exerpts from the novel
The Electronic Windmill
By Pete McKinley
Chapter XI
As the girl moved out of the trees directly toward them, Cole said to Kang, “It must be Letha’s sister, she walks like her.” Then addressing the girl, “Hi, you look like someone I know.”
“I don’t think so,” the girl said. “Are you Mr. Rain?”
“Yes.” Then pointing toward Kang, Cole said, “I guess you know him.”
“Hello, Mr. Shu-li. I saw the last set of your match today. You were very good.”
“Not really. I’ll have to be very good next week.” Cutting short the preliminaries, Kang said, “Mr. Rain - that is, Cole - appreciates your willingness to talk to us. But why do you think you have some information he can use?”
“I don’t know if he can use it or not. My sister thought he could.”
“Why did your sister think I needed this particular information?” Cole asked.
“A friend of hers was suspicious of you,” the girl said. “They’re not friends anymore and my sister has gone back east. When I told her what I knew she made me promise to get the information to you. She knew all about your company and I remembered Mr. Shu-li.” She wrung her hands gently and finally folded her arms. “If it’s all right with you I’d rather tell him, but not here. If we talk too long somebody might see us.”
Cole rose, stretching. “I’ll see you sometime tomorrow,” he said to Kang, and turned to the girl. “Goodbye, and when you can, tell your sister thanks. I’ll appreciate any information you can give Kang.”
Kang and the girl watched his car swing out of the parking area and turn toward the beach. It wasn’t fully dark but it was getting cold and when Kang looked at the girl he could see her eyes were filled with tears. The tears rolled down her cheeks and one dropped from her chin. She didn’t brush them away but when he caught her direct gaze she lowered her eyes slightly and they continued to drip.
“Should we go now?” Kang asked.
“I don’t have to,” she said, “but maybe we should.”
“We can talk in the car, then I’ll drive you home whenever you’re ready.”
“I don’t want to go home,” she said more evenly now. “Could I stay with you?”
“We can stay here a while longer, if you think it’s all right.”
“I don’t have to stay here. I mean I want to go with you - wherever you’re going.”
“After we talk, I’m going home,” he said.
“Oh, I didn’t understand. I’ll go back after we talk.” She wiped her eyes with her sleeve.
“You can go with me if you want, but how old are you?”
“I have an ID that says I’m twenty-one. I’m really nineteen.”
“Where do you live?” he asked suddenly.
“I live with some people, but I don’t want to go there just now.”
Kang pulled a blade of grass, looked it over, put it in his mouth and chewed. Then he got up and, reaching down, helped the girl to her feet. She followed him to the car and got in the front seat. He walked around and got in beside her, wondering if he should tell her about his home. They left the park and turned towards Chinatown without speaking.
Kang and the girl walked through a part of the city that hadn’t changed much since the fire. The streets were narrow and crowded with people. The shops were busy and the restaurants were full, approaching the evening peak hour. Kang lived in the middle of Chinatown and garaged his car five blocks away. They left the main street of the section and turned down a cluttered alley which ended after half a block in a sheer concrete wall. Groping left they climbed a flight of steps. At the top was a twelve-foot solid wood fence painted a dull brown to match the rest of the alley; in its center was a door fitted so perfectly that the girl hadn’t seen it in the dim light. Only a small round brass lock and a carved wooden handle gave it away. Kang inserted a key and opened the gate for the girl to enter. She stepped into a garden world, seventy by seventy feet square, surrounded by tall buildings on three sides and the wooden fence on the fourth. Gently he nudged her along a gravelled path that wound through a miniature redwood forest, the dwarfed trees ranging to eight feet tall. Coming to a small clearing of white sand in the center of the enclosed land the girl stopped to look beyond the sand where there were palm trees approximately the same height as the redwoods, with lush little banana plants sprouting beneath them. To the right the sand gently sloped to a fifty-foot lagoon and incredibly there was an ocean in the distance with waves rolling on a beach and a sun half-buried in the sea; molten red-tinged golden clouds moved in a blue and green sky.
