Hunting Games

If I want more, it’s because I don’t trust those with a seat at the table. At least, that’s what I say to myself as I use my looks and feigned enthusiasm to get a “club promoter” gig at this Beijing bunker-turned-night club. Here are all the glittering people, and then there’s me, listening between pouring drinks on a private terrace, above the crowd, among the moneyed.

I have a friend whose hair shines like a late summer sunset, and across from me sits the man who punched her with no consequences. Because this is his world, from here to the sky.

Next to me is a seemingly nice enough man who keeps that abuser at arms length. I gather they know each other through a family connection. The nice enough man scrunches his nose slightly in the abuser’s direction, as if warding off a bad scent, and I am growing fond of his expressions. We make eye contact and, in agreement, I discretely copy his look of disgust.

“We don’t like the guy.” A third man speaks to me conspiratorially, in English, having watched the brief exchange. “But when my guy’s family head says to get to know a person, you don’t really have a choice.” I am sitting between this man and the nice enough guy, whose family head apparently still holds sway deep in this former war bunker, now expanded, filled with blasting music, blinding lasers, gasoline-strength liquor and floating soap bubbles. The third man has been entertaining me with stories about his childhood, partially spent in Brazil.

“It got dangerous, you know.” He goes back to talking about himself.

“Oh really?”

“Yeah. One time, at a stoplight, a car in front of me got mugged at gunpoint, but then a guy in another car stepped out and mugged that guy at gunpoint. Basically there was a lot of gunpointing.”

“A unique brand of justice, it seems.”

He smirked, as if witnessing the event gave him the street credibility his own golden international childhood had deprived him of. One of the few things his money couldn’t buy. He tells me to call him Rafa, and he wants my number.

I am politely less interested in Rafa and more interested in the quieter man next to me with the bossy family head and scrunchy face, who dislikes the abuser as much as I. His name? He says it’s Jun. His job? He is at an investment bank, after graduating from a school in London. So what’s he doing here with that man who we keep making faces at?

He laughs my question away with his own. My name? Call me Penn. My job? Glorified bottle service, obviously. No, my real job.

“Well, I also work at a law firm, if that’s what you’re asking.” This is true. And a story for another day.

At my answer, he perks up. He becomes the first man to present to me this theory: that some powerful men have a fantasy of catching a smart woman for the challenge of bending her to his will. Assuming she can also serve as a pretty jewel in his collection. 

I have my suspicions, but his boyish grin catches me off guard.

“Care to exchange numbers? In case I ever need a lawyer.” His obvious pick-up line lands as a self-aware joke.

“Only if you tell me who that stinky man is.” I tease.

He gives a dimpled smile. “In exchange for a date.”

I am young and I think the rigged game I am playing, one of unequal power dynamics in a secretive world I don’t understand, is one I can win. I give him my number.

Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash

Author's note: Thank you so much for reading my draft! This story is posted under the "fiction" genre so I might edit details for privacy and to dramatize certain elements, though I maintain the human connections. This is part of my Postcards series—snapshots of human connection in unexpected moments and places.