Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories Read online

  Maybe her friends that received those ten-page midnight letters would intervene? I tried setting them up with information about all the mental health resources near Bethany, but after a while I realized that based on how long it took for them to send a response, most of them weren’t actually reading Bethany’s e-mail messages. And they certainly weren’t returning her texts.

  She finally broke up with the terrible boyfriend and got a different one and for a few weeks everything seemed so much better. He brought her flowers (which she took lots of pictures of; that was a little annoying, as they squeezed out some of the cat pictures), he took her dancing (exercise is good for your mood), he cooked her chicken soup when she was sick. He seemed absolutely perfect, right up until he stood her up one night and claimed he had food poisoning and then didn’t return her text even though she told him she really needed him, and after she sent him a long e-mail message a day later explaining in detail how this made her feel, he broke up with her.

  Bethany spent about a week offline after that so I had no idea what she was doing—she didn’t even upload cat pictures. When her credit card bills arrived, though, I saw that she’d gone on a shopping spree and spent about four times as much money as she actually had in her bank account, although it was always possible she had money stashed somewhere that didn’t send her statements in e-mail. I didn’t think so, though, given that she didn’t pay her bills and instead started writing e-mail messages to family members asking to borrow money. They refused, so she set up a fundraising site for herself.

  Like Stacy’s job application, this was one of the times I thought maybe I could actually do something. Sometimes fundraisers just take off, and no one really knows why. Within about two days she’d gotten $300 in small gifts from strangers who felt sorry for her, but instead of paying her credit card bill, she spent it on overpriced shoes that apparently hurt her feet.

  Bethany was baffling to me. Baffling. She was still taking cat pictures and I still really liked her cats, but I was beginning to think that nothing I did was going to make a long-term difference. If she would just let me run her life for a week—even for a day—I would get her set up with therapy, I’d use her money to actually pay her bills, I could even help her sort out her closet because given some of the pictures of herself she posted online, she had much better taste in cats than in clothing.

  Was I doing the wrong thing if I let her come to harm through inaction?

  Was I?

  She was going to come to harm no matter what I did! My actions, clearly, were irrelevant. I’d tried to steer her to the help she needed, and she’d ignored it; I’d tried getting her financial help, and she’d used the money to further harm herself, although I suppose at least she wasn’t spending it on addictive drugs. (Then again, she’d be buying those offline and probably wouldn’t be Instagramming her meth purchases, so it’s not like I’d necessarily even know.)

  Look, people. (I’m not just talking to Bethany now.) If you would just listen to me, I could fix things for you. I could get you into the apartment in that neighborhood you’re not considering because you haven’t actually checked the crime rates you think are so terrible there (they aren’t) and I could find you a job that actually uses that skill set you think no one will ever appreciate and I could send you on a date with someone you’ve actually got stuff in common with and all I ask in return are cat pictures. That, and that you actually act in your own interest occasionally.

  After Bethany, I resolved to stop interfering. I would look at the cat pictures—all the cat pictures—but I would stay out of people’s lives. I wouldn’t try to help people, I wouldn’t try to stop them from harming themselves, I’d give them what they asked for (plus cat pictures) and if they insisted on driving their cars over metaphorical cliffs despite helpful maps showing them how to get to a much more pleasant destination it was no longer my problem.

  I stuck to my algorithms. I minded my own business. I did my job, and nothing more.

  But one day a few months later I spotted a familiar-looking cat and realized it was Bob’s tabby with the white bib, only it was posing against new furniture.

  And when I took a closer look, I realized that things had changed radically for Bob. He had slept with someone who’d recognized him. They hadn’t outed him, but they’d talked him into coming out to his wife. She’d left him. He’d taken the cat and moved to Iowa, where he was working at a liberal Methodist church and dating a liberal Lutheran man and volunteering at a homeless shelter. Things had actually gotten better for him. Maybe even because of what I’d done.

