Kiss Me, Hadley: A Novel
Page 8
“Calm down, please. Forget the Beijing opera. Here’s one for you.”
“Ah?”
“A song title. It’s a shot in the dark. And it isn’t necessarily at the top of my list.”
“Ah?”
I made sure no one was within ear shot then leant towards the old man’s ear. “She’s a dirty, dirty dancer,” I said sotto voce, my hand to my mouth. “Dirty, dirty dancer, never ever lonely.”
The old man’s eyes were closed and he was frowning. He didn’t move for a while. Then his shoulders began to shake and he went into a soft coughing fit which took at least a minute. He cleared his throat, spat past me into the street, and opened his eyes. They were milky and scaly and were looking about a foot over my head.
“Who write turd song?”
“I don’t know. I’ve forgotten.”
“It turd song.”
“Fair point.”
“Why you come here?”
“I thought…”
“You thought gamble? You thought sexy? Upstairs?”
“I had heard rumours. I heard gamble.”
I stepped past the old man and shook the metal grill. I looked at the ten bells around a circular loud speaker. Only one bell, on the fourth floor, was marked. “The Stanley and Shek O Mah-jong Association.” I pressed them all.
No response. “Why doesn’t someone answer?”
“Only sexy upstairs. No gamble.”
I walked back into the market alleyway and looked up. I could hear the click-clack of mah-jong tiles coming through the open windows of the fourth floor. I heard someone swear.
“So that’s the gambling place? Mah-jong?”
“Mah-jong fourth floor,” the old man said. “No gamble.” He spat this at me. Why was he so angry? “Sexy sixth floor.”
Someone spoke into my left ear, putting an arm around my shoulder at the same time. “Looks like someone gave you a bum steer,” he said.
“What?”
I pulled myself away and Zeb raised the palms of his hands in defence.
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.”
Confusion from the word go. Yet again. “But you’re not the messenger. You said you had been here.”
“Yeah, well, I have been here.”
“So why do you say ‘don’t shoot the messenger’? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Two fuckboats no gamble,” the old man gasped.
“Easy there, old timer,” Zeb said. And then to me: “They shoot horses, don’t they?”
I felt a tightness around my chest. Was it possible to suffer a pulmonary embolism from listening to too much tangled crap spilling from the mouth of a complete fucking moron?
“I don’t know, Zeb. All I know is sexy sixth floor. No gamble.”
“I’ll try to explain,” he said. “They’re playing mah-jong on the fourth floor. There are a few hookers on the sixth floor. It’s the fifth floor where the fun is. I got confused.”
“So how do I get in?”
A man approached the door and fumbled in his pockets for his keys. He turned and saw Zeb and me watching. I, in turn, saw his face. He had a scar running down his left cheek, branching off into smaller side scars, and a tattoo of some sort of plant running up his right cheek. He looked like a Latter Day Saints church window.
“You coming?” he said to Zeb.
“Maybe catch you later,” Zeb said, raising his hand in a fond salute. The man went inside.
“You know this guy?” I asked.
“Ah, yeah, sure. I guess. He’s just one of the guys. I gotta tell you, Hadley, the vibes aren’t cool right now.”
“The vibes?”
“Totally wired.”
“The vibes are totally wired? Does that mean we can’t get into this place?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s right.”
“Zeb, you’re doing an awful lot of guessing. Why are you being so coy?”
Zeb looked around him furtively and looked at his watch. “It’s like, the vibes have slipped out of alignment? You know what I mean?”
“No. Nothing is getting through to me.”
“In simple terms, the place may be under new management who aren’t exactly into the…”
“Into the vibes?”
“Exactly. You thirsty?” he said. “There’s a bunch of stuff I’d kinda like to get off my chest.”
“Bottom line is we can’t go in. Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Correct.”
“Not now, not ever.”
“Never say never, but their focus of attention may no longer…”
“May no longer be in focus. Okay, Zeb. I enjoyed my long conversation with the lamasery chief abbot here. Very spiritual. Lots to think about. But basically, when it comes to the casino story, I have wasted half a day. What do you suggest?”
“How about that drink?”
The trick to being able to enjoy a large gin and tonic would be to block out anything Zeb had to say. Everything. To totally zone him out, to make sure the focus of attention was no longer in focus. We walked through the market to Stanley Main Street, where the South China Pirates, home to homesick, angry, raw-faced British soldiers before the Brits handed their colony back to China, overlooks the South China Sea, its walls and ceiling covered in banknotes from abroad, beer mats and business cards. I ordered a double gin and tonic and Zeb a Jack Daniels, on the condition that they turned down the jukebox playing way-too-loud heavy metal music, and we sat on stools made from barrels. I would give him one more chance.
“Zeb?”
“Yo, boss.”
“I’m not your boss. But can you tell me, slowly and in simple English, why you have come all the way down to Stanley?”
“I guess I came to head you off at the pass.”
“No, you see, I don’t understand that either, Zeb. Try to be specific.”
“Okay, don’t say you didn’t ask. That guy with the scarface just now?”
“What about him?”
“He’s into stuff. Sexy sixth floor stuff. He wants to expand to the fifth floor and take out the tables. He’s doing it, in fact.”
