Isham Cook's Blog: Isham Cook, page 4

American massage

[image error]Painting by Wang Yingying (汪莺莺)

Last November the largest massage chain in the U.S. got the biggest boost of its fifteen-year career with a dour BuzzFeed story, “More than 180 women have reported sexual assaults at Massage Envy.” The findings, from interviews and testimony of aggrieved customers, exposed undoubtedly appalling behavior. Many had their breasts or genitals casually violated while being massaged, but there were more egregious incidents, such as one masseur who held down a customer’s mouth as he fingered her vagina, and another who raped a customer with his fist and ejaculated on her face. The offenders in these two cases have been convicted, but few of the other accused have, what with the difficulty of pressing charges amidst conflicting allegations over what took place in private massage rooms without witnesses. The masseurs named in the complaints have apparently all been terminated and blacklisted in the industry, and there are ongoing civil lawsuits. Massage Envy is expected to ride out the crisis, though the chain has come under heavy fire for having been slow to respond to the complaints until the scandal broke and not previously having in-house investigative protocols in place to deal with them at the outset.

As I write this, I’m seeing news stories on the next troubled domain to fall under the #MeToo movement’s roaming searchlights, namely the “silent epidemic of sexual assault and harassment aboard airplanes.” Now, I applaud the outing of harassment and assault wherever it has heretofore lurked. I am cognizant of the opening of the spigots of sexism and racism under Trump, and the need for a collective progressive stance to oppose it. But I make it a matter of principle never to take media outbursts or social hysteria at face value, above all regarding sexual politics and practices. I have no vested interest in Massage Envy, but in defense of the chain, the occasional slip-up or worse at the hands of a few bad apples was only to be expected, given the sheer scale of their nationwide operation. I don’t believe they would knowingly have employed sexual predators. Rather, displaced responsibility ruled by default, combined with denial in the face of the truth before it finally took a scandal to reveal the extent of the problem. I also suspect many offenders were otherwise decent people whose only real failing was their inability to grasp the matter of workplace compliance. Not wholly clear about their role or simply badly trained, they gave in to human weakness while oiling the naked flesh of a hot body. They then may have repeated the behavior once they saw they could get away with it, or deluded themselves into thinking their customers were into it too.

I would ask not why they succumbed but how the chain has managed to pull off a relatively impressive success rate. With 25,000 therapists at 1,200 branches nationwide performing literally tens of millions of massages every year (with a typical load of five to six customers per day per therapist or up to 100 massages a day at each shop), there have only been 180 reported complaints. True, for every reported complaint there are likely many more unreported incidents — 25 more on average according to Massage Envy’s own guesstimate. At the same time, there must be many false reports: customers who imagine they have been inappropriately touched when they have not. Protocol generally allows stroking up to an inch away from the breasts, genitals, and pubic hair, but some recipients may perceive the therapist’s fingers being more intrusive than they actually are (e.g., while being massaged along the sternum between the breasts, which is generally permitted). Further complicating matters is ever-present contradictory signalling and misplaced body language, leading to honest miscommunications and mistakes. Without videotaped evidence, the presumption of guilt in most cases will probably lie with the therapist. Meanwhile, massage therapists may be sexually harassed by customers as often as the other way around. Thus for their own protection, a strict, indeed hyper-paranoid professionalism is the rule, and this out of greater concern for their own job than any loyalty toward the company.

If you’re a female customer looking to be manhandled erotically, you’d probably have to spend thousands of dollars on massages before encountering a single masseur willing to take that risk and fast-track himself to termination, not to mention being arrested by an undercover cop posing as a customer. Or if, on the other hand, absolute safety is your concern, you can always ask to be massaged by a masseuse. (A note on the words “masseur” and “masseuse,” which have historical connotations of the old prostitution massage den and are rejected by the industry. I find “male massage therapist” and “female massage therapist” unwieldy and freely employ all available terms.)

If you’re a female customer looking to be manhandled erotically, you’d probably have to spend thousands of dollars on massages before encountering a single masseur willing to take that risk.

I am not expecting any erotics for my own session at one of the many Massage Envy branches in Chicago, my hometown. They are booked up when I walk in and I schedule a session a few days later. They have several 60-minute and 90-minute blocks open with different therapists. I get a first-timer discount from the regular $100 to a mellower $70 for a one-hour session. They inform me, however, that the 60-minute massage is actually only 50 minutes, since five minutes at the start and end are set aside for disrobing and getting dressed (this was a first). If we adjust to a full 60 minutes of hands-on service plus the expected 15-20% tip, their regular rate then amounts to more like $140 an hour — twice as much. Not cheap, particularly if you’re used to massage in Thailand, which offers the same quality of service for $10-15 per hour.

In the lobby, they hand me the “intake” form on a touch-pad screen, and I tick off a list of ailments (which absolves the company if I get a heart attack during the session) and the body parts on a map requesting the most attention. The groin area is, of course, blackened out and untickable. I next join two White female clients in a waiting room with New Age decor. My masseuse, who is Black, arrives and leads me down the hotel-like hallway to a room. The typical American massage chamber is decked out in a pleasant, indeed dramatic fashion, with gentle lighting, hushed music (a vague mash of Middle and Far Eastern), fresh taut sheets folded open at an inviting angle, and U-shaped face pillow and cylindrical knee pillow at the ready, the massage table itself positioned diagonally to increase the room’s sense of space, or to forestall any associations with the rectilinear operating table. I slip under the sheet face down naked. One nice thing about American massage, as in Thailand, is you are invited to disrobe completely — none of those loathsome disposable shorts compulsory in many other Asian countries. Though as we shall see, draping procedures in the US are so strict and prudish that one might as well be wearing shorts. And there’s the rub.

Massage must be recognized in all its singularity as at once the most ordinary and bizarre of professions. Despite the polite massage industry’s insistent claims to the contrary, the practice inexorably thrusts up against the sexual. It’s simply not like other forms of bodywork — physical therapy, hair dressing, nail salons — which need not encroach on this territory. A fitness trainer may place his hands a bit lower on his trainee’s hips than called for; a hairstylist may brush her boobs against her male customer. These are extraneous acts, not essential to the job. By contrast, the massage therapist cannot avoid approaching the sexual zones. The more thorough the massage, the more these zones loom up. As the therapist’s sensuous hands glide repeatedly inward over the belly, thighs and buttocks, with each potentially disastrous stroke he or she must decide when to pull back. Some push the envelope and go right up to the allowable inch because that’s what most customers want, at the risk of the rare customer who doesn’t and a false accusation of molestation. Others stay a safe three to four inches away to forestall the slightest possibility of a customer complaint. My masseuse is at the more conservative end of this spectrum: she seems to keep a good six inches away from my body’s hazard zones. While she is admittedly skillful on the sanctioned parts, I can’t help feeling shortchanged, though not so far as to be upset, as I scarcely expected anything else from an American massage.

I’m curious about her job, eager to compare working conditions here with China where I’ve been living for the past two decades, and we chat a bit. When I ask her how much she earns, she replies, “I definitely can’t tell you that.”

One of the receptionists dashes up to me when I’m dressed and back out in the lobby. “Well, how was it?”

This exemplifies a cultural difference between the U.S. and China, a country where customer service is less refined and you are seldom queried about your experience in massage shops, restaurants, etc. It’s nice to encounter these stock yet reassuring acts of kindness again. But the way she asks the question is odd and disarming. Rather than cheery and routine, there is concern in her eyes, as if something might have been amiss and she’s inviting me to lodge a dreaded complaint. Perhaps this particular masseuse has problems I’m not aware of? Or all of them do? The massage was fine, I respond. I chat with her as well for a few minutes, about my experience being back home after living in China for so long. She’s attentive and friendly. In fact I find my interaction with her more worth my time and money than the massage itself.

As the therapist’s sensuous hands glide repeatedly inward over the belly, thighs and buttocks, with each potentially disastrous stroke he or she must decide when to pull back.

But it’s a friendly massage I’m after, and I try a place that should be able to deliver, a massage shop for men in an upscale, predominantly gay neighborhood in north Uptown known as Andersonville. They are also booked up though one therapist has an open slot an hour later and the same therapist again later in the evening. I worry he’s the least popular of the lot but take a chance on him anyway and reserve the first slot. They hold my credit card number and warn me they reserve the right to charge the full amount even if I cancel ahead of time. After a coffee at a sleek cafe across the street, I return to the shop and fill out the intake form in the lobby. A receptionist points out the waiting lounge down the hall, which has sofa chairs and a mini fridge stocked with free beer. He shows me the locker room. There’s an electronic code to open the locker, a sauna and a shower. Once I’m cleaned up and wrapped in the provided robe, I head over to the lounge. My masseur, a tall gay White guy, is waiting for me, shakes my hand and leads me to the room before I have a chance to try the beer.

I’d call it a replica of my Massage Envy treatment, except it didn’t quite manage that. On the one hand, the slow graceful stroking that is the hallmark of the so-called Swedish or synonymous “deep tissue” technique (some venues now differentiate between the two, charging higher for the latter due to the more intensive labor). On the other, the very particular draping, which has the sheet tucked taut under the inner thighs, and the prudishness. No matter it’s a gay place. Twice he asks me if I want more work on certain parts of my body. “Yes,” I twice reply, indicating my buttocks, thighs and stomach. “No problem.” Each time he proceeds to disregard them. With only a few minutes left he finally turns me over, works my chest a bit and time’s up. Does he ignore these parts because my request is naughty code for the libidinous? Or because I don’t have the torso of a twenty-year old athlete? Even chatting seems an imposition; he doesn’t invite conversation. Cleary, I’m not the point; his job is. If massage is an architecture, his is earthquake proof. By staying a good hand’s length away from my body’s danger zones, he makes himself inviolable against any accusation of impropriety. At the receiving end, the massage is expensive, perfunctory and disappointing, so much so I wonder if I’m the butt of a joke, as if, “You knew the massage would fall short of your expectations yet you went ahead and blew $100 on it anyway. How lousy does our service need to be before people like you get it?”

A puritanical society expresses its conflicts over the body in mocking ways, and massage is a good example. As I write in my book Massage & the Writer, this is why the art so confounds, fascinates and frightens. There is the seedy, carnivalesque tradition, like the foreboding “Thai” massage parlor I once visited in San Francisco which operated in a basement behind a steel door with a peephole, middle-aged Vietnamese masseuses and rats in the rooms. And there is the virtuous answer to this — the polite tradition of New Age massage. Many governments see the schizophrenic absurdity of massage for what it is — a sex business trying to pretend it’s not — and ban it outright, or place heavy restrictions on it, such as permitting only fully clothed massage or only on the back and feet, medically approved procedures for muscle ailments, specially designed robes with flaps to access certain body parts (as I experienced in South Korea), etc. Where full body oil massage is allowed, therapists in the U.S. are expected to internalize the strictures on pain of career disaster. The massages that result are paltry distortions of the ideal, a twisted practice shaped not around prescriptions but proscriptions.

In Chicago, massage was long effectively outlawed through a combination of community intolerance and police intimidation. In the 1980s dedicated training schools began to crop up and licensed therapists worked in luxury hotels or did house calls. Street-front shops were few and far between, but the business was able to thrive unseen. Only in the past decade or so has it taken off in a visible way, and I refer not just to Massage Envy but its main competitor, the Chinese, who are branching out from their restaurant niche and rushing to fill a vacuum, given their legacy of knowledge on the massage arts. With each visit back to Chicago, I see more new massage shops cropping up in almost every neighborhood, though they remain vastly outnumbered by less ominous forms of bodywork, the hair and nail salons or “nail spas.” Apart, again, from the Massage Envy chain, almost all massage establishments are run by the Chinese.

I try one at random in another upscale neighborhood, Lakeview. (You’ll note that for the sake of preserving anonymity I provide no names or addresses; this is not a travel guide but a general analysis of the American massage scene, and readers are at liberty to do their own investigating.) In her 40s and attractive, the proprietor is confident in English and has a cultural grasp of the quirky needs of the American client. She’s got the business formula down and the stream of mostly female customers suggests it’s working: the New Age music and decor — the lobby coffee table has a toy Japanese rock garden with little rakes for drawing patterns in the sand — competitive pricing at $60 per hour, and experienced masseuses. At this shop they hail from China, Vietnam, Mexico, and elsewhere. Mine is from Mongolia. She performs a respectable treatment, edging a bit closer toward my erogenous zones than I received from the previous two venues but not quite enough to incite me to come back. After decades of massage experiences in numerous countries I’ve become picky and have high standards. However, all that matters from the business’s perspective is that most of the customers come back.

Evanston is an upper middle-class suburb at Chicago’s northern edge. It’s known for its antique street lamps, lovely churches, and wealthy Republican voters. The town was long dry despite the presence of Northwestern University, and until recent times alcohol could only be found in restaurants. It’s the last place you’d expect to find a massage shop. Or maybe not. Things appear to have loosened up and I now see several have come out of the woodwork, evidently to accommodate bored housewives migrating over from the hair and nail salons. The one I happen upon is wholly Chinese run and staffed. My masseuse is in her 40s and speaks no English. She becomes effusive when I start speaking Mandarin. From Dalian, she’s been here for a year and a half. She works every day from 10am till 9pm, similar hours to massage workers in China (who tend to start at noon and work till around midnight), but with tips obviously pulls in more income in the U.S.

It’s the glancing moves while attending to the massage itself that electrifies things, the finely calibrated erotic massage that stops just short of sexual massage.

Despite their previous experience, America-bound Chinese massage workers have to be retrained in the polite massage routines and the slower, deliberate stroking customers here are used to. Her training seems not to have wholly succeeded, for she pushes all the way down over my belly to my pubic hair and the base of my penis. She stops short of grabbing me outright. It’s just affectionate teasing of the sort I’ve frequently encountered in China and Thailand, and she repeats it. My cock jumps to life and pokes out from the edge of the sheet as a result of her lax draping. If this were taking place at Massage Envy and I was the sort to grow outraged, she’d probably be out of a job and her massage career wrecked. Working in a Chinese-run establishment, she’s considerably safer. In the unlikely event a male customer ever complained, they’d deny everything and quietly shunt her to another massage shop in the extensive Chinese network. And she’d likely have wondered what the hell went wrong in the first place. All she was doing was intuiting the kind of treatment her customer wanted and delivered it. Inadequately schooled in U.S. massage etiquette, she was simply doing the job she assumed she was hired to do. Moreover, by inciting male customers to come back with little erotic gestures, she is precisely the kind of masseuse they want.

