The Mak Collection (96 page)

‘
Mak.
Right,’ Gabby huffed in response, as if she didn’t care what the name was and would no doubt mispronounce it again.

Jen, seated to the left of Gabby, beamed at Mak. She and Gabby were chalk and cheese. Jen was fresh-faced with a cheerful Midwest accent, as
wholesome as freshly cut hay and apple pie. She hadn’t been around the apartment much since Mak arrived, but Mak already liked her. Gabby, on the other hand, was a pouting drama queen for whom a smouldering cigarette and unwelcoming attitude seemed permanent attachments.

‘Red or white,’ Gabby asked—or snarled. It was hard to tell.

‘Red thanks.’

‘Everyone else? Red, yes?’ She called the waiter over. ‘We’d like two bottles of your Canonbah Bridge shiraz.’

The waiter nodded and scurried away.

‘So is this a regular hang-out for you guys?’ Mak asked Jen. She felt it was better to address the friendlier of the two models she knew. She’d hardly caught the names of the others. ‘I have to admit that I thought immediately of Cuban food when you said “Che’s”.’

Jen looked blank.

‘Because of Che Guevara,’ Mak explained.

‘No, this is a Chinese restaurant,’ Jen replied, still not registering. ‘It’s owned by one of the local movie stars! We hope he’ll come in later,’ she gushed excitedly.

The fact that the restaurant was traditional Cantonese had not escaped Mak’s attention. It was hard to miss the tanks of fish and the opulent gilded décor. There were even jars of mysterious dried substances in cases along one wall.

‘That would be so great if he shows up!’ Jen blurted, evidently still thinking of her movie star.

Gabby nodded vaguely, not interested enough to speak on the matter of Hong Kong movie stars or the Cuban revolution. Mak wondered just how old—or young—Jen was. She went back to studying her menu. She quickly realised that deciphering the items on offer would be a challenge. This was not exactly Ming’s on Quadra Street.

‘Um, can anyone tell me what Double-boiled Sweet Superior Bird’s Nest is?’ she asked. There was laughter from those on her side of the table.

‘It’s bird spit,’ the model beside her said in a disturbingly familiar Australian accent. He leaned forward and grinned at her mischievously. He was a deeply tanned bloke with unkempt hair, a ripped $300 T-shirt and Tsubi jeans—the advertising industry’s version of a Bondi surfer. His name was Shawn.

‘Bird spit,’ Mak replied flatly. She raised an eyebrow and waited for the joke.

‘I’m not shitting you. It’s bird spit. A delicacy.’

Mak regretted that she had unwittingly sat next to the only Australian at the table.
What if he recognises me from the press about the trial?
Instinctively, she buried her face in the menu.

Hmmm. Ducks’ Jaws in Maggi Sauce. Snake Fillet with Chinese Herbal Medicine. Pig’s Colon in Soya. Elephant Trunk Shellfish. The menu read like
Ripley’s Believe it or Not.
Sea Whelk. Twenty-five-headed Abalone. And there was a whole section devoted to something called ‘Conpoys’. There were probably things here that weren’t even legal in her native Canada.

Leaning across the table, Mak whispered to Jen. ‘Help, what the heck is a conpoy?’

Jen pointed at the jars of strange-looking shriveled lumps stacked along one wall. ‘Sun-dried scallops. They’re big on conpoys here.’

Right. Perhaps I’ll just stick to steamed vegetables
, Mak thought. Her usual philosophy when travelling was to throw herself into local culture and customs, but tonight the thought of exotic food was repellent. She had a headache and felt vaguely queasy. Was it just jetlag—or was something more sinister doing her head in?

She spoke sternly to herself.
Get a grip, Mak. You’re in Hong Kong. You are safe. Ed is not here. You are safe…

‘Hello, you looking for company?’

The accent was exotic, from somewhere Ed didn’t recognise. He stared impassively at the girl who had approached him—at her dark brown eyes and golden skin, and her large puffy lips, and though he said nothing she did not move away. She batted her eyelashes and smiled. She had tiny pimples all over her forehead, and she smelled faintly of yeast.

‘What do you want?’ he said.

‘You want company? You very
handsome
.’

The petite Filipina girl was not at all attractive to Ed. She wore chunky sandals with a miniskirt and her toes were awful and squarish. She had not even painted them. Her feet revolted him.

‘No, I do not want company.’

‘You have wife?’ she asked.

