Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven Page 29

  What did you argue about? (“A boy, of course,” I say, rolling my eyes for effect. “It was stupid.”)

  They ask me what Claire’s profession is, what her parents do, how long we’ve been in China, and where we’ve traveled so far. Their tone sets me on edge.

  When they finally finish questioning me, one of the officers tucks Claire’s passport into his pocket and says, “We will be needing to keep this for now.” He disappears behind the reception area with the manager. A whole platoon of military officers seems to be swarming around the lobby, along with several well-dressed Chinese men and women who look like stockbrokers or beaucrats. The Muzak has stopped playing, but the lobby is now completely abuzz. Aware that some sort of drama is unfolding, the Western hotel guests try to appear inconspicuous as they gravitate toward the couch, attempting to eavesdrop.

  It is now 6:05 p.m. For all intents and purposes, Claire has been missing for over seven hours. In fifty-five minutes, Eckehardt will have to leave me in order to make his train to Kunming. George, the hotel manager, reappears, accompanied by the two military policemen who questioned me.

  “We have contacted Guilin police, Yangshuo police, and Bureau of Foreign Affairs. So far, very sorry. No one has seen your friend,” he says solemnly. “Now we will contact hospitals.”

  I look despairingly at Eckehardt, then drop my head in my hands. “Oh, God.”

  He picks up his day pack. “I am going to the train station now,” he announces. “I am not sure that I can, but I will see if maybe I can change my ticket for tomorrow instead, yah?”

  “Oh, thank you,” I sob. “Ecke, I am so sorry.”

  “No, it is okay.” He sighs. “I cannot leave you here like this. But I cannot promise I will get another ticket. It is twenty-eight hours to Kunming. I do not think I will be able to travel unless I can get another ticket in hard sleeper.”

  Either way, he promises, he will return, if only to say goodbye. Leaving his own bag at my feet, he hurries out of the hotel and down the circular driveway.

  I sit alone on the couch, blowing my nose and watching him disappear. I suddenly feel as if someone’s clubbed me over the head. This is really happening, I keep telling myself. You are not dreaming. Claire has actually vanished in the middle of Southwest China. All the officials and police remain stationed at strategic points around the lobby. It is clear from the way they keep glancing at me that I’m being kept under surveillance. George has assured me that as soon as he has any more news, he will let me know immediately. Until then, all I can do is pray.

  Suddenly a pretty, fresh-faced Western woman climbs over the side of the couch and slides down beside me with a little flounce. “Wow, what is all of this?” she says cheerily, as if she’s settling in to watch a movie. “You think it’s a convention?”

  She has short auburn hair and a sly feline smile. Her gray-blue eyes are flecked with hazel. One is wider than the other, giving her face a slight asymmetry. She’s dressed in hiking shorts and a nubby white pullover the texture of a baby’s blanket. Reaching into a purple fanny pack clipped around her waist, she pulls out a roll of toffees, pops one into her mouth, and begins chomping away.

  “You want some?” she says, more to the lobby than to me. “Jeez Louise. This sightseeing. It’s sometimes more exhausting than work, enh?” Her voice has the earnest, perky twang of someone from Minnesota.

  George the manager comes hurrying over. “Miss Gilman. Yes. We just speak to Guilin hospital. So sorry. Your friend not there.”

  “Thanks,” I say miserably, relieved but also not relieved. “Christ,” I murmur as he scurries back to the reception counter. “Where the hell is she?”

  The woman slows down her chewing and stares at me dubiously. “Wow,” she says. “What is going on here? You’re crying. Are you okay?”

  I look at her helplessly. “My friend is missing.”

  “Jeez Louise. For how long?”

  I sniffle. “Seven, maybe eight hours. Or not. I’m not sure where I lost her exactly. She was leaving Yangshuo. We were supposed to meet here after noon. I’m not sure now if she ever made it.”

  The woman resumes chewing. “Wow,” she says again, processing this. “How exactly do you lose someone?”

  “We had a fight.” I wipe my cheeks briskly. “She got angry. Jumped on a bus. You know.”

  “Well. That’s a little extreme,” the women declares frankly.

  “Oh, you don’t know the half of it,” I say.

  A blond, bearded man approaches us hesitantly. He’s dressed in hiking shorts too and what looks like the top half of green hospital scrubs. “Uh, Sandy?” he says nervously, scratching the back of his head. “Uh, do you have the door key? I, uh, I can’t find mine.”

