China Mountain Zhang

GHOST (Zhang)

"Ni hao ma?" the nurse says, smiling at me. Mandarin 'How are you,' literally translates as 'You good, huh?'

"Hao," I answer, 'good.' Actually I feel dreadful. I have finally decided that it's not adjustment to a different time zone, I have been sick the entire week since I got here. I am running a fever and I have the backache to end all backaches and if I throw up one more time I will hang myself in despair.

I catalogue my complaints for the nurse who frowns and tells me that I am not in the system. "Ni gang lai-le ma?"

I went to a special secondary school where we spoke nothing but Mandarin, I can dream in Mandarin, so how come my fever be-fogged brain has to translate laboriously to recognize, "You just got here?"

"Dui," I manage. Right.

"Huaqiao ma?" 'Are you overseas Chinese?'

"Dui." I think for a moment before I add, "Can I sit down?"

He checks me with a monitor and informs me brightly that I have a fever, apparently an infection, and slaps a tab on my arm. I'm not sure how long he says to leave it on, I'm not really paying much attention. I have decided it would be altogether too impolite to put my head down on the table. He comes back, peels the tab off and tells me to come back in three days.

Then I'm out on the street again. So much for the most advanced medical system in the world. I want to be home in New York. Instead I wait for a bus. I have to ask three times about where to sit. I keep getting up and down confused in Mandarin. I walk to the back muttering loushang, houbiar, upstairs back, like it is my mantra. It doesn't really bother me when the front separates from the back of the bus, but when the top separates and we cut up into the overcity there's this moment where the thing rises as if cresting a hill and my stomach rises with it. I am not violently ill, but it is purely a matter of will.

I manage to get off at Nanjing University, where I am a special student but where I have yet to attend a class. I go to the correct tower, take the elevator up and find the suite I share with Xiao Chen.

"What did the doctor say?" he asks in English, either for practice or out of deference to my condition.

"That I'm sick," I say, and go to bed.

I sleep for twelve hours and wake up feeling human. Whatever they gave me has worked wonders. I emerge wan but without fever, my mind burned clear. Everything feels new, amazing. Colors are wonderful, not feeling as if I am going to throw up is wonderful, people do not know how lucky they are. Xiao Chen and I go downstairs to get something for breakfast. I don't know him yet, we have only been roommates for a week and I've been sick all that time. I know he's from Singapore and he speaks Mandarin, Singapore and Singapore-English (augmented) and is learning to speak English (augmented.) He seems nice enough, moon-faced and dark. I keep telling him he should learn Japanese but he is studying scientific history and all of the important stuff from the 20th and 21st century is in English.

He convinces me that I should have hot rice cereal for breakfast, that it's bland. I'm not really hungry but it smells nice. Standing in line I drop my spoon and bend over for it, when I stand up I see stars and things go black for a moment because all the blood has rushed to my head, except that my ears start roaring and my vision won't clear. I grab for the counter in front of me, for Xiao Chen's arm, although I'm not sure where he is, the world is turning or I am falling.

And that's the last thing I remember for three days.

I wake in a perfect little room, very clean. I am jacked in, the unit on my left wrist is heavy. I'm comfortable, it is just difficult to work up the energy to do more than turn my head. On the windowsill is a bright yellow spray of forsythia. I have vague memories of dreams.

The doctor comes in, crisp and businesslike in her dark red tails. She sits and jacks in. "I am Dr. Cui. We'll speak English, I think you have quite enough to worry about without trying to speak Mandarin." Her English is dictionary perfect in the style of someone who is augmented but either her system is very good or her English isn't bad on its own because she doesn't hesitate for translation time.

"When you came in on Friday the practitioner saw that you had an infection and gave you standard treatment." She glances over a flimsie, obviously my medical print-out. "We gave you a virus to combat the infection."

"Pardon me?" I say.

"You don't do that in the West?" she asks, perfect eyebrows rising. She is a very polished woman, I feel as if I can trust her. "The virus we gave you carries RNA which uses your body's own immune system to tell it what cells are infection cells." She gestures with manicured hands. "Your cells learn to identify a disease by the pattern of it's outer layer and then creates antibodies that are templates for that outer layer, that fit the offending cell. Do you understand?"

I nod, although I am not really sure.

"All right, the virus we gave you 'learns,' so to speak, to identify a bad cell from reading the cells of your own body and then alters itself to attack those cells."

Okay. So why am I in a tiny clean room?

"Unfortunately, once in a while something goes wrong. In your case most of the virus did what it was supposed to do, but a small portion of the virus mis-identified. That is why you became so ill on Saturday, and Saturday and Sunday you were a very ill man. This is Tuesday, you have been here for three days."

"Am I okay now?" I ask.

She smiles benignly, "You are recovering nicely, tongzhur. However I am afraid you will be here for a few weeks until your new kidneys are mature."

"You have to give me new kidneys?" I ask.

"Oh no," she says, "you already have them, we just have to wait for them to come on-line, so to speak." She smiles, dimples a little, "That is all right to say, isn't it? 'On-line'? In a sense, what we have done is infect you with new kidneys, we have implanted naïve kidney cells, cells like fetal cells, to piggyback on your old kidneys. The naïve cells are also anonymous, which means that they have no identification at all and your body doesn't recognize them and so attack them. The unit on your wrist is monitoring your condition and stimulating your new kidneys to grow. Is that clear?"

"I think," I say, and smile back.

"All right," she says, "lie still a moment, I want to check you out."

I have no desire to do anything else. She concentrates for a moment, frowning at the air. She sees a display but I don't, I'm not jacked into her system.

"Everything looks fine," she says after a moment. "Go to sleep."

It's as if she has tripped a relay, because I do.

Occasionally I am half awake, when Dr. Cui comes to see me I am fully awake, but mostly I am not. Dr. Cui explains that since my left kidney has ceased functioning and my right is badly damaged, they are keeping me as nearly suspended as possible. There is a fine line, she explains, between too much activity which would overwhelm my system and too little which would mean that the new kidneys would not grow. I take all of this placidly.

"Dr. Cui," I say, "you are controlling my moods, aren't you."

She pats my hand, the first time she has touched me that I remember. "Of course, you are new here, alone, ill. If we didn't you would be frightened and depressed. The unit," she indicates my weighted left wrist, "is feeding back into your nervous system. In a sense, you are not jacked into it, it is jacked into you. That's how we control your moments of consciousness, as well as your moods and stimulate the growth of your new kidneys. They are vascularized nicely, by the way. In a few days they will begin to take over. Your old kidneys will shut down and eventually will atrophy and be absorbed by your body."

How exciting. I find it hard to maintain interest in what she is saying, or in anything. Back to nothing.

After three weeks I am released. I have lost seven kilos and my pants don't fit. My kidneys, my new kidneys that is, are functioning well, but I have been instructed to avoid things like beer and alcohol and to watch my salt intake. October, only a few days after October 1, National Day, the day the People's Republic of China was founded and here in the city the windows of some of the shops are still decorated in red and gold. I am assaulted by noise. Nanjing dialect, Mandarin, I am washed in Chinese. The people on the street are all well dressed and healthy looking. Everywhere, elegant men in black and red business tails, or casually dressed in coveralls. Women with sprays of light in their hair. Light displays hang suspended in front of windows, light sticks refract into images whenever I turn my head, characters flash across the backs of my eyes.

I stand waiting for the bus. I feel dizzy again, but it's not physical. I put my hand against the signpole. The bus coasts to a stop in front of me.

Xiao Chen is at the suite, and he has friends over.

"Zhang!" he says, then beaming to the others, "See? I told you he existed." I collapse into a chair, worn out from the effort of getting to the dorm. His friends begin the obligatory, 'You must be tired,' and I shake my head, no, no, please do not leave. "Beer?" Xiao Chen asks in English, proud of himself.

"No," I say politely in Mandarin, "I cannot, new kidneys."

They ask me how I am and Xiao Chen describes my spectacular collapse in the dining hall. He describes things I do not remember, says that when I came to I talked to him, but that my back hurt very badly and that I was very brave, He tells about medical coming and putting me out.

"I don't remember," I say.

"I to hospital go, see you," he says in clipped Singapore English, "They say you sleep. I send to you flowers, they come not come?"

"Yellow ones?" I ask, I don't know the word for forsythia in Mandarin.

He beams. Introduces his friends. A couple are from Singapore, huaqiao, overseas Chinese, like Chen and I. Two are from Chengdu, Zhongguo ren, Chinese citizens. They sit and chatter and I stop trying to follow the conversation, just letting the sound wash over me, drinking tea. It is nice to be with people.

Oh, I am lonely. And it is all so strange. I miss Peter.

I am three weeks behind in my classes. For my lab on tool-handling this is no problem, I have more experience than most of the class. The cutters and sealers we use are often different makes than I am accustomed to, and the steps we learn in class a bit more formal than the way I am used to handling them, but I've used so many different makes it really doesn't bother me. We stand, fifteen of us in the lab, jacked in, and the teacher tells us to turn on the cutter. The tip of my cutter glows ready.

The class has been practicing controlling the width of the beam. The teacher says he wants the beam the width of a pencil, we are supposed to burn a hole through a piece of plastic. I heave three feet of cutter into position, rest the tip where I want the hole and fire a quick burst (plastic keeps melting a bit after the cutter shuts off so it's always good to do a bit too little.) Then I wait for fifteen minutes while everybody else practices and learns the texture and density of the plastic. I help the people on the left and right of me. The girl on the right keeps pulsing the cutter and has little keyhole shapes all over her piece of practice plastic.

For me the only real problem with the class is that I'm out of shape and the cutters are bulky.

The teacher suggests that I test out of the class, but it will probably be one of my two high marks so I respectfully decline. As a non-native speaker I also take Mandarin, poutonghua. Since many of the other non-natives are still augmented in our classes and we are not allowed to be augmented in this class, I do well. The teacher gives me books to read to improve my character vocabulary, my reading is not as good as my speaking.

It is the other classes, the math and engineering courses, that worry me. I have five courses, including an engineering lecture and an engineering lab. I'm going to be thirty in five months, I'm too old to be in school.

