“Lovejoy. You used Marilyn.”
“Used? Well, it just happened,” I said. “Stuck in here all day with a lovely woman. It wasn’t her fault.” Even as I spoke I thought, hang on, Lovejoy. No good taking the blame. “It wasn’t mine either.”
“You did not take the same advantage of me, Lovejoy.”
“Course not. I’m not daft.”
“Could you explain? You spoke to Marilyn of love as a duty, a perfection, a transcendental grace.”
I went red. “Well, love. I lay a finger on you, somebody cuts it off, ne? This place—
every place—is wired for sound and video. I know I’m followed, bugged, traced, intercepted. Also, you are a million dollars a second to ask over for flower arranging, and I’ve got bugger-all except my share-out from Steerforth.” I fished a handful of crumpled notes from a pocket. “That’s it.”
She eyed the money. I sat and swigged a glass of water. “Love, I’m scared to death every hour God sends. Sim knifing Del Goodman. Johny Chen. That poor old addict.
Course I’d give almost anything, love. It’s been murder just working here, with you like a dream…” I swallowed, shrugged. “But the likes of you aren’t for dross like me. You’re perfect, a genius, superb. I’m rubbish. A nerk with a knack.” My grin felt feeble. “Maybe I’ll risk it in another existence, eh?”
“Yet you loved Marilyn without a moment’s thought. And the gwailo tourist women for a hundred dollars —”
“Here, nark it,” I said, indignant. “Two hundred.”
“Apologies,” she said witheringly. There was an awkward hiatus. I tried tact, like a fool.
“You’ll be going up the hill this evening?” This seemed to me the favorite local pastime on festival days, lanterns and nosh on some peak.
“To honor my ancestors, Lovejoy?” She rose, removed her ribboned hat with that headshake they do. “You know my reasons for not so doing. Have you learned so little of our Chinese customs that you still haven’t realized?
Burying a child alive on the whim of the gods is one of our twenty-four filial pieties.”
“The fact your parents—”
She rounded savagely on me. “Have you ever been abandoned, Lovejoy? Terrified?
Alone?” Anything less than perfection was a risk, a return to childhood destitution. I felt pity. Me, the ultimate duck egg, sorry for the most exquisite creature on legs. She saw it in my face and turned aside. “You won’t leave alive, Lovejoy. In a matter of days you must reconcile yourself to life servitude here.”
And that was it. Death or a life sentence for Lovejoy Antiques, for doing the greatest piece of fakery I’d ever clapped eyes on. Perks, of course, but without freedom they’re nothing.
“One more thing, Lovejoy. Resume your duties with Steerforth as soon as the framing’s completed.” Her tone told me that was about all I was good for. I opened the changing-room door for her.
Twenty minutes later, the outer door closed with a slam. Fine time to make an enemy of the boss.
The day Surton’s manuscript-exhibition stuff was finally ready, I went early to take receipt of it in Kowloon. Naturally I codded the old scholar along: of course it would be carefully conserved and such like. He was leaving the colony for London the same day—
all arranged by some London travel agent I’d never heard of—and eagerly tottered off, whereupon I handed his work over to a group of Dr. Chao’s fokis. They would weather the lot—diaries, manuscripts, printed catalogs, everything.
“Look, Leung,” I said as he dropped me off at grubby old Chungking Mansions in Nathan Road. “I’m removing Dr. Surton’s notes tonight. To the studio. Security, see.
You want to examine them?”
He grinned, shook his head. With Surton gone, so were all risks. I waved him off and bought an artist’s large plastic carrying case.
Then I zoomed round to number 4 Felix Villas on Mount Davis to put the final touches to the duplicate painting in the Surtons’ roof room. And got caught red-handed.
“It’s pretty, Lovejoy.”
Engrossed, I hadn’t heard her come in. I was running with sweat, struggling to finish the duplicate in sync with the studio one. No time to turn the neffie thing. I shrugged, beckoned her to see it closer, trying to pass it off. “Another dud trial, Phyllis.”
Siesta hour for the rest of the world, two to three. Couldn’t she sleep, for God’s sake?
“I’m hopeless,” I said. “Incidentally, Stephen get off all right?” He’d be airborne by now, planning his London conferences. They were fronts, arranged with a let’s-pretend firm set up by the Triad, poor bloke.
“Yes.” She watched me clean a brush. “Lovejoy? You remember saying once that… you, well, wanted …?” She ran out of steamy euphemisms.
“Yes.” I gave her my sincerely sad smile. Anything to stop her wondering what I was doing.
She seemed out of breath. “And I said how I’d always…”
“I remember.”
“Well, I want to.” She spoke directly, her voice harsh. “Now, Lovejoy. I have the money.”
“Money?” I was baffled. She tried to take hold of my hand, made it the fourth diffident go. “Look, love…”
“I have to pay, Lovejoy,” she said fiercely. “Don’t you see?”
Bewildered, I followed her to the long bedroom with the veranda overlooking the exquisite Lamma Channel.
