by Anna Ferrara
I stopped, gaped and lost count of the seconds flying by because the sight of what was now on the side table gave me the willies.
Three lava lamps of three different sizes, in three different colours—blue, red and pink. They had been left switched on and while the glow they bathed the room in, and that continuous gooey bubble dance they all did, was what caught my eye at first, it was not the reason I stopped in my tracks to stare at them. I stared, not at them, but at what was on them.
Tiny photo stickers. Neoprint photo stickers, to be precise. The ones we had taken together just the day before. Her face was in all of them, as was mine. We made funny faces, wore wide toothy grins and looked as happy as teenage school girls should.
I never expected I’d see anything like it; I didn’t understand why she would put them there, right next to her bed, right where she could see them before sleeping and when waking up. I didn’t think we were close enough friends to warrant that level of intimacy; we met only five days before! It couldn’t be friendship. It had to be something else. Think! Why would a tourist, daughter of a mob boss, possible girlfriend of a missing man put your photograph by her bedside?
She would do that, if... I was, perhaps, a target she wanted to get rid of.
The black and white MPEG videos in the MultiMediaCards I checked when back at my new apartment confirmed my suspicions.
I watched them backwards, scrubbed through the footage till I could see C39’s girlfriend in her bedroom, right before she had emerged for her breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. She had only been sleeping so I scrubbed further back, back to before she had fallen asleep, back to before she had pasted the photo stickers on her lava lamps.
Turns out, she had been staring at the photo stickers all night long.
I went further back in time to find out why. ‘19:34’, living room lamp camera 2: C39’s girlfriend picked up her house phone; a minute later, she slammed her phone down and looked ready to kill someone for a long time after that.
‘15:02’, living room lamp camera 2: The four men I had seen at the hospital with her, the 81M men, entered her apartment; when they sat themselves down on her sofa, she brought out an envelope of photographs from one of the white cabinets in her living room and threw it onto her roundish, brass coffee table.
I had one camera right above her coffee table so I could see the photographs easily: They were photographs of the hospital’s report on the disappearance of C39; the ones she had photographed while I had been outside, waiting for her to call me in.
I read her lips and saw that she was asking the long-haired guy, the one who resembled the most handsome of the Four Heavenly Kings, to translate. He did just that, read the whole thing, even the part about the other visitor named Carmen. C39’s girlfriend frowned when she heard what the report said. She was thoughtful and silent some time after. When she did speak again, her face was completely cold.
‘Find out who Carmen is,’ her lips said. ‘And…’
The next part of her speech was a little harder to catch so I enlarged the video, centred her mouth in the middle of my screen and played that part of the clip again at a slower speed.
‘And bring her to me,’ was what she said.
An unshakable sense of cold discomfort came over me. I felt as if my heart was sinking down to the bottom of my stomach.
‘And bring her to me?’
Why bring me when she could get me to walk right up to her?
Right before dinner too.
Chapter 10
30 Jun 1999, Wednesday
“Alpha, it’s Sandra.” Half an hour before my dinner with C39’s girlfriend, I was at the 7-11 closest to our apartments, looking at bottles of wine with my office’s glasses on my nose and my Nokia pressed against my ear. “C39’s girlfriend invited me to dinner, tonight at eight. I suspect it’s because she knows I’m not who I say I am. What should I do?”
“Keep up the act, no matter what. I’ll watch over you and get reinforcements standing by. You don’t need to worry, just stay calm and do your job. Get as much as you can out of her.”
“Roger that.” We hung up and I was surprised to find I was actually feeling less afraid about going to C39’s girlfriend’s apartment after that. Even though Alpha’s voice had been creepy as always, it was nice to know he, or maybe she, was out there watching my back, and with a whole team of reinforcements too. Being part of a bigger mission and team made me feel like I was doing something right with my life, perhaps.
The selection of wines at the 7-11 I was at were mostly cheap, with only a few that were slightly more expensive, which was fine for my purposes since journalists weren’t supposed to be all that wealthy anyway. Because I didn’t know what C39’s girlfriend had on the menu, if there was even a real menu, I decided to pick up a red and a white.
That way, if C39’s girlfriend tried anything that threatened my life or safety in any way, I would have two bottles to use for defence, one for each hand.
C39’s girlfriend opened the door to her apartment barefoot, in a body-hugging, sleeveless, long black dress that had a plunging neckline that led your eyes right past the fullness of her chest down towards her toned abs. She smiled when she saw me and stepped back to let me in right away.
I found myself unable to move my legs for a moment. I thought she looked more dazzling than ever, with glamorous evening makeup that had a hint of shimmer and hair that was more shiny than it normally was. I glanced down, through my nerdy metal glasses, at my own crumpled reporter shirt and pants and suddenly felt terribly underdressed. “Sorry, I didn’t realise it was going to be so... formal. I would have gone home to change, had I known—”
“It’s okay, I think you look beautiful just the way you are. Come on in.”
She gave me that winning, supermodel smile again and I couldn’t help but smile back. I handed her the two bottles of wine, prayed she wouldn’t put them somewhere I couldn’t reach, then removed my sneakers and left them outside her door in a position that would allow me to slip them on with ease and run at the split of a second if the occasion called for it.
