“I had some business to take care of,” I say.
“So you come here to do business with those guys, those guys with all the ganja? I did not think you were so stupid.” Now he just sounds pissed.
“No! No. I didn’t know anything about that. I was going there to meet someone else. He…”
I could tell him, I guess. Maybe he could even help. I mean, if there’s anyone who could probably track down a runaway foreigner, it’s Creepy John.
But I just don’t know what the consequences of that would be. For Jason/David. For me.
Trust Mr. Double-Dealing Secret Agent? I don’t think so.
“It’s a long story,” I say. “But it’s got nothing to do with Lao Zhang. It’s personal. Not anything you’d care about.”
WE GET TO SOME village that’s pretty cute: a lot of white with grey stone trim, black and white and grey nature scenes painted under the peaked roofs, carved wood and raw brick. Not a lot of white-tile disease. Middle-aged ladies wearing traditional dress: deep blue shifts and blouses under them, dark head wraps, sashes embroidered with pink flowers and butterflies.
“Bai people,” John says. I see a couple of Western tourists wandering through the narrow lanes, taking pictures with their iPhones.
No veterinarian, though.
We finally find a medical clinic. The doctor there, an older man, at first he doesn’t want to have anything to do with the dog, but John whips out his credential and a wad of cash and the doctor starts bobbing his head up and down and clasps his hands together and smiles like he can’t imagine a better way to be spending his time.
The dog doesn’t want to go with him. It whimpers and hugs my thigh. “It’s okay, dog,” I whisper. “I’ll come with you, all right?”
I make sure the doctor gives it a painkiller before he starts doing stuff. I scratch behind its ears and help hold it down when he shaves the fur around the wound, douses it with antiseptic, and loosely stitches it up. “Might need drain,” he says. “I give antibiotic injection, but hard to say.”
He doesn’t ask what happened to the dog. Just bandages it up and hands me a bottle of antibiotics at the end.
“Two times a day,” he says.
“Xie xie.” I pocket the pills. Hesitate. “Is it a boy or a girl?” He laughs a little. “Girl. You can have xiao gou if you want.” Puppies.
“Wo… wo buyao,” I say. I don’t want. I mean,
I don’t even want one dog.
AFTER THAT, I’M THINKING, I should get the dog something to eat, but it’s not like there’s a Petco here. Maybe we can just stop at a restaurant, get some chicken or beef, or something.
“To feed dog?” John asks with a hard sigh.
I shrug. “He… she… I don’t know when the last time she ate was.”
John checks his watch. “Okay. Lunchtime anyway.”
You can tell that this village gets tourists. We find a courtyard restaurant with an English sign that says WELCOME FOR YOU TRY XIZHOU SPECIAL FLAVORS! ENJOYING IN RETROSPECT THE EVERLASTING! John manages to squeeze in his Toyota out front, in the narrow lane.
I order the local fish and something called a poshu, a “roasting round flat cake by the wheat flour with all good color, joss-stick, and flavor,” that features “ethereal oil layering.” It’s supposed to be good for “go out to labor or tour of holding.” It all tastes pretty good, if not ethereally everlasting. But even though I haven’t eaten since last night, I’m not feeling much like eating. There’s the dog, lying in the back of John’s car, with the windows cracked. She seems pretty lethargic-doped up, I have to figure-so I’m hoping she doesn’t pee all over his new upholstery.
And there’s John, sitting across from me. Eating with a sort of angry efficiency.
We don’t talk. We just eat, in record time, leaving with a take-out order of some plain beef-and-rice dish that I figure will be easy for the dog to eat.
I try to pay. John won’t let me.
When we get back to the car, I open the take-out container and put it under the dog’s nose. She sniffs at it. Her tail thumps a little.
“Don’t you want to eat any of it? Come on, it’s got ethereal flavors.”
She lifts her head enough to nose at the beef and rice. Takes a couple of slurping bites. Lays her head back down, tail thumping weakly.
“Okay, good dog,” I say. “You can have more later.”
I close up the Styrofoam take-out container. Tie the flimsy plastic bag. John stands behind me, and I can feel him watching. I don’t have a clue what he’s thinking.
When I try to stand up, my leg’s buckling and I have to brace myself on the car seat, and even then I’m wobbling like one of those plates on top of a Chinese acrobat’s stick.
“Here,” John says. He circles his arm around my back, tucking his hand more or less in my armpit, and I, reluctantly, thread my arm across his back, my hand resting on his ribs. He slowly hoists me up. His hand remains there for a moment, beneath my arm, his fingertips grazing the side of my tit, then falls away.
We stand there next to the car.
“Did you hurt yourself?”
“Yeah. In Guiyu. Getting better, though.”
I ’M NOT SURE WHERE I expect us to go, and truthfully, I kind of space out for a while, something I still tend to do if I get too tired or too stressed out for too long-“dissociate” is the technical term.
Or maybe… I don’t know, after everything that’s happened, I’m finally feeling like I can afford to relax. Like right now I’m kind of safe.
That’s when adrenaline rushes through me like an electric shock.
Safe? With Creepy John? What am I smoking?
I look out the window, try to get my bearings. We’ve been driving north, away from Dali. Now we’re heading east, around the north end of Erhai Lake. Erhai means “Ear Sea,” I think, because the lake is kind of shaped like an ear, and it’s a big freaking lake. We’re heading around the top of it. The road is dirt now, rutted, and there are wind turbines up on the hillside, and I can’t tell how much of the bumping is from the road and how much is from the gusts of wind.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Some place quiet,” he mutters, hands gripping the steering wheel.
“Why?”
“So you can rest. So I can… so I can decide what to do.”
My heart thumps hard in my chest. “What do you mean, ‘decide what to do’?”
He winces now, scrunches up his face like he’s in pain. “Just… just how I can fix things.”
Okay, I think, okay. He’s not going to hurt me. He’s not. He saved my ass before. He took my dog to a doctor and bought it lunch.
It’s not your dog, I remind myself.
And when it comes down to it, I have no idea what John really wants.
AS WE CURVE AROUND the top of the lake and head south, the road smooths out again. Beams of light stream through breaks in the cloud like some giant flashlight, the peaks of the little waves on the lake sparkling where they hit. There are rusting boats now and again tied up at rotting wooden posts. We blow by some Westerners on bikes struggling against the wind.
“So you really don’t know where Zhang Jianli is,” John finally says.
“No. I really don’t.” I summon up the energy to get pissed off. “I thought you were supposed to be his friend.”
“I…” He looks ashamed, and maybe he actually is. “I just have to tell them something. They think you know. And I don’t want…” His voice trails off. He stares straight ahead.
“What?”
“I don’t want you to have trouble, that’s all.”
He turns to look at me, which I wish he wouldn’t do, given the cyclists and farm trucks and motorcycle carts on the road. “Just tell me what you are doing. Then I can say it has nothing to do with Lao Zhang and they will leave you alone.”