I have similar titillating treatment at a larger venue in Lincoln Park. From Changchun, this Chinese masseuse is in her 30s and attractive as well as technically skilled, a rare combination. Actually only the latter is important but a pretty face does sweeten things. She too lets her fingers to slide under my penis while working my hips and continues to do so once I become erect, though again without overtly caressing me. There is a second, more subtle line that’s not to be crossed: too deliberate and it’s not only dangerous for them, it’s boring for me. It’s the glancing moves while attending to the massage itself, the collateral stroking as it were, that electrifies things, the finely calibrated erotic massage that stops just short of sexual massage. I return to try another masseuse there who, in contrast, plays by the rules with a prim and proper treatment. Most of the customers I see coming and going at this shop are White males. Perhaps the place is acquiring a word-of-mouth reputation and there are finer masseuses I have yet to sample.

Meanwhile back in Uptown, there’s a parlor which offers a different sort of encounter. It’s decked out like your typical New Age massage shop but I have to be buzzed in the front door. An attractive but stern-faced Chinese in her 30s scrutinizes both my credit card and driver’s license — to ensure I’m not an undercover cop intending to entrap her into offering extra services. The last time I was required to show my ID for a massage was in Singapore, where the police require parlors to record customers’ identification to protect the masseuses from violence. Here it’s to protect masseuses from the police. Satisfied, she lets me proceed. Once on the table and draped, I start speaking Mandarin. Now wholly reassured, she whips off the towel and goes for my privates without formalities. I don’t like this approach, as again I find handjobs boring and it will double the session’s price. We chat as she listlessly kneads my flesh. She’s from Shenyang and has been here for four years. I suppose if she were more technically adept she could garner more customers. On the other hand, there are surely enough male patrons who only want a handjob to bring in decent business — unless she gets nabbed by the police. They are taking a risk: any parlor locking you out so they can look you over calls attention to itself.

There is no typical Chinese massage. If you can get anything at the hands of Chinese masseuses in Chicago, from an unadorned handjob to the fussiest no-nonsense therapy, it’s because the same range of services already exists in China. They too have big massage chains run top-down a la Massage Envy (such as Liangzi in Beijing and Yu Massage in Shanghai) which can dispense a standardized product for customers who want that. But Chinese massage in the U.S. is different in one important respect. It eschews branding and keeps an intentionally low profile, so that it can flexibly adapt to the latest trends in the bodywork business. It is also increasingly venturing out of the Chinatowns and setting up shop throughout urban areas. Chinese massage will only be able to supplant lingering stereotypes of the old Cantonese-run prostitution parlor by breaking into the polite massage industry. Chinatown still seems to be the main terminus of the immigrant pipeline, but they’re spilling over into other communities. While the masseuses at the Lincoln Park shop live in Chicago’s Chinatown seven miles away and are bused in every day by company van, those I met at the other shops on the North Side and Evanston live near O’Hare airport. And they’re coming from different regions back home; all those I queried are from Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang Provinces in China’s northeast, rather than Guangdong and Fujian in the south as they long were.

America’s relationship with its Chinatowns has traditionally been fraught, when not hysterical (as in the riots and massacres in the 1880s stemming from the Chinese Exclusion Act). They continue to lurk at the edge of respectable society, not the abject poverty and destitution of the ghetto, but the gray area in between, a distant country ever trying to get a foothold in our own, never wholly welcome but one which serves up a cuisine we’ve developed a taste for. The Chinese know how to present you with only what you want to see, and if it happens to be Chinese food, then that’s all you will see. They are conscientiously discreet to a fault (if not inscrutable) and stay out of the way, apart from the blank-faced waitresses serving your food. The more intrepid and curious, however, can seek out evidence of darker goings-on not immediately evident to the eye — massage or sexual services perhaps — down side streets, unmarked passageways, labyrinthine basements, trapdoors, and smoky rooms. America sweeps its vice into Chinatown where it conveniently disappears yet is accessible to those with patience and persistence.

America sweeps its vice into Chinatown where it conveniently disappears yet is accessible to those with patience and persistence.

The polite massage industry remains a challenge for the Chinese. For many American customers, there is something slightly sinister and scary about a Chinese massage shop, however comfortably decked out in New Age trappings. This partially accounts for the success of the Massage Envy chain, with its reassuring suburban-mall design motifs; and you don’t see too many Chinese receptionists in their stores. For its part, in order to secure legitimacy, the polite massage industry has struggled over the decades to divest itself of prior associations with licentious massage, and as we have seen, necessarily adopts sweeping zero-tolerance policies toward the latter. Yet loathe they would be to admit it, they need their uneasy Other, the Chinese. They aren’t competitors so much as codependents, playing different roles in the industry’s distribution of labor from which they both benefit. As the polite massage business grows and generates demand, more customers in turn expect a greater range of services than the conventional business can provide, but which can be conveniently outsourced. To customers who merely want a more affordable alternative to the big chains, the Chinese are happy to offer that. And to customers of more exclusive tastes, there are adepts at the ready to offer up sought-after services on an invisible menu — at a shop coming soon to your neighborhood.

Now that we are venturing back into erotic territory, there is another veiled region I cannot leave out of this discussion without presenting an incomplete picture of the American massage scene. I refer to noncommercial massage: what hobbyists do in their homes and at parties because it’s not for sale. This includes such skilled practices as internal massage. I was fortunate enough to receive an introduction to this extraordinary art at a private club holding monthly gatherings on Chicago’s North Side, attended by over 30 guests who performed it on each other. Americans don’t have any particular claim to this art; it can surely be found in Europe and elsewhere. But these kinds of wondrously weird phenomena have a tendency to crop up in this country first, and the U.S. surely has the largest number of practitioners, concentrated of course in New York, San Francisco, LA and Chicago.

I arrive a bit early and watch the guests trickle through the backdoor kitchen. Since not everyone is known to each other, there’s a safe for storing our valuables. We won’t need anything on our person anyway. I relax with a beer and watch a video of internal massage in the living room. Most of the guests are middle-aged or elderly White males, a few Black and Hispanic males, and only two or three guys in their 30s. It’s an acquired taste. There are no women, though there’s no reason why they couldn’t participate. It’s not a gay party exactly but a divine activity, one that should transcend gender and sexual orientation. One guy my age that I chat up turns out to be a “virgin.” That’s a relief. Not only am I a virgin, I’m not even familiar with the parlance. He’s looking for someone with smaller hands, but most of the guys are on the burly side. I also realize I need to find a set of small hands and fast. One of the hosts has smallish hands and agrees to massage me.

We start congregating in the basement. There are seven slings bolted to the ceiling with chains (a smaller “play room” off to the side has a cushioned floor and fridge stocked with ice-cold Bud and Miller Lite). Everyone is either naked or dressed in jockstraps or leather gear. Everyone is assigned their personal can of Crisco vegetable shortening, which cannot be shared for obvious sanitary reasons. People are quietly circling and negotiating their choice of partner for a bit before the first guy mounts a sling. I watch as his masseur puts on latex gloves and liberally smears Crisco around the anus. Gradually, he works in two, three, then five fingers. Finally his whole fist disappears inside his anus and rectum and continues sliding in up to the elbow. I am told some take the arm in all the way up to the shoulder.

“Where does the arm go? I mean, you’re going to end up massaging the heart, aren’t you?” I ask in disbelief.

“Pretty much,” one of them tells me.

If your massage therapist can extract as much pleasure out of giving you a massage as you get from receiving it, that’s the one you want.

Two septuagenarians are now going at it in a second sling. The guy being massaged is overweight and well past any semblance of male attractiveness, and the guy massaging him is slight and ordinary looking, though with a kindly mien. If this gathering had a more competitive purpose, he would probably have been hoping to latch onto a more agreeable physique. But it’s evident that is not the point. His only concern seems to be that the man receiving his hands can extract as much pleasure out of it as he gets from delivering it. Flattened together as if in prayer, he pushes his hands in and out of the anus one after the other, rhythmically rocking on his feet in unison with the rocking of the sling. Trance-like he stares straight ahead like a priest or shaman performing a devotional offering. Whatever his spiritual purpose or lack thereof, he’s clearly having some kind of mental orgasm. It’s awesome to watch. If your massage therapist can extract as much pleasure out of giving you a massage as you get from receiving it, that’s the one you want.

Now my masseur is ready and it’s my turn to find out what internal massage feels like. I get on the sling naked and hook my feet up to the outside of the chains in cuffs, my legs spread wide. He knows I might not be able to take his whole fist into me the first time, but what I need to do (short of inhaling poppers), he stresses, is to keep breathing deeply. He applies more and more Crisco as the spent Crisco falls onto newspapers spread out on the floor, and he wipes me off with paper towels torn from a roll on a post affixed to each swing. Something like the practiced, cyclic procedure at the dentist’s, involving pain as well, but with a more ecstatic purpose. He manages to get three fingers inside before I’m exhausted. I will certainly be able to take in more next time, but I’d probably make faster progress in a private session with just two of us. I have nothing against exhibitionism. In fact the massage party is really something everyone who likes massage should eventually try. But it’s a kind of theater and the many pairs of eyes on me are giving my rectal muscles stage fright. Let’s just say it’s a lot to take in at one time (pun intended). And I will try it again.

*    *    *

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Available in paperback, Kindle, Smashwords

See contents

The Kitchens of Canton. A novel

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“Kitchens is a 242-page mindfuck induced most likely by a combination of LSD, gender-fluid sexual experimentation and unbridled brilliance.” — Tom Carter, Unsavory Elements

“A wildly amusing and satirical premise sets the stage for a frenetic tale of time traveling and cross-cultural confusion.” — Chris Taylor, author of Harvest Season

“A dizzying, whirlwind tour across language, space and time…The Kitchens of Canton presents an eerie, if not implicative, vision of society’s future.” — Quincy Carroll, Up to the Mountain and Down to the Countryside

“A picture forms of Isham Cook after reading even just two or three sentences from any of his books. He delights in the excessive, the sensuous and the extravagant.” — Arthur Meursault, author of Party Members

“An insightful, unconventional, and risqué view of present-day culture.” — Kirkus Reviews

Jeff Malmquist is unaccountably catapulted to the year 2060. He finds himself in New Gary, Indiana, a labor camp of one million Chicagoans, their identities hacked and incriminated as pedophiles through the collusion of a corrupt US Government, the Russian cybermafia, and China. He escapes to Chicago, only to find himself in a full-scale replica of Ancient Rome in China, erected for the wealthy country’s amusement and manned by a million enslaved Italians. As he struggles to orient himself in these synchronized urban labyrinths, he is plunged back to real Ancient Rome, before being flung yet further into the future: It’s 2115 and the Chinese Empire rules the world. The former Western hemisphere is now the American Special Administrative Region, a vast Cantonese-speaking slave colony. Malmquist will soon be shipped to the most opulent city the world has ever known for an unspeakable fate.

A dystopian satire both bleak and funny, The Kitchens of Canton distills the worst of our present and future societies into a strangely seductive maze of a story.

Table of Contents: [image error]

Chapter 1: New Gary

Chapter 2: Xinluoma

Chapter 3: Zigaago

Chapter 4: Chicago

Chapter 5: Xinluoma

Chapter 6: Gwongzau

Chapters 7-24: Buy the book

Now out in paperback on Amazon and ebook on Kindle and Smashwords.

New Isham Cook release: The Kitchens of Canton, a novel

[image error]

“Kitchens is a 242-page mindfuck induced most likely by a combination of LSD, gender-fluid sexual experimentation and unbridled brilliance.” — Tom Carter, Unsavory Elements

“A wildly amusing and satirical premise sets the stage for a frenetic tale of time traveling and cross-cultural confusion.” — Chris Taylor, author of Harvest Season

“A picture forms of Isham Cook after reading even just two or three sentences from any of his books. He delights in the excessive, the sensuous and the extravagant.” — Arthur Meursault, author of Party Members

Jeff Malmquist is unaccountably catapulted to the year 2060. He finds himself in New Gary, Indiana, a labor camp of one million Chicagoans, their identities hacked and incriminated as pedophiles through the collusion of a corrupt US Government, the Russian cybermafia, and China. He escapes to Chicago, only to find himself in a full-scale replica of Ancient Rome in China, erected for the wealthy country’s amusement and manned by a million enslaved Italians. As he struggles to orient himself in these synchronized urban labyrinths, he is plunged back to real Ancient Rome, before being flung yet further into the future: It’s 2115 and the Chinese Empire rules the world. The former Western hemisphere is now the American Special Administrative Region, a vast Cantonese-speaking slave colony. Malmquist will soon be shipped to the most opulent city the world has ever known for an unspeakable fate.

A dystopian satire both bleak and funny, The Kitchens of Canton distills the worst of our present and future societies into a strangely seductive maze of a story.

Table of Contents: [image error]

Chapter 1: New Gary

Chapter 2: Xinluoma

Chapter 3: Zigaago

Chapter 4: Chicago

Chapter 5: Xinluoma

Chapter 6: Gwongzau

Chapters 7-24: Buy the book

Now out in paperback on Amazon and ebook on Kindle and Smashwords.

New release: The Kitchens of Canton, a novel

[image error]

Release date February 14, 2018, in paperback and ebook (Amazon, Kindle, Smashwords).

Synopsis:

Jeff Malmquist is unaccountably catapulted to the year 2060. He finds himself in New Gary, Indiana, a labor camp of one million Chicagoans, their identities hacked and incriminated as pedophiles through the collusion of a corrupt US Government, the Russian cybermafia, and China (which runs the USA behind the scenes). He escapes to Chicago, only to find himself in a full-scale replica of Ancient Rome in China, erected for the wealthy country’s amusement and manned by a million enslaved Italians. Or did China come first? As he struggles to orient himself in these synchronized urban labyrinths, he is plunged back to real Ancient Rome, before being flung yet further into the future: It’s 2115 and the Chinese Empire rules the world. The former Western hemisphere is now the American Special Administrative Region, a vast Cantonese-speaking slave colony. Malmquist will soon be shipped to the most opulent city the world has ever known for an unspeakable fate.

A dystopian satire both bleak and funny, The Kitchens of Canton distills the worst of our present and future societies into a strangely seductive maze of a story.

Table of Contents: [image error]

Chapter 1: New Gary

Chapter 2: Xinluoma

Chapter 3: Zigaago

Chapter 4: Chicago

Chapter 5: Xinluoma

Chapter 6: Gwongzau

Chapters 7-24: Buy the book!

The Kitchens of Canton, a novel. Ch. 24: Zigaago

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“I was like, now I’m here and now I’m there even though I’m still here.”

“Far out,” said Cornelius.

They were sitting around their usual Heartland Cafe Museum restaurant table by the Buffalo Bar. Cornelius and soon Wingyee had joined them. Ray was filling them in. Mason, parrot on shoulder, came up and was about to hand Malmquist a pale amber brew in a taster glass when he noticed a face he hadn’t seen in a while. “Aa, Wingyee neihou!”

