The Foreigner by Francie Lin

looked straight at me, clear, urgent. "You will not mind me being so blunt, I hope, but as your friend, I must say it. Get out. Get out now, and go home."
    "But why?" I asked, taken aback.
    He shook his head with some agitation. "It is not for me to tell you. I am bound by certain obligation."
    "What obligation? To Uncle?" I thought of Uncle’s stroke-damaged face. What was it about him that I could not nail down? The missing clue seemed all at once the key to everything, to the girl, the knife on the stairs, my own brother.
    "It does not matter to whom. My job, shall we say, depends on discretion. There is no obligation to keep an old man on at a job for which he is not qualified, especially now that my father has been dead for some years. One can only push one’s luck so far. So forgive me my obscurantness, Emerson. I only thought I would point out the woman to you; perhaps that too was a wrong idea. But as regards Xiao P—" He stopped and frowned. "Stay away from him. The knife cuts deeper than the blood."
    "But he’s my
brother
."
    He waved this away with a small hand. "Life is short," he said, indifferent. He tucked a bit of fish in his mouth. "You care for such things more when you are younger. Your mother, she trained you as a good Confucian son. Myself, I have never liked the Confucian tradition too much. Loyalty to a tribe—
unconditional
loyalty—is dangerous. As bad as religion, I would say. Why should we treat a blood relation differently than we treat others? Are they more valuable than other people somehow? More important?"
    He wiped his mouth fastidiously. "If you must stay, I can help you find your way around. But you will think about my warning, no?"
    "The knife," I said. "You said something about his knife."
    "A figure of speech only." He shrugged. "The manner of weapon is unimportant. A gun, a knife, a poison to the ear. Death is death, do you see what I mean, Xiao Chang?" He wiped his mouth again, as if the conversation were distasteful to him. "Once you are dead, your good intentions die with you. Better to leave it alone."
     
     
     

CHAPTER   8
     
     
    D ESPITE ATTICUS’S MISGIVINGS, I HAILED A CAB and went directly to the Palace after dinner in search of Little P. Someone there would have an idea of where he was, at least, and I was determined to see him again before I lost my nerve. But I could not shake the sense of foreboding that Atticus had stirred up. It was dark; the bright backlit signboards cast a dystopic light on the streets, and the battalions of scooters—people muffled up in their motorcycle helmets—seemed menacing too. I felt for the documents, which I had folded and stashed in my jacket pocket. They belonged to Little P; the motel was his. The sting would not go away. Let tonight be the night I would divest myself of my lie. I would give the papers to Little P and live quietly with the loss, like a monk, or a priest, or some other holy man. The cabbie farted richly and yawned.
    It was Friday, which should have been good for business, but there was nobody in the lobby of the Palace except a faintly mustachioed clerk at the front desk. He eyed me lazily when I asked for Little P and said he didn’t know where my brother was.
    "Well, can I at least leave a message? Message. Message. Uh…
liu
…"—I consulted my pocket dictionary—
"yan."
    He shook his head, irritable. He had been watching some kind of soap opera on a mini-TV behind the counter. Upstairs, a hollow bass beat boomed like cannons, shaking the walls; a little plaster powder fell down on his head. He had a punkish pageboy cut, very ragged and fey, and he kept sweeping greasy strands of hair back from his forehead, glaring at me.
    "Poison?" I said suddenly. "Poison
zai ma
?"
    Again the lazy look, this time slightly animated by doubt. He didn’t have to agonize too long, because at that moment a door flew open off the foyer and Poison himself came out, shouting and guffawing with someone in the room behind