I am assigned a tutor for engineering, to help me make up the time I have lost. I am embarrassed. It is clearly my incompetence, they feel I am not quick enough to make it up on my own. It is low self-esteem, I am aware. I am alone, Chen has his circle of friends, it seems to me that in the four weeks I have lost, everyone else has adjusted.

I am unable to fathom engineering, so I go to my tutor, taking the lift to the bottom of the Dong-ta, the East Tower, where I live, crossing the arcade of shops that connects the overcity complex above the University to the Bei-ta, the North Tower, and taking the lift back up to the address I have been given. I knock on the door, and Yang Haibao opens it.

His eyes flicker down and up, very swiftly, and he smiles. He is smooth faced with a stiff brush of hair. "Hello," he says in Poutonghua, "you are the man with the incredible name?"

"Zhang," I answer. Lenin and Mao Zedong, my huaqiao name! "I suffer for the sins of my parents," I add, a glib response, a play on Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong thought which says the child is formed by the parents and the son of the landlord is also a landlord, even if he owns no land. Only after I have said it do I think, I am in China and I don't know this man and I watch to see if he is offended.

Not at all. He grins, "Come in," he says.

His dormitory. How can I say what it is like to walk into Haibao's dormitory? His name means 'Sea-wave' although a better translation is tidal wave. The room is blue and lightfish swim lazily near the ceiling, skeletons aglow. His room faces out, looking at the city-Chen's and my room faces into the inner wall-and the city is going to smoky twilight, so it seems as if the blue goes on and on. Furniture is soft, dusky shapes.

He waves his hand and the room programming picks up. Lightfish flicker into shadows and are gone and the light comes up, the window dims, and suddenly the room is bright. The furniture revealed shifts chameleon-like to rose and the pale yellow walls seem to be textured, like cotton.

"Nice room," I say.

"Thanks," he says. "Can I get you a beer? Nanjing beer."

Nanjing beer is supposed to be very good. "Thank you, but I can't. New kidneys."

"That's right, you've been sick," he says.

I tell it briefly, tired already of explaining and not wanting to bore him. He makes me nervous. He is polished, his clothes casual and, to my eye, expensive. I think to myself I will remember that open shirt, the brushed gray tights, the calf high boots. Look for something like that. I wonder what he thinks of me in my American clothes, looking huaqiao and appearing with the outlandish name of Zhang Zhong Shan.

"How tiresome for you," he says, with sympathy. "How do you like China?"

I am ready to march out the platitudes but I don't. "I don't know, I've spent most of the time here in bed."

He laughs. My foolish heart, I am in love with him. This polished young man with his perfect clothes. He cannot be bent, I cannot be so lucky, and yet, and yet.

Does he dance? That's the way to tell. When a straight man meets a straight woman, they dance. When I meet someone bent, we dance. It is so subtle. I only know when I meet a straight man, he doesn't dance. It seems to me that Haibao and I are dancing, watching each other's faces a little longer, responding by looking away or swift nervous smiles. But this is China, maybe I'm crossing cultural signals. I'm lonely and I want this young man, this polished tidal wave, to be like me. To like me.

We start at the beginning and he grounds me in engineering. He's a pretty good teacher, he understands my need to know what something means. I arrange to come back on Thursday.

That evening I stop in the arcade and buy a copy of a magazine called Xiansheng, a men's magazine I've picked up once in awhile in New York. It's as expensive here as it is in New York. Beautiful men in shirts that shimmer like lacquer and silk jackets brocaded with cranes and dragons. The sweaters have hoods. Everyone is wearing those calf high boots that Haibao had on.

Thursday I have class from eight to ten (a math class) and then I am free until three. I go shopping.

I head north up Daqing Lu, the street is lined with stores. I stop and look in windows, the prices are ghastly. I have some of my Baffin Island salary on credit plus a stipend from the University. Because I study technology, my only cost was getting here, the rest is scholarship. Getting here was expensive enough. Clothes are five times what they would cost at home. And strange. The refinements of fashion look awkward to my untutored eyes. First I buy a pair of those skintight calf-high boots. I feel confident about those.

Then a pair of rust-colored coveralls. I've seen people in these and I have good shoulders. I think the coveralls will flatter me. I finger a brocade jacket, all yellow with circles of long life worked in it and stylized blue waves across the bottom. So expensive, three weeks of my inflated Baffin Island salary for a jacket. And I don't know what it means. What kind of person would wear this jacket, what does it say about the wearer?

If I don't know then it would undoubtedly call out, 'Huaqiao with more money than sense.'

So I buy conservatively, spending money to blend in, not to impress. How painful. But when I think of my sweaters with the leather ties and the mirrors and look out at Daqing Lu, filled with shoppers and scooters and segmented buses, I can only wince. If Haibao ever saw the way I dressed at home… At least I will not embarrass myself.

That night I study engineering and think of questions to ask Haibao. I want to catch on quickly, be brilliant. After an hour and a half of study I'm drawn back to Xiansheng. I study the clothes, but more closely I study the ads. The regular features show some sort of fashionable ideal, but the ads, they show something that has to pass for everyday life. A different ideal.

I wish I had someone to talk to, someone to compare notes with. Not Xiao Chen, who dresses like a tech; coveralls that he could have worn twenty years ago, and will probably be wearing twenty years from now, all in grays and navy blues. Peter. But Peter is in Brooklyn and I am in China.

I write him a letter that begins, "I'm in love again." It's ten here in Nanjing, so it's morning in Brooklyn and he's at work. Well, the letter will be waiting for him when he gets home. "Love from the Middle Kingdom, Zhang." And then I hit transmit.

Does he take in my new clothes when his eyes flicker over me? It is hard to tell. Maybe the rust coveralls are wrong? "Hello," he says. His room is all the color of a sunset until he rather absently waves his hand and then the only sunset is outside his window. And himself, dressed in a thigh-length tunic that shifts from red at the neck to indigo at the hem. The same brushed gray tights and calf-high boots.

He is distant and pre-occupied this evening. I don't know how to act, so I open my book and feign diligence.

"You teach well," I say after awhile.

"Thank you," he says. "I was a teacher."

"Of engineering?" I say, surprised. I though he was a student.

"No, I taught physics in middle school."

I had thought him younger than me. "What made you quit?" I ask, wondering, are those wrinkles at the corners of his eyes? Is he older than I am? He is an engineering marvel, full of suggested cables and supports, tense under his easiness.

He shrugs. "No money in teaching. No guanxi, either. Fifteen-year-olds aren't very good people to make connections with."

"How did you get reassigned?" I ask without thinking.

"A friend," he says vaguely. "How did you get to school?"

"I was a construction tech on an island in the Arctic circle for a year. I got special placement." I shouldn't have asked him how he got to school. Teaching is an assigned job, a work unit job, cradle to grave security but the drawback is that it's hard to change. Like the army. Not like my job, which is a free market job, but has no health care, no security, almost no protection. I get a housing allowance, but except for the Baffin Island job I've never had assigned housing until Nanjing. But I can quit any time I want to, go to employment and get on the job assignment list.

How did he get permission to leave his work unit to come to school? Maybe he has a lover with connections?

I smile to myself, I don't even know if he's gay and already I think he's got a lover in the army or something.

"That's a secret smile," he remarks.

"Thinking about how different it is here," I say.

"What's the biggest difference?" he asks.

I think for a moment. Everything is different. In New York I ride a subway system built sometime in the 1900's, here buses segment and flow off in different directions. There's a city above the city, a lace work super-structure that supports thousands of four tower living units and work complexes like the University complex we live in; what they call the xin gongshe, new communes. And there's the constant assault of Chinese, I get hungry for someone to speak English with. The food. I ate Chinese and Thai food at home, but not all the time. And there's food here I've never seen or heard of, from Australia and South America and Africa, at outrageous prices. Everyone here seems rich.

I laugh. "At home, I knew what was going on, and if I had something to talk about, I called somebody and talked to them. Here," it is my turn to shrug, "I am not quite sure what will happen, what things mean, and I don't have anyone to talk to about it." I glance at him, to see how he takes it.

He looks thoughtful.

It's time to leave, I stand. "I am sure you are tired," I say politely.

"Oh, no," he says, equally as polite.

We go through the ritual of leaving. I realize I am taller than he is, although not by much. This is important to me in some secret way.

"Saturday," he says, "perhaps you would like some extra tutoring? Not suggesting that you aren't picking it up fast," he adds, smiling.

"I'd like that," I say.

"Of course, the class is most important," he says, "but it never hurts to have a little left-handed help."

Left-handed. My heart starts to hammer. It is all code, he is testing me. Or perhaps it's an accident, he just used the phrase, unaware that it can have any other meaning. Back home, straights are right-handed, we are left. Not really, of course, just slang.

"Thanks," I say, "I'm grateful, and I always appreciate a little left-handed help."

"Oh," he says, politely delighted, "I wasn't sure you would."

"More than you know," I say. "It's very lonely here for a huaqiao."

"I think a huaqiao like yourself should make very many friends quickly. You do not really have to go yet, do you?"

I am filled with terror and joy. "Well, perhaps if you are not too busy," I say. I am all desire, and I see he is, as well. My knees are loosened, I feel as if I am seventeen again, waiting in the dark on Coney Island beach for someone to come along, while the smell of ash rolls off the burning harbor.

"Wait," he says, and does something swiftly with the room. The lights darken towards rose and then the sunset is inside the room, and the world is dark outside. Nanjing is lights that go on up the Yangtze River to the horizon; the river is marked by a curving road of lightlessness.

"I cannot believe this," I whisper.

"What can't you believe?" he asks, laughing softly.

"That you are here," I say, cliche, I know, but things become cliche because they express truths. And I cannot believe he is here.

We are waiting for something, I don't know what but we wait. I am shaking and aroused, he doesn't know what it is like to be alone in a foreign country. He doesn't know. And if he knew how badly I want him, would he want me at all?

"Lai, lai," he says, 'Come here.'

So for a few hours I can pretend that I'm not alone.

If to come is the petit mort, the little death-and it seems to me it is because everything is burned away for that brief, explosive time-then waking up in someone's bed is resurrection. It's only a little death and a correspondingly sordid resurrection. It is not life that falls on me so much as obligation. I have engineering at 9:00 a.m. and I am in Haibao's bed. At the hour before dawn I'm rarely in love.

