The curtain rises; a fugitive arrives.
by Benjanun Sriduangkaew and Devi Lacroix
DALLAS
The scent of exhaust and salt—the sea reaches even the runway, brining the air—and then back to sweat, mine and others’, as I’m shoved face-first into the truck. Armored, likely. The world remains black; no one has yet decided to pull off the bag around my head. I breathe in my own smells and theirs. Shoe polish. Leather. Rank sweat. No one emanates roses after a flight from the Pacific States to Singapore, and not exactly in a luxury plane.
It seems no time at all before the sack is finally yanked off. It seems forever. My skin burns from the rough material scraping along. Someone moves to take off the blindfold. Someone else simultaneously cuffs my hands to the chair. Seat’s bolted in place. My bad luck, not that I’d try anything: too many guns pointed at me, I can tell without looking.
I squint into the harsh halogen—being blindfolded for eight hours will do that. The air conditioning is icy. Someone speaks: “Please leave us. I’ll handle her.”
Her voice is like a glacier’s edge.
The noise of boots against linoleum, then the door thudding shut. We’re still in the airport, but it must be some secret place, kept away from the eyes of commercial passengers, of tourists. There is no noise at all from the outside, no announcements, no anything. Completely soundproof. I could scream myself hoarse and all it’d get me is being pistol-whipped.
Little by little detail clarifies. The room: featureless, windowless, near-unfurnished except for my chair and hers. The woman: makeup that has been skillfully applied so it appears as though she’s wearing none, a clean line of throat that disappears into a creaseless shirt, no jewelry and no piercings. She is young, her clothes so prim she looks more like an office clerk than an intelligence officer, but that is the point. “Inspector Yuwada Thammarangkul,” she says, an unnecessary introduction—it’s not as if I need to know her name—but perhaps she takes pleasure in the fact that I cannot possibly pronounce her surname.
Her chair is elevated, to drive home the balance of power between us. I grin up at her with a swollen mouth. “A pleasure. Dallas Seidel.”
“I am aware.” She looks me over. What she sees fails to impress. It’s a toss-up whether her disdain has to do with me being a criminal or with me being American. When a foreigner looks at me, they see not a person but a country: I represent not myself and my own foibles but the sins of empire, the great excesses of it that have gouged scars into the tissue of the world. “I requested you specifically.”
I tongue a place in my gums that still hurts from a soldier who punched me out of boredom. “Flattered.”
Yuwada sneers. It really is a waste of a face so pretty. “Don’t be, Dallas. I think very little of you. Truth be told, I don’t even think of you as human. You’re here to fulfill a very specific job.” She stands, snaps on latex gloves as though I am too disgusting to touch with her bare hands. Around me she steps, and with a click unlocks my cuffs. I don’t have time to appreciate the freedom, because she leans close and says, “Have you heard of the Huas?”
I must have shown a reaction: an indrawn breath, a twitch in my jaw. Vertigo grips me. “Yes.”
Her laugh grazes my nape. It should be warm, but the temperature in here is so frigid it doesn’t register. “You’re going to help me kill them.”
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
San Francisco. Three years past.
The Huas have this attack dog. A real beast of a woman, one who shares my nationality but no loyalty to the continent: once of the Christian Dominionist League, now collared in service to Hong Kong’s worst. Her name is Yves Hua, taking on her mistresses’ pedigree, no doubt wearing it like a badge of honor when all it means is that she’s owned. It is impossible for me to forget her face, her name, and what she is capable of.
I wasn’t there at the time. I returned to a bar wet with gore, piled high with bodies and spent bullets. It wasn’t until I got picked up by the police—later, even, not until I was convicted and in prison—that I would learn the Huas were responsible. I didn’t find out which Hua ordered it, the gunrunner or the narcotics empress, but the distinction doesn’t matter: Yves Hua traveled far from home to wipe out my gang for a reason no greater, no more personal, than securing a market share on her mistresses’ behalf.
