Buy Farewell the Dragon
Up on the Roof
The sun and the vodka had their way with me when I returned to my apartment from the pool. 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 p.m. 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 hair, Margie. I felt like I had missed an opportunity at the pool earlier. I stood in the bathroom and cleaned up as best I could with a washcloth and a toothbrush and then rode my bike back to the Youyi, the fabled Friendship Hotel.
It was about 11 pm and the sky was clear with a bright 3/4 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 bar on the roof is a big space and when you open the door and come out into the open, the noise level suddenly rises - and of course when I step into the place it goes up even higher.
Nearest the door, Zhou and Chen were talking to some of the regulars, an Argentine long haired chain smoker who I’d seen around, and Harold, a fat English homosexual, who gives me a quick, but deep look, while half-listening to my so-called double Rennie, who is talking to him very closely and very seriously. Zhou is staring at Rennie as he talks to Harold and she takes her eyes off of him, just for a second, gives me a little smile, and a tiny half-wave with her fingers, then turns back to Rennie who is going on and on oblivious to whether Harold is listening or not.
How does this guy do it? How did he get ‘The Job’ on the Movie working as Peter O’Toole’s stand in? 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. Being nice to him was hard - He has never mentioned the job, even obliquely. In fact, he’s been nice to me. In fact, as far as I could tell, he was nice to everyone. I just can’t stand him and now that I think of it, he is probably the reason why I don’t like coming over here to the Youyi in the first place.
The General’s Daughter, Chen, simply stares 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 give Rennie a “later” and move on. I start to look around again when…
“Have some drink!” Boris is 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 drink it in the time it takes to blink. The men at his table all stood and cheered like I just won the Ukrainian Clean and Jerk championship. Dagmar rolled her eyes and toasted me. 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 dammed if I was going to let her know I give a shit.
“We think you are the best American!” Yevgeny was standing unsteadily. I am toasted as the “Best American” all around - I drink again like I am supposed to with good cheer. I have alcoholics on both sides of my family tree so it is easy for me. 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.
“You know,” said Boris, “We will be friends soon.” He stopped and looked around for approval then went on, “The Muslim!” He tried to spit but it ran down his chin. This got everyone laughing for probably a minute. Boris wiped himself off took another drink and continued ... “The Muslim will be our enemy. We will fight them. Like the Jews!” I wasn’t sure if he met “Like the Jews fighting the Muslims in Israel!” or “Like the Jews, who stole our money!” 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 Americans girls from Long Island, sitting with Ibrahim and a couple of his Arab buddies. I waved.
Nathan - you don’t travel?” Boris was big guy, handsome in a Russian way, and he speaks pretty good English. I shoot another shot of vodka. The Russians all kind of run together in my mind though. They 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. He smiled at me, sad eyed and ironically as though I was 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 little Slavic faced Flattop. Yevgeny was an amazing 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?”
Guffing 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 Prince Myshkin’s consumptive friend Hippolyte,” I said. This got them all to smile – Any small tribute to one of their own will make most Russians happy. “I’ve lived here two years - More really,” I said.
“Are all of the Chinese spies?” he asked.
“All of the Russians aren’t spies in Moscow. But you are Russians 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 spy?” ask Boris after a second.
“Well, Sandor. - Probably. Maybe,” I said, for some reason. I wish I hadn’t.
“Yes - definitely. All Jews are spies.” said Yevgeny.
“Especially Hungarians. The question is - for whom?”
“His father was a very important - “, said Demetri the Slavic Flattop, “- he supported the anti-imperialist faction...”
“Yes of course,” said Boris. “But what about from your side?”
“My side?” I asked feinting surprise. I smiled but Boris kept looking and waiting. “Well-perhaps the other red-haired American...?” 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 queer?” said Slavic Flattop.
“Harold? I don’t know. 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 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 - they had brought Molly to China - 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 and but not in it. I looked up from his hands and he was staring at me again.
“Is something wrong?” I asked, aggressively and dangerously.
“No! Nothing…” Then, “Yes, yes! Something is wrong.” He took a deep breath and smiled. “I’m sorry. My girl friend 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, its just...”
