Chasing Chris Campbell

by Genevieve Gannon

  The driver was astounded. ‘Very nice city. Very nice Harbour Bridge.’

  He had visited the previous spring. He told me what a good boy his nephew was. A hard worker. A hotel manager. He needed a wife, the driver explained.

  ‘You married?’ he asked.

  ‘Ah,’ I considered. ‘Yes.’ And that was the end of the conversation.

  Twenty minutes later we were at my new home.

  ‘Man Fuk Road, Hotel Lily Pad,’ my driver announced.

  The lobby was basic and had the shabby look of something that had been nice forty years ago. After I was given a key I rode a grimy lift to the eighth floor and opened the door to my new home. I could feel regret pooling in my stomach. Grey, linoleum floor. Single bed. Dusty television on top of a dressing table. A tap over a basin but no bathroom. Showering facilities, a notice informed me, were shared. For one brief heartbeat I wished I was at home with Michael. But then I squashed that thought. That life was behind me. I was here to see Chris. Besides, I’d hardly slept in almost two days. It was vital that I go to the single bed right away and close out this strange new world with slumber.

  Chapter Five

  I woke at 8 am with twelve hours to kill before I would see Chris at the Shangri-La. I was dying for a shower but more importantly I needed food and coffee. I brushed my teeth at the basin, sloshed water on my face then went downstairs in search of nourishment. Two blocks away I found a French bakery cafe chain called Delifrance. Empty coffee cups and crumpled napkins from previous customers cluttered the counter-top. I used the corner of my Global Maverick guidebook to push them as far away as possible, then cracked its spine to plan my day. Cass had warned me not to rely too heavily on the book.

  ‘Everywhere you go will be filled with tourists. You’ll spend your whole time following well-worn paths walked by Australians, New Zealanders and Brits,’ she’d said.

  It sounded good to me.

  I circled a few sections and created an itinerary for myself. This morning I’d ride the bus up to Victoria Peak, spend the afternoon wandering around markets near Mongkok, then I’d eat dinner and go find Chris. I’d say I was in town and remembered he worked there. My heart twittered with excitement.

  I had decided not to email ahead. I wanted to look casual, as if dropping in on him had been an afterthought. If he asked me what I was doing in Hong Kong I’d say I was checking out the job market. It was true. Lustre Labs had refused to grant me time-off for more than seven days and wouldn’t give me a leave of absence. So I’d quit. Michael had been right, I hated working there. But I’d never quit a job before, let alone without having something else to go to, and it left me feeling uneasy. I was trying not to think about it. Without the goal of the home and the garden and the family-sized car, there was nothing to motivate me to spend my days monitoring the effects of purple eye shadow on the human eye.

  I opened the travel diary Cass had given me. Her own included scrawled memories, ticket stubs, sketches in pencil and ink of people she had met, and views she had absorbed. I used to love leafing through the pages as she told me stories.

  I looked around the busy cafe, with its faux-French seats crowded with couples and friends. I felt lonely. But I pushed that feeling aside and began to write.

  Day 1:

  Itinerary: Victoria Peak, markets, meet up with Chris. Breakfast at French cafe, very exotic.

  There’s a scaly patch of skin on my left shoulder. Hope it’s not psoriasis.

  (Funds: $20,545)

  Then I took a deep breath and headed outside. At first glance Hong Kong’s streets were not that different to the ones I walked at home. The signs were foreign but there were still traffic lights, still cars, still corner convenience stores advertising soft drinks and phone cards. I even passed a French Connection boutique.

  This isn’t so hard, I decided.

  Nearer the waterside, chain stores gave way to markets and street stalls where turtles, black fish with bulging eyes, and stingrays swayed in over-crowded plastic tubs of water. Next to them, their eviscerated brethren lay on trays, bleeding onto the street. Stall owners cut and hacked while arguing over the price with customers. They shoved slippery fish innards into plastic bags and handed them over in exchange for a fistful of notes. I pulled my phone out and snapped a photo. It was amazing. Travelling was amazing.