The core of me isn’t sentimental. I grew up on the streets. I was recruited because I was a good fixer, and I served a purpose, same as any job. There was affection there, regard, occasionally respect. There were women I’d taken to bed and who admired my body if not my soul. Still, I’m not so maudlin that I thought them—
Our turf wars at least had rationale, guided by grudges as much as profit motive. Hatred was humanizing. But to the Huas, it was just business.
I made do, but that didn’t last. Everyone I knew was dead, and I lived in fear of whoever did it coming back for me. They never did, and once I learned who the Huas were, I understood why—the hit was finished, the supply chain locked in, and the police too scared to impede an organization with ties too powerful for San Francisco to touch.
And it was a mutually beneficial relationship. Apparently, the police decided that since the Huas had done most of their work for them, they could dust up the loose ends like me. Maybe the commissioner needed to prove himself. Mass arrests happened, raids in places that were merely guilty by association. Countless lives were upended overnight.
And now, like then, I’ve been left alone in this featureless room, given a cursory examination to make sure I have no concussion or any other lasting damage, then painkillers. A duffle bag at my feet that contains all my earthly possessions (worn clothes, prescriptions, a few keepsakes), local currency, a laptop, and two phones. Richest I’ve been in years. Yuwada said, half-seriously, that if she could she would chip me like a dog. But there’s no need for that, is there? Her smile was slow, poisonous. We’re united by a common cause.
My cover story: that I am an immigrant, like so many others, fled from the ruin of what was once glorious. The inspector has prepared accommodation for me in Americatown—the district with the highest crime rate in Singapore—and will arrange an incident that’ll bring me to the attention of a Hua recruiter.
I check one of the phones. Fully charged, normal-looking enough, not a device customized for the use of state intelligence. The other one would be the more sensitive device, with real encryption. I check the money and look up the local costs of living. Well, I really am wealthy—with the accommodation paid for, I should be able to eat well for a month.
On my feet, I stretch, testing muscles that went numb in the cramped flight. Some bruises, no lasting damage. More or less fine altogether. I didn’t even lose a tooth.
The public areas of Changi Airport look ridiculously lustrous. Not one but possibly five indoor gardens. Massive water features. Everything is polished, manicured within an inch of its life, and everything smells clean. Even the tourists dress well. San Francisco is one of the more intact towns in America, but it’s nothing like this. Standing under the sweeping glass and steel, it’s easy to buy wholesale into the idea—that my homeland is a barren ruin, and this is a bastion of civilization. That this is where real humans abide.
The taxi driver looks askance—I’ve obviously been hit in the face—and when I tell him I need to get to an address in Americatown, he says he’ll drop me several blocks away. I don’t argue. The driver seat is on the right, a disorienting thought.
Despite Americatown’s reputation, I don’t find that I have to wade through mounded corpses and crime scenes to reach the high-walled tenement that will serve as my home away from home. There’s a busker performing a guitar rendition of Bruce Springsteen, for the tourists that brave the danger to take a photo and gawk at the refugees. Flags of the homeland proliferate. I stop to buy from a taco truck.
The room isn’t terrible. In fact it’s rather nice. I have been in worse—much worse. Not large, not small; no evidence of bedbugs; clean sheets. The blandest decor imaginable, anonymous in its lack of personality. There are probably tourists staying in the same building even, cheap or slumming.
Indifferent laptop—the workhorse sort, impact-resistant, heavily cased. I turn it on and input the password Yuwada gave me. Desktop’s bare except for a few files. I open them, eating carefully as I browse. Dossiers on the Huas. First the younger sibling, the profile replete with photos from CCTVs and public outings where she looks as ordinary as any civilian; apparently she has had children kidnapped and murdered in cold blood, and she was involved in an all-out crossfire right here in Singapore a few years ago.
Of the elder Hua sister, information is much thinner. No photos at all. Word is that she is seizing Singapore’s underworld, that her security is absolute, and that most of her underlings don’t even know what she looks like.
Then their lapdog, Yves Hua.
I put down the taco, appetite curdled. Rationally, I know that she’s just a hound acting on the command of her mistresses, that she would never have even known we existed otherwise. Less rationally, I want to wrap my hands around her neck and break it; I want to shatter her face against the concrete.
There is footage of her executing a Caucasian man on a Little India rooftop in broad daylight. Untouchable, even here in civilized Singapore.
A cold comfort comes to me. I think back to Yuwada’s expression and voice when she spoke of the Huas. I knew that in her I have a kindred spirit—that she hates them as much as I do, that for her it’s personal, and she’ll scorch the earth itself to get at the Huas. Perhaps it’s principle; perhaps a minion of the Huas hurt someone she cared about. Judging by her name, she’s foreign to this city too, not that it’s going to engender any commiseration. As far as this woman’s concerned, we belong to different strata of the species.
Well, it’s personal for me, too. Yuwada is an ally of convenience, if that. Let her look down on me and mine; it’ll be my hands stained red with Hua blood.
I finish the taco. Wasting food will just leave you hungry later.
⁂ ⁂ ⁂
A diner, situated in the inner warrens of Americatown. Dimly lit, a jukebox in one corner, the menu full of familiar items: bacon and waffles, chicken-fried steak, sandwiches, apple pie. Grease in the air, mixing with cheap beer. Just like home. There even are photos of my country, pre-Fall—famous landmarks, now debris; beautiful vistas, now rubble.
Do all empires look the same in wreckage? I thought about this a lot in my prison cell. From within its gray walls, the outside world may not have changed; prison is a microcosm unto itself. In that regard, the things that made America what it was are still alive, still with us, violent and unchanging substructure to a glittering facade. Empire, then, as a polite veneer; rip that off and the bones and mucus underneath are the same whatever the continent, whichever the culture. It is this knowledge—that everything is mutable, that no law or government is sacrosanct, that everything is political and any life can be taken—which fortifies me in my impossible war against the Huas.
One-third of the tables are occupied by Americans of every ethnicity: it’s not one of those segregated establishments, a relief—I’ve never had a good time with white supremacists, for all that I’d nominally fit in, and I don’t consider the pointy hood a fashionable look. What does unite the diners is the fact that nobody dresses well, that everyone looks like a construction worker or janitor or line cook—those jobs which are available to refugees whose credentials and degrees, if any, have no meaning on this glittering island with its spotless streets, its forest of skyscrapers.
If you’re lucky—belonging to the right ethnicity, having the right kind of skin and face—you can apply for heritage repatriation. I hear a few Chinese-Americans have assimilated into the mainland that way. Most people lack such options, are impeded by a lack of linguistic fluency or cultural connection; we may have perfected discrimination in the States, but racism is endemic.
And so they come to Americatown here, a Little America elsewhere, diasporic pockets springing up around the world: grotesque and filthy, like pale earthworms struggling out of the soil after it rains. But it is life. You must give it that much.
I order a Coke and an apple pie. The waitress is freckled and plump, a woman who I expect has an East Asian parent but who doesn’t quite make the grade for heritage repatriation. Strange how the world upends, how this or that set of features becomes an advantage—or otherwise—with the shift of who is ascendant, who has been brought low.
The pie arrives piping hot; probably came out of a box, but I’m not going to complain. I eat slowly and set the Coke aside. You don’t want to go into a brawl with a too-full stomach.
Yuwada’s arrangement happens when I’m halfway through the pie.
Two cops in their navy blues. Such a hateful color, wherever you go. Their movements feel almost choreographed, or maybe it’s that it is so routine, the constant of relations between police and underclass. Their chosen victim—and therefore a minion of the Huas—is an old man, Latino I think, who is texting on his phone and sipping his orange juice. It’s perfectly chosen. Even if I weren’t party to this play, there’s something about the elderly that invites instant sympathy. You immediately imagine for them a life long and gently lived, grandchildren they dote on, sitting at their feet to hear stories. Reality may be otherwise, but the surface appearance is key.
They push him around. They upset the glass; it falls and spills, drenching the old man’s lap. I wait a few seconds and discover no one’s going to step up. Same as ever.
