Zhang checked his watch. He had a meeting in five minutes. “Will you be at home at lunchtime?”
“I’m retired,” Mad Dog said. “Where else would I be?”
* * *
—
When Zhang stepped out of the building at half past twelve, the sky was blue, and a fierce and abrasive heat pressed down on everything. A young woman in a red dress and sunglasses walked past, her head protected by a red umbrella. It was a relief to climb into the Jaguar—its tinted windows, its chilly leather seats. Chun Tao drove north through Lujiazui. Men lay on plastic loungers in the shade. The parks were empty. The sun no longer felt like something that was good for you. His thoughts drifted back to his time in Vancouver. Driving to the beach in a convertible. The fresh salt sting of the air, the glitter of the waves. He had done his best to fit in—he learned English, and started wearing T-shirts and jeans—but his life never seemed entirely normal or natural. Even the sex was different. The girls he slept with were always putting things into words. What do you like? Should I blow you? Did you come? So many questions…They sped down into the Dalian Road Tunnel, emerging a few minutes later on the north side of the river. The dappled streets, the toxic sunlight. More women with umbrellas. When they approached the junction of Anguo Road and Tangshan Road, he told Chun Tao to pull over.
“I shouldn’t be more than an hour,” he said.
In the alley where Mad Dog lived, all the doors and windows were open. Men stood about in their underwear, with plastic slippers on their feet, talking or smoking or simply staring at the sky. Zhang pushed on the door that led to Mad Dog’s yard. Mad Dog was sitting by the wall in a white undershirt and a pair of stained tan trousers. On the Formica table next to him was a packet of Shanghai Gold, a lighter, a teapot standing on a newspaper, and a half-drunk glass of tea. A sloping sheet of pale green corrugated plastic jutted from one side of the house, shielding him from the sun and rain. Strung across the yard behind him was a washing line hung with children’s clothes and two faded pink bras.
“Bit of a nip in the air today.” Mad Dog bared his teeth, which was the closest he ever came to smiling. The air under the lean-to was solid, humid. Thick as soup.
Zhang pulled a dishcloth off the washing line, spread it over the dusty seat of a white plastic chair, and sat down in the shade. Mad Dog pushed the packet of Shanghai Gold towards him.
“I don’t smoke,” Zhang said, “remember?”
“You used to smoke. You used to smoke more than all the rest of us put together.”
“That’s why I stopped.”
“So now you’re going to live forever?”
“Longer than you, anyway.”
Mad Dog reached for the packet and shook out a cigarette and lit it. The flame coming from the lighter and the glowing tip of the cigarette seemed to add to the heat of the day.
“It must be important,” he said, “for you to come all the way out here.”
All the way out here. Zhang smiled. Mad Dog might live in an alley no wider than a hotel corridor, but if you got on the metro it was only four stops to the city center. It was just that he liked to think of himself as marginal, alternative.
“It’s because of what I said to you,” Mad Dog went on, “isn’t it.”
Zhang didn’t respond. He remembered a brief exchange with Naemi as they drove back into town after the gig at Yu Yin Tang. I don’t think Mad Dog likes me. He had tried to reassure her. He doesn’t like anyone. Which was true, actually. Mad Dog was often caustic, and even, sometimes, violent—especially if he had been drinking.
Selecting a glass from the narrow shelf behind him, Mad Dog poured Zhang a glass of tea. “I meant every word.”
“Why would you say something like that?”
“There are things you don’t know about me.” Mad Dog studied the end of his cigarette, took one last drag, then flicked it away from him, into the yard. “I wrote a book once.”
“Really? What about?”
“Ah, I surprised you.” Mad Dog allowed himself a small, sour smile. “It was a history of ghost culture in China, from ancient times to the present day.”
Zhang stared at his friend. Mad Dog a writer? He would never have guessed.
“I studied the subject for many years,” Mad Dog went on. “I even taught at the university.”
“What’s this got to do with Naemi?”
“Let me tell you a story.”
Sipping his tea, Zhang felt a bead of sweat slide down the middle of his chest.
“A woman who had died in childbirth walked into a grocery shop one morning,” Mad Dog began.
“Good opening,” Zhang said.
Mad Dog gave him a look that meant, Don’t interrupt.
“She bought the kind of food a mother and baby would need,” he went on. “As always, the shopkeeper admired her looks, but kept his eyes lowered, out of respect. She paid for the groceries and left.
“When she had gone, the shopkeeper noticed that the money she had given him had turned to ashes in his hand. He ran out into the street and looked around. The woman was already some distance away. It was raining, and she had no umbrella. Her black hair grew blacker, and her wet dress stuck to her back, and to her bottom. The shopkeeper was struck more than ever by her beauty.
“After following the woman to the gates of the cemetery, he lost sight of her. Not knowing what else to do, he wandered among the graves. The rain eased. A weak sun shone.
“When he finally found her, she was lying in a coffin, dead. On her breast was the baby she had given birth to. Waving its arms. Crying out as the rain tickled its face.”
Mad Dog finished his tea.
“Have a think about that,” he said, “while I make us some lunch.”
As Mad Dog disappeared indoors, Zhang’s phone rang. It was Wang Jun Wei. He wanted to know if Zhang had reached a decision about the Iran deal.
“There’s a meeting tomorrow,” he said, “in my office. It would mean a lot to me if you were there.”
Zhang said he would do his best.
After finishing with Jun Wei, Zhang called Sebastian, a German commodities trader who he had worked with before. He asked Sebastian if he could attend a meeting the following day. He apologized for the short notice.
By the time he had talked Sebastian into it, proposing a fifty-fifty split on fees, Mad Dog had appeared again, with two steaming bowls of noodles. The two men began to eat.
“The broth is excellent,” Zhang said after a while.
Mad Dog nodded. “I’m a good cook. Better than Ling Ling.”