File: Report: D0

Rain runs down glass (looking at it). Stereo set. Under and over. Stood smoking a cigarette under an eve. A women with blue hair slips, falls, her umbrella smacking against her neighbor. A man down the street turns, wearing orange, hawker color.

D. and I met at a tea canteen about half past six—storefront beneath the MK Road pass. I ordered dumplings and noodles, plus one coke. D. ordered—nothing, though the waiter did bring him a beer.

D. was stressed, his tie poorly knotted (missing its dimple) his jacket slumped and peeled over one shoulder. He did not bother properly closing his umbrella. We sat beneath a cracked mirror, a scrawled sign promising prosperity. I ate unhurriedly. D. did not say much for a while—he talked about the rain, some horses, some gossip. How he was tired of hearing the same songs over and over again at the pub—and mind you, D. is not some LKF teenybopper, he’s a bar man, a K singing specialist with the hot stuff for the young Connie Chan, if I remember correctly. Don’t blame me if I don’t, I really couldn’t give a damn about who D. had the hots for. Like I said, he was in a bad mood. Mong Kok is very busy, yes, and Hong Kong is a safe place, but sometimes bad things do happen to good people.

But I seem to be losing the thread of my argument (oh how I wish I had graduated high school!)—D.—perhaps not such a good person. Anyhow.

The woman sobbed, strangely, in that place, even dead human silence doesn’t really exist, between the buzzing of the signage, the bleating of the crossing lights, the omnipresent strum of the VCD chains. I dropped my cigarette and rain put it out. Dead human silence, because everyone in the street did (freeze). A photograph may have been taken. Rain ran down the glass. She’d hurt her leg—one white boot bloodied, but that was an accident, knees and concrete, nothing more. I turned away, put my umbrella (sober black) up and walked south. By the time I arrived at Nathan Road there were only the typical noises (rain, bus, light, word). No following shadows. I got on a bus to the island. Swiped the octopus, nodded briefly (unnecessary) at the driver, and my body banged heavy against the window when I sat. Rain runs down the glass.

D. looked me in the eye. His hair spray had been washed away, and the locks swept down over his eyes in what would have been soap opera style—had his eyes not been hollowed, dulled, grained in red. He slumped low and banged one chopstick listlessly against the table top. A caged turtle, tired, waiting to get its throat cut. But perhaps I look too hard for signs from beyond.
“You know about the Puritans, don’t you?”

“What Puritans?”

He laughed softly, took a gulp of beer. Back down, he grinned. Smiling, he showed his teeth, so sharp they were almost hooked.

“I forget, you never graduated from high school… Lao __.” He pronounced my name as if he had just plunged those teeth into my throat. After taking another gulp—half the bottle now gone, he continued.

“The Puritans were the first—British to come to America. They…believed in demons. That the demons…” His eyes fluttered about, between the doorman, the other eaters, young K girls with white legs, old estate mothers, the odd coated street sweeper. Looking for which way it was coming.

“They believed the demons lived in the forest. Where no people are.” He laughed again, shortly, the laughter left no echo—“So to stay… good. Avoid the bloody forest.”

He inserted the English epithet, properly, with an educated sweep of tones. I did not understand.

“What?”

“I probably should have stayed out of the forest.”

We did not talk business. I had expected to. I had expected him to try—because, you know, nobody makes such rat looks if he doesn’t know that the trouble is big. Far bigger than me, even. A week earlier he’d gone hiking near the beach, where he’d learned, for the first time, right in front of his girlfriend, the shit he was in. She styled her hair a little like a late nineties Faye Wong. And now, beneath the concrete line, at that scratched and oily table, he smiled. Smile and stood, noisy, gulping the last of his beer. To the door, his walk was steady. No-one else took any interest. I paid.

He stepped out, me with him. A minibus pulled away from the curb. We slithered underneath the overpass, through the puddles, pushing against crowds, me, digging into my jacket, him, under that umbrella, he held it badly, nearly poking eyes out and ragged. He did not undo his tie, but it loosened all of it’s own. D. ran his hands through he hair. Suggested we hail a cab.

“No.”

“Why not? It’s raining.”

“Put your umbrella up.”

He did not smile this time. Striding on the street, he walked typically of his class—half steps, truncated at the knees, black shoes crawling though muddy steps. He was sweating, I saw, in the white light of a VCD shop. A weak, stooped, and slow little wire. Clumsy, he nearly knocked into a magazine stand. We kept walking for another block, but abruptly, he stopped. (He was)

“What are you going to do to me, ___? I didn’t do anything wrong!” He flapped his hands a little, raised his voice. But then he stopped, and dropped his umbrella. The rain came stuttering down on his hair, and mingled with the sweat along his graying face. His suit began to sink, deeper and deeper, into his shoulders. Men pushed us, women brushed us. Crowds and lights surging by.

“You know, those Puritans, they thought the demons were in the woods, but actually, see—they demons were in themselves. Right? But you aren’t even that. You’re not even…___Do you ever go to the temple?” I did not answer. The rain flattened, snarled and worked him over, and white light spilled across him. He smiled again, and the water surged at his face, raised up, to the towers.

“Please, whatever… for… forget it. I’ll walk home. I’m making too big a deal about this. This is Hong Kong, no forest, no demons here.” He licked his lips. Again. His mouth opened. His turtle eyes bugged out. What a scrawny turtle. I smiled at him back.

“Why do you keep talking about demons?”

But he didn’t answer, and we started walking south again. Two blocks later, we passed onto a pedestrian street, a boy in orange, and I told him I was going to get a beer from the 7-11. He stayed, standing, ready, looking up, in the center of the street. People on all sides. I walked to the 7 quickly, shoulders up. I bought smokes, not beer. I slipped to the side and ducked under a doorway.

That crack still makes me jump. D.’s head slipping upwards, rain running into his open mouth—mingling red there, and waterfalling across those hooked teeth. A woman with blue hair fell and skinned her knee, just above that white boot. (He wasn’t.)

I let my head slide against the glass, so that the rain seemed to cross it.  She styled her hair just a little bit like Faye Wong.

Leave a comment