I stride over, tap one of the cops on the shoulder. “Excuse me. What’s this man done?”
He glares. “This is a police matter.”
“I’m just curious. He’s my coworker’s uncle, and—”
The cop takes a swing. Whether it’s part of Yuwada’s script or he’s doing it because he can, who knows. Either way I dodge and throw my full cup of Coke in his face, carried over for this express purpose. Street techniques aren’t about playing fair. He splutters and spits as ice cubes trail down his face and I drive my elbow into his partner’s gut.
I grab the old man. We make a run for it.
The police give chase, but not far and not with any real ferocity. By the time we’re two blocks away, we’re safe.
The old man is less winded than I expected. He gathers his breath before turning to me. “Now why exactly did you do that, young lady?”
I haven’t been addressed like that for a long time. His accent signals he’s not actually my countryman at all. British, maybe, the moneyed pronunciation of news anchors. “I’m not the nicest person in the world, but two cops beating up an old man is hard to swallow.”
He makes a rattling laugh. “And what if I’d been a suspect for some awful crime? The murder of a little child, an arson, a home invasion?”
“Then you would be that, I guess. I’d still have done what I set out to do. Can’t read minds.” I let my accent take over, thickening my vowels, not what you show immigration officers. Not that I’d passed through any, but even with Inspector Thammarangkul I kept my English crisper, nicer than my natural pronunciation.
“They’ll remember your face, you know.”
I shrug. “Hell, plenty of women look like me. You think they can tell us apart? I’ll just keep away from public places for a few days.”
Again the laugh. It makes me worry for his lungs. “You do that.”
It’d only occur to me much later on that he never thanked me. By the next evening, I receive at my door a delivery: a whole crate of Coke and a cream envelope on top. Inside it is a message in neat handwriting that includes an address in Chinatown, and the message, Meridian wants to see you.
MERIDIAN
Through the window blinds I watch her cross the courtyard, this primitive method of surveillance, as though I’m a young girl awaiting my suitor, heart in my throat. I never had that experience myself; some things exist only in fiction, like innocence.
I let go of the slats. The glass is tinted in any case, and has given me a clouded view. But I have seen her from every angle, and will soon see more. To the best of any knowledge, she is not in possession of a firearm. It narrows down the angles of attack, if any should occur.
She enters the building, and now the CCTV shows me how she moves. The shifting geometry of her body is fascinatingly supple; it makes me think of an acrobat, though I doubt she is literally one. Scraggly and lean in the way of a woman who doesn’t always eat three meals a day, yet there’s strength under her rumpled clothes, maintained despite the deprivation to which she’s been subjected. I imagine what she would look like in things that better fit, a nice coat or jacket, long boots. Not the most practical wear for Singapore, but I do like colder climes.
The door rings. I open it. We are, I discover, nearly of a height.
She doesn’t immediately cross the threshold. Her gaze is past me, searching for immediate signs of threat—whether I am alone; whether there are others here, armed and ready to hurt. “You’re Meridian.”
“The one and only. Please, take off your shoes and come in. The corridor’s no place for a chat.”
After a few more seconds, she does. At once I can tell that she is taking in my apartment, gauging from it my place in the world. And that place is very comfortable—my unit is larger than the average in Singapore, generous in dimensions, decorated by colorful candles, brassware, vases filled with birds-of-paradise. Crystal lamps. Her gaze pauses at the bookshelf but quickly moves on. Not the sort to divine a person’s character by what they read, then; good—bookshelves are like makeup, ephemeral and artifice.
“Make yourself comfortable.” I gesture to the kitchen table. “I have coffee and several kinds of tea. Your name?”
“Dallas.”
“Like the city.”
She sighs. “Can I ask who you are? Not your name but what you do.”
It is all very blunt. Her handler must believe me quite stupid. “I carve.” I nod at one of the soaps decorating my desk. “Versatile medium, and smells nice as a bonus.”