I sit up, Haibao stirs and opens his eyes. His hair is a mess and he is naked and ordinary, as am I.

"I must go," I tell him.

"Weishemma"? 'Why?'

"I have engineering and I have to study."

He sits up, "Wait," he says, "I'll make tea."

Rituals, the same here as at home. You never let the coney go without making him breakfast, even though by that time you often can't stand the sight of each other. "Bei-keqi," I murmur, 'Do not be polite.'

He protests a little, but I dress and apologize for my rudeness in leaving so abruptly and asking him to understand. "I'll see you Saturday," I promise, not particularly wanting to at this moment, but knowing that by tonight I'll be thinking about nothing else. I press him gently back to the bed, and leave him going to sleep.

My eyes are thick, I'm slow. The hall is silent and dark and the lift opens with a sigh. I cross the empty arcade and stop to watch the sunrise. A sunrise is a special thing, I've lived north of the Arctic circle, where night lasts for months. Then up to the suite where I shower and make coffee, and sit down to study my engineering.

Engineering is better that morning. I am beginning to follow what is going on, and I find I study better in the morning than I do at night. But once engineering is over, I think of Haibao. Will he want to see me again? I think of how many people I have wanted only once, maybe it was only the unexpectedness of the moment, the always incestuous discovery of our particular brotherhood, that interested him.

I'm so tired of being a colony of one.

Xiao Chen says, "Last night, out late."

I answer in Mandarin, "I was with my tutor."

"Studying?"

I shake my head and smile. "No. I'm not that good a student."

A couple of Xiao Chen's friends come over and we watch a vid. I work on my mathematics homework. I get a letter from Peter which begins, "You're in love? I'm so jealous I can't stand it. Tell me all about her, is she beautiful?" You never know when a transmission will be monitored. I write back extolling the charms of Haibao who I rename Hai-ming, Sea-jade.

Empty afternoon, empty evening. I am waiting, suspended, until Saturday evening.

I dress in my new clothes; calf-high boots, black jacket with swallow tails over red, and brushed gray tights like Haibao wore. Am I doing it wrong, I wonder? Have I chosen well? I could disappear on the street in a thousand similar outfits. Will he approve?

When he opens the door he is preoccupied. "Lai, lai," he says absently, 'Come in, come in.' And he is not alone.

I despair at not having him to myself. I wonder if I have not been good enough. I am angry at him for doing this to us. I am curious about this other-one of us? And I am elated at the thought of meeting people.

"Hello," says the man on the couch, "You are Haibao's huaqiao."

"Hello, I'm called Zhang," I say, and we scrutinize each other. Haibao is not particularly handsome, in the face he is rather plain, but he has good hair and a good build and is so polished that the net effect is dazzling. This man is casually, even badly dressed. His hair is cut as if someone has dropped a bowl on his head and cut whatever showed and he hasn't bothered to comb it. But he has a handsome face; something easy to miss. In my experience, no one is truly handsome or beautiful without working at it.

"I'm Liu Wen," he says, "have a seat. Haibao is suffering and we should not interrupt a master."

"Irony is the escape of the intellectual," Haibao murmurs.

"Escape is escape. And if I must be a bad element, I might as well allow myself the luxury of indulging as many categories as possible."

Bad elements. There used to be five categories of black elements; landlords, criminals, counter-revolutionaries, capitalists, and one other which I don't remember. We studied it in middle school in Political Theory, that was a long time ago for me. Capitalists have been rehabilitated. I don't remember where intellectuals originally came in, perhaps counter-revolutionaries, but bent as we are, we are criminals. That has not changed in all the years since the revolution.

"Let's do something," Liu Wen says.

"It's early," Haibao answers, still pre-occupied with the view out the window.

"Then lets go get something to eat."

Haibao shrugs. And so we go out into the evening and catch a bus. Liu Wen is in charge and Haibao doesn't ask where we are going. So I don't either. I notice at an intersection that we're on Jiankang Lu but I couldn't retrace my steps. Liu Wen gets up and we swing off the bus and saunter into a restaurant. It's beautifully finished. My first restaurant in Nanjing. The floors are inlaid wood and one entire wall looks like red lacquer, finished in so many coats that it seems as if you could put your hand into it like water.

Liu Wen orders duck and four other dishes and beer. I apologize and explain that I can't drink beer. They bring tea, and eventually duck with creamy white skin and red tender flesh. "It's a specialty," Liu Wen says. It is tasty. I chase it with my chopsticks, and wash down monkeybrain mushrooms with my tea.

Liu Wen turns his attention on me, 'How do I like China?' 'What is it like in New York?' 'How did I get here?' He is fascinated when he learns that I worked north of the Arctic circle, on Baffin Island. He worked in Australia for awhile, he explains, in Melbourne. "Australia will be the next major economic power," he says, "now that they have the technology to use the Outback." He says 'Outa-baka.'

It is a strange meal. The food is good, but it is disturbing to watch Liu Wen animated while Haibao sits and broods, playing with his duck. I don't know the rules here.

Liu Wen pays, they give him the debit statement and he doesn't even glance at it. Out on the street it is night. "Still too early to do anything," he says. At home I would suggest we go watch the kite races but here I don't know what anyone does. Liu Wen is attractive, fascinating, but he seems interested in me only as conversation. That is all right, it is better than being alone. I think. I'm uneasy and uncertain. Wait, let things happen, I tell myself, live in this moment, there is nothing but enjoyment in this moment.

We take a bus across town to Linggu Park and walk. "They used to close the park," Liu Wen says, "but now everything is monitored."

It is a tacit way to say 'be careful'. Liu Wen seems to catch Haibao's silence. The evening is cool. We walk up a road until we come to a building surrounded by a moat crossed by three bridges. We stop and I try to figure out the reason we are here. The building is small, square, white, with a graceful blue tile roof with upcurving ends in the tradition of Chinese architecture. It's a nice little building, but what is the point?

"The tomb of your honorable namesake," Liu Wen says to me, grinning.

"Zhong Shan?" I ask, stupidly. He nods. Sun Yat-sen is buried here. Well imagine.

I glance at Liu Wen, he has a funny smile on his face. Haibao leans on the balustrade at the edge of the moat and looks down at the sluggish orange carp motionless near the light set under the bridge.

I don't know what to say so I say nothing. I am not even sure if they are making fun of me.

"Well," Liu Wen says to no one in particular, "let's go play."

Haibao straightens up and shoves his hands in his sleeves. We walk back and catch a bus.

We ride all the way back across town, out of the dark park into wide streets, then through the bright heart of Nanjing, back out into the dark edge of the city. The bus is only three segments when we get on, goes down to two, picks up two more in the center of town, loses them (people transfer from segment to segment but we just sit) and finally goes down to one segment before we get off. The air smells different down here. All of China smells different, I noticed a dusty, old clothes smell when I got here, but I don't smell that anymore. Here is a damp smell. Liu Wen remarks we are close to the river.

Around us are godowns. We walk past loading docks and parked flat-skids for moving goods off trucks. I can't imagine why we would be here. Liu Wen stops at a metal door and hisses at me, "Don't give your real name," and opens the door on a badly lit stairwell. Up we go as I try to understand what he meant. At the top of the stairs another door, waiting behind Haibao I can't see what it's like when Liu Wen opens the door, only hear sudden music, people murmuring. I can't hear what he's saying, only that he is talking to someone at the door.

"Don't worry," Haibao whispers, "he is a member." Then he follows Liu Wen to the door and this time I hear the doorman say, "Shi shei?" Who are you?

"Li," he says, the most common surname in China.

"Shemma Li?" Which Li?

"Li Haibao."

I smile, 'Haibao' means 'seal'. I have seen seals with their cat's heads and sad eyes in the waters off of Baffin Island, and Haibao, in his sleek way, has picked a name that flatters him.

"Shi shei?" the doorman asks me, he is wearing a white mask with holes for eyes and a slit for a mouth.

"Ma," I answer.

"Shemma Ma?"

"Guai-zi," I answer. 'Ghost' or 'Demon.'

Haibao glances over his shoulder at me and smiles. I smile back. We are inside.

The place is big, after all, this is a godown, even if it's not being used for storage. The light comes from floor level or just above our heads and the ceiling disappears in darkness. Looking up I almost think I see stars, which is of course an illusion. The lighting is all gold, our faces and hands are gold. There is a bar and some small tables, and then there are larger, square tables, with people standing around them. Gold light comes up from the tables.

"Want a drink?" Liu Wen asks.

I shake my head.

"Are you buying?" Haibao asks. "Mao-tai then."

Liu Wen shakes his head and laughs. I remember my mother buying mao-tai for her future boss when she was giving gifts to change jobs. A bottle cost more than she made in two weeks, and that was twenty years ago.

In China, a secretary makes more in a week than I make in almost a month at home as a construction tech.

I wonder if I am dressed right. Looking around I see a few people dressed as I am, and a few dressed in long formals, tails almost sweeping the floor at their heels as they stand at the tables. Some dressed like Liu Wen, with complete disregard for appropriateness. What is this place, a gambling hall?

There are no women. I look around, surprised. There are no women. Haibao is watching me, smiling a little.

"In New York, do you have places like this?"

"I don't know," I say, "I don't know what this place is."

"Jiaqiu," he says.

I don't understand. In Chinese, one word can have many different meanings, 'jia' can mean 'family' or 'home' or it can mean 'beautiful' or 'welcome."Qiu' can mean 'prisoner' or 'ball'. I try sorting through meanings and nothing makes sense. Mandarin is a hell of a language in a lot of ways.

"Which 'jia'?" I ask and he sketches the character on his hand.

"Jiagong de jia," he explains, which doesn't translate into English. 'Jiagong' means to be caught in a surprise attack by one's enemies and closed in, almost squished between.

"The jia of jiazi?" I ask. 'Jiazi' means clothespin, which in Chinese is called a 'press-pin'.

"Dui," he says. Right.