  I let out a gasp of delight at the sight of the bay. It was filled with colourful junks with sails the colour of candy pink, green and yellow. They looked as if they were made out of tissue paper and would float away on a firm gust of wind. And behind them, the city rose like a steel mountain range, the peaks, instead of being snowy, were the smooth fronts of sky-scrapers. They were marked Philips, Olympus, Hitachi. Signs of modern Asia. Beneath them in the shining water the old-fashioned chugging of diesel engines powered the boats.

  I paid for my ferry ticket and rode across the water snapping more shots of the colourful sails. On the other side I navigated my way to a terminal where a bus would take me to The Peak. I found it easily. The sight of a blonde with a map confirmed I had come to the right spot.

  ‘Hello.’ She held out her hand with a broad smile. ‘I’m Kym.’ She pronounced it ‘Kum’ identifying herself as a New Zealander.

  She was a skinny girl in shorts that showed-off tanned legs covered with a fuzz of golden hairs. Her pretty face had a scattering of freckles and was framed by a short, pixie haircut.

  ‘Violet,’ I said.

  ‘Hey, an Australian. Don’t worry, I won’t say “G’day mate”.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She looked at me sideways. ‘Is this your first time overseas?’

  My shoulders sank. ‘I just landed last night. How can you tell?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she chirped. ‘I’ll show you the ropes.’

  We boarded the double-decker bus and handed our tickets to the driver. He wore a T-shirt that read ‘HK OK’ on the front, and a piece of jade on a leather strap around his neck. I opened my wallet to save the stub from my first overseas bus trip.

  He saw my colourful Australian money and broke into a grin.

  ‘Ozzie! G’day mate! Bloody Hell, where are ya?’

  Kym smiled. ‘Get used to it.’

  As we climbed to the top she told me she was staying at her brother’s decadent apartment.

  ‘He’s disgustingly rich,’ she said. ‘Only twenty-nine. His boyfriend’s rich too. And they’ve got no kids so they have nobody to spend all their money on. Except themselves. And me, of course.’ She gave me a gummy grin. ‘Look at this cool watch he gave me.’ She shoved a rose-gold band under my nose.

  I couldn’t help but notice the time. Eleven thirty. Seven and a half hours until my scheduled bump-in-to Chris. Stop it, I lectured myself. You’re coming up here to distract yourself from that.

  To Kym I said, ‘Very nice.’

  The top floor was empty. I slid into the bench seat next to the window. There was no air-con but many of the windows were open. There were tiny fans mounted on the walls, blowing plumes of freshness into the space immediately in front of them. The rest of the bus showed signs of tropical decay – the seats, walls and floor were covered with rust and mould and festooned with spider-webs.

  A sweaty man, wearing a shirt with only two buttons appeared at the top of the stairs. Boils sprouted from the back of his hands. He surveyed the empty bus and fixated on me and Kym. We looked at each other and, in perfect unison, lifted our daypacks onto our seats so that he wouldn’t be able to squeeze in next to either of us.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Kym. ‘I was doing volunteer work at a drop-in centre for women in Jakarta. Now I’m just travelling. I’m visiting friends in Hong Kong but next I want to go to Thailand and get my diver’s licence.’ She rubbed sunscreen onto her fair skin as she spoke. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m just taking some time off.’ I’d learned by now that perfect strangers were not as enthralled by the minutiae of my break-up as I was.

  ‘Do y
ou –’ Kym stopped as the man in the open shirt stepped between us and paused, hands on hips, deciding which of our seats to share. He scratched his chin as he looked from me to her and back again. Then he grunted and dropped heavily onto the vacant half of my seat, squashing my daypack.

  ‘Um,’ I looked around. I didn’t want to ask him to leave. It was a vacant seat after all. But every single other seat on the top deck of the bus was free. And he was blocking my view of my new friend.

  He snorted loudly and spat onto the ground.

  ‘Um, excuse me.’ I tapped his shoulder. He turned around and yelled at me in Cantonese. Then he leaned back into the seat and opened his legs so the bristles of his hair scratched against mine. I shrank away from him.

  ‘We’re nearly at our stop, let’s go down to the bottom of the bus,’ said Kym loudly.

  The man grunted. I didn’t dare ask him to move just in case he ejected another phlegm witchetty grub. I stood and freed my bag from behind his back but he wouldn’t move. I had to pick my way carefully over him.

  We rode the rest of the way in the bottom half of the bus.

