by Cath Ferla
It sounded like an order.
Disney raised his hand in a wave. ‘I’ll do my best to keep out of your way,’ he said, his voice booming.
‘Which brings us to the matter of the day,’ said Pete. ‘The apparent suicide – and the police are calling it that until they’ve had a chance to finish their inquiries – is a matter of great concern.’ He spoke louder now, his confidence returning. ‘Of greater concern is the revelation that Wendy…’ Pete faltered, glancing around the room.
From his position by the lockers, Lenny exhaled. ‘We can’t bear the suspense, Pete,’ he drawled.
‘Wendy was not who we thought she was,’ Pete said, his glare falling on Lenny.
Sophie registered a collective intake of breath as the staff processed Pete’s words. Her mind replayed the final images it had captured before the screen went up around Wendy’s body – that pale, lifeless arm. Needle marks, brown and definite, like a snakeskin tattoo.
‘Actually, we don’t know who the girl on the footpath was,’ Pete said. ‘What we do know is that she wasn’t Wendy Chan.’
A confused murmur rose above the sound of the photocopier as people turned to colleagues, concern and confusion etched on their faces.
‘Let me make this clear,’ Pete said, his voice raised above the din. ‘The girl on the footpath yesterday attended this school and some of you may have taught her. She went by the name of Wendy and she was enrolled here under that name. But the police have, this morning, informed me that what we have is a case of mistaken identity.’
‘Hence the audit,’ muttered Lenny.
‘How have they established that?’ Sophie’s voice carried above the chatter.
Pete paused, ran a thin tongue across his lips. ‘The police have their methods,’ he said. ‘I’m not an investigator.’
Sophie sat back in her seat, rocked. What other secrets had ‘Wendy’ been hiding? And where was the real Wendy Chan?
Pete’s voice drilled into Sophie’s thoughts.
‘…a very serious matter and I need each staff member to exercise extra vigilance when it comes to the roll. I shouldn’t need to remind anyone that these are legal documents. Should you note inconsistencies in student attendance this week, please draw them to my or Michael’s attention immediately. We’ll pass the information on to the police.’
Pete glanced across at his companion. ‘Did you want to say a few words?’
Michael Disney cleared his throat. ‘I’ll be interviewing each of you individually over the course of the next week as part of my investigation into visa regulation adherence among the language schools in the city,’ he said. ‘This is nothing for you as teachers to worry yourselves about – we haven’t singled your school out specifically – but because of Wendy Chan’s disappearance, it was decided that United English is a good place to start.’
A few mumbled questions. Pete held up a hand, pleading for quiet. ‘There’ll be time for questions over the course of the week. Feel free to bail Michael up in the staffroom or by the coffee machine or wherever you happen to catch him. He doesn’t bite.’
Pete nodded and the two men backed out the door. Sophie felt the tension lift as she watched her colleagues shake their heads and discuss Pete’s announcement, making jokes, again beginning to jostle in the queue for the photocopier.
Across from her, Chuck had noted the change in atmosphere as well. ‘Hear that?’ he asked Sophie.
‘What?’
‘The chatter.’
‘People talking, yeah.’
‘It’s relief.’
Sophie stared at Chuck. ‘Relief from what?’
‘From thinking she was somebody we knew.’
A hoot of laughter sounded from the corner of the room. Chuck leaned forward, beckoning Sophie closer. ‘I know it’s sick, but somehow it doesn’t seem so awful now. Don’t you think?’
Sophie swallowed the bile rising to her throat. ‘I’m sorry, Chuck,’ she said, pushing back her chair. ‘I absolutely disagree.’
Over in student administration, Sophie found the intake officer, Maria, eating banana bread with her morning coffee.
‘Want some?’ Maria held out a thick slab of the stuff, its surface glistening with butter.
‘Pass,’ Sophie said.
‘You’re too skinny,’ complained Maria, licking a finger and then wiping it on her pants. ‘But if you won’t let me put some meat on those bones, what else can I help you with?’
