How to Pick Up a Maid in Statue Square

by Rea Tarvydas

  “Racialist bastards,” says Load Toad and shakes his head.

  “You were married?” Leon asks Decker.

  “Yeah, six years.”

  “How’s she doing?” asks Load Toad.

  “Good, good. Business is bustling. She owns a couple high-end boutiques in Kuala Lumpur,” Decker says in Leon’s direction.

  “First-rate, that one,” says Load Toad.

  “Damn straight.” Decker stalks off.

  “What happened?” asks Leon.

  “Don’t ask,” says Load Toad.

  “Heard about a new bar. Probably posh enough for a metro sexual such as yourself,” Load Toad says to Leon when Decker returns with another round. Eventually they walk down to Lan Kwai Fong to a bar with no permanent signage, just a glowing purple symbol.

  “What is it?” asks Decker.

  “A mutant onion,” says Load Toad.

  “A sign that I’m done for if I don’t finish this project,” says Leon and kicks at broken pavement.

  “Quit complaining, the project will get done,” says Decker, pulling out a cellphone to take a picture of the sign. “Shit. Phone’s dead.” He gropes his pockets for another. Decker’s compulsion for sharing images with his friends via email is neverending. The theme, however, changes. Thank God he’s through the what-I-ate-for-dinner focus, thinks Leon.

  “I think it’s Morse code for trouble,” says Load Toad. “Speaking of trouble, I better call the wife. Let her know I’m running a wee bit late.”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure she knows,” says Decker, flicking his cigarette into the street. They dive into the tiny packed bar, a dark blue heaven, house music throbbing. Somehow Decker scores a minuscule table on the edge of the patio, with a direct view down the crowded pedestrian street. Neon signs stack above open doorways.

  “Table’s the size of a postage stamp,” says Load Toad and flags down the waitress, grilling her regarding English beers on tap. She shrugs no, lifts her hair off her neck, and smiles, exposing a crooked overbite.

  “No Beamish, are they bloody crazy,” says Load Toad.

  “How about Red Bull and vodka?” asks Leon.

  “I can’t drink that caffeinated shit,” says Decker. “How about JD?”

  Jack Daniel’s. Leon compartmentalizes the two words and mentally adds another box labelled “Recover from Massive Hangover” to his “Thursday Night” feedback loop.

  Substandard beverage orders are placed and the waitress departs. “I’m a sucker for an overbite,” sighs Decker as they watch her hustle back to the bar.

  “It’s fetching,” says Load Toad.

  “Her ass or her overbite?” asks Leon.

  “Both, actually, ta.”

  “I ever tell you about my one and only Red Bull and vodka session?” asks Decker a little later. “Drank so much I was fucking vibrating. Heart palpitations too. Drove out to Sai Kung at five in the morning, shirtless, with the top down on the Beamer, trying to cool off. Stayed up thirty-six hours.”

  “Christ,” says Load Toad. “That’s a record.”

  “Epic feedback loop,” says Leon and beats the rhythm of the music onto his knees.

  “You and your fucking flowcharts,” Decker says to Leon.

  “You and your fucking phones,” Load Toad says to Decker.

  “You and your fucking empties,” says Leon and points at Load Toad’s stack of highball glasses.

  They talk business and girls, not necessarily in that order. Load Toad’s worried about his suppliers coming through with the next shipment of pigments by September; Decker’s concerned about another major reorganization at work; and, Leon’s head is about to be chopped for being a fake, a phony, a risk imposter. Thank God for Thursday nights, he thinks and checks again for messages.

  “Give me that,” says Load Toad and disappears Leon’s Blackberry.

  “Babes, three o’clock,” Decker says under his breath and nods at a group of young expatriate women settling into an adjoining table.

  Load Toad leans over and says, “What d’you ladies think of The Rude Giant?”

  Blank stares.

  “The billboard on the Ritz-Carleton,” says Decker.

  “He’s gorgeous,” says a woman and sweeps wispy bangs aside. Her eyes are contained in black kohl.

  “According to Leon, The Giant’s ripped,” says Load Toad.

  “I keep dreaming about him,” says another woman, a little older than the rest, a polka-dot scarf draped across her shoulders.

