Rock Paper Tiger Read online

  Copyright © 2010 by Lisa Brackmann

  All rights reserved.

  Published by

  Soho Press, Inc.

  853 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Brackmann, Lisa.

  Rock paper tiger / Lisa Brackmann.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-56947-640-6

  eISBN 978-1-56947-891-2

  1. Iraq War, 2003—Veterans—Fiction. 2. Women veterans—Fiction.

  3. Americans—China—Fiction. 4. Uighur (Turkic people)—Fiction.

  5. Computergames—Fiction. 6. Beijing (China)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3602.R328R63 2010

  813’.6—dc22

  2009044018

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To everyone at Soho Press, with particular thanks to Laura Hruska and to Katie Herman, whose attention to both the big picture and the tiniest details blows me away.

  To my parents, Carol, Bill, Ray, and Gayle, and my family, with a special shout-out to my mom, Carol, whose research assistance was invaluable.

  To my friends for putting up with my craziness, especially beta readers Billy Brackenridge, Nikki Corda, Christy Gerhart, and Jenny Brown; Pilar Perez, Anna Chi, Kathleen Cairns, and Ebbins Harris for their all-around support, Jim Bickhart for the margaritas, and Mimi Freedman and Jon Hofferman for Buffy nights.

  My China buddies, in particular Richard Burger, Fuzhen Si, and Shanghai Slim.

  The Writing Wombats, whose camaraderie and humor have brightened my days for over two years now. I must mention Ken Coffman, Sherrie Super, Judi Fennell, Pat Shaw, Beth Hill, Jamie Chapman, and Dale Cozort in particular, for their very concrete help and encouragement.

  T. Jefferson Parker, who taught me something about the first fifty pages.

  Kerrin Hands, for making the book look great, Anne Fishbein, for making me look good, and Ryan McLaughlin for the awesome website.

  The Lurking Novelists, who have been with me every step of the way—Dana Fredsti, Bryn Greenwood, Elizabeth Loupas, Maire Donivan, Maureen Zogg, and our newbie, Heather. You guys are beyond awesome. I can’t wait to see every one of you in print.

  And finally, Nathan Bransford, whose hard work, editorial eye, patience and constant good cheer made this debut possible. It would not have happened without you.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I’M LIVING IN this dump in Haidian Qu, close to Wudaokou, on the twenty-first floor of a decaying high-rise. The grounds are bare; the trees have died; the rubber tiles on the walkways, in their garish pink and yellow, are cracked and curling. The lights have been out in the lobby since I moved in; they never finished the interior walls in the foyers outside the elevator, and the windows are boarded up, so every time I step outside the apartment door I’m in a weird twilight world of bare cement and blue fluorescent light.

  The worst thing about the foyer is that I might run into Mrs. Hua, who lives next door with her fat spoiled-brat kid. She hates that I’m crashing here, thinks I’m some slutty American who is corrupting China’s morals. She’s always muttering under her breath, threatening to report me to the Public Security Bureau for all kinds of made-up shit. It’s not like I ever did anything to her, and it’s not like I’m doing anything wrong, but the last thing I need is the PSB on my ass.

  I’ve got enough problems.

  Outside, the afternoon sun filters through a yellow haze. My leg hurts, but I should walk, I tell myself. Get some PT in. The deal I make with myself is, if it gets too bad, I’ll take a Percocet; but I only have about a dozen left, so it has to be really bad before I can take one. Today the pain is just a dull throb, like a toothache in my thigh.

  I pass the gas tanks off Chengfu Road, these four-story-high giant globes, and I think: one of these days, some guy will get pissed off at his girlfriend, light a couple sticks of dynamite underneath them (since they don’t have many guns here, the truly pissed-off tend to vent with explosives and rat poison), a few city blocks and a couple thousand people will get incinerated, and everyone will shrug—oh, well, too bad, but this is China, and shit happens. Department store roofs collapse; chemicals poison rivers; miners suffocate in illegal mines. I walk down this one block nearly every day on my way to work, and there are five sex businesses practically next door to each other, “teahouses” and “foot massage parlors,” with girls from the countryside sitting on pink leatherette couches, waiting for some horny migrant worker to come in with enough renminbi to fuck his brains out for a while and forget about the shack he’s living in and the family he’s left behind and the shitty wages he’s earning. Hey, why not?

  I still like it here, overall.

  I guess.

  I’m just in this bad mood lately.

  So I call Lao Zhang. That’s what I do these days when I’m feeling sorry for myself.

  “Wei?” Lao Zhang has a growly voice, like he’s talking himself out of a grunt half the time.

  “It’s me. Yili.”

  That’s my Chinese name, Yili. It means “progressive ideas” or something. Mainly it sounds kind of like Ellie.

  “Yili, ni hao.”

  He sounds distracted, which isn’t like him. He’s probably working; he almost always is. He’s been painting a lot lately. Before that, he mostly did performance pieces, stuff like stripping naked and painting himself red on top of the Drum Tower or steering a reed boat down the Yangtze with a life-size statue of Karl Marx in the prow.

