Year of the Tiger

‘Here. Take my hand.’

I try, feebly grasping at it like my fingers have gone boneless; they’re just these white worms, jellyfish fingers, waving around in a black sea.

John scoops me up, hands placed beneath my shoulder blades and butt, lifting me out of the car. My feet touch the ground but don’t want to stay there.

‘Here,’ John says. ‘I carry you.’

And he does. My arms circle around his neck, because they don’t know what else to do.

I rest my cheek against John’s leather jacket and close my eyes, lost in the rock and sway of his steps as he carries me along like I’m some little kid in her daddy’s arms. I catch his scent beneath the smell of cheap, tanned leather: sweat mixed with some bad cologne. I like the sweat better.

‘Yili,’ John says, his breath warm in my ear. ‘What is your apartment number?’

‘What?’

‘Your apartment number. What is it?’

I open my eyes, and it’s the weirdest thing: my apartment building looms above us.

Wait, I think. Wait. He doesn’t know my apartment number, but he knows where I live. That doesn’t make sense. How does he know where I live?

‘You told me this, Yili. At the party. Don’t you remember?’

Did I just say that out loud? I guess I did.

‘Twenty-one oh-five,’ I slur.

I just want to lie down.

I just want to go home.

We take the elevator upstairs. It’s empty, the tall stool where the fuwuyuan sits when she’s on duty unoccupied. I stare at it, the empty stool surrounded by mirror tile, fake wood paneling and fluorescent light, and try to conjure up some meaning to it, but I can’t.

Here we are in the foyer.

As John fumbles at my door (Does he have my keys? Did I give them to him?), I see a sharp beam of white light, and fucking Mrs Hua pokes her head out from her apartment.

‘What sort of things are going on now?’ she hisses. ‘This is really more than anyone should bear!’

John turns his head in her direction. ‘Your business ends at your eaves, old Auntie.’ The way he says it, so cold and matter-of-fact, would scare me – that is, if I could feel afraid right now.

Mrs Hua can. She pulls back behind her door. ‘Show some respect,’ she mutters as she slams it shut and locks it with both chain and bar.

John carries me inside.

He steps carefully through the maze of computer parts, the cardboard Yao Ming, the piles of clothes and books in the near-dark, the only light in the room what’s leaking in through the windows from a Beijing sky that’s never really dark any more.

‘Which room, Yili?’

Now, suddenly, I do get scared. ‘Chuckie?’ I say. But my voice is weak, weak like in a dream where you can’t cry out, where you can’t make anyone hear you. ‘Chuckie?’ I try again.

‘No one is here,’ John tells me. ‘Besides, you shouldn’t worry.’

He takes me into my room and lays me down on my futon. He doesn’t turn on the light, but the nightlight by the door has come on.

For a moment, he stands over me. His face is in shadow, but he’s staring at me, I can tell.

‘I am going to make you more comfortable,’ he says softly.

He kneels down by the futon. First he takes off my sneakers and socks, balling up the socks and putting them in the shoes, placing the shoes in the closet, lined up neatly.

Then he hesitates before reaching for the top button of my jeans.

‘Don’t,’ I say. ‘Don’t.’

‘Now, Yili, you cannot be comfortable in these.’

I can’t stop him. I can barely move. He unbuttons my jeans, lifts me up, and slides them over my butt and then off. He folds them up, looks around, and then puts the jeans on the room’s one chair.

He kneels down next to me again. His eyes fall on my bad leg, and he reaches out and lightly touches a place where two long scars cross, then the hollow from the chunk of missing muscle. ‘Oh,’ he says, in a curious voice. ‘You were badly hurt, I think.’

I bite my lip and nod. Tears stream from my eyes, and I can’t control that either.

He gives my leg a final, gentle pat. Then he reaches under my back, beneath my shirt, and unhooks my bra. He rocks back on his heels. ‘Yili, I have to take this off too,’ he says, with a trace of apology. Then he peels my shirt up and over my head. For a moment, the shirt catches on my chin, collapses on my face like a death-mask, and as I breathe in, the cotton sealing my nostrils, I think maybe it will suffocate me, and that’s what John wants to do to me. But no. He frees the shirt from my head. Turns it right side out, folds it, and lays it neatly on top of my jeans on the chair.

He turns back to me, smiling awkwardly. He pulls one bra strap down along my arm until it clears my hand. Then the other. He holds my bra in his hand, and for a moment he stares at my tits. Then he looks away and drapes the bra over the back of the chair.

I’m lying there naked except for my panties. I’m shaking. The room seems to vibrate.

John’s back is to me. He’s rummaging through the little dresser next to my closet. ‘Ah,’ he says, satisfied. ‘This is good.’

He has in his hands a large T-shirt. ‘I think maybe this will be comfortable for you.’

He puts it over my head, lifts me up a little, and I can feel the dry heat radiating from his hand pressed flat between my shoulder-blades.

After he gets the T-shirt on me, he finds the light blanket I use most warm spring nights and covers me with it.

‘Just a minute,’ he says, and leaves.

I lie there. The room is still vibrating, but not so quickly.

When John returns, he carries a glass of water and something wrapped in a dishcloth. He sits cross-legged by my head. ‘Here, Yili,’ he says. ‘Have some water.’

‘I don’t … You put something in it.’

‘Don’t be silly. You are sick. You need some water.’

He tilts up my head so I won’t choke and pours a little water between my lips. I swallow. He pours some more. It tastes good. Like nectar. Like something I need.