"Janqiu de qiu?" I ask. 'Qiu' meaning 'ball' as in basketball? 'Press-ball' or 'Squeeze-ball'? What the hell is 'Squeeze-ball'?

He nods.

"I don't think we have that," I say.

"You'll like it," he assures me.

I am not so certain. But Haibao brightens up, he actually looks at Liu Wen when Liu Wen hands him a tiny glass containing mao-tai.

"Let's play," Liu Wen says.

We find a table with only three men around it. They don't glance up. The tabletop is featureless, a golden glow illuminating our faces like heat from a fire. Liu Wen picks up a contact and grins at me with gold teeth before jacking in. The three men shift slightly as if someone had stepped up beside them. Liu Wen seems engrossed in the glow. Haibao jacks in and the four-Liu Wen included-absently shift again.

I study the glow for clues.

Whatever is happening, it's not visible. I jack in.

The table is still there, but I have an overlay, I am in a circle with five others. It's a little like contact when making a call, that instant before sound cuts in; I don't see them but they are there. I try to see them and I can-five men around a glowing table-but then I almost lose the sense of contact.

I am a boundary, I am part of the golden glow. And there are balls in the glow; a golden ball (almost invisible), two silver balls, a black lacquer ball and a red lacquer ball. I find the red lacquer ball attractive. I reach out to touch it, it is not so different from working power tools, and it gently squiggles away from my touch.

I sense a slight hiss of disgust from my right, and I am shocked into actually seeing the man. He is tall, dressed in a high-collared cutaway coat and he has hair that brushes his collar (hair almost as long as mine, is he huaqiao?) He is staring into the table, oblivious to me.

Liu Wen stirs, "It is his first time," he says.

I am sliding back into the field and so I feel the acquiescence.

I watch this time.

Haibao is after one of the silver balls. He attempts to cup around it, so that equally repulsed it will have no place to go and be held, but one of the strangers (not the long hair) hits it with a touch and it shoots towards my end of the table.

Haibao makes a start to stop it, a wild unfocused motion that suggests that I shouldn't want it too close, so I hit it rather like hitting a ping pong ball, back towards Liu Wen who deflects it, pool cue style, right into the stranger beside him.

We are suddenly dropped out of contact and Liu Wen says, "My point," and the stranger, "my loss."

Liu Wen smiles at me, "Good ball." Which in English is more like saying, 'good save.'

We fall back into the golden ocean and the balls are distributed in the center. Silver are top and bottom, red and black revolving slowly around the golden in the center.

Liu Wen taps the red ball toward the silver and both rebound towards where no one is sitting. Haibao reaches out and slings the red towards himself and although the long haired man and Liu Wen try to tap the ball it touches Haibao and we drop out of contact again.

"My point," Haibao says, smiling. No one takes a loss.

"Excuse me," I say politely, "but the silver should not touch one, the red should?"

The long haired man nods. "The gold, the black and the red are friendly, the silver are not. Anyone who causes an opponent to take a silver gets a point, and the opponent loses a point."

"You can never start the gold in motion on the first play," Haibao adds, "and you can't touch the golden ball until it is already moving, although you can hit it with another ball."

I nod.

We are back in the gold. Haibao clicks the black into the silver and we play them around the table. I play cautiously, trying only to deflect, never attempting to catch, and trying always to send the silver to the center, particularly after someone sends the silver at Liu Wen and before it has even begun to cross the space between them he reverses it right back into them.

Finally by accident I send the silver into the golden ball. It has been in play a few times before but I have never even touched it. The long hair reaches for it and one of the other strangers tapps it away. Someone else jacks into our table as the golden ball is gliding past me and I feel everybody shift. It startles me and without thinking I reach out like a jai lai player and sling the ball my way.

When it hits there is an explosion of feeling. For a moment I am the golden ball and the golden ball is me and I am jolted with pleasure. It is orgasmic and threatens to unlock my knees but before I can even react it washes through me and we drop out of contact. I blink and everybody grins at me. I look at them.

Then I remember, "My point."

"Five points for a gold," Liu Wen says.

Back into the light, where I find my sensitivity is heightened. Now when the red or black balls come near I feel a tickle of sensation, with the golden ball it is even more definite. The silver balls seem colder. I become more aggressive in my play and catch the red ball twice. The explosion is less dramatic than the golden ball, and I remember to say, "My point," each time.

Only once am I hit with the silver ball, and it drains me, takes away the sensitivity, and I have the sense that what I have lost has gone into my opponent. Hungrily I play harder until I almost take the silver ball again, managing by sheer luck to deflect it into one of the strangers. He has been playing a long time, and I am jolted again by the power of what drains off of him.

"My point," I say.

"My loss," he says. Our eyes meet and he looks hungrily at me, and we drop into the light.

I am more careful, made aware by my near miss, and manage to catch the black lacquer ball once. It is like the red lacquer. I catch the red lacquer.

We drop out of contact.

"My point," I say.

"Time is up," Liu Wen says. "Nine points, you almost made it."

Time is up? "How long have we been playing?" I ask.

"Two hours," Liu Wen says. "That's how much we paid for. If I had realized you had nine points I'd have fed you the tenth, just so you could see what it was like."

"Like the golden ball?" I ask, staring into the gold of the table.

He shakes his head. "Different."

Better, I think.

I look up from the gold. Already the others are back in contact, only Haibao, Liu Wen and I are out. Somehow I keep expecting to drop back in, but instead, they take off their contacts and I take off mine. My bare wrist feels cold in the air.

I look at them, Haibao looks tense. Liu Wen looks like he always does. I am aware of perspiration on my neck, under my hair. I am even more aware of my aching testicles, and that I am tight against the seam of my pants. I feel as if I have been cock-teased for a couple of hours, which is precisely what has happened. But it doesn't seem as if we have been playing for two hours.

I lick my lips.

"He did pretty well," Haibao says.

"Beginners luck," Liu Wen says.

I realize that Liu Wen paid for me. "Thank you for the game," I say.

"I love the way you talk," Haibao says softly.

"How do I talk?" I ask.

"Your accent, the formal way you say things."

"Do I have much accent?" I ask.

"It's charming, exotic, and yet you sound so refined."

I thought my Mandarin was pretty good. I resolve to work on my accent.

Liu Wen shakes his head, smiling. "I'll see you two later," he says and heads back towards another table. I follow him with wistful eyes, wishing to be back in the golden glow, although I ache.

"He's handsome," Haibao says.

"He could be," I answer, "if he would bother."

"Come with me?" Haibao asks. Lai gen wo ma?

Of course I will go with him. We walk through the godown to the back, where there is a narrow iron stair, and up above the lights he opens a door on a room like a coffin, a little more than a meter high, the same wide. It is only then that I realize why he has taken me here, that there is not another game at the end, or at least, only the old game.

I laugh, although I am so aroused there will be damn little joy.

He stoops and enters, and sitting on the mat says, softly, "Lai lai lai," 'Come, come, come. I stoop and follow him, kneeling in front of him, aware of my boots on the mat. I lean awkwardly forward, resting my hand on the mat next to his thigh, and we kiss. I tug gently at his pants and he raises his hips for me to slide them down. If there is a way to do this without a sense of interruption I have never found it. But then I kneel reverently and pay homage.

And later, once, he asks me, "Why 'ghost'?"

"Waiguai," I say, 'foreign-devil' or 'foreign-ghost'. It's the old slang term for a foreigner. Not very flattering. Like Westerners say 'Slope-head.'

"You aren't a "waiguai," he says, "you're hauqiao." Not a foreign ghost, but an overseas Chinese.

That is what it says on my identification. I was certain my IDEX would be waiguoren but it says huaqiao. The flimsie they gave me indicated that my genetic mother may have been Philippine Chinese (the combination of my mother's Hispanic genes and my father's Chinese, I suppose.) Haibao doesn't know that my mother is Hispanic-American. I do not mention it.

"You look tired," the doctor says in Mandarin.

I am, I did not get much sleep the night before. It is Monday and I met Haibao for dinner last night-late because he had something he had to do before he saw me. I was jealous but did not ask.

I am here for an examination, just to make sure that my new kidneys are working.

"You are the first patient I have ever had who is the result of cosmetic gene-splicing," she says. "It's illegal here except for authorized disorders."

It is now at home as well. Except for things like Taysachs, Downs, Herodata's Schizophrenia. She has accessed my deep records, I wonder if she will change my IDEX, but she doesn't seem to think of it. I am jittery and nervous.

The doctor is astonishing. Gone is the perfect, concerned woman I remember from when I was sick. She says the correct things, like 'You look tired,' but she says them with an air of detachment. I don't answer her and it doesn't seem to matter. She explains things, tells me how my kidneys grew, how the old ones are beginning to atrophy. She holds me off with her words. "If you experience any depression or anxiety these days you are welcome to come and talk with a counselor."

I nod unhappily. She is jacked in to my medical records. What does she find in my medical records that makes her think that I need counseling? Something from Baffin Island? Or perhaps my constructed genetic make-up is flawed and I am prone to system imbalances? She certainly does not want to counsel me. Why did I think her so wonderful?

"Are you eating right?" she asks, and does not wait for an answer. "Still avoid things like beer and alcohol and not too much protein yet." She stands. I stand.

"Thank you Dr. Cui," I say.

It must be the unit that they used to keep me quiet. It must have encouraged me to trust my doctor, to assume that everything is all right.

All my life, or at least since I was seven and got my jacks implanted, I have jacked in; in school, at work, to call a friend, to find out how much credit was on my account. But those are operations where the system is passive, where I draw on the information. In the West, active systems, systems that feed back into the human nervous system, are illegal. There are exceptions; the big kites that the pros fly, for example; they feed flight information back to the flyer, but those are licensed. I've never been to the doctor and been jacked into an active system.

Jianqiu, 'Pressball' is an active system, too. I know it is illegal, that's why one doesn't use one's real name, although if the system records a trace they can identify our individual nervous system patterns. Still, that takes a lot of work, I suppose they'd almost have to know who we were first.

Active systems are illegal, as everyone knows, because they can cause injury. And because they are addicting. I wonder if Jianqiu causes any sort of degeneration of my already taxed nervous system. There are certainly ways in which it is taxing. But I have no idea if I will ever play again. I'd certainly like to.

