Table of Contents
Chapter 1.
Chapter 2.
Chapter 3.
Chapter 4.
Chapter 5.
Chapter 6.
Chapter 7.
Chapter 8.
Chapter 9.
Chapter 10.
Chapter 11.
Chapter 12.
Chapter 13.
Chapter 14.
Chapter 15.
Chapter 16.
Chapter 17.
The Expat Diaries:
Misfortune Cookie
Michele Gorman
Copyright
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright 2012 Michele Gorman
Cover Illustration © StockImageGroup
Chapter Images © Patrick Ma
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Also by Michele Gorman
The Curvy Girls Club
Perfect Girl
Bella Summer Takes a Chance
The Reluctant Elf
Christmas Carol
The Expat Diaries: Single in the City
The Expat Diaries: The Twelve Days to Christmas
Weightless (a Romantic Comedy Short Story)
Chapter 1.
‘Yarrow nudens?’ The squat old woman at my elbow screeches again.
‘What?’
‘Yarrow nudens?!’
‘I’m sorry, I still don’t understand.’ My pleading look to the Chinese girl sharing my table elicits a hearty smirk as she pretends to ignore me. I wonder if the word for bitch is hard to pronounce in Cantonese.
‘Yarrow nudens, yarrow nudens!’ She’s bobbing with the effort of her exclamations.
‘No, no thanks.’ What on earth are yarrow nudens?
‘No yarrow nudens?’ She murmurs in a tiny voice. Clearly I’ve hurt her with my refusal.
‘No,’ I say again. ‘Just the soup, please.’ The last time I let a waitress bully me into an order I was served what looked like brains on a plate. Discretion is the better part of dining in Asia.
She strides to the kitchen to make sure the cook adds a little extra, off-menu flavor to my order. I can hear her in there, shouting in what sounds like tortured cat.
My belly grumbles its greeting upon her return… but there aren’t any noodles in my noodle soup. Not a one. Only three sad won tons and a mass of yellowish-pink meat floating in broth. The broth is delicious, if meagre. The meat is as repulsive as it is plentiful – greasy and gamey and unquestionably domesticated. I’ve just slurped little Tiddles from my spoon.
Undeterred, the squat old shrew redoubles her efforts, this time to make a grab for my bowl. There’s at least an inch of broth left. I’m still hungry. I’ve made my peace with the pet issue, and I’m not giving it up. She’s surprisingly strong for a septuagenarian, but desperation to finish my sad supper gives me the upper hand. She tugs. I tug harder. If forks were the cultural norm here I promise I’d use one now in soup-defense. ‘No!’ I scowl. ‘I want to finish this.’
She gives up the fight in a fit of muttering. It’s hard to be dignified with the entire restaurant now staring at me. By ‘entire restaurant’ I mean the five other tables, arranged close enough for the diners to inspect each other’s pores. Mustering an upper lip that would have made the Queen Mother proud during the Blitz, I sip my last two mouthfuls and go to the counter to pay. Waiting for the change, my eye falls again on the sparse English menu…
Not yarrow nudens. And the waitress wasn’t trying to steal my dinner. She was just trying to give me some yellow noodles in my soup.
Welcome to Hong Kong, Hannah.
It’s a little different from London. By which I mean that it’s alien in every possible way.
Take a city like London or New York, with its mix of architecture old and new. Then raze 99 per cent of the buildings built before the advent of MTV. Pull the rest of them together as you might tug dishes atop a tablecloth, until they stand shoulder to shoulder. Then set them at the foot of the Matterhorn, into which you carve steps instead of roads snaking to the top. This is to save residents from being run down too often by the cab drivers, whose brakes are as weak as their navigational skills. Finally, build high-rise blocks of apartments for seven million people into the mountainside. I’ve moved to a bustling twenty-first-century ant colony bathed in neon lights.
