How to Pick Up a Maid in Statue Square

by Rea Tarvydas

  “Black rain,” explains Sarah.

  “What’s that?”

  “Torrential rains, thunderstorms.”

  “You’re having quite the adventure.” David asks for more details of her daily life. He’s more preoccupied with Hong Kong, the exotic, than with her. When will she disclose her acrophobia to David? He has a way of looking askance at personal weakness.

  “Have you booked your ticket yet?” she asks.

  “Bit of a problem. Something has come up. Big client meeting.”

  “But it’s your turn to visit.”

  “It’s my job, Sarah.”

  “I have a job too.”

  Silence on the phone.

  Sarah pictures fibre-optic cables stretched beneath the Pacific Ocean. Miles and miles of cable roped across basins and mountainous ridges of the continental shelf, strung across deep oceanic trenches. Glass cables, the only solid connection between them. Transmitting silence.

  David suggests they meet in Vancouver in mid-October, he’s scheduled into a legal conference. She says she’ll think about it. Near the end of the call, he asks if she’s thought about a dress that would be suitable for the wedding.

  “Not really.”

  “Have one tailor-made. We’ll show it to the kids, tell them about the year Mommy lived in Hong Kong.”

  Mommy, thinks Sarah and hangs up. She’s never thought of herself as a mother. It strikes her as entirely foreign.

  Outside the kitchen window, clouds form graphite shapes so intense that they seem to instantaneously dissolve. Natural light recedes until there is nothing in the world but water. The refrigerator click-clicks in the darkness. She turns on all the lights.

  She keeps herself busy into the afternoon, checks work email, cleans, rearranges her few belongings until she cannot cope with the sway any longer. The office, she thinks. Her work is located on the nineteenth floor and, for some reason, she can manage anything under twenty-five floors without resorting to duct tape.

  Sarah drops to safety in the lift.

  There are no taxis in the street and she starts walking. She’s drenched in a moment. A wild gust of wind rips the skin off her umbrella. She dashes onto the Mid-Levels escalator and begins her descent into Central District. Partway down, rainwater leaks onto the moving platform and she exits early. Picks her way down tiled stairs to street level.

  As she splashes across a narrow street, a taxi surges past and swamps her with a wave. She loses her balance and falls hard onto the curb, scrapes her knee. Stunned, she remains on the pavement, holds her breath until pain establishes itself into a regular-irregular rhythm.

  A man emerges through a curtain of rain. He picks her up and hauls her onto her feet in one movement. She feels unsteady but hangs on. Blood mixed with water drips down her leg.

  “Let me — ”

  “I don’t need — ”

  “You’re bleeding — ”

  The man steers her across a sandbagged doorway into an English-style pub and sets her, dripping, on a barstool. Dabbing her shredded knee with a drink napkin, he asks the bartender for a first-aid kit. “I’m Fast Eddy,” he says and gently eases gauze over her bandage.

  “Sarah.”

  “Swept away,” says Fast Eddy.

  “It was a big wave.” Sarah hands him a piece of adhesive tape.

  “A rogue wave,” says Fast Eddy and grins up at her. An angular face, straight nose. Dishevelled dirty-blond hair above a thin blue T-shirt, the blue of twilight, more evening than night.

  “You all right, then?” asks a pudgy Englishman propped up at the bar.

  “Yes,” says Sarah. She wonders if she will regain her balance in this precipitous city.

  “Sarah doesn’t need a man, Load Toad,” says Fast Eddy.

  “Women.” Load Toad orders whiskey all around.

  “Where’d you get a nickname like Load Toad?” asks Sarah.

  “Don’t ask,” says Load Toad and grins.

  Fast Eddy says, “You gotta admit that the initials are perfectly — ”

  “Perpendicular,” says Sarah.

  There are more waitstaff in the pub than patrons. The bartender wears a Bluetooth headset and is busy texting on his cellphone. One of the cooks is drinking a beer at the end of the bar. Heavy metal blares out of the jukebox.

  “What are you doing out in a black rainstorm, Sarah?” asks Fast Eddy.

  “Heading to work,” says Sarah. “You?”

  “Search and rescue,” says Fast Eddy and shoots Load Toad a dirty look. “You?”

  “Avoiding a perfect storm at home.” Load Toad points out the window, a kinetic snapshot of driving rain. “Black rainstorms are worse than typhoons. Right bastards, they are.”

