“How long will you stay here?” he asked. They were talking over a dance track in which a man was cackling like a jackal. Mandy could not seem to come up with an answer. Part of Joe’s work on snakehead gangs involved preventing the trafficking of Chinese girls to brothels in the UK, but he knew that somebody like Mandy would simply be rotated from club to club in the local area, west to Macau, north to Shenzhen, until age or illness finished her. Kitty, with her looks, might be a bit different. The lucky ones sometimes found husbands. It was the way of things.
“You guys OK?”
Miles had emerged from another cloying embrace with Kitty, whose qipao rode up briefly above her knees.
“Fine,” Joe told him.
“Didn’t you buy your chick a drink?”
Joe had deliberately not done so because he had resented handing over HK$200 to the cashier for their vodka and tonics. SIS was meant to be fighting these arseholes, not supporting them. But a glass of fuck wine for Mandy would at least earn her fifty or sixty bucks. Thirty pieces of silver to salve his conscience. Joe made a gesture of sincere apology and was on the point of going to the bar when Miles waved at one of the barmen and indicated that he would pay for another round.
“You gotta forgive my friend,” he said to Mandy, shouting over the music. “Englishmen. They got no manners.”
Joe ducked the insult and lit a cigarette. He was suddenly tired again and regretted allowing Miles to order him another drink. No good could come from staying in the club any longer. He was going home.
“This is my last one. Then I’m off.”
“Oh relax.”
“Seriously. It’s time for me to go.”
“Seriously,” Miles repeated, imitating him as the music shifted from house to a slow, corny ballad that Joe recognized from his days at Oxford. “I Believe I Can Fly.” Miles began mouthing the words while his right hand slid around the taut silk waist of Kitty’s qipao, her mouth once again nuzzling into his neck. They both started giggling. As if she was feeling left out, Mandy now reached across and put her hand tentatively on Joe’s leg.
“I’m OK,” he said, though she failed to understand. He felt that it would be rude physically to lift her hand from his leg so instead shifted backwards in his chair, dropping it like a rag doll.
“You like R Kelly?” she asked, oblivious to this. It was some time before Joe realized that she was talking about the song.
“Not really,” he replied. Miles emerged from his embrace and shouted “Relax” across the table, as if he had been watching and listening all the time.
“I am relaxed,” he said. “I’m just tired. It’s two o’clock in the morning.”
“So what? You’re twenty-six years old. Enjoy yourself, man. You got someplace else you’d rather be?”
The question coincided with the arrival of their drinks. Miles reached into his back pocket and retrieved a silver money clip from which he peeled off a series of hundred-dollar notes, a process that Kitty and Mandy watched in a state of near-hypnosis.
“Tell me,” he said, as the cashier walked away. “Do you even know what it’s like to fuck a Chinese girl?”
Joe could only laugh, bewildered at his tactlessness. He looked across at the girls, wondering if they had understood the question, although neither of them seemed to be paying much attention. “On second thoughts,” he said, “I’m taking off now.”
“Why?”
“Because I-”
But Miles did not let him finish. For a second time he said, “Tell me, have you ever fucked a Chinese girl?” and Joe tried to kill the exchange with a look. “Have you?”
“You’re drunk,” he said.
“What is it? You don’t like Asian pussy?”
“Let it go, Miles.”
The American took a first sip of his drink and rested his hand in the small of Kitty’s back. I believe I can fly. A prince in his domain. “You want me to tell you about it? Is that it? You can really move them, you know?”
“Miles…”
“And they love it, don’t ever lose sight of that. Chinese chicks love Western guys. When I take Kitty home tonight, she’s gonna have herself a great time. I’m paying her, I’m supporting her family, where’s the harm? People like you need to take your Christian moral heads out of your ass and start to see what’s really going on.”
“If you say so, Miles.”
“Why if I say so? Do you feel sorry for them?”
“I don’t feel happy for them.”
“Do you feel sorry for me?”
This last question carried a sting. The tone of the conversation had abruptly shifted. It appeared as though Miles expected a serious answer.
“You’re gone,” Joe said, but it was not enough.
“Answer me.”
“I’m going home.”
“No, you’re not.” Lifting his hand from Kitty’s back, Miles leaned forward and pinned Joe’s forearm to the table, preventing him from standing up. His grip was strong and purposeful. “You do, don’t you?”
“Do what?”
“You do feel sorry for me.” Joe instructed him to let go but Miles wasn’t hearing. The music returned to thumping house and the American had to shout above it to be heard. Joe could see in his eyes that he was obliterated by alcohol. He had witnessed this in Miles only once before. “You think you’re better than me and better than these girls.” He was swaying slightly in his seat. “You’ve been brought up in that typical fucking British way to believe that sex is wrong, that desire is guilt, that the best thing you can do in a situation like this is just patronize everybody and slip out the back. You’re a fucking coward.”
“No Miles, I’m just not you.”
Joe again tried to release his grip but Miles only squeezed harder. Finally Joe lost his temper. “Let it go,” he said.
“Why? What are you going to do?”
What he did was very simple. In a single abrupt movement, Joe pulled his entire body away from the table, taking Miles and Kitty and four glasses of fuck wine and vodka and tonic with him. Kitty screeched in Chinese like a scalded cat as Miles, realizing that they would both fall, quickly released his grip. The commotion silenced a small section of the club as Joe turned from the toppled table and walked directly through a parted sea of bewildered customers, stunned that he had so quickly lost his temper. Behind him he could hear Miles saying, “Let him go, just let him go,” in Mandarin and he felt a sickness in his gut. It was as if twenty-four hours of frustration and resentment had exploded inside him like an ulcer.
He expected to be stopped by bouncers on his way out but nobody stepped into his path. He climbed the steep stairs and emerged onto the street. On the corner of Jaffe Road he stopped and spun slowly through an almost complete circle searching for a cab, the fresh Hong Kong air, the diesel and the dust and the salt of the South China Sea sobering him up until he felt almost calm. He looked at his arm and saw the sunburn imprints of Miles’s hands beneath the hairs on his wrist. A taxi stopped at the lights and he stepped into it, travelling home without a word to the driver. When his mobile phone rang after five minutes, he ignored it, assuming that Miles was calling to make peace. Talk to him tomorrow, he told himself. Sort it all out in the morning.
16
Isabella was dreaming about Miles Coolidge. This is the entry in her diary:
