Stephen wouldn’t understand anyway if you did. It’s… about the bar. Where you get picked up—”
“Listen,” I began, but she shushed me.
“… Meet ladies, however you put it.” She stared away. “I’ve saved up, scrimped. For months I’ve had enough to… to, you know, hire somebody. And… and I desperately wanted to. There!”
My gasp sounded really authentic. “Phyllis!”
“I knew you’d be shocked. I actually tried once, even went as far as writing out a note.
I picked out a man and everything.” She watched a group of students climbing the garden path. “I’m so hopeless. Pathetic.”
“Which was he?” I already recognized a few of the other gigolos, the idiot musician Rich, Dennis the blond with a good line in patter, Sidney the pretend aristocrat forever dropping names, Juanito—
“You, Lovejoy.” Still not a glance. Her face was red. “To me you felt the same timid creature riven by unrequited desire.”
“Nark it, Phyllis.” Though it proved she was a woman of taste. “I’m only doing it because I have to.”
“You’re not offended, Lovejoy?” She looked askance.
“I understand.” I gave her my most soulful gaze, really profound sincerity. Saying you understand makes women think you agree. She smiled hesitantly, reached out and touched my hand. I didn’t collapse.
“Thank you, Lovejoy. You’re sweet.” She paused, until the students were out of sight.
“There’s one thing, Lovejoy.”
“Yes?” More sordid secrets? I suppressed a yawn.
“Hong Kong’s dangerous. Please remember that. It fights dirty. So keep safe from risks.”
I chuckled, debonair. “I know all about risks, love.”
Her gray careworn face hung its sadness at me. “Promise. If there’s any way I can help, you’ll come to me. Even if you think I’ll be useless.”
“It’s a deal,” I said, doing my cheap gangster act, not getting a laugh.
I left then, waving to her as she went towards the Tang Chih Building and I trotted downhill to the curving road.
Happy now the scam was underway, I paused, attracted by a crowd near Centra]
Market watching crickets fight. One called Golden Double-Eight Super Dragon won hands down. It ate its vanquished opponent. The sight made me ill. The loser had seemed so sure of itself.
We were in the Lantern Market one evening, me and Marilyn, strolling after supper. It was a couple of days after I’d started work. The place is actually a car-park near the Macao Ferry but becomes a vendor’s paradise at dusk. Hundreds of folk arrive and simply set up business, each around a paraffin lantern. Instantly it could be a scene from the Middle Ages, the yellow glows on huddles of faces against a starry sky.
“Here, mate.” I paused, gave an old bloke a note. He seemed poor, having nothing to sell. He took it without acknowledgment, which narked me. Bloody cheek. He could have said a ta. I’d only given it him because I’d glimpsed my little stumpy leper Titch talking to him, before poling himself off on his rollers as we’d approached.
“Sin Sang.” He was calling after me. Marilyn had halted. The old bloke was effortlessly hunched down, smoking. I saw he had a blackish pet bird in a bamboo cage.
“Go, Lovejoy,” Marilyn said. “Your fortune.”
“Eh?” I didn’t want my fortune told. “It’s all rubbish.”
A number of Chinese paused with us, loudly speculating.
“You must, Lovejoy. You’ve paid.”
The old bloke spouted in Cantonese, pointing, flicked the hemp loop off the cage and presented a deck of cards. Beside him was a pile of small bamboo slivers in an old Coke tin. The bird came out, picked out a card rather snappishly, I thought. I gave it an inexpert trill whistle like I do in my garden back home, just being pally. It ignored this, picked out a bamboo sliver, cast it on the card, and slammed back into its cage. Do not disturb. I was conscious of the crowd’s excited interest. The fortune-teller was silent, looking.
“Two! The bird should have chosen card or stick,” Marilyn said.
“I distracted it whistling, I expect.” I shrugged.
The old man spoke, chopping the air enthusiastically. Guillotine? The chop from some hoodlums? The crowd went wild. I grinned modestly, it was nothing. I thanked the bloke and his bird and walked us on among the lanterns.
“Good news, eh? Maybe I’ll be lucky.”
“He said that the double luck had not come together since his first Hong Kong ancestor, Lovejoy.” She was distant, unsmiling. “You will survive much trouble—”
“Look, love.” I could see what she was thinking. “Don’t start all that superstition stuff.
I’ve got a job on, remember?”
We strolled until about ten, then parted. I saw her into a taxi. She never looked back.
No rule that she had to wave, was there? I watched the taxi out of sight. Under the Triad’s rules I could do as I wished about Steerforth’s, ah, lucrative escort agency, as long as I made regular reports that the painting was on course—though I bet Marilyn was updating them every couple of hours.
This evening I felt restless, really out of sorts. Partly it was being so long away from home, partly the