“Just what?” Something put me at ease. His smile, I don’t know - but I believed him. Japanese girl friend? 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 3rd 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 Israelis, using captured papers and speaking bad Hebrew while sneaking his little unit in good order through the Israelis lines that had beaten his unit 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 Luffwaffe. 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 $30 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 and 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?” I asked.
“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 and 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.
He 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...” said Judy. 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 friends – 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.
“Nate my friend, please sit. Tell me, how is your father.” We talked while my two long Island honeys snuggled closer and closer to Ibrahim’s boys. Rashid spoke no English. He seemed shy anyway, but he did speak Margie’s high school foreign language, French, so they got by with whispers and giggles.
“I’ve never seen an Arab so – his eyes are beyond blue – He doesn’t look anything like you – or me,” Judy said to Nasser.
“He is Circassian.”
“What does that mean – he’s still a Muslim right?”
“Rashid,” said Ibrahim, followed by a stream of Arabic. Both Rashid and Nasser started laughing. “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. 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 fl oor. Nasser lay next to the table laughing hysterically and even Ibrahim could not stop.
“What?” asked Margie.
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?’
“He’d just bail on us like he did in Lord Jim’”, I said.
Harold laughed.
'‘Who’s Lord Jim?” Rennie asked.
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 in Chinese. She had a quiet dignity and it stopped the laughing. Ibrahim looked at Rennie and then at me.
“You two should go stand in front of a mirror so you don’t let confused as to which is which!” said Ibrahim in a pure Beijing accent.
“Americans and Europeans all look like eggs in a basket.” said Rashid in Chinese.
“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!” Ibrahim’s Chinese patter was the most colorful and seductive of any foreigner I ever meet. It wasn’t just his grammar or words it was ... well…
“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. I smiled back because ... He got me my teaching job. Gratitude tastes funny sometimes.
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 remember having the same feeling on a summer night, years ago, watching fireflies compete with the stars for attention as I looked up from the ground while I laying with a girl whose name I had already forgot. I am getting older. The same sky, the same stars. Even on the other side of the world.
An Asian girl walked in - She had on a short shinny plastic blue skirt that tightly outlined her distinctive Japanese butt. 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 - the works! Dagmar stood up and hugged her. Dagmar 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 loudly, showing off her Japanese.
“Mikku!” Ibrahim said again this time 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 where he wanted anyway.
“What country is that?” asked Rennie.
“Waiguo,” I said, getting a big laugh even from Rennie.
Two Chinese girl friends and over a year in Beijing, and Rennie still could not speak much beyond ‘Ni hao’. But even he knew waiguo can mean 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!”
The Russians reacted a bit edgy but Dagmar cured them - “Here -” she came over and relieved me of the money - “I’ll go down and negotiate - we need food too right? Erika, come and help.” Erika had been sitting over in the corner, smoking cigarettes with Sandor, the Argentine longhair, Monique and Harold. They were negotiating a Falklands War peace treaty or something.
I suddenly recognized Mikku. She was the mousy Japanese school ‘girl’ who always wore pigtails, a pleated skirt and white knee socks and 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. I will probably die at the hands of the Jews like Christ as well.”
“You will not,” shouted Judy authoritatively, leaning over and kissing him. “Anyway it wasn’t us 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’ mock crucifixion, but the rest of us were laughing our asses off . Judy climbed on Bethlehem-born Nasser’s lap, straddling his waist and forced his hands to her breasts and began grinding her pelvis. Nasser really did look like he was being tortured and everyone was in hysterics laughing.
“No,” he said pulling away almost angrily, “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. “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 straddling his lap, and kissed him long and full on the lips to the cheers of everybody. “You and me! We 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 - believe me.”
“My mother, God rest her great soul was a Marionette Christian,” said Ibrahim. “She married my father, Mohmet Abdullah. He was Sunni and I was raised in a Shiite village after the Israeli’s took my grandfather’s orchard outside Yafa. That orchard is my religion.”
“What if we became one people?” asked Margie. “We know what happened wasn’t fair. But - when survival is at stake - in 1945 it wasn’t clear ...”
“But maybe,” said Judy, coming up for air, “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 in the Book of Genesis 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.” but then let it go, and turned his attention to Mikku. Sandor and Erika were talking together like an old married couple, arguing, looking at no one but each other. Sex doesn’t cause wars, I thought. Then I suddenly wondered why did they name rubbers Trojans? Do they protect Helen from the Hellenics?
