British John keeps giving me looks, like he thinks I’m going to lose it.
“Hey, we need more music,” Xiaowei pipes up. “What should I play?”
“You choose, luv,” says British John. “As long as it’s none of that fucking awful Korean pop.”
Xiaowei pouts. She loves Korean pop, which as British John points out, really is fucking awful.
“Reggae!” shouts Hank the Australian.
“It was America’s criminal invasion of Iraq,” the Norwegian chick drones on. She’s kind of drunk by now, too. “Everyone involved is a criminal. You know, Falluja, Haditha, Abu Ghraib, these are war crimes…”
Hank and the other Norwegian girl, meanwhile, have gone over to the jukebox, draped over each other like partners in a three-legged race. “Redemption Song” booms over the speakers.
“These soldiers, they killed innocents, and you Americans call them heroes.”
“Why don’t you just shut the fuck up?” I finally say. I’m not mad. I’m just tired. “You Norwegians are sitting on top of all that North Sea oil or you’d be making deals and screwing people like everyone else. Plus, you kill whales.”
Supermodel straightens up. Actually, she looks more like a Viking. All she needs is a spear. “Norway contributes more percentage of its income to foreign aid than any other country. While you Americans-”
“Oh, it’s wrong to kill whales,” Xiaowei says, her eyes filling with tears. “And dolphins. They are so smart! I think they are smarter than we are.”
“Darts, anyone?” British John asks.
I END UP crashing at British John and Xiaowei’s place, finally dragging myself off their couch the next day around noon to make my way home.
Of course, I run into Mrs. Hua, who is hustling her kid into their apartment, him clutching an overstuffed, greasy bag of Mickey D’s.
“Somebody looking for you,” she hisses, her little raisin eyes glittering in triumph. “You in some kind of trouble!”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, right.”
“Foreigners,” she continues. “In suits! You in trouble.”
I freeze, but only for a moment.
“Whatever.”
I unlock the door and make my way through the living room, which is cluttered with all kinds of random stuff: books, magazines, dirty clothes, a guitar amp, and a cardboard standup figure of Yao Ming draped with a plastic lei. My roommate Chuckie has the blackout curtains drawn, and I can hardly see a thing, just Yao Ming, the red of his jersey blanched gray by the dark.
Foreigners in suits. It doesn’t make sense. How can Lao Zhang be in trouble with foreigners in suits?
Then I think: maybe it’s not Lao Zhang they’re looking for.
I’m not in trouble, I tell myself. I’m not. All that shit happened a long time ago, and nobody cares about it any more.
“Cao dan! Zhen ta ma de!”
“Chuckie? What?”
Chuckie bursts out of his bedroom, greasy hair bristling up in spikes, glasses askew, Bill Gates T-shirt about three sizes too big, knobby knees sticking out beneath dirty gym shorts.
“That fucking bastard stole my seventh-level Qi sword!”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” I say. “Who stole your sword?”
“Ming Lu, the little shits! I should go bust his damn balls!”
I try to picture Chuckie busting much of anything and fail. The reason I have such a good deal renting this apartment is that Chuckie gives me a break in exchange for tutoring him in English conversation. Sometimes I listen to him and think that I’m not really doing my job.
“So… Chuckie… I don’t understand. This sword, I mean, it’s not a real sword, is it? It’s like… it’s part of the game, right?”
Chuckie stares at me like I’ve suddenly grown horns.
“Of course it’s part of the game!”
“So, um… if it’s not real, how did Ming Lu steal it?”
Chuckie paces around the dim, dank apartment, which I notice smells like some weird combination of sour beer and cement dust. “I lend it to him,” he mutters. “I trust him!” He slaps the cardboard Yao Ming for emphasis. “And that turtle’s egg, jiba son of a slave girl go and sell it!”
I had a lot to drink last night and I’m pretty sleep-deprived, so maybe if I had some coffee I could follow him a little better. Still, he’s talking about a virtual sword in an online game. How can I take it seriously?
Chuckie’s game is The Sword of Ill Repute, the same game Lao Zhang plays. That’s how I met Lao Zhang, actually, through Chuckie. Lao Zhang was throwing a party at this space off the 4th Ring Road, and he’d invited his online friends to attend. Chuckie hadn’t really wanted to go. He didn’t approve of Lao Zhang’s gaming style. “Too peaceful!” he complained. “He don’t like to go on quest, just sit in teahouse and wine shop and drink and chat all the time.”
Me, I was tired of virtual reality and thought an actual party might be fun. I’d thought maybe I was going crazy, sitting in that apartment all the time. I was having a lot of nightmares, not sleeping well, and I needed to get out.
So we went to the party, which was at this place called the Airplane Factory (because it used to be an airplane factory). When we got there, a couple of the artists were doing a piece, throwing dyed red mud at each other and chanting slogans every time they got hit. A DJ was spinning tunes while another artist projected images on the blank white walclass="underline" chickens being decapitated and buildings falling down and Mickey Mouse cartoons. At some point, this fairly lame Beijing punk band played, though I had to give them points for attitude.
I wandered around on my own, not talking to anybody, because even though I’d wanted to come, once I got there I felt awkward and nervous, like I couldn’t have been more out of place. Eventually I saw Chuckie standing over by this installation piece, a ping-pong table that lit up and made different noises depending on where the ball hit. That’s where the beer was, iced for once, in plastic tubs.
Chuckie was talking to this big, stocky guy with a goatee and thick eyebrows, wearing paint-splattered cargo shorts, an ancient Cui Jian T-shirt, and a knit beanie. The guy had just opened a bottle of Yanjing, and instead of drinking from it, he gave it to me, eyebrow half-cocked, grinning. There was something about his smile I liked, something about how it included me, like we were already sharing a joke. “You’re Chuckie’s roommate,” he said. “Chuckie says you’re crazy.”
That was Lao Zhang.
Now I’m thinking: talk about a pot/kettle scenario, ’cause here’s Chuckie, pacing around the living room, muttering about how some jiba ex-friend of his has ripped off his virtual sword.
Chuckie grabs his backpack and heads for the door.
“Hey. Where are you going?”
“Matrix,” Chuckie mumbles.
“Why?”
“Because that’s where Ming Lu is.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
“Make him pay.”
“Hey, Chuckie, wait a minute. Just… wait.”
He pauses at the door. “What?”
“You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?”
Chuckie swings his backpack over his shoulder. “That Qi sword is worth 10,000 kuai! I’m going to make him pay me for it!”
“You’re kidding.”
Ten thousand yuan is no small sum of money. It’s over fourteen hundred dollars. More money than I make in a month. More money than Chuckie makes a month doing his freelance geek gigs, I’m pretty sure. He’s a genius with computers, but he’s always getting canned for spending too much time online doing things he shouldn’t.