"Mi amor," she was whispering, his lun cock stroking her.
"Mamita," he groaned like the low growl of a dog, and came long and angrily, deep inside of her.
Memory
As was her routine on Sunday afternoons, Mona pressed the Discman's plugs into her ears, adjusted the volume, then wrapped the Hermes silk square over her head and knotted it under her chin. Shirley Kwan sang a ballad into her brain as the elevator descended, and before Mona stepped out onto Henry Street, she slipped the black Vuarnets over her eyes.
She took the side streets south, away from the China Plaza, went as far as the Seaport and turned west toward the Hudson River. She didn't know the names of the streets but followed landmarks from memory, walking distance from Chinatown recalled. The way led through the steel-and-glass canyons of the Business District, pass a gwailo American department store where she found designer lingerie, toiletries, household items. Farther down that street was a travel agency she recognized by the pictures of ships and exotic locales, and a model airliner, displayed in the show window. On one occasion she had noticed a Chinese woman inside, wearing the red uniform blazer of the agency. Lucky red, she'd thought, and jook-sing, born American, she'd guessed.
Her route took her toward the river until she reached the World Financial Center. The promenade was deserted, as she had expected. She looked out over the harbor where the rivers met and mixed into riptides.
In the near distance she could see the Statue of Liberty, and she considered the word freedom, but remembered Uncle Four's bitter remarks about the exclusion of the Chinese, especially Chinese women, from these shores. She switched off the Discman, peered out beyond the choppy expanse of water, and began to wonder about liberty, and what she would need to do to gain it.
Out on the wet blue shining, the ships and boats reminded her of Hong Kong, the fragrant harbor, and as she stroked her piece of jade her mind reeled back to lost youth and forgotten hopes.
In Hong Kong she had crowded into cousins' bunk beds until she was sixteen, when she feared uncle would come into her room at night, herself the only girl there. She remembered wanting to be a movie star.
The memories that came after were mostly about jobs she had had long before she'd managed to work her way up from Wanchai to Central, in Club Volvo, in TsimSha Cheui, the tourist sex ghetto, before she'd wound up on Nathan Road.
She'd worked component assembly at TongKai Precision, in the beauty-care industry, making devices called Beauty Facial Sauna, Eye Massager, Deep Heat Body Massager, Scalp Stimulatortouted to improve blood circulation, cleanse the skin, eliminate cellulite.
That position lasted six months, then Fat Louie Kai tried to stimulate her blood circulation against her will. She remembered working for lofeiYat "Playboy" Pang, an aging gangster and the boss of Electronix Express, stamping circuit boards, LEDs, voice programs for talking thermo clocks: Mr. Temperature. Thermo-Talk Inc. The clocks presented multilingual digital displays and humanlike electronic voices that reported time and temperature in English, Spanish, French, German, Cyrillic, and Chinese (Mandarin only). Every hour, or at the touch of a button.
Every two months, databanks and calculators.
In the fall, children's programs for Christmas toys. Talking MathQuiz Pinball, Ring Back Talking Phone, Phone Calculator Pencil Box.
In one period, she assembled flashlights for five weeks.
In Chai Wan, she'd assembled plastics for High Speed Industries, snapping together pocket digital gambling games labeled Blackjack, Slot Machine, Craps, Roulette, Poker, Baccarat, and Deuces. Miniature versions were attached to keychains.
In Tseun Wan she had attached watchbands onto digital and quartz watches, in two months rising up the production line at Best Fortune Inc. to mini-alarm clocks and electronic pedometers.
Assembly work was all the same. Girls and women slouched over their workstations under the fluorescent lights, sometimes twenty or thirty on each side of a long conveyor belt, working their goods onto the moving rubber blacktop. They were seated on backless stools, sometimes metal, sometimes plastic or cheap handcrafted bamboo.
The factories were unbearable in the humid monsoon season, a mindless drudgery always. She punched in just after the sun came up. Punched out when the moon put a bright hole against the deep blue of night.
Another time she'd been a sales rep for costume jewelry and accessories made in Mainland China and selling well at large department stores in Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, and Japan. She never got used to hotels and airports. Tak Sing Imitation Jewelry. Necklaces, earrings, bangles, hair clasps. Gold- and silverplated steel key rings, cufflinks. It didn't last.
A different man, a different product. Wholesale rep for Everrich Handbags factory. Portfolios, briefcases, clutches, purses, shoulder bags. Leather cowhide wallets, makeup cases, and organizers.
She learned quickly the play between sex and money. If sex was attached to the job, best to be paid richly for it. Seek men with power, wealth.
Always it was a man who provided a job, always a man who took it away. Always for the same reason: she wouldn't have sex with them. When the time came to fire her, it was because her work habits were unsatisfactory, or business was bad and layoffs were necessary. Or inventory turned up missing from her line.
Men. No sex. No job.
Seven jobs in two years. Along the way, dirty old men, nasty young men. Sun Tak thugs who fancied themselves playboys passed her around among themselves. Several European indus trialists who had pledged their love until they'd bankrupted their businesses and abandoned her.
The longest job lasted nine months, at Fook Inc., the island's largest watchmaker, until old man Ah Fook died and young son Fook came around wanting what all the others before him demanded.
She'd moved on.
Now the sounds of the waterfront receded and she found herself following the traffic down the side streets back toward Chinatown.
Help
Tin Nee Beauty Salon was a beauty-and-fitness emporium on the second floor of the jade Building, in the middle of the noise roaring along Canal Street. Exercise machines, whirlpool. Manicure.
Mona maintained a regular appointment every other Sunday, but she was later than usual on this afternoon. Facial, sauna. A massage, the purity of innocent hands rubbing, squeezing away the poisonous touch of a piggish old man. Steam and heat purging the smell of Uncle Four from her pores.
She sank her body into the massage table, remembering Water Over Thunder, strengthen base of operations.
But how?
If she could find a woman, an accomplice, to help her secure a false passport or a new identity, she might be able to escape. But who? The secrecy of her relationship to Uncle Four forbade her any ordinary friends. And she didn't trust women anyway, especially the gossipers who cut her hair and polished her nails, always slipping in rude questions she had to evade. They never said what they knew, although she suspected they knew enough to gong sifay- spread gossip-behind her back as soon as she stepped out of the salon. So she went to several salons during the year, rotating them, thinking she could keep them off balance.
But who? Working-class women, factory women, would be suspicious of her, would misjudge her intentions. The sin lai lai, socialites, would recognize her for what she was, cheap see, mistress, and would disdain her, betray her.