by Naoise Dolan
Lumpish children ran through the gallery. The paintings were of tulips and cherry blossoms. Edith claimed it was the kind of thing her grandma liked. I thought she’d said that to make fun of the exhibition, but then she went to buy prints for the very same grandma. It was at moments like this I remembered there was a category of people who called her Mei Ling and whom I’d never meet.
As we left, I told Edith I’d go home and make dinner. She asked if I had flatmates. I’d been wondering when she’d raise that.
‘One,’ I said, ‘but he’s away. Julian.’
‘Julian,’ she said – vigilantly, I thought. ‘Maybe we could cook together.’
I’d never brought guests to the apartment and was relieved there was no tiresome process of registering them at the lobby. The rule was that you should, but it turned out to be one the doormen did not apply to white people. In the lift a woman held a panting German shepherd on a lead. Edith said something gao something, and the woman laughed and said something something gao.
‘You’re sure Julian doesn’t mind?’ Edith said.
I felt I had told her something personal by giving his name and wondered, stupidly, if it was too late to take it back.
Inside the door, I put my ballet flats on the bottom shelf, then moved them to the top unnecessarily, which struck me as the behaviour of a nervous person. While Edith cooked, I lit the candles for the first time ever. I wondered if Julian would notice the globs of wax when he returned.
Edith took Julian’s wingback chair after it became clear I’d forgotten I was meant to invite her to. She used the armrests. Julian rarely did when he sat there. He’d crossed his arms narrowly, like he was in the middle seat on a plane and the people on either side had boarded first.
We ate. I asked why Edith didn’t move out. It would have been a stupid question for most Hongkongese twentysomethings, but I knew she made plenty of money.
‘You can’t just move out,’ she said. ‘You need a husband, or at least a mortgage.’
‘Do you think you’ll get married?’
‘No, I don’t suppose I will.’
‘We should just get a house together.’
Edith smiled and said: maybe.
I gave her the remote and she chose a channel showing Inglourious Basterds. She said the title was spelled that way because Tarantino had misspelled it in a leaked screenplay and then insisted he’d done it on purpose. We agreed this was extremely male.
I touched my mouth a lot when we talked. It was a childish habit and made me look gormless. I made myself stop, then found I was playing with my hair.
During a shootout, Edith asked what Julian was like. It did not seem strictly necessary for her to keep using his name.
‘He’s in London right now,’ I said. ‘He’s in banking.’
I considered alternative phrasings: he does banking, he works in a bank, he works for a bank. Edith probably thought they were all the same, but maybe she didn’t and I’d used the wrong one. I sometimes thought things might have gone better with Julian if I’d known you went ‘up’ to Oxford. I hated the British class system. That was definitely a front for whatever the hell I was actually feeling in the context of Edith, but it was also a real emotion – just not the main one. By my standards, I was being self-aware. I knew Julian still wouldn’t be my boyfriend if I’d said ‘up’, but on some level I earnestly believed that my key uncertainty with Edith was whether she experienced attraction towards people who misused the subjunctive.
‘Do your parents find it weird?’ Edith said. ‘That you’re living with a man.’
‘I haven’t told them. They wouldn’t get it.’
Which was true.
‘Does he bring girls back?’ she said. She was typing on her phone while she said it. I knew she really did have emails to answer, but I also wondered if it wasn’t a touch convenient that she always saw to them when she was saying something potentially awkward.
I wished I’d said at the start that Julian and I were fucking. It was too late now. Edith would stop telling me things and would be newly suspicious of anything I told her.
Looking at her, I could see she’d suit Julian. They both kept tempo to hard shoes on marble floors, Sunday phone calls and midnight emails. They could save time if one read the Economist and the other the FT and they then pooled facts. I was sure if I put all this on a spreadsheet, Julian would ask Edith out. I pictured them together, then realised I was only doing so because I couldn’t form a clear image of her and me. My hand could pass as Edith’s much more easily than as Julian’s in the dark – but there were only so many thoughts you could productively entertain.
