The Stone Monkey

and comb. In the men’s room, he’d shaved and washed the salt water out of his hair and dried it with paper towels. Then he combed the thinning strands back and brushed as much sand off himself as hecould. He joined the well-dressed commuters on the platform.
    Now, approaching the city, the bus slowed for a tollbooth and then continued through a long tunnel. Finally it emerged into the city itself. Ten minutes later the vehicle parked on a busy commercial street.
    Li climbed out like everyone else and stood on the sidewalk.
    His first thought: Where’re all the bicycles and motorbikes? They were the main means of private transport in China and Li couldn’t imagine a city this big without millions of Seagull bicycles coursing through the streets.
    His second thought: Where can I buy some cigarettes?
    He found a kiosk selling newspapers and bought a pack.
    When he looked at his change this time he thought: Ten judges of hell! Nearly three dollars for a single pack! He smoked at least two packs a day, three when he was doing something dangerous and needed to calm his nerves. He’d go broke in a month living here, he estimated. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply as he walked through the crowds. He asked a pretty Asian woman how to get to Chinatown and was directed to the subway.
    Jostling his way through the mass of commuters, Li bought a token from the clerk. This too was expensive but he’d given up comparing costs between the two countries. He dropped the token in the turnstile, walked through the device and waited on the platform. He had a bad moment when a man began shouting at him. Li thought the man might be deranged, even though he was wearing an expensive suit. In a moment he realized what the man was saying. Apparently, it was illegal to smoke on the subway.
    Li thought this was madness. He couldn’t believe it. But he didn’t want to make a scene so he stubbed out his cigarette and put it in his pocket, muttering under his breath another assessment: “One crazy fuck country.”
    A few minutes later the train roared into the station and Sonny Li got on board as if he’d been doing it all his life, looking around attentively—though not for security officers but simply to see if anyone else was smoking so that he could light up again. To his dismay, no one was.
    At Canal Street Li stepped out of the car and climbed up the stairs into the bustling, early morning city. The rain had stopped and he lit the snuffed cigarette then slipped into the crowd. Many of the people around him were speaking Cantonese, the dialect of the south, but aside from the language, this neighborhood was just like portions of his town, Liu Guoyuan—or any small city in China: movie theaters showing Chinese action and love films, the young men with long slicked-back hair or pompadours and challenging sneers, the young girls walking with their arms around their mothers or grandmothers, businessmen in suits buttoned snugly, the ice-filled boxes of fresh fish, the bakeries selling tea buns and rice pastries, the smoked ducks hanging by their necks in the greasy windows of restaurants, herbalists and acupuncturists, Chinese doctors, shop windows filled with ginseng roots twisted like deformed human bodies.
    And somewhere near here, he was hoping, would be something else he was very familiar with.
    It took Li ten minutes to find what he sought. He noticed the telltale sign—the guard, a young man with a cell phone, smoking and examining passersby as he lounged in front of a basement apartment whose windows were painted black. It was a twenty-four-hour gambling hall.
    He walked up and asked in English, “What they play here? Fan tai? Poker? Maybe thirteen points?”
    The man looked at Li’s clothes and ignored him.
    “I want play,” Li said.
    “Fuck off,” the young man spat out.
    “I have money,” Li shouted angrily. “Let me inside!”
    “You Fujianese. I hear your accent. You not welcome here. Get outta here or you get hurt.”
    Li raged, “My dollar good as fuck Cantonese dollar. You boss, he want you turn away customers?”
    “Get outta here, little man. I’m not going to tell you again.”
    And he pulled aside his nice black jacket, revealing the butt of an automatic pistol.
    Excellent! This is what Li had been hoping for.
    Appearing frightened, he started to turn away then spun back with his arm outstretched. He caught the young man in the chest with his fist, knocking the wind out of him. The boy staggered