The Leavers(94)

“I knocked,” Peter said.

“Dad?” His heart pounded, but he couldn’t help it; he turned to the screen to confirm his winning hand. His account ticked up. As Peter watched, Daniel pumped his fist in the air.

This time, Peter was calm, like he’d been expecting this. “All right. That’s enough now.”

IT WAS SEVEN IN the morning. Daniel packed his backpack, the same one he had brought with him to the city, but left his guitar in his room. He’d have them send it to him later, wherever he was going.

Kay sat at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of tea. There were half-moon shadows under her eyes, which were puffy from crying.

“You’re not going to ask me to stay?”

She shook her head. “I got an e-mail from Elaine.”

He pulled his bag onto his shoulder. “I’ll let myself out.”





Fifteen



He remembered nothing about the flight, only darkness, rocking, then waking nineteen hours later to sunlight slamming through the window, walking off the plane and into a humid afternoon, one full day disappeared. The lone runway was surrounded by potholed streets, a long line of dirt and rocks, like the airport had been dropped into a sandbox. Language flew around him at warp speed, harsher and throatier than the same dialects he’d heard in New York.

Motorcyclists circled like vultures. “Fuzhou!” they barked. “Fuzhou!” He took a step forward, and three motorcyclists braked and shouted. “Get on, quick,” the first man said, and Daniel balanced himself on the seat and was fixing the straps of his backpack when the driver accelerated and he flew forward. “Grab on,” the guy said. He wrapped his arms around the man’s waist, coughing back exhaust as they shot through the streets. He saw other motorcyclists and passengers wearing smog masks.

“Where you going?” the driver asked.

“Fuzhou,” Daniel yelled.

“Where in Fuzhou?”

“Downtown?”

“Wuyi Square.”

“Yeah,” Daniel said.

They careened down a long road, empty except for the occasional passing truck. Daniel spat out gravel and dust and the wind blew a glob of saliva back onto his jeans. He couldn’t let go of the driver’s waist, so the spit sat on his thigh, taunting him, spreading into the fabric. Green fields and hills were punctuated by clusters of buildings. With their knobby trunks and feathery leaves, the trees seemed older, friendlier, than the pines and oaks of upstate New York.

“Where you from?” the driver asked, as the fields gave way to taller buildings.

“America.”

“Ha!”

“New York.”

“Chinese?” the driver asked.

“Yes.”

“Cantonese?”

“Fuzhounese.”

The driver made a sound like pshaw. “No.”

“Yes. My mother is from Minjiang.”

“Hrm.”

The four-lane road was clogged with cars and buses. The driver slowed to a standstill, surrounded by a solid mass of traffic, all of it honking in unison, then lit a cigarette, the smoke drifting directly into Daniel’s face. The light changed to green and the driver threw the cigarette onto the ground and accelerated, Daniel bouncing hard against his back.

He was dropped off on a busy street near a Pizza Hut and a shopping mall.

“You know a hotel around here?”

“Over there,” the driver said, gesturing to the other side of an overpass and a traffic circle. He had a small, pimpled babyface, and Daniel saw that they were around the same age.

“How much for the ride?”

“One hundred fifty yuan.”

Daniel took out two hundred–yuan bills from the money he’d gotten at the airport currency exchange.

“You speak funny.” The driver handed Daniel his change. “You’ve got a Cantonese accent.”

It wasn’t until Daniel was paying for a room at the Min Hotel, a six-story building with wall-to-wall orange carpet, that he realized the driver had given him only ten yuan in change.

His room was on the third floor at the end of a long hallway, a double room with two queen-sized beds, more expensive than the singles. It was the only room they had available, the clerk said, and Daniel had been too tired, too humiliated by his accent, to argue. He crawled into the bed closest to the window, the sheets and pillows smelling like cigarette smoke, though he’d requested a non-smoking room. He would call her when he was more coherent. Maybe then he would sound less Cantonese.

He woke up three hours later, head aching, the room dark. According to the clock it was early evening, and when he opened the curtains, it was still light out. A line of buses idled in traffic below. A crowd of people were standing outside the Pizza Hut. Overwhelmed, he sat down on the bed. He calculated what time it was in New York, how long it had been since he’d eaten. He turned on his phone and dialed his mother’s number, but it wouldn’t go through. He tried again and got the same result. There was no wireless Internet in the hotel, so he couldn’t get online to see if he had to dial a special code. He tried again using the phone by the bed, but it only produced an automated recording that said he was unable to make this phone call. It was Planet Ridgeborough all over again.

“You’ll have to dial this code,” the clerk said, when he went down to the front desk.