“Jiejie.” He brushed her hair away from her face, returned her smile tenfold. “You’re in the wrong room. You’re bleeding. What happened?”
“What?” She looked around the room. When her eyes fell to the two chairs pulled out from the table, she gasped, “Shan Dao!” She sat upright too quickly and clutched her head with a whimper of pain.
“Hey, hey, not too fast.” He wrapped an arm around her narrow shoulders, easily encompassed by his embrace. He knew she hated to be considered delicate, but right now she was nothing less than porcelain to him; he wanted to circle her in one of those thick quilts museums used to wrap priceless artifacts and then ship her back home, away from all this. He should have been here. What had he been thinking? Just how useless was he? The question made his hand spasm on her shoulder. She stirred in his arm, shaking her head to clear it.
“Better?” he asked, and she nodded. “Then, what were you going to say about Shan Dao?”
“Oh,” she breathed. “Tinseng, you have to make sure he’s safe.”
Frissons of panic skittered through him. “Why wouldn’t he be safe?”
“Grodescu . . . came and found me. He gave me a message for Shan Dao. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, or waited for you, but at the time it seemed too important to wait. But after I told him, Shan Dao—” Yukying paused.
Tinseng swallowed. “Take your time,” he said, though his heart pounded.
“After I told him, he was upset. He ran off. I tried to stop him, but I . . . I tripped and fell.” She touched the side of her head. “I hit the table, I think.” Tears welled in her eyes. “He must have put me in the bed before he left.”
Upset. Ran off. Left an injured Yukying in pursuit of Grodescu, because of something the Frenchman had said.
“Why did he leave? What did Grodescu say?” Tinseng tried to keep a tight rein on his panic, but he knew his mask was slipping.
“Grodescu was leaving for Paris tonight. He wanted Shan Dao to go with him.”
“What? Why?”
“He said if Shan Dao didn’t, he would add your name to a poem. What does that mean? I thought he had photographs?”
Tinseng tasted iron in his mouth. The rest of his body was numb. From far away he said, “And you told this to Shan Dao?”
“Y-yes, I did, and he . . .” Yukying looked more afraid than he had ever seen her. More afraid of him now than she had been in that alley. “He told me to tell you he understands why his father helped her now.”
Her words caved a bloody crater into his chest. Was he dreaming again? He must be. It had seemed so important, so crucial, for Jinzhao to see things his way. And now, it seemed, he did. And now Tinseng realized far too late the consequences of a Jinzhao who believed love was worth any sacrifice, just in time for Tinseng to watch Jinzhao throw his life away for him while demanding that Tinseng live with his decision. What was the point of victory when it had no winners? It was too cruel to consider. No, it had to be a nightmare; he would wake up soon, surely.
Then Yukying cupped his cheek, and the chill of her hand robbed him of the comfort of pretending. This had to be real; she never touched him in his dreams.
“I have to go.” He stood. “I have to—when’s the next train? Do you have any pesetas on you?”
“I-I think so. Yes, here.”
She handed over the coin purse from her pocket. He had traveler’s checks, of course, but they said Wu Tinseng, and that name served no purpose for what was to come. He had to consider the trail he would leave from here to Paris. A trail that could not, under any circumstances, lead back to his family.
“What’s happening?” Yukying asked as she watched him pull out a drawer and paw behind his clothes. “What is this poem? Did Shan Dao really go with him?”
He didn’t answer. The gun was where he had left it, six bullets inside.
“Tinseng!” she cried when she saw the gun. The holster was hidden in a different drawer. “Tinseng,” she said, raising her voice, “you’re going after them? Why do you need that? Why do you even have it?”
“It’s fine.” Had he always been such a bad liar? He didn’t think so. He would have to find that cold center of himself if he wanted to save Jinzhao. “I’m taking care of it.”
“Whatever it is . . . whatever Shan Dao is doing . . . surely Grodescu wouldn’t—it’s just blackmail . . .”
Tinseng started laughing. Once he started, he couldn’t stop. It was funny, wasn’t it, how Yukying cared so much for people who didn’t deserve it—who had lied to her from the start.
She stared at him, mouth agape. He was scaring her, his rage darkening the horizon. She had weathered tsunamis in Hong Kong, but this one was in the room.
“That’s not even his name,” he choked out against the laughter.
“What?”
“Shan Dao. Isn’t his name. He’s not from Paris; his parents didn’t die in a car accident. Nothing you know about him is true. For that matter, he might not even like me.”
“You don’t believe that,” she insisted, and all his bravado disintegrated, paper in the storm.
“You’re right,” he conceded. “I know exactly how he feels about me.” He told me to tell you he understands why he helped her now. He pulled out the fine leather bag Cheuk-Kwan had gifted him before he left for Paris; he shook out all the belongings then repacked with what he would need. A change of clothes; the harness and the gun; leather gloves, technically for driving; his fake passport. If they searched his bag, he would never pass the border. He would just have to hope.
“But if he’s not those things, if he’s not Shan Dao, who is he?”
“I can’t tell you.”
He kept his back to her, but it didn’t help: her gentleness still gutted him as she asked,
“Who is he to you?”
The answer in his heart was ready to bloody his lips with its truth. Words that had sat far too long: I’m sorry, jiejie, but I never really believed you all those times you said you loved me. It’s not your fault, it’s mine. But with him, I never doubt. He makes me feel things I thought I’d spend my entire life without. He makes me feel safe. And he hasn’t said it yet, but, well, actually he just did, in the worst way possible, but that’s okay, because I’m going to save him, then yell at him, and then fuck him until we’re both crying, and then I’ll say I love him too, and ask him to build a life with me. Who is he to me? He is nothing less than my zhiji. I know, I know, such an old-fashioned term, but when I first read of Yu Boya playing for Zhong Ziqi, I imagined his face, though it’d been years since that one summer.
And then the oldest words of all, which he knew he’d never speak: I think I was born knowing his face. Even if we’d never met, I would have died thinking of him.
None of these words were for his jiejie. She deserved different truths. When he finally turned to face her, she had stood.
