes? The question is – for which side?"

"His father was a very important ally," said Demetri the Slavic Flattop, "he supported the anti-imperialist faction during…"

"Yes of course," said Boris. "But what about from your side?"

"My side?" I asked, feigning surprise. I smiled but Boris kept looking and waiting. "Well, perhaps…?" I said nodding at Rennie, my double. They looked at me with silent puzzlement. They obviously knew he was an idiot too.

"What about the fat English?" said Slavic Flattop.

"Harold? Don't you guys own the British Secret Service? MI6? You should ask Kim Philby."

The laughter at the table drowned out everything else. They toasted me and Philby.

"Nate, my friend!" A pair of lumpy, hairy hands wrapped around my shoulders from behind. The hands' owner spun me around, looked me in the eye, then hugged me.

When I met Ibrahim, it had been strange and auspicious. It was at the Baiyun Hotel in Guangzhou during Spring Festival the year before last. I was with my parents, who had brought Molly to China, which is another story completely. Mom and Molly were in the room and Dad and I were having drinks in the bar. I went to take a piss and this fat bearded Arab in a polo shirt and dress slacks came up and stood next to me. He began staring at me until I looked at him, then he turned away. I finished up and was washing my hands and I noticed he was holding his hands next to the stream of water but not in it. I looked up from his hands and he was staring at me again.

"Is something wrong?"

"No! Nothing…" Then, "Yes, yes! Something is wrong."

He took a deep breath and smiled. "I'm sorry. My girlfriend stole my money." He pulled his wallet out and showed me it was empty. "She is Japanese," he added meaningfully. "We were staying here and this morning I wake up and – it is gone. She is gone." He smiled again. "I thought, no problem, I have a friend in Guangzhou, but, it's just…"

"Just what?" Something put me at ease. His smile, I don't know – but I believed him. Japanese girlfriend? Nobody would make that up. Normally I'm pretty standoffish, but this time something about him made me stay to see what he wanted.

"My friend doesn't answer the phone."

I invited him for a drink – easy to do, my Dad was paying. I always got on better with Dad if we had a third person around and we had a great two hours trading stories. Ibrahim was PLO and had been in Lebanon in 1982. In spite of the horrors of the war, he told funny stories about pretending to be Israeli, using captured papers and speaking bad Hebrew while sneaking his little unit in good order through the Israeli lines that had beaten him to Beirut. My Dad told funny stories about Vietnam and World War II, about stumbling drunk off of a floating bar in the middle of the Mekong River just as it blew up behind him, or shooting at a cousin in the Luftwaffe. I had never been in a war, so I

told what I thought was a funny story about trashing a cop car in front of the ROTC building on my college campus in 1970 right after Kent State.

My Dad gave Ibrahim thirty dollars to buy a train ticket to Chengdu and I left him my address in Louyang. When I got back to Louyang the money was waiting for me (I never did get around to sending back it to Dad), along with a beautiful tiny jade statue of Buddha for Molly, even though Ibrahim hadn't met her and obviously wasn't a Buddhist himself. I wrote him, thank you for the Buddha, etc., but we lost touch after that. Then we both showed up in Beijing last year and here we were.

"We waited for you…" said Judy, pushing between Ibrahim and me.

"Was I supposed to meet you?"

"Yes!" She put her arm through mine to make sure I didn't get away. "We were in the dining room downstairs when Rashid and Nasser and Ibrahim sat at our table…" Judy moved close to my ear so she didn't need to shout. "Well, one thing led to another and…then when we saw you come in, Ibrahim said 'That is my friend!' and we said, 'He's our friend too!' Isn't that funny?"

I agreed it was funny and Judy then leaned even closer and whispered to me – she smelled of perfume and Cuban rum - "Look at Margie." She dragged me arm in arm to their table and Margie was forehead to forehead with a startling-looking young man – that was the first time I had ever met or even seen Rashid. He looked up at me as we got to the table and his eyes looked like sapphires, bluer than any eyes I had ever seen. His hair was golden, not blond, not red, but golden. The more I looked at him the more I realized I was staring. His eyes looked way too blue for his face, way too blue for anyone's face, so blue that they looked completely stoned yet behind those eyes was intentness and clarity that was the opposite of stoned, almost unworldly.

Rashid looked at Ibrahim and asked him something in Arabic.

Margie couldn't take her eyes off of him. "His name is Rashid," she said. "His friend is Nasser…" As if on cue, a very tall, taller than me, very Arab-looking young man with close-cropped hair, wearing an Izod knockoff golf shirt, stood glaring nervously at me.

"Nate, let me introduce you to my friend, this is Nasser." Ibrahim said something in Arabic and Nasser smiled. He suddenly looked like a teenager with an innocent disarming smile. We shook hands and Ibrahim said something else to jewel-eyed Rashid. He looked away from Margie only long enough to smile and nod at me. Rashid spoke no English, but he did speak Margie's high school French, so they got by with whispers and giggles.

