The Ballad of a Small Player (10 page)

I ate the sugary biscuits that came with the coffee and my head, unexpectedly, did not clear. I was beginning to shake, the fingers first, then the hands, and then the whole arms. The waitress came over with the check and laid it discreetly next to the flowerpot on the table. Her makeup was perfectly applied, the look in the eye like an ink pot that shines for a moment as the stiletto nib is withdrawn. When she had turned I flipped open the folder and saw that it was double what I had on me. I closed it and sat back, thinking that I had at least an hour sitting there watching the rain before they pressed the issue. The hour passed, and then as I had suspected the waitress came back.

“Sir,” she said. “Would you like to settle up?”

“No, I wouldn’t like to settle up just yet.”

“Would you like something else?”

I thought.

“What about another champagne cocktail?”

She glanced back a little nervously at the bar, where an older woman presided as The Collector.

“Well, sir, you would need to settle up this bill before ordering another drink.”

“Oh I would, would I?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What about you bring me another champagne cocktail and I’ll settle up then?”

“I don’t think we can do that, sir.”

“Oh, why is that?”

“When a bill is issued we have to see it paid before the customer can continue.”

I could see there was no such rule.

“I see,” I said.

I made as if to reach into my pockets and brought up the wrinkled, still wet thousand dollars. She stood above me looking down, tensely smiling, her fingers fidgeting, while I unrolled the thousand bucks.

I was not sure if she could see how short I was, and I fudged the matter by nodding and pretending to make for the other pocket and hoping she would go away. She did not.

“Just a minute,” I murmured.

The Collector had stirred and was looking over at us intently. A businessman a few tables away lowered his paper to watch us.

“Do you take cards?” I blurted out.

“We take them all, sir.”

But I didn’t have one. I laid the filthy notes on the table and there was a ripple of unease. The girl flinched. For a moment she looked up at the violence of the rain against the window. The Collector put down a glass and watched even more intently. The Lobby Lounge of the Intercontinental was not accustomed to such disgraceful scenes. They were probably not sure how to proceed. The
waitress cocked her head. She seemed to be wondering if she should smooth out the notes on the table or count them for me. It was certainly embarrassing in the extreme in Asian terms. I had already lost face. It was at that very moment, however, that I became dimly aware of someone walking toward us, a kind of human radiance approaching my squalor from behind, a measured step in high heels, the glow of the feminine.

It was like a ship approaching a wharf on a quiet night. The sails lowering bit by bit and the prow probing forward, one of those prows carved into the shape of a good-luck mermaid. I didn’t turn. The glamour of the presence was registered first in the meek, surprised face of the waitress, who half-turned on her heel and then took a step backward to admit this new presence into the force field of our scene. I already knew who it was and I therefore decided not to feel surprise at something so banal as a coincidence, because there is no such thing as coincidences.

NINE

T
he waitress seemed tempted to observe that the fault lay with the numerous glasses of champagne I had consumed, and I heard Dao-Ming exchange a quick pleasantry with her in Cantonese, unafraid to let her mainland accent shine through. She said she would pay the bill and the other woman stepped back and half-bowed and the corners of her mouth were sarcastically upturned. Between them the women had decided upon my salvation, and it was done with a brisk efficiency. The rustle of notes pricked my ear and it was clear that the matter was being settled without any fuss, sotto voce, the waitress bowing slightly as if relieved that she didn’t have to lose face.

I stared through the glass at the mist and rain and didn’t say a word. When the waitress had retired, Dao-Ming swung round to the opposing chair. When she extended her hand for a shake I suddenly leaned forward and kissed its back before she could refuse.
Yes
, I could feel her thinking as she winced a little and blinked;
that’s just what a lord would do, even a broke one who has forgotten his wallet or mislaid it or doesn’t like paying such trivial things as bar checks. It’s just what he would do even if he was a fraud lord who has become used to thinking like one
. She let it go. Our eyes met and there was a moment of questioning, accusation, and nothing was said at the end of it. It seemed to me then that years and years had passed since we had seen each other, and during these years entire lives had been played out and even reached their end. We had diverged, and I had gone downhill.

“You paid it,” I said simply, and all my surprise burst out, causing her to sit down quickly and motion to the waitress to come back.

When she did, Dao-Ming said to her:

“Could I have two champagne cocktails?”

“Yes, madam.”

“And some chocolates, please. The Earl Grey kind.”

Dao-Ming laid her handbag next to her and opened it. She looked up at the view, within which the dark red sails of junks could be seen moving in slow motion. She was in a sleeveless evening dress, lamé touches, silk straps, something that must have been paid for by someone. It was a condescending thought, but the difference in her appearance from the previous time I had seen her made it inevitable. And then it became clear that she had spent the night in this hotel. That she was wearing the clothes she had arrived in the evening before. A client. She was not
disheveled or off balance. She had made herself up for her morning exit. The hand of a pro.

Every morning must be the same. The luxury hotel, the Lobby Lounge with its anonymous amenities, the deflected glance of the slightly disapproving staff who are nevertheless trained to respect everyone but murderers. I struggled to find the words.

“Thank you. I must have left my money in Macau.”

It made her smile.

“That was silly.”

“I do that sometimes.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Leave all your money behind?”

“Yes.”

“I see.”

“I’m forgetful. It’s a trait of mine.”

“Yes, it is,” she said reproachfully.

But there was a humor, too, that had its way with me.

“Well,” I objected, “I didn’t have—”

“It doesn’t matter. Clients rarely call back.”

