More, she was in her natural habitat and in command. A woman stood behind her chair, partly in shadow.
Awkwardly I edged forward. The elegant room had been appointed by somebody who knew. Not a single color or item of furniture jarred. All was harmony. Screens, carvings, ivories, the angles the furniture made with the decor, the wall tapestries. Beautiful and tasteful but semi-modern grot. I felt a familiar clang deep within and looked to the left.
An antique calling me? But there was nothing notable, really, except some wall plants that should have been out playing. Odd, that. I’m not usually that wrong.
“Sit down,” a voice squeaked.
One bloke was Sim, standing and fidgeting. He looked nervous to the point of agitation.
You can smell fear. For once I wasn’t terrified on my own. The man who had spoken was honestly the fattest man I’d ever seen in my life. He belonged in a fairground. His flesh overhung the vast rosewood armchair so much that his knees were splayed to keep him vertical. His face was a moon with symmetrical craters. Even sitting motionless he wheezed. I began trying to work out a crazy sum: If an average man is eleven stone, which is 154 pounds weight, and he could make nearly three averages, then he weighed 462 pounds. No, couldn’t be, surely to God, but he was so enormous…
I sat, vowing to start slimming the minute I regained my independence, and tried not to gawk at Ling Ling.
“You are Lovejoy?” Wheeze, wheeze. His voice was a distant reed pipe. No wonder, all that fat.
“Yes.” A silence. “How do you do,” I offered shakily.
Fatty ignored this. “You know antiques.”
“Well, yes, in a way.”
“Tell.” Even that took a prolonged inhalation.
“Eh?” I swallowed, lost. Suddenly my hands were clammy, the room not so cool after all. Was Fatty going to go berserk because I’d told Steerforth the truth about a few fakes, fingered a genuine article here and there? “Look, ah, sir,” I got out, my voice whining with panic. “I didn’t realize there was some antiques scam on, honest. If you’ve lost on some deal, I’ll try to—”
“You are in no danger, Lovejoy,” Ling Ling said in her mellifluous voice. “It’s simply a matter of explaining your skill.”
She meant the divvy bit. “Right.” I wiped my brow with my sleeve. “Er, well. Antiques are special. At least, I think so. They, er…” I tried to clear my throat, couldn’t much. “I feel, well, different, like. With a proper antique. See?”
Silence. Fatty’s bulbous hands pudged into fists like a tire advert. I coughed, tried again. “Most of the things around nowadays aren’t…” I glanced about her room and changed my tack. “I like old. It’s better than new.”
Silence. My oratory skill winning no prizes. Fatty, slogging from wheeze to wheeze, suddenly turned and spoke at length to Sim. The nerk began to answer in jerky monosyllables of agreement. He was being interrogated quite nastily, his story under test. He nodded in a frenzy of agreement. He even made a throwing-away gesture, me at the ferry concourse chucking the phony porcelains into the harbor. Silence, but not peace, descended. Fatty glanced at Ling Ling. She inclined her head, spoke to the standing woman behind her, who answered briefly.
“Please be undeceived, Lovejoy.” I could have listened to Ling Ling all day, watched her a lifetime. “You are safe with us. But do not dissemble. We have video film of you at the antiques viewing. We have tape of your conversation.”
Dissemble? “Look, miss. Honest. I didn’t realize I was trespassing on your —
somebody’s—scam. I’ll go and tell them it was all a mistake…” The image of Dr. Chao swam into ken and stopped me. Were we all pals together? How many armies were in this particular war? Unless I was careful I might fall foul of them all. I chucked the towel in, distraught. “I’ll do whatever you say.”
Ling Ling smiled at my face. “Be frank, Lovejoy. Remember, we here believe that all is capitalism.”
“If you say.” But I’ve never yet managed to pin down an ist or an ism. Once you start asking what the hell it really means it’s suddenly all Scotch mistism.
“Please do not be afraid,” she said. Snow White full of compassion. I must look like I felt, shivering in abject surrender. Easy for her, perfect beauty and power combined.
“Can your skill be learned, or is it a gift?”
Ah, that was it. She wanted to know if ‘perfect’ meant divvy, too? “Er, no. It can’t be picked up, miss.”
She began speaking in Cantonese to Fatty, who listened querulously with occasional egophonic interjections. Sim tried to speak once, but was roundly abused by the corpulent man. I was pleased at the way Sim trembled, remembering how he had butchered my one pal in Hong Kong. During their chat I peered towards those plants.
By leaning forward I detected a gleam of reflection from behind one spreading poinsettia, and rested, satisfied. An antique plate or some such had been lodged behind it for some reason. Same tricky try-on, as at Dr. Chao’s? They’d be narked if I got up to have a look, so I stayed put.
“Lovejoy.” Fatty rotated his umpteen pendulous chins in my direction and rose. I gaped.
He simply unfolded roll after roll of blubber and kept going, seven feet tall if an inch. I doubled my weight estimate. He was a spherical giant. “Out.”
“Sir?” I sat mystified, until Ling Ling gave me a smile of dismissal. It was like sunrise. I babbled good-byes and blundered through curtains, screens, and doorways until I stood blinking at the pavement glare. No car. No goons. Only Hong Kong doing its raucous exuberant best.
And the vanishing shape of a tiny figure swiftly poling itself along the pavement out of sight. Food for thought. Three times lucky, yes, but four sightings was getting on for constancy. I learned to watch this world where survival came minute by minute.
14
