Fishing for Tigers (21 page)

By the time the restaurant closed I was almost sober and everyone else was very drunk. Outside, it had stopped raining but the water on the street was ankle-deep. There was much confusion and shouting and making and changing of plans as a cluster of taxi and moto drivers hovered. I said goodnight and slipped into a cab before anyone could protest. A minute later I received a text and twenty minutes after that Cal and I were fucking in my front hallway.

He came quickly and we climbed the stairs and he lay naked on my bed while I rubbed his frozen feet. He told me he had missed me this week, that he thought I'd gone off him.

‘Silly. It was a busy week, I told you that.'

‘Working on the Very Important Major Project of Great Significance?'

I pinched his heel. ‘Mai was impressed even if you're not. And she's a proper Vietnamese person, not a faker who doesn't even know
The Tale of
.'

‘Is that the troubling, venerated one or the straddling sharks one?'

‘You're a disgrace to your people, young man.
The Tale of
is like, um,
Waltzing Matilda
is for Aussies. It's about this girl,
. She's beautiful and kind and smart. She falls in love with a suitable young man, Kim, but before she can marry him, her father and brother are thrown into gaol and her family plunges into crisis.
is forced to go into prostitution in order to save her family. She has various adventures and continues to be beautiful and pure of heart, and eventually she ends up back with Kim, but she's all sexed out and the two become sort of chaste companions rather than passionate lovers.'

‘And I thought a suiciding swagman was grim.'

‘It's all relative, isn't it? Looked at like that,
isn't so sad. She could've jumped into, well, not a billabong, but a
. But she didn't. She did what she had to do and she survived and so did her family. Her life was sad, but at least she lived it.'

Cal squinted at me. ‘Are we talking about you now, Mischa?'

‘Not at all. Mai had me pegged. I'm far more
than
. Her too, which makes you wonder what she's doing with Henry.'

‘What was so great about this
?'

‘For one thing, she led an insurrection against the Chinese when she was, like, twenty.'

‘Cool. Did she win?'

‘For a while. When she stopped winning she went to a mountain top and killed herself.'

‘And you relate to her? That's a worry.'

I felt exposed, suddenly.
was an orphan who fled from her siblings and the threat of being subsumed by marriage. Her downfall came when the Chinese general ordered his men to strip. An army of naked men drove her to suicide.

‘Well, the really famous thing about her,' I told Cal, ‘was her enormous breasts. Legend has it she had to toss them over her shoulder before she could ride her elephant into battle.'

Cal sat up, covered my breasts with his hands. ‘Over the shoulder? How would that even work?'

There was a fierce drumming on my front door. Cal leapt off me, reached for his pants.

‘Wait in here.' I grabbed my Chinese robe from the desk chair, tying it tightly as I ran down the stairs. The drumming continued. ‘I'm coming,' I called.

I threw open the door, ready to yell. Henry leant heavily against the frame, his eyes bloodshot and unfocused. Across the street, I saw noses and eyes and fingertips poking out from behind shutters. This would be all over the neighbourhood by sunrise.

‘Henry! Shit. What's wrong?'

‘Mish. You're here. Thank fuck. Mish.'

‘What—'

‘Wait for me!' Kerry's voice came from the darkness.

I ushered Henry inside, keeping hold of his arm to stop him climbing the stairs. Kerry appeared, hobbling unevenly down the deserted road, waving wildly as though trying to be noticed in a great crowd.

She lurched into the hallway and I closed and locked the front door. Immediately, Kerry began to yell at Henry. Something about being a pucking frick.

‘Shut up. Please! It's two in the morning. The police'll be here if you don't pipe down.'

‘Sorry.' Kerry clutched my arm. ‘Sorry, sorry. Fuck, my feet hurt. Can we sit?'

I led them to the lounge. All three of us sank down. Kerry kicked off her shoes and Henry let out a gutted moan and I asked what the hell had happened.

‘We got kicked out of that cowboy bar on Hang Quat. Mr Charm here got all aggro and started shouting and next thing we're being dragged – not exaggerating here, Mish – bloody
dragged
by the elbows out onto the street.'