“Presumably you knew this before I came down here.”
“No, it was news to me this morning. I know him, you see.”
The eyes told me not to ask about the “stuff”. “But there is another casino?”
“Sure.”
“Can you tell me about that?”
“Can it wait until tomorrow? I’ll tell you and Baxter together. He wants to be kept in the loop. Can we just change the subject for a few minutes? Have you got anywhere you have to be? Let’s get hammered and shoot the breeze. What do you say?”
The sun was setting over the neighbouring promontory of Chung Hom Kok, the gin and tonic was generous and cold and I had done all I could on the story for one day.
“No need to twist my arm,” I said.
“Attaboy,” Zeb said, wriggling in his seat to get comfortable. “There are so many things I want to ask you, so many things I’ve got to learn about this journalism scam. What are the angles?”
But plenty of reason to twist his arm until it really hurt. “Oh, Zeb. What are you talking about now?”
“Where’s the payoff? Bottom-line stuff, I mean. Ask a few questions, throw a few words together. Wham bam, thank you ma’am. What’s the racket? Is it the expenses?”
You are in the zone, Hadley. You are looking across the South China Sea as the sun sets. You are a large pink dolphin swimming lazily ten metres beneath the surface. Zone the fucker out.
“Hadley, are you all right? Hadley?”
You are a large amoeba with a penchant for double gin and tonics. You are breathing deeply fathoms beneath the surface. Suddenly you remember that amoebae can’t drink gin… I choked loudly and gin and tonic squirted from my nose. It hit the squirt sitting opposite me.
“Hadley, are you all right?”
“Sorry. Went down the wrong way. I’ve done this before. I’ll be all right.”
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“You had me worried there. Anyway, remember that story I was doing about the royal wedding?”
“Zeb, let’s not talk about work anymore. You are giving me the spins.”
“The thing is, Baxter took it off me. Said it was too important. Gave me another - about a man who lost his arm in a road accident.”
I put my head in my hands and tried to remember. The wedding story wasn’t important. Baxter took it off Zeb because he couldn’t bear the thought of having to edit it. A story about a man losing his arm in a road accident isn’t a story. Full stop. Period, even. The reason Baxter gave him that story was the same reason you gave a teething puppy something to chew.
“You wrote a story about a man losing his arm in an accident, Zeb?”
“I did. Baxter asked me to approach it differently, to take a leap of imagination and give it a shot.”
Take a leap would be good. Give Zeb a shot would be good. Have him shot, even better. “What’s newsworthy about a man losing an arm, unless he’s the U.S. president? This isn’t the Sussex Express.”
“Well, I guess I ain’t too familiar with the Sussex Express. But this man was a farmer. He lost his goddam arm, for chrissake. Baxter asked me to make this story shine. Do you want to read it?”
“Wait a minute. Has this story hit the wire?”
“No.”
“When did this person lose his arm?”
“Day before yesterday.”
“Well even if it was newsworthy, it would be no good. It’s too old.”
“But he lost his arm.”
“The day before yesterday. And if five people are killed in a road accident in Hong Kong, we don’t write the story. Why are you writing about one man losing his arm? It’s not usable.”
“I have a print-out in my pocket.”
“I don’t want to see it.”
“Oh please.”
“No.”
“Well let me sing it to you.”
“Sing it to me, Zeb? Are you mad?”
“Baxter says we are always looking for new forms of delivery.”
“What are you talking about? Shrubs is a news agency, not a talent show.”
“Well, let me give you the first paragraph. To see if I’m on the right track. That’s all you have to read.” He pulled the print-out from his pocket. “I am going to tear off just the first paragraph and let you read that. That’s all. Is that okay?”
“I don’t want to read it.”
Zeb, his tongue sticking out between his lips like Dennis the Menace, ripped off a slice of paper two inches wide on the edge of the table and put in front of me face down. “There. I think you’re going to be surprised. I’ve always had a way with words and this time I think I’ve managed to capture the drama of the story…”
“There isn’t a story.”
“Shhh. The drama of the story and the poignancy of this man losing his arm right now.”
“Two days ago, apparently.”
“This is new journalism. It is throwing out the old and leaping in with the new. It’s as though I’m carrying this farmer’s pain. Read it.”
I looked Zeb in the eye. I looked at the piece of paper. I looked at Zeb again. He was calling my bluff. I reached forward and picked up the paper. I was expecting the worst. I turned it over and read.
“Gone, gone, gone the arm.”
It was much, much worse than I had expected. I put the piece of paper quickly back on the table, face down. I thought for a moment I was going to throw up. I started to shake. I wasn’t sure if I was laughing or crying. It was neither. My body had gone into shock. This was what we call in the trade an “intro”. Except that Zeb’s effort was not so much an intro as steaming heap of cow shit, albeit only five words long, three of them the same word at that. It was madness. It was insulting.
“What do you think, Hadley?”
“No.”
“What? I mean, what do you think about the story? I nailed it, right? The arm is gone. The reader knows that straight off. First comes the shock, then the pain, then the realisation of what’s in store down on the farm. It’s like three separate accidents. Hence the…”
“Hence the gone, gone, gone.” My voice was an octave higher than normal. “The dramatic effect.”
