The Trail to Buddha's Mirror - Don Winslow [79]
In the meantime, the old man swung into action. He dug around under his kang and came out with a lamp that looked like a large sterno stove, a long-stemmed pipe, and a tin cigarette case. He lit the lamp, and when he had a nice glow going, he used a long needle to spear a tiny ball of opium, a blackish green nugget. He held it over the burning lamp.
Fondue, Neal thought. Hell of a time for fondue.
The old man screamed at Marvel, who scrambled down the ladder and stood in waiting. The old man ignited the opium, stuck it into the pipe, and handed it to Marvel, who climbed back into the loft and held the pipe to Neal’s lips.
“Kryptonite?” Neal mumbled. He brushed the pipe away.
“Kryptonite,” Marvel said, and pushed the pipe back to Neal’s lips.
“Red Kryptonite or Green Kryptonite?”
“Green.”
“Okay, then.”
Neal took a short draw on the pipe as the old man fried another ball of opium. Marvel went back down and fetched in the pipe and went back up to Neal.
“Flash,” said Marvel.
Neal didn’t fight the pipe this time or the next. The fourth time Marvel came with the pipe, Neal reached up for it and held it to his own lips.
Neal floated to the ceiling and then through the roof. He drifted up over the Walled City into the blue sky and then he flew right into Li Lan’s painting, the one on the mountainside above the abyss. He sat down with Li Lan on the precipice and looked down at the other Li Lan in the canyon beneath them.
“I found you,” he said.
She set her brushes down and took his hand. “No,” she said gently, “I led you here.”
“Why did you leave me?”
“I knew you could fly.”
He felt the tears well up in his eyes and then spill over onto his cheeks. It felt good, so good to cry, and he let the tears pour into his open mouth and they tasted sweet, and she must have known that because she took a single tear with her tongue, swallowed it, and smiled.
He recognized her then.
“Kuan Yin,” he said. “You are Kuan Yin.”
His eyes flooded with more tears and she lapped them off his face. She opened his mouth with her tongue and drank more tears as the sky became a brilliant blue and she took him inside her and gently rocked him. She wrapped her hands around the back of his head and pushed his mouth to her nipple and fed him. She softly chanted his name and the pain receded and then it was only pleasure, only pleasure, only pleasure, and then she was weeping and he soothed her straining neck with his lips as the wet and warmth of her moved on him. And then her reflection floated up from the abyss and reached out her hand and Li Lan took it and held it tightly and drew her reflection into herself and Neal saw his own reflection in the mists below—his eyes sunken, his face pale with pain and hunger—and he reached out and took it and drew it into himself and then they were all together, all inside each other, and they fell off the edge of the cliff and into the mists.
11
Xao Xiyang took a deep drag of the cigarette, stubbed the butt out in the full ashtray, and lit another one. It was a deep character flaw, he knew, that anxiety made him chain-smoke. He should meditate instead, or do t’ai chi, but he lacked the patience. Another character flaw.
Besides, his smoking made the interior of the limousine smell bad. His late wife had complained about it constantly—it had been one of the many running jokes they shared—and he felt a quick stab of sorrow that she was not there to nag him about it.
He looked out the window at the wide boulevard. His was one of the few automobiles among the thousands of bicycles, their bells jingling like an immense flock of chirping birds. The car came to a stop at a four-way intersection in front of a traffic island on which a white-uniformed policeman waved his arms and did a showy pirouette to face a new stream of traffic. Behind the officer loomed a gigantic billboard picturing a young couple beaming at their baby. Their single baby. It was