The Mysterious Red Egg

Chris opened his eyes. Brenda’s small, oval face appeared smooth, languorous everywhere but under her eyes, were darkened folds of olive skin supported thickets of lashes. A spray of light came through the window above their heads and illuminated an opening in their tented blankets, Brenda’s hiding spot for them. She watched Chris; her chestnut eyes emblazoned with fear. He knew she had been studying him for some time from the lack of drowsiness in her face, apparent though the dour, tepid color of sleeplessness.

“Did you check?” Brenda shook her head enough to confirm what he already knew. “Maybe you should look this time. I mean they come from females –”

“Please, Chris, you know I can’t stand it, to look. Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.” Chris sighed and blew around the loose hair strands on her temples.

“How about we do this together?” He found Brenda’s hand under the cover. It was clammy. Their fingers interlocked one by one to prolong the moment before truth revealed itself.

“Together?” She reassured herself with the memory of the resolution of the biggest argument they had in their six-year relationship, which happened last night, when their marital bonds groaned from the testing. Accusations, names, and tears flew from them both. Fingers pointed, laid blame, responsibility, and great weight on shoulders not formed like Atlas’s. Even he wouldn’t have rather bared the orb that caused their discord regardless of its size.

A month ago, she had taken him to task about the first crack, the first yellow stain, called him immature to play such childish pranks. His constant pleas of innocence convinced her to sleep on top of him with her legs wrapped around his torso so he could not move without notice. If guilty, it would have been proven that night. When they woke, it had still arrived.

That’s when her anger replaced itself with fear. An intruder perhaps, some sick little Asian man who could scale walls like Jackie Chan to get his voyeuristic jollies from the Americans, all thoughts that came to her. She demanded double bolted locks on the doors and windows. A search for trapdoors followed the next night when it still came, then a tripoded digital camera the night following its next arrival.

The Chinese authorities laughed, at first, behind their backs, then in their faces, two nights ago as they revealed more details on its arrival and the consistently failing camcorder.

“Zai zheli fugin?” They pointed at the bed.

“Yes – er, uhm, Shi.” Chris thumbed through the small English/Chinese dictionary. Another round of laughter burst from the officers leaning against the doorframe. Brenda snatched the dictionary away from Chris, irritated by how they could find humor in the situation.

“You’ve got to be saying the wrong thing. They shouldn’t be laughing!” Inside she knew no one would take them seriously and that Chris’s Chinese was spoken more fluently than hers. She followed the officers to the door pleading in her best broken Mandarin. They shut the door on her, leaving the shiny new chain lock faintly clicking against the wall, like the sound of their footsteps fading down the corridor. Hours after the police had left, their horseradish miasma lingered in the apartment, a perfect accompaniment to the memory of their sharp laughter.

The following day an older Chinese Lieutenant came to the apartment. When Chris opened the door, the officer addressed him in a rich baritone that surprised him coming from a man so slight of stature.

“Are you Chris Aubergine?” His English was perfect and had a hint of Midwestern accent. The silver buttons down the front of his black and red trimmed tunic glinted in the hallway’s pallid light.

“Yes, yes I am.”

“My officers have told me of your phone calls, Sir. I have come to inform you that these types of things are not funny here in the Republic of China.” He tugged at the bottom of his tunic and leaned in closer. “If you and your wife value not spending a considerable amount of time in a Chinese jail, having your work visas revoked, and being deported, I would suggest not bothering us again unless there is a real emergency.”

“But Sir – “

“I’m not here to argue with you Mr. Aubergine. Good day.” He turned and left.

Chris shut the door and found himself standing face to face with Brenda wearing the same look on his face as the day they went antiquing by the harbor a month ago. He had just dropped a red porcelain bowl with a cock painted on it in a section of the store the owner, an old Japanese woman, had clearly marked as off limits.

Up until that moment, the owner had been teetering back and forth in her rocking chair with her eyes closed. She looked as if she was contemplating some deep mystery of the universe, her black and grey pretzel-styled hair channeling the energies of the cosmos. The only thing that interrupted the creaky rocking chair rhythm, her slight hesitation to jettison a cinnamon stream off her chew into a cream-colored dragon-shaped spittoon. The spittoon had only a few splotches on its circular wide-nostril face. Chris, admiring her accuracy and wondering why she wore kabuki garb, dropped the oblong bowl. Her rocking ceased.

“I’m sorry – I’m so sorry, let me pay for that.” Before Chris had his wallet out his pocket the old lady had pushed them both out her shop while spitting at their feet and speaking a fast English pidgin and a doubly fast Cantonese. When she cleared them out, she stared at them from her doorway under a tattered red and yellow awning.

“You Americans take curse away from my shop!” She spat at their feet again then slammed the door.

Brenda remembered the face he made that day, a dumbfounded expression that she thought was cute when she’d surprise him with one of her jump-and-latch-on hugs. His skin was very tan, his black mid-length hair wheedled by the wind, all of his earth tones out of place against the harbor’s monochromatic greys. The vibrations surrounding him, atonal in comparison to the rambling wind chimes underneath the shop’s eaves.

Chris shrugged his shoulders as he did then, tried to make light of the heat that rose from both their necks, but for Brenda that heat had constantly built for a month. The heat had dried out her fear. It left a crumbling loathing shell that blew apart and swirled in emotional currents, faster and faster until friction set it ablaze. It tilted and leaned like an infernal dust-devil pouring from her mouth. When she spoke, blame swept across the room, encouraging lightening to crease the air. Her pyroclastic flows incinerated any patience left between them like a feminine Kilimanjaro. That was yesterday, before this morning’s suggestion of cooperation.

“Together, we can make it through this together.” Chris gripped the ends of the blanket. Brenda did likewise and slowly they moved it from over their heads. Sure enough it was there. Its angry rubicund hull bathed in morning light. It had tucked itself neatly amid blanket folds between their legs. They peered at it with the comforter just below their eyes, abhorring the sight of the mysterious red egg.

The End

Copyrighted 2014