And now that my suitcases temporarily have a place to call home, this ant is as settled as she can be. It was a gamble to rent an apartment off the internet. I risked topping the StairMaster debacle of 2008 as my most expensive online purchasing mistake. It’s one thing to order a wonky jumper off eBay. An unwanted apartment can’t be stuffed into the back of the closet. What a relief, then, to see that this ‘corporate efficiency apartment’ lived up to its photos. And it certainly is efficient. I can watch TV, cook dinner and brush my teeth without leaving my bed. It’s like living in a boat on the fourteenth floor. My dinghy in the sky doesn’t come cheap though. It’s right in the middle of the Mid-levels, which seems to be the Hong Kong equivalent of posh South Ken. Plus, the bank-breaking clue is in the title. Corporations can afford these short-term lets. Girls with modest savings accounts cannot. So unless men here like their hookers with an American accent, I’ll have to move out soon. That’s where Stacy comes in. My best friend should be here in a few weeks. It’s incredible, really. Not only did she finagle a transfer with her bank to join me, but she’s even got a housing allowance, so I get to be her unofficial apartment mate. To say we’ve travelled along different career paths is an understatement. Her employer bends over backwards for her, where I’ve generally left my positions at the request of HR. Clearly she’s indispensable at the bank, though I still don’t know what she does. It seems to involve a lot of meetings, an unintelligible language, and schmoozy client dinners. I can’t wait for her to get here. And given the way things are turning out, I’m even more grateful that she’s coming.
The enormity of my move generally hits me when I’m dropping off to sleep. Doubt pounds its bony little fists into my chest – a right hook for having no job yet while watching my anemic savings evaporate into the Hong Kong air. Oof! An uppercut for moving to a city that’s on the wrong side of the South China Sea from my boyfriend. Youch! Sometimes it’s enough to tempt me to search for a cheap one-way fare. Yet even in the midst of this self-doubt, I already know I love this city. I’m excited by my surroundings. I want to sample it in all its guises. There’s a feeling of lightness, like I have the freedom to do anything I want here. Which, of course, I do. It’s the same feeling I had when I first went away to college, of living my life. It’s one of the perks of being a grown-up, along with eating cupcakes for dinner and not making my bed.
The only slight issue is that Sam isn’t here. It’s not like he had any idea, when he first brought up moving here, that he’d have to be away for work. It’s laughable, really. Or it would be, if it didn’t make me cry.
Chapter 2.
Our Asian life together was meant to be perfect. What better way to start off than with a fabulous holiday? Bangkok was to be my introduction to life in the East. Sam flew from Hong Kong and, after a twelve-hour flight in which my seatmate’s thigh showed no appreciation for boundaries, I arrived from London.
In the airport, I was swept along on a ti
de of small people. It was hot, despite the air conditioning, and I was bleary-eyed and nervous with anticipation. The whole place was disorientating, at once familiar and alien. Unintelligible announcements bombarded me, and the signs were written in squiggle. I needed an ‘Asia 101’ sort of city. This looked like a PhD course.
I strained to catch the first glimpse of Sam, but he was lost in the sea of backpackers. People squealed and kissed and hugged all around me as they found their loved ones. Where was mine? It had been a very long two months since we kissed good bye at Heathrow. How ironic that time flew when a term paper or a baby were due, but crawled backwards when waiting for a reunion. Not even the giddy anticipation of living in a new country (read: terrifying second-guessing of decision) sped the days along. Sometimes I had to remind myself that I wasn’t dreaming – I really was moving my worldly belongings halfway around the world to start a new life.
‘Hannah.’
He saw me first. My heart lodged in my windpipe. In that moment I realized that ‘weak in the knees’ wasn’t just an expression. On over-boiled-spaghetti legs, I went to my boyfriend. We kissed for long minutes while the other passengers streamed past with their families. He felt, smelled, and tasted so good I didn’t want to stop. Despite our separation he was completely familiar to me. Who’d have thought that I, Hannah Jane Cumming, could be so happy?
‘Good flight?’ He clasped my hand like he was afraid I’d disappear. There was little chance of that.
‘Wonderful. I was nicely tranquilized.’ That was an understatement. I could have taken out my own appendix.
