emotion—fear of what the Triad would do, the effort of painting in the style of somebody who never existed, all that. Ten-thirty I decided what the hell.
By eleven I was at the Digga Dig, up to no good. Steerforth was relieved to see me. My client he got me was French, sophisticated, impatient, world touring for a film distributor. Or was I her client? Anyway, she got on my nerves, even though we were a riot and she paid up. Superstition’s for the birds.
The inevitable’s never quite unavoidable. I’ve always found that. The trouble is that women make you want not to avoid it, if you understand. To be blunt, Marilyn and I made smiles, after a desperate painting session in which I marouflaged canvases onto wood for future masterpieces and laid my first touches on the Song Ping. I used quite narrow hog’s-hair brushes like Monet, touching the sky spaces. I was shaking with elation. From now on I’d slog daily, building up the surface and always remembering the white which the French master in his old age called “poison white” and deplored having used so much. I mixed paints on old blotting paper, Monet’s trick to reduce the oil content.
“Is that all, Lovejoy?” Marilyn scanned the canvas.
“For now. I wouldn’t want my old friend Monet to be mad at me, would I?”
“No.”
Her face was so trusting, her eyes rounded in agreement, that I grabbed hold of her and waltzed clumsily round the floor. She laughed, showed me the proper steps, but I was hopeless. We’d made love almost before I realized what was going on. I came to, thinking that samples of pollen and fine dust should soon be arriving from Cap d’Antibes, France, as I’d asked, and was too preoccupied to say good-bye properly.
It was a pity, because Leung and Ong came at six o’clock, with a summons to the presence, and by then Marilyn had disappeared off the face of the earth.
30
« ^ »
USUALLY Marilyn was somewhere around when I was called before the terrible trio—
Fatty, Sun Sen, and Dr. Chao. This time she was absent, though I’d tried to hang about downstairs in the Flower Drummer hoping to arrange more ecstasy. Steerforth could gigolo alone.
“You saw our television leakage, Lovejoy?”
I sat facing them, a partisan under trial from guerrillas. The screen was in its place, of course, but by now I’d given up trying to work out who hid behind it. Ling Ling was odds-on favorite, but why?
“Yes. It went well.” I coughed, shuffled in my seat. My scam was planned in four stages. Would it be safer to dish them out one stage at a time, as insurance? Weakly, I compromised. “We do the next two stages simultaneously. Tomorrow night.”
“Yes?” They leaned forward eagerly. I was fascinated by their different expressions.
Fatty vicious, Sun Sen shifty, Dr. Chao interested at some clinical exercise.
“We need a student protest.”
“Against what?”
“Exploitation of art.” I was getting edgy, wondering why Marilyn hadn’t shown. “Rent a small empty shop somewhere near Jordan Road. Protect it from prying eyes. Then start the rumor that the Song Ping painting’s inside.”
“Why?”
“Art students protest,” I explained. “Placards are in their nature. They never know what for. It’ll help to authenticate Song Ping.”
“Very well.” Dr. Chao raised his forehead in interrogation. God, but I was tired of smiles.
“Second. We hire an art expert. To expose us.”
Silence, utter and impermeable. Fatty broke it by wheezes. The old doctor laughed in the Chinese way when startled to incredulity.
“You wish us accused of fakery, Lovejoy?”
“Correct. He needn’t name us, merely blames the work as an out-and-out repro.”
“How, exactly?”
Suddenly I was so tired. The day before, I’d weighed myself at the Star Ferry terminal in Kowloon, bored waiting for the ferry. Since my arrival I’d lost seventeen pounds.
What with gigoloing all night, working all day, worrying myself flaming sick, I’d had enough. I was knackered. My life-style would be called idyllic by some. Not me, because love is loving and art is art only when you aren’t pushed.
“Why the hell ask me? You’re the all-powerful Triad. I’m a prisoner here, remember?
Let me go. I’ve work to do.”
“You are insolent!” Fatty trilled. His chins fibrillated with anger. “You be punished—”
A handclap shut him up. It wasn’t much, just a tap, and barely audible at that. But it came from behind the screen, and abruptly we were in a silent world. Stalemate.
Whoever sat behind there listening was no serf. He—she? —was the superpower.
Dr. Chao gently snapped his fingers, sort of willco, I suppose. “You may go, Lovejoy. As you say, tomorrow evening.”
