Dragon Day (9 page)

I'm guessing it was added on, even with the aged grey on the outside wall. Plenty of places that got knocked down in these neighborhoods to salvage it from. Little lights in the ceiling cast yellowish circles on the worn stones. There's a door made of wood and frosted glass at the end.

Just as I get there, the door's flung open. I jump. Out comes a woman, one of the thirty-, forty-somethings, in a black sheath dress and fancy heels. Louboutins, which I know only because of Lucy Wu. Polished more than pretty, with a designer bobbed haircut. Her face is redder than the soles of her shoes. I can't tell if she's been crying, is furious, or has been slapped.

“Duibuqi,”
I say. Excuse me.

She looks at me like,
What the fuck are you doing here?

Good question.

With barely a nod, she storms down the hall, her heels clicking on the stone like taps from a hammer.

I go into the bathroom—fancy, of course, more stone and rustic wood, with a shower off to one side. Do my business. There's another door on the other side, and I decide to go out that way, just because. I'm thinking about a Percocet. I'm thinking about a beer. I'm thinking, What do I have to do here before I can leave?

Find Tiantian, I guess. He wasn't in the first hall, so maybe he's in this one up ahead: the north hall, the main house. I mean, that's where the lord of the manor is likely to hang out, right?

The second door opens onto the side courtyard, a narrow rectangle between the west house and the north house. The smaller wing of the north house is closed up, though I can see lights inside. I'll have to go over to the main entrance if I want to go in and check it out.

“Hello!”

I flinch a little, but everything has me jumpy tonight. A young woman with pigtails, wearing a sort of designer baby-doll outfit. She looks familiar, but I can't quite place her.

“From Gugu's party,” she supplies. “I am Celine.”

“Right. You have a website.” The one she said I should read to learn something about modern Chinese culture. I think she was giving me shit, but I'd actually meant to check it out.

“Yes. And I hear some things about you.” She gives me a look. I think she's amused, but I'm not sure why. Just 'cause I'm funny, I guess. “I hear you work with artists,” she says. “Some interesting ones.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Are you interested in art?”

“Recently I become more and more interested. I even work in a gallery sometimes. Artists say fascinating things about society. Don't you think?”

“I do,” I say. I have to admit, not what I expected from a twenty-something club kid. Is she talking about Lao Zhang?

I try to think of something to say, something to ask about what artists she finds particularly fascinating, but she beats me to the next question.

“Do you like this house?” she asks.

“Sure. It's pretty. I mean, it's traditional Chinese, right?”

“Yes. Tiantian likes such styles. He always says China culture is over five thousand years old—what does rest of the world have to compare?” She giggles. “But he likes some modern things, too.”

Am I supposed to ask? Ever since I started hanging out around the younger Caos, I feel like everyone's speaking in some kind of code all the time and I'm not really deciphering it.

“Like what?” I ask. “Fancy cars? New plumbing?”

She leans forward. “Modern girls,” she says, peering at me through her eyelashes. “Did you see Mrs. Cao just now?”

“Tiantian's wife?” I think about it. The only person I've seen just now was the angry and/or crying woman in the bathroom. “Maybe.”

“She is unhappy with Tiantian, because he has this modern taste,” she says, fumbling a cigarette pack out of her tiny purse. “And she is
hong er dai
, so it is better if she is happy.”

Hong er dai.
Second-generation red. The sons and daughters of the revolution, born into privilege.

She taps out a cigarette. “Smoke?”

I shake my head. I haven't smoked since the Sandbox. Though I still get the itch sometimes.

“They are Panda.” She shows me the pack. Two pandas on a sea-foam green background. “Deng Xiaoping's favorite.”

“Is that why you smoke them?”

“No. It's because I like pandas.
Zhen ke ai.
” She flicks her lighter and inhales, then blows out a dainty cloud. “Very cute.”

I don't really want to make small talk with this girl, but it's not clear to me what else I should be doing, other than organizing a museum or something.

“You're here with Gugu?” I ask.

She lifts one shoulder. “He is here, and I am here.”

“Oh. I haven't seen him yet.”

“So is Betty. My friend you meet before.”

Rhinestone baseball cap. “Right.”

Then it occurs to me that I could actually do something productive. “And Marsh is here.”

She chuckles, a little belly laugh bottled up behind her closed lips. “Yes. I saw you talk to him.”

“Yeah. He's
. . .
I don't know. Interesting.”

“Yes. Interesting.” She takes a draw on her cigarette. “Sexy, I think. Don't you?”

“Not really my type.” Which is true and not true. He's nobody I want to get anywhere near, but he's got that kind of creepy charisma that some bad boys have, in part because you don't know what they'll do. It's the kind of thrill you get in your gut going up a roller coaster that might actually be nausea.

“He likes to think he is dangerous,” Celine says suddenly.

“Oh, yeah?”

Come up with something smart to say, dipshit, I tell myself.

“So is he?” I manage.

She blows a few smoke rings into the dark. “I think he is just acting. But maybe he forgets this sometimes.”

Okay, I tell myself. You need to go meet Tiantian. Pitch the museum or whatever and then get out. No reason to waste a lot of time. Because it's not actually going to happen, right?—the kids all getting together to support Dad's ego monument.

I'm here to evaluate Marsh, download to Sidney, and
di di mao
the fuck out. I tell myself this as I limp up the shallow, broad steps that lead to the entrance of the main house.

