by Anna Ferrara
“Where is it?” the security guard muttered in Cantonese. “Where did I last see it?”
C39’s girlfriend sucked in her lips and stared right at me with huge, twinkly eyes. To my horror, she looked as if she was trying to stop herself from exploding with laughter.
‘This is not funny,’ I mouthed right away. I attempted to put on a stern, solemn face to get my point across but against my will, my lips began curling upwards too. ‘This is bad,’ I added with a frown, whilst a grin appeared on my face.
That only made her want to laugh more. When she looked up from my lips and back into my eyes, C39’s girlfriend turned red in the face and began shaking ever so slightly as a gigantic grin appeared all over her face.
I shook my head at her but the urge to laugh became so overwhelming, I had to look away and cover my own mouth with my hand to keep myself from laughing. My face turned hot and I too began shaking.
In the meantime, the security guard pulled open a drawer, then closed it. He left the security office right after that and locked the door from the outside.
C39’s girlfriend and I counted to thirty, then burst out of our hiding place in wild laughter. We clutched our stomachs, dropped tears and laughed till our faces turned purple. I don’t know why we laughed, it didn’t make sense for us to be laughing, but for some reason, we couldn’t stop. The sight of me laughing seemed to make C39’s girlfriend laugh all the more; likewise, each time I saw her all choked up with laughter, with tears rolling down the sides of her cheeks, I couldn’t help but laugh too. We laughed for a good few minutes, till we were both coughing for air and drained of all energy.
“Alright, go stand guard again,” C39’s girlfriend said when she finally managed to calm herself down. She placed both hands on my shoulders, opened the door and gently edged me out of the office. When our eyes met, right before she closed the door, she smiled.
I smiled back.
For the next ten minutes, I stood outside the security office with my back against the wall, my mind desperately trying to calm my body with all sorts of visualisation techniques. I felt feverish and exhilarated, sensations I had never felt while at work before, and I wasn’t sure if it was right for me to be feeling that way while in the midst of an assignment. I had never shared any of my job’s excitement with another person before and, whilst having done so at last felt oddly invigorating, I wasn’t sure it was in my best interest to continue feeling that way. I could hardly even keep a straight face.
I was still smiling when C39’s girlfriend opened the door to the security office and pulled me in by the arm.
“I found it,” she said after she closed and locked the door behind us. “And a report too. But it’s in Cantonese, I think. Come check it out.”
She grabbed a cardboard spring file from the table and handed it to me, then plugged a tape labelled ‘9th Flr, 22/6/99, 11pm-5am’ into the VCR player.
The file I held had the words ‘Security Office’s Report on Danny Diaz’ written in Chinese on its cover, with the exception of C39’s name in English. I flipped it open and saw three A4 pages of handwritten Chinese words within. A quick glance at the text on the very top of the first page told me that the report had been written by the security guard who had been working the night shift the day C39 went missing.
I took out the Konica point-and-shoot camera I had in my backpack—paid for by my organisation, as always—and took a photograph of each and every one of the pages within the file.
‘Last visitor who saw Patient was his girlfriend,’ the last page read. ‘She was his only visitor until 22 June 1999 and visited alone the night he went missing. On 22 June 1999, Patient got a new visitor who identified herself as Carmen. Relationship between Carmen and Patient is unknown. The number she provided our hospital is not in use. Our hospital requested his girlfriend assist the police with their investigation but she declined.’
“Here we go,” C39’s girlfriend said.
I turned towards her, to the boxy television set on the table behind her and saw a black and white video on its screen. It was a top-down image of the hospital’s ninth floor corridor; the corridor right outside C39’s intensive care unit. C39’s girlfriend had her finger on the rewind button but there was nothing much of interest going on on screen—just nurses walking around checking all other wards but Ward 912—until... the door to Ward 912 opened and a nurse walked out, backwards. When the door opened, I got a glimpse of a man lying in the bed I had seen, connected to all the tubes, wires and machinery around it.
“Shit,” C39’s girlfriend said.
I didn’t understand what she meant until she hit the forward button.
It was that same black and white corridor with the same irrelevant activity until a different nurse walked towards Ward 912, frontwards, opened the door, stopped abruptly while in the middle of the door, then ran out shouting and looking around the corridor frantically just seconds after.
I saw the bed when she ran out. It was empty. The man that had been lying in it before was gone. Tubes and wires lay all over the bed unconnected.
“How is that possible?” C39’s girlfriend whispered.
I didn’t know. He was right there, until he simply... wasn’t. It didn’t make sense. “What about the tape from the hours before?” I asked. “Let’s watch that.”
“No. I watched it already. He was there in it, just as he was at the beginning of this one. This is the tape that shows how he went missing and it doesn’t show anything at all.” She frowned while looking at me but I could tell she wasn’t seeing me; her mind was a million miles away. “What does the report say?”
“Danny has a girlfriend. She was his only visitor and the last one who saw him before he went missing. Did she appear in the tape? We should get a photo of what she looks like. My boss would love that.”