Is that the definition of addicting? If so, duck is addicting because I'd also like to try Nanjing duck again.

On Tuesday I have my engineering tutorial again. I cross the busy arcade and take the lift. I don't know if we are going to bother with engineering again.

"Lai, lai," Haibao says absently, opening the door. He is not looking at me, and the flat is rose. He gestures and the lights come up. So I suppose we are going to work. We sit down and he sighs, sits for a moment as if too listless to bother before leaning forward to look through the book.

It is quite a performance. But I'm not Liu Wen to make fun of it.

"We don't have to work this evening," I say, "I can go back, we can work another time."

"No," he says, "it doesn't matter." He pages through my book.

"No, truly," I say. "I'm doing better. It makes more sense these days." This is the truth, although I have some questions I'd like to ask.

He smiles. "You are always so polite," he says, "are all American huaqiao so polite as you?"

"Old fashioned, maybe," I say, and begin to get up.

He puts his hand on my arm. "Don't pay any attention to me, Liu Wen doesn't."

"Liu Wen knows you better than I do," I say.

To my astonishment his eyes fill with tears and he looks away. Then he stands up and walks to the window. He stands with his back to me and I wait, confused and alarmed. What did I say?

He doesn't say anything for awhile and I have time to feel uncomfortable. What should I do? I don't know what to do so I sit and look at my engineering book, and then back at Haibao. I don't hear any crying. His shirt is as bright as yellow lacquer and the nape of his neck is pale between his hair and the collar.

"What's wrong?" I finally ask.

"A friend of mine is going to be arrested," he says.

Liu Wen? No it can't be. I wait.

He clasps his hands behind his back. "He is a teacher," he says. "They are arresting him on a morals charge, but it's more complicated than that."

I think, it always is. And I am relieved it isn't Liu Wen.

"I feel sorry for him," Haibao says, "of course. They'll send him to Xinjiang Province, to do Reform Through Labor. Do you know, if you misbehave in a labor camp, one of the punishments is to wire your thumbs together? They draw the wire very tight. It cuts off the blood. You have to eat rice out of a bowl like a dog, without using your hands. And then gangrene sets in and they cut your thumbs off. Or maybe you die."

What's to say? At home they used to send people to the Corridor out west, convict labor. Now, sometimes they send them to Mars. Convict labor. Chinese citizens do not usually have much interest in going to the moon or Mars.

"I think we are a disease in society," Haibao says. "Bad cells. I think something has gone wrong with us."

"In my country there's a bird that lays it's eggs in other bird's nests," I say. "The other birds don't know. They think this baby is their own. They raise it and feed it, in some ways it becomes almost a monster because it grows so large and demands so much. But eventually it simply leaves the nest, like any other bird. It's not a monster, it's really just another part of things. I think we're like those baby birds. We didn't ask for this, our parents didn't ask for this. No one is guilty, just maybe unlucky."

"So you think that we're accidents," Haibao says. He sounds sarcastic.

I shrug, even though he's not looking at me. That's what I think, and if he doesn't, that's okay.

"I'm afraid," he says. "If they interrogate my friend, they may arrest me."

I say delicately, "Perhaps you have a friend who can help you, someone who perhaps helped you transfer out of your teaching job… "

"No," he says curtly.

It crosses my mind that if they arrest him and interrogate him, perhaps I will be arrested as well. But it seems too improbable to concern me.

He is still at the window, looking out with the city as a back drop. This flat is like a theater for him, a shadow box for his own display. I get up and walk behind him, put my hand on his shoulder. He is trembling, like some small animal. I stroke his hair, he leans back against me and I wrap my arm around his waist. He turns his head so he is looking away from me and relaxes against me, his profile expressionless in the reflecting window. I tighten my grip, feeling his buttocks and back pressed against my stomach and groin, his fine skull under my fingers. Slowly the shaking subsides.

There's no doubt that his fear is real. But I cannot help but notice the flicker of the whites in the reflection of his eyes as he glances towards the window. He adjusts ever so slightly, improving the line, perfecting the pose.

"Don't worry, haibao," I say, thinking how 'seal' fits him, how sleek both he and seals are, "you are a perfect picture."

He laughs, shakily. "You see through me."

I don't really understand him at all, but I kiss his hair rather than answer, running my fingers across his chest. His pulse beats visibly in his temple.

"No," he says, chiding, "we must study engineering." His voice is playful and so I pay no attention, sliding my hand under the waist of his tights.

He sighs. "At least," he says softly, "we must darken the windows."

"Oh no," I say brightly, pulling my hand away, letting go, straightening his clothes like a mother with a toddler, "we must study engineering."

He growls at me, baring even, perfect little teeth like pearls.

I laugh, "First we study engineering and then we screw."

He gapes, astonished. "Did I hear your right? The namesake of Zhong Shan, vulgar?"

We do study engineering. I get my questions answered, draw out the session, teasing him, distracting him, pretending to be serious. It's a little like pressball, everything done by indirection. When I think his attention is wandering I press my thigh against his. I bring him a beer, brush fingers when I hand it to him, reach over and drink from his without asking while I watch him over the rim, and he watches me.

Finally I admit I have no more questions and kiss him. He grabs my hand and pulls me towards the bedroom, but I laugh and hang back, stopping him in the doorway where I press him against the frame, peal down his tights and go down on him there. He gasps, and laughs and swears at me, his hands wrapped rather painfully in my hair. Only after he comes do we make it to the bed.

Late, he dozes next to me and my arm is draped over his chest. I look into the darkness. It is about one. Peter is at work in New York, joking with Rebecca, the girl who does all the correspondence and filing. Peter would be astonished and proud of me, to know I have done so well with Haibao. To see me thinking about someone else in this way.

"A ministering angel," he would say, "a regular Florence Nightingale."

Peter, who so often did the same for me.

I am terribly homesick.

Haibao helps me with my engineering, a classmate, Wai Ling Zhung Fan, graciously helps me with my engineering. Even Xiao Chen, who knows nothing about engineering, uses my notes to ask me about my engineering. The midterm examination is very difficult, I work until the end of the hour and still do not get a real answer for question 6. I walk out despondent, knowing that I missed at least three questions completely, and parts of many others. For days I will not stop at the Professor's office and look at the grades posted on a flimsie on the door. But the Professor's office is next to my Practical Applications class (my tool handling class) so one day I simply go and look. And I have passed the engineering midterm with a score of 62 points out of 100 which on the grade curve is a 86%! I didn't know there would be a curve! I thought a 62 would be a failing grade!

Of course I go straight up to the arcade (the university is the base on which the four towers rest.) I take the lift to his flat and then stand outside his door in an agony of apprehension. I have never come on Haibao unannounced. And each day it is problematical as to whether Haibao will be pleased to see me or too despondent to care. Some days he is all wit and languid charm. Some days he is silent and withdrawn. Always he knows I am coming.

I imagine him opening the door smiling. Open the door frowning. Someone else there.

So I go back to the lift, take it back down and call from the arcade. I jack in and think the numbers in careful Chinese-the system will understand English, and thinking out the call in Chinese is not second nature yet, but it's good practice to do everything in Chinese. Then there is a wait so long that I think he is gone. Perhaps in a meeting with his thesis professor? Not that I have ever seen Haibao work on his thesis, but then I'm never there during the day.

"Wai," he says, Chinese for 'Hey' and the way everyone answers the phone. No vid, sound only.

"Venerable teacher," I say, "this is your undeserving student."

"Who?" he says, he sounds as if he has just woken up.

"Zhang," I say. "It's Zhang. Did I call at a bad time?"

"Zhang?" he says. "No, you didn't call at a bad time. What is it? Something wrong?"

"No, I just wanted to tell you I passed my engineering midterm. And say thank you for your help."

"Oh, you passed? Excellent." He is trying to sound interested, pleased, but the effort is apparent in his voice.

"An 86%," I say.

"An 86%?" he says, "so high? When did you find out? I thought you weren't going to check."

"I had to, better to know the worst than anticipate. I just wanted to tell you, I didn't want to disturb you. I'll see you tomorrow evening as usual?"

"Right, right." A pause. "Where are you now?"

"On the arcade," I say.

"Oh," he says, "are you busy?"

"Oh, sure," I say, "there are all these incredible men lined up waiting to spend the afternoon with an engineering genius."

He laughs and sounds a little more like himself. "Tell them to go away and come up. No wait, tell them to keep you entertained, buy you lunch or something, and give me thirty minutes. Everything is, ah, let me think of the Zhang way to say this," his voice changes, he speaks softly and mimics my American accent and northern pronunciation, "things are a bit untidy, and if you do not mind, I must inconvenience you a little, respectfully request you wait."

"Ta ma da," I say, 'Your mother.' "Just get dressed and come down to the coffee-bar. Go shopping with me. Show this poor confused foreigner what clothes to buy that will make him look less like he comes from a second-rate country."

"Mao-Zedong and Lenin, I thought you'd never ask," he says and breaks the connection.

But it is twenty-five minutes before he shows up. I am sitting in the coffee-bar nursing my coffee-or at least the sweetened syrup that passes for coffee in this country-when Haibao stops in the doorway. He scans the room, which is full of students. His gaze flickers past me a couple of times, although I wave. He is pale and lost; his hair looks as if he has run his fingers through it, his long yellow and green tunic doesn't match his tights. At last he sees me. He puts his head down and enters the crowd like a swimmer making a long dive.

"Do you want anything?" I ask him when he slides into the seat.

He shakes his head.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

"Nothing," he says. "Where do you want to go shopping?"

"I don't know, where do you go?"

"We don't want you to look too much like a fag," he says, off hand. "Why have you got your hair that way?"

My hair is tied back in a ponytail. I keep it shoulder length so there's not much tail. "I had my tool handling class today, I like to keep it out of my eyes when I work."

"It looks nice," he says.

"It looks huaqiao," I say. "I think maybe I should cut it.

"No, don't," he says. "Please don't."