“Zeoikan houmaa?” She smiled and pulled up her tunic to let him comb his fingers through the eruption of black hair between her legs. She grabbed his balls.

Mason turned cheerfully back to Malmquist with the taster glass. “Nei soeng soengsoeng ngodik maalaat ngaaiji bezau? Ngo zigei joengzou ge.”

“It’s their new prickly ash chili pepper ale. Mate made it himself. Sicyun Province prickly ash, though it’s grown here now and is the real thing,” explained Cornelius.

Malmquist downed the glass. “It’s really good. But can I ask a question? I’m concerned about hygiene whenever I see that. Especially restaurant workers.”

“Oh, why?”

“People keep themselves much cleaner nowadays than before,” said Ray. “Obsessively clean. It’s a matter of pride. Yet a little bacteria doesn’t hurt. After all, when we eat Chinese and share dishes, we’re spreading our saliva all around with our chopsticks. Accepting someone’s germs is a natural form of expression. Remember our conversation about being lovable? But yes, I know where you’re coming from.”

“And disease?”

“Ah, for Liberation. One of the first big radical overhauls was universal health care. Free clinics in every park, just like swing sets and public lavatories. Sexual infections have been mostly eliminated, since everyone is scrupulous about their privates and gets checked out immediately, regularly, voluntarily. Of course, they’re not really ‘privates’ anymore. Your body is not your own; it belongs to the community. It’s everyone’s business. You have a social obligation to take care of it.”

“Wow. Let me wrap my head around that. Where’s Belinda, by the way?”

“He’s stepping in for her. She’s under the weather,” said Cornelius.

“Oh, I don’t think you two have met,” said Ray, calling Mason back. “Jeff, this is Mason. He’s Belinda’s sister.”

“We have met and already know each other quite well.”

“So as I was saying,” she continued, “I went from now I’m here and now I’m there to now I’m here and now I’m there. Not one after the other but at one and the same time.”

“How can that possibly be?”

“Have you ever been aware that you’re having a dream? You know, already asleep but not yet asleep? Or woken up while you’re still in a dream? That’s the best analogy I can think of. Except that this was much more exact and crystal clear. I was in both places at once and I was perfectly conscious of being so.”

“I mean how could you have been physically in New Rome and New Gary at the same time? That I can’t understand.”

“You don’t have to understand. It was simply a fact. New Rome and Chicago, actually. I hated New Gary. Once the military occupation was over and we were all freed, I just had to be back home. Chicago. I’ve been here ever since.”

“And you’ve been in New Rome all along as well. Amazing.”

“I didn’t like New Rome at first. I couldn’t even speak the language. But I got to like it the longer I was there.”

“Just yesterday we bumped into each other right here in the Heartland. That was the last I saw of you — your younger self. The next thing I hear, you’re back in New Gary and back in New Rome. How did it happen?”

“Zhang didn’t want me to leave but we needed to get rid of that police chief. We did so by writing ‘Chicago’ on the tunic we put on him and I got accidentally teleported with him. You know where we wound up? Right here again in the Heartland but in 2060! It was closed down and all locked up. It must have gone out of business back then.”

“Yeah, I once found myself in the abandoned Heartland too. That’s the night I went to your place late and knocked on your window.”

“We were locked inside and could only get out by breaking the windows, but there were lots of people running around and gunshots everywhere and it seemed too dangerous. I wanted to find Inspector Melynchuk. I thought he could protect me. So I decided to abandon the cop and send myself to New Gary. I convinced him to give me his tunics since I was naked and he had his uniform on underneath.”

“Why were you naked?”

“Zhang took off the tunic I was wearing so I wouldn’t get sent with the cop, just to make sure, even though it was an ordinary tunic. I got teleported anyway. So I put the tunics on and wrote out ‘New Gary’ and found myself in the gay sauna on Broadway!”

“Gay sauna?”

“Yeah, everyone knows about it. It’s in the back of the bar called ‘Bar.’ You told me you went there on your first day in New Gary.”

“Oh, yeah, that place.”

“Well, all these people were hiding in the sauna from the Chicago attackers. I don’t know what happened next. I only remember going with some police to Chicago to rescue that chief cop in the Heartland. After the violence stopped and the Chinese took over, I was back in Chicago for good and I’ve been living here in Rogers Park ever since. The Heartland reopened after Liberation. I came here a lot in the early days to help out.

“Then how did you return to New Rome?”

“I don’t have any memory of leaving New Rome. As I said, Zhang didn’t want me to go back to the US anymore. We successfully sent the cop back. That’s all I remember. I’ve been there ever since as well.”

“I need to work all this out in due time. What’s it like over there now anyway after all these years? And what about Zhang?”

“Zhang died years ago and willed her domus to me.”

“And Giulia?”

“She stayed on in Ancient Rome and never came back.”

“And Attica?”

“She’s doing fine. We take care of each other.”

“Haaisik,” Wingyee demanded.

Cornelius filled her in while Malmquist continued. “One thing I still don’t understand. If you’re Ray here and Delilah over there, what are you now, now that you’re united?”

“Both. Nothing wrong with having two names.”

“How did you get along in New Rome without speaking Chinese?”

“We all picked up Cantonese pretty quickly back then.”

“I thought they spoke Mandarin.”

“They did until the changeover. Around the time of the Chinese occupation of the US.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Southern China had been the real center of power for some time. That’s where the wealth was. There was some kind of a coup, a bloodless one, and the south took over. Everything more or less stayed the same, except the capital shifted from Buijyun to Gwongzau — ”

“Where?”

“Peking and Canton. Cantonese became the national language. New Rome is in the south, in Zitgong Province near the coast, but not the far south where Cantonese is spoken. So everyone had to learn Cantonese. It was easier for Zhang and the servants since the two languages have the same characters and grammar; only the pronunciation is different. We had to start calling her ‘Zoeng.’ It was really hard for me and Attica, but we plunged right in.”

“And I recall you saying you all had to learn Cantonese in Chicago around the same time too.”

“Yeah.”

“I still can’t understand how you could make sense of being in two places at the same time. How could you handle it?”

“That didn’t last. Once I got settled in both places, I lost the simultaneous awareness. That’s when the split happened. I effectly split into two distinct people, one in Chicago and one in New Rome, each with no consciousness of the other. Though we were actually the same person. And still are.”

“You never went back and forth anymore with the tunics?”

“No. Teleportation just got too intense for me. The more time went by, the riskier it seemed. I developed this fear of not being able to make it back again. So I stopped going across for good. Until about a week ago, when I was yanked across. Just after I slept with you for the first time.”

“That’s when you went missing. But you just arrived from there. So how could you be aware of what happened here?”

“Because I came back to myself.”

“That’s what we don’t get,” said Cornelius. “How could you lose your memory and get it all back again? Where did it go? Didn’t that just freak you out?”

“All I know is I was soaking in the Diocletian Baths last week with Attica and my memory of my Chicago years, all five past decades, came back to me. Total recall.”

“Perhaps you lost your simultaneous awareness as a defense mechanism to protect you from the stress and confusion of it. That’s what a psychological explanation would say. Or it could be even simpler than that. The weight of simultaneous awareness was too heavy to bear, and your two realities just snapped apart.”

“Whatever. The question is, what brought my two selves back together again?”

“Magnets, man!” said Cornelius triumphantly. “Magnets. That’s what it is. Her two halves snapped back together just like magnets. Jeff somehow poked holes in the time-space continuum and you got pulled through to the other side.”

“But what about yourself there now, now that you’re here?”

“I’m not there now. I’m here.”

“So you are presently missing in New Rome?”

“Yes, I must be.”

“Are you aware of what’s happening in New Rome right now?”

“No.”

“But you were aware of your life in Chicago over the past few days.”

“I am aware of my life in Chicago only up to the past few days. I remember fucking Jeff but nothing after that.”

“So you have no idea what’s going on in New Rome at this moment?”

“No.”

“Will you go back there?”

“I don’t know. I can’t control it. I presume I will. I have to. I can’t leave Attica alone. But it was so nice to be back in my old bed here. With a handsome guy and his morning hard-on flush against me!”

“You scared the hell out of me when you woke me up,” said Malmquist. “But I have absolutely no memory of fucking you last week. So something happened to my memory as well in the process. And you know what? It’s coming back to me just now. Something else. How I got into this mess in the first place. Remember I told you how I first found myself in New Gary? I was in a used bookstore on Broadway in Chicago. That’s all I could recall until this moment. Now I remember the anger, the rage.”

“What anger?”

“I had slept with a student from one of my classes at the university. It was purely consensual and she was smart and was going to get an A anyway. Her name was coincidentally was Delilah. She didn’t resemble you at all. It was nice while it lasted, but there were inevitable problems with our age gap and expectations. I wasn’t the right person for her and told her so. She wasn’t ready for that. Now, normally I’m a calm person. Nothing fazes me. But there is one thing I can’t deal with, and that is stalking. Things went downhill from there. She started following me around my neighborhood. One day I tried to shake her and slipped into a used clothing shop. There was a clothing carousel containing T-shirts. One had a silly phrase printed on it that said ‘Witches underwear party.’ I was about to buy the shirt, thinking it would be a cool object to discuss in my semiotics class on the meaning of nonsensical messages, when I saw Delilah standing before me. I was so angry I pushed the carousel over her and ran out of the store. That’s when I found myself on Broadway in New Gary.”

Wingyee had pricked up at Malmquist’s excitement and got the others to translate. She listened and considered for a moment before saying, “Waabei ngo zi nei niuge zeoihau jatzi.”

“She wants you to tell her about the last time you got angry.”

“That was the last time.”

“She says there was a more recent outburst of rage. And that’s why you’ve been under investigation.”

“I know I’m in trouble but I didn’t do anything since then — Oh. Yes. Of course. She must be referring to the incident that happened nearby, in 2060. But how would she know about that? I told you I broke out of the Heartland and a man threatened me from his car with a gun. I turned his gun against him and hijacked his car down to the highway across from New Gary. I beat him up badly with the butt of the gun and tied him up and sent the car to Danny’s house. I don’t know what happened to him after that. Did he die?”

They interpreted this for Wingyee and she reacted with surprise. “Jau jatzi gunggik ni?”

“She didn’t know there was another assault.”

“Was that really an assault? I’d regard it as preemptive self-defense.”

“She wants to know about the assault in New Rome.”

“New Rome? What assault?”

“Nei gu.”

“She wants to hear it from you,” said Ray, in a resigned yet affectionate voice. “Homicide, dear.”

“Homicide? I never killed anyone there.”

“A Chinese man.”

“Oh!” He slapped his head. “Him. That guy? He was going to kill me.”

“He was unarmed. You bashed his head against a wall and he died later in the hospital. It was unprovoked.”

“How do they know?”

“There was a witness.”

“The prostitute he was beating up?”

“And your DNA was all over him.”

“I got out of there immediately and don’t know what happened to him. I didn’t intend to kill him. Oh, Jesus. That’s what I was being investigated for? Is there no allowance for the fact it happened fifty-five years ago?”

“A few days ago, in your life.”

As soon as Malmquist recalled the event, Wingyee visibly relaxed and gazed at him calmly. For a minute there was silence around the table, whereupon she said, “Nei zeonbei houmei aa?”

“It’s time, Jeff.”

“I know.”

He hugged Ray and Cornelius and followed Wingyee out of the Heartland. At the police station they were buzzed through a set of inner doors and she led him into a quietly decored bedroom, like a nice motel room. A framed painting of an old Chinese town with a canal winding through it hung on the wall. She said something in Cantonese and waved her hand.

“This is your room?”

“Deoi,” she nodded as pulled off her tunic. She unhooked the holster under her breasts containing the bowie knife and gun and placed it on the nightstand. She pointed to his tunic. “Zoeng keoi ceoi loklei.”

He took it off. Surround-sound music began to play from hidden speakers — sticks, gongs, cymbals and the cries and wails of singers. “What’s this music?”

“Jyunkek.”

She uncorked a ceramic flask and filled two jade shot glasses with a clear liquid. They toasted. Malmquist grimaced. “Holy shit! Is this stuff ever strong. It’s almost pure alcohol. What is it?”

“Baakzau.”

“Wow, the painting has changed to Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night.’ I couldn’t tell it’s electric.”

She handed him the flask and lay down on the bed, gesturing at the flask and her body. He splashed the liquor over her and lay down next to her. They embraced and kissed. She got on top of him and for the first and last time fucked him. When he was about to cum she held him fast in her hips to take in his semen. “Ng sai daamsam. Jikjap lei laa. Ngo jiu neigo zi.”

They pulled apart, his cock still hard and drenched with fluids, and embraced again. One of her tits was stuck under his side and she freed it and nestled them against his chest. They were bigger than he had ever recalled, the areolas dark and swollen, little breasts in their own right. A tear rolled down her cheek as she placed one in his mouth. “Syunkap ngo, boubui. Syunkap ngo.”

Her arm was around his neck and she caressed him on the face. With her other hand she worked the gun out of the holster and raised it toward him. He looked up. “What are you doing?”

“Nei fangok, boubui,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes again and continued to suckle. She pressed the gun’s blue button. His jaw moved for a few moments and he went to sleep.

*      *      *

Previous chapter: Ch. 23: Xinluoma

Chapter 1: New Gary, IN [image error]

Forthcoming February 2018: The Kitchens of Canton, a novel

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Malmquist took a long hot bath. He washed his two filthy tunics in the tub, rinsed them out and hung them up to dry. No writing was visible on the wet outer tunic. He slipped into Ray’s bed naked and had a long sleep. In the morning, he rummaged around her kitchen and fridge. American items — cheddar cheese, whole wheat bread, eggs, butter, the basics. There was no branding on any of the packaging, though jars of condiments bore Chinese characters printed on simple white labels. “Some kind of hot pepper jam,” he said to himself, dipping into one with his finger.

He fixed himself a grilled cheese sandwich, brewed some coffee in a percolator, and lit up an unfinished ganja roach sitting in the ashtray on the kitchen table. He took a closer look around the room. The books on the shelves and scattered magazines were all in Chinese. He fetched the bound tunics from the bathroom and hung them up on the wall across from the bed. The outer tunic read “WITCHES UNDERWEAR PARTY,” as it originally had when he first acquired it. From the kitchen he retrieved the condiment jar and traced out the characters from the label — “辣椒酱” — onto the tunic. “C’mon, Ray, where are you?” he muttered.

“Nei hai bingo aa?” said a young man with a red beard who had stepped into the apartment.

Malmquist jumped. “Who the hell are you? You scared the shit out of me.”

“Ngo hoji japlei aa?”

“Yeah, go ahead.” Malmquist motioned him in.

“Ngo hai soengmin ge pindim gungzok. Ngo zi hai soeng ze Ray jat zoeng pian.”