“No she doesn’t,” C39’s girlfriend said. She sounded calm; no change in tone or speed of response whatsoever. “And I don’t think we have time for that. I have a bad feeling someone’s going to come in. We better get everything back and talk later.”
Before I could even say a word, C39’s girlfriend ejected the tape, shut off the television set and VCR player, then placed the tape at the very top of one of the stacks on the table—the very stack from which I had taken the tape I now hid at the back of my pants.
“Seriously? But we’re right here, we’re so close!”
“Seriously, it’s too risky. We have to go now.”
C39’s girlfriend grabbed me by the hand and dragged me out of the security office. She never noticed the tape I dropped on top of one of the stacks with my other hand or the wad of plasticine I grabbed from the wall and stuffed in my pocket right as I went out the door.
“That was fun,” she said, when we were out of the fuggy hospital and back out in the sunshine its surrounding pavement enjoyed.
“It was. Most exciting thing I’ve ever done.”
“Me too.”
“Really?” I had to glance downwards to catch her expression because although she was taller than most Hong Kong women, she was still an inch or two shorter than me.
“Yeah really.” Again, she didn’t sound like she was lying. She simply looked more friendly than usual, beaming again and not taking her eyes off me.
A shot of nerves rushed through my heart when our eyes met so I quickly turned mine away. “That tape was weird though, right?” I said, as if to no one in particular. “If Danny didn’t walk out or get dragged out, how on earth did he vanish?” And why didn’t you let me see the tape with you in it? Why bring me to the security office then hide the tape from me? What are you really up to, Milla Milone?
“Did the report say anything else?” she asked. “Any other clues? Did he wake up? Did anybody else other than his girlfriend go into his ward?”
“No, not that I saw. I wasn’t really reading it properly though, I’ll read when I get the photos developed. In fact, you know what, I really should head
back to the office to get the photos developed now. This is huge. Bigger than what I expected.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well… can I come? To your office?”
“Unfortunately, no. It’s employees only. But there is a shopping district right down that road you could go check out.” I stopped walking and pointed to the road at a right angle to the one we were on. “It has practically anything you can think of.”
She didn’t even look. “Shopping district? Okay... or… do you have time for… a quick lunch?”
“Well... I’m not really hungry, yet, because of that huge breakfast we just had an hour or so ago? It’s still... digesting.”
“Right. Yes. We just had breakfast. How could I have forgotten? Uh, okay then, I guess I’ll go… shopping. Even though I hate shopping.” She gave me a feeble smile and suddenly looked so despondent, I began to feel weirdly… conscience-stricken.
“You hate shopping?” I said, in the most gentle tone I could put together, despite remembering very well what Benny had said: “Never feel concern for your subjects. Always remember they are just subjects.”
“Yes.” She shrugged, sighed and looked away. If you had seen the way she looked in that moment, you probably would have thought I said something way more hurtful than just a simple goodbye. “Unless I need something, which, right now, I don’t, so...”
“I get it. Frankly, I hate shopping too, so… I’m sorry.” I had no idea why I said that; Benny always said, “Never reveal too much of your true self to a subject, one false step can cause lifelong regret,” yet I threw caution in the wind. Perhaps it was because I had never met another woman who hated shopping as much as I did and now that I had, at last, I couldn’t help but feel a bit of an affinity with her? I couldn’t stop myself; not even when I knew my moves would make Benny cringe. “Look, why don’t I take you out tomorrow? I can get the morning off if I stay on later today, so... are you free?”
“Yes,” she said at once.
“Where do you want to go?”
“I... will think of something.” That despondent look she had been wearing vanished in that moment and another lovely grin appeared all over her face again. “Just pick me up at seven.”
“That early? Are you sure?”
“Yes. You only have half a day to spare so… it has to be that early.”
“Okay, whatever you say.” I suddenly felt a lot less guilty and even a little… happy.
“Bye. For now.”
“Bye, for now.”
It was a long time before she took her eyes off me, lifted her feet and walked away.
An hour later, I was back in my new, bare apartment on Hong Kong Island, waiting for my computer to boot up yet again.
“Alpha, it’s Sandra,” I said on my Nokia as I poured hot water from the one kettle I owned into the Cup Noodles I opened for lunch. “I just posted a roll of film I need developed. It contains the hospital’s report on Danny Diaz. Do look out for it.”
“Roger that, Sandra,” the raspy cartoon villain voice said. “Have a nice day.”
The day did feel rather nice indeed. I was smiling when I hung up and smiling when I set my Cup Noodles down on the floor next to my computer.
I was smiling when I removed the MultiMediaCard from the eraser-sized camera that had been in the wad of plasticine I stuck on the wall of the security office earlier on and smiling when I plugged it into the card reader I had connected to my computer.
My smile turned into a grin as I watched the black and white video of C39’s girlfriend and myself darting behind the metal shelves at the security office. I laughed a little when I saw us holding ourselves and laughing.
I stopped laughing only when I saw what my camera caught next, in the ten minutes I spent out of the security office, away from the frame.
