The Woman Who Pretended to Love Men

by Anna Ferrara

  Milla’s beautiful blue eyes—those eyes I loved with all my heart—grew wide. “What do you mean stay safe?” she asked, in a low voice.

  “My name is Fleur de Roller. I work for a security agency called Everquest and I think they want your baby.”

  “What!”

  “I’m not going to let that happen! I’ll take you somewhere they can’t go till we find out what’s really going on!” I dragged the plastic clip she had on her middle finger away and uncurled the velcro sleeve she had around her upper arm. Two of the electronic monitors around her bed stopped beeping. I tried to get the buttoned device she was holding out of her hands but she gripped it like her life depended on it and wouldn’t let go.

  “Please, just, stop!” She grappled to push me off but I overpowered her easily; she was weaker than she had ever been and all the feistiness she used to have about her seemed muted. “I can’t do this right now! Can’t you see?” she stared at the device I had thrown onto the floor and suddenly looked all scared again.

  “Dr Jones is an agent too, Milla! I don’t know why but I’m not waiting around to find out! Please just trust me. I promised to look after you and your baby and I’m trying to do just that!”

  Milla blinked, looked up at me and frowned but didn’t budge.

  In that moment, I felt that connection between us again, that rush of chemical energy that surged through my veins every time I met her eyes. The sensation reminded me of all the times we made love in the dark of the night, and the times we hugged each other to sleep and whispered mushy words into each other’s ears. It reminded me of all our firsts—first kiss, first hug, first night together, first bath together, first morning—and it reminded me how happy I had been all those times; how there had never been any happiness quite like it.

  “No,” Milla said. “You lied to me twice. I’m not stupid enough to believe you again.” Milla took her eyes off mine and turned her head away. She scooted further back on the bed she was on, crossed her arms and suddenly looked very cold, like we were nothing but strangers who didn’t know each other very well at all.

  My world went blurry as a lump appeared in the middle of my throat. The sense of loss I had been trying to push down and not think about all afternoon suddenly burst through my defences and overwhelmed me from head to toe. “I really do love you, I swear,” I whispered as tears began spilling out of my eyes and rolling down my cheeks. My body began to tremble and I felt as if I might never be happy again if I didn’t get to hold Milla at least one more time. “That, I couldn’t lie about.”

  She snorted and shook her head ever so slightly but didn’t speak or look at me.

  “Every time you break away from me, I get this nagging sense of sadness and loss and discomfort that doesn’t ever go away, no matter what I do. I didn’t understand it at first but I think I’m starting to.” I went down on my knees and tried to meet the eyes she kept resolutely fixed on the floor. “I think it means you mean something to me.”

  She dodged my eyes, turned hers onto the ceiling and inhaled sharply. The expression on her face remained cold but I could see, from the movement of her shoulders, that she was now breathing more quickly than she had been doing before.

  Just as she had done the night we first slept together. I lifted myself onto the bed. She stiffened and glared at the part of my thigh that touched hers but I remained where I was because I had a feeling...

  “You feel it too, don’t you? Every time we come apart?”

  Milla inhaled sharply again and all of a sudden, her face was red and there were tears in her eyes. She turned her head away but I could see tiny wet patches appearing on the upper portion of her gown.

  “You can’t just ignore everyone who hurts you, Milla,” I said, softly. “You can’t keep running away from people, especially those who actually mean something to you. I mean, I get it, it’s easy, I’ve run away from many people in my life too but I’m starting to see we shouldn’t. Everybody makes mistakes, even the ones who love you, but at the end of the day, those people, family, they’re the only ones you can count on. Not colleagues, not professionals you pay to care for you, not people you have one night stands with.”