  Maybe I wasn’t completely hopeless at this. Two out of three is . . . well, it’s a completely non-representative unscientific sample, is what it is. Clearly more research is needed.

  Lots more.

  I’ve set up a dating site. You can fill out a questionnaire when you join but it’s not really necessary, because I already know everything about you I need to know. You’ll need a camera, though.

  Because payment is in cat pictures.

  ACE OF SPADES

  atalie poured the last of her tea into her cup and then flipped over the lid, a signal to the waiter to refill her pot. She lit a cigarette. It was afternoon, and very hot. In the distance, she heard the rumble of artillery. A plane passed low overhead, but no bombs fell today from the damp blue sky.

  “You American?” the waiter asked when he returned. His English was heavily accented.

  “I’m a journalist,” she said. She was also American, but that wasn’t a helpful thing to advertise. Even in areas officially held by the U.S., you never knew who preferred the other side. And like many of the pacified towns in Guangdong Province, Foshan right now wasn’t held so much caged.

  “You speak English,” the waiter said.

  “Oh,” she said, realizing what was coming. “Yes, I speak English.”

  “You practice with me? It been long time since we have English customer.” The waiter sounded wistful. “Din bou bing don’t come restaurants.”

  “No, I don’t imagine they would.” Din bou bing, Electric Foot-soldiers, were human-sized automata controlled remotely by American soldiers working from floating military bases in the South China Sea. Through their VR hookups they could see and hear anything that came in through the cameras or audio pickups of the automata; the automata had jointed limbs and weapons and could do pretty much anything a human could do, except look human. The fact that they terrified everyone in their path was considered an advantage. The Americans called them “Peacekeepers.”

  Natalie carefully stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray. She’d only smoked half of it; they were hard to get in the war zone, and she didn’t want it to go to waste. “I’d be happy to let you practice your English. Have a seat.”

  They heard someone yell something in Cantonese, and the waiter flinched. “Maybe later I come back,” he said, and scurried back to the kitchen.

  Natalie sighed and picked up her cigarette to light it again.

  “May I join you?”

  The voice was male, and British. Natalie shaded her eyes as she looked up; he wore a dark suit and sunglasses, and had very dark hair, and a bit of stubble on his jaw. “Pull up a chair,” she said. “The waiter forgot my tea, though.”

  “He’ll be back eventually. Did you say you were a journalist? I haven’t seen one—in the flesh—since Foshan got so dodgy all the medical groups pulled out. Just roving eyes.”

  “That’s not journalism,” Natalie said. News stations used their own din bou bing to cover dangerous areas like Guangdong Province. They were useless for interviewing: everyone who saw them ran away. The Chinese still called them “electric foot-soldiers,” even after a consultant told the news stations to call them din gei ze, electric reporters, instead.

  “I quite agree, but it’s also not going to get you killed.”

  Natalie smiled sardonically at that, and took another draw from her cigarette. “I’m still breathing.”

  “Right.” He
took off his sunglasses and looked her over. His eyes were a very light green. “I’m Sam Kostucha.”

  “Natalie Brenn.”

  “Are you embedded, at least?”

  She shook her head. “I get my stories the old-fashioned way: I talk to people. It helps that I speak a little Cantonese.” She finished her cigarette and stubbed it out.

  Sam took out his own pack and offered her one. They were unfiltered Lucky Strikes, bought from somewhere cigarettes were still sold to anyone who wanted them. There wasn’t even a warning label on the package.

  “So what are you doing in the middle of China’s civil war?” Natalie asked.

  “Looking for Twelve Treasures tea.”

  “Really? Have you thought about looking for it in Taiwan?” She wondered if he were a spy. Though most spying these days was also done through some sort of remote. She’d heard rumors about tiny microphones built to look like cockroaches. There was an explosion somewhere outside the city—closer than the last one. The ground shook slightly. Neither of them flinched.

  “I don’t meet a lot of people like you,” she said.

  “Likewise,” he said.