"Circassians were favorites of the Turks for their beauty," said Ibrahim to us in English. He struggled not to laugh. "You saw the film Lawrence of Arabia?"

"With Peter O'Toole," said Judy. "I've seen it three times."

"Remember when the Turk Colonel did that to Lawrence." Ibrahim made a face of painful disgust. "Lawrence was pretending to be Circassian – when the Turk did it." More rapid-fire Arabic from Nasser and Rashid leaned over and punched Nasser in the chest so hard it knocked him to the floor. Nasser lay next to the table laughing hysterically and even Ibrahim could not stop. Even Rashid started laughing now. He stood up and shouted above the din on the rooftop –

"P'tar Oh Tooo! - P'tar Oh Tooo!" Everyone turned and Ibrahim and Nasser laughed uncontrollably, contagiously, and soon we were all laughing although I wasn't sure at what.

"I work with Peter O'Toole every day. What is so funny?" My double, Rennie, spoke up loudly, as if he were demanding satisfaction from a gentleman, but was ignored. He walked over to our table with trepidation.

"Peter is a great guy you know. I bet I could get him to come over and drink with us. He stays downtown mostly, but I know he would really like it here."

Ibrahim nodded diplomatically. He shot me a look that said, "What the fuck is wrong with this guy?"

Rashid said something in Arabic. "He wants to know if O'Toole enjoyed being a Circassian." Now everybody was bending over laughing. Rennie still didn't get it, which was now what was so funny.

"Rennie is Peter O'Toole's stand-in. They are making a movie about Puyi, who was the Last Emperor of China," Zhou said quietly in Chinese. She stopped the laughing, even though only about half of us understood what she said.

Ibrahim looked at Rennie and then at me.

"You two should go stand in front of a mirror so you don't get confused as to which is which!" Ibrahim spoke in Chinese with a pure Beijing accent.

"Americans and Europeans all look like eggs in a basket," said Rashid.

"Eggs are eggs," said Ibrahim. "They rot, they are white, brown, big or small and can have any kind of animal inside – an eagle or a snake!" Both Rashid and Ibrahim's Chinese was indistinguishable from that of a native speaker.

"East meets West," said Rennie, suddenly seeming to understand the joke. "It's always an interesting story." He nodded and laughed and put his hand on my shoulder like a good sport. He of course had not understood a word of what was said. I smiled tightly and excused myself. I walked over to the deserted west side of the bar. I looked over the parapet and out into the night. Nothing was out of place. I traced Orion's belt to the Little Dipper. It was all familiar. I am getting older. The same sky, the same stars. Even on the other side of the world.

Then an obviously Japanese woman walked in wearing a short, shiny, tight, plastic blue skirt. She looked like she just got back from a David Bowie concert, with Twiggy-style short hair, blue lipstick, and plastic boots up to her thighs. Dagmar stood up, hugged her and guided her to the Russian table. She stopped and turned and looked at Ibrahim. It was a face-off at the DMZ.

"Mikku!" Ibrahim's voice went up an octave and he looked as if he had just been shot. She looked at him with no change in expression and then turned back to Dagmar and laughed, much too quickly to have been told a joke. Dagmar spoke to her a bit loudly, showing off her drunken Japanese.

"Mikku!" Ibrahim was almost pleading. She turned to him again and looked at him as if she were waiting for something that she could take or leave. Ibrahim went to her.

"Let's join the tables," said Dagmar.

"Yes…" Ibrahim said although he didn't take his eyes off of Mikku. "Yes. This is China. We are all from the same country anyway." He touched her elbow and she pulled away, but went with him anyway.

"Waiguo," I said, getting a big laugh even from Rennie. Two Chinese girlfriends and over a year in Beijing, and Rennie still could not speak much beyond "Ni hao." But even he knew "waiguo" (外国) can mean something foreign or foreign country. How long had it been since we'd been home to the

green hills of Waiguo! In China, we were all compatriots. "Everyone! From now on!" I pulled out a $100 bill – an enormous sum - "We drink until it is gone!"

Dagmar jumped up, ignoring the Russian edginess to my suggestion. "Here! Give it to me." She came over and relieved me of the money. "I'll negotiate. We need food too, right? Erika, come and help." Erika, smoking cigarettes with Sandor, the Argentine longhair, Monique and Harold, had been trying to settle the Falklands War peace treaty, without success, so she joined Dagmar.

I suddenly recognized Mikku. She was the mousy Japanese school "girl" who always wore pigtails, usually with a pleated skirt and white knee socks and who studied by herself in the courtyard at my Institute.

"So," said Boris to Nasser, "You are Arab – from where?"

