Free Dragon Day by Lisa Brackmann Page B

not who he is.
    Not who he was , anyway. I haven’t seen him in over a year. I don’t know what he’s been doing, what he’s been going through.
    How well did I really know him before, for that matter?
    Don’t go there.
    If I can’t believe that Lao Zhang’s the man I thought he was, what has the last year of my life been about?
    I pass the rows of little shops selling incense and Tibetan Buddhist tchotchkes: gilt statuettes, sandalwood beads, prayer flags, and cards. I bet at least a couple of them have postcards of the Dalai Lama behind the counter.
    Whatever it is that Lao Zhang plans on doing, it’s got to be some big, stupid gesture that gets him into trouble. I mean, he’s already in trouble, right? By coming back, it’s like he’s giving up. He knows what’s going to happen. Maybe not the details, but that it’s nothing good.
    I’m getting teary-eyed, which I really hate.
    And for all he said it was about taking the pressure off me, well, I know one thing about so-called superpowers—they hate being embarrassed. There’s no way I’m not going be on the receiving end of some blowback from this.
    By the time I’m on the escalator heading down to the Number 2 subway, I’m really pissed off.
    All this time I’ve been doing what Lao Zhang wanted me to do. First, going on that crazy hunt through China last year, following clues he’d laid down for me, getting my ass kicked from one end of the country to the other. Then managing his art. I’m still not sure why he picked me for that.
    Yeah, he told me he thought it was good for me. That I needed something to do. Which, okay, was true. I needed a mission. Something to take my mind off the Great Wall of Bullshit that had been my life to date.
    But how is this going to help me? Being the front woman for a dissident artist determined to get himself in deeper shit than he already is.
    So he thinks he’s going to make some big gesture and that it’s going to mean something. Like those Tibetans lighting themselves on fire to protest the regime. Does any of that help? Does it change anything?
    And fuck it, I’m not Chinese. This isn’t my country. It’s not my business trying to change it.
    And further, I’m sick of being a good soldier on someone else’s mission.
    You know what I could really use? A guy who’s actually there for me when it counts. Not some flaky artist who—okay, I know he cares about me, at least I think he does, but I’m never going to be first. Or even close to it.
    I swipe my card at the turnstile and take the escalator down to the platform. Stand there and feel a wash of stale air from the tunnel. It’s not too crowded at least. Middle-school kids in tracksuits, a couple of European tourists examining the map enclosed in Lucite that details the exits, a cluster of PLA soldiers in square-cut, baggy fatigues who don’t look much older than the middle-school kids. A subway worker, an older woman in a blue uniform with gaudy gold buttons, sweeps the tiles with a straw broom.
    Too fucking late, I think. I already signed up for this.
    I swear, if I make it through, this is the last time I go out on someone else’s mission. Next time I’m working my own.
    Like I have a clue what kind of mission that might be.
    I’m pretty sure that my mission of choice would not be meeting Cao Meimei for dinner at a pretentious restaurant on the top floor of a five-star hotel in the Central Business District.
    The name of the restaurant is Estasi. Italian, maybe? I can’t tell from the decor. It’s just a lot of bullshit marble, fancy light ing, dark wooden alcoves with carvings of grapes and vines.
    Just going into the hotel lobby made me want to run the other way. Marble everywhere, more gold trim than the Lama Temple, perfectly conditioned air, and the faint hum of Muzak. There’s an atrium that goes up a few stories with a