  “Flight I was on landed on the diagonal in the middle of a black rainstorm,” says Fast Eddy.

  “Life flash in front of your eyes?” asks Load Toad.

  “Nope.”

  “Any regrets?” Sarah sips her whiskey. It tastes like smoke mixed with salt water.

  “Oh, yeah,” says Fast Eddy.

  “Christ, who doesn’t?” Load Toad gestures to the bartender for another round.

  Fast Eddy shakes his head. A vein at his temple knots into a blue bruise. Sarah wonders what it would feel like beneath her tongue.

  “You and your fucking two-drink rule,” says Load Toad and orders two whiskeys. “Reckon I liked it better when you drank too much.”

  “Yeah,” says Fast Eddy. “I didn’t.”

  “It’s pouring,” says Sarah. She fingers the gauzy bandage on her knee and sets nerve endings on fire. Easing back in her barstool, she reminds herself to breathe through the pain. The burn of whiskey distracts.

  Load Toad nudges Sarah with his shoulder and points across the street. “Neon over the butcher shop is lovely in the rain, isn’t it? Pink light over BBQ ducks. Fucking brilliant.”

  “When will it end?” asks Sarah.

  “Middle of September.” Fast Eddy catches Sarah’s eye and won’t look away until she does. His eyes are dark green. The colour reminds her of seaweed.

  “I have loved the air outside 7-Eleven on many a warm September night,” says Load Toad and raises his glass. “Drinking beer from a can, smoking.”

  “Are you a poet?” asks Sarah.

  “Nah. Potter.” Load Toad relays a history of ceramics. Describes, in detail, the fusion of English pottery traditions with Japanese Raku. “Crockery’s the fucking beauty. Functional. Made from clay, scorched with fire. Earth art, it is.”

  “What kind of work do you do?” Fast Eddy asks Sarah.

  “I’m a consultant.”

  Load Toad snorts.

  “Consultants work hard, Load Toad.” Fast Eddy shoots another dirty look at him. He shifts in his seat and leans in her direction. She can feel him beside her, closer. She wonders if he is protecting her, then she wonders if she wants protecting.

  “Try running a business in a fucking financial tsunami,” says Load Toad. “Endless trips into Mainland China. Factory dust full of coal, Christ knows what else.”

  “Try a bank,” says Fast Eddy. “After a fall from grace.”

  “It’s true,” says Load Toad and shifts his weight.

  Sarah wonders about falling from grace. Wonders if she’d feel dizzy all the way down or just until the twenty-fifth floor. She gulps down a half glass of whiskey.

  “Patience.” Load Toad rubs fatigue out of his eyes.

  “Been here eight years, still haven’t any,” says Fast Eddy.

  “Try fifteen,” says Load Toad. “Try marriage.”

  “I did.” Fast Eddy rests his square jaw in his hand.

  There’s a beat of silence then Load Toad says, “Don’t mind me, eh, Fast Eddy? Been drinking since Friday, lunch.”

  “What’re your thoughts on The Suitable Dress?” asks Sarah. She has no idea why she asks except there’s an uncomfortable tension growing between the two men. Besides she’s drunk and facing another whiskey.

  “Don�
�t look good in a dress,” says Load Toad.

  Sarah nods. “I’m a pants girl.”

  “Always fancied a hat with flowers on the brim,” says Load Toad.

  Fast Eddy says, “I’d wear a dress.”

  “Is that a dare?” asks Load Toad. “Cause if it is — ”

  “You quit drinking, go home to the missus,” says Fast Eddy. “I’ll wear a dress.”

  “Deal.” Load Toad smacks his hand down on the bar.

  “Three weeks today,” says Fast Eddy after checking his electronic schedule. “I’m out of town for a bit. Sourcing ladies clothing in my size takes time.”

  “Shop near the Cricket Club make ladies shoes, eh, Fast Eddy? Special order.” Load Toad sketches directions onto a drink napkin.

  “And you know this how?” asks Sarah.

  “I know everything,” says Load Toad and shrugs. “And nothing.”

  She takes a closer look at him. One of his sideburns is flattened against his cheek and the other flares out wildly. She tries to picture him in a hat and fails. “This I’ve got to see.”