“Oh, you want to borrow one of her records? You work in the shop above?”

“Deoi. Ngo giu Mason,” he said, as he latched onto Malmquist’s penis.

“Yeah, I think I remember you working behind the counter when I first passed through the shop.”

Mason stared at Malmquist kindly while continuing to caress his cock. “Nei houci hou guduk,” he continued. “Nei zungji peidung singngoi maa?”

Malmquist looked down at the tumescence forming in the man’s fingers and back at him. “What are you doing to me? Are you gay?”

Mason beaked the fingers of his hand and made a stabbing motion at Malmquist’s groin. Then he repeated the gesture with his fist. “Kyungaau sigwat.”

“What?”

“Kyungaau,” he reiterated, pumping his fist. “Ngo hou sinzoeng.”

“You’re going to slug me in the balls if I don’t have sex with you?”

“Dang jathaa.” Holding up a finger, he dashed back upstairs.

Malmquist noticed a message on the tunic:

WE ARE IN TROUBLE

THEYRE FIREBOMBING US

AFRAID TO STAY OR LEAVE

DELILAH

“WHAT’S GOING ON?” he wrote back.

Mason returned, holding up a tube of some kind of cream. “Sehoengjau.”

“What’s this?”

Placing his thumbs at his temples, Mason expanded both hands over his head like a clown’s tease. “Luk, zidou maa?”

“You’re making fun of me?”

“Luk.”

“I am looking at you.”

Mason pointed to an image of a deer’s antlers printed on the tube. “Luk.”

“Oh, you mean a deer. Why a deer? What is this stuff? Really, I have no idea what’s going on.”

He guided Malmquist onto the bed and spread his legs.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“Fongsung.”

Smothering his fingers with the silken contents, he began to work them into Malmquist’s anus, first one, then two, before slowly, inexorably, as gracefully as a snake as thick as an arm, the whole hand slid in up to the wrist. Mason slowly pumped while Malmquist moaned. Then he noticed Delilah’s response on the tunic:

MY WINDOW IS GONE

I’M SCARED

WHAT DO I DO?

A young woman appeared at Ray’s door and asked Mason, “Nei jiu lau geinoi aa? Ngodei jau haakwu.”

“Hey, can she come over here and help? Hold that up in front of me so I can write on it.”

After some confusion she figured out she was to bring the tunic before Malmquist. On it he wrote: “CAN YOU HOLD ON TILL NIGHT THEN SLIP OUT? THE FENCE HOLE SOUTH NEAR EXPRESSWAY.”

“Vidi, vici — “

”Veni,” completed the parrot. Cornelius had arrived as well and squatted at Malmquist’s side.

“Shouldn’t it be ‘veni, vidi, vici’?”

“I saw, I conquered, I came. Standard greeting. Polite acknowledgement when chancing upon folks caught in flagrante.”

“Ouch! Slow down, will you? I’m not used to this. Will you please ask him why he is doing this to me?”

“You’re in the hands of a pro. He must have taken one look at you and knew you needed it.”

“Keoi seoijiu peidung ge singhong wai,” said Mason.

“He says your body was screaming for passive sex.”

“What’s that?”

“You have it done to you without worrying who’s doing it.”

“I have to say he’s good-looking enough.”

“He’s Belinda’s sister.”

“The waitress in the Heartland? No kidding.”

“You bet.”

“What’s the cream on his hand?”

“Oh, that’s musk oil. You know, from deer. A lubricant.”

Cornelius knelt down next to Malmquist and settled his scrotum sack on Malmquist’s shoulder. His lengthy tattooed member flopped across his chest and was within easy reach of his mouth.

“Are you gay too?” asked Malmquist.

“Ah, a word long out of use. There are no sexual divisions between people anymore. We’re equisexual. You offer yourself freely to anyone without prejudice.”

“Do I have to agree?”

“As long as you — ”

“cooperate,” said the parrot.

Two more women appeared in Ray’s doorway. “Neidei jigu mong ng mong aa?”

“Ngodei zikhak zau jiu jyunsing zo,” Mason told them.

“He’s keeping the customers waiting?”

“Dang ngo jyunsing keoi laa,” said one of the new arrivals, as she stepped onto the bed, pulled up her tunic and prepared to straddle Malmquist.

“See? She’s going to finish you off. Take your time. There’s no rush,” said Cornelius.

“Aa, yat bin!” said the girl holding up Malmquist’s tunic.

They all turned toward the tunic. In place of the usual writing was an image of a burning fire.

“Nigo hai jatgo fozuk ge singsi maa?” said Mason. He had withdrawn his fist from Malmquist’s extremity.

“Wow,” said Malmquist. “It’s so realistic. The flames are moving. It’s a city on fire. Chicago’s burning.”

“Must be the Great Chicago Fire of 2060,” said Cornelius.

“It’s a message from Delilah.”

*

“We’ve got a new arrival from New Gary, Chief. A girl.”

“I’ll get to her in a minute. This suspect is taking longer than usual. Hey, Ramirez, maybe you can help. She doesn’t speak a word of English. Or she’s bluffing. Can you figure out what language she’s speaking? Doesn’t sound like Spanish to me but maybe it is.”

“She don’t look Mexican. Es usted de México?” he asked the beautiful blonde with eyes as clear as ice. For a detainee, she wore an oddly impersonal expression.

“Quid est?”

“De dónde es usted?”

“Non intellego.”

“Crees que no eres inteligente?”

“Non intellego.”

“She says she thinks she’s not smart.”

“That does sound like a kind of retarded form of Spanish. Do you think she’s making it up as she goes along?”

“I can understand her but it’s not Spanish.”

“What is it? Dago talk?”

“You mean Italian? Don’t think so. Well, maybe it is. Eres italiano?”

“How’s she going to understand you if she’s Italian and you’re speaking to her in Spanish?”

“I think it’s the same word. De qué ciudad eres?”

“Vere ego non intellego.”

“Yep, she must be retarded.”

“She used the word ‘ego.’ Isn’t that Latin?”

“Yeah, it means conceited. Now she’s saying she’s conceited? Where are you from? Mexico? Italy? Rome?”

“Venio a Roma.”

“Oh, you’re from Rome, are you. Dumb, blond and conceited. Wherever the hell you’re from, how did you ever hook up with Malmquist?”

Another cop entered. “Chief, the girl we picked up a while ago admits knowing Malmquist but other than that isn’t talking. She does say she’s looking for a blonde named Attica. This wouldn’t be the gal, would it?”

“Bring her in.”

“Oh, Attica, there you are,” exclaimed Delilah as she was led in.

“Mi carissima!” said Attica, standing up.

“They say you’re involved in the Malmquist affair. What’s your role in all this?” asked the Chief.

“She’s innocent, I can tell you that. She got caught up in this and doesn’t know what’s going on. She’s from Ancient Rome.”

“You’re kidding,” he grinned.

“Well, she speaks Latin, doesn’t she?”

“Miss, she’s a suspect in a triple abduction and murder, and you’re a fugitive pedophile,” said the cop.

“I told you I have no idea what all this is about, nor does she. There’s no way she could have cooperated because she doesn’t speak English and she doesn’t even know what a pedophile is. And I don’t believe Jeff shot anybody.”

“Your good old friend Malmquist and this Roman gal here broke into a home at gunpoint and attempted to abduct the family’s daughter but were surprised by the parents. There was a struggle. He shot and killed a boy the two of them had kidnapped and then escaped with another boy they had kidnapped. She got left behind.”

“Yef non occidit illum puerum,” said Attica.

“Who was killed?” asked Delilah. “Gunther?”

“Tuus puer occisus est!”

“Gunther’s dead? No! How?” cried Delilah.

“Alter puer occidit puerum!” gestured Attica.

“See! It wasn’t Jeff who killed the boy. It was the other boy who killed him. Jeff would never kill anyone.”

“But he disappeared with the boy. Do you have any idea where they might have gone? Hiding out at your place, perhaps?”

“I just came from there.”

“We know that.”

“Do you officers have any idea what’s happening? We are being attacked by you. My building was firebombed. Someone blasted into my apartment through the window.”

“Where did you get the FN P90?”

“The what?”

“The submachine gun you had with you.”

“Oh, that. An obese teenage boy. Younger than me. He was the one shooting into my apartment. But friendly fire got him first. His dead body was half hanging inside my basement window and blood was streaming out of his mouth — ”

“You’d better hope it wasn’t you who shot him.”

“Check the bullet in his body when you get around to it. I couldn’t get out of my apartment. The building was on fire and the smoke poured in when I opened the door. His body was blocking the window. The only way I could escape was by pulling him all the way through. He must have weighed 300 pounds. I don’t know how I managed. Finally I dragged him through and that’s when I saw where he’d been shot — in the ass! I crawled out the window and ran for my life. Can you blame me for grabbing his gun and trying to save myself? There’s a hole in the fence in a hidden place where there’s no shooting going on. I figured Chicago was now safer than New Gary. Why are we being attacked anyway?”

“Where were you planning to take the aircab?”

“To the address where I was told I could find Attica.”

“You knew that was futile, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I knew I would be tracked but I had a window of opportunity. Or I thought I did. It rejected my payment but started flying anyway and brought me — ”

“Right here. All pedophiles are entitled to a free tour of Chicago’s major attraction — the Pedo Unit. We want you to tell us what you know about the Malmquist abduction.”

“I told you guys I know nothing about it. I spoke with Jeff just yesterday and all he said was he was in trouble in Chicago. He didn’t give any details.”

“Where is he?”

“Chicago. Fifty-five years in the future.”

“Don’t test our patience.”

“What is your relationship with him, anyway?” said the Chief.

“We’re friends.”

“You realize, don’t you, that he’s a middle-aged man and you’re a minor?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Were you two in a sexual relationship?”

“None of your business.”

“Don’t forget where you are, Delilah Power. As a convicted pedophile, you have no rights.”

“So what? Go ahead and send me back to New Gary. You can’t scare me.”

“No, we’ll just keep you here. Forever. No one will ever know. We can do anything to you.”

“Chief, the crowd outside is getting a bit unruly,” said a third cop who had entered.

“Crowd? I thought it was just a group of them.”

“Yeah. Looks to be about a thousand now. And they’re all heavily armed.”

“Damn it. What do they want?”

“They’re demanding we turn all pedophiles in our custody over to them.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Should we burn them?”

“Yeah. Keep it less lethal, though. I thought the Commissioner was dealing with this.”

“He and the Mayor, Sir, they got their hands full with all the fires and the riots going on.”

“Let me take care of these two first.”

When the cops had left, the Commissioner turned back to Delilah. “You and your little cabal have created one helluva mess.”

“What mess?”

“Chicago’s up in arms.”

“Why?”

He slammed the table with his fist. “Because of the triple abduction and homicide carried out by your armed-and-dangerous boyfriend or whatever he is and his foreign agent here!”

“Abductio et homicidium?” said Attica.

“Yes, homicide. So she does understand English. Do you admit to the abduction and homicide?” he asked Attica.

“Admitto? Non admitto!”

“I’m telling you it’s impossible she could have committed murder. Neither did Jeff. He was framed and it was that other boy. I’m sure of it. And if you do anything to me, Inspector Melynchuk will find out, because he’s in charge of us in New Gary. In fact I’m going to contact him right now.”

“Oh, my god, the naivety. You think a two-bit cop in New Gary is going to be of any help to you?”

Delilah traced out the words “INSP MELYNCHUK I NEED NEW ROME IN CHINESE. DELILAH.”

“What are you doing, playing with yourself?”

“I’m sending him a message.”

“What is that, some kind of pedo code?”

“Wait.” Delilah took the new travel tunic out of her pocket and handed it to Attica. “Here, put this on.”

Attica took off her T-shirt and skirt and slipped the tunic over her naked body.

“Oh, so you’re putting on a strip show for me now?” said the Chief. “Maybe we should take her outside where she can have a real audience. That’ll pacify them.”

“HURRY PLEASE INSPECTOR,” Delilah wrote on herself.

“Hey, can I have some fun playing magical crayons on your titties too?” he said, dragging his finger back and forth across Delilah’s chest and poking her breasts. “Oh, yeah, baby, you like playing with yourself? Can I play too? Ooh, I like it, such big soft baby flesh — ”

“Stop it!” Delilah took off her outer tunic. “Attica, put this on too.”

As soon as Attica had the tunic in place, a message appeared on it:

新羅馬

“Yeah, baby, give it to me! And braless yet. Look at that jiggle,” the Chief said.

As he continued to rough up her bosom, she started to trace over the characters on Attica’s chest. He pulled her hand away and placed it on his groin. “Hey, don’t I get any respect? Don’t write on her, write on me.”

“Please, officer, let me finish writing my message, and you can do anything you want with me. I promise,” she told him. “I’ll even sleep with you if you want.”

“Are you trying to bribe me? You know everything you’re saying is being recorded.”

“No, it isn’t. Otherwise you wouldn’t be compromising yourself with a minor.”

“All right, let’s just keep things nice and quiet, baby. How about you just give me a little strip show like she did and you can finish your message.”

Delilah pulled her tunic off her shoulder and exposed a breast.

“Yeah, show it to me, baby, all of it. Ooh, yeah.” He tweaked her nipple and yanked the tunic down off the other breast. “Fucking show it to me baby! All of it, you dirty cunt! You think you can fuck with me? Do you know who I am?”

His tweaking grew more spirited, until he was tugging at them violently and slapping them. He ripped off her tunic and began tearing it to shreds.

“What are you doing?” Delilah screamed.

“What is this fucking thing you think can be used as a communication device? Who do think you’re fooling?” he yelled. He slapped her in the face and knocked her down. “You think you can fuck with me!”

“Desine! Noli eam battuere!” shouted Attica.

“You telling me what to do, you fucking Dago whore?”

He punched Attica in the face and tore off her tunics as well. As he proceeded to shred them, she grabbed a long piece off the floor, looped it around the cop’s neck and pulled. He fell down, his legs kicking as he struggled to grasp at the cord. Attica sat on his chest and tightened it, while Delilah sat on his legs behind her, placed the front patches of the tunic on his torso and traced out the characters.

The three of them vanished.

