‘Look,’ he finally says, ‘just take it easy for a while. When this all settles down, you can come back.’
At that, I snort. ‘Yeah, right. Like I want to come back to this shitty-ass job.’
I shoulder my backpack and my duffel. British John comes out from behind the bar, wraps his arms around my waist, and hugs me close. ‘Try not to go to extremes,’ he says. ‘’Cause you have a tendency to do that, you know.’
I hug him back. ‘I’ll see you,’ I mutter into his shoulder. And then I turn and leave.
I start walking down the street, past a string of stores selling phones and MP3 players and cameras. I don’t have a clue what to do. I’ve got two sets of spooks on my ass, no job, no place to live, no husband, no boyfriend, and this stupid fucking duffel bag is cutting into my shoulder and making my goddamn leg ache, and I’ve only got nine Percocets left.
Maybe I should just book myself a flight to the States. What’s left for me here in China? Absolutely nothing.
But what do I have back there? My mom, and it’s not like I don’t miss her sometimes. She’d take me in, but how long would that work? Her life’s still bound up in the church. In Sunrise. And that’s pretty much the last place I want to be.
Sunrise, with its fake adobe buildings that make it look like an Indian casino minus the neon, which I guess works for Arizona, where I grew up. The auditorium, where the services are held with coffee and donuts and giant plasma TVs. At the bookstore you can get the latest Christian rock and hip-hop CDs, ‘WWJD?’ bracelets, T-shirts that say ‘Stoned Like Paul’ and ‘Yes, I am a Princess – My Father is the King of Kings!’ You can drop your kids off at the daycare center if you want while you go to an aerobics class. The minister, Reverend Jim, wears Hawaiian shirts and talks about joy and living in Christ and how to reach your professional goals, in a Christ-like way. Reverend Jim is big on reaching your professional goals.
There wasn’t much else to do where I lived, so I went.
Mom started going too, when she wasn’t working. She needed something – something that wasn’t work and wasn’t taking care of me in our shitty little townhouse down the street from the KFC. Christian parenting, Christian singles – all of a sudden she had this whole network supporting her. It was like she’d been falling and falling and had suddenly landed on this big, soft comforter held up by all these new friends, a place where she was finally safe.
How safe would I be in the U.S.? If the Suits are watching me … Would they really leave me alone if I went home?
Sometimes I miss having a weapon. Not my M16. What I want right now is a little M9. A nice reliable pistol. Because really, what’s the point? My life’s been a disaster ever since those times, and nothing’s getting any better. It’s just getting worse.
My steps have slowed down to a near shuffle.
Don’t cry, you stupid bitch, I tell myself. Nobody cares, and it’s not going to do you any good.
About the time I’m ready to stop walking, I find myself in front of a wangba, an Internet bar.
I guess I could check my e-mail before I go kill myself.
The girl behind the counter asks for my passport and then doesn’t want to look at it, telling me to write the information down myself. So I say I’m ‘Faith McConnell’ (my sworn enemy from middle school) and claim to be living in ‘Orange County,’ this suburban development that’s out by the Capital Airport, not the one in California. Being a foreigner, no one’s going to question me about that.
This wangba's okay, not too crazy with smoke and noise – it’s just a long room with rows of computers, a counter up front where you sign in and buy drinks and snacks from a glass-front refrigerator if you want. The décor is mainly beige, with the obligatory ‘New Beijing, Great Olympics’ poster that no one’s bothered to take down and a couple sad-looking potted plants here and there. Chinese and Korean students play games involving swords, explosions, and girls with big tits dressed in chain-mail bikinis; a middle-aged Westerner reads what he can access of The New York Times through the Great Firewall. Lately getting on news sites hasn’t been too much of a problem, but things like Facebook and Twitter and Blogger are blocked.
Like Lao Zhang said, the government doesn’t like it when too many people get together.
When I log in to my Web mail account, I’ve got over two hundred unread e-mails. Most of them are junk. Plus there’s my mom’s obligatory ‘Send this message to Five Angels you know’ e-mail and a couple of dirty jokes from her Christian friends. This is one of those things I’ve never understood. Why are Christians sending me dirty jokes about cowboys and nuns?
I delete all that, and I don’t forward my mom’s e-mail to five angels I know, because I don’t know any, and I’m probably going to hell anyway.
Halfway down the page is an e-mail from Trey.
‘Ellie, please turn on your phone. Call me. I know you’re pissed off, and I get that, but let me know you’re okay. Those are some heavy-duty guys – if you help them, they can help you. But don’t fuck with them. Okay?’
Like he really cares if I’m okay.
My finger hovers over the keyboard. Reply or delete?
I do neither. I go back to my inbox.
Now, here’s something weird.
‘An Invitation To Tea.’ The e-mail is heavy on the HTML, with graphics that look familiar.
‘The Sword of Ill Repute,’ it says on a banner at the top.
I scroll down, past a Flash animation of warriors swinging swords, pectorals bulging or breasts heaving depending on their gender.
‘Cinderfox, the Humble Servant of the Lord of the Boundless, requests the Swordswoman Little Mountain Tiger join him on a quest. We begin with a cup of tea at the Tears of Heaven’s Pass Teahouse. I will be there after four o’clock. I await your response.’
It’s Lao Zhang’s game, the one he’s so addicted to. Chuckie too. I’m Little Mountain Tiger. This is an invite for me to come and play.
I sit there for a moment. I haven’t played this game in ages. In fact, I’ve hardly played it at all. Chuckie and Lao Zhang, they’re serious players, high-level, not likely to pursue a lowly newbie with no points, no spells, no magic sword, and who doesn’t give a shit about it. None of their friends would either.
Lao Zhang’s screen name is Upright Boar of the Western Forest. Chuckie’s is Eloquent Evergreen Monkey.
So who is Cinderfox? And why did he send me this invitation?
Here’s the link to play, outlined in blue. I hesitate.
It’s Lao Zhang’s game.
I click on the link.
CHAPTER SEVEN
My first duty assignment was at one of the biggest forward operating bases in the Triangle. Life on the FOB was okay, in comparison to the alternatives. We had a PX, where you could buy toothpaste and iPods and tampons, a dining hall with a salad bar and a taco station, a little gym, air-conditioning some of the time, Internet connections. I could get a mochaccino in the morning if I wanted, before going out on patrol. That part sucked, though, and there was no getting around it. I was a medic, not some fobbit who never left the base. It was my job to ride along, in case somebody got shot or blown up.
You hear ‘patrol,’ and you’re probably thinking ‘combat’; we’re out there fighting bad guys. It wasn’t like that. I was part of a support company. Most of the time, we delivered supplies, guarded cheesecake for truck convoys run by private contractors like KBR, or escorted