“She was a setup,” Leo went on. “Her father was a Kuwaiti diplomat. They hired a goddamn advertising firm to coach her.”
“So what is the reason for this story?” Charles asked. He looked to Li-Li, perplexed, as though there must be context she was omitting.
“My point is this time it was pure calculation,” Leo said. “I don’t have anymore fucking illusions about saving the world.”
He took a pause here to survey his audience. The Gospel of Leo went something like this: “For God so loved the world he said, ‘Fuck it, you people aren’t worth saving.’”
“This sounds very much like two poor poker players,” said a man who hadn’t spoken all evening. He’d had the shortest introduction of all the executives and was seated farthest from Charles. His tie was thrown back over his shoulder. He was wildly drunk—a bottle of whiskey that had sprouted lips. He looked like he knew as soon as it was out of his mouth that he’d fucked himself.
“Well Saddam’s fucking dead,” Leo said. “How’s that for a hand?”
Charles directed curt words at the man who’d spoken out of turn. The man stood up, mostly under his own power, and there might have been fire ants crawling up his legs as he marked a curved path to the door. He turned, preparing for a final exchange, and was cut off by three men at once, who ushered him into the hallway. Li-Li translated none of this.
Charles stood for a toast to clear the air, but he looked like a man who knew his operation had just turned from rescue to salvage.
“We look forward to much future cooperation with Congressman Fillmore,” he said. Leo glared into his wine glass.
Charles continued: “And now I offer a toast to our mutual friend, Armand Lightborn, for bringing us together tonight.”
“To Armand,” Leo said, raising a glass to the absent presence. But I didn’t write Lightborn’s name in my book. I knew better.
MY BOSS FILLED my suit pockets with the business cards he’d collected, expecting me to alphabetize them later.
“They wish to say good night to you now,” Li-Li said, indicating the line of men clustered expectantly at the door.
The representatives of Bund International swayed like they were on the deck of a pitching ship. Charles listed right and gave my hand a firm shake, with a sweeping motion to lead me out of the room. He held the congressman back to offer further apologies. I stood in the corridor, and Li-Li was forced to take a few steps toward me as men gathered in tight around Leo. I remembered her red in the face at the morning’s meeting, embarrassed by how the men around her spoke, and so I took the risk of saying what came into my head. I had a desire to put a beam of daylight between my boss and me. I leaned to her ear: “You ever get the feeling these guys would rob their own mothers’ graves?”
Li-Li worked on what I’d said, visibly untangling it. Before she could respond, Charles pulled her away.
I hung back in the low, gold light at the top of the stairway, and I wanted to crawl into my shadow. It wasn’t that I thought I had risked much—it was that her reaction showed me an uncomfortable reflection. Perhaps to Li-Li I didn’t appear as different from these men as I wanted to be.
IN THE HOTEL lobby, I started for the elevator, but Leo didn’t follow. He collapsed into an armchair.
“Think I’ll go for a night swim,” he said.
“It’s too late. I don’t think they’ll let you in the pool.”
“The hell they won’t.”
“You don’t want to go upstairs?”
“I need some air,” he said. Air wasn’t going to do it—I don’t know what would have sobered him up besides maybe dialysis. The hotel staff, skating by on secret errands, made a good show of not staring at Leo sprawled in the chair.
“Phone,” he said, pulling his out.
“They don’t work,” I said.
He punched his. “Phone,” he yelled.
“We can get it fixed tomorrow.”
“These people are jerking us around,” he said. “Typical.”
“Bund International?” I said.
Leo fondled his phone like a baseball, looking for its seams.
“Or you mean Lightborn?” I said.
He made a sharp half rotation of his shoulder, and threw his phone at me, high and tight. I cut it off with my left palm, which spared my face. I had a good chance with my right hand at catching the phone’s low rebound, but I let it slip. My reflexes weren’t professional-grade to begin with, but a few drinks and my hands were steaks. The phone hit the maybe-marble floor. It wouldn’t rise again. A young man from the hotel fell to his knees picking up the pieces.
“You’re going to Kaifeng tomorrow,” Leo said. “They’ll pick you up in the morning.”
“To where?”
“I told them you’re my chief of staff,” he said. “The fuckers.”
Our actual chief of staff, John Polk, saw me as a nepotistic hire and barely tolerated me. Chemotherapy had left Polk’s head sheen as a missile, but he still kept two cell phones holstered on either side of his cock and would scream at me even from a hospital bed. Fallen sick, Polk wasn’t any wiser or more empathetic a person, but much more was forgiven of him. He’d never traveled with us, even before leukemia, because he said it was my job to wash the shit stains out of Leo’s underwear in places without reliable plumbing.
The hotel clerk tried to hand the phone fragments back to me, and I refused them.
“What’s in Kaifeng?” I asked Leo. He was beyond answering. He held both hands to his forehead like they were the brim of a hat.
“You speak English?” I asked the clerk. He nodded, not enthusiastically.
“If he wants to stay down here, then fine,” I said, pointing to Leo, who had slouched until his dress shirt was tight around his belly.
“But you don’t let him go anywhere,” I said. “And tell them.” I pointed to the attendant by the lobby entrance, and the girl behind the front desk. “He stays here.”
I fished out two notes with Mao’s face—two hundred yuan, what I understood was about twenty dollars. The clerk refused and chewed his lips. I pressed the money on him, and he followed me trying to give it back. I didn’t turn toward Leo again until I got to the elevator. The last thing I saw before the doors closed was Leo huddled over a lobby courtesy phone, like it was a toilet he was going to be sick into.
BACK IN MY room, the windows didn’t open. Gray night like gray day. I didn’t like the bed. I slept on and off—mostly off—in a chair until about five a.m., but then there was the hammering. At the foot of the hotel, a few courtyard houses were being demolished. They were single-story structures with shingled roofs, four buildings set in a square so that each house’s central garden