The film ended and Edith said she’d have to go soon. ‘We should do this again some time,’ she said.
‘It might be harder when Julian’s back.’
‘He’s not a mingler?’
I said he was about as close to being Catherine the Great of Russia. This joke was a lot like one of Julian’s and wasn’t much like mine. I wondered if I’d stolen his phraseology because it had worked on me.
Before Edith left, I showed her my wardrobe. She pulled out a camel coat and said she loved Ted Baker because it looked more expensive than it was. I had moved on so far from the version of myself who’d found the price alarming that I was only embarrassed on their behalf.
‘By the way, Ava,’ she said, ‘are you a socialist?’
No one had asked me that before. At college people had assumed I was since all my friends were, and no one at work thought an adult could be. ‘Yes,’ I said. Edith said she saw the merits of it but also liked having nice things.
The next day I messaged saying: you could argue marxism means thinking everyone should have nice things, including us. Edith replied that I surely couldn’t think it justified having a Rolex in the here and now, not when people were starving. I said: you’re right. I wanted to add that Julian’s watch was a cheap one he’d got in Shanghai, but reflected that Edith did not know him and had made no apparent horological assumptions.
Later that night, she messaged again, complaining about still being in the office. I sent her the PDF of Why Marx Was Right with the subject heading ‘warning: marxist polemic’. She replied: are you hitting on me? because i feel like this won’t be safe for work.
The lights were off. My hands were silhouettes in front of the screen.
* * *
Ever since his departure two months ago, I’d been keeping tabs on Julian online. His social-media presence was more of an absence: no status updates, Facebook profilers changed so infrequently that within four scrolls he was getting sprayed with champagne after finals. He had an Instagram where he’d posted eight pictures ever. Since leaving for London, he’d taken to opening all my stories. I doubted he knew that it told you when someone did that.
Edith’s name was always near the top of my story viewers. In vain I consulted articles and subreddits to see whether this meant she stalked me, I stalked her, or both. I already knew I checked her account a lot, but I wanted to know if the algorithm knew. More importantly, I wondered if I was high on Edith’s list. If her coming high on mine did mean I was the stalker, then at least I would only come high on hers if she was stalking me, too – and if her being high on mine made her the stalker, then yes, my being high on hers would out me as one, but she stalked me back and couldn’t judge.
I compared them. They were neither similar enough to be twins nor different enough to be foils. Still I kept one tab open on Edith, another on Julian, and went back and forth.
24
May
In early May, Edith took me to Times Square Mall. It was big and clean, with marble floors. The Lane Crawford department store took up the atrium, then Gucci and Chanel (‘tourist-bait,’ Edith said), then Loewe and Max Mara (‘Thinking man’s tourist-bait’), then labels for people who thought they had money but didn’t – you
r Coaches, your Michael Kors. ‘Imagine wearing Michael Kors on purpose,’ Edith said. I told her that was a bad thing to say. ‘It is true, though,’ she said.
Whenever I wore something Julian had bought me, I felt Edith could tell what it cost and did not think it was worth the money.
We went to Zara. I asked why Zara was acceptable when Michael Kors was not, and Edith said it was because Zara knew who they were. She added that she was well aware on another level that this was all consumerist garbage, but Mrs Zhang’s influence was hard to shake off. ‘You’re right,’ I said, ‘it is consumerist garbage.’ She smiled. I was glad she seemed to find my sullenness endearing, but suspected she only did because it did not much affect her. I pictured us as cartoon characters, me trying to headbutt her, stuck in the same spot with my forehead ramming into her serenely outheld palm.
At the racks she chose things for us to try on. I was too embarrassed to check if we were the same size, but Edith asked mine and said we were. She said it would save time if we shared a changing-room stall. I turned away and then Edith did the same, like it wouldn’t otherwise have occurred to her. Through the mirror I saw her black lace bra. Her deodorant smelled like soap. ‘I like your freckles,’ she said, still with her back to me. She could have been admitting she’d glanced over her shoulder or could simply have been commenting on the parts of me she’d already seen, and I felt it wouldn’t have killed her to be clearer about that.