*      *      *

Previous chapter: Ch. 21: Gwongzau

Next chapter: Ch. 23: Xinluoma (upcoming)

Chapter 1: New Gary, IN

[image error]Forthcoming January 2018:

The Kitchens of Canton, a novel

You might also be interested in:

Reset, a play

Newsex, a play

Lust & Philosophy, a novel

Filed under: Fiction Tagged: China expat novel, Dystopian satire

The Kitchens of Canton, a novel. Ch. 21: Gwongzau

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People build their lives out of a mixture of reality and symbols. I’ll provide an example from my earlier Chicago days. I once rented the upper floor of a house; the owner lived on the lower floor. He was out of town one winter and asked me to keep an eye on the central heating unit’s pilot light to make sure it was always on. That much at least, the reality principle guided his life. One day I was back down in the basement and noticed the smell of gas coming from a gas line along the ceiling. The most prompt and reliable public service in any city, even faster than an ambulance or the police, is the gas company when you call their emergency number. They were there in a few minutes, shut off the gas, unscrewed the leaky pipe, applied glue to the threads and screwed it back in. “What the hell is he doing attaching pipes without pipe dope!” they yelled.

I got on the phone to inform my landlord he had to have all his gas lines refitted with pipe dope as soon as possible.

“Pipe dope?”

“It’s a glue, a sealant, to prevent gas from escaping through the joints.”

In other words, his house was possibly days or hours away from being blown sky high. That didn’t stop him too from yelling at me. He was outraged I had approved the gas company’s bill for the service without consulting him first. He was moreover incredulous he could possibly have improperly fitted his own gas lines. Again I tried to explain it was the gas company, not me, that fixed the leaky pipe, and as it was an immediate public threat they didn’t need his permission. No matter. How dare I authorize an unjustified intrusion on his property? It was as if his very identity had been violated. I had messed with his independence, his self-sufficiency, his rights — his symbols. He did finally swallow the humiliation and accepted the need to refit the pipes, but it goes to show how strong resistance to reality can be among symbol-driven types.

Whole countries can be symbol dominated, less beholden to the dictates of reality than elsewhere. The USA was particularly invested in symbols. This increased over time with the nation’s rightward drift and decline of the economy. Down the decades, specters driven by their own logic began to overshadow reality. Americans were traditionally known for a host of admirable qualities — openness and optimism, hospitality and trust, adventurousness and ingenuity. But these national traits became twisted into naivety, stupidity, hostility, recklessness, and the like. People retreated into their homes in a growing collective paranoia, distrustful of their neighbors. Hatred of government, always simmering, reached a boiling point, and the citizenry stopped paying taxes en masse. Though the incident with my landlord was hardly a factor, the rise in residential gas explosions was one conspicuous consequence of the collapse in municipal services. Many of these explosions were catastrophic, given the huge stores of firearms and munitions people hoarded in their basements. It all culminated in the Great Chicago Fire of 2060.

The obsession with guns was fueled by another cultural phenomenon that had gathered momentum over the decades, one which the Russians and the Chinese were quick to exploit. They saw the potential in the blissfully vulnerable American psyche and came up with a grand scheme as brilliant as that of the East India Company’s opium-for-tea trade in the nineteenth century. The Russians had already caused the Internet to morph into something completely different from its innocent heyday; its bustling surface now merely reflected the criminal activity underneath, like a corpse vibrating from its teeming colonies of worms and mites. The malign manipulation ranged from sex scammers milking American men of everything they had to presidential elections. But far more was at stake.

Americans held a strong moral streak, an untapped free-floating energy ever seeking righteous expression, a drive for justice that could be unleashed. They were known as well to have had a long, fraught, schizophrenic-like attitude toward sex, celebrating it with one hand while slapping it down with the other. Ritual social bloodletting required the regular identification and shaming of sexual deviants. Only the nature of the offenses changed over the eras, never their extent or the perpetual need for their public airing. It was well known whom Americans across the entire political spectrum, from antifa anarchists to survivalist militias, regarded as the worst of the worst. The only problem was there weren’t enough of them. Untold legions there surely were yet in hiding, in their secret societies. They needed ferreting out. There were only occasional scandals in the news when there could be a media explosion. The Chinese had the Internet expertise but lacked an understanding of the Western soul. The Russians did not lack for this understanding. They knew what turned the US on, and not only did they have the computer expertise, they did it for sport. They hacked for fun, one savvy technoteen for every dumb American. And then when they had a eureka moment and connected the dots, the hacking became a lot more lucrative.

The Russians were fully at home in the dark web, the wilds of cyberspace where illegal activity flourished. So were pedophiles. Why not flush them out for profit? It was easy enough to track them down in the web’s obscure corners where they lurked. Soon every pedophile who had ever ventured into the virtual underworld got the unpleasant news over morning coffee: their identity would be revealed if they didn’t fork over a sum equivalent to their annual salary. Since few could pay up, they were promptly outed to the media and the local authorities, while their community, through a new “pedophile” tax (the one tax enjoying popular support), paid the ransom on the suspect’s behalf. Tentative pedophiles who merely engaged children in online conversation were easy bait as well, as were those who fell for Russian teens posing as adults for pay. It was only a small step to shadier means of rounding up child molesters: manufacture them. Average Joes guilty of no more than dabbling in adult porn had their identity attached to toddler porn. They too only learned about it when the discombobulating ultimatum flashed across their screen. It’s not easy to clear your name once your identity has been stolen, all the more so after it’s been smeared, your mugshot on the nightly news, your electronics seized by the police. The identities of innocent adults working as primary school teachers, sports coaches of juveniles, music tutors of children, and every single priest and minister were next in line to be tampered with and incomprehensibly compromised. Anyone whose employment or activities provided any kind of circumstantial evidence was fair game.

Quite a few Russians became exceedingly wealthy on the tens, indeed hundreds of thousands of Americans zoned or driven out of their neighborhoods and cities and exiled to rural trailer parks. But the biggest prize was legislation passed by Congress to raise the age of consent from eighteen to twenty-one — in line with the drinking age. To be sure, this was most draconian and un-American and garnered scant popular support, despite the celebratory atmosphere of the great pedophile cleansing. It passed when the Russians agreed to share the profits from this huge new demographic with the lawmakers. A six-month grace period was proffered to defuse the anticipated resistance, enough time for those in the age range to either extricate themselves from any relationship or legitimize it in matrimony before they once again became minors. Nevertheless, the outrage against this basic assault on rights and freedom was deeply underestimated. Pedophiles were one thing; criminalizing legal adult relationships was another. Millions planned to disobey and flaunt their sex life on principle. What could the authorities do about it?

Plenty, it turned out. All the evidence that was needed was elegantly assembled through a combination of GPS tracking, facial recognition, financial transactions, and self-incriminating personal messaging. The half-year window gave the hackers ample time to compile comprehensive sexual histories of every American in the eighteen-to-twenty cohort and older who were tied with them. When the big day arrived, the fate of the millions who declined to sever relations with their intimates was already decided. They were expelled from universities, fired from their jobs, and evicted from their apartments. But there was not enough space in the trailer parks to house the newly exiled masses. Concentration camps the size of cities needed to be quickly constructed. Here again China offered its expertise in the rapid mobilization of populations. The newly reigning superpower was delighted at what the Russian devils had accomplished and would be reaping much of the windfall, since the US was at a significant disadvantage in the business arrangement.

The exiles themselves were put to work in the great construction boom and paid prison wages, while developers and suppliers made fortunes. The profits were funneled back to China, invigorating that country’s leisure industry, with the new fad for erecting full-scale replicas of ancient capitals: initially that of Chang’an and later the great cities of Western antiquity — Rome, Athens, even a Babylon. Italians, Greeks, and Iraqis respectively were invited to escape their moribund economies to help build the curious cities. But they had been deceived and while housed and fed were never paid for their labor, prevented from returning home and forthwith enslaved for the purpose of manning the cities as “natives.” Their feeble protests were brushed off. They had done their homelands a patriotic service by slashing domestic unemployment, and their embassies intended to keep things that way. China for its part, having already bought up most of the world’s economies, was too powerful to be pushed around anymore.

Meanwhile, the guilty millions not dragooned into construction were employed in gargantuan gun factories, another expanding industry. No propaganda campaign was necessary to persuade freaked-out Americans to panic-buy arms against the looming pedophile menace. You’d expect people might have sighed with relief now that the monsters had been largely cleared out of the cities. Paradoxically the opposite happened. The more of them were flushed out, the more there seemed to be, and the more fear of them grew. If you thought people had a lot of guns back in 2015, multiply by a factor of ten and that’s what every citizen from children on up now boasted. Loaded pistols hung on Christmas trees as ornaments and stockings were designed to hold rifles. One would think Americans were gearing up for a new civil war. That is exactly what transpired.

When every last seeming pedophile had been identified and driven out, the uncertainties and the unease only skyrocketed. Surely they were massing for revenge. Would they soon rebound supercharged like an army of zombies? Was it not a terrible mistake not to have had them all done away with at the start instead of merely exiling them? The concentration camps where they were now pullulating were a mounting peril. Were they not stealing guns at the factories and arming themselves? Were they not already sneaking back into the city to destroy us? The logical thing to do was to bring the war to them, to the concentration camps, while there was still time. But there were obstacles. The government wouldn’t countenance a disruption of business with the Chinese and the Russians, and American citizens were too suspicious of each other anyway to organize more than vigilante mobs.

An unfortunate incident confirmed suspicions and overturned the uneasy state of affairs. A New Gary pedophile snuck into Chicago with the aid of a European female. They staged a brazen triple abduction of two boys and a girl from three separate homes before being caught in the third, but not before killing one of the boys and making off with the other; their whereabouts remained unknown and the case was never solved. But galvanized into action, the mobs wasted no time in going after the phantom fugitives. At the very moment the roaming armed were kicking open doors in their neighborhoods hunting down molesters supposedly sheltered in basements, their own basements were being ransacked. Many fought back, and many were killed. No one was charged with homicide, as everyone could claim self-defense. Heavier munitions in the form of anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns pulverized houses and caused explosions from stockpiled ammo and ruptured gas lines. Community conflagrations dotted Chicago and only a miracle enabled the diminished fire department — one of the few public services left — to gain the upper hand and prevent a city-wide firestorm.

Meanwhile, the Chicago incident sparked riots and burnings in cities across the country. Things were coming to a head, as millions lost their homes to the fires and had nowhere to go. The heavily armed refugees began to merge into columns and parades which wended their way through the smoky streets toward the same destination: the concentration camps. New Gary was the first to be breached; other cities followed.

This much was recognized: business as usual was clearly unsustainable. Americans’ bizarre stockpiling of guns had become a calamitous vicious circle. The Chinese stood much to lose unless things were quickly contained and martial law declared. Their military stepped in and rational policy took over. In a swift, efficient and remorseless nationwide operation, they confiscated the guns, criminalized gun ownership and dismantled the US Government. The ultimate form of control is through language. As this can’t be forced at gunpoint, Americans were gradually weaned off English over the following decades. You could continue to speak English, but your children were educated in Cantonese-medium schools; and then your generation died off. Victory has its own logic, and the Chinese went on to replicate their model across the Americas and on other continents.

Thus much I learned from the holographic history I’ve been entertained with of late and will be indefinitely. Now that it is all over, I have never felt more clear-headed and relaxed. But first things first. For the record, I will admit having abducted Danny, but I emphatically deny killing Gunther, and I deny attempting to abduct Marvin’s daughter; it was they who abducted me. I am after all the prime witness. Nor did that affair have anything to do with how I wound up in Canton. Not because it took place fifty-five years ago, but they never caught me.

Let’s get back to the present, for something dramatic took place today. I had my first visit from Ingmon and the “boss” (you recall it’s Ingmon who was discovered to be the boss). It was so gratifying to see their faces.

“Neihou maa?” said a cheery Ingmon. “Nei kutjing san waanging aa?”

I guess she wants to know how I’m adapting to my new surroundings. Even if I did understand her exact meaning, I can’t respond. Our ears have been electronically wired to receive audio signals through an outside microphone, but we can’t speak. Though I am fully conscious, I can’t even blink my eyes. I try to emote through my face and maybe subtle expressions are visible to them but I don’t know. From my field of vision, which is fixed straight ahead, I can only see others like myself preserved throughout the hall, and their occasional visitors. I cannot look up or down, and wouldn’t see much anyway, below the glass box enclosing my head in a liquid matrix. I can turn on the hologram with a thought command and tune in to anything I want. A world of knowledge is at my mental fingertips, enough to keep me busy for eternity. However, the presence of a human visitor is obviously preferred. How lucky I am to have Ingmon and the boss, luckier still if Wingyee or Ray happen to make it one day.

As if on cue, Ingmon produces a plastic paper and holds it before me. It contains a message in English, which reads: “Hi Jeff. Wingyee made sure I got this to you. How are you doing over there? Really sorry to hear about the verdict. I had no idea. Anyway I finally figured out what happened to myself, my disappearance and all that and the gaps in my memory over the years. In case you haven’t heard, I was finally able to escape from the fake Ancient Rome of 2115, not that of 2060 you recall from your times there with good old Delilah. To make a long story short, I was there all along! Next time I’ll tell you what to happened to me after you left in more detail. I just wanted to make sure you got this for now. Miss you. Be lovable, Ray. P.S. Cornelius says hi.”

*      *      *

Previous chapter: Ch. 20: Roma

Next chapter: Ch. 22: Chicago (upcoming)

Chapter 1: New Gary, IN

[image error]Forthcoming January 2018:

The Kitchens of Canton, a novel

You might also be interested in:

Reset, a play

Newsex, a play

Lust & Philosophy, a novel

Filed under: Fiction Tagged: China expat novel, Dystopian satire

The Kitchens of Canton, a novel. Ch. 20: Roma

 

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“Stop shooting!” yelled Malmquist.

“What happened?”

“Get out of the cage.”

“It’s not a cage. We’re stuck under a board. I can’t move my arm.”

Malmquist crawled out from under the board. It was a toppled litter. He extracted Danny’s arm and dragged the rest of him free. There had been screams. A pair of Roman ladies lay flung on the ground next to them. Several slaves bent over another person who was prostrate. A growing pool of blood and commotion. Voices exclaiming, “Quid accidit?”

“Let’s get out of here, now! Follow me.”

“Where’s my gun?”

“We have no time to talk.”

Confusion and the crush of the crowd enabled them to escape. Malmquist’s tunics were both torn open and he grasped them to hide his nakedness as they dashed out of Trajan’s Forum and through the marketplace in back.

“Don’t you tell me what to do, bandage head. You were trying to assault me just now! Where the fuck are we?”

“Listen, you brat. This is Ancient Rome. One of your gunshots caused that pool of blood just now. You’d better pray it was only a slave or we’re going to be executed on the spot. I’m taking us somewhere safe.”

Danny looked around him at the dizzying squalor of the Argiletum. “Where are we? What’s with the scag clothes? Who are all these filthy people in sheets and rags?”

Malmquist made a beeline toward Syria’s brothel, dragging Danny by the arm. “I told you, Ancient Rome.”

“Give me a break. And what’s all this scuz and sewage on the street? Is it jism?”

“What?”

