“You’re the one with the illusion,” Zhang said. “You’re basing this whole hypothesis on something you thought you saw when you were drunk.”
“Ghosts are devious,” Mad Dog continued, quite undeterred by Zhang’s objections. “They don’t tend to reveal much. They can’t afford to. They know that if they’re recognized they could be destroyed.” He paused. “If you were honest with yourself,” he went on, “if you were seeing clearly, you’d be able to supply me with evidence that would support my argument. I know you would. You’re in denial, though.”
Zhang shook his head, but inside he felt a certain agitation or disquiet, the sense of something coming loose. He was thinking of Naemi’s restlessness at night, the way she never appeared to sleep, and how she seemed much older than her years. He thought of her impenetrability. Was he in denial, as Mad Dog claimed?
“How do you know all this?” he said finally.
“I told you. I wrote a book. Don’t you ever listen?”
“You seem a bit obsessed.”
“Obsessions are what make people exceptional.” There was a quick, scratchy noise from Mad Dog’s lighter as he lit a cigarette. “My knowledge hasn’t come in especially useful, though—at least, not until now.”
“So what would you advise?” Zhang said. “I should stop seeing her?”
“Yes.”
“And if I can’t—or won’t?”
Mad Dog fell quiet for a few moments.
“Be careful,” he said at last. “And tell me if anything happens that seems out of the ordinary.”
Zhang was aware that he was keeping things from Mad Dog, but he couldn’t bear to provide him with any ammunition.
“By the way,” Mad Dog said, “that song of yours. It’s not so bad.”
Zhang smiled faintly. “We’ll work on it next time we meet.”
“Saturday?”
“Yes. See you then.”
Only seconds after Zhang ended the call, his phone started to ring. He pressed Accept.
“Naemi?” he said.
“How did you know it was me?” She sounded warm and slightly blurred, as if she had been drinking.
“I don’t know. I just did.”
They listened to each other breathe.
“I’ve been thinking about you,” he said. “I want to see you.”
“I want to see you too.”
“Can you come over?” The words were out of his mouth before he knew it, despite everything Mad Dog had said.
“I wish I could. I’m in Hong Kong.”
He thought about throwing a few things in a bag and taking a taxi to the airport—Shanghai to Hong Kong was only a two-hour flight—but it would be four in the morning by the time he reached her, and he had a midday meeting with Jun Wei.
“When are you back?” he asked.
“Tomorrow. I have to be at work in the afternoon.”
“What about tomorrow evening?”
An awkward silence fell.
“I can’t,” she said eventually. “I have plans.”
They agreed to see each other the day after, at lunchtime.
Once the phone call was over, he showered, then went to bed. Lying in the dark, though, he found he couldn’t sleep. Perhaps it was because he had been thinking of flying to Hong Kong to see her. Or perhaps it was her influence: just speaking to her had unsettled him. Usually, when he felt restless, he would take a taxi to Wing Mei’s apartment in the French Concession. When he arrived, she would remove his clothes and wash him with fragrant soaps and oils. Afterwards, they would make love on an opium bed that had belonged to her great-grandfather. Once he was inside her, she would hum a tune, and he would know she was approaching orgasm because she would look away, into the corner of the room, and she would bite her bottom lip, as if nervous or apprehensive. Later, she would cook for him. Something delicate, delicious. He could predict almost every aspect of an evening with Wing Mei, and there were times when that familiarity would excite or comfort him. But things were different now…
Turning onto his side, he saw himself arriving at the Embankment Building on Suzhou North Road. He had been there once before, for drinks with a French economist, and he remembered how shabby and run-down the lobby was, with a rudimentary Art Deco floor and a wall crowded with hundreds of small, dark green mailboxes. At the rear of the building was a flight of stairs, the dull brown wood furred with dust. Cobwebs hung high up on the pale walls. He remembered thinking it would make a good location for a horror film. If Johnny was to be believed, Naemi lived in apartment 710. He took a lift up to the seventh floor and stepped out into a corridor that stretched away in both directions. As in a nightmare, though, he couldn’t find a door with 710 on it.
Outside again, he stood on the promenade that followed the curve of the creek. Was it here that Naemi had confronted Johnny in his porkpie hat and his green suit? He found the idea that they had met unlikely—they were such very different characters—though he knew Johnny well enough to know that he wouldn’t have given anything away, despite having been caught red-handed.
Leaning against the railing, with the creek at his back, he looked up at the building’s intricate brown facade. The place was vast—it occupied an entire block—and yet it managed to be secretive. Ambiguous.
Like her…
At last he felt himself sinking into sleep.
* * *
—
After his lunchtime meeting with Jun Wei and Sebastian in north Shanghai, Zhang would normally have returned to the office. Instead, he asked Chun Tao to drive him to 50 Moganshan Road. It was five o’clock when they stopped outside. The cluster of old industrial buildings backing onto Suzhou Creek had been converted into galleries and artists’ studios that were now famous the world over. Zhang told Chun Tao to pull into the residential car park opposite. It was probably illegal to wait there—Zhang wasn’t a resident—but if they parked on the road Naemi might recognize the car. He kept his eyes trained on the main entrance. When she told him she couldn’t see him that evening because she had plans, he had noticed a shift in her voice, a kind of wariness or caution, as if she had said more than she meant to. He wondered if he was about to learn something he would rather not know. Hopefully not. Hopefully, it would turn out to be something innocuous—a doctor’s appointment, dinner with an old friend.
A security guard stood near the entrance, beneath a dark red parasol. He seemed to be asleep on his feet, like a horse. Ten meters to his left, in front of a gallery called Fish Studio, a parking attendant sat slumped on a plastic chair. Dressed in a pale blue uniform and black sandals, she was staring at an iPad. A bag of plums hung from the arm of the chair. Farther along, towards the main road, was a street vendor who was probably there for the foreign tourists. His wooden handcart was cluttered with bric-a-brac. Old teakettles. Pieces of mud-colored jade.