The Ghost Shift (20 page)

He took a minute to pass out, and two more to die.

Yao’s head rested in her arms. His tongue, which she’d felt inside her mouth only moments before, lolled to one side of his lips, a livid purple. Mei kept her grip on him after there was nothing left, half-afraid that he’d spring back to life and half-afraid to consider what she had done. Finally, as his body cooled and his face turned waxy white, she let him go. Pulling herself from under him, she got up. Checking that the latch on the door was locked, she sat on the sofa, Yao by her feet. She shook and her teeth chattered. Imagining that the guards might hear her, she clamped her jaw shut. Then she felt a rush of nausea. She scrambled into the toilet—a privilege for the deluxe traveler—and knelt at the bowl, retching liquid with half-digested chunks of the lunch Wing had made.

The train roared on toward Guangzhou.

After she’d washed the vomit off her lips and splashed cold water on her face, she sat down again. Her blouse buttons were undone where Yao had pawed her, and she refastened them. She looked at his lifeless body and, for the first time since he’d attempted to rape her, wanted him back. He’d been her closest friend at the Commission—an irritant, but a constant ally against its stupidities. She had been fonder of him than she’d acknowledged to herself, and his final betrayal had stripped away the precious illusion that she had been different. Not another girl to have his way with, but someone he respected, looked up to for her intelligence, for herself.

But he hadn’t. He’d been waiting for the moment that he could
possess her as well. She’d had no brother, just a predator in disguise. She shivered, feeling a wave of self-disgust at her stupidity. Would she never grasp that she was alone in this world and had to fend for herself? Others might follow Yao if she gave herself in, force her to submit because she was beyond the law. Some wouldn’t have his finesse, or even ask first. She could not let them near her.

A stench rose from the body. The corpse had urinated, a damp patch spreading down one leg of its pants. The smell woke her from paralysis and forced her into action. The soldiers might enter at any moment and find him. She squatted down and pulled off the jacket, tossing it on the sofa. Then she undressed him as rapidly as he’d wanted her to do in life, unbuttoning his shirt, untying his shoes, pulling off his pants from the ankles. She reached onto the bunk and brought down his traveling bag with its Louis Vuitton seal, taking out a set of light-blue cotton pajamas.

When he was naked, she threw his things into the toilet and dressed him again in his pajamas, pulling the pants over his cold buttocks and tying them at the waist. His cock spilled from the front of the pants and she tucked it inside, feeling nothing. Then she buttoned his pajama shirt and paused to observe him. He looked almost peaceful. She pushed her arms under his armpits and maneuvered him so his head pointed toward the bunk, then shoved her feet against the sofa and pulled him up.

The body was stiff, and its legs could not bend. She stood by the bunk and drew the covers over him, propping him on one side with his head facing away from the door and shoving one arm across his chest. It was the best she could do to make him seem asleep. She placed a book from his bag on the bed, and dimmed the cabin lights. Then she went into the toilet and washed the urine off his pants to dull the smell, before spraying some air freshener around the cabin.

Opening her bag, she brought out a T-shirt she sometimes slept in. She stripped to her underwear and put it on, leaving her legs bare. Then she removed her makeup and tousled her hair. She sat as if she’d just climbed out of bed, while she looked through his jacket pockets. One held his wallet, with his Party card inside, the other a phone,
with a screenshot of a naked woman scrambling to cover her breasts. The key to the carriage doors, which the guard had given him, was in a side pocket.

She examined his bag. He had a toilet bag of deodorants and aftershave, all in luxury brands. There was a Swiss Army knife and a Poppy tablet with a suede cover. She felt around the bottom of the bag, unzipping a side compartment. It held a thick bundle of dollars and Swiss francs, held tightly in a tube with a rubber band. Unwrapping it, she saw three one-thousand-franc bills, rendering drab the hundred dollar bills with Benjamin Franklin on them.

As she stared at the money, there was a knock on the door—a double rap. Mei jumped and looked at the body, stiff under the covers. She couldn’t do any more to conceal it.

“Hold on,” she called. She dimmed the lights until the cabin was almost in darkness and switched on a reading light. Then she unlatched the door, pulling it back two inches. The soldier thrust his hand through the gap to widen it, looking at Yao’s body.

“He’s asleep.”

“Wake him.”

“No.” Her voice was high and loud and she repeated it more softly. “No. Yao must rest. He wouldn’t be happy if you woke him up now. He’s been hard at work.” She smiled, and rested her bare leg in the gap in the door, next to the soldier. “And he’s not done yet.”

The soldier looked down at her leg. He had a light mustache on his upper lip, and he looked no more than eighteen. He blushed, unable to cope with her fake brazenness. Retreating from the door, he tried to sound stern.

“I’ll be back later. Tell him that.”

“He won’t like you interrupting. He’ll be fully occupied until Guangzhou, believe me.”

She pushed out her breasts, propelling him back. He scurried back into the next-door cabin, leaving the hallway empty. Mei waited until she heard the click of the door, then exhaled. She sat again and looked up the timetable on her phone. It was half past eleven and Hengyang was next. Four hours to wait.

The night passed dismally slowly. Just before two o’clock, as they
pulled into Chenzhou, a storm burst above the hills, casting lightning across the sky. Each boom of thunder made her squirm: She was afraid the soldiers would return. She squealed and then giggled, as if afraid. Then she started to moan, making grunting noises in rhythm, faster and faster. She thumped the side of the bunk and let out two loud moans. The corpse lay on the bed, not knowing what he’d missed.

