Lisa Brackmann
Dragon Day
The third book in the Ellie McEnroe series, 2015
To my mom, Dorothy Carol Brackmann Galante,
who taught me to love books, baseball, politics and cats,
and has the best laugh I have ever heard.
★
Dragons and China. It’s the biggest fucking cliché. If you ever go looking for books about China, you know how many of them have “dragon” in the title? Like all of them, practically.
Thing is, dragons are a big deal in China. The emperor’s symbol was a dragon. Dragons are all kinds of good luck, and super powerful. They can control weather, especially the kind that involves water. Your village keep flooding? Maybe you pissed off the local river dragon. Dragons can hide among clouds, disguise themselves as worms, or grow as big as mountains. Out of the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac, Dragon is the one you most want your kid to be. Dragon babies are attractive, smart, natural leaders, bring good fortune to the family. Yeah, I know all the other animals are supposed to have positive characteristics, but come on. You’re telling me you’d choose to be a Sheep over a Dragon?
Me, I’m a Rat. Obviously I’m not winning any zodiac beauty contest. Sure, they say we’re clever survivors, and that’s useful, I guess. It’s true I’ve survived some pretty crazy shit.
On the other hand, if I’m so clever, why do I keep walking into it?
If you believe in any of this Chinese astrology, it’s way more complicated than just the animal year you were born in. There’s an animal for your birth month, for your birthday, for the hour you’re born, and there’s all this other stuff having to do with the four elements-or maybe it’s five-and stems and pillars, and I have no idea what any of that means.
All these things have to do with your luck, or lack of it, and what kind of person you are. Because it’s not like every single baby born in a Dragon year turns out to be smart, good-looking, and destined to rule, right?
So maybe you’re born in a Dragon year but on a Sheep day.
And maybe some of those Sheep have Dragons inside.
Chapter One
★
I’m eyeing the bottle of vintage Moutai on the table and wondering if it would be unforgivably rude of me to pour myself another shot.
I don’t even like Moutai. But Sidney Cao singing “Feelings”? I definitely need something.
We’ve finished the Château Mouton Rothschild (“Genuine one,” Sidney promised), and there’s nothing else left on the table to drink except Pepsi.
“Feelings… nothing more than… feelings…”
I’m sitting in a private room in what I’m told is one of the three most expensive karaoke bars in Shanghai. The weird thing is, it’s not in a super-upscale neighborhood like the Bund or Nanjing Road, the French Concession or the riverfront in Pudong. Instead it’s this area west of the Shanghai train station that looks pretty typicaclass="underline" grey high-rises, broad streets choked with traffic and torn up by subway construction, nothing green in sight except for the occasional strange paint job. Vendors selling socks and DVDs and steamed buns crowd the sidewalks, along with bicycles and electric scooters.
This place though, outside, it’s a façade pretending to be marble that’s slathered with neon, fiberglass columns, and turrets surrounding tall, fake-bronze doors. The cars double-parked in the street are Beemers, Mercedes, Ferraris, a Rolls, and a Bentley. On the inside there’s a huge lobby four stories high that you have to go through a metal detector to enter, and when you do, you’re surrounded by the fronts of fake buildings, like a movie set of a European village, all painted white, and everywhere you look, there are gilded planters and gold chandeliers, Plexiglas kiosks advertising luxury goods, giant ornate mirrors, and the kind of fussy carved furniture that belongs in a Three Musketeers movie with dudes wearing long powdered wigs, except instead of being white like it usually is, the furniture’s painted peacock blue and neon green.
Also grand pianos. There are several in the cavernous lobby, black Steinways, sitting beneath a painted sky hanging four stories up that gradually changes from sunny blue with popcorn clouds to a garish red sunset.
No pianists, though. Maybe the pianos are just for decoration.
Our private room is pretty cozy, with fake Renaissance paintings on the red-flocked walls, which I have to say do not go very well with the peacock blue and neon green Musketeers furniture. But whatever.
I’m sitting next to Lucy Wu on one of the couches. Lucy, my sometime partner in the art business, owns a Shanghai gallery, and she dresses the part. She wears crazy designer stuff a lot, but tonight she’s outdone herself outfitwise. It’s this short, sleeveless, white dress with daisy-shaped cutouts and a halo of wispy white ostrich feathers, paired with red leather boots. Her shiny black hair is cut in this blunt anime style, and she’s wearing bright scarlet lipstick, thick mascara, and eyeliner like on a cartoon Cleopatra.
“Feeeeelings… Oh, oh, oh, feeeelings…”
“One more chorus,” she says to me, all the while keeping a big smile on her face.
Sidney really can’t sing. I mean, I can’t sing either, but I’m not the one standing up there with the microphone. So far this evening, Sidney has regaled us with “Yueliao Daibiao Wode Xin” (“The Moon Represents My Heart”), “Home on the Range,” and “Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman”-“Cultural Revolution favorite!” he explains with a big laugh.
I’m just about to reach for the Moutai when the song ends. Lucy smiles, showing her perfect tiny teeth, and claps. I smile and nod and clap.
Vicky Huang, the fourth member of our party, sits straight backed, not smiling, because this is serious stuff apparently, and she’s staring up at Sidney and applauding like she’s witnessing the Second Coming.
Sidney beams and approaches our little group of couches, microphone in hand. As he does, our very own private waitress, dressed in a French maid’s outfit, emerges from the shadows of the back wall, where she’d blended in like one of the paintings.
Smiling, without saying a word, she refills the tiny crystal flutes reserved for the Moutai.
“Ganbei!” Sidney says, raising his glass.
“Oh, thank God,” Lucy Wu murmurs in my ear.
I lift my glass. We clink. And Lucy, who is about the size of an anorexic hobbit, downs hers in a single “Ganbei.”
I don’t do as well. I know this is expensive stuff and prized in China, but it’s about 110 proof and tastes like sweet and sour paint thinner, with maybe a dash of soy sauce. The Moutai catches in my throat, and I cough.
“Now, Ellie, I think it is your turn!” I look up, and there’s Sidney holding the microphone in his outstretched hand.
“Oh, no, that’s okay,” I say. “I’m… you know, I can’t really sing.”
“Everyone can sing! You only must express what’s in your heart!”
Believe me, buddy, you don’t want to know.
“I… uh, my throat’s kind of sore.”
“Then you should have more Moutai!” He doesn’t even need to raise his hand. He merely flexes his fingers, and the waitress rushes over to refill our glasses.
“Just sing something!” Lucy hisses in my ear.
“Why don’t you sing something?” I hiss back.
“Because he asked you.”
“What shall you sing, Ellie?” Sidney asks.
I really don’t want to sing. But a good rule of thumb? Don’t piss off Chinese billionaires.
Especially don’t piss off Sidney Cao.