Read Online Hour of the Rat by Lisa Brackmann - Free Book Online Page B

tourists, vendors calling out to “look, come buy!” and holding up their scarves and hats and carved wooden frogs.
    The weird thing is, for a street called West Street, there are way more Chinese tourists than Westerners here. Young people, mostly, wearing broad grins. Couples holding hands, cruising the strip. I guess West Street to these kids means it’s something sort of forbidden, a little dangerous.
    I hate it already. The crowds, the music, the pulsing strobe lights from the discos, the constant come-ons to buy something or drink something or fuck something.
    You made a promise, I tell myself. You have to at least try.
    I hesitate, then go into the first coffee place I see, show the girl greeter Jason’s photo. “Sorry to bother you. Have you seen this young man? I’m a friend of his family. They are worried about him.”
    The girl, a tiny thing who looks like she’s maybe twelve, wearing a sort of sailor suit with very short shorts over tights, makes a show of studying the photo, scrunches up her face and shakes her head. “Haven’t seen him. But wait a moment. I can ask my manager.”
    She retreats into the coffee house, a wood-lined space that reminds me of the inside of a cigar box.
    “No, sorry,” she says when she comes back. “My manager doesn’t recognize him either.”
    “Thanks for asking,” I say, folding the page and putting it back in my canvas bag.
    As I turn to go, she puts her hand on my arm for a moment.“I hope you find him!” she says. “It’s terrible for his family to worry.”
    I wonder where she’s from. Where her family is. What they know about her situation. What her situation even is.
    If she’s lucky, she’s from the area. Has a home to go to. A bed of her own. Or works for an employer who provides a dorm room somewhere close by.
    Or she sleeps here, in the coffeehouse, after it closes. Wraps herself in a blanket and sleeps on a straw mat, on the floor, beneath the tables.
    “Thanks,” I say. “I hope I find him, too.”
    I stop at every open business along Xi Jie. Show people the photo. Watch them shake their heads. If Jason had been here, he was just another foreigner. One who didn’t do anything particularly memorable.
    I limp down the street. By now I’ve got a throbbing headache and my leg feels like it’s on fire. Percocet, I think. I’m going to sit down and have a beer and a Percocet.
    Not on Xi Jie, though. Some quiet side street. At least there’s plenty of those here in Yangshuo.
    I’ll try one last club and call it a night.
    Up ahead is a place called the Last Emperor. Lots of red and gold. The same pounding music as everyplace else, Lady Gaga at the moment. Outside, there’s a guy dressed in a costume doing his come-ons, a slouched, shuffling sort of dance combined with waving people in. He’s wearing a Qing-dynasty-style beanie, a fake pigtail, and a long embroidered robe over counterfeit Levi’s and Nikes.
    “Come inside! Ladies’ night!” he says to me, in English. He’s young, with a cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth, an attempt at a goatee.
    “Maybe. But first can I ask you, this man, have you seen him?”
    He stops his shuffle. Takes a look at Jason’s photo. “Why you want to know?”
    “His family misses him.”
    He lifts the other corner of his mouth in half a grin. “Really?” He hands me back the sheet. “You can ask over there.” He points with his cigarette down the side street that empties into Xi Jie across from us. “Place called Gecko. Lots of foreigners like it.”
    “Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”
    He takes a puff from his cigarette. Grins from both sides. “Then maybe come back here later. For a drink.”
    “Maybe,” I say, and smile back, because he helped me and he’s sort of cute, in a slouchy, borderline-delinquent kind of way.
    I’m sure not coming back for a drink, though.
    I find Gecko easily enough. It’s a narrow place sandwiched between a coffeehouse and a pizza restaurant, advertising