Sophie handed her a slip of paper. She’d written Tae Hun’s name on it in black pen. ‘I think this guy is a student at our school,’ she said. ‘I need to talk to him.’
Maria took the paper. ‘Not ringing any bells but it’s a fairly uncommon Korean name, Sophie.’ She shook awake her computer. ‘You must know that, though. Being Asian.’
Right.
‘Pretty sure my birth certificate says I’m an Aussie.’
Maria smiled, like Sophie had told a joke. ‘Got a family name too?’
‘Nuh uh.’
Squinting as she pushed her spectacles up her nose, Maria typed the name into her database. Her forehead furrowed into a frown.
‘What do you know,’ she said.
Sophie moved behind the desk to peer over Maria’s shoulder. ‘Tell me.’
‘We’ve had two Tae Huns enrolled in the past six months,’ said Maria, pointing to the screen. ‘One is currently a student in lower elementary…’
‘That’s not him,’ said Sophie. ‘This guy’s English is stronger.’
‘The other guy…’ Maria scrolled the cursor down the computer screen. Sophie saw a panel on the right side of the screen flash red.
‘…here it is.’ Maria highlighted the information. ‘He left the school a couple of months back. It says he fell behind in fees.’
Sophie rocked back on her heels. ‘Any idea where he went?’
Maria studied the computer screen. ‘We don’t keep records of the competition, Sophie,’ she said. ‘But here’s something that might help. He’s down as working at Seoul Cafe in Haymarket. If he’s still in Sydney, you might find him there.’
Sophie grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled down the name of the restaurant.
Maria reached for her banana bread. ‘What’s this guy done? Broken some girl’s heart?’
Sophie smiled. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘That’s what I want to find out.’
He’d brought her broth again. He fed it to her with a flat-bottomed spoon. It reminded Han Hong of the blue and white porcelain soup set her mother kept at home, under the bed. The thought made her want to cry. She pushed it far away and concentrated on the task at hand.
She leaned forward, rested her forehead against the bars of her cage and parted her lips. If she bent her head down to an awkward angle, she could find the rim of the spoon with her mouth and sip delicately at the soup. She’d been slow in developing her technique. In the beginning, she’d knocked the spoon frequently, spilling its contents and wincing – not from the physical pain but from the emotional distress of wasting her nourishment. But hunger made her resourceful. She’d started to get the hang of it. She remembered the story her father told her, about his time living through the great famine. He and his brothers had taken to the fields, following mice to their burrows. They sought not only to eat the mice but to steal the few precious kernels of grain that the creatures had stored carefully for the winter. That had been a time of great hunger, and her father and his brothers had used their resources to survive. Now was her time to do the same.
Han Hong swallowed a mouthful of broth. It tasted rich, the result of long-simmered pork bones with generous amounts of ginger and spring onion. She detected notes of white pepper and Chinese rice wine. She guessed, from the thin texture, that he was feeding her a master stock, a base broth yet to be turned into a soup.
Oh, to strike out at her captor and spew the hot soup over his face.
The bars of her cage prevented it. She had no choice but to take the small sustenance he off
ered, use it to build her strength, so that when the opportunity arose she could use it to escape.
It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the only one she had. Han Hong leaned forward again and sipped.
Students dominated the lunch crowd at Seoul Cafe. They sat in groups, sporting hip-hop gear, gold chains and dyed hair.
Sophie stopped at the entrance to the dining room and scanned the interior. The restaurant had been difficult to find – she’d entered via a lift hidden within a newsagent on Liverpool Street. A young waiter hurried over with a menu. Sophie indicated she wanted a table for one, and he led her to a small booth by a window. The restaurant smelled of pickled cabbage and meat. Sophie leaned into her seat, tuned to the sizzle of fat hitting hotplates. The steam from the barbecue settled into her shirt. She already felt clammy and by the time she got out of here, she would reek.
‘Something to drink?’ Most of the diners were indulging in midday soju sessions. They held thimbles of the potent spirit in the air with gusto.
Sophie nodded. ‘Some tea.’