‘Yes. I have a wife.’

He still had the frozen guy’s gold wedding band on his finger. There had been a time when Ed used to wear one like it at least once a week, on his nights off when he was cruising for girls. He used to enjoy polishing it up. Over the years he had learned that it put girls at ease to think he was on his way home to
a wife. It made him seem harmless. The wedding band sealed the deal, when the offer of a lift home in the rain from a kindly bespectacled good Samaritan was tempting, but not quite tempting enough to make a girl let her guard down and get into his van.
‘I have to be home for dinner any minute, but I saw you walking by yourself and I thought you looked lost. You looked like you might need help. It’s not safe around here you know…’
For the others, the hookers and the strippers, money was usually enough to get them into the van. If they refused, he would simply offer more money, and more, until they gave in.

Ed had bought his ring at a garage sale—a funny thing to sell, he’d thought—and now it was sitting somewhere in police custody in a small cardboard box of measly possessions labelled
Edward Brown.
Ed could replace the ring, but he couldn’t replace the other things the police had stolen from him. He desperately missed his souvenirs. He had been so proud of them. Over the years he had painstakingly collected several of his girls’ toes, only the best ones severed neatly from the foot, in a shoebox in his bedroom. It had taken patience and practice to make the incisions neatly and perfect the method by which to store them. He had even kept one whole foot in formaldehyde in a jar and it had been a beautiful artefact, one he had enjoyed looking at often. She’d had perfect, symmetrical toes, the nails manicured and painted red. Just perfect. The curve of her arch had been exquisitely formed. Now he would never see that arch again.

‘Want to drink with me?’ It was the young dark girl again. She was still hanging about, smiling at him and twirling her black hair between the fingers of one hand. She rested the other hand on his arm, the long, chipped, artificial pink nails touching his bare wrist.

‘Go away!’ Ed snapped and pulled away. If she was even half worth the effort he would cut her open right there on the tiled floor of the disco. That would shut her up. That would stop her touching him.

The girl recoiled at his response, and finally left him alone. He saw her retreat to her girlfriends, with whom she exchanged some words. They looked at him with scowls and then looked away. One of them pointed out a tall fat man in a suit standing alone at the bar, and the girl approached him next.

Ed surveyed the room. No Makedde Vanderwall. There were lots of American and Australian men, and a lot of Asian girls. Was this where he would find Makedde?

He finished his cheap drink and slumped on his stool. How long would it take to find her? And once he had her, where could he keep her, and for how long? The beats of the disco music rang in his head, the flashing dance floor blurring in his vision. He felt tiredness set in. The jet lag and the time difference had begun to catch up. He would walk back to the apartment, perhaps after one more lap around the strip.

I will find you soon, Makedde.

You can’t hide from me.

By 1 a.m. the models had left Che’s and were standing on Lockhart Road, discussing whether or not to go for one last drink. Mak was weary, and she wanted nothing more than to head back to the apartment and rest her aching head. Most of the group, however, seemed determined to have one more for the road. They didn’t have jet lag and her draining anxiety to contend with.

Lockhart Road was rife with girlie bars: a handful of modern, trendy establishments incongruously nestled between the strip clubs. Amongst abundant and equally bright Chinese symbols, neon signage for
Pussy Cat, Cavalier, San Francisco Club, Dreams Café, Club Carpenter
and the subtly named
Cockeye Model Dancers Club
adorned the street, beckoning foreigners in English. Westerners, the majority of them men, hung about the entrances with lazy smiles and flushed cheeks, keeping an eye out for a good time.

‘Pluto’s?’ Shawn suggested. He threw an arm around Gabby, which she shrugged off.

‘Hell no,’ Gabby said. ‘Not Pluto’s.’

‘Well, let’s go somewhere else then,’ Jen suggested peaceably. ‘The Felix?’

‘It’s a bit late for the Felix, hon,’ Shawn said. ‘Especially by the time we get there. Come on, let’s show our newcomer the
real
Wan Chai.’

Mak raised an eyebrow. ‘I might be a bit exhausted for the “real” anything right now, but thanks.’ With the two-hour time difference from Sydney, for her it was about 3 a.m. already. She wasn’t much of a party girl, she reflected.

‘Come on, just one drink,’ Shawn coaxed.

Mak looked to Jen and Gabby for support, hoping to hitch a ride back to the apartment in Mid Levels with them. Somehow she didn’t want to walk into the empty apartment alone.