The din makes it hard to carry on this conversation. Students call to each other in nasal, six-toned Nanjing dialect and shrill four-toned Mandarin. At home, my non-Chinese speaking friends say Chinese conversations often sound like arguments. I wonder how long it will be until I hear the liquid vowels of Spanish again. "Yan Chun!" the young man next to me shouts, "Yan Chun! Zouba!" 'Let's go.' Across the floor, a tall young man with an open face, dressed as if he just came off the gym floor, turns and smiles. "Shemma?" 'What?' The mandarin word for 'a good time' is renao, hot-noisy.

"Let's go," I say.

The arcade is busy, too. Haibao has his hands jammed in his tunic pockets, and moves with his head down.

I want to get out of this, to some place where it is quiet and private. Sometimes I take real pleasure in being with a person when there are all these straight people around and that person and I are just two people together. But right now Haibao and I aren't together, he is there and I am here and the physical space between us is not nearly so vast as the emotional distance. But I can't suggest we go to his flat, since he made a point of telling me it was a mess. I can't take him to my dorm because Xiao Chen might bring friends back from class and then we'd have no privacy.

So we walk down to the bus stop. "Have you heard any more about your friend?" I ask.

He shakes his head. "I talked to someone back home last night. He said my friend is still suspended from teaching, but nothing else. Everyone is still waiting."

"How did they find out about your friend?" I ask.

"It's complicated," he says.

Rebuffed, I say nothing.

The sun is hard on the street. Traffic is not heavy at mid-day, a street sweeper running off a power line raises and absorbs clouds of yellow dust. The window across the street is full of empty bird cages, in a square of sunlight, a white cat sleeps beneath them. It doesn't feel like home, the light is different or something. Maybe when I go back to New York I'll get a cat. Chinese people do not keep pets very much, it seems particularly Western to make an animal a member of the family.

"The District Superintendent of Education is a fag," Haibao says. "He hired my friend and I. He was arrested in a park. Then my friend was suspended. That's all anyone really knows."

The District Superintendent must be how Haibao got to study engineering. It must be a big scandal that someone in education is gay, someone so important, a big person.

"Do you think they'll be looking for you? The school hasn't suspended you."

"Not yet," Haibao says. Chinese never say 'no'.

I see the bus, far up the street. Segmented buses look as if they are hinged in the middle, they bend a bit when they go around corners.

"I'm not feeling very well," Haibao says. "Maybe I'll go back and take a nap. You go on, celebrate your good mark." He smiles tiredly, "I forgot to say congratulations."

"Don't go back," I say. "You'll just sit by yourself, that's bad, I know."

"I'll take a nap," Haibao says.

"No you won't, you'll try to sleep but you won't. I promise, we'll only be gone an hour, you'll sleep better if you do something."

He shakes his head. The bus is coming.

"Haibao," I say, "I don't know how to dress, what to buy." I remember feeling the way he does. "If you won't come shopping with me, I want to go back to your flat with you."

The bus stops, the door hisses open.

He shakes his head again, but gets on. I palm the credit and pay for both of us. He slumps down into the seat and looks out the window.

I feel as if I shouldn't leave him alone, although I'm not sure if it's him that shouldn't be alone, or me. Surreptitiously I run the flat of my hand over his thigh. He glances over at me and smiles a little.

"You are one son of a bitch," he says.

"Have you talked to Liu Wen?" I asked.

"Not since the night the three of us went out."

"He is an unusual person," I say.

Haibao laughs dryly. "You have such a way of putting things. Yes. Liu Wen is 'unusual'." He watches out the window for a moment. "Maybe I'll call him. Do you have an early class on Friday?"

"Yes."

"Then Saturday. Maybe we'll go play pressball, if he'll pay."

"Is he rich?"

"Sometimes. When he has a good week."

"What does he do?"

"Cui cui."

Hurry-hurry? Slang is the most difficult part of Mandarin for me. "What's that?"

"Sells himself."

My face must betray me. Haibao breaks out laughing. "You are right, it's good to come out with you, you cheer me up. You look as if I told you he murders little girls."

"Why does he dress that way if he, cui cui?"

"Because they like it. Talk softly."

"You say I always talk softly," I hiss, feeling the heat rise in my face. I glance around, the bus is nearly empty.

"Well, don't stop. Do you not want me to call him?"

I want very badly to play pressball, I want to get ten points. I've never been out with a man who goes for money. I mean, pick-ups, of course. When I was fifteen I used to go out to Coney Island and wait to get picked up, and when I was older, go to pick up, but not for money.

"What's wrong with it?" Haibao says.

"It spreads disease," I say.

He rolls his eyes. "I won't call him."

"No," I say, "call him."

"We are corrupting you," he says, then laughs. I, of course, do not find this funny.

New clothes. I have waited all week to for Saturday night. Because Haibao likes it that way I have tied my hair back. My suit is black and in Haibao's words, "So ruthlessly conservative it's not. Everyone will think you're a vid artist or something."

Liu Wen, sitting on the couch and needing his hair brushed, as usual, approves. "Pretty," he says. "Need to make some money on the side?"

"No," I say curtly.

He grins at Haibao. Liu Wen is wearing a business suit coat that has seen better days, over gray tights that have been worn so often that they bag at the knees. Haibao is in white and looks, this evening, perfect. He is also in a good mood. A delightful mood. His hair is freshly trimmed, he smells ever so slightly of ocean and evergreen. He smiles when he sees me, gives me a beer which I shouldn't have but which I drink anyway.

We look as if we are going to three completely different places.

"You look like a bride," I tell Haibao.

Liu Wen laughs, "I told him he looks like a funeral."

"Funerals in the west are still in black," I say.

"And brides in the east wear red," Haibao says.

"The east is red," Liu Wen says, "and now that we've had our cultural exchange hour finish your beers because I'm hungry."

But we don't. Haibao doesn't want to leave yet, he wants to watch the sunset from his window. So we talk, about my engineering mark, about Liu Wen's week (in carefully vague terms.) Liu Wen has apparently had a fair week, business-wise.

Outside the window it is the west which is red. The towers of the overcity, the new communes, rise above Nanjing. The sides that face west are red, and those between us and the horizon are black silhouettes. Red and black, the colors of good luck. While Liu Wen and I talk, I watch Haibao. He is engrossed in the window. The city goes blue-gray, and we sit in the halflight until it is almost dark, finally silent, as the lights come on in the city.

"I want to give you each something," Haibao says, "you have both been my friends through this difficult time."

Liu Wen looks amused. I'm taken a bit aback. To Liu Wen he gives a ring set with Australian opal. "It is not your style, I am aware," Haibao says, smiling, "but it is one of my favorites."

Liu Wen looks perplexed but tries it on. It fits his smallest finger.

To me Haibao gives a small gold box set with a tiger-eye. "It's very old," he says, "Qing Dynasty, 1600s. Open it."

Inside it says Guai-zi, 'Ghost.'

"A tiger-eye always seemed a bit guai-yi," strange, or unusual, same first character as 'ghost', "and so I thought of your assumed name," he says.

"Thank you," I say. Chinese people do not usually give gifts in this way, they normally leave the gift and you look at it after they are gone. I am uncomfortable and so is Liu Wen.

Haibao says, "Let's go."

The hall is painfully light, and Haibao's eyes are too bright.

As if he was about to cry. But he moves quickly, excited. "Are we going to the new place?" he asks Liu Wen.

"If you want," Liu Wen says. "I don't care where we go."

"Somewhere where business is good," Haibao says, watching me and smiling. Liu Wen grins. I am still confused by the little ritual, I wonder if I should have had something. I search for something to say.

"Something I have wanted to ask," I say, hearing in my own voice the diffidence that Haibao teases me about.

Liu Wen cocks an eyebrow as if to say, 'Yes?'

"The last time we went out, why did we go to the tomb of Zhong Shan?"

Liu Wen grins again. "Did you think we were trying to tell you something?"

"I didn't know," I answer.

"No reason," Haibao says. "Truly. We often go to the park, but usually we walk down the Avenue of Stone Animals. Just once we were there it seemed fitting to go by the tomb."

"Do you mind if I ask you something?" Liu Wen asks.

"Go ahead," I say.

"Why do you ask people to call you just 'Zhang'?"

"If your first name were 'Zedong' would you want people to call you that?"

Liu Wen shakes his head, "I understand why you don't use Zhong Shan. But to just call you Zhang sounds… well, rude. If you know what I mean. Don't you have a nickname?" I know what he means, it sounds too short. Chinese people like names to come in two syllables.

"Rafael," I say.

"Shemma?"

"Rafael."

"Ur-ah-fa-"

They both try it. Mandarin has a different 'r' than the west, and they have difficulty ending with an 'l'. They keep wanting to end with a vowel, since Mandarin ends in a vowel, an 'n' or an 'ng'.

"Ur-ah-fa-eh-la," Haibao manages.

I shake my head, "Rafaela is a woman's name."

"So, Zhang," Liu Wen says heartily, "how do you like it here in China?"

"We can't call you Xiao Zhang," Haibao says. Xiao Zhang would be the diminutive, 'Young Zhang.' It's like saying 'Billy' for 'Bill.'

"'Lao Zhang'," Liu Wen laughs. Elder Zhang.

"Must be the suit," I say.

We eat a leisurely dinner. Pork and bamboo shoots, french fries, Sichuan (spicy) cabbage. I drink two beers, I know I shouldn't but it's always hard for me to eat spicy food without pijiu. We get down to the warehouse district. I assume that we are going to the same club, but Liu Wen leads us to a heavy red door-was the last door red? I cannot remember. Up the stairs we go into a red and gold place, full of rooms with two or three tables in each and gilt sitting platforms along the walls. Some of the tables have men and women at them, which surprises me. We wander through a maze.

Liu Wen buys Haibao a mao tai and I have a beer. Liu Wen says he'll be back. I gaze, mesmerized, at the gold light rising like mist off the tables.

"You have an unusual face," Haibao says.

I am not bad looking, I know. Not truly handsome, the way Liu Wen would be if he chose to be. I fancy I hear wistfullness in Haibao's voice, little does he know how much I envy him, a Chinese citizen, worldly and polished.

"Do you know where in China your family was from?" Haibao asks.