I joined her on her glazed wooden floor with my bare feet and immediately noticed how clean her floor was. The two times I came to her apartment before that, I had been wearing socks so I never actually got to get a feel of her floor; I hadn’t realised they were that much cleaner than my own. Mine always had teeny grains on them because I seldom had enough energy outside of work, that two hours of running on the treadmill and reading to give my floor mops; hers, in contrast, most definitely had been mopped in the past couple of days.
The next thing I noticed was the smell in her apartment. The cheery, fruity scent I smelled earlier that day was gone; there was now a thicker, more perfumed, sensuous sort of scent and there was also the scent of something very delicious and wine-drenched coming from the kitchen. The smells seemed to have an intoxicating effect on me; I felt as if they were wandering into the depths of my chest, telling my heart to beat faster than it already was doing.
“I’ll get these chilled. We can drink them next time,” C39’s girlfriend said. She disappeared into the kitchen with my weapons. “Make yourself at home. Sit wherever.”
I didn’t sit; I wouldn’t have been able to even if I tried. Instead, I walked to the windows at the far end of her living room; partly because I needed to release the nervous energy churning within my muscles and partly because I wanted to check what she could see from them.
From her window, my new apartment was just one of many; its windows were different from most of the other windows in the building—they looked like mirrors whereas most of the other windows looked like clear glass—but there were a few other windows that looked like mirrors too so my apartment didn’t exactly stand out in any way. Just as I hoped. I had left all the lights in my apartment switched on too, just to see if it would affect the opacity of my one-way mirror film at night and I was pleased to see it didn’t; the inside of my apar
tment could not be seen at all.
“Nice place,” I said as I turned around and surveyed her living room to see if any of my hidden cameras could be seen.
They couldn’t; I did a good job, as always.
Knowing so made me relax ever so slightly. With nothing else to do, I took the opportunity to get a better look at the spacious, sophisticated-looking interior of her apartment, in a way I never had the chance to do before. With the lights and air-conditioning switched on, her apartment looked way more warm and inviting than it did the two times I scurried through it in the dark. I could now see that it was thoughtfully furnished with a mix of natural materials and touches of greens, yellows and oranges that gave the space a vibrant energy within its very white walls. All the fixtures looked perfectly new and her electronics were all top-of-the-line—the biggest television set there was in the market; the most expensive speakers, amplifiers and subwoofer. The swing chair next to her sofa, made of white wicker wood with yellow and white square cushions, looked especially inviting. “What does your friend work as?” I asked.
“Broker,” C39’s girlfriend said from the kitchen, as if that really were the truth. She came back out with a bottle of chilled white wine (not the one I brought) and poured some into the two wine glasses already on the six-seater walnut dining table, with four black legs in steel, that was right in the middle of the dining area. On the dining table, two place mats had been laid out and cutlery and napkins had already been set on them like they would be in a fine dining restaurant. There was even a fat, white, lit candle between the place mats.
I smiled politely when I saw her smiling at me. “I see. What’s that smell by the way? It smells... delicious.”
“Our dinner.” She picked up the two filled wine glasses and walked towards me. “Linguine and clams from that market you told me about. Topped with a slippery sauce, a spill of wine, salted garlic, melted butter, breadcrumbs, red pepper flakes and a drizzle of oil. My grandmother’s recipe. She grew up in Italy.”
I took the glass she handed me and found my stomach doing somersaults when I saw her standing right in front of my face, close enough to touch. She kept looking into my eyes as if trying to see into me, read my thoughts, and that made me... afraid. I realised I was petrified of her. I had every reason to be. I was a liar, just like she. “I didn’t know Smith was an Italian surname,” I said because I knew I had to say something.
She laughed. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that. I’m... not actually a Smith. My name’s really Milla Milone. I lied because you were a stranger and I didn’t know if you could be trusted. I mean you could have been a creepy stalker, right?” She laughed again.
I forced myself to grin then brought my glass to my lips, over my face, so she wouldn’t see how close I was to losing composure.
“I’m twenty-three years old, my dad’s in jail, my mum’s dead and I have many brothers and no sisters. Nice to meet you. Cheers!”
I nearly choked on my drink. Five truths at one go? What did that mean? That she was no longer afraid of me knowing about her because she knew I wouldn’t get to see another day? That the wine was drugged? What?
“You’re supposed to knock my glass with yours so that we can... you know, drink together?”
I blinked and saw her looking right into my eyes and smiling yet again. I had been staring, shit! “Right! Sorry, I was just... suddenly... anyway, cheers!” I clinked my glass against hers and quickly covered my face with my glass yet again. Thank God Alpha had my back, I thought, as I forced myself to let her wine go down my throat.
“It’s okay. I know. Believe me, I know.” C39’s girlfriend laughed, drank and extended her hand towards me when she was done. “Shall we?”
I made myself take her hand but wished I hadn’t the moment our palms touched for she then made a comment that my skin was feeling exceptionally smooth that day. I laughed it off but my flesh tingled and grew hot and stayed hot and tingly until she sat me down on one of her white, wooden-legged dining chairs.
