dinner, I’d be at home fucking you to death.”
Moira looked at the driver’s reflection in the mirror. He didn’t look as if he spoke English.
“We could always turn around and go back. I mean, I’ve got only one more day here, and I would hate to waste even a couple of hours-”
Chan squeezed her hand. “I’m also hungry, need a drink and want to look at you across a plate of noodles.”
“That’s erotic for you?”
“No, just familiar. Every really good date I ever had started off with noodles.”
“Sorry if we’ve been putting the cart before the horse.”
The taxi climbed from Central up Garden Road to Magazine Gap. Apart from Government House, a white colonial mansion crouching under apartment blocks at every corner, there was nothing left of the Hong Kong Chan had known as a kid. No traditional two-story flat-fronted Chinese houses with yellow walls and green shutters; no British barracks with pillared terraces, mosquito netting and red-faced chaps reading
At the junction with Magazine Gap Road they turned and climbed more steeply. The driver switched off the air conditioning in favor of more power, Chan opened the window. They were just above the pollution level. Moira breathed deeply, moaned.
“It’s so balmy. In exactly thirty hours I’m not gonna believe this ever happened.”
On the flat saddle under Victoria Peak the driver switched the air conditioning back on. At the Peak Cafe they were shown to the outdoor table Chan had booked; it was small, round and made of marble from the Philippines. Chan ordered champagne. It wasn’t a real Chinese restaurant at all, although in an earlier incarnation it had been a teahouse for coolies who had dragged Englishmen and women up the ancient paths in sedan chairs. An American entrepreneur had renovated it into a chic international cafe with international prices and one of the best views in the world.
Moira took it in with a long, slow sweep. “Wow! Is this how Hong Kong detectives spend their spare time?”
Chan screwed his eyes to slits: “Velly old Chinese proverb: Too much workee make Wong dull boy.”
Moira’s eyes sparkled through the meal while Chan ate noodles with dumplings and she ate smoked salmon with warm nan and pesto, washed down with a bottle of Australian white wine between them. Chan wanted to ask if she needed more alcohol but didn’t. He knew she knew he was waiting.
He paid the bill and led her to the footpath that circles the Peak and is walked at least once by everyone who visits the territory. They began at the harbor side. Two thousand feet below a man-made constellation sent light skyward in a million different clusters, a macrofax for extraterrestrials:
Moira gripped his palm. “So, is this my moment?”
“I guess.”
She cleared her throat. “I brought some pictures. Telling stories is easier for me with visual backup. Here’s the first.”
She took some photographs out of her handbag, gave him one. It showed a young blond female cadet in the blue uniform of the New York Police Department. He noted the chiseled Irish jaw, the determined posture, the womanly shape despite the ugly uniform.
“And this is me at about the same time out of uniform.”
She was in an evening dress that reached halfway down her thigh and plunged between her full and youthful breasts.
“Great tits,” Chan said, practicing directness.
“Dad spoiled me. He said I could have any man I wanted. Well, girls who can have any man they want generally pick the wrong one. Of all the guys chasing me in the department I picked Mario. He was a captain, the only one who hadn’t been married before, or wasn’t still, but that’s not why I chose him. I fell for him like-oh, like all serious girls fall sooner or later. Can I have one of your cigarettes?”
Chan offered her the open box, took one for himself, lit both.
“Well, I have to backtrack to tell you why I joined the NYPD. I joined because it was the religion I was brought up with. My father was a captain, three of my brothers were already on the force, one of them a sergeant, and we were that other kind of Irish family you don’t hear too much about. I mean honest like an iron girder. So when a year into my marriage I found that Mario was taking money from the mob, I broke with him even though we already had Clare by then. I flipped from violent love to violent contempt in about twenty-four hours. After all, I’d heard my dad preach against corrupt cops every mealtime for as long as I could remember. And I was very young. The young think in black and white; Americans think in black and white; cops definitely think in black and white. Mario was wrong; I was right.
“Italians don’t think in black and white, though. To them it’s all negotiable. I think that was our real point of disagreement, looking back. He was shocked, pleaded with me, told me how much he loved me. But I turned myself to stone.”
She smiled up at Chan, paused to inhale from the cigarette.
“There’s nothing wrong with criminals,” Chan said, “except that they break the law.”
“Looking back, I think I could have saved him. I’m old-fashioned enough to think that a woman can do that for a man. Now let’s fast forward a bit. Clare stays with me, sees her father weekends; I throw myself into my work. Sure, I go through a man-hating period, but it didn’t last that long. I’m one of those women who actually like men. My feminism was the political, economic kind. Still is, for that matter. Equal rights, equal pay. A lot has to do with being a single-parent family and with some frustration I’m getting with my promotion prospects. This is still early days for women in corporate slash institutional America. I honestly don’t believe I was especially strident. It just happens that Clare absorbed the message that men are rotten through and through and just there to be used.”
Moira paused, musing. “The other stuff I tried to instill in her, like respect for others, respect for the law, be a good citizen, work ethic-the more challenging part of my message, you might say-that washed right over. And we were living in the Bronx. In the back of my mind I know she’s doing bad things, but I have a life of my own. Men come and go; I’m losing a lot of my hard edges; I even dream of hooking up with Mario from time to time, although he’s turned into a womanizer pure and simple. Clare still sees him once a week. He gives her money, more money than anyone on the NYPD payroll could afford to give a teenage girl. What does she spend it on? I don’t even dare to ask. All I can do is check her body, her eyes, the color in her cheeks. As far as I can tell, she’s not doing anything real bad. She even goes skateboarding in Central Park. Her coordination is excellent. I take some comfort from that.”
Moira threw the remains of her cigarette on the ground, rubbed it out with her shoe. “Sure is beautiful here, Charlie. Kinda mind-blowing, considering that this trip, this moment, wasn’t even in my thoughts five days ago. Where was I?”
“Clare.”
“Right. So, the first time I find her making love with another girl I’m shocked, I mean shaken to the bones.”
“Another girl?” Chan frowned. There were plenty of Chinese who looked on male homosexuality as a recent Western import. Lesbianism was a vice so exotic it was hardly more than a myth. What did lesbians do?
“Correct. This is not something my Catholic upbringing prepared me for despite sixteen years on the force. I restrain myself, though, tell myself it’s just a phase. But frankly I’m disappointed. I don’t have a problem with gays anymore, it’s not a moral issue for me, strictly speaking, but in Clare’s case it just strikes me as so damn-well, selfish.”
“Ah, yes.”