She looked out the window and down to the street below. Lunchtime pedestrians headed west. She flipped through the picture menu and, when the waiter returned with her tea, she selected rice cakes and kimchi soup.
‘And I’m looking for one of your staff,’ she said, handing back the menu.
‘Excuse me?’ The waiter studied Sophie, his face a furrow of confusion. ‘My English is not so good.’ He smiled apologetically.
‘A waiter,’ said Sophie. ‘His name is Tae Hun. Do you know him?’
Sophie watched a vein pop out on the boy’s temple as he leaned in closer. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Tae Hun,’ said Sophie, raising her voice above the noise of a rowdy table beside her. No doubt she’d mangled the pronunciation. ‘I’m looking for Tae Hun.’
The boy shook his head, miserably. ‘My English is not so good,’ he mumbled. ‘One minute.’
Sophie waited. She took a sip of her tea. Her muscles relaxed.
‘Can I help you?’
Sophie looked up. In front of her stood Tae Hun.
‘Sophie.’ Tae Hun’s face drained of colour. He placed a hand on the table, as though to steady himself. ‘Do you remember me?’
‘I came looking for you.’
Tae Hun slid onto the bench seat opposite.
‘Have you heard the news?’
‘You mean Wendy?’ He looked at the table, straightened the mat with smooth fingers. ‘I didn’t know she felt so…’ He searched for the right word. He looked up at Sophie, his eyes wide. ‘I didn’t know she felt so sad.’
‘Did you see her the day she died?’ Sophie asked. ‘Had anything changed?’
Tae Hun leaned forward. ‘Oh no,’ he said quickly. ‘You don’t understand. I hadn’t seen Wendy for many weeks.’
‘I thought you were friends?’
‘She dumped me.’
‘She wasn’t who she said she was.’
Tae Hun scratched at his chin. ‘I heard this,’ he said. ‘But to me, she was Wendy.’ He paused, as though searching for something. ‘For foreign students,’ he said, ‘this city is not so friendly. It’s not easy.’
‘I know.’
‘It’s not easy to be a foreigner,’ he continued. ‘We are students together. We share our experiences here, not our history.’
Sophie looked at Tae Hun. She knew how it felt to be a foreigner.
Laowai! On ice-cold Beijing days, she’d wandered the streets, inhaling China’s fragrance: drain water, coal dust, chicken fat and skin. The place was part of her heritage and yet she’d felt so lonely and pined so much for home.
‘I wish I could have helped,’ Sophie said.
Tae Hun examined her closely, like someone trying to unlock a code.
‘Can I tell you something?’ he asked. ‘A secret?’
Sophie nodded. ‘I’m good at those.’
‘Nine o’clock tonight,’ he said. ‘The Three Monkeys.’
Justin Holmes entered the store from the laneway. The shop took up space behind a Chinese butcher and backed onto the lane. He wrinkled his nose in distaste. The lane reeked of garbage and the refuse from the butcher shop. It hadn’t rained, but he’d had to leap over several puddles to avoid ruining his shoes.
The entrance led to a narrow passageway. A single bulb glowed from its metal cage. Justin pushed through the plastic flaps at the end of the passage and stepped into the shop. It smelled of fried food, a relief to his nostrils after the scents of blood and offal in the lane. House music played quietly from speakers mounted high above his head. At the counter stood the shopkeeper, a man of about thirty – built, tattooed, shiny metal sticking out from his face. He flicked Justin a momentary glance and looked away again, more interested in his dinner.
At the back of the room, a man in a cabbie’s uniform examined the range of dildos. Disgusting. Justin unbuttoned his suit coat and headed for his usual shelf – the DVDs.
Making a selection. This part was always exciting. Justin liked to take his time, picking each case up, examining the cover. But tonight the experience was tainted by a growing sense of disappointment – he’d seen many of these titles before, and the others looked tame. Justin realised he was growing bored with the usual fare. He wanted something harder.
