In Chinatown at 7th and H on top the Friendship Arch stood him, invincible, on guard. I dreamt that he, a horrible-looking thing, that was buried centuries ago in Beijing, was returned in his visible form, and was not to be denied my mind neither in this world nor in the other, and neither could I keep from his. For years and years I tried to break this bond. I turned to prayers and to professors. None provided me with hope. I went into the alleys behind the shops in Chinatown targeting myself for the reptiles. I came upon two bad boys using the night to sell the ancient death under modern names and I lit into them with great bravo and temper that I wished would have carried me away from here to my rest.

In Washington where I have lived as a hermit, shutting myself up in my house on Irving Street these past ten years, going out at night only for food, I did this deed. These two bad boys were drug boys with dead hearts and gray souls and were busy selling the meanest crud then on the street to three long-haired sons and a grungy daughter of Falls Church that lay across the river. As I grappled with the drug boys, away, quick, like they would swim the river and not take the tunnel train, the kids from suburbia ran.

One of the drug boys, a criminal wretch, got me on the ground between a trash dumpster and his foot; the other cocked a gun, fired at me, but the bullets became blanks. I saw sudden horror overtake the drug boys' eyes. The skin of each smoked, cooked to charcoal black and their hair turned the color of the whitest white. Stupefied, they fell down dead. He, the guardian who sat on the Arch, avenger, and particularly a slayer of dealers in opiates, hovered over them. He snatched their souls from their bones and hurled the souls around and flung them. They went howling into a pit of a dimension of endless darkness, and the bodies broke into dust that he kicked about. The two were damned; religious rites were denied them.

He took me up, dangling me by my arm as if I was a disobedient child. I yelled. I tried to slither free of him so to tumble to the street in a terrible fall. He wouldn't loosen his grip.

I shouted, "Why has Good Fortune forsaken me?"

He sat me under the archway. It was very late and the traffic was slow. He looked at me gravely. I spit into his mud eye. "This is America!" I shouted. "You are out of your territory! I am not Chinese!"

"Why do you live such a shallow life?" He asked. "Would you dig yourself a shallow grave?"

"I don't even know any Chinese," I shouted. "Why do you keep haunting me?" I said other things, made mention of every slur I could recall and when I finished he gave a wink, rose in the air and took his post on top of the Arch.

And suddenly the traffic wasn't slow and an H Street bus was honking to get past, and a taxi whose driver was popping his temper's cap -- and cars, a sea of cars. I jumped as if I was a child who had been told to stand in the corner, and strangers had come into the house. I felt so embarrassed. I hated it. People saw me standing in the street conversing with something that was unseen by them. He who stood atop the Arch was looking, still winking down at me. I knew that at any time a cop could come. Soon enough, I heard a car door slam and the grunt of a gruff throat.

"Get out of the traffic! We will be wiping your butt off the street!"

And when I stepped out of the street, my head and neck dripped with sweat. The water did not quench the flaring tightness in my chest nor cool my temper, but was fuel. I looked red-faced furious, confused.

A small Chinese lady with a hunched back and a head that bobbed as she walked, leaning heavily on a cane, approached me.

"You can see him up on the monument?" She said, "You ride the tiger's back."

I attempted to ignore her and walked away, going up the street.

"Wait!" she struggled to follow. "Please!"

I kept walking.

She sobbed, "I can't walk as fast as you."

The few people around, those coming from the restaurants, stopped and looked. The woman drew a scene. "Please, wait. I am not an ugly old lady. I was glamourous once before calamity came and my looks were gone."

"Lady, did he do anything to you?" The policeman pulled up and jumped back out of his car, ordered me to stop. He called to the Chinese lady, "Mama-san?"

The lady waited until she got closer, then she shook her head. "No, Mr. Policeman."

I let out a huge yawn.

"He is my friend," she said.

I began to walked away.

"Please!" she said. "Wait and talk to me."

The policeman shrugged, put his hands over his shoulders and then got back into the squad car, and I remembered why I was out. I reproached the policeman.

"I've made a notation of your badge number," I told him.

He let out a huge yawn.

"Why did you stop me? Is it a cultural thing?"

He took off the badge on his uniform. "This isn't mine," he said. He replaced the badge with one that had black tape over the numbers, and with a scowl said, "You have a complaint?"

"I sure do."

"Fine. File it at the station." He started up his car and drove away.

"Young sir," the Chinese lady tapped my sleeve. "Everybody here is a shadow, except you and I and those who can see the guardians."

The uptown bus passed by, and I swung my arms and made fast with my feet and ran to catch it at the next stop. The Chinese lady called to me. I wasn't going to look back. To get away from the dreadful woman I covered the distance twice as fast as I'd ever done. I sprinted pass the bus which stalled and now crawled. The motor puttered. The muffler dragged its tail down in the street and sputtered smoke like a down trodden English dragon dying in the moors.

The Chinese woman pursued, impeded by her handicapped form. The bus reached me before the woman did. As the bus pulled into the stop, I thought of boarding quickly, of resting my then tired feet, of easing my butt into a seat, and for a few soothing moments, taking my mind from, if not forgetting, things that have been so troublesome. The bus door opened. I was struck in the face by a rush of cold air and was pushed backward.