The Dog (9 page)

“Let's go,” the chief grunted.

“I've got to get my affairs in order,” Ning said, gesturing at his desk.

“You're not arranging a funeral,” the chief said.

“You'd think not,” Ning said.

The chief took in the wreckage of Ning's desk—reporter's notebooks piled high against the cubicle's flimsy partitions, boxes of files, printouts of stories stacked like shale deposits on every available surface, newsprint melting over stacks of books, the plunders of a reporter's raids on his fellow man. He drew a deep breath.

“Management defined by its unwavering dedication to mediocrity?” the chief said.

“Too much?” Ning said.

“Every time I let someone go, Personnel gets the same letter. It's a terrible shame I'm never informed of the depths of my moral and ethical insolvency until one of you geniuses gets the boot. Think of the heights we'd reach if only someone would step forward and struggle against my incompetence.”

“I'm just a guy in the business forty years,” Ning said, “what do I know?”

“Funny how you didn't mention your own contributions to this journalistic morass you accuse me of running.”

“I thought that went without saying. As you pointed out, it's been years since I've written anything worth reading.”

“And now we know all along you were only saving yourself for a final shot.”

Ning shrugged.

“Sort yourself and get over to the Green Room,” the chief said.

“Or what?” Ning said. “You going to fire me?”

“You're a real piece of work. You know what? If you don't show up and give Li Pai the finest send-off in history, I'll strip your pension, everything.”

“Here it is. My punishment for speaking the truth.”

“No one would ever accuse you of that,” the chief said as he shuffled off, leaving Ning alone in the bleached fluorescence of the empty newsroom.

Two of the TVs over by Metro were tuned to all-news channels, and the first thing Ning did was change one to a poker tournament from Macau. He put his feet up on his desk and leaned back into the posture of an untroubled man.

To hell with the chief. If he wanted a speech, Ning would give him one. But he wasn't going to get in any hurry. No one rushed Ning Wang.

Ning shifted in his chair and crossed his arms. On the TV, the poker players wore sleek wraparound sunglasses. Some had hats pulled low over their eyes and wore beards like bandits' handkerchiefs. Ning supposed he'd hold his own at the table with these men. They were nothing if you looked past their disguises. He'd once interviewed Johnny Chan, the world champion, and he could read Chan's tells within five minutes of sitting down across from him. That was, in his own estimation, his greatest skill as a reporter, his ability to recognize a man's true intentions.

He watched long enough for a fortune in chips to change hands several times. At the commercial, he reached down, slid open his desk drawer, and pulled out the speech he'd been working on for the last month. It was nothing more than a list of sentimental recollections and professional triumphs cribbed from Li Pai's memoir, written in a style that approximated ground meat shooting into a sausage casing. He'd never been able to work out the introduction. “What can I say about Li Pai that hasn't already been said?” he'd begun the latest draft. The line had been scratched through, rewritten, and scratched through again, the pen scoring deeply into the paper. The more he worked it over, the worse it got. He didn't want it to be good, but he didn't want to make a fool of himself.

He dropped the speech and slammed the desk drawer closed. He wasn't going to fire sugarcoated bullets. Tell it straight or don't tell it at all. Over the years, this stance had cost him friends, but he tallied those losses not as indicators of some failure on his part, but as the inevitable consequence of maintaining his ideals.

The poker game ended in what Ning could tell was a staged win, the victor thrusting his hands aloft as his vanquished opponent lowered his face to the felt. They'd probably meet in a hotel room later to split the winnings.

An F1 race came on next, and he watched, vaguely hoping for a crash.

A cleaning crew of blue-bibbed women wheeled their carts through the newsroom, dumping trash cans and chatting to each other across the cubicles, oblivious to Ning's presence. He checked his watch. He supposed it was late enough, and he gathered a few mementos—a press pass from the '08 Olympics, a sliver of
Shenzhou 1
's heat shield encased in resin, a photo of him at the U.S. Embassy protests in '99—and stuffed them into the pockets of his coat. He opened the desk drawer again and pulled out the speech.

*   *   *

When Ning got to the Green Room, he nearly turned around and went home when he saw who was posted at the door.