“It’s jism, all right. I know the smell of jism, turd face. That’s pedo waste flowing along the street and you’ve ambushed me in a street full of pedos.”

Danny broke free of Malmquist’s grasp. He produced his Magpul FMG9 folding machinegun from his back pocket and pointed it at him, voice quivering. “Now I know what’s going on. You kidnapped me. You knocked me unconscious in that cage and smuggled me into New Gary. If you don’t get me back to Chicago immediately, I’ll blow you away along with everyone else on this street!”

“You brought that gun as well?”

“I should have blown you away that day in Munchees. I could have in self-defense and gotten off scot-free, and that’s what I’m going to do now. You have ten seconds to get me out of here.”

“We are not in New Gary, Danny. I’m the only person who can get you out of here and if you kill me you’re stuck here for good. And that gun won’t do you much good against Roman sharpshooters with bows and arrows.”

“To hell with you, pedo! The Chicago police will rescue me and they’re on the way.”

“Put your gun down, Danny.”

“Quid agis?” said Syria, who had stepped out, along with a naked Giulia in gold filaments and a tall lad dressed as a female, who had apparently been in the midst of someone’s intimate ministrations, for poking out of his robes was a semi-tumescent bejeweled penis.

“Ah, Jeff, sei tornato,” said Giulia. “Chi è il ragazzo?”

“You’re bringing me to these perverts?” said Danny, now in tears. “Fuck you, asshole! You’re dead — ”

As Danny pulled the trigger the gun was snatched away by a burly man dressed in an immaculate toga, and the bullets missed their target. The recoil of the discharge sent the gun flying. Smacking Danny away with his hand, the man picked up the gun and looked at it with curiosity.

The tall lad approached. “Qui est puer?”

The burly man picked Danny up by the hair and brandished a knife. “Imperator, interficiam eum?”

The lad caressed Danny’s face. “Numquid times ne tibi non placeam, bellus puer?” Pulling him into Syria’s brothel by the edge of his pants, he added, “Quid dicis, muliebris patientiae scortum, cuius ne spiritus purus est?”

“Who the fuck are you? Oh, no, your dick is sticking out,” said Danny.

“Quod vestimenta sua novis?” wondered the lad, tugging at Danny’s jeans.

“Giulia, the kid doesn’t know where he is. Don’t let them hurt him,” said Malmquist.

“Cosa vuole fare?” she asked.

“Vere, quia a pulcher puer,” said the crossdressing lad, stroking Danny’s blond locks as the man in the toga held him aloft. “Mi carissime.”

Danny squirmed under the man’s grip. “Keep off me, you fucking pedo!”

“Digli di comportarsi bene. È l’imperatore,” Giulia cautioned Malmquist.

“I know.”

“Inimica est,” said the lad, pouting. “Comprehende eum.”

The man in the toga whisked Danny back to the street and instructed Malmquist to follow. Just then another toga-clad man approached in urgency, exclaiming, “Imperator, dux occisus est.”

“Quid est?”

“Celeriter!”

Syria held Giulia back as the others rushed up the street. “Mane.”

“Cosa sta succedento?” asked Giulia.

“Age tuum negotium.”

A crowd was gathered across from Nerva’s Forum. A toga-clad man lay on the ground in a pool of blood next to a horse. More muscular types materialized out of nowhere and cleared a path for the tall lad, trailed by Malmquist and Danny. The crowd spoke in hushed voices, “Praetorianus occisus est.”

“Quis occidit eum?” asked the lad.

“Nescimus.”

“He did it!” yelled Danny, pointing to the burly fellow holding his FMG9.

The man glanced at the machinegun and back at the body in confusion.

“Quis est puer?” the crowd asked. “Quomodo audeat accusare eum.”

“Quod telum est?” said the lad, pointing to Danny’s gun.

“Non certus,” said the burly man, who was examining the gun. “Iacit sagittas invisibiles?”

“Look at the mess you got us into, bright boy,” said Malmquist. “They don’t get it. But we will finally be held responsible.”

“Look what he’s doing. He’s pointing the gun at himself. Don’t look into the barrel, you moron!” yelled Danny.

A moment later there was a loud crack and a spray of blood. The man had shot himself in the face. The ladyboy fainted and was caught in the arms of a toga-clad bodyguard. Seconds later he revived and issued a command. They all now headed in the direction of the Roman Forum, whisking Malmquist and Danny along.

“Where are we going?”

“To the palace, I assume. Either that or a dungeon,” said Malmquist.

“Who are these men?”

“The Praetorian Guard. That teenager dressed as a lady is the emperor. I suggest you be on your best behavior.”

“I want my gun back.”

“Fat chance of that. Start getting used to being unarmed.”

“They will give it back when they’re out of ammo and need my help to get more.”

They passed through the Forum and headed up the Via Nova.

“I recognize this street,” said Malmquist. “We’re going up the Palatine Hill. Who knows, if we survive this ordeal, you might eventually get to see the Circus Maximus on the other side. They have wholesome activities there like chariot racing, more suitable for someone your age than collecting guns.”

“I know what chariot racing is, ass wipe. Guns would make it a lot more fun, like cowboys and Indians. Blow the drivers right out of their chariots.”

“At least you’re getting the greatest history lesson ever. Do you even attend school?”

“Estis fugitivi?” one of the bodyguards asked Malmquist.

“No, we’re not fugitives.”

“Quid agitis? Germanici?”

“No, we’re not Germans.”

“Britannici?”

“Close enough.”

Malmquist and Danny were sent into the palace and dumped on silver-framed sofas in a large gold-lined hall porticoed with crystal columns. Rose petals wafted down from a ceiling of finely sculpted ivory; a dome made of sapphire suffused the hall in a dusky blue glow. Tigers and leopards ambled about, caressing the new guests with their tails. The guards laughed as Danny hyperventilated in a panic.

“They must be tame,” said Malmquist.

The emperor made his appearance minutes later in a chariot drawn by four naked women. He was dressed in a toga woven of fine gold thread and wore a jewel-encrusted diadem on his crown. He held Danny’s machinegun upright like a sceptre. As soon as he sat down across from the two guests, their cushions deflated and they dropped through the sofa frame onto the floor. The emperor and everyone else present laughed hysterically.

“Ubi hoc telus adeptus est?” the emperor asked them.

“Non linguam latinam loquuntur,” one of the toga-clad men responded on their behalf.

“Unde venerunt?”

“Nescimus.”

“Quam linguam loquuntur?”

“Nescimus.”

“Convocate interpretes,” said the emperor.

“I think they’re trying to figure out what language we speak,” said Malmquist.

The two were served a platter with several steaming cone-shaped objects. They were instructed to slice them open with knives and partake.

“What are these?” Malmquist asked.

A grinning servant mimed a woman’s breasts.

“Are these tits? No fucking way am I going to eat this,” snapped Danny.

“I think they’re sow’s teats, in fact,” said Malmquist. “I hope.”

He cut into one and something shiny spilled out — gemstones. Another general burst of laughter. A servant spiced up the dish by flinging a fistful of gold dust on it. More laughter.

“You need to play along and not get angry,” Malmquist nudged Danny.

The emperor was distracted and fiddling with the gun. A round shot off and the strange black object that was lighter than iron flew out of his grasp from the recoil. They all looked around and nobody seemed to be hurt.

“They have no fucking idea how to fire a gun.”

“Of course, they don’t.”

“I need to teach you idiots. Here, give me the gun.”

“Noli dare ei telum, imperator. Etiam periculosum,” warned one of the bodyguards.

“Utique,” said the emperor. “Tenete eum dum docet me quomodo uti.”

“Don’t make any sudden moves, Danny, or we’re both dead.”

A knife at his throat and his arms grasped by the guards, Danny instructed the emperor on how to brace the rifle against the shoulder. He also learned how to lock and unlock the safety, and how to fold up and unfold the gun into its little self-contained box, all of which mesmerized the men in togas. A guard grabbing Danny’s shoulder noticed something under his shirt and pulled it off.

“Give me my shirt back, asshole!”

His torsos and legs were crisscrossed with belts of magazine clips — enough ammunition to keep the gun in operation for some time. This was quickly figured out and Danny was stripped down to his underpants. “No!” he yelled, crying. “Give me back my ammo.”

The interpreters were brought in, but the emperor had gone off somewhere with his new toy.

Soon a dreamy, high-pitched voice could be heard from another hall, calling out, “Puer carissime!”

The faces of the guards and attendants were strained with suppressed laughter.

“Veni, puer carissime. Veni,” the voice echoed.

“What’s that?” asked Danny. “Someone singing?”

“I think someone’s being summoned.”

The naked sylphs then rolled the chariot up to Danny. “Escende,” the guards urged him.

“Veni, puer carissime,” the voice repeated from afar.

“What’s going on?”

“You’re being ordered to ride the chariot.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter why. You don’t have much choice.”

“I can’t ride this fucking thing. Won’t you come with me? I’m scared.”

Danny in his underwear and Malmquist in his torn rags ascended the carriage. The jiggling slaves swept them into another chamber considerably bigger than the former, resembling the frigidarium of the Caracalla baths but vaster still. The airy space contained a lake surrounded by woods. An oculus in the glass roof ushered in a beam of moonlight which fell on a shabby little structure on an island in the lake, a hovel with telltale lanterns hung over the entrance — and the illumined face of the emperor poking out of the curtained doorway.

“I recognize those lanterns,” said Malmquist. “It’s a brothel. He built a brothel in the palace!”

The chariot rolled over a bridge and pulled up to the hovel’s entrance. The emperor was back in female apparel. “Ah, venisti, mi carissime,” he said, reaching out to the boy.

“Help!” screamed Danny, as he was pushed into the hovel’s entrance by the giggling girls. A leopard slipped in after him.

“As for myself, I’m getting the hell out of here,” said Malmquist to no one in particular, while writing the word “ROMA” on his tunic. A moment later he was in Trajan’s Forum. “Great, it worked.”

Syria and Giulia were shocked to see him back at the brothel, having assumed he and the boy might never be heard from again.

“Quello che è successo?”

“Ubi est puer?”

“I may not have much time,” said Malmquist, catching his breath. “Can you fix these tunics? You can just sew them together as one for now.” Syria went to get a needle and thread. “No, wait. Syria, can you watch the street?” He pointed toward the Forum. “Giulia can sew this up.”

“Remeabunt?”

“I don’t know, but I can’t take any chances. Giulia, do you like it here? Do you want to come back with me or stay here for good?”

“Mi piace essere quì. Non sono ancora pronto per tornare indietro.”

“Quando Attica remeabit?” asked Syria.

“She’s not ready to come back yet.”

“Quid?”

Giulia particularly seemed to miss Attica. “Che cosa intende?”

“Actually she hasn’t seen New Rome yet.”

“Che cosa?”

“I can’t explain now. I have to go back first.” He held her face between his hands. “Giulia, I don’t know if I’ll be coming back here. But Delilah can come and get you if you want.”

“Dilaila?”

“Yeah. We’ll have her sent here to check up on you, and she’ll have a new tunic with her in case you can’t get your tunic back from Attica.”

“Attica ha preso la mia tunica?”

“If she doesn’t come back, that is.”

“Non tornerà?”

“I don’t know.”

“Non capisco.”

“Someone will be back for you, trust me.”

Giulia finished sewing up the tunics and then exclaimed, “Cosa significa?”

A message on Malmquist’s tunic read:

YOU THERE JEFF?

FOR YOUR SAFETY

DO NOT RETURN

TO NEW GARY

OR CHICAGO

MELYNCHUK

When he inquired back as to why, he received the following response:

YOU’RE WANTED

FOR MURDER

AND ABDUCTION

IN BOTH CITIES

ALL OVER THE NEWS

“Oh, shit. What do I do?” He considered for a moment before writing back, “WHAT’S THE CHINESE FOR CHICAGO? ASK THE ANDROID. NO. NOT CHICAGO. NEW GARY. GIVE ME THE SAME CHARACTERS AS LAST TIME.”

When Melynchuk responded, Malmquist traced over the characters with his finger and found himself deposited in a vaguely familiar location: the New Gary cafeteria, year 2115.

He quickly abandoned the restaurant before attracting any unwanted attention and made his way over to Delilah’s place. The tenements had undergone extensive gentrification over the preceding half century. At least that’s what the dazzling painted colors causing each building to shine like a peacock and the rich flora and vegetation sprouting from the windows as organically as body hair from a girl’s armpit suggested. He went over to peer through the windows of the flat she had occupied and saw a group of young people sitting in a circle and fondling one another’s genitals. Delilah was not among them, either the younger or the elder, and her apartment’s décor was missing as well.

He made his way over to Broadway. There was no bar where the bar had been. He followed the flow of people toward the lake and figured out the means of getting to Chicago by ferry, and eventually, the Heartland Café Museum.

“They just left,” said Cornelius.

“Where did they go?”

“To that fake Ancient Rome you told me about in China. They’re trying to find Ray.”

“I know.”

“And Wingyee is looking for you as well.”

“I want to go to Ray’s place. You can tell Wingyee that I’m here, and will cooperate fully with the investigation.”

“Do you have any idea where Ray might be?”

“Chinese Rome, 2115. And I have no idea how to get there.”

*      *      *

Previous chapter: Ch. 19: New Gary

Next chapter: Ch. 21: Gwongzau (upcoming)

Chapter 1: New Gary, IN

[image error]Forthcoming January 2018:

The Kitchens of Canton, a novel

You might also be interested in:

Reset, a play

Newsex, a play

Lust & Philosophy, a novel

Filed under: Fiction Tagged: Chinese expat fiction, Dystopian satire

The Kitchens of Canton, a novel. Ch. 19: New Gary

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Ganja haze hung in the air and Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy blared on the stereo when the buzzer rang. Delilah turned the music down. Gunther entered with a strange woman. “Leroy dropped her off. He said to take care of her.”

“Hoc est lupanar?” the woman asked.

“Who is she?”

The woman walked around the room as if looking for something. She went up to the stereo and pointed to the speakers. “Ubi musici?” she asked, peeking around and behind the speakers.

“What’s she doing?” asked Gunther.

“I don’t know.”

The woman then noticed the spinning record on the turntable and grabbed the tone arm, making a blood-curdling scratch.

“Oh, fuck, you just ruined my record!”

She looked up at them in confusion, the tone arm still in her fist. “Ubi musici?”

“What’s the matter with her? Is she retarded?”

Delilah pulled her away from the stereo and sat her down on the bed. “Who are you?”

“Quis es tu?” Pointing to Gunther, she asked, “Ille aquariolus est?”

“What’s that, Spanish?”

“She doesn’t look Mexican,” said Gunther.

“Do you know any Spanish?”

“Not much. I hate Spanish class.”

“You must know something. Can you ask her where she comes from?”

