Hit the Road, JeanWhile I will be returning to schlep my belongings Sherpa-style across the border to Hong Kong, this last Tuesday was my last "official" night in Shenzhen and what transpired seemed oddly fitting if you're into sudden, bizarre, off-kilter, slightly sexually tinged scenarios.
And as is its wont my past came back to haunt me, and it wasn't altogether pleasant. At about 8:30 p.m. I was nursing a Tsingtao and flipping through Chicom cable waiting for ex-foreign barbarian coworker Jeff to come over for some farewells. I heard a rattling at the steel cage that shelters my apartment door and found not Jeff, but a young woman who looked oddly familiar.
Her name I recalled as "Jean." We had met several million dead brain cells ago one night at a SZ disco called the V-Bar and eventually repaired to the Lucky Number where she had slept on the couch until the a.m. when she joined me atop the World's Worst Mattress.
Afterwards I gave her a can of herbal tea and a roll for breakfast and walked her to the bus stop before going to work. We had exchanged some oral bodily fluids and first names but no phone numbers and I had smugly congratulated myself on what I thought was a seamless one night stand.
Wrong, wrong, wrong again Mr. Zipless Fuckhead.
I was a bit startled to see her again, but invited her in for what I thought might be a brief stay and chat. She sat on the couch and began to make herself at home by changing the channel and then by stretching out and putting her head on my lap.
"Uh, Jean. It's nice to see you again but I have a friend coming over soon and I am moving to Hong Kong tomorrow."
"It is OK. I stay here tonight. It is dark outside."
"Yes. It's dark. But you must go soon."
Several dozen variations of this exchange continued until it became clear that she had no intention of leaving under any circumstances and she also had a request.
She wanted me to give her 1,600 yuan (US$200) for a "new flat" she was "renting tomorrow."
I began to panic just a little. What unnerved me was her impassive calm and resolve not to be moved and her speech which, though somewhat mangled, combined a slight British accent with words like "untimely" (as in: "I know I am untimely") and "disheartened" ("Yes, you are disheartened")- words you don't ordinarily hear even from fluent English speakers in SZ. I kept waiting for Quentin Tarantino to emerge with a camera.
"I know you will give me more money because you are a gentleman," she said looking at me steadily. This was after I had buckled somewhat and thrown a 50 yuan bill at her for taxi fare while raising my voice to request: "Will you PLEASE, just FUCKING PLEASE get the fuck outta here!?"
"Yes, you are a gentleman."
"I AM NOT A GENTLEMAN! Listen, I am a cranky, tired, old American guy who wants you to just leave. I never asked you to come here. JUST GET THE FUCK OUT! Please? Pretty fucking please?"
I began to try to pull her up and off the couch.
She went into a Gandhi passive resistance mode and kept up her mantra.
"You are dispirit. Disheartened. Yes. But you are a gentleman. I stay with you and you help me."
I went to the TV and picked up a weighty foot-long cast bronze Mao statue from atop it and began thumping it in my palm in what I thought was significant and menacing manner.
This broke her calm demeanor just briefly. Jean flopped herself full length on the couch, closed her eyes and proclauimed dramatically: "Yes! Srike me! It is dark. I have no apartment tomorrow and forever. There will be my blood very much and you will be disheartened."
Not knowing what else to do, I put Mao back on his perch and began laughing until I had a sudden brainstorm.
Leaving her prostrate on the couch, I left the apartment and went to the elevators where I pushed the button. "Gotta go get apartment security," I though. "Don't care if they can't understand English. Just gotta get security."
As I waited for the World's Slowest Elevator, I heard the door to 1908 open and then saw Jean standing next to me.
"What are you doing?" she asked as if she had every right to know.
"I am going to police," I replied, watching the elevator light's glacial progress and edging around her to get nearer to my apartment door. "Telling police so you go."
"I go with you," she said. "No problem."
Whether she meant this or whether she was implying she would accompany me to tell them that I was not a gentleman, I never learned because the elevator arrived and the door opened. I feinted toward it, then in my best 51-year-old white running back mode dodged around her and sprinted into 1908 and slammed and locked the doors.
Jeff arrived about 20 minutes later and told him about the previous guest.
"Was she carrying a roundish white purse? Pink skirt?"
"Yeah," I said. "How'd you know?"
"I saw her on my way here. She looked daggers at me. Could've killed me, I thought and I couldn't understand why."
"Now you know," I said. "But I was a gentleman about it. I did say 'excuse me' when I faked her out at the elevator."