  But usually when I call, he sounds like he’s glad to hear my voice, no matter what he’s doing. Which is one of the reasons I call him when I’m having a bad day.

  “Okay, I guess,” I answer. “I’m not working. Thought I’d see what you were up to.”

  “Ah. The usual,” he says.

  “Want some company?”

  Lao Zhang hesitates.

  It’s a little weird. I can’t think of a time when I’ve called that he hasn’t invited me over. Even times when I don’t want to leave my apartment, when I just want to hear a friendly voice, he’ll always try and talk me into coming out; and sometimes when I won’t, he’ll show up at my door a couple hours later with takeout and cold Yanjing beer. He’s that kind of person. He works hard, but he likes hanging out too, as long as you don’t mind him working part of the time. And I don’t. A lot of times I’ll sit on the sagging couch in his studio while he paints, listening to my iPhone, drinking beer, surfing on his computer. I like watching him paint too, the way he moves, relaxed but in control. It fe
els comfortable, him painting, me sitting there.

  “Sure,” he finally says. “Why don’t you come over?”

  “You sure you’re not too busy?”

  “No, come over. There’s a performance tonight at the Warehouse. Should be fun. Call me when you’re close.”

  Maybe I shouldn’t go, I think, as I swipe my yikatong card at the Wudaokou light rail station. Maybe he’s seeing somebody else. It’s not like we’re a couple. Even if it feels like we are one sometimes.

  Sure, we hang out. Occasionally fuck. But he could do a lot better than me.

  “Lao” means “old,” but Lao Zhang’s not really old. He’s maybe thirteen, fourteen years older than I am, around forty. They call him “Lao” Zhang to distinguish him from the other Zhang, who’s barely out of his teens and is therefore “Xiao” Zhang, also an artist at Mati Village, the northern suburb of Beijing where Lao Zhang lives.

  Before I came to China, I’d hear “suburb” and think tract homes and Wal-Marts. Well, they have Wal-Marts in Beijing and housing tracts—Western-style, split-level, three bedroom, two bath houses with lawns and everything, surrounded by gates and walls. Places with names like “Orange County” and “Yosemite Falls,” plus my personal favorite, “Merlin Champagne Town.”

  But Mati Village isn’t like that.

  Getting to Mati Village is kind of a pain. It’s out past the 6th Ring Road, and you can’t get all the way there by subway or light rail, even with all the lines they built for the ’08 Olympics. From Haidian, I have to take the light rail and transfer to a bus.

  It’s not too crazy a day. The yellow loess dust has been drowning Beijing like some sort of pneumonia in the city’s lungs, typical for spring in spite of all those trees the government’s planted in Inner Mongolia the last dozen years. The dust storms died down last night, but people still aren’t venturing out much. So I score a seat on the bench by the car door, let the train’s rhythms rattle my head. I close my eyes and listen to the recorded announcement of the stations, plus that warning to “watch your belongings and prepare well” if you are planning to exit. All around me, cell phones chime and sing, extra-loud so the people plugged into iPods can still hear them.

  The nongmin don’t have iPods. The migrants from the countryside are easy to spot: tanned, burned faces; bulging nylon net bags with faded stripes; patched castoff clothes; strange, stiff shoes. But it’s the look on their faces that really gives them away. They are so lost. I fit in better here than they do.

  Sometimes I want to say to these kids, what are you doing here? You’re going to end up living in a shantytown in a refrigerator box, and for what? So you can pick through junked computer parts for gold and copper wire? Do “foot massage” at some chicken girl joint? Really, you’re better off staying home.

  Like I’m one to talk. I didn’t stay home either.

  When I’m about fifteen minutes away from Mati, I try to call Lao Zhang, thinking, maybe I’ll see if we can meet at the jiaozi place, because I haven’t had anything to eat today but a leftover slice of bad Mr. Pizza for breakfast.

  Instead of a dial tone, I get that stupid China Mobile jingle and the message that I’m out of minutes.

  Oh, well. It’s not that hard to find Lao Zhang in Mati Village.

  First I stop at the jiaozi place. It’s Lao Zhang’s favorite restaurant in Mati. Mine too. The dumplings are excellent, it’s cheap as hell, and I’ve never gotten sick after eating there.

  By now it’s after six P.M., and the restaurant is packed. I don’t even know what it’s called, this jiaozi place. It’s pretty typical: a cement block faced with white tile. For some reason, China went through a couple of decades when just about every small public building was covered in white tile, like it’s all a giant bathroom.

  The restaurant is a small square room with plastic tables and chairs. There’s a fly-specked Beijing Olympics poster on one wall and a little shrine against another—red paper with gold characters stuck on the wall, a gilded Buddha, some incense sticks, and a couple pieces of dusty plastic fruit on a little table. The place reeks of fried dough, boiled meat, and garlic.

