had scared himself with his passion for acting out this made-up story in front of people sitting in the dark. Now, he was surprised to be saying this stuff out loud to Nina when he hadn’t even talked about it with Chris. She wasn’t listening, so he kept talking.
“You can just disappear into someone else,” he said. “Someone surprising, except not surprising, because you know the lines. No matter how fucked up they are, the characters, it’s not as bad as how fucked up I am. Because, you know, their fucked-upness is art, and mine is just…here.”
A horse tossed his head and nickered. Nina clicked her tongue at him.
“Of course, it’s not like I really could do that for a living. Become some great actor or something. Only one percent of one percent of one percent of actors get acting jobs.” Isaac didn’t know if that was true. It sounded true. He kicked the cold dust and watched it scuttle across the ground toward the hazy horizon. “Maybe even less than that.”
The wind gusted, and if he hadn’t been so surprised by her speaking at all, he might not have heard Nina say, “Someone has to do it, though.”
“What?”
She raised her voice. “Someone has to get those jobs. Or there wouldn’t be any Shakespeare. Or plays, or movies. Right?” The wind whipped her hair over her face.
“Sure,” he said. “Someone gets those jobs.”
She asked, tilting her head, “So why not you?”
When she didn’t laugh, Isaac blushed, baffled and angry. He wanted to tell her, Because I’m nothing. I’m from the Land of Nothing. I can’t. It’s impossible for people like us, from the sticks, broke, and stupid.
She waited in his coat.
He wanted to shake her, push her down, kiss her. Instead, he just cleared his throat and said, low, “You have no idea how hard acting is.”
A smile hit one corner of her mouth, lingering like a smudge. Nina turned and began walking away from him, her feet swishing through the frozen grass.
The sentry horse turned to face her, his front legs twitching a little. Nina didn’t break her stride. Isaac said, “Nina, these horses are feral,” but she ignored him and walked closer and closer. The sentry snorted at her, his tail flipping. She paused, as if taking his opinion into account. Then she continued her forward march.
“Nina, what are you doing?” Isaac hissed, but she couldn’t hear him anymore. He took a few steps toward her retreating, fragile back.
Now, she stood right in front of the horse. Its black mane stood up like a Mohawk. She leaned forward into the stiff wind until they stared face to face, not an arm’s length apart. Isaac was afraid that the horse would bash her, knock her out. He was afraid of a stampede. He was afraid of…he didn’t know.
With a whoosh, Nina grabbed the sides of Isaac's coat and yanked them high above her head, like a bat.
The black horse reared onto its hind legs above the girl. She didn’t move, her black wings flapping in the wind. The horse’s crumbly front hooves pawed the air above Nina’s tiny head, and he whinnied hard. Isaac imagined Nina’s head smashing to pieces as the horse landed on her, her body crumpling to the ground under his hooves, irreversibly lifeless. He shouted and ran.
The horse twisted at the last minute. His hooves landed next to Nina’s worn shoes. He pushed off, launching his body away from her as she stood motionless, still angled forward.
By now, the entire herd was galloping toward the ridge, moving as one beast, the black horse holding the rear. The ground vibrated under Isaac’s feet, and the dry air filled with dust and the thumping of their rough, worn hooves. Their backs rippled as their muscles stretched and contracted under their hides, over and over in perfect action.
Isaac knew he should be watching them. He’d never see anything like this again. But he couldn’t stop looking at Nina, transformed. Nina, with her smudgy smile, Nina with her black wings.
He caught up to her, panting. She let her scrawny arms drop to her sides. Suddenly small again in his coat, she grinned up at him through the din and dust.
“Acting,” she said.
Chapter Four: Cops and Robbers
Dong Haichuan was born in China in the early 1800s. The youngest son of the youngest wife, he was the bullied runt in his family hierarchy. He left home as soon as he could.
At a place called Crouching Tiger Mountain, Dong Haichuan spied a broken-down temple. He tried to cross the river to get there, but the current was too ferocious. He was stuck. Just then, two monks approached and crossed the river as easily as if they were walking across a bridge. He asked them for help. They carried him across the water, lodged him, and taught him martial arts for almost two decades.
When he crossed the river again eighteen years later, trouble returned. Fighters fight, and Dong Haichuan, now thirty-six, was now the best fighter in China. He killed someone, which created vendettas, and more killings. Things got complicated, but nobody could touch him. Dong Haichuan was a wanted man, an uncatchable criminal.
Finally, the Imperial Court offered him a deal. They would clear his record and give him a job collecting taxes. He would teach martial arts to royals, and live in the Forbidden City. The catch was, he had to be castrated.
Many boys and men decided to become eunuchs at that time. There was good money in it. Only castrated males were allowed to live inside the Forbidden City. Life there was preferable to life outside, where you could be killed or beaten for no reason, by people just like him. Outside, open sewers tunneled the sides of the roads. Inside the Forbidden City, all was peaceful, even if you couldn’t hold your urine.
Dong Haichuan took the deal.
After he recovered, he worked for the Courts. Then, with his top student Yin Fu, he traveled north. He extorted taxes from tyrannical authorities in the outer reaches of Manchuria, fought off bandits, traversed the Chinese countryside, and had a great old time. He was still beating people up. He was still undefeated. He was still doing the same things as before—roaming around, fighting, stealing, and killing people. But now he was a cop.
~
Punching her duffel bag in the early morning alley, Nina worried about the downturn in violent crime. Summer was usually her most lucrative time, when people loitered outside, drunk and angry at global warming. She socked away enough money to see her through the cold and snow season, when she often found herself shoplifting to eat, taking the odd factory shift, and ignoring increasingly urgent telephone calls from her landlord until summer’s cash rained down again.
But this summer, everything was backasswards. Nina blamed the economy. She blamed psychotherapy. She blamed Oprah. She blamed herself. All she had to look forward to was yet another meal of lunchmeat and bananas, when this was the time of year for king crab and gourmet potato chips. Was this what happened in normal careers?
She gave the heavy bag an extra-hard punch, and stopped to adjust the sweaty tape over her knuckles. A staph infection had taught her to protect herself from her own gear, especially this bag, which was probably alive with bacteria, MRSA, tetanus, and hantavirus. She had split it open so many times it was, by now, constructed almost entirely of duct tape. The sand had settled to the bottom, where it felt like she was kicking