  “Give me your digits.” Load Toad stabs at his cellphone with a meaty forefinger. “I’ll text you the particulars.”

  “What do you have in mind?” asks Fast Eddy.

  “Bit of a party.”

  Fast Eddy shakes his head. “You’re impossible.”

  “Old trick, new dogs, that.” Load Toad grins like he can’t help himself.

  “My sandal’s ripped.” Sarah hops off her barstool, reaches down for her sandal, realizes that her knee should be throbbing but can’t feel anything.

  “What’re you going to wear, Sarah?” asks Fast Eddy.

  “I shall dress as a suitable man,” says Sarah and steadies herself.

  “Christ, what’s that?” Load Toad asks Fast Eddy.

  “I figure that out, I’ll let you know.” Fast Eddy runs his hand over the scarred wood bar top like he’s feeling his way across a familiar surface. Sarah pictures his hand running up her calf into the private space behind her knee.

  “What’s it like, being a girl?” asks Load Toad.

  “There are expectations.” Sarah’s cheeks feel flushed.

  “Try being a boy.” Load Toad drains his drink. He stands, pushes his stool away from the bar and asks, “Think the missus will open the door?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m in trouble.”

  “Go home, big man.” Fast Eddy telephones his car service.

  A few minutes later, he pours Load Toad into a black Mercedes, provides instructions to his driver, and waits until the car pulls away. He turns, pushes his fingers through his wet hair, and darker roots emerge.

  The wash of the rain down the window distorts Sarah’s view out on to the street. Fast Eddy’s shirt, the blue of night, is plastered to his lean torso.

  “Sure you don’t need a man?” asks Fast Eddy when he returns to the bar.

  “Yes,” says Sarah and means no. She swirls whiskey around her glass like a man and takes Fast Eddy back to her flat.

  Sarah watches Fast Eddy sleep. Fatigue pools under his eyes like smog. She wonders how he can sleep in a swaying building. They’re thirty-four floors above solid ground. At any moment they could be sucked across parquet flooring, thrown against single pane glass and fall to their deaths.

  Sarah tries not to think about the eighteen maids and four children who’ve perished this year, tumbling out of open windows. The maids leaning out, wiping the window exteriors into a shine, overreaching. The children, playing in window seats, dropping a toy and chasing after it. Sarah tries not to think of children and toys, falling in tandem.

  Instead she thinks about her upcoming wedding and The Suitable Dress. She thinks about the woman scheduled to wear it. She wakes Fast Eddy and says, “We can’t see each other again.”

  “Mmmhmm,” says Fast Eddy. He props himself up onto his elbow.

  “I’m vertiginous — ”

  “Tell me what you want, Sarah.” Fast Eddy reaches for her, caresses the vulnerable aspect of her waist, between rib and hip. The ambiguous space between men and women.

  Sarah has no idea how to answer because no one has ever asked her what she wants.

  “This?” asks Fast Eddy. “Or this?”

  “This,” says Sarah and shows him.

  Rain slides down the window like a screen.

  After several nights with Fast Eddy in her bed, Sarah makes an appointment with a well-regarded dressmaker. She arrives at the tiny shop early and edges past a row of antique mannequins who wait patiently for their next customers. Newspaper headlines circling, the mannequins’ small waists are defined by old news.

  The shop is empty but Sarah hears voices in the back.

  She surveys the sample rack. A Mao suit made of silk seems incongruous. She tries on an old-fashioned cheongsam in what she thinks is her size. Too tight across the shoulders, it flattens her breasts.

  The dressmaker emerges from the back and joins Sarah at the mirror.

  “Un-good,” says the dressmaker and scrunches up her nose.

  The dressmaker pulls bolt after bolt of Chinese silk from glass cases: white, off-white, ivory. She points out slight variations in weight, texture, and sheen. Sarah traces semicircles stamped into fabric and tries to focus on their differences. David recommends suitable clothing; Fast Eddy removes it at every opportunity. Double un-good.

  Sarah selects a crepe satin. Shaking her head, the dressmaker selects another then drapes a length of ivory duchesse satin across her body. The two women scrutinize Sarah’s image in the tri-fold mirror. Washed out. Sarah resolves never to see Fast Eddy again.

  As the dressmaker takes her measurements, she reaches from behind and lightly cups Sarah’s breasts with both hands and says, “Too big.” Her lips twitch with displeasure and Sarah wonders if the dressmaker expects a smaller version to emerge on command.