“You've got some balls,” the man said. He was called Baby Zhou. So painful an example was he of the shopworn convention by which hulking men are given petite names that Ning cringed every time he set eyes on the guy. Baby Zhou was, indeed, a man of infantile proportions—a perfectly round head, high, perpetually rosy cheeks that gave the impression he was always smiling, stubby arms that seemed to project from the sides of his neck. Because of that, Ning had always caught a whiff of cruelty in the name, the possibility that it had been bestowed as an act of retaliation. If that was the case, Zhou seemed blissfully unaware. Whatever the name's origin, Ning considered it a sad commentary on human nature.

“Nope. Nope. Not a chance,” Baby Zhou was saying.

“I'm not going to tell you how to do your job, and you'd probably be right not to let me in,” Ning said.

“Not a chance.”

“But you might show some respect to a man twice your age,” Ning said.

“If I killed you and threw you in a ditch out back, do you think anyone would care?” Baby Zhou said, stepping closer.

Ning noticed that Baby Zhou's eyes were incredibly puffy. “No, probably not,” he said.

“I'd get a cash reward,” Baby Zhou said. “Do you think anyone's forgotten about what happened last time you were here?”

“That kid should have known better than to go shooting his mouth off,” Ning said. Just then the metal door screeched open, and he found himself face-to-face with Li Pai.

“You made it!” Li Pai said, throwing his arms around Ning. He was drenched in the sour musk of beer, and he slumped soddenly against Ning's shoulder.

“Good grief,” Ning said, trying to back away.

A couple of young reporters Ning recognized from the newsroom came out after Li Pai. When they saw Ning, all joy drained from their faces.

“Ning,” Li Pai said, suddenly very serious. “I saw you through the window. Like a shimmering in the mist.” Li Pai looped his arm through Ning's and announced, “My dear friend has arrived! Let the celebrations begin anew!”

“Yes,” Ning said. He'd meant to arrive late enough to miss the celebrations entirely, to give his speech to a nearly empty bar, but peering inside, he could see the place was packed.

Baby Zhou blocked the door. “Mr. Li, all due respect, I don't know about letting him in.”

Li Pai tilted his head to the side.

“What am I supposed to do?” Baby Zhou said. This was a quandary. He sank a finger into his ear and rotated it a quarter turn, then back. Ning could practically hear the rocks banging around inside.

Li Pai said nothing.

“You'll vouch for him?” Baby Zhou said.

“Who?” Li Pai said. “This man? I've never seen him before in my life.” He doubled over laughing.

“That's helpful,” said Ning.

“Let's say he is my best friend in the world,” Li Pai said. “Is that not enough? Here.” He pulled out a wad of cash and stuffed it into the breast pocket of Baby Zhou's suit jacket. Baby Zhou gave the money back.

“Your word is enough, Mr. Li,” he said. Then he took Ning by the lapels and pulled him close enough that Ning could smell his mealy emanations.

“If you so much as raise your voice to order,” Baby Zhou said, “I'll snap off your fingers. You blink wrong, I break fingers. You have a bad thought, fingers. I've been authorized. Got it? Won't type so good then, will you?”

“You smell like a barnyard,” Ning said. He smiled grandly.

Li Pai pulled him through the door before Baby Zhou could remove his head from his body.

The Green Room was a long corridor about as wide as a boxcar. It had an arched ceiling that in the wet season condensed and dripped onto the patrons below. A hundred years earlier, it had been part of a club for English traders, and the walls above the chair rails had been upholstered in a rich green velour, but now only mold and cracked plaster remained. The wood floors were beer-soaked, and beneath that familiar sour smell was something else, earthy and dank, as though the entire place had slipped subterranean. Reporters loved it because it was the embodiment of condemnation, and hookers loved it because of the reporters. You could smell the disrepute for blocks.

Li Pai steered Ning to a table in a corner where a couple of kids from the newsroom and the chief's assistant were seated. Ning had worked a story with one of the reporters, and he didn't hate him. Ning allowed that someday he might be a decent journalist. He was an empty bucket, thick in the way the best reporters must be, incapable of developing a full understanding of anything he was being told without a complete and detailed explanation.