‘I like your dress,’ I said. ‘Mine is ugly.’ Edith said no, it was just different. It was the first time we’d disagreed on clothes. ‘The neckline brings out your collarbones,’ she said. I told her she had nice collarbones, too, that wasn’t it interesting we pluralised collarbones when it was really all one bone, and also that the dress was still ugly. ‘Let me try it on if you don’t want it,’ she said. I took it off. This time I stayed facing her.
Later I started another Potemkin message to Julian.
i think i’m flirting with edith. she seems like someone who flirts with everyone, and so doesn’t really flirt with anyone. i don’t know what’s happening. i’ve known her two months and it feels like she’s the only person in my life who has ever mattered or existed.
I highlighted the text and pressed the back key, then navigated out and back into my drafts three times to make sure the deletion had saved. In the now-empty box I wrote: i wish i knew how i felt about everything, then erased that too.
* * *
Victoria invited me out for tea again, alluding to things Julian had ‘written to her about’. ‘Writing’ just meant ‘messaging’, but made them sound in deeper cahoots. I replied that I was busy with work. I watched myself type this thing that would obviously make Victoria hate me even more than she already did, then kept watching as I pressed send.
Mam also said it had been a while. When I called, she said I seemed distracted. Julian messaged, then again a few days later saying – cockily, I thought – that it wasn’t like me to take so long to reply. Even Tom asked if things were well. It was so long since we’d last spoken that I forgot to upbraid him for telling Mam about Julian.
Whenever I was waiting for Edith’s replies, I touched my collarbone. Then she’d message.
The first Sunday of May, she and I went to a sushi place in Queensway. We met at the station and walked past money-changers and double-decker trams on Hennessy Road. The Chinese pharmacies smelled of scallops and woody ginseng. Edith saw me looking at the display crates of brown shrivelled remedies, and said Mrs Zhang had detailed thoughts on what worked and what didn’t if I ever needed help.
‘Birds’ nests for coughs,’ she said.
I tried to jaywalk at a crossing, but she pulled me back.
The sushi restaurant had a conveyor belt. I didn’t eat fish, so my options were limited. Edith saw a cucumber roll before I did, jerked forward to grab it, then smiled in triumph at what a good provider she was. She rated me as an intermediate chopstick user. I wasn’t embarrassing myself, but nor would I be winning prizes. When I couldn’t follow her demonstration, she reached over and arranged the sticks in my hand. Afterwards I was scared to put them down in case I couldn’t reposition them at the correct angle.
‘How long do you think you’ll stay in Hong Kong?’ Edith said.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe till I want to get a mortgage.’
‘If you don’t mind my saying,’ she said, ‘your flat is quite nice. Maybe you could move somewhere cheaper.’
‘To be honest, Julian pays most of the rent.’
‘Really?’ she said.
There was always surprise in Edith’s voice. That was her charm. But it made it harder to tell when a statement had genuinely nonplussed her. She held her chin at just that angle, and widened her eyes just so, to take in words, any words. This face was one of my favourites of Edith’s, but its ubiquity muddled matters when I’d told her something difficult and didn’t know what to say next.
‘It’s complicated,’ I said.
‘This is none of my business,’ she said, ‘but –’
‘Are you wondering –’
‘Yes.’
‘No. But I don’t mind you asking.’
I wondered if I was being dishonest to avoid hurting my, quote, chances with her, end-quote. But I didn’t think that was it. I was unscrupulous enough to lie so I could have sex with someone, but while I’d do other things just as bad, it wasn’t the sort of bad thing I’d do. Unless, of course, I was telling myself that so I’d feel I was being duly self-critical, while remaining fuzzy on which of my behaviours ever did count as the sort of bad thing I’d do.