‘Pluto’s is rank,’ the elfin-faced model called Amber complained, wrinkling her nose.

‘One drink. Come on. It’s part of the initiation.’

Initiation?

‘Okay, enough already,’ Gabby said. ‘One drink. Let’s go.’

Mak’s heart sank.

With a flurry of tired air kisses, Amber and her friend Raquel parted ways from the rest of the pack and jumped into a taxi to head home.
Ah well, the ‘real Wan Chai’ sounded vaguely interesting
, Mak thought. It might be worth ten minutes of her time.

Pluto’s was a basic bar with a dance floor. At first glance at least, anyway. They took a side table and ordered drinks. Makedde sipped her free gin and tonic sceptically.

‘So, what kind of an initiation is this, exactly?’

‘It’s just a glimpse of the Hong Kong underbelly, that’s all,’ Shawn answered.

‘What makes this the Hong Kong underbelly?’ Mak wondered aloud. ‘There are no locals here.’

‘Well spotted.’

To Mak, it was obvious. Although the bar was crowded with revellers, not one of them was Chinese. There were Caucasian businessmen, some Indians and Africans too, but the girls were all South-East Asians, mainly Thai or Filipina, Mak guessed. With Raquel and Amber gone, Jen, Gabby and Mak were the only three Caucasian women in the place. No one would let any of their group pay for drinks, which Mak found odd, and a bit suspicious. She tried several times to push Hong Kong dollars into the waitress’s hand but the woman refused.

‘So these are foreign sex workers, I’m guessing?’

‘The women are 90 per cent workers, yeah,’ Shawn said. ‘They come here on short-stay visas and make all the money they can. Most of the money goes home to their families. Back in their villages, they would be heroines for paying the bills. Anything that puts bread on the table.’ Shawn seemed to be experiencing a sudden streak of sensitivity.

Mak nodded thoughtfully. What a life they must have. And she thought
she
had problems.

Not surprisingly, Shawn’s maturity was short-lived. He pointed towards the bar with glee. ‘Oh, she’s hooked one! Yep, hook, line and sinker.’ He began to laugh. Gabby rolled her eyes.

A pretty girl in a tiny skirt and a lycra top was smiling alluringly at two American men in jeans and pressed dress shirts, batting her eyelashes and flicking her hair. She was no more than five feet tall, and the men towered over her. They were clean-cut and a little overweight, probably not used to getting such eager female attention back home. They looked like college boys to Mak. They looked like someone’s brothers. What did they think they were doing accepting forced affection from an impoverished sex worker? In moments the girl had giggled and cooed her way into being offered a drink. She leaned against the shoulder of the taller one, smiling flirtatiously. She put a manicured hand on his waist. He looked delighted. Negotiations would be next.

‘Mak,’ Shawn said in a lowered voice, ‘I wanted to ask you something.’

He had her immediate attention. She braced herself for the worst.

‘Are you the same Mak from Canada who was just in Sydney for that trial?’

Mak cut him short. ‘No,’ she blurted.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Jen broke in, seemingly oblivious to the conversation. Mak saw her tug at Gabby’s sleeve. ‘I’ve got a photo shoot tomorrow.’

‘Oh, live a little. You’ll be fine,’ Shawn complained, sipping his free cocktail. At least she had distracted him.

‘It’s a test for my book. I need some sleep,’ Jen insisted.

‘I’ll go back with you,’ Mak offered, jumping at the chance.

Jen’s face lit up. ‘Great!’

‘Thanks for the tour of the underbelly, Shawn,’ Mak said. ‘Don’t forget to tip well. Bye Gabby.’

With that, she and Jen climbed the stairs to the street.

‘I hate that place,’ Jen complained, once they were outside. ‘It’s so creepy. I don’t understand why people like it.’

‘Well, I don’t reckon we are quite the demographic, somehow. I think Shawn rather likes the free drinks. Come on, let’s flag a cab.’

The red taxis of Hong Kong Island zipped past on both sides of the road, all occupied. Mak began to feel uneasy. Goosebumps stood up on her forearms. Were they being watched? Yes. She could feel it. Was it just the bouncers at the entrance to the club, or was someone else watching them?

Why do I keep worrying about Ed here, when I am so far away?

Suzie Harpin blinked once, twice. Yes, it had to be her. A tall young woman with a mane of blonde hair had emerged from a doorway not half a block from her.