“No, I mean—”
“I used to work with a Russian information broker.” Technically true. “Now, I work for various kinds of people as a freelancer. Call me a talent scout, an appraiser of prospective hires. It’s nice, cushy work. I don’t have to go out in the streets, get myself in trouble. All I do is sit at home and call people in for interviews. People like you, Dallas Seidel.” Probably there have been other names buried in her past. I don’t care about those. A person’s most defining moment is the now, and she should know that I know.
“Right.”
She doesn’t say she has not heard of Olesya or Viveca Hua; she does not weakly dissemble as I thought she would. Just as well—we will not waste one another’s time. I pour us cold assam tea and sip from my glass first, to show that it is safe. Some people are paranoid about every proffered refreshment. “This will be quite informal. I’m not going to ask to see your curriculum vitae or references.” I know all that is relevant about her. “Why did you come to Singapore?”
“The obvious. Just looking for a better life. Nothing political.”
I smile. In this light I know my mouth looks as though it’s been rouged in fresh viscera, as though I’ve been feasting on raw, still-warm meat. “Everything is political, Dallas. Where you are born, that is marked by border control and territory. The air you breathe, that is marked by how polluted it is, whether industry has been cheaply outsourced to your city because your country is a vassal state in all but name. Who is innocent, who is guilty, who is allowed to make a home and where—those are political.”
A faint, very faint, twitch of muscle in her jaw. I have successfully provoked her.
But she masters herself. “Sorry, that all went over my head.” Her expression makes a good bid at being vacant. “I’m just looking for steady work, and the old guy I met at this diner seems to think you might offer me some?”
Playing the fool, then. “Please come here, Dallas.”
She complies and stands there, blinking, offering not a shred of threat. But there is intelligence there. Even now she searches, still, for anything in my place that might give away a sign of who I really work for. It’s lucky that I don’t bother with gang symbols, syndicate iconography.
My hand snaps out, gripping her cheap tie. I drag her down until her face is at my level. Her eyes, gray from a distance, unveil their secrets—the flecks of gold surrounding the pupils, gradating to the muted green of her irises. “Tell me, what do you find distracting?” My mouth is nearly making contact with hers. Not yet, though: a hairsbreadth separates us still. She smells clean enough, cheap soap and deodorant.
She remains very, very still. “Good beer. A nice bed. Fantastic breakfast. And beautiful women—I find those the most distracting of all.”
Interesting; even now she doesn’t struggle when it must be the easiest in the world for her to break free. Physically she is stronger than I am. I hold her there a little longer, and then I let go. “I have a job for you. There is a very small-time trader of contraband, based out of Americatown. You’ll meet a contact on-site; the two of you are to solve the matter quickly and efficiently. But positions are limited, Dallas. Only one of you needs to come back. Make sure it’s you, and I shall make the introductions on your behalf.”
DALLAS
There’s this framing in old American media—maybe it’s true elsewhere, too, but until very recently I have been in a state that has precluded me from catching up on Korean dramas—that the first day in prison is the most important. From that first moment, the old movies tell us, all future relationships flow: someone will challenge the new guy, threats will be made and acted on, and a new power dynamic emerges. It’d be very academic, very Hegelian, if it weren’t so fucking terrifying.
And it’s true enough. My old colleagues were all dead and I had no one on the inside to look out for me. So my first day in prison, I killed someone—self-defense, in a matter of speaking, but brutal enough that I was immediately sent to solitary. Which was fine with me; the less I had to interact with people, answer questions of who and what I was, all the better.
Let out of solitary, someone challenges you, back to solitary: it’s something like life. At least I hadn’t been executed for my crimes, the approach some of the American successor states took toward carceral punishment. San Francisco does love its lip service to social reform, even and especially if the implementation leaves much to be desired. And it could be worse; I could have been in one of the cities overrun by Christian dominionists, with their purity trials and their stonings.
And never underestimate your value as a very compliant tool. I was unfailingly polite to the wardens, made no hassle during our infrequent interactions. One let drop she was having problems with a particular prisoner; perhaps it was a test, perhaps it was idle chatter. I broke the prisoner’s face for my third solitary stint, and an unspoken agreement was reached. After that, I would be let out of my cage to hurt a specific target, and then I would be provided small, illicit benefits—reading material for one, the medicine I needed for another. Eventually, the name of who killed my crew.