  Sarah thinks about the images of near-naked women plastered across any available space in Hong Kong. About the swarms of scantily clad women that walk the streets. About the heat and how she cannot bear clothing against her skin. With each passing day, she sheds more layers and enjoys the freedom. On the street, men and women alike stare at her breasts.

  The dressmaker’s hands linger. Sarah’s nipples harden. For a moment she wonders what disapproval would taste like. This moment, and her thoughts, will not be shared in her next telephone call with David. On impulse, Sarah orders a trouser suit made of green shantung silk, textured.

  “You order wedding dress?”

  “Next time,” says Sarah. She leaves the cluttered shop.

  “Hurry, hurry,” the dressmaker calls after her on the street.

  On the crowded walkway leading to the Star Ferry, a beggar sleeps sitting up. He wears a ragged blue tunic. Sarah places several coins in a battered coffee tin on the pavement. The beggar startles, raises his head from his knees. Blue eyes emerge below matted hair.

  “I’ve lost my money,” he says. “Every bloody cent.”

  “You should call your family.”

  “Where’ve they gone?”

  Sarah doesn’t know what to tell him.

  A green light flashes ahead. The Star Ferry bangs against the pier and water sprays. The boatman whistles and signals final boarding. Sarah dashes down the passage and makes the ramp just in time.

  The Globe. 8’ish, reads Load Toad’s text. Fast Eddy leaves a message that he’ll stop by her flat and pick her up on his way. Sarah doesn’t call him back.

  Sarah tells herself she isn’t going to the pub and dresses anyway. She wears her new green trouser suit and a pair of ridiculously high heels. Before she knows it, Fast Eddy is at her door. He’s wearing a blue wrap dress that gapes at the neck, and jewelled flip-flops.

  In the living room, Sarah strikes what she believes to be a masculine pose. He shakes his head and says, “You make a good-looking man. Love the shoes.”

  “Suitable?”

  “Like I said. I’ll let
you know,” says Fast Eddy. As he tells her about his business trip to the United States, he looks even more tired than when she last saw him.

  Sarah longs to lick the silk that lines his mouth, put her hands on his body. Instead she tells him about the beggar on the walkway to the Star Ferry. “He had an English accent.”

  “A banker. Jeremy something or other. Lost everything at the track, including funds from the bank,” says Fast Eddy. “What were you doing, Kowloon-side?”

  “Visiting a dressmaker,” says Sarah. “Had this suit made up. The dressmaker did the strangest thing — ”

  “Who’s David?”

  “How — ”

  “You talk in your sleep.”

  She doesn’t want to tell him but tells him anyway.

  “What do you want, Sarah?”

  His words drop down through her.

  “It’s your call,” says Fast Eddy.

  Sarah thinks about submerged fibre-optic cables, the silence that stretches. Do glass cables make a sound when they break underwater?

  “I’ve made a lot of mistakes.” Fast Eddy tightens the strap of his wrap dress in an attempt to fix the gaping neckline. His clavicle hangs out, a ridge of bone that crests into his broad shoulder. He seems more exposed than he is. Vulnerable.

  “Were you dizzy?” asks Sarah. “When you fell from grace?”

  “Nope. I’m dizzy now. Every single day, Sarah. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Sarah crosses the vertigo line.

  RICHARD

  YELLOW HARD HATS swarm over the Star Ferry Terminal demolition site, forty-two floors below. You don’t mind the destruction of the terminal. The plain concrete box, with green marine paint that bubbles and lifts in the humidity, is unattractive. Reminds you of a bunker.

  A cart clatters in the hallway.

  “Yum cha?” asks the Tea Lady.

  Don’t turn away from the corner office window. Fine days are few, between a high pollution index and extreme weather. Intense heat, black rainstorms, typhoons, and landslides. Precisely why you moved to Hong Kong. Predictably unpredictable.

  The Tea Lady mutters under her breath.

  “I beg your pardon?” Take in a nondescript, middle-aged woman wearing a too-large Marks and Spencer jumper. Titanium eyeglasses frame her dark eyes. She doesn’t answer. When she pushes a full glass of tea in your direction, her jade bracelets rattle together. Take the steaming tumbler and quickly deposit it on your desk, but not before it scalds your fingers.