Kang took the girl’s hand and they went from the warm sand to a curved inclined path whose grassy edge was sprinkled with wild flowers. They came to a ledge, and beyond were open doors to his home. The room was softly carpeted and strewn with pillows and at one end a bamboo bar and utilitarian kitchen blended into the mood with low lights and muted colors. The girl returned to the ledge to gaze again at the lagoon, the trees, the ocean and the sky and then questioned Kang with her eyes. He beckoned from an open door to the far end of the room, and she came to peer inside at an array of strange equipment. A central object was pointed through an opening in the wall, and unlike a movie projector, it had several projections that pierced the now dark night with directed beams of intense light. A reflected ocean, sun and sky was created on the treated surfaces of the smooth concrete buildings. As she watched the sun disappeared. Flipping one switch off and another on, Kang brought forth a moon shining down on a calm sea. Stars began to pulse and then she saw a small sail come out of the shadows and cut with slow grace across the vast expanse of the ocean. When she started to speak he placed his fingers to his lips, listening. From off out on the ocean came the sound of music, the whipping of wind on sails and the slap of water against a hull. And now she heard other night sounds: of birds and insects, and even of happy voices chattering way off in the distance. She wanted to get closer and they went to the open doors and out on to the ledge - and she wasn’t sure what was real and what was fantasy.
She moved toward him and as he embraced her she huddled close in the protection of his arms and looked down again on the redwood forest, the white sand before the lagoon, and deep into the ocean where the sailboat skimmed the waves. Suddenly she was conscious that to her left, beyond the coconut palms, there was a dim glow and out of the mist there appeared in the distance a cone-shaped mountain with a dark cloud rising from its summit, tinged fiery red from a bubbling and spouting crater. A warm rain began to fall as high on the walls of the buildings a sprinkler system installed for the magic garden automatically erupted. She looked way up at the square of real sky and could see fog scudding by, lighted yellow from the lamps of Chinatown. This time she took Kang’s hand and they went to the path that led down to the lagoon. At the beginning of the white sand, she slipped off her sandals and ran to the water’s edge. With one motion she shed the loose blouse, stripped off her pants and dove into the warm water. She made two gliding passes across the pool and returned to the sandy beach. Raising herself from the water, she stood before Kang without shyness, sure of her physical beauty.
“Aren’t you coming in?” she asked. “The water’s great.”
And then doing a backward flip she exposed her inner thighs with a frog like kick.
Kang removed his clothes and followed, swimming and stretching his muscles for two laps before he paused in chest-deep water to look for the girl. Almost immediately he felt a current surging around his legs as she swam by. He stood motionless watching for her to surface, but she returned under water, and he felt her arms encircle his hips and her head press against his stomach. She nibbled at him like a minnow, and then he felt the incredible heat of her mouth and the touch of a fluttering tongue. A shudder shook his body and he reached to pull her to him but she clung like a leech, greedily demanding his fulfillment.
He fought for control, refusing to be taken without giving in return. He was on the verge of losing the battle when she surfaced for air and came into his arms searching his lips and mouth with her warm tongue. Slowly her legs parted and enwrapped his torso. Kang’s fear of bursting had subsided somewhat; the cool water gave him respite. Her smallness made a difficult passage but she strained to him and Kang forgot his control and with a vicious thrust entered again into an incredible hotness. They were as two antagonistic living things in a death struggle, the water was thrashed to a froth and before they entered the first portals of darkness and the girl uttered a cry of anguished pain and ecstacy, burying her teeth in his shoulder. Plunging and jerking, Kang subsided finally with low whimpering cries. Then there was a fraction of time when both wished to sink slowly into the waters and be surrounded with its liquid protection forever. Minutes passed before he felt strong enough to carry her from the pool and place her gently on the warm sand. He lay down beside her, and they gazed languidly at the contrived moon, the stars and the sailboat in the distance and listened to the recorded sound of the surf until they were lulled to sleep.
Sometime during the night Kang wakened and carried the girl to his bed; she too awoke and they made love again. It was afterward that she told him what she knew about the smuggler ship, the SS Crescent Moon. The next morning when he wakened for the second time she was gone. For a moment he wondered if she’d ever been there. He got up and strode to the ledge to see if she might be by the pool and then he saw the note pinned to an oversized pillow lying on the floor.
Dear Sir:
I’m still afraid. What happened to me was the most beautiful experience of my life so far but I wonder if there’s any more? Or, can it ever be better? Also, could I settle for what there was in our few hours together if I could be sure it would last forever and would always be the same? I think maybe I could, but then I know that in the morning everything will be different. I forgot, I don’t like mornings either. Why does everything have to be so real?
Sincerely, Clara
Kang turned back into the room thinking he should call Cole, but he was famished and decided first to cook breakfast in his utilitarian kitchen and have bacon and eggs and hotcakes covered with orange blossom honey. As he went by he dropped the girl’s note into a large oriental vase.