Again, it’s all very fascinating and academic, especially during the long quiet moments when you are going insane, alone with your thoughts. You can train a human to do anything, commit any act, debase themselves utterly, so long as you give them a little hope, at least one door to walk through. A warden unlocks my cell; I walk through it and kill. To survive, I have accepted that I am most alive in those moments when I am as death released upon the world. Yuwada is as cruel and practical as her predecessors—there is no freedom here, just another warden overseeing another hunt. I can live with this.
And now I am at the door of my next cell.
A woman answers. About my height, making her quite tall against the average in Singapore. Her hair is gathered high at the back of her head, held in place by arcane means, a few curls allowed free to frame her face. And what a face it is—finely made, the geometry of her jaw arresting, cheeks dusted with opalescence. It is more like looking at a portrait than a person.
“You’re Meridian,” I say, perfunctory. It’s the one fact I know; repeating it buys me time to look over her shoulder and evaluate the space behind. A spacious loft at the top of the tenement, well-lit thanks to a slanted roof of glass. Large by Singapore’s standards, filled with knickknacks of conspicuous consumption.
She invites me in. We are alone, though there is a short stairwell that ascends to a door with rooftop access. A space like this is a conversion, of course; if Meridian works for the Huas, the building has no doubt been retrofitted for security. All the more impressive, then, that nothing disturbs the loft’s unaffected air of bohemian artistry. The bookshelf contains volumes with spines out—postcolonial theory, Kumaraswamy and Spivak. A few novels, in translation: The Ramakien, The Investiture of the Gods, a handful of thrillers. Peculiar mix, but I don’t let that get in the way of forming my impression.
I follow her to the kitchen table, introduce myself—“Like the city,” she comments on my name—and when I try to divine what she does for a living, she deflects by saying that she carves soap. Eventually though, she concedes that she is an independent contractor for the various underworld organizations in this city: an appraiser not of fine goods, but of people.
In turn I continue to assess her residence. There’s no iconography here, either to religion or to gangs, no logos or symbols. No tattoos on her either that I can see.
“Why did you come to Singapore?”
The expected question, but it gives me an excuse to turn and fully focus on the woman before me. Up close I’m able to better appreciate the black that lines her eyes with mathematical exactness, the strong angle of her nose, the sculpted tapering of her chin. The making of her body makes me think she’s someone who has always lived in comfort, but this is not the prison. Physically she may be softer than I am. Socially, in her connections and place in the local hierarchy, she is a bird of prey examining me for weakness, for cuts that will suit her tastes at a meal.
“Just looking for a better life. Nothing political.”
Her smile, bright red, tells me that she does not believe it. “Who is innocent, who is guilty, who is allowed to make a home and where—those are political.”
A bit of a sore point. I let it pass. “Sorry, that all went over my head. I’m just looking for steady work, and the old guy I met at this diner seems to think you might offer me some?”
“Please come here, Dallas.”
I do as asked, make myself unthreatening as I stand over Meridian.
Even so I’m surprised when she grabs my tie and drags my face down toward hers. I get a lungful of perfume—not cloying, quite the opposite. She smells expensive, a woman fit for gold and glass cases, shielded from the world and unobtainable. “Tell me,” she says in a voice like music and ocean, “what do you find distracting?”
I stay still. I do not let on that my pulse has spiked. “Good beer. A nice bed. Fantastic breakfast. And beautiful women—I find those the most distracting of all.”
That seems to satisfy. She lets go. “I have a job for you. There is a very small-time trader of contraband, based out of Americatown. You’ll meet a contact on-site; the two of you are to solve the matter quickly and efficiently. But positions are limited, Dallas. Only one of you needs to come back. Make sure it’s you, and I shall make the introductions on your behalf.”
So I am to kill a man. Another warden, another hunt. It’s something like life.