I didn't know. I still don't.
I never saw Becky again. It was quite enough to know that she was simply alive.
I began searching for Mr. Li shortly after Nina and I moved back to the Spokane area. I had a thousand questions to ask him, a thousand things I wanted to know about him. How had he come by this power that he had? Why had he picked me? I also felt I owed him a large debt of gratitude for what he had done for me. I wanted to make sure that he did not end his life dying in a shitty convalescent home. I wanted to try to prevent his getting terminal cancer in the first place if I could. Depending on where the cancer had started, that was surely possible.
But Mr. Li proved impossible to track down. My source of information was Tracy, who, as a deputy DA had access to a nationwide computer network of known people. This should have done the trick. Unfortunately, I did not know enough information about Mr. Li. All I knew was his last name and his age approximated to within ten years or so.
When I'd first met Mr. Li on that fated night in 1999 I didn't know that he would have a very profound impact upon me. I'm surprised I was even able to remember his last name by the time it became apparent what he'd done. When I'd gone to bed that night Mr. Li had been nothing but a vague memory of a sad event, an event that I'd been forced to stand helpless before. Paramedics train their minds not to think about such things. If we grieved for every person that died before us, if we allowed ourselves to feel saddened by all of the human suffering we saw, we would all go mad very quickly. A paramedic's mind is accustomed to purging all information the moment it is no longer relevant.
According to Tracy's computer work there were nineteen hundred and four people with the last name of Li in the State of Washington that were between the ages of fifty and eighty. And that was only in Washington. Who was to say that Mr. Li even lived in Washington back then? My task seemed quite hopeless.
But as the years rolled closer and closer to 1999 and as my hopes of preventing Mr. Li's death from cancer decreased, I knew that I could at least keep the man out of the convalescent hospital. I could have him put up in a private home with around the clock nurses and premium medical care. Hell, I'd even spring for daily blowjobs if that's what he wanted. I was determined to see that old man die in comfort, to repay him for what he'd done for me.
I made contact with several people in the administration of that particular con home in mid-1998. I passed several envelopes full of twenty-dollar bills and extracted promises that I would be called immediately the moment anyone named "Li" was admitted to their facility. I promised more little envelopes when the information arrived to me. I checked back frequently with them, more than once a week when 1999 began.
But a strange thing happened, something that I could not figure out. As 1999 wound onward towards the 7th of July, the date that I'd met him and come back, no Mr. Li appeared. He had to have been there for a while before I'd encountered him, hadn't he?
By July 2nd I was very confused. Still no Mr. Li in the con home. The man was going to die in five days, had to be wracked with cancer at that very moment. Where the hell was he? Had I imagined the whole thing? That certainly wasn't possible. How else could I have had so much knowledge of what had been unless I'd really lived through it.
July 4th came. The Stevens' family and the Meachen family celebrated by taking our cabin cruiser out onto the lake and watching the fireworks near Sandpoint. It was an annual tradition. We all got drunk and poured ourselves into bed later that night, Nina and I in our room, Maggie and Mike in a guest bedroom, Jack and Mary, who had watched our children, in another guest bedroom. The next morning, still hung over and feeling like shit, I'd called the con home once more. Still no Mr. Li.
Nor was there an admission on the 6th of July under the name Li. Very strange. Would the anniversary, the sacred date, the date of his death pass by without my ever contacting him? It seemed it would. And there was nothing I could do about it.
The 7th of July was a hot, sticky, typical Eastern Washington summer day. I went out to get the mail about 10:00 that morning, the same time I always did. Our mailbox was out on the main road in front of our plot and it was a considerable walk from the house itself. I took Frank, our two-year old German Shepherd with me like always. He tagged along my heels, sniffing this, peeing on that as we went. I reached down and petted him a few times, talking to him as a man does his dog.
I hadn't been thinking of much of anything as I opened the mailbox and pulled out the pile of envelopes and advertising circulars that were inside.
I was flipping through them, sorting what was important from what was not when a voice called my name.
I jerked a little, startled by the voice in the stillness and looked towards its source. Our little stretch of the world was typically pretty deserted and having someone else out there when I picked up the mail was so unusual as to be unheard of. Frank barked once and then began to growl menacingly, his eyes locked onto one of the pine trees that guarded our driveway.
A man stepped out from behind it. I did not recognize him at first. He was Asian and very short. He was dressed in a pair of running shorts and a T-shirt. His face was rugged and ageless. His appearance there coupled by the fact that he knew my name, put me immediately on guard.
"Can I help you?" I asked with a voice that was not quite steady. Beside me, Frank continued to growl.
The man smiled, continuing his approach. "You don't recognize me, do you?" he asked.
I didn't say anything, just continued to watch warily.
"Not surprising," he nodded. "The last time you saw me I looked considerably worse than I do now. But I know you've been looking for me for a long time." The smile widened. "I didn't want to be found by you, didn't want to cause you undue worry. But today the time has come for you and I to have a little talk."
I stared, wondering if what I was thinking was correct. "Mr. Li?" I asked in disbelief.
He chuckled. "The one and only."
I stared in disbelief at the vision before me. He was not emaciated in the least. In fact, his body appeared to be in tip-top physical shape. His calves were muscular, his stomach flat. His face was unlined, his eyes bright and inquisitive. He had no respiratory problems, in fact seemed to be breathing quite a bit easier than I was at that moment.
"But…" I started, "you're supposed to be…"
"Dying?" he asked, smiling at me.
I nodded.
Another chuckle. "There's a lot of things that have happened in the last seventeen years that weren't supposed to happen, eh? And a lot of things that WERE supposed to happen that didn't. You've led me on a very strange journey Mr. Stevens, a very strange one indeed. But the time has come for you and I to have a little talk together, to hash out a few details." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. "This is my address.
It is imperative that you show up here tonight, alone. I believe your wife Nina is off work today, is she not? Childcare for your three lovely children should not be a problem."
"Mr. Li…"
"Take the paper," he told me, offering it. "Be there tonight at six o'clock.
Be sure you are not late. Do not tell Nina what you are doing. If you care for the life that you have built over the last seventeen years, you will do as I say."