Two
qipao
-wearing serving girls stand by the entrance with trays holding glasses of wine. I take a red. One Moutai, one glass of wine. Doing okay, I tell myself. Even though my leg's throbbing, this pulsing nerve in the middle of my thigh that feels like an electrical fire, and I really want a Percocet.

After I meet Tiantian, I tell myself.

It's going to suck when I run out of Percocet.

Another lacquer screen. I walk around it and through the little entry and then into the main room.

There's this low, almost yellow light. More carved Chinese furniture, antique urns and scrolls, black lacquer chests, red silk hangings, chunks of pale green jade. It kind of looks like
Crouching Tiger
exploded.

I pick my way through the Chinascape. Knots of guests watch me pass, or maybe it's my imagination. But there aren't a lot of foreigners here. There's Marsh, and there's me.

“So you came.”

I turn and see Meimei, lounging on one of those carved wooden bed things with the little table, smoking a Chinese brass water pipe, the kind with the chamber that fits in your hand and a long curved stem. She's wearing a take on a men's silk jacket with a mandarin collar, her hair slicked back like last time, and a pair of antique-looking round gold-framed spectacles with the lenses flipped up. China steampunk.

She extends the hand with the pipe. “Care to try?”

“What is it?” I ask.

“I don't know, maybe just some tobacco.”

“No thanks.”

“You can always have something else if you'd like.”

I don't know what she means, but man, am I tempted to ask.

Don't be stupid, I tell myself. “I'm good,” I say. “Got my wine here.”

“Have you met Tiantian yet?”

“Not yet.”

She swings her legs off the side of the bed and hops to her feet in one nimble move. “I will introduce you.”

I limp after her.

We walk to the back of the main hall. There's an exit that leads to a narrow courtyard and, like I thought, a two-story hall behind that. As we step up the three stairs that lead to the entrance, this random factoid flashes into my head, that the
back house was where the unmarried daughters used to live. I don't know if that's true or something I'm just making up.

Whatever the truth is, this doesn't look like a home for cloistered daughters. It's more like an upscale man cave. Leather, glass, and chrome furniture. The biggest TV I've ever seen embedded in one wall. A living room, I guess. There are a bunch of men sitting around, some obvious rich guys but also a few who remind me of Pompadour Bureaucrat, wearing polo shirts and ugly designer belts, others dressed in subdued black suits. The women who are here are mostly younger than the men. Of course they're cute. Of course they're wearing expensive outfits with short skirts and high heels and carrying rhinestone-studded designer purses. They perch on the arms of the couches, hanging around the edges.

“Hello!” Meimei calls out in English.

Everyone turns and stares. It's like one of those scenes in an old western, where the gunfighter walks into the saloon. The music doesn't stop playing, though. Too bad, as it's this cheesy Mandopop, and I have a low tolerance for that shit.

One of the men stands abruptly. The girl hovering next to him has to step aside, and she totters on her candy-red heels, and for a moment I think she's going to fall back on her ass. But she grabs the arm of the couch and steadies herself.

The guy has to be Tiantian. In his thirties, a little heavy through the hips and gut. He's wearing a black jacket, a grey shirt, and black slacks, and even from across the room I can tell that the clothes are expensive, but for some reason they still don't fit him quite right, like his sort of dumpy build defies all the custom tailoring.

“I've brought Father's friend Yili,” Meimei says.

“Ah.” Tiantian smiles briefly and bobs his head. “A pleasure to meet you,” he says to me in English. He doesn't speak it as well as Meimei or Gugu.

“Hen gaoxing renshi ni,”
I offer back. Nice to meet you, too. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

He waves that off. “You're my father's friend.”

I can see the resemblance to Sidney—like Gugu, Tiantian got dad's bony nose and high cheeks. His face is broader, more like Meimei's. Maybe they got that from Mrs. Cao, whoever and wherever she is. It occurs to me that I've never seen Mrs. Cao, never even seen a photo, never heard Sidney or Vicky or anyone say a word about her.

Tiantian gestures at the chair to his left. “Please, sit. So we can have a talk.”

I hobble over and sink into the chair. The leather is as soft as velvet. Meimei perches on the arm of it, rests one dainty ankle on the other knee.

Tiantian sits in his chair. Jerks his head to one side and snaps his fingers. One of the serving girls rushes over. The same one I bumped into earlier, I think, or maybe she just looks like her. I mean, they're all pretty. All in
qipaos
. All with their smiles in place, anxious to serve.

“What will you like?” Tiantian asks, his lips curving up as if they're being lifted by tiny hooks.

It's a good question. What will I like? I mean, how do I even know until I've tried it?

“Uh
. . .
wine. Thanks.”

“That wine you have now, we can do better.” He raises his hand to his mouth and mutters something to the
xiaojie
. Something about
“tebie hong putaojiu.”
Special red wine.

I sip the one I've got. Tiantian watches me, that fake smile frozen in place. Am I supposed to say something? Make small talk? I suck at small talk. But one thing you don't tend to do in China is get right to the point.

Plus, I'm not even sure what the point is. The museum project I made up to save my ass? Marsh Brody?

I settle on, “This is a great house.”

“A traditional Beijing
siheyuan
. You know this kind of house, I think.” He's proud of this place, I can tell. Well, who wouldn't be? It's a fucking expensive piece of real estate, for one thing.

“Yes. I've lived in Beijing for a few years. Not too far from here.”

“By Gulou, I think, yes?”

Great. Well, it's no surprise that he could find out where I live.