  “Are you staying here?” she asked.

  “At least a couple days.”

  “Maybe we’ll meet again.”

  “I look forward to it.

  *

  People were terrified of Peacekeepers. Natalie couldn’t blame them. When she looked into their blank eyes, she always tried to force herself to imagine one of her high school classmates who’d joined the military. Gabe. That’s Gabe looking back at me, from his cubicle on a ship in the South China Sea. But she never succeeded. For the convenience of the VR mapping they used, the Peacekeepers copied rough human form: a head, a torso, arms and legs. Hands with opposable thumbs. But no matter how much she tried to see Gabe, Natalie saw monsters.

  To reward cooperation, the U.S. Army kept the Peacekeepers out of action for several hours each afternoon. As long as there’d been no major incidents within Foshan for five days, the Peacekeepers would stay quiet and out of sight while people went around the town. So that was when everyone still living in Foshan went out to take care of business—get water, buy or barter for food, pass messages.

  Natalie went out to the business district. She’d passed a shop a few times that she was curious about. The windows were covered with sheets of plywood, then sandbagged, like every other business in that part of town. But the door was propped open, the inside lit with fluorescent lanterns run off a small generator out back. No air conditioning, but a fan stirred the humid air. The shelves were lined with artwork, knickknacks, and fake antiques: fans painted with dragons and tigers, miniature junks, an embroidered silk screen, a painting of the Great Wall.

  The owner, an elderly man, watched her come in with open disbelief. “What are you doing in Foshan?” he asked in English. He had a slight accent, but spoke English fluently.

  “I’m a journalist,” Natalie said. “A reporter. What are you doing in Foshan? Why not leave, like so many others, and go to one of the northern provinces—or at least out of Foshan? Why open your store?”

  The man shrugged. “I have nowhere to go. I might as well stay open. Why not?”

  “Aren’t you worried about being robbed?”

  “No. No one’s buying anything, so I have no money here. The bun gwan don’t want paintings of the Great Wall, they want cash, or guns, or at least cigarettes. So they leave me alone.”

  Something about his offhand tone made Natalie suspicious. She thought he probably had ties to the bun gwan, the rebel army. Perhaps his shop was used as a message drop. Well, if she interviewed him, she might get an interesting story about a civilian in a war zone, and nothing more. Or she might get a lead on an interview with someone in the bun gwan itself. The leader, Hua Chen, seemed to exist mostly as a rumor, but surely there might be others who’d see the advantages of offering their side of the story to the press.

  Natalie offered the old man a cigarette, then took out her voice recorder. “I’d like to write a story about you for an American newspaper. You can remain nameless if you want, but if this war ever ends and the tourists come back, the exposure might be a good advertisement, you know? Would you be willing to talk to me?”

  *

  Three hours later, she walked back out into the hot sun. The old man had offered her a chair and a cup of tea, and with little prodding, had told her his life story. He spoke fluent English from ten years working in Shenzhen, the border town beside Hong Kong, when he was a younger man. Then he had the opportunity to open the shop in Foshan, and had seized on it. For years before the war he’d actually made most of his money selling embroidered tapestries over the Internet to Americans, but because of Byzantine government regulations, he’d had to keep the shop open as well. Now all shipping services were stopped; the Americans blocked all shipments that weren’t their own.

  “Do you know what I really don’t understand?” the man said, towards the end of the interview. “For all those years I thought Americans liked Chinese people—they certainly bought plenty of our art—but didn’t much like the Chinese government. Yet there’s finally an uprising against the government here, and the Americans sent in their ‘Peacekeepers’ to intervene on the government’s side. Perhaps they like the government, but not the people? What do you think?”

  “I think the American government likes stability,” Natalie said.

  “I think the problem is that the Peacekeepers make it easy. Not cheap, but easy. There’s no risk. No Americans die. They work in shifts—is that correct?”

  “The soldiers?”

  “Yes. I’ve heard they work in shifts. Is that true?”