  More tiny wet patches appeared on the upper portion of her gown; they combined and soon became large wet patches. I could see her starting to sob and I—

  —found myself sobbing along with her. “I swear I didn’t know it would end up like this. I never would have done any of those things had I known—”

  “They’re setting you up to be the scapegoat,” Milla suddenly said. She turned to me, took a deep breath and very abruptly wiped all tears out of her eyes and away from her cheeks. She frowned and suddenly looked deep in thought, more like the confident and capable Milla I knew well again. “I know because that’s exactly how my family does it. Send an associate to do all the dirty work and leave no trace of your own involvement. Tell them not to talk or ask questions. Make sure they have no clue what’s really going on so that if they end up getting caught, they go to jail alone. You need to get away from them. For your own safety.”

  I gasped and suddenly found I no longer had any words to say.

  Milla slid herself to the side of the bed and stood up. “I will give you one last chance,” she said, in a weary voice, when she turned back to face me. “But if you lie a third time, we are through. Forever. Are we clear?”

  I nodded at once. Many times. “I swear on my life I will never lie to you again. I will tell you everything tomorrow, even the really embarrassing bits.”

  Milla observed my eyes with the coldest of stares and never once looked like she believed me.

  We got out of MDYM Hospital in ten minutes, via the stairs and back door, without running into any nurses, doctors or security personnel. Whether or not that meant Dr Jones fulfilled her promise, I couldn’t say. I didn’t have time to ponder it; I had to keep us moving.

  Before we escaped, when in the stairwell, I made Milla put on the black ladies’ wig I bought and also the black ladies’ trench coat that happened to be in trend that season. With those on, Milla’s belly became less prominent and she looked more or less like every other local woman on the street. I, on the other hand, with the male wig and male trench coat over my clothes, ended up looking like every other local man in his early twenties, or at least that’s what Milla said. She smiled ever so slightly when she saw me in my disguise—the first smile she had given me since she found out who I was—and that got me all charged up with a fresh burst of energy. Milla’s approval, it turned out, was more energising than a promotion could ever be. Milla’s approval, I realised, was all I really wanted most of all.

  I kept one arm locked around hers and shielded her with my other arm as we moved through the hundreds or thousands of people out on the streets that night, past flashing decorative lights and all sorts of music and noise. It was winter but, in my trench coat with my own clothes underneath, surrounded by people and with Milla so close to me, I felt as warm and faint as I would in the afternoon of a summer’s day. The world around us became a blur of Cantonese, indistinct noise, black trench coats and all sorts of neon colours. I tried to move us as fast as I could but it was hard with all those slow-moving, decoration-gazing locals and tourists always in our way.

  “It’s coming back,” Milla said, when we were at a river front lined with lights and MDYM Hospital still large behind us. “The pain’s coming back!” Right after she said so, she stopped in her tracks, threw her head into my chest and began groaning in a low, animalistic way.

  I could feel the vibrations of her groans in my chest but couldn’t hear it in the noise of the streets. There was perpetual loud music coming from an event I couldn’t see and lots of shouting from the stream of people pushing past us who were trying to make conversation while doing so. It was so chaotic, so much of a squeeze, that nobody really cared what anybody else was up to. It was perfect, if Milla would only keep going.

  “We’re almos
t at the train station!” I told her. “It’s only two stops away. After that, I’ll get you into a cab and we’ll be safe in just a few minutes. I just need you to keep moving for twenty more minutes!”

  “I can’t. It hurts too much! We need to go somewhere closer!”

  Her hands ran over my arm and grasped it so tightly, I felt as if my circulatory system had been cut off. She then began grunting so loudly, a few passers-by actually did turn to glance at us, though, fortunately, in predictable Hong Kong fashion, they moved on, pushed along by the crowd behind them, without stopping to investigate further.

  I wrapped my arms around her and realised she was trembling from head to toe. Her face was all scrunched up in pain too. She looked nothing like the cool, always collected Milla Milone I had gotten accustomed to. This time, she was weak, vulnerable and not in the least in control. It hit me I was going to have to be the brave one for a change, also that Milla was not going to be able to make it to my mother’s house in the state she was in.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll think of something else. How much further can you go?”