Also, I still didn’t know Edith’s sexuality. I thought about inventing an ex-girlfriend to see her reaction, but this felt beyond the pale. There was no limit to what I would trawl through online, and clearly none on the information I would hide from Edith, but I wouldn’t make up a person. That was my moral purlieu. Coincidentally, bringing up a girlfriend would take courage, whereas cyberstalking was easy.
There was the question of Julian, but he’d laughed at me back in February when I asked if he minded me flirting with men. Women, I assumed, were fair game. Even if they weren’t, I knew I’d keep seeing Edith anyway.
25
I tried to keep seeing Miles, not least so I would have some way to account to Julian how I was spending my time. It also distracted me from thinking about Edith, which was nice because then when I remembered her again, it felt better than the last time.
Miles told me about how Mao heeded the failed Taiping rebellion in the mid-nineteenth century. Like him, the Taipings imported a rebellious foreign doctrine. Unlike him, they never made it resonate with locals and so were crushed by the gentry’s grassroots militia.
‘Another reason Marxist academia shouldn’t be a universe unto itself,’ said Miles. It was the fourth time I’d gone to see him since Julian’s departure. ‘And between us,’ he said, ‘it makes me question the purpose of what I do. Who reads academics’ books?’
‘I have to admit I don’t,’ I said – absentmindedly, but he laughed and said he could always count on me for brutal honesty.
That wasn’t true. I often lied to spare others’ feelings or to make them like me. Most of my directness was by accident. But I got more social capital from pretending it was on purpose, not least because it made people assume my compliments had to be sincere. Julian seemed to trust me. Smart people often did dumb things.
‘Would you like tea?’ Miles said.
I thought it was too hot for that but said yes, then offered to make it myself. Miles declined twice and accepted the third time. The kitchenette had a window and poor soundproofing, so I heard and saw men in hats doing something with drills outside.
Miles said he was coming to prefer my company to Julian’s. I knew that wasn’t true but thanked him for saying it. I wondered if it was obvious how much I craved his son�
�s approval, or if he thought everyone wanted Julian to like them. For some time, I’d been dying to ask him who’d come to Hong Kong first: father or son? I frequently pictured a conversation where one of them was already installed there, and then the other rang from England to announce they’d be moving over, too. They’d both remain calm on the surface, but the exchange would have far-reaching emotional implications. Julian would say ‘right’ a lot.
I couldn’t think of Julian for too long without cycling back to Edith. Most persons, places and things led me her way, but Julian especially triggered it. I sat there in Miles’s apartment and thought: Edith, and smiled.
* * *
‘Drink faster, Irish,’ Edith said.
‘You know it’s a serious social problem in Ireland?’
‘Yeah, okay. Sorry. Drink moderately.’
We’d picked up Ladies’ Night champagne at a rooftop bar in LKF on a Friday in mid-May. The premise of the evening was that bars gave us free drinks so we’d stay there for men to sleaze on. Edith said this made girl-on-girl dating quite affordable for the savvy consumer. I couldn’t remember if most women made jokes like Edith’s, or how their faces looked when they did make them.
We were getting mullered before Cyril Kwok’s twenty-third. Edith asked if ‘mullered’ meant what she thought it did. Yes, I said. Irish English made sense. That was how one distinguished it from British English.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘why do we need to get mullered?’
‘You’ll see,’ Edith said.
‘Ar meisce is the Irish Irish.’
‘Let’s get ar meisce,’ she said, as if deciding to keep it.
The Ladies’ Night champagne was a shoddy payment for talking to the men. Anything would be. They slapped the tables whenever anyone said anything, which seemed, bizarrely, to encourage them all to say more. You would need to drink a huge amount not to deliberately step on their foot, and the quality of the alcohol did not lend itself to this.
We’d claimed wicker chairs in the corner. Edith drank three flutes of champagne in ten minutes. I asked if she really needed that much sedation for Cyril Kwok’s.