Beautiful Country by J.R. Thornton Read Free Book Online Page B

the door. She said something to me that I didn’t understand. I waved and headed to my room. She called after me in a tone that sounded urgent, and I turned to find her pulling on my shirt and pointing at my shoes. I dropped my bag and bent down to unlace my sweat-stained shoes. She didn’t wait for me to take them off but pulled them off my feet before I had a chance to. Shoes in hand, she scurried back to the doorway.
    I heard the sound of her bolting the three locks as I trudged through the living room toward the kitchen. I was pleased to see the living room was empty. My legs ached, and my back was sore from hitting serves. I walked down the dark hallway and up thestairs to my annex. My legs burned as I walked up the stairs. Lukas would have made me stretch after practice, but here there was no one checking that I did the things I was supposed to do.
    After showering I felt the familiar haze of jet lag return. It became harder and harder to keep my eyes open. I was in the middle of putting on socks when I fell asleep.
    I awoke not knowing where I was. I checked my watch—seven fifty. Morning or evening? The haze in my mind cleared as my stomach awoke: “Dinner.” I picked a fallen sock off the ground and slipped it on my right foot. My thighs burned even more than they had before, and pushing myself off the bed was an excruciating task. I descended the stairs step by step, trying to bend my legs as little as possible.
    I pushed through the door into the kitchen, expecting it to be swarming with maids cooking and cleaning, but it was empty. There was no one at the dinner table either. It was then that I heard an exclamation from across the room. David was sitting in front of the television, eating his dinner on a table in front of the sofa. I walked over and sat next to him. He was watching some sort of wrestling event. He glanced at me before turning his attention back to the television.
    â€œWhat is this?” I asked.
    â€œ WrestleMania ,” he said, without breaking eye contact with the television.
    I focused on the program. At that moment, a scary-looking bearded guy with a long blond ponytail and a swollen torso accented by a sleeveless biker jacket climbed into the ring. Two men who appeared to be identical twins waited on the other side of the ring wearing matching all-black outfits. They also both had long ponytails and appeared to be wearing eyeliner. I wondered how this, of all things, had made it to Chinese television. “Who’s playing?” I asked.
    â€œYou mean fighting? This guy is the best. His name is Triple H. He’s fighting the Hardy Boyz.”
    There was silence and I tried to think of something else to say. “You think he’s gonna win?”
    â€œOf course, he’s the best.”
    â€œYou speak English really well,” I said.
    â€œYeah, I know. We speak English in schoo—Woah! Did you see that?” David jumped up from the sofa and gestured at the television. Triple H had just landed a massive hit on one of his opponents. David punched his fists in the air and brought them down on an imaginary Canadian foe. “That was awesome!” he shouted.
    â€œSo, where is everyone?”
    â€œDunno. Lily is doing homework.”
    Perhaps alerted by David’s shouts, a maid appeared in the living room. Upon seeing me, she disappeared to the kitchen and returned a moment later and placed a tray of food in front of me. There was a cup of soup and a bowl filled with some sort of brown gelatinous material next to it. A bowl of white rice and a small plate of meat that looked vaguely like pork made up the rest of the tray’s offerings. In the coming months, whenever I could convince Victoria, I tried to eat at the few Western restaurants I discovered around the city. It wasn’t that I was opposed to eating the local food, some of which I found delicious; it was more that it was just so foreign that it became exhausting after a