China Mountain Zhang

'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.