‘Han, I’m so glad you’re here. God I’ve missed you! You look beautiful.’
I knew for a fact that I did not look beautiful. I’m not saying I’m bad looking – that would be disingenuous. At five foot eight, I’m tallish. I’ve got boobs and hips but I’m not fat to look at (the squishy middle bits don’t bother me). Most people assume I play sport (I resolutely do not). My features are regular; I don’t hate my nose or crave collagen injections, but neither are my lips bee-stung, pillow-soft or any other Scarlett Johansson-esque adjective. Eyes (two) are hazel and look in the same direction. The one thing I’d change is my hair. Not the color (blonde) but the way it comes out of my head. Other people have waves. I have reverse cowlicks and sticky-outy bits that fuzz up like candy floss. It’s out of control. Picture Helena Bonham Carter. Then rub her head against a balloon for twelve hours.
I knew Sam wasn’t looking at me with his eyes, but with his heart. I wasn’t seeing him in a wholly impartial light either. To me he was as adorable as an unshaven boy next door could be. His eyes are startling and green, his jaw square, and stubbly in keeping with rather long, unkempt curls. The only pinkie-sized bone I could possibly pick was his questionable fashion sense. ‘Nice shirt,’ I pointed at Che Guevara on his chest. Socialist-lite.
‘Thanks. Power to the people.’ He kicked his untrendy flip-flops (no Havaianas for him while George was designing for ASDA). As a man working for the government, his statement lacked a certain amount of revolutionary credibility. ‘Here,’ he said through the cheekiest grin this side of Matt Damon. ‘Let me get your bag. No wait, let me kiss you again. Come here.’
He was so utterly sexy. Just thinking about him gave me that tickly stomach-churning feeling. He was the kind of kisser you definitely wouldn’t want to be away from for almost two months. ‘Thanks,’ I panted when we surfaced for air.
Hoisting my hot pink tote over his shoulder made him list slightly to one side. He grabbed for my hand again, possibly to steady himself. ‘What have you got in here?’
‘Only necessities.’ Wait till he saw my checked luggage. ‘You never know what the weather’s going to be like.’ I didn’t want to sound defensive, but jibes from fashion-backward boyfriends in the past had left their scars.
‘The weather’s hot. You don’t need much.’ He patted his rucksack, which was no bigger than a decent packed lunch. ‘I have all I need in here.’
I squeezed his hand. Hard. No one liked a show-off. I’d love to have been one of those girls who dressed (or packed) appropriately for the occasion, but I wasn’t. If it wasn’t an evening dress at a business dinner then I was wearing stilettos at a picnic. Like the fruit machine that never quite paid out, my fashion choices were always off by one event. That was how I found myself wearing cashmere in Bangkok: a city where you could fry an egg on the sidewalk. While very stylish in powder blue, every so often I got a whiff of damp dog.
Outside, a pack of hopeful cab-drivers and assorted touts peered through the doors, plotting to pick off the young and the weak.
‘Taxi? Taxi?’ A boy materialized at my elbow as soon as we stepped into the chokingly humid morning air.
‘No, thanks.’
‘Where you goiiing?’ He persisted. ‘Bangkok? You take taxi from meee.’
‘Ah, no thanks. Sam, where are we going?’
He was trying to deflect his own pre-teen peddler while putting his arm over my shoulder. I nestled into him. ‘I heard about this great hotel. It’s right out of the nineteen forties. I thought you’d like that.’
A grand old colonial hotel! I imagined four-poster beds and mosquito nets. Creaking old butlers with sweating cold drinks. Maybe there’d be a veranda. And palm trees and ceiling fans. ‘I can’t wait! I just need to get some money first.’
‘Over there.’
He pointed to the cash machine. It wasn’t even attached to a wall, just a free-standing plastic box. The kid who tried to sell us the taxi ride could have walked away with it under his arm. In fact, he might have put it there. ‘Sam, darling, I don’t think that’s real.’