"I was born in Bethlehem."

"Of course you were!" Now everyone was laughing.

"It's true – just like the Christ. And like him, I am sure the Israelis will kill me eventually."

"No!" shouted Judy authoritatively, leaning over and kissing him. "It was the Romans."

"You see? They won't kill you right away! First they torture you," said Yevgeny. Boris stood on his chair with his arms out, hanging his neck slack. Most of the other Russians looked mortified at Boris's mock crucifixion, but the rest of us were laughing our asses off. Judy climbed on Bethlehem-born Nasser's lap, and straddled his waist. Nasser really did look like he was being tortured and everyone was in hysterics laughing.

"No," he said suddenly picking up Judy as if she were a loaf of bread, and standing up. "First I go to Afghanistan and kill all the Russians for Allah!"

Silence. "No, no," said Ibrahim, "the Russians are our brothers. To Kalashnikov!" He stood up and toasted. The Russians held up their glasses. Mine stayed on the table.

"Let's stop killing," said Judy, grabbing Ibrahim and pulling him back into his seat. "Don't you all understand how rare this is? This could be like a Peace Conference! We could settle it! We all could settle everything here tonight!" Judy looked at Margie, who rolled her eyes and went back to kissing Rashid. "In America this would be big news." Judy turned back at us. "Everybody is here. I've never met a Palestinian before. Why can't we change things?

How do we stop the fighting? All of it?" She turned to Nasser and now straddled his lap again, and kissed him long and full on the lips to the cheers of everybody. "You and me! We'll make Peace!"

"To peace!" I toasted, holding up my glass. Everyone lifted their glasses.

"Is that what it's called in America?" said Yevgeny, with a stage-whisper. "If you really want peace, then stop giving the religious crazies the Stingers," he said. "It will come back to haunt you."

"My mother, God rest her great soul, was a Maronite Christian," said Ibrahim. "She married my father, Mohmet Abdullah. He was Sunni and I was raised in a Shiite village after the Israelis took my grandfather's orchard outside Jaffa. That orchard is my religion."

"What if we became one people? We know what happened wasn't fair," Margie said. "But in 1945…it was desperate for so many…"

"…But maybe," said Judy, "maybe we can…"

The thought hung out there. I thought to myself, maybe you can fuck for peace. I had the feeling that this had all been played out long before, and maybe before that. It didn't work then either.

"The problem is it's a sex thing – a male-female thing. Isn't it just tribes – my tribe and your tribe – keeping women under control?" asked Judy, pulling away from Nasser.

"That's the problem. Sexual envy. Men will die rather than lose that control," said Margie.

Ibrahim said, "It is more than that. Even though Sharon killed thousands of us in Lebanon, I do understand him."

"He's a mass murderer," said Margie.

"No, he's a soldier. He was born on the land and can't go back to America. I know that we will win eventually, and so does Sharon. He is just trying to claim as much as he can. I don't think the sex interests him. He is too fat."

Mikku patted Ibrahim's stomach lovingly.

He looked at Judy and Margie, "You don't need to be afraid of it when we win. During the Crusades, the Arab who finally captured Jerusalem was Saladin."

"He was a Kurd," said Nasser, kissing Judy.

"Yes, yes, Kurd. He killed no one, well, he killed some but not for sport. He destroyed no churches, let the Crusaders who had farms keep the farms. Moses Maimonides, the greatest Jew of his time, was his physician. He preferred to live under the Muslim rather than live in Europe with the Christians. Jews were always safe in the Muslim world until…"

"So you think that sex is the answer to the problem between cultures," asked Chen, interrupting Ibrahim, in Chinese. I translated for Judy and Margie.

"Yes," said Judy.

"We Chinese have always thought so too," said Zhou in English. "We had a policy called 'huanqin'(换亲) which is exchanging daughters for marriage. The Princess was sent to the wild men. How do you say, Xiongnu?"

"The Huns, the barbarians…"

"Yes," added Zhou, "and the Huns would send their Princess to China. In order to keep the peace, the Chinese Princess had to go. It was terrible. She lived in the round tent and wrote many beautiful poems about the difficulty."

Everyone was quiet. "But now it is different. To go live in a foreign land as a bride is not bad." She looked down and reached across the table to put some food on my double's plate.

"Communism succeeded in some places, Vietnam perhaps, Cuba definitely, because of sex," said Harold.

"Why?" asked Dagmar. She looked at Yevgeny impassively.

"Because Americans or French could come in and buy girls cheaply," said Harold. "If I had seen my little sister have to go off with some fat American for a few dollars, I would have joined Castro. Besides, he was actually pretty cute back then."

"What if the American wasn't fat?" asked Chen.

"You would have joined Castro, because his cause was the correct one," said Boris.

"Yes – of course," agreed Rennie, looking at me, nodding seriously, as if he knew that I understood.