When she left me to get the food out, I felt as if my heart might just collapse from fear. As I breathed in the soundproofed silence and nerve-teasing scent all around me, my cheeks grew hot and my neck, chest area and armpits got all sweaty. I couldn’t help but wonder if Alpha was seeing something I didn’t? If he or she was running around gathering the reinforcement team together, in a frantic bid to save my life?
The seconds ticked on. My palms began to sweat too. I wiped them against my jeans and checked the cameras I had placed around the dining area. Could they be seen? They couldn’t. Good. Maybe, if I die or go missing after tonight, they’ll be able to tell my office what happened to me. Perhaps through them, my mother will be able to get a last glimpse of me? And finally know I wasn’t just a statistician?
What might C39’s girlfriend do? Gun me down? Drug me and lock me up in some basement forever? Get the 81M men to deal with me? The door to her second room was closed this time. Was it because it was full of 81M men with long knives and ropes, just waiting for the right moment to barge out?
C39’s girlfriend emerged from the kitchen with a dramatic serving tray that had a globular silver cover over its flat base. When she saw me gulp at the sight of it, her smile grew even bigger.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes,” I said because I couldn’t have her know I really wasn’t. I couldn’t let her know how much she really got to me lest she used the same tactics to push me into giving up information I wasn’t legally allowed to reveal.
Benny had given me one lesson on how to recognise and evade the tactics terrorists or militants used to get information out of you. When I saw C39’s girlfriend coming towards me with the shiny tray, all I could think of was of every last word he said during that one lesson, as if my life depended on me knowing it.
Imagine my surprise when she then lifted the silver cover and showed me the two plates of steamy linguine peppered by clam shells under it.
C39’s girlfriend’s linguine tasted sublime; it was al dente with just the right amount of glossy sauce clinging onto its strands. The clams were fresh and cooked just enough to be cooked while still retaining the sweetness of its former rawness.
Although I was aware there might be poison or some sort of drug in there, once I had a few bites, I found I couldn’t help but want more. It was delicious. It was addictive. The wine in it seemed to warm my body and induce a floating sensation that brought on a sleepy sense of relaxation. I began thinking there might be some sedatives in there.
As the minutes wore on, I found myself wishing C39’s girlfriend would just get on with whatever it was she planned on doing because I was starting to feel way too… comfortable. I was not hungry, the temperature in the room was just right, the dim lighting and quietness was soothing, the flame of the candle between us was mesmerising; I feared I wouldn’t be able to get my muscles going fast enough when the occasion called for it if I kept myself in that state of relaxation any longer.
C39’s girlfriend kept the conversation going in the effortless way she always did. She asked about my childhood and family— information the stack of papers on Sandra Sum hadn’t covered in much detail—so I told her my English mother died from cancer when I was one and my Hong Konger father died from a heart attack when I was 25. “I never really knew my mother,” I said when I saw her staring hard at me, with a look that suggested she wanted to know more. “But, somehow, it didn’t really bother me.”
That was as close to the truth about my life as it could get. Truth was my Dutch father, an expat my mother had been married to for a year or two in her early twenties, divorced her when I was one, went back to Holland without properly saying goodbye and simply never came back. My mother refused to say a word about him after that so I never found out who he was or whether he was even dead or alive.
“Really?” she said, as if what I said fascinated her.
Is she trying to tell me she knows I’m lying? “Real
ly. What did bother me was getting asked about her all the time and not having answers.”
“Keep up the act, no matter what,” Alpha said.
I decided to add more truth to my words to be more convincing. “Classmates, teachers, neighbours, strangers, they would always be wildly excited about my ‘foreign’ parent until they heard I didn’t really know her. After that, their faces would fall and change into awkward looks of sympathy. In the days after they would start to treat me with extreme kindness and gentleness and it always made me feel as if I were a sad case everyone simply felt obliged to feel sorry for. I hated it. I didn’t like having people feeling sorry for me. To solve the problem, I went to the library at age ten, picked out a book on English culture and a book on how to improve your English, found all the answers to the most popular questions I had gotten over the course of my short life, and after that, began pretending I was Mummy’s little girl who had grown up in a multi-cultural home and as a result spoke English flawlessly. Some people saw through my lies at first but then, I got better, and better. By the time I moved on to secondary school, nobody could tell I was a girl who never knew her mother. Problem solved.”
Replace the words ‘mother’ with ‘father’ and ‘English’ with ‘Dutch’ and that was my story, as true as it could get. I didn’t know why I told her so much—I never told anybody the truth so frankly before—yet somehow once I got started I couldn’t stop; I felt like a soda drink that had been shaken. Telling the truth felt unexpectedly good, even if it was to a woman who might be planning to jump me at any moment. I was just happy that the truth had come out of me at least once, before I went into the grave. I didn’t have any clue how C39’s girlfriend would take the news though. How would a person react if they found out another person had been lying about their background their whole life? I started regretting what I said when I saw her gazing at me with wide, thoughtful eyes; I realised she might have already branded me a liar in her mind and wouldn’t be trusting my words ever again. Unexpectedly though, she said—