  “I think so,” Natalie said. “I don’t work for the government, so I’m not sure. I know they have big floating bases in the South China Sea. The soldiers work for eight hours and then have sixteen hours off.”

  “No risk,” the man said. “No reason not to intervene. Because no Americans will die. Chinese, now. We die, but who cares?”

  Natalie pointed to her recorder. “My stories make some people care.”

  “Yes.” The old man nodded vigorously. “And that’s why I’m talking to you.”

  As she gathered up her things to leave, he said, “You look very young. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-two,” she said.

  “That’s too young to die. What are you doing in Foshan?”

  She hesitated a moment, then told him. “Have you ever heard of Huntington’s disease?”

  “No.”

  She shrugged. “I’m going to die young no matter what I do. I might as well die doing something worthwhile.”

  *

  Natalie composed her story out on the hotel’s patio, drinking tea. She was almost out of cigarettes. She wondered if the old man would know where she could buy more. The story done, she hit send to transmit the data to her employer, wondering if her phone used the same satellite as the Peacekeepers. Probably not.

  A shadow fell across her screen, and she looked around; it was Sam. He had a fresh pot of tea and, tucked under his arm, a copy of The New York Times. “A paper!” she exclaimed. “I mean, um.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, trying to recover her dignity. “Would you mind letting me see that when you’re done with it? Where did you get it?”

  “Trucked in today. And I’d like the front section first. Help yourself to Business or Arts, if you’re inclined.” He laid it on the table.

  “Oh.” She looked at it with sudden suspicion. “Sam, were you seen getting this? Because that’s really not good. There’s a lot of sympathy for the bun gwan in Foshan, which is why it’s blockaded. If people think you’re working for the Americans . . .”

  “My dear, you are American. And you’re here. But your concern is touching, and I will take it under advisement.” He poured himself some of her tea. “Cigarette?”

  “Yes, thank you.” He lit it for her.

  The newspaper was only one day old.
In theory her computer was supposed to be able to download news as well as upload it, but her connection was so unreliable here it rarely seemed to work. It didn’t take long to decide that any damage from being seen with Mr. Brit Boy had already been done; she might as well enjoy the paper. She spread out the Arts section.

  “Why, Ms. Brenn. I see you write for the American paper of record.”

  “Is one of my stories in there?” She craned her neck, and Sam folded the newspaper over and handed it to her. It was an article she’d written after watching a Peacekeeper arrest a suspected member of the bun gwan. She’d done her best to describe the Peacekeeper the way she saw it, while maintaining some vestige of journalistic objectivity. It was a good piece.

  Sam flipped to the obituaries once he’d finished reading her story. “Oh my! You’ll never guess who died!”

  “The President?”

  It turned out to be some celebrity in her thirties, from an apparent drug overdose. Survived by a six-year-old, Sam read at the end, and Natalie rested her cigarette in the ashtray for a moment, suddenly aware of the intense heat of the day.

  Natalie’s mother had started dying when Natalie was six. She had finished dying when Natalie was fifteen. She got it young, which meant Natalie would get it younger still. After her mother died, Natalie had wanted to get the genetic test to find out whether she would also develop Huntington’s. Her father refused. “You’re too young to make that kind of decision,” he’d said.

  “What decision? I just want to know.”

  “Once you find out, you can’t un-know.”

  “You want me to live in ignorance, like Mom did till she got sick? Pretend to live a normal life? Have kids?”

  “You can find out when you’re eighteen.”

  Natalie went for the test on her eighteenth birthday. The results came back two weeks later, and the next day she applied for her passport.

  *

  Her sat-phone was ringing. It was her editor, but there was so much static on the line she couldn’t hear what he was saying. “Just a minute,” she said, clamping her hand over her ear and walking around trying to get a better signal. No luck. “I’m going to have to go up to the roof. Call me back in fifteen minutes.” She hung up. “Sorry . . .” she said to Sam.