“Exactly. So what do you think?”
I had a choice to make very quickly. Either to slap him down and rub his nose in this piece of nonsense, or to try to rescue something, to find a “learning point”, something for him to build on.
“There are ways of going about things,” I began. “Oh don’t give me that shit about training and experience. About how there’s a lot to learn about asking questions.”
“I…”
“How are you? There you go, I’ve just asked a question. Not as difficult as I had imagined. You’re just jealous.”
“I…”
“Who are you fucking?”
“I…”
“Sorry. Should that be whom are you fucking? Shit, I’ve just asked another question successfully.”
I counted to five before saying anything. I didn’t have to.
“Shoot, I’m sorry, Hadley. I do this all the time. It’s a defence mechanism when I’m in front of people I admire so much and whose boots I could never fill. I just get so darned aggressive. Please forgive me.” I had nothing to say. “Your reputation precedes you,” he went on. “It’s an honour to be drinking with you. You’re an officer and a gentleman. Let’s drink a toast to honour.”
“No need to drink to honour.”
“Sure. I guess I know all about honour. Or lack of it. Let’s just say I’m the black sheep of the family. I’m probably the smartest, but I don’t have much of an attention span. In fact, when…”
“Zeb, please stop. I don’t want to know about you. Do you understand? Let’s finish our drinks and go.”
Zeb leant back as far as the barrel stool would let him. He held on to one knee with his interlaced fingers. “That’s kinda interesting,” he said. “Did I tell you I fucked an English girl last night and made her squirm?”
“What?”
“You heard me.’
“Zeb, you’ve completely lost me. Why would you want to tell me that?”
“Oh dear, I’ve made you jealous again.”
Borderline crazy. A natural bully. Hates women. In love with himself.
“No, Zeb. You haven’t me feel jealous. You make me wince.”
“Same thing.”
“No it isn’t. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I wouldn’t tell you about my sexual conquests.”
“I rest my case.”
“Why do you feel the need to boast?”
“I’m not boasting. Just stating a fact. I don’t need to boast.”
“I’m sorry, Zeb, but you’re behaving like a baby.”
Zeb sat back against the postcards and banknotes.
“You think I’m behaving like a baby? Let me just say one thing. Get it off my chest. And then we can talk about something completely different.”
“What?”
“This girl last night. She’s one in a long line.”
“Zeb, I don’t want to know…”
“Listen, please. Maybe you can help. Maybe you can offer some advice. And then I’ll stop. She’s in love with me. It’s all part of my plan.”
“What plan?”
“Well, it’s a thing I have with girls. I teach them to love me.”
“Teach them?”
“So I can go ahead and break their hearts. I find huge pleasure in it.”
“I thought you said you were in love.”
“Don’t change the subject, pal. This is nothing about love. This is about pleasure.”
I got up quietly and left a few notes on the table.
“I don’t find that funny, Zeb. You and your mate, Scarface. I don’t like talking to you. I’m leaving.”
“So high and mighty, such a know-it-all. So…”
I was already out the door and wa
lking along the seafront back to the market. That was all I heard.
CHAPTER FIVE
BUT YOU CAN’T WALK away from a great story. Don’t see why not myself, especially if it meant not having to meet loony Zeb. But sure enough, there we both were back in Baxter’s office the next morning.
“You leave me no choice but to tell you about the casino that has brought me down to earth,” Zeb told us. “This is a last resort, you understand. I did not want to get involved. I do not want to get involved. I fear it may mean the end of my journalistic career.”
Oh no, that would be awful. Prick.
“You won’t have to get involved,” Baxter said.
“I find that hard to believe. My wife is a famous graphologist.”
“Yes, we know,” I said. “You told us.”
“She can read people’s hand-writing.”
“We know, Zeb.”
“She once read my hand-writing. She said it would all end badly. Give a man enough rope.”
“Nothing more specific?” I said. “Tell us about the casino.”
Zeb leant back and put his hands behind his head. He was, without doubt, a loopy and evil old bender. I felt sorry for all the women he had fooled and fucked, or was about to fool and fuck. I had a brief, unhealthy image of him impregnating some poor innocent with horns on his head. On Zeb’s head, not on the poor innocent’s head. For some reason, the Pet Shop Boys were watching.
“Well, to describe it as a casino wouldn’t be doing it justice,” he said. “It’s more like a pleasure palace, with casinos, bars, massage parlours, the whole nine yards. The casinos take up just a small part of the place. And who needs casinos when you’ve got Macau an hour away, right? But they’re there and they’re busy. They’re jamming and they’re full of high society people. Nothing rinky-dink.”
The pleasure palace was a rusting tanker in Hong Kong harbour, moored off Lamma, the island where I lived. It was called the “Xanadu”.
“Okay. How do I get aboard?”
“It’s open twenty-four hours a day,” Zeb said. “There’s a wired Chinese heroin addict guy, you can’t miss him. He’ll approach you.”
“No password this time?”
“Sure there’s a password. Man, all in good time. Chill out, can’t you?”