I saw C39’s girlfriend bolt to the desk the moment I left the room. She scanned the tapes on the table for a few seconds before picking up the one on the top of the stack I had removed a tape from. She played it on the VCR player right away, with her finger on the forward button.
I recognised the footage. It was the one we watched together; the one which didn’t show how C39 disappeared from his room.
When she was done watching it, with her face in a frown, she grabbed the next tape from that stack and played it on the VCR player with her finger on the forward button once again. Even though the television set in the security office was small and even smaller in the video my eraser-sized camera had recorded, I could make out C39’s girlfriend on the television’s screen since few women in Hong Kong had a body or hair like hers. I saw her going into C39’s ward with her posse of 81M men around her and coming out some time later. She only appeared once in the second tape. When the footage on the tape ran out, C39’s girlfriend pressed the rewind button on the VCR player. As the tape rewound itself, she searched the drawers of the desk and eventually pulled out a cardboard spring file—the very cardboard spring file she handed to me earlier on.
I expected to see her calling me in next but she didn’t.
Instead, she got out a small and handy point-and-shoot camera from her handbag and photographed the pages as I had done. Only when she had put away her camera and replaced the second tape on the stack did she open the door and call me in.
What the hell did all that mean? I backed away from my computer and leaned against the wall that was behind me with both hands on my cheeks. Why did she care what was in the hospital’s report? Did it mean she had something to do with his disappearance? Was that why she didn’t want me to know he was her boyfriend?
I didn’t know. What I did know, though, was that I had to stop thinking of C39’s girlfriend as a friend I could have fun with. I reminded myself I was on assignment; it wasn’t a game, wasn’t school, wasn’t some party I was lucky to be enjoying myself at. It was work, and I owed it to my organisation to be serious and focused at every moment.
In full seriousness, with no smile on my face, I swore to find out what C39’s girlfriend was really up to, no matter what it took.
Chapter 8
29 Jun 1999, Tuesday
C39’s girlfriend chose the Big Buddha on Lantau Island—a thirty-four metre bronze statue, one of the biggest seated Buddha statues in the world—where locals went to pray for every little thing their hearts desired.
We joined the droves of tourists making the same journey: rode a glass-bottomed cable car up to the commercialised traditional village that was closest to the statue, hiked over then climbed the two hundred and sixty-eight steps leading up to the statue’s base. When up on the base, we stopped to take in the lush, green, picturesque views of the mountains surrounding us, just like everybody else was doing, and breathed in the relatively fresh mountain air, just like almost everybody else was doing. When I stopped at the feet of the Big Buddha to do a quick prayer for career luck, C39’s girlfriend followed suit—pressed her palms together in the shape of a steeple and closed her eyes. I did wonder what she was praying for but because I didn’t want her asking about what I had prayed for (it was said your prayer wouldn’t come true if you announced it verbally), I didn’t ask. She did ask if I was a Buddhist later on, when we walked the Wisdom Path a short distance away from the statue, underneath a canopy of trees, surrounded by thirty-eight steles covered in Chinese engravings that were laid out in the shape of an infinity symbol. I said I wasn’t (I genuinely wasn’t) but in Hong Kong, everyone, regardless of religion, believed in getting whatever luck they could get. That amused her greatly, for some reason; she laughed till we finished the whole path and got ourselves back to the nearest village.
“Are you really not seeing anyone right now?” I asked when we sat ourselves on the patio of the Starbucks that operated out of one of the village’s traditional village houses, under one of those iconic green umbrellas. I had gotten us Grande Mocha Frappuccinos because it was sweltering—her face was all flushed and damp and I believe mine was too—and when I saw her staring wistfu
lly at a Korean couple enjoying an ice-cream together outside the Hello Kitty Cafe across the street, I decided the opportunity to grill her about the boyfriend she wouldn’t tell me about had presented itself.
She turned her eyes away from the young man and woman at once. “I am. I think.” She gave me a look that seemed like a mix of surprise, confusion and embarrassment, laughed then turned her face away from me.
“Who?”
“You.”
I laughed because I thought it was a joke. “No, seriously, I don’t get it. You’re beautiful, you’re fun, you’re nice. You should be out dating someone awesome instead of being stuck with me all the time.”
“I don’t mind being stuck with you, Sandra.” She turned back to me and grinned. “I like being stuck with you. Frankly, I don’t get why you’re single either. I mean... you are single, aren’t you?” Her grin fell and was suddenly replaced by a look of worry.
Was I? The stack of papers on Sandra Sum never mentioned her dating history in that much detail (it only said she was a career woman more interested in getting ahead in the corporate world than in starting a family); I guess whoever came up with the profile never thought C39 or his girlfriend would be caring that much about that side of her. I had to fall back on Plan B which, as taught by Benny, meant I was to talk about my own life and my own experiences.
“That’s the only way you’d be able to keep track of all your identity’s truths and untruths,” he said. “The only way to ensure you’d never get caught in a lie. No matter how big your hands may be, they can’t ever cover the whole sky.”