  Seeing how this is Mati Village, most of the customers are artists, though you also get a few farmers and some of the local business-owners, like the couple who run the gas station. But mostly it’s people like “Sloppy” Song. Sloppy is a tall woman who looks like she’s constructed out of wires, with thick black hair that trails down her back in a braid with plaits the size of king snakes. Who knows why she’s called “Sloppy”? Sometimes Chinese people pick the weirdest English names for themselves. I met this one guy who went by “Motor.” It said something about his essential nature, he told me.

  Sloppy’s here tonight, sitting at a table, slurping the juice out of her dumpling and waving her Zhonghua cigarette at the woman sitting across from her. I don’t know this woman. She looks a little rich for this place—sleek hair and makeup, nice clothes. Must be a collector. Sloppy does assemblage sculpture and collage pieces, and they sell pretty well, even with the economy sucking as much as it does.

  “Yili, ni hao,” Sloppy calls out, seeing me enter. “You eating here?”

  “No, just looking for Lao Zhang.”

  “Haven’t seen him. This is Lucy Wu.”

  “Ni hao, pleased to meet you,” I say, trying to be polite.

  Lucy Wu regards me coolly. She’s one of these Prada babes—all done up in designer gear, perfectly polished.

  “Likewise,” she says. “You speak Chinese?”

  I shrug. “A little.”

  This is halfway between a lie and the truth. After two years, I’m not exactly fluent, but I get around. “You speak Mandarin like some Beijing street kid,” Lao Zhang told me once, maybe because I’ve got that Beijing accent, where you stick Rs on the end of everything like a pirate.

  “Your Chinese sounds very nice,” she says with that smug, phony courtesy.

  She has a southern accent; her consonants are soft, slightly sibilant. Dainty, almost.

  “You’re too polite.”

  “Lucy speaks good English,” Sloppy informs me. “Not like me.”

  “Now you’re too polite,” says Lucy Wu. “My English is very poor.”

  I kind of doubt that.

  “Are you an art collector?” I ask in English.

  “Art dealer.” She smiles mischievously. “Collecting is for wealthier people than I.”

  Her English is excellent.

  “She has Shanghai gallery,” Sloppy adds.

  “Wow, cool,” I say. “Hey, I’d better go. If you see Lao Zhang, can you tell him I’m looking for him? My phone’s dead.”

  Lucy Wu sits up a little straighter, then reclines in a perfect, posed angle. “Lao Zhang? Is that Zhang Jianli?”

  Sloppy nods. “Right.”

  Lucy smiles at me, revealing tiny white teeth as perfect as a doll’s. “Jianli and I are old friends.”

  “Really?” I say.

  “Yes.” She looks me up and down, and I can feel myself blushing, because I know how I must look. “It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other. I was hoping to catch up with him while I’m here. I’ve heard wonderful things about his recent work. You know, Jianli hasn’t gotten nearly enough recognition as an artist.”

  “Maybe that’s not so important to Lao Zhang,” Sloppy mutters.

  Lucy giggles. “Impossible! All Chinese artists want fame. Otherwise, how can they get rich?”

  She reaches into her tiny beaded bag, pulls out a lacquer card case, and hands me a card in polite fashion, holding it out with both hands. “When you see him, perhaps you could give him this.”

  “Sure.”

  What a bitch, I think. Then I tell myself that’s not fair. Just because she’s tiny, pretty, and perfectly put together, it doesn’t mean she’s a bitch.

  It just means I hate her on principle.

  I order some takeout and head to Lao Zhang’s place.

  Lao Zhang’s probably working, I figure, wa
lking down Xingfu Lu, one of the two main streets in Mati Village. When he gets into it, he paints for hours, all day, fueled by countless espressos—he’s got his own machine. He forgets to eat sometimes, and I’m kind of proud of myself for thinking of bringing dinner, for doing something nice for him, like a normal person would do. It’s been hard for me the last few years, remembering to do stuff like that.

  Maybe I’m finally getting better.

  As I’m thinking this, I stumble on a pothole in the rutted road. Pain shoots up my leg.

  “Fuck!”

  I can barely see, it’s so dark.

  There aren’t exactly streetlights in Mati Village, only electric lanterns here and there that swing in any good wind and only work about half the time, strung up on storefronts and power poles. Right now they dim and flicker. There’s problems with electricity sometimes. Not so much in central Beijing or Shanghai, but in those “little” cities you’ve never heard of, places with a few million people out in the provinces somewhere. And in villages like this, on the fringes of the grid.

  But the little market on the corner of Lao Zhang’s alley is decorated with tiny Christmas lights.

  I buy a couple cold bottles of Yanjing beer (my favorite) and Wahaha water (the label features this year’s perky winner of the Mongolian Cow Yogurt Happy Girl contest) and turn down the alley.

  Lao Zhang lives in one of the old commune buildings, red brick, covered in some places with red wash, surrounded by a red wall. The entrance to Lao Zhang’s compound has two sculptures on either side, so there’s no mistaking it. One is a giant fish painted in Day-Glo colors. The other is a big empty Mao jacket. No Mao, just the jacket.