“Donde something—oh, yeah, donde es? I think. Donde es?”

“Non intelligitis,” the woman said.

“Are you a pedophile?”

“Quid est?”

“Pedophile. You know, child molester.”

“Obviously, she doesn’t understand, Delilah.”

“Pedo—?”

“Pedo. Phile.”

“Ohe! Pedo?” she said, embarrassed, pointing to her buttocks.

“Well, that’s one way they do it.”

She pointed to Delilah. “Pedere te amo?”

“No, I am not a pedophile. I mean I’m not into that.”

“Quid me rogas?”

“What’s that in Spanish?”

“I don’t think it’s Spanish.”

“Pedere,” the woman reiterated, pointing again to her buttocks.

“Oh, gross, she farted,” said Gunther. “Stand back!”

Delilah laughed. “I don’t think we’re getting anywhere.”

The woman pointed to her stomach. “Esurio.”

“You’re hungry?”

A bowl of tortilla chips and salsa was fetched. She took one in her fingertips, crunched into it and chewed it slowly with a scowl.

“Well, now we know she’s not Mexican,” said Gunther.

“Hey, do you think she’s Jeff’s friend? Maybe he met her in that fake Ancient Rome in China with all the Italian slaves and she somehow got teleported here. Is she speaking Italian?”

“Doesn’t sound like Italian either.”

“I wonder where he is.”

“Perhaps he’ll show up later.”

“Ask her if she knows Jeff.”

“I can’t remember how to say that in Spanish.”

Delilah stood up and mimed a much taller version of Gunther. “Do you know Jeff? He was also wearing a tunic just like you’re wearing.”

“Yef? Est adhuc in carcere,” she said.

Gunther passed her the burning joint.

“Quid est hoc?”

Imitating Gunther, she took a toke and coughed it right back out. Delilah turned the music back up. The woman stared around nervously. She pointed to Delilah’s macramé lantern hanging from the ceiling. “Quod est lucerna? Ubi flamma est?”

“It’s my lamp.”

“You were there in that fake Rome. Don’t they have modern technology?” said Gunther.

“They do.”

“Let’s go get something to eat. I’m hungry too. Maybe she can find something she likes there.”

When they arrived at the cafeteria, Deshondra confronted them. “Ain’t she the one in the toilet stall with that whitey wear the dress?”

“Yeah, what she doing back here?” said Akeeshea.

“Leroy dropped her off at my place and we don’t know who she is.”

“We don’t neither. All we know is she can’t speak English and your old honky friend was caught with her in the ladies room.”

“Jeff Malmquist?”

“Yep, that’s the one.”

“Where is he?”

“They both got hauled off to the station.”

“That’s what she was trying to explain,” said Gunther.

“Then we’d better get back to my place right after lunch in case he’s released.”

They brought their food to the table. The woman had examined all the offerings and on her tray were servings of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, fish, bread rolls, pickles, grated cheese, and honey. Tasting the gravy, she wrinkled her brows and asked, “Garum non est?” Receiving no response, she mashed up the fish with a spoon, stirred the gravy into it and spread the mixture on the bread. Then she chopped up the pickles into tiny bits and mixed it with the cheese and honey into the mashed potatoes. She ate that with the spoon in one hand, while spearing the leg of chicken with a knife and eating it directly off the knife in the other. Delilah and Gunther stared.

Malmquist was waiting outside Delilah’s building when they got back. “Hurry up, man, I can’t stand out here forever in this tunic. I’m getting suspicious stares. How’s Attica doing now? Has she calmed down?”

“Who is she?” asked Delilah.

“She’s from Rome.”

“That’s what we thought. But it doesn’t sound like Italian she’s speaking.”

“No. Ancient Rome. As in 2,000 years ago. She speaks Latin.”

“Holy shit.”

“Do you have any idea of the hassle we got ourselves into?” said Malmquist once they were inside. “We were teleported to your good old ladies room in the cafeteria where you yourself disappeared. We found ourselves inside a toilet stall with a female customer in it! She freaked and we next found ourselves in the slammer. Luckily Inspector Melynchuk was there to come to our rescue. Then Attica threw a shit storm when they locked in her a cell. She took her tunic off, rolled it up and whipped the guards with it when they opened the door. Of course, she had no idea what was going on and nobody could explain. They didn’t know what to do with her because she doesn’t have a chip in her and her origin is unknown. So they let her go. But I had to get pulled through a bunch of paperwork before I got out due to the ladies room incident.”

“Why did you bring her here anyway?”

“I’ll get to that. Let me lay out what I need you to do first. I was detained in Chicago in the future, the year 2115, a suspect in your disappearance—”

“What?”

“Just trust what I’m saying for now. We can’t find you anywhere. I escaped from there and am reluctant to go back again until you’re found.”

“But I’m right here.”

“Your 72-year old self. I want you to go there and try to locate yourself. Using Attica’s tunic I’m going to try to send you there, I mean here, on the assumption you’re still in New Gary 55 years from now. Can you give her something to wear? You have to put on the tunic you’re now wearing on top of that tunic and then we write ‘New Gary’ on it. But wait. That won’t get us very far. The Chinese have taken over by then. We have to write it Chinese. Shit. How do I do that?”

“Maybe someone at the police station knows?”

“Oh, yeah, that android cop, what’s his name, might. He said he couldn’t recognize Attica’s language in his ‘database.’”

Malmquist wrote the following on his tunic: “MELYNCHUK, WHAT’S NEW GARY IN CHINESE? ASK THE ANDROID.”

“When you arrive,” he continued, “check your apartment here and the cafeteria and the police station. Ask around if necessary. Oh, right, you can’t. They’ll all be speaking Cantonese. Anyway do your best. If you find yourself, great. You’re then going to take her up to Chicago to see a female cop named Wingyee. You’re going to go there anyway even if you don’t manage to find yourself. There’s a restaurant called the Heartland Café way up in the north part of the city. Look for an old man named Cornelius who’s a regular there. He always goes naked and has a huge rainbow-tattooed cock he likes to show off, and a parrot on his shoulder. He speaks English and knows Wingyee.”

“How do I find this place?”

“I’ll draw you a map. Now, if you do find your 72-year old self, you’re all set and I can go back there no longer a suspect. But if you don’t, I have another idea. I want you to convince Wingyee to go with you to Chinese Rome at that time—the year 2115. That’s the only other place I can think of where you might be hiding. She’s eager to find you as well, so it shouldn’t be too hard to convince her. You’ll need to pick up one of these travel tunics at the Heartland Café gift shop. They’re free. She puts that on and you hold hands as she writes the words for ‘New Rome’ in Chinese on your tunic, just like what we’re going to do now to send you to the future.”

“What do I do if we still can’t find her?”

“You come back. I want you to keep me updated by sending me messages on your tunic. I hope you can do this fast. I’m stuck here with Attica in the meantime. I’m planning to take her to New Rome—the New Rome you’ve already been to—but can’t do that until you’re back with her travel tunic, so she can use it again.”

“It sounds so complicated. Why didn’t you take her there first before coming here?”

“I’m a suspect there as well. I got this new tunic soaked in that powerful hallucinogen again and they want it. They’ll take the tunic away and I don’t know if I’ll be to get another one if they confine or arrest me. Then I’m fucked. So when I finally go back there with Attica, I want all my other business taken care of and out of the way. I also want Wingyee to go with me for my protection, and that can’t happen until we solve your missing person problem.”

“Hold on a sec,” said Delilah. “You said the writing goes on the tunic of the person who is traveling. But as soon as the Inspector writes the Chinese words for New Gary on your tunic, won’t you be sent there instead of me?”

“Oh, yeah. You’re right.”

“He just wrote back.”

Malmquist looked down at the Chinese on his tunic:

新加里

“Fuck, I gotta get this off me before I’m sent there.”

“No. You would already have been sent there.”

“Oh, I guess we have to directly write it on the tunic with our finger or it won’t work.”

Malmquist pulled off Attica’s tunic.

“Quid agis?” she said, confused.

“Wow, do you ever have a great body. Here, put these on,” said Delilah, who handed her a T-shirt and a hippie skirt. She took off her tunic, put Attica’s on and her own back on over it.

“By the way,” said Malmquist to her, pointing to Gunther, “you don’t walk around naked all the time with him here, do you?”

“Nah,” said Gunther. “She can’t scandalize me. She’s well behaved.”

“What do you mean?”

“She only takes her clothes off when others are present, like you. She’s an exhibitionist.”

Malmquist drew a crude map of Chicago with the Heartland Café’s location. “Don’t lose this,” he said, folding it and sticking it in Delilah’s tunic pocket. He then took off his own tunic and asked Gunther to hold it up next to Delilah. “Sorry for our little exhibitionist show here but I have to see how to write these characters.”

As soon as Malmquist traced the three characters on Delilah’s tunic, she was gone.

“Great, it worked.”

“Quo abiit?” said Attica. “Et misisti ea ad Romam?”

“She thinks I just sent her to Rome.”

“That would be cool. I want to go there.”

“I don’t think you’d like it. It’s a pretty rough place. Filthy. You’d be employed as a slave boy hauling around basins of water in the brothels to wash the prostitutes with. You know who really needs to go there? Danny. Without his guns. For good.”

“He’s the one who has a bounty on you?”

“Yeah.”

“You can never go back to Chicago, then, until that’s over. Way too dangerous. They can blow you away with impunity.”

“I was just there! Teleported right into the basement of his house. I got out through a tunnel into a neighbor’s house across the street. They thought I was a pedophile sent by Danny to molest their little daughter! They put me in a cage and I escaped from them too just in time with the tunics.”

“You’re lucky.”

“Which means I could go back there and escape again, though it’s risky and dangerous. Hey, I have an idea. You said you know a secret route out of New Gary.”

“Yeah, why?”

“Show me. We’re going back there.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Don’t you have to wait for Delilah to come back before you can go anywhere?”

“She’s not going to be back right away. She may need some time. But I don’t know when I’ll be back here again. Let’s go.”

“You’ll be tracked by your chip.”

“I know. But there’s a window of opportunity to act before I’m caught. This may be my only chance.”

“What about her? You can’t leave her alone here, can you?”

“She’s coming with.”

“Quo vadimus?”

Gunther took them a few blocks south to a hole in the fence not far from I-94 and out of range of the guns. Once on the other side of Highway 912, Gunther hired an aircab. He had Malmquist speak the address into the dash and they took off across the city in the self-flying vehicle.

“Amazing. How fast do these go?”

“About 150 miles per hour.”

“Why don’t more people fly in these things? I still see a lot of cars on the roads.”

“Lots of people are afraid to fly.”

“Do these crash?”

“Yeah.”

“A lot?”

“As often as regular cars do. She’s not afraid? I doubt they have these in Ancient Rome.”

“She was at first when Leroy brought us over to Delilah’s. But she quickly became fascinated and called it—what was it you called this, Attica?”

“Currus caeli et terrae.” She looked up to the sky and intoned, “Ore trahit currusque suos candescere sentit.”

“What’s that, poetry?”

She smiled proudly and continued, “Hic situs est Phaethon currus auriga paterni quem si non tenuit magnis tamen excidit ausis.”

After ten minutes in the air, they landed at 666 West 26th Street. They walked up to the house across from Danny’s house and knocked. The man with the blond Afro opened the door.

“Hello, Marvin,” said Malmquist. “Can we come in?”

“Where the hell did you go to? You escaped right in front of our eyes! The police are after you and you’re not going to get away this time if I can help it. Who’s this? A new boy you seduced?”

“This is Gunther. I have no intention of seducing him. He’s going to help us capture Danny.”

“And who’s the gal?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“He’s back!” said the wife and daughter in unison as Malmquist and Gunther entered. “Get the pedo cage!”

“Yep, we’ll need that,” said Malmquist. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Gunther, you’re going to run over to Danny’s house across the street and knock on his door in a panic, saying Marvin and I molested you—”

“Don’t you go accusing me of molesting anyone!”

“It’s a ruse, dummy. Make sure you announce my name, Jeff Malmquist. Tell him Marvin is guarding the first floor entrance and he’s well-armed, so you’ll lead him into the house via the basement tunnel. They’re having a birthday party for their kid and I’m in the basement molesting the children. I’m not armed so he can easily capture me. Danny already knows I don’t know how to use a gun.”

Gunther ran over to Danny’s, and was seen from the living room window being let in the front door by Slim. Down in the basement, Malmquist placed himself in the cage, which was positioned before the tunnel entrance, the basement lights turned off. Mere minutes later, a light could be seen approaching from the far end of the tunnel. As Danny, and Gunther after him, got closer, the daughter as instructed shouted, “Stop doing that to me!”

A flashlight helmet emerged from the tunnel entrance. Danny was met with a more powerful beam, blinding him. The wife and daughter pressed gun barrels against him as Marvin snatched away his AR-15. They pushed him into the cage—right between Malmquist’s legs. They wedged him in further so that he was trapped against Malmquist inside his tunic, and shut the cage door.

“What are you fucking doing!” screamed Danny as he struggled. Just as Malmquist was writing the word “Roma” on his tunic, Danny managed to extract from his pocket a pistol. Malmquist grabbed his arm and thrust it away from him but not before Danny got off a shot. Then both vanished from the cage.

*      *      *

Previous chapter: Ch. 18: Zigaago

Next chapter: Ch. 20: Roma (upcoming)

Chapter 1: New Gary, IN

[image error]Forthcoming January 2018:

The Kitchens of Canton, a novel

You might also be interested in:

Reset, a play

Newsex, a play

Lust & Philosophy, a novel

Filed under: Fiction Tagged: China expat fiction, Dystopian satire

The Kitchens of Canton, a novel. Ch. 18: Zigaago

[image error]

“Where the hell am I?” Delilah whispered to herself.

She was seated on a toilet in what should have been a toilet stall except there was no stall, only exposed toilets projecting from a wall. The seat next to hers was occupied by a black female. To one side sinks, to the other urinals, one being used by a white female facing forward, tunic hiked up over her hips. The only thing separating the so-called restroom from the noisy space on the other side was a screen. Then a white male came up and grabbed the toilet on Delilah’s other side. “Neihou,” he said to her.

She immediately got up and went over to the sink. The black woman was soon at the sink next to hers, washing not only her hands but her face and chest as well, sticking her hand through the sides of her sleeveless tunic to get under and between the breasts. Delilah stared.

She emerged from around the screen and recognized the restaurant yet didn’t recognize it. It had the same layout and black-and-white checkerboard floor and metal-banded retro tables, and that was about it. All the customers were wearing patchwork tunics like she had on, so she wasn’t noticed until a waitress saw her confusion and asked, “Yatwai?”

“It’s the public cafeteria but it’s changed. Where’s the counter?”

“Me wah?”

“What language are you speaking?”