"My gene scan said that my mother's family was apparently Philippine huaqiao," I say. It didn't make any difference. Since I qualified by working on Baffin Island, I could still go to Nanjing University without having to qualify for a huaqiao seat. Competition for the waiguoren seats is fierce. Many candidates, few places.

If my genetic map is within tolerance, then I am Chinese, right?

Physically, if not culturally. I mean, they are obviously not concerned with the information in my files, that my mother is not Chinese. The University has to know. Someone at the University, at least.

"You are more yourself tonight," I say.

He looks thoughtful, "Truly?"

"Have you heard any more about your friend?" I ask.

"Let's not talk about it," he says. He puts his hand on my arm, looking off across the room, and then shudders.

Idiot, I shouldn't have said anything. I search for other topics. "How did you meet Liu Wen?" I ask.

"Through friends," he says. "I don't really know Liu Wen very well. I like him though, he has been good for me." He smiles sadly, "So have you, ghost."

"Have you been here before?" I ask, trying to push him away from this mood.

He nods.

Liu Wen comes back and I am relieved to see him. If we play, Haibao will be distracted. "We're at a table in the back," he says. A young girl with a smooth white face and painted eyebrows comes to lead us to our table. I watch the swing of her narrow hips in her imperial Chinese gown embroidered with cranes and realize suddenly, she is not a woman.

Fascinated and more than a little amazed I cannot take my eyes off the boy. He gestures with exaggerated grace, catching hold of one sleeve and pointing with the other hand. He keeps his eyes cast down, glancing up at me only as I pass him. He doesn't smile and his eyes flicker down.

Am I aroused? No, only curious. There is nothing in cross-dressing I find stimulating.

But I watch him walk away, watch his hips swing, and look back to see Liu Wen grinning.

Into the golden glow. There are the five balls; one black lacquer, one red lacquer, two silver and in the center, a golden ball, almost invisible in the glow. Liu Wen flicks the silver ball directly at me and I barely manage to avoid taking it. I ricochet the red ball off the edge hoping it will come back towards me and Haibao hooks it in a long gliding curve and captures it and we drop out of contact. So fast.

"My point," Haibao says. He is all edge and excitement, and I think, this will be his night.

And it is. Even Liu Wen and I together can't stop him.

Every time we break contact Haibao is more exhilarated. His color is high, sweat beads along his upper lip and his wisps of hair lay wet at his temples in fine black curves like pen strokes. His hands rest lightly on the table edge, fingernails pink with perfect white half-moons. He doesn't move and yet like a cat, perfectly relaxed, he has the air of something on the edge of motion.

We break contact and Haibao says, "Seven," and I am clenching the table, my palms wet. He smiles, perfect white teeth, golden skin, white clothes and all wrapped in golden light. White and gold and electric. Liu Wen looks at him hungrily, and so do I.

Haibao looks down at the table, the light under his eyes and carving his normal flat face into planes and high cheeks. His eyes are hooded. Liu Wen opens his mouth as if to say something-I know what he is going to say, to stop the game, and I want him to say it and I don't because I want the game to end but I don't want Liu Wen to get Haibao-and we drop back into contact.

I score four points and never once touch the golden ball. Liu Wen scores more often, but is hit with the silver too many times. He scores six points only by taking the gold ball. And immediately after that, Haibao, at seven points, reaches past where Liu Wen and I are playing with the black lacquer ball and effortlessly sets the red spinning into the gold. I reach reflexively for the golden ball, and Liu Wen sends the black careening to cut it off but I end up interfering with the black and it collides with the red and both skid off on tangents towards empty parts of the table. And Haibao effortlessly takes the golden ball.

We break contact. Haibao's head is thrown back, his eyes closed, his back slightly arched. His hands remain resting lightly on the edge of the table. He sighs, a shudder more like a sob, then opens his eyes and looks at us and smiles. "Ten points," he says.

Liu Wen starts to say something, clears his throat, "Do you want to keep playing, Zhang? I'm sure they can find a table for you." He isn't looking at me.

I should be good, I should disappear, as Liu Wen did the last time, but I wait, because it is Haibao's night. It is Haibao's choice. I swallow. He looks at Liu Wen, and then at me, and then back down at the table. I am reminded of the boy who led us here, and the way he didn't look at me. I think I have read something in Haibao's look, my heart begins to hammer. He will choose me. Choose me, Haibao.

The lights on the table flicker, and the lights above us dim, for a moment I see the bare bones of the building, normally hidden by a scrim of light and color, and this is an old, not very attractive place. The light comes back even brighter, distantly I hear the sound of glass shattering.

We look towards the sound, through the opening we see other people listening, and then I see someone yank off their contact.

"Turan soucha!" Liu Wen hisses, 'Police raid!' He peels the contact off and flings it, it jerks at the end of the cord and swings. Liu Wen does not wait to see if we are coming, but goes into the room next to ours.

Haibao is motionless.

"Come on," I say. Liu Wen will know how to get out of here.

Haibao looks at me.

I grab his hand and pull him into the next room, I think I see Liu Wen. People begin shouting and pushing past us towards the entrance, but I am counting on Liu Wen to know a back door. We are buffeted by a two men and a woman running into us. I can't see Liu Wen, so I go in the direction I think he went. There is a service door, and I know I have found the exit, I open it.

A stairwell going up.

"Fuck," I say in English. Behind me the sound has changed. A woman screams. And some of the shouts have a different timber, the voice of authority. Reform through Labor, or that old-fashioned penalty, a bullet in the back of my head. I panic and take the stairs, Haibao a weight I pull behind me. It's only one flight up to another door, a heavy industrial door, the kind they don't make much anymore. I try it and it opens and we are in a huge, dark space. Along one edge, far to our left I see a faint line of light.

The ceiling doesn't seal against the wall, that's the light from the club below us. I put one hand against the wall and start to jog to the right. This is the godown, the space could be huge, but there would have to be an office and from the office an entrance.

Haibao is breathing hard, sobbing for breath. "Zhong Shan," he whispers, "Zhong Shan-"

"Hush," I say in English and run hard into a pole, face and shoulder. The pain staggers me, brings tears to my eyes.

"Zhong Shan!" he says loudly.

"Xing xing," I say, it's okay. Madre de Dios, I think, Mother of God, help us. "Watch the pole," I say, and guide him around. Then go more slowly along the wall. I find a door, try it, it's locked. Of course. We keep on and get to a metal stair going up. "Careful," I say. Xiao xin, in Chinese, 'small heart.'

It seems to me that our feet are very loud on the stairs. We go up twelve steps, a door? A landing. Up twelve more steps. Around the landing. Up twelve more steps. I'm a construction tech and I've built a godown. I know I've fucked up; this is the stairs to the catwalks and the grid they use to hang the tackles to move heavy things. My check throbs. I have a grip on Haibao with my right hand, and hold on to the railing with my left.

The stairwell rings mutedly with our footsteps and we climb blind in the dark. At the back of the catwalk maybe there'll be another set of stairs to the loading bay. Madre de dios, I pray in the language of my mother, who believed in Mao Zedong and Kirkiegaard. We had a tortured Christ on a crucifix in the hall when we lived in Brooklyn. Dios te salve, Maria, llena eres de gracia, Hail Mary, full of grace. We are at the top, the landing is different. I feel the railing find the catwalk. I can't do it in the dark, can't walk an industrial catwalk.

I follow the railing to the wall, nothing else, we are standing on a square platform with the wall behind us, the stairs to our right, the catwalk in front of us. The only thing to do is to go back down.

Below us there is sudden surprisingly distant square of light. It is the door we came in. I sit down, pulling Haibao down against me, and a moment later lights flicker across the walls and ceiling, heavy search lights. I pull Haibao's head against my chest and he draws up against me. Perhaps we should make a break for it, run across the catwalks. At worst they will shoot us or we will misstep and we will fall and die. If they come to the stairs that is what we should do.

I can't do it. I can't move from this spot. If they climb the stairs they will find us here.

Their voices are distorted by space and distance. They will find us wrapped here in each other's arms and there will be no question of guilt or innocence. I don't really believe any of this. I have been picked up by a policeman once, when I was fifteen, for loitering, being out after curfew at Coney Island. He knew what I was there for, but just gave me a lecture and called my mother. And I was beaten up by nighthawks once in almost the same place where I was arrested. Both times I had the same sense of unreality.

I am rocking, rocking Haibao tight in my arms, but I can't stop myself.

The lights have stopped but I still hear voices. Sigue I whisper, I can't think in Chinese, when I try to think of Chinese it comes out Spanish. 'Go on'. Do it. Arrest us. Anything, just make it end.

They stop talking. I listen for the sound of their feet. I can't tell if I hear them or not, an empty godown is not a silent place. I can hear our breathing. I can hear my heart. I think I can hear Haibao's heart.

I listen to the words running through my head, Padre Nuestro, que estas en los cielo, santificado sea tu nombre. Venga a nos tu reino. Hagase tu voluntad asi en la tierra como en el cielo… Meaningless snatches of prayer. I think they are on the stairs, I can't exactly hear them, but I think I do. I count again. They are coming without lights. They wouldn't come without lights. I rock Haibao, he has my jacket clenched in his fists and he is hyperventilating. I can't hear over the sound of his breath.

Will Peter ever find out what happened to me? He will call mama, and she'll tell him. She knows Peter is my friend. She may even suspect that there is more, she has never indicated that she knows what I am. She doesn't ask me about my life, I don't ask her about hers and every Christmas when I am home in New York I go and see her second husband and my half-brothers and Craig came to stay with me when he was eleven and I still had a place. We went to the kite races.

They will tell her, will she tell Craig that his huaqiao half-brother is a fag?

It has been a long time.

Maybe they aren't coming.

But we wait for a long time.

Even when we know they aren't coming, we wait. Haibao begins to shake. "I want to die," he whispers, "I can't stand it. Stop it, please, make it stop."

I stroke his hair and rock him. I kiss his hair as if he were a little boy. "Hush," I whisper, "they're not coming." They may still be downstairs, we'll wait. "We're okay, nothing's going to happen to us here."

He shakes and shakes. I doze, and wake and he is still trembling. My arms ache. My back aches. I shift, try to shift Haibao and he grabs hold of me. "Shhh, shhh. It's okay, here, lie this way. Shhh." I rub his back and his temples and sooth him as best I can. His face is wet. "I want to die," he whispers, "I'm so afraid."