  She shook her head with force, threw all of the weight of her body on me and began blowing hot, frantic breaths into my chest.

  Oh dear. What now? I was struggling to come up with a plan and struggling to keep us both upright amidst the waves of other people trying to get past us when I saw, in the not too far distance, a bunch of possibly thirty men in dark blue uniforms running out of MDYM Hospital.

  Every one of them had a walkie talkie and baton in hand and looked taller and fitter than the average Hong Kong man. As if they already had a plan, the men in dark blue split into pairs and moved out towards different directions. Two of them came running towards us. They ran their eyes over each and every one of the faces in front of them.

  I spun us both around and pulled Milla closer to me so that the men in blue would only be able to see my back and not any part of Milla. “Shit. They’re out looking for us already.” Even though our seventeen minutes to do the impossible passed only five minutes ago.

  Milla removed her head from my chest, peeped over my shoulder and, I think, saw what I had seen because she said, in a whisper, “I don’t get it. Why on earth would they want my baby?”

  “I don’t know…” I gazed into her eyes and bit down hard on my lower lip. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  She looked away, sighed and suddenly looked all small and defeated. “It’s not your fault, Fleur.”

  Fleur. She called me ‘Fleur’! “I will do whatever it takes to make it all right again, Milla, I swear on my life.”

  She looked up and met my eyes, and for a moment, all I saw and felt was her. I forgot the press of the crowd and the noise and the chaos and felt only... warming, irrefutable... love.

  Then, she gasped, threw her head into my chest, began groaning in a frenzied way and reminded me what we had to do. “Hurry!” I felt her say. “Please just hurry!”

  “Okay, okay! Let’s see... let’s…”

  I looked beyond the tops of heads and scanned the river front area that was surrounded by malls, museums, hotels and the MDYM Hospital until my eyes landed on the forty metre Clock Tower on the far right. It was decorated like a Christmas tree and caught my attention like a lighthouse would on a stormy night out at sea.

  The red-bricked tower had clock faces on all four sides and, more importantly, glass windows under each of those faces. At the very bottom, there was a single wooden door with a ‘No Entry’ sign on it.

  “Hey, Milla,” I said, as I began to smile. “Want to see me do something sexy again?”

  Chapter 28

  31 Dec 1999 - 1 Jan 2000

  Unlocking the Clock Tower’s locked wooden door was a piece of cake; getting Milla up forty metres of rickety wooden stairs in the state she was in was the real challenge.

  We had to stop every time she got a contraction. I let her hold on to me, bite me, rip off my silly male wig and squeeze me in any way she wanted for I could do nothing else to help with the pain. Many a time, while waiting in silence as she screamed her lungs out right next to me, I found myself regretting my decision to take her out of the hospital. I hadn’t realised how hard labour would be for I had never actually seen a woman in labour before. I always thought it would be another one of those things Milla would be able to handle effortlessly but clearly, it wasn’t. I began wishing we had opted for a Caesarean from the get go. I also started thinking a lot about my mother, wondering if she too had suffered greatly just to bring me into the world.

  When we did get to the top, we found ourselves in a room that was covered in a film of dust, with walls that were lined with rotting wooden shelves. There was no lamp we could use but the moonlight and city lights coming in through the glass windows turned out to be brighter than I expected it could be. I could see the complexity of the clockwork above us as well as the dust on all of its parts. I could see every bead of sweat on Milla’s forehead and the footprints we made in the dust when heading to the corner furthest from the stairs.

  Once I laid out the towels I bought at that corner and offered Milla a bottle of water, I checked out the view from the window.

  Down below, hundreds of thousands of tiny little heads swarmed the river front and its surrounding streets like busy little ants on a mission. I could see a stage a short distance away, and even the show on it too. Its speakers were so loud, it sounded as if the show was happening in the tower with us; the most handsome of the Four Heavenly Kings was performing and I could hear every word and every beat of his tune. Across the river, the skyscrapers on Hong Kong Island were beautifully lit from top to bottom in colourful lights; it was breathtaking. I thought we were lucky to be there; I felt if the world did end, for what ever reason, at the stroke of midnight, I would be content for I was with the person I loved and I had lived.