Justin sensed the shopkeeper’s eyes on him. Shit. He preferred to keep his exchanges to a minimum. It was bad enough that he had to see the same guy behind the counter every week. He never made eye contact and he’d kidded himself that the guy didn’t remember him, never recognised him. But clearly that was untrue. Justin decided he would have to start going somewhere else. The question was, where? No other adult store had as wide a range as this one. No other store provided the convenience of proximity to work combined with privacy and the pure visual exhilaration of such a premium product. He didn’t trust the internet. He didn’t want to be tracked.
As he considered this, Justin realised that the shopkeeper had approached. He turned his head. The guy had a neat silver pin through the pink flesh connecting his upper lip to his gum. Ouch. Justin liked pain, but not that kind. What would possess a man to do that to himself?
Justin realised he was staring at the shopkeeper’s lip. The guy didn’t seem to mind. He just stood there, smiling. Justin put his hands in his pockets, eyeballed the guy.
‘What?’
The shopkeeper took a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket and offered it to him. Justin glanced at it, his hands still firmly stuck in his pockets.
‘In case you’d like a bigger selection,’ the shopkeeper said. ‘For special clients. We deliver, pick up, whatever. More discreet than online.’
Justin took a moment to digest the shopkeeper’s words. The last thing he wanted to become was a special client. He’d have to find another store, a place where he could again be anonymous. But the idea of a bigger selection appealed to him. The possibilities were tantalising.
At that moment, the cabbie approached. He carried a massive black penis-shaped contraption in his hands.
‘Is this the biggest you’ve got?’
The shopkeeper turned towards the cabbie. Justin seized his courage, grabbed the paper from the shopkeeper’s hand and pushed past him, shoving the cabbie roughly to one side. He stalked through the plastic flap, increasing his pace as he fled along the corridor and out into the alley.
He cursed as garbage water splashed around his ankles and seeped into his shoes.
Sophie entered the Three Monkeys hotel on George Street at ten minutes to nine. She scanned the room. A few suits mingled over the last of their after-work drinks. A group of men in rugby jumpers watched the final stages of a game on the telly. Sophie ordered a soda and sat at a table by the window. Took out her notepad and pen. Outside, George Street buzzed with young people dressed up for a night out. They walked in groups of five or six, heavily made-up girls hanging onto the arms of their boyfriends, young men with trendy mullet cuts and skinny jeans. They smoked cigare
ttes, sipped bubble tea and laughed.
Then Sophie saw Tae Hun. He mooched along the footpath, an American baseball cap on his head, headphones jammed to his ears. A boy.
And then he was across from her, placing a schooner on the bench. Sophie smiled, raised her glass. ‘Cheers.’
Tae Hun clinked his glass against hers. ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘Australians make better beer than Koreans.’
‘Is that right?’ Sophie laughed. ‘I can’t believe you’d admit it.’
Tae Hun shrugged. ‘We make soju,’ he said. ‘And better food. And our women dress best.’ He motioned to a group of girls standing outside the pub window. They wore short skirts and sloppy, off-the-shoulder knitted jumpers, loads of jewellery, ankle boots, dangly earrings, pretty printed scarves. ‘Korean girls dress more like women.’
Sophie looked down at her jeans and purple sneakers. ‘How about Chinese girls?’ she asked. ‘Is that why you liked Wendy? Because she dressed well?’
Tae Hun took a sip of his beer and placed the glass carefully on the coaster. ‘Wendy liked to have fun. That’s what I liked about her,’ he said. ‘And I liked her smell.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She had this perfume, very sexy, like spices. Now when I think about her, all I can remember is her smell.’
‘Scent can do that to you.’
Tae Hun gazed out the window. ‘We had fun together but we dated for two weeks only. She dumped me and I don’t know why. And what’s the matter about it? I don’t even know who she was.’
He took a long drink from his glass, draining it.
‘You said you wanted to tell me something,’ she said. ‘Was it about Wendy?’
‘I want to forget her.’
‘Okay,’ said Sophie. ‘So, what did you want to say?’
Tae Hun looked around. The bar had filled and electronic music pumped through the speakers from the space upstairs. ‘I need more to drink,’ he said. ‘Can I buy you one?’