Chapter 9
Shen Huan stared at them blankly for a long time until she heard a Spanish-accented English voice urging her loudly. She then averted her gaze, quickly took a few steps forward to the glass counter, and spread out her passport.
It should have been a matter of a few minutes, but the customs officer looked at her passport over and over for a long time, asking her what visa she had, why she was using a tourist visa, and whether she had any relatives or friends here.
Chen Huan answered truthfully. The customs officer flipped through her past visas page by page, then looked at the information on the computer. After a few seconds, the customs officer looked at the screen and said, "You have held a green card in the past and have an unfinished naturalization application."
Shen Huan nodded and said yes. She had canceled her green card seven years ago. She had been questioned upon entering the country in recent years, but customs officials would just ask her a few questions and then let her pass. Today, she seemed to be unlucky. The person on the other end kept asking her questions, such as why she gave up her green card, why she was visiting the United States again, and whether she had any plans to immigrate.
The three men entered the aisle next to her. Meng Zixuan was the last. Shen Huan felt him pass by her from behind like a cold wind. The customs officer next door made a few lighthearted jokes and said, "Welcome home." She couldn't help but look back. Their eyes met briefly, then parted.
"Ma'am." The staff member in front of Shen Huan knocked on the table seriously, "Ma'am, I'm talking to you." He clicked his knuckles hard and his eyes widened, causing the people behind him to look at him curiously.
Shen Huan quickly turned around.
"Let me ask you what your purpose was in entering Texas seven years ago?"
“Hmm…” Chen Huan was frightened and stuttered a little. He looked at Meng Zixuan for help, his eyes catching his back, as if he could keep him like this.
But Meng Zixuan had already walked away.
"I'm here for a divorce." Chen Huan retracted his gaze and explained to the customs officer, "I came here to complete the divorce procedures seven years ago."
Shen Huan was taken to a small dark room by customs.
The blonde woman, Avery Baldwin, raised her chin and gestured towards the customs gate. "Meng, that woman keeps looking at you."
Meng Zixuan said nothing and went straight to the terminal.
William Collins followed from the luggage area, his left hand clutching a pair of combat boots, his right arm carrying a backpack. He bumped his shoulder against the woman's, "Let's go, Baldwin."
"Do you know her?" Baldwin stood still, a puzzled look in his blue eyes under his long eyelashes. "Maybe she needs help."
"Shut up, Sergeant." Collins looked at Meng Zixuan's back in front of him and took bigger steps.
Baldwin immediately started to follow. "I'm sorry, sir."
Three hours later, the plane landed in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was approaching dusk, and the wings of the planes on the taxiway were shimmering with a cold glow.
Collins and Baldwin shook hands and said goodbye to Meng Zixian at the arrival gate. Their next contract is at Benny Fort.
Due to the tropical storm off the southeast coast, many flights in Raleigh-Durham had been diverted over the past two days, making car rentals hard to come by. Meng Zixian waited a long time before finally picking up a Honda Civic of unknown vintage, which reminded him of Chen Huan's used car from years ago. The left rear window wouldn't roll down, and the passenger seat was held together with six inches of black tape to prevent the foam from squeezing out.
She took the car fare from her big red wallet with a proud expression: seven hundred dollars. At the time, that was no small sum, equivalent to a month's rent for his two-story house in Fayette. Shen Huan always had a neatly stacked dozen US dollars in his bedside table, as if it were magically inexhaustible.
Someone told Meng Zixian that Chen Huan came from a wealthy capitalist family in East Asia, and his father was a wealthy shipping merchant. It sounded like the forbidden origin of the male protagonist in Duras's "The Lover", so Meng Zixian never dared to ask.
After they got married, Chen Huan moved into his rental apartment, bringing the stack of cash with her. She frowned when she opened the bedside table because his Glock was lying in the drawer. Chen Huan asked him to put the gun away, saying she didn't want to see it every time she took money and that she felt it was dangerous. Meng Zixuan thought she was joking and ignored her.
One day she came out of the bathroom and brought up the matter again for no reason, asking him if the gun was registered.
Meng Zixian lay in bed, eyes closed, explaining that in North Carolina, you didn't need to register your gun. He was very sleepy. After returning from Air Assault School, he had spent the past three days drilling new recruits and hadn't slept a total of ten hours. When he got home, she wouldn't let him touch her, saying, "It's too hot, I'm not in the mood."
"No." Shen Huan insisted, "I checked online. To buy a handgun, you need to provide your ID information and register with the store."
Meng Zixian covered his eyes with his arms and answered patiently, "Yes, that was in the store."
“You didn’t buy it in a store.” Shen Huan understood.
"I got it from Stan," Meng Zixuan explained. His temples felt like they were throbbing with pain. If he hadn't known she grew up in Rongcheng, he would have thought she was one of those Democratic Party fighters from private colleges.
There was silence for a long moment. He opened his eyes and looked at her. She took a few steps closer, opened the bedside table, and looked down. She stared at the gun in the drawer as if it were a venomous snake, and asked him if it was loaded.
"Loaded." He carried a loaded gun.
"Do you have insurance?"
This conversation wasn't going to end easily. He sat up, pinched his forehead, and replied, "This one doesn't have a manual safety."
"What if it goes off accidentally?"
"This gun is very stable. You won't accidentally fire it even if you drop it from a plane. You need to understand the mechanics of the gun. The Glock has a triple safety, and the only way to activate it is by pulling the trigger. But obviously you don't have to worry about that. You're a frail little princess, and pulling the trigger is a very strenuous task for you."
His patience ran out, and he stood up from the bed, raising his hand to push the drawer shut. But Shen Huan thought he was going to reach for the gun, and she screamed hoarsely in fear, took two steps back, looked at him fearfully, and then ran to the sofa in the living room to cry. She had been crying more and more recently, and her crying was getting to him.
