Fiction: The Reckoning (6)
The final excerpt in this series, in which John is confronted by a stranger who knows more about him than he should. (excerpt from the novel, MY OLD CHINA)
With the arrogant air you might ascribe to someone who actually owned the place, the man in the black jacket grabbed a chair. Of all the empty chairs in the empty cafe he chose the chair closest to me. He flashed a cheesy grin, then yanked the chair into the air, swinging it around, positioning it back facing front. He let the legs of the metal chair crash against the tile floor.
Clink, clank. Cu-lunk.
He then asked in gruff Chinese if he could join me, but he wasn’t really asking, was he?
After removing his leather jacket and draping it on the back of another chair, he sat down at my table. He leaned in close, close enough for his cologne to be my cologne, close enough to mask my own body odor, a rising odor of tension.
Arms draped over the back of the chair which he rode like a horse, he clasped his rough, chafed hands, rubbing them hard as if he’d just come in from the cold.
“Oh, hello? Sorry. Is this your table?” I sputtered in English. “It’s yours. You can…You can have the whole tab…