  ‘Oh no, look.’ When we reached our stop we were met by tourists who were alighting a modern, air-conditioned tram service, unaccosted and clean.

  ‘Oh well,’ said Kym. ‘Let’s explore.’

  At the centre of the Victoria Peak complex was a monumental, gleaming silver building. It was shaped like an anvil, or a trophy and held homes for the very wealth and shopping centre Mecca. We hurried to the rooftop viewing deck, from where we could see the metropolis of Hong Kong spread out before us.

  ‘Ah!’ said Kym throwing her arms out to greet the city below. ‘This is what it’s all about.’

  ‘It’s so beautiful. So you travel a lot, huh?’

  ‘Ever since the quake.’

  ‘The quake?’

  ‘Christchurch. February 2011.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘My brother and I grew up there. Lived there all our lives until it happened. It was the only place I had ever known. You should have seen it afterwards. Decimated.’

  I’d seen the grey pictures on the news: the piles of rubble, and the broken cathedral steeple. Almost 200 people had died, many of them journalists, news producers and support staff who’d been lost when their network building collapsed.

  I didn’t know what to say. ‘It must have been scary.’

  ‘Scary is not the half of it,’ Kym was scanning the horizon. ‘It was life changing. One my best friends lost her aunt. There was a nice man who always used to chat with me when he got his coffee. He was killed. I was waiting tables in Christchurch when it hit and I thought, imagine if I’d died waiting tables, never having seen anything.’

  I thought about how I’d spent my last year. Scrimping. Saving. Planning. For nothing.

  ‘After the clean-up I decided to head overseas. My brother did too. I want my life to be made up of wonderful moments. I know, I sound like an internet slogan. Corny, huh?’

  ‘It’s not corny.’

  ‘Well, the words are. But the sentiment isn’t.’ She hooked her leg over the observation deck rail and hoisted herself up.

  ‘Kym what are you doing?’ I looked down at the concrete below.

  ‘Relax, it’s just like sitting on a fence.’ She threw her other leg over the rim and sat, perched, on the glass barrier. A light breeze tousled her hair.

  ‘Kym.’ I felt dizzy just looking at her. ‘I don’t think you’re supposed to do that.’ I wanted to grab hold of her arm to make sure she didn’t fall, but I barely knew her.

  She closed her eyes and turned her face up at the sky.

  ‘When I’m finished with travelling I’ll go back to Christchurch,’ she said. ‘But I just want this for now.’

  After a minute or two of my pleading, she agreed to view the city from the safety of a bench inside the barrier.

  When we started to bake in the sun, we retreated to the Galleria where the air was chilled. We walked from store to store picking out things we would buy if we were rich.

  We tried on fur coats and jeans encrusted with Swarovski crystals.

  It was distracting. But not distracting enough. I checked my watch: 2 pm. Six hours until I could go and find Chris.

  ‘What are you doing tonight?’ Kym asked, modelling a grey leather hat. She said she and her friends were having dinner on a floating restaurant.

  ‘They have these traditional costumes, and you can dress up in them and have your photo taken. Afterwards we’re going to a club called Dynasty. You should come.’

  ‘Thanks, but I’m meeting up with a friend from home.’

  ‘You’d both be completely welcome.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I smiled.

  In the afternoon, Kym accompanied me to the Mongkok markets. At five Aussie dollars for an Armani watch, this was far more my price range. The outdoor sprawl of stalls turned out to be a carousel of identical knock-offs: watches, DVDs, shoes and belts. I knew the labels but everything looked a little pathetic. The glamour of a Marc Jacobs watch was dulled by the thin sheet of plastic laid over their faces to protect them from dust or a paper-sticker price tag. There were flimsy DVD covers illustrated with pictures that had nothing to do with the film contained within – Tom Cruise dressed as The Last Samurai on the front of a Top Gun case; Kirsten Dunst ready to go to the ball as Marie Antoinette alongside Paul Bettany in his Wimbledon whites.

  Other tables held Chinese paraphernalia: jade elephants, carved incense holders, red tassels, and chairman Mao watches. There were stalls selling the latest ‘Louis Wuitton’ handbag, ‘Galvin Klein’ (or Calvin Kleen) boxer briefs, ‘Bucci’ watches and ‘Frada’ shoes.