  “Yeah, you’ll need a smoke,” Decker says and pulls out a fresh pack of Marlboros: a white peak dominates red cellophane sky. Like Caucasians in Hong Kong, thinks Leon and stabs at his ice cubes with a stirstick.

  Ribald laughter.

  “It’s a sexualized image of a man, which is pretty surprising in this city, don’t you think,” says the kohl-eyed woman to Leon. “It’s usually the other way round.”

  “He’s getting on my nerves,” says Leon.

  “You said that,” says Decker.

  “Why?” asks Load Toad, pursing his fleshy lips.

  “I think he’s watching me,” Leon says.

  “Maybe The Giant has x-ray vision. Sees through people and such,” says Load Toad after a moment.

  “Lucky man. He can see everyone naked,” says Decker and grins.

  “If you have enough money in this city, you can see anyone naked, eh, Decker? No. The Giant is closing his eyes so he can’t see the scary stuff,” says Load Toad.

  “You think so,” says Leon.

  “He’d see all kinds. Like whatever’s buried in alleyways. Makes me think of the Walled City in Kowloon. All kinds of bits and pieces hidden in there. Human remains, probably,” says Load Toad.

  “Yeah,” says Decker and sniffs like there’s a whiff of wet garbage stuck in his nose.

  “What’s the Walled City?” asks the kohl-eyed woman.

  “A squat made up of several buildings, cobbled together with bamboo scaffolding, electrical cords. A living creature, it was. Thirty thousand people living on top of one another. Demolished now, thank Christ,” says Load Toad.

  “Didn’t some journalist take a bunch of photographs before the wrecking ball hit?” asks Decker.

  “Put out a coffee-table book,” says Load Toad.

  “A coffee-table book about a squat,” says Leon.

  “It’s true,” says Load Toad and shrugs his shoulders like they’re too heavy.

  “If you package it, you can sell anything,” says the kohl-eyed woman.

  “You ever go in the Walled City, Loady?” asks Decker.

  “Nah. Story is the police didn’t go in there. You’d be killed. Not that anybody belongs,” says Load Toad and re-stacks his empties into a glassy arc.

  And Leon recalls an encounter a few months earlier with an old Chinese shopkeeper wearing a monochromatic Mao suit who, brandishing a dirty broom worn down to a forty-five-degree angle, thwacked his leg. He was walking past her household goods shop when she hit him for no apparent reason. Broke his skin.

  “I can’t sleep,” he says, to no one in particular.

  “Just ignore Leon. Problems at work. He promises not to go on about it,” says Load Toad.

  “What do you do?” The kohl-eyed woman crosses her legs. As her skirt falls away Leon can’t help following the line of her thigh, pausing on her triangular kneecap.

  “Work at a bank,” he says.

  “Ask him to show you his flowchart,” says Load Toad and flags down the waitress. “Very sexy.”

  “Flowcharts can be sexy,” she says. In the humidity, her eyeliner is smudged and Leon fights the urge to reach over and smooth it out with his fingertip.

  “Speaking of sexy, do you like my new shirt?” asks Decker.

  “It’s striped,” she says.

  Leon laughs.

  More drinks arrive at the now-conjoined tables. They laugh at Load Toad’s stories about factory trips into Guangdong Province, the mix-ups and mistakes. A street vendor wanders
up, hawking glow-in-the-dark sticks across imaginary patio walls before the bouncer forces him to move along. “Neon chromosomes,” says Leon without thinking and that’s when he realizes he’s drunk.

  “I glow in the dark,” the kohl-eyed woman whispers in his ear. Leon’s attention narrows into a point on her bare shoulder and he thinks she’s probably right. Her skin is remarkably pale.

  Somehow she drags Load Toad, protesting, up onto the crowded dance floor. Leon catches a glimpse of him a little while later, caught in a blue dot, swaying, his arms outstretched like Christ the Redeemer. When Load Toad eventually comes back to the table, he leans on Leon and says, “She likes you.”

  “The Giant is killing my mojo,” complains Decker and shoves at his shirt sleeves like they’re tourniquets.