"No, my Russian friend," said Sandor. "Communism is dead, or will end very soon. It is almost gone here in China. The 'dictatorship of the Proletariat' will of course continue, but the Capitalists will take over." He stopped to take a

drink and looked a long time at Erika. Boris just stared at Sandor.

"I see it on the movie set," said Rennie. At that moment I understood why I disliked him so much. "Everybody from the West is highly paid, and they live separate, but the girls…" he stopped.

Zhou stared off with a blank look. He looked at her and it was the first time it seemed as if he might have a hint of self-awareness, but it quickly passed. "…Men from the West can be big stars here," he held his hands up as if to demonstrate his point.

Wow, I thought. Of course, he is right.

“But then I am rich," he continued. "My family is anyway. I could have any girl I wanted. But here, I'm not just a rich boy, because Socialism makes us all equal. Here I am myself. And I feel free because of it." Rennie looked around, then at Zhou, who appeared vaguely unsettled. Flattop toasted his drink to him, while laughing. Everyone else tried to avoid looking at each other.

Ibrahim laughed. "Free – yes – free to find a mate! That is as old as life. Male wolves are kicked out of their pack and leave to find female wolves. Chasing a mate is what we all have to do – it is as free as we'll ever be – and then we find them and we lose everything – most of all our freedom! That's the way it is supposed to be – to spread seeds around. Peasants have always known that. Royalty stays in the family and look what happens to them – hemophilia, insanity…"

"Prince Charles," said Harold.

"No," said Dagmar. "Sex outside your class or tribe ends up being exploitative. Women are still property, in fact they are the only valuable property still allowed everywhere. Love is not a bargain, is it? We still are no different than wolves or barbarians. Most of the time, it's just rape." Dagmar looked harshly now at Yevgeny.

Rennie excused himself saying that he had to be on the set early. He came over and offered me seventy dollars to help pay for the food and booze, which I quickly took. He pulled Zhou away for a private talk. I went for a piss and Dagmar followed me down and threw herself around me, clearly drunker than she looked. "So what shall we do?"

"We still haven't finished the vodka," I said.

“Of course – we are Germans – we can never waste anything!"

I noticed I was suddenly a German in her eyes. My immigrant grandfather is smiling, somewhere. Zhou came up behind her and innocently interrupted us with a little two-fingered wave for me to come over to her. I nodded to Dagmar and then walked over to Zhou.

"I need someone to see me home. Rennie is angry at me and I don't want to see him anymore tonight."

"OK." As I left, Dagmar smiled at me with a shrug – no anger and no hurt look. She was pretty drunk.

"Can you get home?" I asked her. "Zhou lives on the other side of the Zoo and it's pretty late."

"Boris is getting a taxi for us all – I was just hoping you could come and pay for it!" She held out the change (about sixty dollars) from the $100 I had given her earlier. I took it.

"Well, send me a bill."

"Oh – you will get a bill!"

My bike, a well-oiled, fat-tired, solid machine, pedaled easily. Zhou rode on the handlebars, fearlessly, expertly. The night was beautiful as we rode away from the hotel.

Recently I had been taking my bike to an old street tinker who oiled and adjusted it. He worked off of a blanket where his well-used tools were laid out clean and straight. He never set up in the same place, and he fit his shelter and tools on his bike with intricately designed baskets and bars. The tune-up cost me fifty mao, half a yuan, about a nickel in dollar value. I paid him twice that, a whole kuai, and refused the change. I remember the old street vendor gave me a smile that promised something extra for the tip.

The night air was cool and the crescent moon was suddenly very close. I leaned back and my well-oiled machine took off for the stars and soared above the earth. My bike handled perfectly, banking from one side to another, seeming to lose all attachment to gravity as we flew into and then out of a cloud bank. I looked down and could see the Great Wall at Badaling to the north and the Forbidden City to the southeast. We dropped down to flying at treetop level and Zhou relaxed and leaned back on my handlebars and I stood and pedaled hard, and we were riding fast, almost cheek to cheek; the thick-framed, fat-tired bike was a magic carpet, sailing us through all time and space with ease.

The night had cooled off after the hot day and I knew she wasn't thinking about Rennie. I made her laugh somehow as we breezed down The Western Gate Road and past the Beijing Zoo.

The moon was still bright, bright in the clear open sky, and a little breeze picked up, making the temperature so comfortable that it seemed like a crime to go inside even for sleep. We turned at a little hutong (胡同) and went down a construction road past a half-finished apartment complex. Just beyond that there was an old wall that looked to be half torn down. The wall was hundreds of years old and would soon be bulldozed. Time stood still and we stood at the edge of her hutong village, next to that crumbling wall. We kissed, just kissed. It was so nice in the summer breeze under the splintered moon. I said good night and rode home.