But he stops shaking eventually, and we doze together. We stay there until dawn comes in through the dirty skylight.

I am so stiff I can barely move. In the night I have slid down on my side and Haibao lies curled beside me. The light is not very good, only enough to make out shapes. Haibao's white suit is a little more visible.

"Haibao," I whisper.

He stirs.

"Now we should try to go," I say.

He sits up but doesn't look at me. I try to work the cramps out of my back and arms, stand up and try to move about a bit. I am chilled to the bone and my teeth start chattering. Haibao sits woodenly.

"Come on," I say, "stand up." I reach down and take his upper arm and he stands up.

The catwalk is too narrow for us to stand side by side. It's wider than an I-beam, of course, but we are high above the floor and it looks narrower. I take Haibao's wrist with my left hand and start across it. I can see the control panel on the other side and a set of stairs going down, but that side of the building is shadowed and I can't see if there is a loading dock. There should be.

"Hold on to the railing," I say. Haibao does what he's told. I wish he would think a little for himself, I am cold and I ache and he's acting like a child. Damn it, I ought to leave him here, let him find his own way out.

Anger is good. Anger is better than what Haibao is feeling, than apathy or, what did Maggie Smallwood call it? Perlerorneg, the awareness of the futility of it all. Despair. Underneath my anger I am all too aware that I've been just as paralyzed as Haibao is now.

There is something exhilarating about being the one who is intrepid. I think, I have done it, I have saved us. We go step by cautious step across the catwalk and I am exhausted and angry and full of a hard, terrible joy. We have survived. Yes, it was luck as much as anything else, but we made our own luck. The chain and tackle system dangles in lines and shadows all around us, the light slowly brightens above us. There is a purity of form and line; reality, hard lean reality is very beautiful.

We take the stairs down. I'm so tired my knees are shaking, but Haibao follows me without complaint. The door to the loading dock is bolted shut, but it isn't meant to be safe from the inside. And then we are outside and we walk away, not going around the front but climbing the fence in the morning halflight. I make a stirrup of my hands and boost Haibao up, then climb the chain link and drop, shaking with fatigue, on the other side. Haibao's white suit is streaked with rust like old blood, but we come out on a street two blocks away.

And then, it is all too normal. It is Sunday morning.

"It's okay," I say to Haibao. "We're okay."

He nods, listlessly.

"I'm never going to play pressball again," I say, grinning, but he doesn't respond.

I start watching for bus stop signs. "What is our bus?" I ask Haibao.

He doesn't act as if he heard.

"What number is our bus," I say. And when he doesn't answer, "Haibao!"

"Seventeen," he says. "A 17 or a 17 Special."

It is too easy, I find a stop for the 17 and we stand, Haibao slumped against the wall with his eyes closed. The bus comes and the driver eyes Haibao's stained suit but nobody says anything. "Nanjing University," I say.

"Back," he says, "Up."

We climb up and go back and collapse into seats. Haibao nods. I stare out the window. Eventually his head comes down against my shoulder. The bus is warm and slowly the warmth creeps into me. I doze with my head against the glass, waking when we separate from the front, then again when we join another bus. I awake the third time when our segment peals off to go up, and I know we are close to the University so I wake Haibao. He is bleary eyed.

We get off, the stop is familiar, and yet different. Just as the morning, which would usually be a beginning, is an ending to the night.

"I'll come up with you," I say to Haibao.

"It's okay," he says.

"No problem." I go up in the lift with him, and when we get to the flat, I send him in for a shower. "I just want to go to bed," he protests, but he has no fight in him. While he is in the shower I make tea and sweeten it. I check out the bruise on my face in the mirror in Haibao's bedroom-I have a blue knot and the side of my face aches. Tea and aspirin. I take my hair down.

Haibao comes out in his bathrobe and I feed him sweet tea and aspirin, and remembering Maggie Smallwood, talk to him softly. "It is a pretty morning," I say and "You are warm now, and tired, and you'll sleep well. Finish your tea, the sugar will make you feel a little better, and then into a warm bed. We'll darken the windows, and I'll call this evening."

Then I make him drink all the rest of his tea and put him in bed. I dim the windows. I am so tired. I want to be clean like Haibao. But I sit for a moment and he says something for the first time since I asked him about the bus. "Don't go," he says.

"I'm here," I say, feeling a little foolish. "I'll stay, and I'll call you this evening."

He closes his eyes and I sit what seems like a long time, but which is really only five minutes by my watch (I count the seconds. I decide to stay ten minutes, then seven, and then slide carefully off the bed at five.)

I dim the windows in the front of the apartment. It is easy, I've seen Haibao do it so many times, I just rest my fingertips against the glass and say "Dim," and when it is dark enough I take my fingers away. On the little table next to the door I see a letter signed with the red official chop of the University. I am tired and I almost leave it, but I pick it up.

'Comrade Yang:' it begins, they all begin with Comrade. 'This is to inform you that pending an official investigation from your home district, you are suspended from study-'

It is dated for Friday and it is open. Haibao has seen it, knew about, but hasn't said anything. And Saturday night he was in a better mood than I have seen him in a long time. I think of his exhilaration at pressball. How he glowed gold and white.

I assume I have misunderstood the letter, read it again. My Chinese causes me to make mistakes, perhaps it is telling him he has been cleared? No, I go through the sentences carefully, my head beginning to throb from fatigue and strain. He is suspended, they are investigating him. Maybe he hasn't read it? But why would he print it out on Friday and then not read it?

I put the letter down and go, closing the door softly behind me. I am too tired to care now, I'll call him this evening and ask him. In the lift I put my hands in my pockets and find something in the right. The gold box with the tiger-eye lid that Haibao gave me the night before.

Xiao Chen is watching the news when I open the door.

"What happened to your face?" he asks.

"Very good party," I say, grinning. "Except that I walked into a door."

He shakes his head appreciably.

I shower and sleep. I awake a little before dinner. The sun is strong through the window and I am disoriented and still tired, but I know if I keep sleeping I won't sleep tonight. When I sit up all my joints all crack like old sticks.

I wander out to the kitchen and flash heat some fried rice. Xiao Chen kids me about my dissolute life, tells me I've got mail. I figure it's Peter, I owe him a letter. Guilt makes me avoid printing the letter before I eat.

It's only one page-Peter's letters run to four or five pages and use every type of punctuation available.

Ghost,

Not to fret, I have sent this to you from the arcade, it is not on my system. This is just to say thank you. I have received my suspension notification and I cannot go through Reform Through Labor. I cannot face my family.

I wish to thank you for all you have done, I believe you will understand. From the first you have always understood, even when no one else did. Even your choice of names. I think perhaps I hoped that last night would show me I made the wrong decision, but when we were almost arrested I knew that I had been a fool to wait.

Think of me with kindness.

Haibao

"What is it?" Xiao Chen asks.

I don't know what to say, I am not sure what it is. He has run away, I think. Where will he go?

I call, there is no answer. The letter is dated today and the time on it is 5:15. It is a little after 6:00, which is marked as the delivery time, meaning he sent it at 5:15 on a forty-five minute delay. He can't have left this fast, unless he sent it on his way out.

I pull on my coveralls.

"What is wrong?" Xiao Chen asks.

"I don't know," I say, "I don't understand this message from my tutor."

On the arcade I pass where he would have sent the letter and catch the lift. When the lift opens the hall is full of people and there is a strong breeze. People are standing around chattering, their arms crossed, the way people stand around an accident.

There is a police tape blocking the hall right before Haibao's door and the breeze is coming through the door. It is more than a breeze, it is a strong wind. They have arrested him, I'm sure. The wind is like being up on the super structure when a building is going up.

"What happened?" I ask two women standing there.

"The person in that apartment," she points, "he broke his window and jumped out."

"Jumped out," I say, and then stupidly, "did he die?" We are over 150 meters above ground level standing in this urban cliff.

"Oh, yes," she says.

"He is my tutor," I say. And then add, "I am an engineering student."

"Why did he do it?" she asks.

"I don't know," I say.

We stand there for a minute and then I duck under the police tape. I should not, I should get on the lift and go back downstairs, but I have to see. The wind is strong in the doorway, it is coming from the great shattered starburst in the window. Police are picking through the pieces of glass or standing talking.

A man looks up at me, "Hey, what are you doing here! Don't cross the barrier!"

"He, h-he was my tutor," I stutter, "I am an engineering student."

"There is no tutoring today," the officer says.

On the floor, covered with crystals of glittering glass, are a pair of shoes, neatly folded white tights and white shirt. As if he had taken them off there, in front of his window.

"How did he break the window?" I ask. The windows are supposed to be shatterproof.

"He used a softening agent on it, then heated it with a hairdryer until it was brittle," the officer says. Then his expression softens. "Where are you from?"

"America," I say. "I'm American."

"Well, tongxue," 'student,' "there is nothing you can do here. You should go home.

"I can't go home," I say, "I have eighteen more months until I finish my classes."

He looks at me oddly. "No, no, I meant your dormitory."

A woman comes into the room, "He wiped his system," she says, "He made sure that we couldn't use the trace, either." Her feet crunch in broken glass.

I don't know what they are talking about. I back up. I duck under the police tape again, walk through the crowd with my head down. I am afraid. There are people in the lift. I look at the numbers and then at the floor.

In the arcade, I sit down for a moment on a bench, because I don't want to go back to my dormitory, and then I get up and make a call to New York. It is five-thirty in the morning in New York, Peter is not up.

"Rafael!" he says. "Hey! How are you doing!"

"My friend," I say, "You remember the one I wrote you about? My tutor."

"What happened?" he says.

"He killed himself," I say.

"How?" he says.

Why do we always have to know? What difference does it make? "He broke his window and jumped."

"Are you going to come home?" Peter asks.

Well, yes. I hope so. I don't want to die here. Then I think, he means right now.

"No," I say, "I have to finish school. I did well on my engineering examination."

We talk, I cannot say why so I say I don't know and talk around it. I think, it's good to talk, better than being alone, the money doesn't matter.

But all our words are empty.