  “MacDonnell doh,” she says to the taxi driver. Her Cantonese is brutal. The driver mutters under his breath and they’re afloat in a sea of pulsing brake lights. As they surge around a complicated overpass, she kisses Leon, throwing them off balance into the backseat corner. The driver grumbles louder and turns up the radio.

  Her building, shrouded in a green, plastic tarp that wrinkles around the entranceway, is laced up with bamboo scaffolding. “Renovations,” she says and shrugs. Leon thinks she looks appealing in her sleeveless dress, shoes dangling from one hand. As the lift ascends, the shuttered eye of a security camera whirs and clicks. Reflexively he smoothes down his hair.

  She kisses him again.

  Fourteenth floor, turn left at the lift, thinks Leon. Reverse the process on the way out. A quick glance around her studio flat reveals that it’s almost empty. No curtains adorn the windows. A pile of moving boxes slumps into one corner next to an unmade bed.

  She slips out of her dress and poses before exposed plate glass. The tarp skin casts a green glow through the windows. Crossing her arms over her breasts she turns, exposing the knuckles of her spine. Another line, thinks Leon and slides forward, joining her. When she pulls his clothes away she says, “You’re very fit.”

  “I work out,” says Leon. His words catch in his throat when he realizes that The Giant has a clear view and worries aloud that he will spy on them having sex.

  “Let him watch,” she says, staring down at The Giant. “I bet he thinks he’s fucking magnificent.” Her tone is abrupt like the Cantonese she spoke to the taxi driver earlier. Then she asks Leon to wear a strap-on dildo that she extracts from a packing box.

  “But I have one,” he says and gestures.

  She insists and demands, “Tie me to the window.”

  He doesn’t want to do it but does it anyway. Tying her wrists to the safety bars is easy. The leather strap of the dildo cuts into his hip almost immediately and he has difficulty finding the correct angle. My rhythm is off, he thinks and shifts position.

  “I think I’ll go,” he says after a while.

  “You think you’ll go. Dumb fuck.” Her eyes are bleeding kohl.

  “Don’t say that,” says Leon.

  “I can say whatever I want,” she says and stares up at him like dirty glass underfoot. He thinks of the old Chinese shopkeeper with her sharp-edged broom. Straw scraping skin. An isolated unit of Leon slips across a boundary and he screws her until a groan of pleasure slides from her lips. He dresses and leaves her there, sexually aroused, one wrist tied to the safety bars.

  At the doorway, Leon turns back. She’s unravelling a silk scarf. The air fills with an unfamiliar, continuous light and her naked skin starts glowing greenish-blue. He wonders if it’s financial data streaming up from the banks below, merging with neon molecules, creating up-to-the-minute computer code. Like a futuristic capital, thinks Leon. A city of shopkeepers, below, and a city of information, above.

  MERRILOU

  MERRILOU SET THE ironing board beneath the dining room window. Outside, a steady rain blurred the horizon of the South China Sea. The room was dim. Across Stanley Village Road, the floodlights on the grounds of The Crest reflected across the deserted swimming pool, and Merrilou wondered if she would ever leave this city. This morning her son had called, asking for money for another dress. She’d already sent him money for a frothy pale-pink gown with a sweetheart neckline.

  Merrilou paused to refill the iron with water. The Mrs. had a heavy iron, a perfect weight. She started in on a linen shirt the colour of coral and the tamp tamp tamp of the iron soothed. Money for another dress. Merrilou was a bank for her son. She struggled with this on a weekly basis — money orders from Mami.

  The iron hissed and she smelled rust in the vapours; the pipes in the flat weren’t clean. She should’ve filled the iron with bottled water from the dispenser in the kitchen. She should’ve. Merrilou was a bank for her son. She knew it was her fault and there was no one to blame — she’d left him with her mother when he was ten months old. When she’d signed her first contract as a live-in domestic in Hong Kong.

  “It’s so beautiful,” he’d said.

  “I just sent money for the rice.”

  “But it’s graduation.” He’d continued for several minutes, describing the dress in detail, and she had to admit it sounded lovely. Mermaid style with a corseted bodice. She could picture him wearing it; he looked attractive in red, more crimson than blood.

  “It needs beads on the bodice. Can I send to you?”