“Ngo ng ming.”

“Chinese? But this is New Gary. I’m so confused. Jeff was right. It’s really the future.”

“Nei mousi aa?” the waitress asked, looking concerned. She led Delilah to a table. “Ngo cing nei jambui je?” she asked, miming a beverage.

“I’m hungry.”

The waitress returned with a bowl of soup and steamed greens.

“Wonton soup? That’s it?” She looked around. “Why is everybody eating the same thing? That’s all you have? Hey, how can I get to the Heartland Cafe from here? Is there public transportation?”

“Me?”

Delilah brandished the map of Chicago Malmquist had drawn for her. “Look. Now we’re in New Gary, but Jeff didn’t include it on the map. So we’re about here and I want to go to this place here.” She drew her finger from a point on the table and across the paper.

The waitress stared at the map. “Taai jyun,” she said, shaking her head and drawing her hands apart. “Joekmou jatmak gungleoi.”

“I know it’s far, but there must be a way to get there.”

Other customers had turned around. “Ji jau neje mantai?”

“Houci ji dongsat lou liu.”

They conferred a bit. The black female seen in the restroom was just finishing up her meal and said to Delilah, “Gan ngo loi.”

“Oh, great, you can help me?”

They got on public bicycles outside the restaurant and road toward the city center.

“Oh, my god! What happened to the residential buildings? They’re all painted over in so many colors and trees are growing out the windows.”

They took a left on Broadway, crossed under I-90 and headed out to the lake, stopping at a crowded pier where a ferry was docked.

“That’s how we get to Chicago from here? Aren’t there any cars? No aircars either? I haven’t been to Chicago in years. This is so exciting.”

The girl wrote down Delilah’s stop on the map to show to the attendant.

“How do I pay?”

“Ng sai maai piu,” she said, pointing to the line.

“But I don’t have a ticket.”

“Heoi!” she pointed. “Nigo hai minbei ge.”

“How can I ever thank you? Oh, let me give you this.” She pulled out a spare coin from her tunic, US mint 2060.

The girl examined it with interest. “Nei hai zinbai sauzonggu me?”

Once on board Delilah climbed to the upper, open deck. There were no seats. The passengers sat right on the floor, carpeted with fake grass—no, real grass. She found an empty space next to two twenty-something couples, who were laughing and smoking a blunt.

The ferry made several stops along the great length of the Chicago shoreline but oddly bypassed the city center. The skyline was still there: the starkly looming Aon Center, and in the distance the eerie black edifices of the Willis Tower and the John Hancock, now as old as the Eiffel Tower was when she was born. But something was wrong with the skyscrapers. They looked darkened, damaged, until she had a closer look. Their glass skin was gone and objects were protruding from the windows: trees.

“Why aren’t we stopping at Navy Pier?” she mumbled. “Oh, I remember Jeff saying something about slaves not being allowed downtown.”

“Nei syut ge hai neje jyujin?” asked one of her neighbors. They were sitting next to her cross-legged, their genitals exposed beneath their tunics. They passed her the ganja.

“Oh, thanks. I can really use this now. Sorry, I don’t speak Chinese.”

“Yingman? Nei hai bindou leige?”

“Nei gwai sing aa?”

“What?”

“Mason,” said a guy with a shaved head and a long red beard, holding out his hand.

“Oh, I’m Delilah.”

“Hou hoisam jingsik nei.”

“Nice to meet you too.”

Mason introduced the others—Billy, Jo, and Steph. They invited her to sit with them and open her legs. When she had inched closer, Mason gave her pubic hair a tug and sat back, waiting. She looked confused. He guided her hand to his cock. She yanked her hand away. “Oh, no, this is too weird for me.”

Jo, a mixed-race black Asian with micro braids, tried next and successfully got Delilah to reciprocate on her pubis.

“Oh, I see what’s going on.”

Jo then leaned over and looked more closely at Delilah’s groin. “Keoi hou hausang,” she said to the others.

“You guys sure have some strange rituals.”

“Nei heoi bin?” they asked her.

“Oh, you mean, where am I going? Yeah, can you help me? I want to go to the Heartland Cafe,” she said as she pulled out the map.

“Aa, zidou! Heartland Gafei. Ngo jan gonggwo daan haimou heoigwo.”

“I need to meet with an old guy named Cornelius. He speaks English.”

“Bingo?”

“Cornelius. He’s old and tall and has a huge cock.”

To illustrate these concepts, Delilah stood up on her toes and raised her hands as high as they would go, before stooping her shoulders and trudging with an imaginary cane. Then she pulled out of her groin Pinocchio-style an infinitely long penis, betraying embarrassment at its length.

The others were laughing.

“Oh, his cock is tattooed, and he also has a parrot.”

Pulling up her tunic to show them her Led Zeppelin runic tattoos, she pretended to peel them off and transfer them onto Mason’s member, grabbing it by the head with one hand while she pressed the imaginary tattoos firmly onto the shaft with the other. She tried to depict a parrot but this only made them laugh harder.

After two hours on the boat, the “Loyulaa” stop was announced. The couples disembarked with Delilah and walked down Sheridan Road until they reached the entrance to Loyola University.

“Oh, you’re all university students? I wish I could go to university. But most of the students are Chinese!” she said, looking through the gate at the campus.

Mason, Billy and Steph waved goodbye and were let in the electronic gate. Jo continued on with Delilah up the street. “But why are all the students Chinese? And why were your friends allowed in?” she asked.

“Keoidei hai noudai. Hoksang hai keoidei ge zyujan.”

Jo brought Delilah not to the Heartland Cafe but to a police station. A youngish female officer appeared. Delilah again tried to explain that she was looking for an old man named Cornelius who could be found at the Heartland Cafe.

The cop dismissed Jo and conferred with a superior officer, noting with evident curiosity that Delilah was wearing one tunic over another. She fingered the outer tunic’s fabric. Next, she had Delilah lie back on a couch with her legs spread. She applied lubricant to a latex glove and gently inserted her fingers in Delilah’s vagina and pumped her until she grew wet, before scooping up a bit of her lubrication in a digital spoon and announcing the reading to the superior. They then got on bikes and the cop escorted Delilah over to the Heartland Cafe Museum a few blocks away.

“Neihou Wingyee,” said Cornelius. Turning to Delilah he asked, “Nigo houzing ge hausang jyuhai bingo aa?”

“Oh, so you’re Cornelius?”

“I’m your man. English! Well, if this isn’t—“

“And you’re Wingyee?” she said to the cop. “You’re the one I’m trying to find. Jeff said Cornelius could help me find you, and you’re both here!”

“Yes, I’m here. Be here now. Well, that must explain how you’re able to speak English. It’s that drug, man. The STP he told me he was on. It’s so potent it can make you speak another language. Where can I get some of that shit? Jeff is the trippy guy?”

“Yeah. He said he met you.”

“Where is he? She’s looking for him.”

“He’s back in New Gary. I was sent here from there. The past. I’m his emissary.”

“Where do you two hang out at anyway? I thought he was taken into custody. Nei miu zoeng go gong yingman ge jan keoilau hei ma?”

“Haige daan keoi zaulatzo. Ngodei ng zidim,” said Wingyee, who appeared as confused as Cornelius.

“I’m telling you I’m not from here, and he isn’t either.”

“Keoi gong neje?” said Wingyee.

“Keoidei taaigu sik.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Delilah Power. They’re looking for me here, when I’m 72. I go by the name of Ray then.”

“You must be her granddaughter.”

“Whose granddaughter?”

“Ray’s.”

“No. I am Ray. Her younger version. Look. Do you recognize these tattoos?” She showed Cornelius the Led Zeppelin runic symbols on her belly.

Cornelius stared hard at Delilah. The waitress Belinda came up, suckling her baby, Cornelius’ parrot on her shoulder. “Jau mei hou sanman?” she said.

“Keoi waa keoi hai aak Ray.”

The three stared hard again at Delilah.

“Keoi sang dak houci.”

“You’re the spitting image of your grandmother,” said Cornelius.

“That’s because I am her.” Turning to Belinda she said, “You’re so beautiful. Just like an—”

“Angel,” chirped the parrot.

“Can I hold the baby?” She took the baby from its mother’s nipple and into her arms.

“Keoi waa nei houzing,” Cornelius explained to Belinda.

“Nei dou hai,” Belinda responded, smiling at Delilah quizzically. “Daanhai butsang zo neje si aa? Ngo ng ming.”

Once again the three stared hard at Delilah. “Keoidei zyudeoi hai hyutjyun gwaanhai,” said Wingyee.

Cornelius considered for a moment before asking, “Tell me something about Ray.”

“How can I tell you about her if I’ve never met her?”

“You haven’t met your grandmother?”

“No, I mean I haven’t met myself—my older self. I haven’t gotten there yet. Well, I have now, but I’m missing.”

“She never told us she had a granddaughter. So she must have taught you English. But why would she have brought you up in secret?”

“I am not her granddaughter. I am her. We’re the same person. You guys still don’t believe me?”

“Keoi waa keoitung hai tungjat go jan,” Cornelius said to Wingyee.

“Keoi jaume zinggeoi aa?”

“What evidence do you have?”

“What evidence do you have that I’m not her? Oh, let me try this.” She wrote on her tunic: “JEFF, THEY DON’T BELIEVE I’M FROM THE PAST.”

Shortly the words faded and were replaced by an incoming message:

NO NEED TO SAY MUCH

ONLY YOUR PASSIONATE GAZE

WILL DISSOLVE EVERYTHING

“No, he’s not online now.”

“Yes, he showed me that. The STP is so strong it seeps out of your skin and gets your clothing high.”

“If you wait till he gets back online I’ll prove it to you. I can get him to repeat any conversation you had with him. Damn you, Jeff, where are you?”

A new message now appeared:

THESE FEW WORDS

CONVEY THE GREETINGS

FROM A FRIEND AT A DISTANCE

PLEASE TREASURE THE OLD DAYS

“I’ve got an—”

“Idea,” said the parrot.

“Your parrot is—”

“Funny,” chimed the parrot.

“And annoying.”

“Have you been to Ray’s place before?” Cornelius continued.

“No, but Jeff told me about it.”

“Let’s go there now, the three of us.”

“Cool! I want to see what my place looks like in the future.”

The bird was returned to Belinda, and Cornelius and Wingyee took Delilah over to Ray’s. Deliberately they slowed their pace and let her take the lead, but she appeared not to know the way. Once inside the basement pad, Delilah walked around in wonder. “These are my old black light posters!” she exclaimed. “These ones here. Those ones I must have acquired later.”

“Do you recognize any of your old records?”

“Oh, yeah, my record collection. But it’s so much bigger.” She quickly picked out several. “These are some of the first records I ever bought. Antique rock, 1970s vintage. Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Brain Salad Surgery. Deep Purple, Machine Head. Led Zeppelin V—the greatest album cover ever. Jethro Tull, Thick as a Brick. But it’s no longer playable because of a terrible scratch I made on it. Look.” She pulled the LP out of its sleeve and showed them the scratch. “Hey, I have an idea! Can she test for fingerprints? These records will have my fingerprints all over them and no one else’s. I made sure of that. I never let anyone touch my records. If I’m not the same person as Ray, you’ll see two different people’s fingerprints on this record.”

“Good idea. Hoji caksi ziman maa?”

“Hoji,” said Wingyee. “Daan ngo jigging zidou keoi gongge hai satwaa.”

“Me? Nei dimzi ni?” said a startled Cornelius.

“Ngodei hai cogun deoi keoi zouzo DNA gimcaa. Keoi hai Ray.”

“She said they already genetically confirmed you’re Ray at the police station.”

“Then why did you go through all this trouble if you knew I was her?”

“Ngo jathoici ng seon, jiu zeon jatbou kokjing,” Wingyee explained.

“She couldn’t believe it at first and needed more proof.”

“Okay, so anyway, now that I’ve enlisted you, we need to get to work,” said Delilah. “I’m to take Wingyee with me to Chinese Rome and see if we can find me there.”

“Run that past me again.”

“We have to go back to the year 2060 where I’m from. But not New Gary, where Jeff is. We need to go to the fake Ancient Rome in China, where we think Ray might be hidden.”

“Why do you think she might be there?”

“Jeff thinks she might be there.”

Cornelius explained all this to Wingyee.

“She says that if she accepts you’re from the past,” he told Delilah, ”she has to accept you can take her to the past. And it’s her only lead.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

“She needs to go back to the station first to prepare a few things.”

Cornelius and Delilah returned to the Heartland and waited for Wingyee over an ale. “Do you always go naked?” she asked him.

“Six months out of the year. The air is me clothes. Nothing more comfortable to wrap around you than a warm breeze.”

“What about in cold weather?”

“A parka. Sometimes I wrap myself in a big old American flag.”

“I love to go naked myself but where I’m from it’s not—Wow, what happened to your tits? They’re so much bigger.”

Wingyee had arrived. She lifted up her tunic. A Bowie knife and a gun were strapped in a holster under the breasts.“

“Oh, I see.”

“Ngo jau siusiu ganzoeng. Zau zicin ngo jiu jatbui bezau. Keoi ngoncyun aa?”

Cornelius ordered another round of ales. “She says she’s a bit nervous and needs a drink first. And she wants assurance from you it’s safe and she’ll get back here all right.”

“I’m sure she’ll get back. We’ll find a way. Oh, but she needs to wear a travel tunic. Jeff said you can get them at this restaurant for free. Or maybe not. Let’s first try using the police tunic she has on. All I do is write the name of the destination on my tunic. Oh, shit! I just realized I don’t know how to write the name of the place. It has to be written in Chinese, right? How to write ‘Rome’ in Chinese?”

“How did you get here, then?”

“Jeff got help in writing the Chinese word for ‘Chicago’ but I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“Keoi waa nei jiu yong zungman sezyu lomaa ni go ci,” Cornelius told Wingyee.

She downed her ale at one go and started to write the word for ‘Rome’ on Delilah’s tunic in Chinese.

“No, wait! We have to hold hands. With your other hand. And it wasn’t just ‘Rome.’ We don’t want to end up in the wrong Rome. Oh, I think it was ‘New Rome’—I remember Jeff saying. How do you say ‘new’ in Chinese?”

Cornelius conveyed this to Wingyee.

“Sanluomaa? Houlaa, ngo si.”

As Delilah grabbed her by the hand, Wingyee tried out the following characters on the tunic:

新羅馬

They disappeared.

*      *      *

Previous chapter: Ch. 17: Xinluoma

Next chapter: Ch. 19: New Gary, IN (upcoming)

Chapter 1: New Gary, IN

[image error]Forthcoming January 2018:

The Kitchens of Canton, a novel

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Filed under: Fiction Tagged: China fiction, Dystopian satire