  A look of intense irritation flickers across the woman’s face, and she digs down into her fanny pack. “This woman just lost her friend,” she informs him, snapping her fingers. “Just like that. That’s why all these police are here.” She looks at me knowingly and rolls her eyes. “Kyle here thought it was because some Chinese party bigwig was arriving. He thinks that just because we’re in China, he’s going to be rubbing shoulders with Deng Xiaoping.”

  Kyle looks at me, his eyes shining. “Well, they actually have hot water here, so I assumed maybe someone important was coming. You lost your friend?”

  Slowly I explain my predicament to him and Sandy much the same way I explained it to the Chinese, in a sanitized, protracted fashion, careful not to mention anything about madness, paranoia, or covert intelligence agencies. When I finish, I say, “I really hope she shows up soon. We’re supposed to fly to Guangzhou tomorrow. If we miss that flight, I have no idea how I’ll manage to get her home.”

  “Get her home? To the United States?” Sandy scowls, tucking in her chin. “Jeez Louise, lady. Why would you do a thing like that? Because you’ve had a fight and she’s acting like a baby?”

  “Well, it’s complicated—”

  “Lordy. Look, if you don’t want to travel with her after this, well, I can certainly see why. But there’s no reason you should forfeit all your adventures. Just put her on a plane. But don’t you go with her. Heck,” Sandy says, gesturing with her chin over at Kyle. “Kyle and I can barely stand each other half the time—can we, Kyle?—but you don’t see us throwing in the towel.”

  I look at them helplessly. With all of these Chinese officials milling around, there is no way I can risk telling them the truth.

  “The thing is,” I shrug, “who would I travel with? Claire and I, we planned this whole trip together.”

  “So travel with us,” Sandy declares, throwing open her arms, as if the conclusion is obvious. “We’re great to travel with. Backpackers hook up with us all the time. Kyle and I, we’re loads of fun. We’re Canadians, so we’re intelligent and easygoing, but not show-offy or demanding like you Americans. Kyle here’s worked in a hospital, and I’m sort of a nurse, so we’re very practical and levelheaded. Not like some of these drug-heads roaming around here. And I’ve been teaching English in Shanghai all year, so you won’t have to spend another minute in China if you don’t want. In a couple of weeks, we’re going to Bali, then Thailand, and just lie on a beach drinking piña coladas, eh? By all means, don’t go home!”

  “Absolutely,” Kyle nods. “How many times again in your life will you ever have this chance? We may even go see the Dalai Lama in India later.”

  They look at me coaxingly. “Well,” I say vaguely, “we’ll see, okay?”

  I don’t have the heart to admit to them that at this moment, I actually want to go home. I’m frightened, I’m physically sick, I’m exhausted; getting the hell out of Asia will only be an enormous relief to me. And the truth is, this trip was really Claire’s idea. I simply can’t muster up any enthusiasm for doing it without her. Alone—or with anyone else—I have neither the nerve nor the appetite. It’s Genevieve and Zsa Zsa, or nothing.

  Seven o’clock comes and goes.

  Sandy checks her watch. “The restau
rant’s open. Kyle, what do you say we go get some dinner?”

  Slowly she stands up. I notice that one of her knees is crosshatched and scarred. “Don’t forget what I told you, enh?” She points at me admonishingly. “As soon as they find that friend of yours, you put her on a plane and come travel with us. We’ll be at the steak house upstairs if you want to join us for dinner. Kyle here takes forever to eat, so no rush. We’ll probably be there through breakfast.”

  As I watch her walk off, a voice calls, “Susie!” Eckehardt hurries across the lobby, waving a slip of paper. His temples are shiny with sweat. “They changed my ticket. A hard sleeper, leaving tomorrow,” he says breathlessly. “It was the last one. But the CITS woman, she was very nice. Oh, I am very, very lucky, yah?”

  I throw my arms around him. This man is a savior, my Teutonic knight. “Thank you,” I whisper over and over again, burying my face in the crook of his neck.

  He smiles wearily. “You think maybe later, though, we can have that steak dinner?”

