I feel like I'm swimming. Bright blobs of light pass above me, and muffled, garbled words enter my ears. Through the fog of semi-consciousness, I hear my Michelle's voice…then my mother's…then Mona's. The kaleidoscope of pain and nausea begins to sharpen, and I almost understand…and then I'm asleep.
I awake to warmth and steam and the smell of heady incense. I slit my eyelids to let my vision bleed through. Crimson light filters into the room through a thin red curtain covering a small doorway. Makes it look like I've got blood on my hands. I look again. I do.
Glancing around with hurting eyes, I get a distinct 'East meets West' feeling. The walls of the small room are covered in Asian-patterned wallpaper and small scrolled paintings of landscapes with Japanese lettering framing brushstrokes of tranquil mountainscapes.
It takes a minute to get my bearings. I'd been laid out on a cot in the back room of a Japanese restaurant, I guessed, judging from the bustle and clinks and smells of a busy kitchen in the background.
I move to sit upright and I'm rewarded with a shriek of pain jabbing inside my injured skull. I nearly lose my balance. A hand I didn't see coming grabs my shoulder and keeps me from toppling over. Instinct gets the better of me, and I have the stranger twisted and flat on his stomach in an instant, his arm bent at an angle only the Marquis de Sade would find comfortable. I press my knee into his back…and then realize it's just a kid. I let up on the bodylock. But only slightly.
"The first words out of your mouth better be ones I like, kid. Otherwise you'll be unzipping your fly one-handed until you're in your grave." My voice is raspy, and unused. How long had I been out?
The kid isn't as soft as I might have thought. Most thugs I'd pull this move on would have soiled their shorts already. But save for a couple of grunts at the pain of skeletal manipulation, the kid stayed calm. And his story didn't start out half bad either.
"Mona brought you here," he blurted, teeth gritted. "She said it was safer for you to stay off the radar until you could recover. My family owes her a debt, and hiding you here is part payment for that."
Keeping my weight against the kid I steal a glance past the curtain. No gorillas with machine guns screaming after me, just tired looking cooks and busboys and the flames of an open grill. I must be having a good day.
I give the kid some slack and release my hold on him, teetering back onto the cot. The dizziness returns quickly. I try to rub the swimming of my senses away. "What's your name?"
The kid stands slowly, giving me the once-over like he's not sure giving me his name won't lead to him being slammed back on to the floor. "Henry. Henry Wong." I crack a grin and mumble some thing about how many Wong numbers there are in the phonebook. Henry either ignores it or doesn't hear it. Whatever.
"Ok Henry. How long have I been here?" The kid takes a second to measure his response. My potential trust in this boy begins to drop.
"Well, you've been unconscious, in this room anyway, for two days. But you were out when Mona brought you in, so I couldn't say for sure. But today's the 17th, if that helps anything."
I nod, grimacing in pain from the movement of my neck. "Ok, three days. She must have drugged me. I've been smacked stupid with baseball bats that didn't make me feel this groggy." I suddenly remembered something important, and I'm sure my face, filling with wide-eyed recollection told Henry the same thing. "There was another man, one Mona would...should have had with her. Tough looking guy, black shirt and jeans. Has a Russian accent. Is he here too?" Henry's face said enough. Vlad was either dead...or maybe just being hidden somewhere else. Probably made sense not to keep the two of us in one spot, but still...
"Look," Henry pulls the curtain back a bit, the intruding light adding another ache to my already long list, "no one's come looking for you the whole time you've been here. I know you've gotta be hungry...c'mon. My mom makes the best tempura in town." Though I'm still wary, my stomach suddenly agrees with the kid. He helps me to my feet and I've got a teenage crutch all the way to a booth in the restaurant. I feel like an old man.
The food helps. I take it slow at first, feels like my stomach has shrunk. But soon I'm eating again like a bad habit. And the kid was right: the tempura gives new meaning to my life.
Henry sits with me, and the conversation clears some things up. His family owns the restaurant and Mona, a long-time customer, stopped a robbery a couple of years back the old fashioned way. Old fashioned as in Bang, Bang. Apparently the word got out to local thugs that "The Frying Dragon" had a dark guardian angel, and there hadn't been a robbery attempt since. At least by local thugs. That's when Henry laid out the rest.
"You look like you watch movies. Heard of the Yakuza?"
My ears perk up along with my trigger finger. I didn't know all the history, but I had the basic idea. Yakuza: La Cosa Nostra dubbed in Japanese. Whatever the language, it meant trouble. Henry went on.
"They're really our only worry now. I mean, they do make sure the neighborhood's safe...sorta. But they charge all the shop owners for protection. It wasn't ever that bad, I guess. But Mom says they've been asking for more and more lately. If it keeps up...well, I dunno what will happen." I could've given the kid my personal forecast, but he looked like the type that didn't need to be told the score. I drink my tea.