“Even though Sharon killed thousands of us in Lebanon -I understand him.” said Ibrahim. “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 thing interests him. He is too fat to fuck anyway.” Mikku patted his stomach lovingly. “But you...” he looked at Judy and Margie ... “don’t need to be afraid of it when we do 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. His personal physician was Moses Maimonides, the greatest Jew of his time, who 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” which is exchanging family members – It is when 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. She 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 plate. Rennie didn’t notice.
“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. 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 - it will end in Russia soon. It is almost gone here. “dictatorship of the Proletariat” will probably continue though.”
He stopped to take a drink and looked a long time at Erika.
“I see it on the movie set,” said Rennie, trying to speak nonchalantly with an air of wisdom and authority. At that moment I understood why I disliked him so much. “Everybody from the west is highly paid, 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 he seemed to have any awareness of anything but himself. He continued. “...men from the West who are losers, who can’t get women for one reason or another can be big stars here. Or any place that is poor. Money buys sex and that fuels hatred -”
Wow, I thought. I think everyone was shocked not at the idea, but that he of all people was aware of it.
“But then I am rich. 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. And I feel free because of it.”
Rennie looked around then at Zhou who looked vaguely unsettled. Flattop toasted his drink to him. 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 suppose 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.
“Yes – and then he goes and gets a young girl to pass on his sick genes.” said Margie.
“No -” said Dagmar. “All sex outside your class or tribe ends up being exploitative. Love is not a bargain is it? Surely we are different than wolves or barbarians - it's just rape otherwise right?” Dagmar, looked harshly now at Yevgeny.
“Or is it - a fantasy!” said the Argentine longhair, who came up for air from the food. Rennie and I laughed but no one else did – a bad sign that maybe I had had enough to drink, or worse that I had something subconsciously in common with my double Rennie – the conversation was becoming tedious and was interrupting the drinking. The Russians started singing - Rennie excused himself saying that he had to be on the set early. He pulled Zhou away for a private talk. I went for a piss and Dagmar followed me down. She threw herself around me and was drunker than she looked. “So what shall we do?”
“We still haven’t drunk all the vodka,” I said.
“Of course – we are Germans – we can never waste anything!” I noticed I was suddenly a German in her eyes. Perhaps – in 1909, when my grandfather jumped ship in New York, knowing no English, from the Hamburg-Amerika steamship Kaiserin Auguste Victoria. Perhaps the blood is true. But then so would be the guilt and I didn’t want that.
Zhou came up behind her and innocently interrupted us with a little wave with her fi nger for me to come over to talk to her. I excused myself from Dagmar and walked over to her.
“I need someone to see me home. Rennie is angry at me and I don’t want to see him anymore tonight.”
“OK.” I was still mad at Dagmar. Fuck her and her ‘..we Germans..’ I was pretty sure she fucked Yevgeny this afternoon when I left her in the sunny courtyard to go sell software. I glared at her as Zhou and I walked down the stairs – I had to pass Dagmar again who smiled at me – no anger and no hurt look. She was so drunk I don’t think she cared.
“Can you get home?” I asked her. “Zhou lives on the other side of the Zoo and it’s pretty late.”
“Yes – Boris is getting a taxi for us all – I was just hoping you could come and pay for it!” She held out the change from the $100 I gave her. I took it.
“Well, send me a bill.”
“Oh – you will get a bill!”
My bike was a well oiled, fat-tired, solid machine. It was too big to ride fast, but it pedaled easy. Zhou rode on the handle bars, 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 old 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 50 mao, 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 look and a smile that seemed to promise something extra for the tip.
The night air was cool and the three quarter crescent moon was suddenly very close and 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 south. We dropped down to fl ying at treetop level and Zhou relaxed and leaned back on my handle bars 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, weaving between the potholes and wormholes with equal ease. I was just giving her a ride and I made her laugh somehow as we breezed down The Western Gate Road, passed the Beijing Zoo. The broken 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 and went down a construction road passed 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 and kissed, just kissed. It was so nice in the summer breeze under the splintered moon. I said good night and rode home.
