Read Online Afterburn by Colin Harrison - Free Book Online Page A

Communist China. And he was especially not interested in the balance of trade between China and the U.S. Why discuss it? Everyone in the room, even the fucking waiters, for God's sake, most of whom were probably speculating in the Chinese stock markets or smuggling stolen truck engines, knew! Knew that the Chinese would and could do as they wished. It was their world—if not now, then soon.
    Mercifully, the boys in red uniforms and brass buttons began setting down spoons and bringing around tea and coffee for dessert. Charlie excused himself and headed for the gentlemen's restroom. The boys watched him, not gawking at his height—the Chinese were getting taller, Charlie had noticed—so much as trying to understand the subtle hitch in his stride, why he stepped across the carpet with deliberate care, like a man who had been taken apart and then not quite been put back together. Well, let them stare. It didn't bother him, for he no longer actually limped, this accomplishment having taken ten years and eight operations, one a spinal fusion, one an artificial knee joint, one of them botched. And he had learned that it was simply easier if he kept his weight at about one hundred and eighty; above that, the old pains returned to his back and leg, bringing with them certain other old pains of a different nature, and on the whole, he had decided that he was far more interested in the wide, unfurling future than in his own small past. That past could go to hell; the future was the thing.
    The future, in fact, would be most improved by the news that his daughter was going to have a child. Please, God, he thought, it's a small favor, really. One egg clinging to a warm pink wall. He and Ellie should have had another child, should have at least tried, after Ben. Ellie had been forty-two. Too much grief at the time, too late now.
    In the men's room, a sarcophagus of black and silver marble, he nodded at the wizened Chinese attendant, who stood up with alert servility and attended to a silver tray of colognes, breath mints, hair sprays, combs, brushes, and toothpicks. Charlie chose the second stall and locked the heavy marble door behind him. The door and walls extended in smooth veined slabs from the floor to within a foot of the ceiling. The photo-electric eye over the toilet sensed his movement and the bowl flushed prematurely. He was developing an old man's interest in the regularity of his bowels. He unbuckled his pants and eased down, careful always to favor the right side of his back, the old problem there so unforgiving that he had spent years learning to play golf as a left-hander.
    He shat then, with the private pleasure of it. He was starting to smell Chinese to himself. Happened on every trip to the East.
    And then, as he finished, he heard the old attendant greeting another man in Cantonese.
    "Evening, sir."
    "Yes."
    The stall door next to Charlie's opened, shut, was locked. The man was breathing as if he had hurried. Then came the sound of pants being unbuckled, some loud coughing, an oddly tiny splash, and the muffled silky sound of the man slumping heavily against the wall he shared with Charlie.
    "Sir?" The attendant knocked on Charlie's door. "You open door? Open door?"
    Charlie buckled his pants and slid the lock free. The old man's face loomed close, eyes large, breath stinking.
    "Not me!" Charlie said. "The next one!"
    "No have key! No have key! Climb!" The old attendant pointed to the top of the wall between the stalls, pushed past Charlie, stepped up on the toilet seat, and stretched high against the glassy marble. His bony hands pawed the stone uselessly. Now the man in the adjacent stall was moaning in Chinese, begging for help. Charlie pulled the attendant down and stood on the toilet seat himself. With his arms outstretched he could reach the top of the wall, and he sucked in a breath and hoisted himself. God, how his arms had gotten weaker. Grimacing, he pulled himself up high enough so that his nose touched