  ‘Shoot, I have to go,’ Kym said suddenly. ‘Give me your number, and I’ll give you mine in case you want to join us tonight.’

  I dug my mobile out of my daypack and entered her details, hoping I wouldn’t have to use them. Ideally tonight I’d be with Chris.

  ‘It was really good to meet you,’ she said, walking away backwards.

  ‘It was so good to meet you,’ I called, meaning it. I was sad to see her go, but I had bigger things on my mind.

  I found a restaurant up a set of stairs off a main road that bragged it was the luckiest vegetarian restaurant in Hong Kong. I entered, wiping my forehead. The relentless humidity was turning me into a Salvador Dali version of myself – dripping and melted. I settled myself at an empty table only to find the laminated menu was all beef, chicken and duck. Cass had warned me that some people’s interpretation of the word ‘vegetarian’ might be a little liberal. But this was ridiculous.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I called to the waiter. ‘Do you have anything vegetarian?’

  ‘Yes, Misses. Vegetarian beefs. Vegetarian duck. Vegetarian chickens.’

  I wondered if this meant the animals had all subsisted on a diet of greens and tofu.

  ‘No,’ I said to him. ‘I –’ I pointed to myself, ‘– vegetarian.’

  This confused him more. Luckily, a pretty waitress was serving a tray of dishes to the family at the next table. They held the tell-tale spongy, grey squares of meat substitute. So that’s what he meant by ‘vegetarian beefs’. I’d never eaten meat substitute before. I took my time weighing up the options. It was novel to be able to select from a menu, rather than a have a single vegetarian dish allocated to me. I rubbed my hands together and ordered a plate of substitute-beef and black bean.

  A grey slab arrived attended by flaccid green beans covered in a gel-like sauce. I ate three mouthfuls and pushed it aside. 6 pm. Two hours until to go. I paid my bill and returned to my room. It was time to shower.

  In the communal bathrooms.

  I had been dreading this. My skin itched at the thought of the fungal infections I was probably going to contract and mental images of papillomas the size of mushrooms.

  ‘Give me strength,’ I whispered.

  I grabbed my towel, changed into my thongs and walked down the hallway where a steamy cloud hung in t
he air. The bathroom had three shower cubicles. I pushed open the door to the first one and screwed-up my nose at the sight of grimy tiles, scarred with cracks where bacteria could evade a scrubbing brush’s bristles. A stale puddle that had failed to drain sat beneath the shower head. The floor tiles around it were a particularly unhealthy looking shade of grey, and the grout had dark, nebulous blots where mildew had taken hold and turned black. I imagined whole families of germs teeming in the dirty tile cracks. Toiling, working, growing, multiplying. Communities of germs. Whole cities. This shower block could be the Rio de Janeiro of germs; a place so populous in bacteria that it had spawned germ slums; where there were different classes of germs and even the germs had germs. Not just bourgeois E.coli and staphylococcus, and working class clostridiums and pseudomonas, but unemployed germs. Homeless germs. Armed robber germs and mangy dog germs. Germs that the most creative minds at the Vic Uni Immunology Department could not have conceived of. Organic wonders that would have made a biological warfare specialist’s eyes sparkle with glee.

  I starred at the cubicle feeling slightly sick and let the door swing closed.

  The second shower had a twisted band-aid stuck to the back of its door. In the next was a curling toe nail clipping. Everywhere I looked I saw long thin hairs.

  A small whimper escaped my lips.

  I wanted to run screaming to the Hyatt. I wanted a pile a freshly laundered towels, and a paper seal across the toilet that looked like a boy scout’s sash and proclaimed with earnestness that this loo has been sanitised for my protection.

  I was about to resign myself to the toenail cubicle when a heavy-set woman entered. She greeted me with a ‘hello’ in a thick German accent and then stripped down to her plastic sandals. There was a faint sucking sound as she pulled off the polyester top, her shorts and tall knee socks one after the other.

  ‘So hot,’ she exhorted, releasing a satisfied sigh as each item of clothing was removed.

  She merrily dropped the sodden shirt, shorts and socks onto the tiles with a plop. She began to hum as the unstrapped her bra then, to my horror, jiggled out of her underpants.