  Milla, on the other hand, didn’t care much for the view or existential discussions. She stripped off her trench coat and the silly wig I made her wear, got down on her hands and knees and began panting and making all sorts of frightful noises.

  I did everything I could to make her feel better—held her and stroked her in all the ways those pregnancy books suggested a husband should do; kissed her many times on her sweaty forehead and cheeks; wiped down her sweat with the towels I bought and pushed damp, matted strands of hair away from her face every time she got a break from the intensifying pain—but none of those things actually helped. She clung on to me for dear life and howled and all I could do was feel sorry for her. My mother too.

  I felt like an ingrate for thinking of my mother as a bother, for not sharing my life with her or making the effort to keep in touch.

  I made a mental note to go visit her the day after, just to tell her I loved her.

  Sixty seconds before midnight, as the world below us began counting down in unison, Milla began pushing really hard and panting more fanatically than ever before.

  Fifty seconds before midnight, as the world below kept on counting, Milla screamed, threw her head back into the brick wall behind her and told me she couldn’t do it. She was on the floor with her legs up and I could see the tip of the baby’s head sticking out a little, looking way too big for the tiny exit that was Milla’s vaginal opening. The baby had light coloured hair.

  Forty-seven seconds before midnight, I looked Milla in the eyes, put my hands on her shoulders and told her she could. I reminded her of the time she saved me from 81M and the time we dodged a guard by the hair at King George Hospital’s security office. I reminded her how brave she had been when she initiated kissing me and told her I had full faith she would be able to give birth to a child on her own because she was the bravest woman I had ever known.

  Twenty seconds before midnight, Milla was in tears, red in the face and making deep-throated pushing sounds as she pulled her torso towards the propped up thighs she grabbed with her hands.

  Ten seconds before midnight, I was cheering her on. Do
wn below, the crowd chanted with increasing fervour, their enthusiasm both obvious and contagious. “Ten, nine, eight, seven…” Up above, Milla screamed, cursed, began panting like she couldn’t quite catch her breath then screamed again with her face scrunched up in pain. She left hand-shaped patches of sweat on the dusty granite floor as she tried to hold on to something, anything, and eventually grabbed my shoulders for support instead.

  “Six, five, four, three…”

  “The head’s almost out! Keep going, Milla! Your baby’s almost out!”

  Milla huffed furiously, grunted like an animal then screamed again, right as the crowd below shouted—

  —“One!! Happy! New Year!!!!!!!”

  Her baby’s chubby, blue-ish cheeks popped out of her right as the crowd below went wild. Fireworks appeared outside the glass windows around us. Milla heaved a huge sigh of relief and fell back against the wall right as the emcees of the show below began shouting ‘Happy New Year’ in Cantonese, English, Mandarin and Portuguese. Auld Lang Syne began to play.

  The exploding fireworks brought a pink glow inside the tower. It began looking very much like a womb and I found myself feeling really safe and happy just being right there.

  I turned to Milla, who was trying to catch her breath, and pecked her gently on the lips. “Happy New Year, darling,” I whispered after we parted. “We made it. We lived to see the new millennium and we’re going to have our chubby little baby girl any minute now.”

  “Our?” Milla whispered in return. A film of fluid appeared over her lovely blue eyes and shimmered in the light of the fireworks.

  I took her cheeks into my hands and I nodded. “Yes, our. We are going to have this baby together. We are going to raise this baby together because she is our baby. Yours and mine. I will always love her because I will always love you, Milla. I want to grow old with you, raise children with you and be a part of your life forever. Even when it’s really difficult or awkward.” I found myself crying after I said so because I realised that really was all I wanted. I didn’t want a job or more money or the approval of the world if it would mean losing Milla. Milla was all I needed. I had been fighting for the wrong things all this time.