  “I have no time. I’m working.”

  “But it’s your talent, Mami.” And he’d first complimented then pleaded until she’d stopped speaking. Merrilou took pleasure in handwork and her sewing was well regarded in her neighbourhood in Manila. Somehow, by the end of the call, she’d agreed to teach him the art of appliqué and beading on her next home visit.

  Merrilou loved ironing. It was predictable. After spraying starch from an aerosol can then flicking water drops onto the light fabric, she pressed the iron down hard. Another short burst of steam and she slid a pair of khaki pants onto a hanger, and hooked them over the curtain rod. Wind thrashed rain-splattered leaves against glass. She considered cracking the window open for fresh air but the moisture would ruin the freshly pressed clothes.

  Where would she come up with money for another dress? Could she take another part-time job like this one? Merrilou was lucky to have an understanding employer who allowed her to moonlight, as long as she finished her work first. He insisted on a different neighbourhood, the farther away from Sai Kung, the better. People gossip. Moonlighting was illegal and she had to be careful because, if discovered by Immigration, she would be deported. No. When Merrilou took an ironing job she was selective — professional expatriate couples were the best because, between work and travel, they were rarely home. She could iron in peace. Part-time work made a big financial difference.

  After she finished and cleared up her supplies, she locked the flat and walked to the bus stop. It had stopped raining. A man in a green sports car pulled to an abrupt halt, leaned across the passenger seat and asked, “Care for a ride into the city?” He was wearing a polo shirt and a Cartier watch with bead-like jewels on the face. His hands were manicured, tanned fingers tapped the leather-clad steering wheel.

  Merrilou knew what this question meant. It was something she’d occasionally done before. Sat alone in expat bars and waited for a man to ask her to accompany him home for the night. Sometimes it was for money and other times, for company.

  The bus pulled in behind the sports car and honked.

  She searched the man’s face and said, “No, thank you.” He shrugged like he didn’t care one way or the other, waved an attractive hand in her direction, and accelerated toward the traffic circle.

  The bus hissed to a stop.

  “Why you talk to that man?” asked the bus driver and jerked his head at the sports car. His uniform was too tight and a roll of fat spilled over his dull-white collar — the shirt needed bleaching.

  “It’s none of your business what I am doing,” said Merrilou and immediately regretted talking back. She couldn’t risk drawing attention to herself. What if the driver repo
rted her to Immigration?

  “Dark devil. Going with men.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Get in, get in.” The driver’s eyes were angry, flat.

  “I will wait for the next bus.”

  “Stupid.” The driver snapped the door lever shut.

  Instead of waiting, Merrilou walked into Stanley along the beach road. Past the octagon-shaped building with the over-sized American flag and around the corner, down the steep hill and alongside the empty main beach. Curtains of seawater slapped against the sand and she ran along the edge as if she were being chased, escaping the foaming water at the last moment. Her bared feet gouged footprints from the coarse sand before the next wave erased all evidence.

  It was late by the time she reached her employer’s house, the aroma of garlic and chili lingered in the kitchen. The cook, a retired Gurkha, had a talent for all kinds of food, particularly Thai curry, one of her favourites. Merrilou ate standing at the sink. In the dark, she undressed and carefully hung her Tencel skirt from Marks & Spencer in the small wardrobe. Her room, with its barred windows opened wide, smelled of rain and spray starch.

  MARK

  THE AMERICAN CLUB: a peach building that clings to the rocky shores. Mark wanders out to the poolside after his morning workout. Sunlight explodes off the deck in every direction and momentarily blinds him. He pats his pockets. Useless. His sunglasses are in the car, melting into the dashboard.

  On the pool deck, expatriate women huddle over coffee cups, chat about maid troubles and difficulties obtaining airline tickets for their next home visit. The women dab at their upper lips and fan themselves. Their eavesdropping children alternate between paddling in the kiddie pool and hanging their tanned feet above the deep water pool. Waiting for the all-clear.

  Off to one side sits a handsome woman in a blue bikini, suntanning. She hooks a finger through the nosepiece of her designer sunglasses, slides them down the long edge of her nose, and gives him the once over. Emerald green irises contrast sharp against the whites of her eyes.