Later, Meng Zixuan thought that perhaps Chen Huan was ashamed of his profession. She wanted to escape from him and escape from Bennyburg. Even when they worked together in Xuantao many years later, she avoided their past.
This Honda Civic was just as he remembered it; the driver's seat felt cramped even when stretched to the limit. On his way to Duke University Medical School, he received a call from Lou Hetai. This was the third time Meng Zixian had received a call from him since his release from prison. Lou Hetai kept asking the same question: when did he plan to return to Xuantao?
Lou Hetai said that he got the memo drafted by the investment bank for Ronghui Commercial Bank yesterday, and he felt something was wrong no matter how he looked at it. "Bad debts have to be sold off in batches, but they can't be sold at such a low price..." He said that Li Ting has been so anxious these days that his hair is turning white. Since he has taken a step back and asked you to come back, you shouldn't be so arrogant. Let's shake hands and make peace, right?
Meng Zixuan smiled silently and turned up the air conditioning to full blast. Lou Hetai didn't know what happened three years ago. Li Ting, the old toad who lurked in the church gutter at night, transformed himself into a priest during the day, wearing a surplice and having quite a few followers.
If it weren't for Shen Huan, Meng Zixuan wouldn't have endured these three years.
As the car passed a construction site behind the hospital, the smell of burning metal crept into the car, briefly causing Meng Zixian to lose consciousness. He smelled that pungent, burning smell again, and a heat wave, wrapped in a sharp roar, rushed towards him, mixed with sand and blood, and he was completely blown away...
The traffic light turned red. The Honda Civic braked and stopped at the intersection.
Lou Hetai said that if things continued like this, he was not sure whether Chenyue International would still be willing to invest money. "It's an unequal treaty, and we have to beg the other party to sign it." Lou Hetai persuaded him to come back first, and Lao Li would agree to any treatment he wanted.
Meng Zixuan didn't respond. The light turned green and the car drove into the hospital parking lot. Lou Hetai asked him if he was in Washington, D.C., and what was going on with the Trans-Atlantic Savings Bank.
Meng Zixian said he was meeting a friend in North Carolina and would fly to D.C. later. He vaguely stated that the bank was going bankrupt and that the project was a bailout led by the International Monetary Fund.
Lou Hetai asked why they had to dig you up from so far away? And why were they sending you to Eastern Europe?
This was related to his mission on NATO's eastern front six years ago. Meng Zixian joked that if he said a few more words, he would be back in jail. Lou Hetai laughed out loud. After chatting for a while, he saw that he couldn't get any results from Meng Zixian, so he had to say that even if he was busy, he shouldn't always avoid Li Ting. He called you and you didn't answer.
Meng Zixian raised his eyebrows slightly, put the car in reverse gear, and parked it in the garage. He had never received a call from Li Ting. He didn't know what the old fox was planning. Meng Zixian responded casually and hung up the phone.
After getting off the bus, he headed for the elevator shaft. Even after three years, the path to the hospital was still familiar to him. He pulled out his phone and opened a browser search: "Foreigners denied entry at customs."
The signal in the garage was only two bars, and the webpage refreshed very slowly. While waiting for the elevator, he looked up at the numbers on the LCD screen: L, B1, B2… He looked down at his phone again, and the progress bar had already moved halfway. Meng Zixuan closed the page.
After getting out of the elevator, he walked towards the inpatient department.
Oliver Schumer, now 67, once had a daughter and a son. His daughter died of colon cancer ten years ago, and his son, Henry Schumer, died in Afghanistan nine years ago. After his children's deaths, his 35-year marriage to his wife, Barbara, ended, leaving him alone to battle his illness.
Weekend visiting hours are from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM, which leaves an hour and a half. Meng Zixian went to the visiting room, donning a mask, a hat, and a disposable gown. Years of chemotherapy had crippled Oliver's immune system.
When Meng Zixian arrived at the ward entrance, Schumer was standing straight by the window. Despite the tumor and Alzheimer's disease, Schumer maintained the demeanor of an Army lieutenant general presiding over a strategic meeting at the Pentagon, shoulders pulled back, chin slightly raised.
Meng Zixuan stood at the door waiting. He followed the nurse in after she took Schumer's blood pressure and delivered the food box.
When Schumer saw him, a simple, shy smile appeared on his face. In contrast to his impressive resume, General Schumer was a down-to-earth, approachable old man in private. He wore no medals of honor on his uniform, and after retirement, he repeatedly and publicly expressed his political stance that diplomacy should take precedence over blood and sweat.
Of course, he couldn't stop his son Henry from joining the army.
Schumer sat on the sofa and scooped up the pudding. Meng Zixian sat down next to him, wondering if Schumer recognized him, since most of his face was covered by a mask. Sometimes Schumer would mistake him for Henry. But when other people from the camp came over, the old man never made a mistake.
There was a TV hanging on the wall opposite the sofa, and the news was playing. After Meng Zixuan came in, Schumer's eyes were still fixed on the scrolling subtitles on the TV, but he turned off the sound with the remote control, and the ward became silent for a while.
His hand holding the spoon was shaking the entire time, and he had to rest for a few seconds after taking a scoop. Later, he put the pudding back on the coffee table, resting his hands on his thighs, his right thumb occasionally rubbing his knee uncontrollably. Whenever this happened, Schumer's eyes would turn away from the TV, meet Meng Zixuan's, and he would smile shyly again.
An hour and a half passed.
When the nurse came in again, Schumer said to Meng Zixuan, "It's time for you to go."
Meng Zixuan nodded and said, "I'm leaving." He stood up, his back naturally straightened, his heels lightly pressed together, nodded slightly to Schumer, and walked out of the ward.
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