At three o’clock, she dressed in the dark. The train had crossed into Guangdong and she saw a city in the distance. She stood by the window as the lights grew brighter, her bag in one hand. The train slowed into Shaoguan, passing pink oleander bushes, and sweat ran down her palms. She walked to the door, peering out into the corridor. It was empty, no light under the door of the next cabin. She crept to the end and stood there, waiting for the brakes. As they took hold, she put the key in the carriage lock. It wouldn’t turn and she wrenched twice, afraid to look over her shoulder. She calmed herself and tried again. This time it clicked, just as the train came to a halt.

Walking through, she grasped the handle and twisted, then took two steps onto the platform. She stepped away without closing the door and fell in behind a family from the next carriage. Her head down, she saw from the corner of her eye the drawn blinds in the soldiers’ cabin, remembering with horror that she hadn’t pulled them closed in her own. The moon would be shining down on Yao’s blanketed body.

Sitting on a bench a hundred feet away, she waited nervously. A guard walked along the platform slamming doors, not caring whom he woke. At her carriage, he gave the door an extra-hard shove, a small protest against the Party elite who could not be bothered to do it themselves.

One minute, two minutes. A light came on in a carriage next to the soldiers. Then, imperceptibly at first, the train started moving. It crept along the platform, parading the corpse past her. Gradually, it picked up speed until, with a slash of light, it disappeared around a bend.

“What do you want?” Mei jumped. It was a uniformed official, her hair fastened under her cap.

“I’m waiting for a connection.”

“Where are you going?”

“Shenzhen.”

“Shenzhen West; 3:53. You shouldn’t have gotten off. It would have been much simpler at Guangzhou. Platform Four.” The official stalked away, her duty done.

Mei hauled her bag through an underground passage and onto the platform. She stood at the edge, her phone in one hand. As long as the screen remained blank and she couldn’t hear sirens, she knew that the soldiers hadn’t woken and found the body. They were enjoying the last two hours of sleep before their disgrace.

After fifteen minutes, she saw the lights of the Shenzhen train, thundering south toward her.

Mei pried herself from her seat at Shenzhen West just before nine o’clock and pushed into the platform melee. The train bearing Yao’s body had been due to arrive in Guangzhou three hours earlier, and the soldiers must have discovered him half an hour before that. She was already a fugitive.

At five o’clock, she’d stepped past the blanket-covered heap in the next seat and walked to the end of the carriage. A blast of humidity had rushed in through the window as she’d tossed first her phone, then its battery, and finally its SIM card out.
Let them try to put that back together.
She needed a plan, but as she’d fretted in the hours after leaving Shaoguan she’d rejected each possibility. Returning to Guangzhou wasn’t conceivable—she’d been drawn into the Wolf’s disgrace, with Yao’s blood on her hands. Guilin was no better—she wouldn’t get near Wing without being arrested. It was agony to imagine the old woman gazing from her window as Mei had been taken away.

Her only chance lay in her bag, and it would involve abandoning her country and throwing her identity away, like the phone she’d chucked from the train. She hadn’t dared look around but, as she left the freight station and walked past garages and warehouses to the Liyumen subway, she paused. She felt safe among the trucks on Taoyan Road and the people heading for the train—they were rushing to work or to deliver their cargo. Nobody cared about her.

She took out the passport of Lizzie Lockhart—the person that Song Ping had become—and leafed through the pages to the yellow-banded
departure card tucked by her visa. Mei examined the girl’s writing. The cursive in which she’d written her name with a ballpoint pen wasn’t so different from Mei’s English script. She had entered China at the Futian crossing on July 15 after arriving in Hong Kong. Mei flicked to the girl’s photo. They could pass for twins because that was what they’d been.

As she reached the subway, a police car halted on the far side of Taoyan Road. She turned her head away and, when she glanced back, she realized that the cops weren’t interested in her. One had lined up by a food cart for breakfast and the other stood smoking by the car. She bought a single ticket and scrambled down the escalator as quickly as she could. By the time the Laojie train left, she had made up her mind.

First, she needed to mimic the woman she’d seen on the Guilin train—one who’d traveled to China and was returning to her western life. One who did not fear being put in detention by the Party. At Laojie, she took the Yongxin Street exit and headed toward Donglong Fashion Street. This was Luli’s territory—the place her girlfriend loved to parade on summer evenings. It was a bustle of stores and shops, located on walkways and in warrenlike markets. It was easy to linger all evening, walking arm-in-arm with friends, hopping into cafés for food. Neon signs flashed in garish colors. For Luli it was heaven, but Mei hated the fakery—pink miniskirts, leather jackets, and T-shirts with brazen slogans.

Now it was her sanctuary. As she entered, she disappeared among the shoppers and stallholders—another woman in search of a bargain, maybe spending the money from a factory job to cheer herself up. She marched into a mall and looked on racks for clothes, emerging with two pairs of Levi’s jeans, three T-shirts, a hoodie with “Brooklyn Baby” on the front, leather boots, and a trench coat. She bought makeup at a boutique, and a JanSport backpack at a nearby department store, paying for her entire wardrobe with Yao’s cash.

Mei forced herself to eat lunch, stuffing noodles into her mouth and fighting the urge to vomit. Then she grabbed a donut from a stall to inject even more sugar into her blood and trotted, laden with
clothes, into a hotel. The clerk took away her passport as she checked in under Lizzie’s name.