  As night descends, the number of Chinese officials slowly thins out and the lobby grows chilly. The chandelier overhead comes on dimly. In the reduced light, the tiled walls and the marble floor glisten darkly, their surfaces suddenly appearing harder and more impenetrable. Eckehardt slumps next to me with his head propped against my shoulder. I continue to stare watchfully out into the darkness. Now that it is black outside, it is clear that Claire cannot be anyplace good. Is she unconscious in the thicket somewhere? Half dead in a cave? What if she never reappears? What if she becomes one of those ghoulish mysteries I used to read about as a kid, like the one about the boy in Kansas who simply vanished from the cornfield behind his parents’ farmhouse one evening? The Chinese are now checking all of the hospitals throughout Guangxi province. If she’s sick or, or, or… I don’t even want to think it. Nobody knows yet for sure. Until they do, I’m not placing any calls to our parents.

  Claire. I remember her in the student lounge our freshman year, throwing back her head with laughter and proclaiming, “You are brilliant.” Claire loping across the green with her elegant catwalk stride, her hips thrust slightly forward, her hands tucked into the pockets of her long white coat. Claire leaning across the table at IHOP, her fork poised in midair, declaring, “Okay, sweetie. Now we absolutely have to travel.” My friend, with her cornflower-blue eyes, her irritating habits, her imagination and humor, her love of complicated books, her silly faces, her flamboyant enthusiasm, her athletic vigor, her inborn physical grace. Oh, God, where is she? Please, please. Don’t let this happen. Deliver her safely somehow.

  ———

  At eight-thirty that evening, George and one of the military officers suddenly reappear.

  “Miss Gilman,” George announces. “I have very good news. We have found your friend. She is with the Yangshuo police. She is safe, and they are taking care of her. They will bring her here to you in the morning.”

  That is all he says, but my relief is so volcanic, I am instantly transported, incoherent with gratitude.

  “Oh, shay shay nee, shay shay nee,” I cry. It takes all my restraint not to throw my arms around him.

  “You and your friend here,” he continues, gesturing to Eckehardt, “you will please stay here at the Osmanthus Hotel tonight as our special guests. We give you number one room at special student rate.”

  “Yes, of course, thank you.” I nod vigorously. He leads me over to the counter, hands me the registration to fill out, and tucks my passport into one of the room cubbies in exchange for its key. Eckehardt and I haul the three backpacks triumphantly into the elevator.

  “Oh, Ecke, they found her, they found her!” I clap.

  “Yah, I know. That is very good,” he says. “I was very worried.”

  “Oh, me too,” I say. “Thank God she’s all right. I was worried sick.”

  I press the elevator button and announce, “Good. Now that I know she’s fine, I can kill her.”

  We drop the backpacks in the room and head immediately downstairs to the mezzanine restaurant. Now that all is well, we feel positively inebriated.

  “Okay,” I say, pulling Claire’s Gucci wallet out of my day pack and waving it around in the air, “dinner’s on Claire tonight! Order the whole menu if you want.”

  We order two glasses of white wine at fifty yuan apiece. “To Claire,” we toast. “To the Yangshuo police!” Neither of us can stop laughing. We can barely concentrate on the menu. We order shrimp cocktail, pâté, sirloin steaks, French fries. Before the waiter has even finished writing down our order, I race ahead to the dessert section and cry, “Look, hot fudge sundaes.”

  “Yah, and apple strudel,” says Eckehardt. “That is so funny here.”

  “Well, order whatever,” I proclaim. “Like I said, Claire’s treating.”

  We sit with our fingers laced together across the heavy white table-cloth, watching the votive candles flicker. Now that we know that all has ended well, we replay the day’s events with gusto: “And then, when she ran down the street?” “Oh, yah, and when she jumped on the bus?” What was a living nightmare twenty minutes earlier is now a wild adventure, a delirious believe-it-or-not.

  When our food arrives, we fall upon it. We are ravenous. The “Western” dishes turn out to be caricatures of themselves, peculiar Chinese approximations using local ingredients. The shrimps are served with their shells and heads still on in a gelatinous sweet-and-sour dip. The steaks have been marinated in soy sauce, the French fries prepared in a wok. Eckehardt and I devour all of it, tearing the shrimp from their casings with our fingers, dunking the French fries in the cocktail sauce, spearing multiple chunks of steak with our forks, laughing as we chew. We then order two more glasses of wine. “To Claire,” we cheer again, clinking our glasses.