“You’re quite wrong about that.”

It’s the way men treat women
, she was thinking, I could see.

“I didn’t expect any special consideration,” she said tersely.

It was a futile exchange, in the end.

“It’s money that fucks everything up,” I said.

“Never mind. Do you like chocolates?”

“Not in the morning.”

“I seem to eat them round the clock,” she said.

“But you never get fat.”

“No. Nothing makes me fat.”

The tray of chocolates arrived. She impaled one on the end of a fork. It looked a little strange eaten this way, and I had to watch. Perhaps she didn’t know any other way to eat chocolates, or she thought it was the correct way. Her hands looked powdered. The chocolate smeared the corner of her mouth. She dabbed it away with a stiff napkin. From afar came the music of the rain, hissing against the fifteen-foot-high glass, and the streaking water cast a metallic luminosity against the granular surface of her cheeks. She seemed satisfied with her night, or the money made, and in her eyes I could see as if reflected in a tiny convex mirror the middle-aged Chinese businessman asleep upstairs in an unlit bed. She wore a Patek watch with a crocodile strap, customized for her by one of the shadowy men who had taken a shine to her. A Chinese ring with a pigeon stone, shoes with stiff bows on them. The vulgarity of the first encounter had been smoothed away by someone. She told me in Mandarin that her business, as she called it, had looked up in recent weeks and she had made many new clients in the real estate sector. The commissions were flowing in and life among the glass towers was looking up, insofar as
it could ever look up in the realm of the hungry ghosts. She had adapted and she had begun to thrive, she said.

“But what about you,” she went on. “What brings you over to Kowloon?”

“I rarely do come,” I admitted. “I got nostalgic for the Intercontinental last night and just decided to hop over on the ferry. You know.”

“So you came up for breakfast?”

Her eyes lifted to greet the view yet again, and there was a hint of green in them, of neutral submission.

“I’m the impulsive sort,” I added.

“Yes, I remember.”

“I wasn’t losing or anything.”

She shifted slightly, and her smile was slanted, foxy. I had lied.

“But for a moment,” she said, “looking at you there, I thought you might be broke. You seemed to be having trouble paying the bill.”

She laughed.

“Yes,” I said.

She leaned back, and there was again a glitter of the imaginary eye-green.

“We’re a couple of charming amateurs, your lordship.”

“If you like.”

I saw that a pot of tea had arrived, Dragon tea, and there was a jasmine flower laid on the saucer next to the gingersnap biscuits.

I
remembered now that she had given me her card at the time and that I had not called her. I had not been expected to call her, but all the same I had not. There lay the source of the reproach that I could plainly see in her face, even though it was forgiving and minimal. Was it even a reproach? It was perhaps something else. A plain sadness at human forgetfulness and egoism. But she had not known that I had been preoccupied with the drama of losing everything bit by bit. She had felt slighted, but she must have been used to such situations with men. Things might have become tetchy, and to avoid that I said I liked the way she stabbed the chocolates with a fork.

“It’s my way,” she laughed.

“I can’t believe you were here.”

“Please.”

She pushed the plate toward me.

I said, “I feel hungry all over again.”

“Why don’t you order something? It’s my treat.”

“I couldn’t possibly order anything more on you. I really couldn’t.”

“Oh go on, I don’t care. I’m flush.”

The word
flush
came out in English, as if there weren’t a Chinese equivalent.

“All the same,” I said.

“Go on, like I say I don’t care. If you’re hungry.”

“I might,” I stammered.

She beckoned to the waitress, who was incredulous.

“The gentleman would like something else. What about pancakes?”

“Excellent idea,” I said without shame.

“With fruit?” the girl asked.

I nodded.

“And yogurt.”

“Very well, sir.”

Dao-Ming ate a gingersnap, holding it with two fingers. She spoke with a controlled, understated voice that seemed to have found its ideal pitch. The tense nervousness I remembered in her was gone.

She went on:

“I stopped playing a while back. I was losing and it made no sense. I never really liked it anyhow. I always thought it was a waste of time.”

“That’s exactly what it is.”

A few moments of silence later, she said, “Have you ever been to Lamma?”

I said I had been there a couple of times.

“It’s more than just seafood tourist traps, you know.”

It was an island a half hour from Victoria Harbor by slow boat.

“Are you headed back to Macau now?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“I’ve no plans in particular.”

“Well then,” she said. “Come to Lamma for the day. It’s where I’m living now.”

“A boring place for a girl to live.”

I could, I thought. It was a way out. Lamma—

“And do what?”

“Whatever you want. You don’t have to pay me.”

“I didn’t intend—”

She shook her head.

“It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to pay me. Come as a friend.”

“I might,” I said.

“I want to show you my house.”

If you’d called
, her voice seemed to suggest,
I would have shown it to you a long time ago. But you didn’t call
.

She leaned forward and there was a friendly nonchalance in the way the offer turned into an inviting pout, a widening of the eyes, and I thought,
Yes, it might be quite pleasant after all, a few days in Lamma while I extricate myself from my mess and decide what to do
. The sexual offer was muted, but it was there. It wasn’t relevant now that I was down and out and almost dead.

A
ll that morning, in fact, I had expected to be dead by midday, and as that hour approached I found myself to be alive, continuing onward toward yet another opened door, and I began to wonder on the statistical odds
that had placed Dao-Ming in the Lobby Lounge at the very moment I was trying to pay my bill. Millions to one against. We took the ferry to Wan Chai in the downpour and waited for a boat to Lamma.