‘I promise it is. I used it last night when I got in. Don’t worry; I’ll watch your bag. I mean your bags.’ He sniggered at my luggage.
Twenty minutes and five hundred baht later, we were speeding along the motorway to the beat of cheery Thai pop at ear-bleeding decibels. Red and white flower garlands swayed from the taxi’s mirror where Catholic drivers might have hung their crucifixes. In fact, there was a St Jude medal there too, and beside the dangling saint an entire shrine to Buddha perched atop the dashboard. The ceiling was papered in flock print to offset the tassels hanging from the door handles. It was more than a taxi. It was a speeding sitting room.
I tried not to be disappointed that we hadn’t passed a single elephant. Still, it definitely wasn’t London. Tangles of red and blue neon signs vied for space with colorful laundry hanging from the balconies of hundreds of rundown apartment buildings. Those buildings bristled with TV antennae and satellite dishes. Along the roadside, dozens of vendors with wooden pushcarts had constructed tarpaulin tents over scattered plastic garden chairs. They were serving up feasts from industrial woks, liberally flavored with exhaust fumes. Crowds of suited office workers shuffled along the highway’s dusty edge, as oblivious to the Grand Prix running beside them as if they’d emerged from London’s Underground. A family of four sped past on the kind of motorbike ridden by gap-toothed rednecks in the American South. A mom with babe in arms and two toddlers raced them on a mini-bike. And to think of all the money we wasted in the West driving our children around in vehicles with over-the-top safety features like seat belts, or locks. Or doors.
My observations were gleaned in the few moments when Sam and I weren’t aligning our erogenous zones. Being denied smoochy access for so long made me desperate to catch up. It wasn’t that we hadn’t made an epic attempt at round-the-clock orgasms before he left. Eventually we had to curb our appetites or risk dehydration and permanent muscle damage. Besides, sex couldn’t be stored up so, to be perfectly male about it, I really hoped the hotel was close.
The dashboard gods answered my smutty prayers when the driver put his indicator on for the first time since we’d left the airport. It wasn’t the first time we’d turned, but indicators, like seat belts and the speed limit, seemed to be optional on Bangkok’s roads. We drove past a beautiful, tall, modern hotel on the corner into a pothol
ed street that threatened to shake loose my fillings. Keeping the uncertainty (accusation) out of my gaze, I peered at Sam.
Obviously my expression reassured him that I was confident in his hotel choice. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, beaming. ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine.’ Two mangy (rabid?) dogs trotted alongside the car. I’d seen jackals on TV take down baby wildebeest this way. Several empty lots grew tall weeds and garbage heaps. It was dusty, dry and barren. There wasn’t a tourist in sight. There weren’t any locals either, and no cute shops, interesting bars, funky cafes or restaurants. Just dust. And dogs. My hopes for a miraculous detour into paradise were dashed when we reached the end of the street – a dead end. The building in front of us hadn’t seen a coat of paint since Yul Brynner filmed The King and I. The windows were grimed over and the air conditioners hanging from them had peed great brown stains down the side of the once-white building.
‘Is this it?’ I didn’t bring bedbug repellent.
‘I guess so.’ Now he looked uncertain, probably wondering why he hadn’t just kept his room in the airport hotel.
‘Three hundred fifty bahhht,’ the driver informed us.
‘Three fifty! Sam, I only took out five hundred. This guy’s ripping us off.’
‘Han, it’s okay,’ he said with a grin, holding my face to kiss my indignant lips. ‘Three-fifty baht is about five pounds.’ He took a wad of bills from his pocket, paid the man and wrestled my suitcase towards the curb. The odds on this match weren’t in Sam’s favor. That bag was costing me, and not just in reputation. The airline check-in clerk took a very inflexible view of my baggage allowance, even after I explained all about moving here, and meeting Sam, and most of the highlights of the last year. She warmed up a little towards the end, but the line was growing by that time, and she still made me hand over my credit card to pay for the extra weight.
The Expat Diaries: Misfortune Cookie (Single in the City Book 2) Page 1