Ning nodded at him. “Here's a man always ready with another question,” he said.

The kid ducked his head.

“One's greatest asset as a reporter,” Ning said, addressing the table, “is stupidity. A reporter with a brain never knows when to shut up. He can't stop answering his own questions. Not a problem for this one,” he said, gesturing at the young man.

“It's late,” the chief's assistant said. “I'd better be going.” She reached across the table to shake Li Pai's hand. “Mr. Li, it's been an honor.”

“The honor has been all mine,” Li Pai said.

“We'll go with you,” the reporter said to the assistant. “Mr. Li, we'll drop your presents off tomorrow.”

“That's very courteous of you,” Li Pai said.

“It's the least we can do.” Ning saw that the empty bucket was visibly moved. He had enfolded Li Pai's hand in both of his own, and appeared unwilling to release him. “I became a reporter because of you, Mr. Li.”

“Be well,” Li Pai said with great import. “Be well.”

“Where's the film crew?” Ning said to no one in particular.

“I don't suppose we can trust you to see that Mr. Li gets home safely,” the chief's assistant said to Ning.

Ning didn't respond. He signaled the waitress for a beer.

“From the day I met you, it's been a trial,” the assistant said, drawing her shoulders up. “In fact, it's been a nightmare. I've never met anyone so awful. When I heard you were leaving, I wept with joy.” She was gaining courage from the power of her own words, and she stood and steadied herself on the table for another salvo. “You're a rotten piece of shit, Ning Wang, and I hope you spend your remaining years alone, suffering for all you've done. After you're dead I'll find your grave and piss on it.”

One of the kids tugged at her arm.

“I'd piss on you now but I wouldn't want to waste the beer,” she shouted as they pulled her toward the door. Some of the reporters nearby gave a rousing cheer.

“Well, wasn't that something?” Li Pai said.

“She's charming. Chief find her in a Vietnamese massage joint?”

“She's a survivor, that's for sure,” Li Pai said.

“Had a thing for me from day one.”

“You don't say.”

“She's young. She can't handle how I make her feel. You've seen how I make her loins quiver.”

Li Pai, realizing that Ning might be serious, let it drop.

Ning felt around in his pocket for the speech. “I didn't get you anything,” he said.

“I wasn't expecting anything,” Li Pai said. “Your friendship has been gift enough.”

Ning frowned.

“Of course, you remain, as ever, a waste of humanity,” Li Pai said.

“That's more like it.”

“What've you got there?” Li Pai said, nodding at the speech in Ning's hand.

“Just some thoughts. I don't think they're appropriate.”

“I'd be disappointed if they were. Let's hear them.” He rose to call everyone over, but Ning stopped him.

“How about a drink first?” Ning said.

Li Pai agreed, and they drank—or, Ning drank while Li Pai reminisced about old colleagues, friends lost to retirement and the grave. There came a point, after his third glass, when Ning felt something like comradeship rise up in his heart, even if it was only because he recognized all the names and beer made him sentimental. The bar was filled to capacity, the noise forcing them to sit closer than Ning otherwise would have chosen to. Every so often reporters would stop by to shake Li Pai's hand. Then they'd drift back into the crowd, which, Ning found hard to ignore, was a forest of youth. The few old-timers looked like men adrift, mossy and damp, flapping jowls and eye bags thick as melted icing. It was during one of these scans of the crowd that he spotted the back of the chief's mottled head. He was on a stool at the bar, hunched over his drink like an inmate protecting his bowl of soup.

Ning spat on the floor, and when he looked back up, he saw the kid from
Youth Daily
sauntering toward their table. It was just one thing after another. The kid was hard to miss in his pink Izod golf shirt and knockoff Italian loafers. He was wearing a nice watch, an Omega, but it all looked wrong on him, as if he'd borrowed the ensemble from his older brother. He had given up a banking job in Hong Kong to become a reporter, and he had a hurt, angry look about him, as if he'd recently come to the realization that he'd made a terrible mistake, for the first time in his life double-crossed by his own desires.