Darkness

Mona turned off the lights. The place was less ugly then. She undressed herself in the dark ofJohnny's flat, then scented herself with a spray mist, sat down at the edge of his bed and waited.

Johnny stepped out of the shower, saw the blackness beyond the slit of the open door and instinctively hit the wall switch. His eyes adjusted, then he saw her clearly, seated perfectly still in the small square of moonlight that fell through the window. The only movement came from her fingers working over something hidden in her hand. He threw on a towel, watching her all the while. He heard a small humming sound coming from her as she began rocking slowly back and forth on his bed.

Water over Heaven. Auspicious sign.

Water over Heaven. Cross the river, move forward.

Buddhist, Johnny thought at first, then realized it was "Taoist invocation.

When she saw him the spell broke.

The towel dropped as he approached her, the two of them falling together, onto the bed. She, warm and soft, and he, cold from the shower rinse, hard with desire. Yin crashing into Yang.

He turned on a small light, showing her the pistol as she pressed her softness against him. She peered along the barrel and silencer, squinted and imagined the target in her sights. She took a breath and squeezed the trigger, heard the hammer snapping down on the unloaded pistol.

"Don't worry," Johnny said. "You won't be shooting far and there's no kick."

Mona watched asJohnny chambered a round for her, flicking on the safety, then ejected the round, explaining the slide action to her.

"All you need to do is squeeze," he said. He passed the bedsheet over the Titan in a quick wipe, cursory but careful enough to remove his prints.

Mona turned off the light on the night table, leaving the bedroom illuminated only by moonlight. She climbed on top of him and worked her body until he was hard again, inside her. Almost a half hour passed before she rolled off him.

"Will you help me load those extra bullets, my love," her lips demanded just before sliding over the head of his hardness.

In the dim light he groped for and found the extra six-shot magazine, never taking his eyes off her head, then felt again for the small box of bullets, spilling them across the night table. He was in ecstasy, his mind drifting, with clammy hands slipping the little bullets into the magazine.

Her head was bobbing, eyes open, watching him, her tongue twisting inside her mouth. He tossed the loaded clip onto the night table as her lips tightened on him, her fingernails fluttering, closing on his testes. He was ready to explode, to blast himself away from Chinatown, to a sunny place far from the reaches of the mean and unforgiving city.

Double Ten

The Kuomintang banner of the Republic of China was a twelvepointed white sun on a dark-blue rectangle, cornered on a field of blood red. It was raised on every lamppost in Chinatown and flew along with plastic American flags over all the wide two-way avenues.

October 10th, celebrated as Double Ten, was a political holiday, the Eighty-third Anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Republic, a break away from civil war and the clutches of warlord feudalism.

Uncle Four wore his best gray suit, with a small red carnation in the lapel, beneath a red, white and blue Kuomintang flag pin.

He stood on the corner of Mott and Bayard, felt the faint sun on his face and knew exactly how it was going to happen. He'd seen it every year the last thirty years. The faces changed but the routine was the same.

He let his eyes roam over the program for the celebration. There was the Chinese Calligraphy Exhibition that the Lin Sings offered annually. Once a year the Nationalists cranked up their loudspeakers and blasted the streets with martial music, marching fanfare. In the auditorium of the Community Center there was Cantonese Opera and a Chinese Music Recital, followed by a reception-by invitation only-restricted to the big shots. They ran out the schoolchildren with candlelit Chinese lanterns and the floats with beauty queens in cheong saams.

Scheduled for Day Two was a late afternoon series of the Lion Dance, performed by six traditional kung fu academies. Afterward, the Gala Anniversary Dinner at twenty dollars a head, hosted by the Silver Palace and the Harmony Palace, the biggest Chinatown restaurants. The Nationalists ritually issued threats to the Chinese Communists and vowed to retake the mainland. One year they drove an armored half-track with.50 caliber machine guns and camouflage netting down Mott Street and chewed up the asphalt. The following weekend featured the Senior Citizens' presentation of Cantonese Opera, and the boh lo, northerners, offering Peking Opera out in Flushing. In Queens, the Nationalists from Taiwan, the Republic's forty-five-year seat of power, provided an even greater bang-up celebration of the day. That was to be expected, Uncle Four thought, Flushing being a KMT stronghold.

The wind gusted up and Uncle Four shielded his eyes from the dust. Double Ten drew people to Chinatown, his stronghold, and was good for business. The celebration allowed the Nationalists to blow off steam, to show off their face in the Chinatown power configuration: the alliances between Associations, the tongs, the Ian jai, punk-thugs, street gangs, the Kuomintang Nationalists and the triad secret societies.

The sunny morning turned gray and blustery, the October wind carrying on it an edge of wet and cold that made the beauty queens wrap their slender arms about themselves, shiver, and scrunch up their made-up faces. The marching band from the Chinese School came down the street, a platoon of old veterans from the American Legion dragging along behind it.

Uncle Four folded the program and stepped out of the wind. He'd seen it all before and none of it held any surprises for him. He turned toward the Community Center, but was thinking about the stacks of hundred-dollar bills in the plastic takeout bag, and the cache of diamonds and gold in his bedroom that Golo had entrusted to him.

Run

In the haziness of his sleep he imagined the distant beeping of his pager singing in his ear, but when he stirred from his pillow, the sound was more distinct, a tapping on his door that made his eyes focus on the faint sliver of light and shadow that seeped in under the door from the stairwell.

He rolled off the bed, tiptoeing toward the door and the tiny hushed voice calling, fun Yee, Jun Yee!

Johnny squinted through the peephole, saw it was Mona, and unlocked the double deadbolts. She brushed past him like a cold gust, saying in a rush, "You must run, the old bastard put a contract out on you." She looked desperate.

Was he dreaming? What?and How?were all he could manage against the force of her outpouring.

"There are loongjaai, Dragons, searching for you. Your face cannot be seen on the streets." Her body quaked in the darkness.

"He found out about us. I don't know how. I have left the apartment. I am going to Lor Saang, Los Angeles." Breathless, talking to him in the night shadows, her words jumped out in a steely, angry chopping rhythm.

"I need you. I want you to meet me there." A heartbeat passed. "Take the bus." She gave him a ticket folder, red, from jade Tours.

He felt his heart hammering, a dryness blotting up in his throat, anguish and dread sweeping over him.

"It's all there," she said, her voice expectant.

He saw the Greyhound bus ticket, the Holiday Inn reservation, and swiveled his eyes back to her.

"I will call you in three days," she said, the moonlight flashing in her eyes. There was silence around them, his bloodshot eyes burning questions into hers.