  By the time the waiter has cleared away our dessert plates, we both look a little stunned.

  Eckehardt stares at me. “I cannot believe I just met you yesterday in the forest.” He shakes his head. “I was just standing there. And there you were. And then it turns out we are staying in the same guest room?”

  “I know.” I smile. “It’s crazy. No one would believe it. And now look at where we are.” I reach across the table and squeeze his hand. The idea that Eckehardt and I will now actually get to spend a night alone together in this fancy hotel sends a thrill shooting through me. It almost makes everything worth it.

  He gazes at me. We both sense what is coming. “Well?” He smiles.

  Leaving the restaurant, we run into Sandy and Kyle, sitting at a table in the corner. Sandy is leaning back in her chair, coolly watching Kyle as he painstakingly finishes a slice of cream cake. He is scraping the excess frosting up off his plate with the side of his fork as if it were cocaine.

  “Hey, lady, did they ever find your friend?” she calls out.

  “Yeah, they did. She’s in Yangshuo. She’s fine. The police are bringing her by in the morning.” I introduce her and Kyle to Eckehardt. “This is my knight in shining armor. He fairly saved my life today.”

  “Oh, no,” Eckehardt laughs, waving his hand embarrassedly.

  “Well, then, knight in shining armor. Don’t you think Susie here should just put this friend of hers on a plane and keep traveling with us?”

  “Oh, I do not know about that.” Eckehardt shakes his head. “Her friend, she was really going—”

  “Why don’t we see in the morning,” I interrupt. “After I’ve had a chance to sleep on it. I really don’t want to make any decisions before Claire comes back, if that’s okay.”

  Sandy nods. “Good thinking. Boy, are you smart, lady,” she teases, crinkling her nose. “Are sure you’re not Canadian?”

  ———

  Our hotel room is not much more glamorous than a Motel 6. It has two twin beds with plastic coverlets, modular, built-in furniture, and a single lopsided floor lamp leaning between two polyurethane chairs. But by Chinese standards, it’s luxurious. It’s also the first time in my life I’ve shared a hotel ro
om with a man.

  I sit on the edge of one of the beds while Eckehardt rummages through his backpack. I watch the muscles in his arm flex slightly as he pulls out his various belongings: his shampoo, his shaving cream, his bottle of aspirin, all these mundane products labeled peculiarly in German. His hair falls into his eyes whenever he leans over. When he realizes I’m watching him, he smiles shyly. He is a mixture of both sensuality and kindness. This is such a rare combination in anyone.

  I am swooning with gratitude. I feel as though I am in love with him. “Hey,” I say, lightly touching his shoulder. “I’m sorry about all of this. You got a lot more than you bargained for with me.”

  He shrugs. “For three months, I have been without anyone to talk to. Now I am spending the night with a beautiful woman. It is not too terrible.”

  An image forms in my head. Slipping into the bathroom, I turn on the shower and strip.

  “Hey, Eckehardt,” I sing out, tossing first my bra, then my panties back out into the bedroom. “Would you come here, please?”

  I have big erotic plans for us. Yet the reality is that after all of the running around and emotional turmoil of the day, the two of us are caked in perspiration and dust. And I, at least, do not smell very good.

  Once we are facing each other beneath the merciless bluish glare of the bathroom light, we become bashful. We step gingerly, almost shyly into the steep, narrow orange tub. For a moment, we just stand there propped against each other with our eyes closed. Eckehardt turns the knob higher. The spray pulsates down on us. I have not had a hot shower in almost five weeks. The sensation is all-consuming. Slowly we begin to scrub our scalps with earnest dedication. We get very intent on shampooing, then with methodically getting the dirt out from underneath our fingernails and the clefts between our toes. When we have effectively sanded ourselves clean, we take turns standing under the spray and sighing with relief.

  Wrapped cozily in the hotel’s terry-cloth towels, we emerge from the fogged-up bathroom and drop down onto the bed in a stupor. Gently Ecke-hardt turns my face toward his and kisses me, and I fumble for the damp towel around his waist. But it’s no match for our exhaustion. As we ease down onto the bed, we can’t help it; his head drops heavily onto my shoulder, and I collapse beside him limply with my head flung back. With the lights still blazing and the wet towels stuck to us, we fall instantly, doggedly, asleep.