‘Try to behave,’ I said, squeezing into my laced-up shoes, grabbing my briefcase and picking up my clutch of keys.
Katy always answered, ‘I hear and obey, oh hunter-gatherer.’
She never answers.
Going, going, gone.
The elevator was on its way down. Thank God. Otherwise I’d miss the bus to the ferry. The doors opened. I squeezed into the all-male space, half-yellow, half-pinko-grey, but all the same Financial Zone Tribe. We couldn’t afford to live here if we weren’t. The space smelt of suits, aftershave, leather and hair-mousse, and something lingering. Maybe badly ducted testosterone. Nobody said a word. Nobody breathed. I turned around, so that my dick wasn’t facing another moneymaker’s dick, and saw the door to my apartment: 144.
‘Not good,’ Mrs Feng had said. ‘“Four” in Chinese means “Death”.’
‘You can’t spend all of your life avoiding Four,’ Katy had protested.
‘True,’ said Mrs Feng, closing her sad eyes. ‘But there is another problem.’
‘Which is?’ said Katy, giving me a half-smile.
‘The elevator,’ said Mrs Feng, opening her sharp eyes.
‘We’re on the fourteenth floor,’ I said. ‘Don’t tell me we can’t use the elevator.’
‘But it’s directly opposite your own door!’
‘So?’ Katy was no longer smiling.
‘The elevator doors are jaws! They eat up good luck. In this place you shall have none.’
I looked up, and saw myself looking down through smoked glass, from amongst the tops of my unmoving heads. Like I was spirit-walking.
‘You’re also on Lantau Island,’ she had added as an afterthought.
Ping, went the bell.
‘What’s wrong with Lantau Island? It’s the one place in Hong Kong where you can pretend the world was once beautiful.’
‘We don’t like the currents. Too much north, too much east.’
Ping, went the bell, ping, ping, ping. First floor. Ground floor. Whatever. The bus was waiting. We all ran across the road and boarded it, the James Bond music blaring in my head. I thought of little boys boarding a pretend-troop transporter in a game of war.
Standing room only on the bus, but I don’t mind. It reminds me of being crushed on the Dear Old Circle Line back in Dear Old Blighty. The cricket season will be starting now. That’s why I like this bus. From the moment I get on it until the moment I enter the office, everything is out of my hands. I don’t have to decide anything. I can zombify.
Until, that is, some fucker’s cordless phone drills through my ear-drum. That is so annoying! Answer it. Answer it! Deaf-o, answer your fucking telephone! What are you all looking at me like that for?
Right, my phone. When these things first appeared, they were so cool. Only when it was too late did people realise they are as cool as electronic tags on remand prisoners.
I answer it, allowing the electrons of irrelevance to finish their journey along wires, into space and back into my ear.
‘Yeah? Brose speaking.’
So, now every last jackass on this bus knows my name is Brose.
‘Neal, this is Avril.’
‘Avril.’ Who else? She had probably slept over in the office. She was still hard at work on the Taiwan Portfolio when I left last night stroke this morning stroke whenever it was. Jardine-Pearl had a posse of lawyers working on this one. Cavendish had me, Avril and Ming, who couldn’t manage the lease on our — I mean my — apartment without fucking it up and getting me right royally rogered on the deposit. The Chinese are bad enough, estate agents are even worse, but Chinese Estate Agents are Satan’s Secret Servicemen. They should be lawyers, but they probably make more cash doing what they do. Fuck, the Taiwan Portfolio! On top of everything else I had to worry about, I had this maze of details, small print, traps. It was probably good Avril was on this case, but fuck, she got on my tits sometimes. London had sent her in January, and she was so piously keen. Me, three years ago.
‘Sleep well?’
‘No.’
Avril probably wanted me to apologise for leaving early last night. This morning. One a.m. Early, right. She could fucking forget it.
‘I’m phoning about the Mickey Kwan File.’
‘What about it?’
‘I can’t find it.’
‘Oh.’
‘So where is it? You had it last night. Before you went home.’
Fuck you, Avril. ‘I had it yesterday evening. Six hours before I went home.’
‘It’s not on your desk now. And it’s nowhere in Guilan’s office. So it must be in your office somewhere, because I haven’t touched it since yesterday afternoon. Might you — might it have been misfiled? Could it have been put under something, again? In a drawer somewhere?’
‘I am on a bus on Lantau Island, Avril. I can’t quite see my office from here.’
I thought I heard somebody sniggering behind the wall of suits, ties, and faces pretending not to listen. Sniggering like a loooooooooony. Maybe it was just a sneeze.
Avril was a walking experiment in humourlessness. I should nickname her ‘Spock’. ‘I don’t understand you sometimes. Yes, I know you can’t see your office from there, Neal. I know that very well. But in case you’ve forgotten — again — Horace Cheung and Theo want a progress report on the Wae Folio in 52 — no, 51 — minutes. You are not here, because you are still on a bus on Lantau Island. You will not get here for another 38 minutes, 41 minutes if you haven’t had breakfast and have to stop for doughnuts. Mr Cheung is always 10 minutes early. This means I have to complete said progress report by the time you waltz in through that door. As I need the Mickey Kwan File to do this, I need it now.’
I sighed, and tried to think of a withering response, but I was all out of wither. I must be going down with this ’flu that’s doing the rounds. ‘What you say is all true, Avril. But I honestly, really, truly, madly, deeply don’t know where the file has got to.’
The bus lurched to and fro. I caught a glimpse of tennis courts, the international school, the curve of a bay and a fishing junk in the tepid Asian white.
‘You have a copy on hard disc, don’t you?’
I was suddenly very awake. ‘Yes, but—’
‘I’ll download the file off your hard disc, and whip off a copy on my printer. It’s only about twenty pages, yeah? So just tell me your password.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t do that, Avril.’
A pause while Avril thought. ‘I’m afraid you can, Neal.’
I remembered watching a rabbit being skinned, where, or when I couldn’t remember. The knife seemed to unzip it. One moment a dozing Mr Bunny, the next a long rip of blood, from buck teeth to rabbity penis.
‘But—’
‘If you’ve downloaded any Swedish dominatrix hard porn pix from the internet, I promise your secret is safe with me.’
No matter how quietly I tried to speak, ten people would hear me. ‘I can’t tell you my password like this. It’s a security breach.’
‘Neal, you probably haven’t noticed, in fact I know you haven’t, otherwise you wouldn’t have gone home last night, but we are on the verge of losing this account. The Dae Folio is worth $82 million. Dutch Barings and Citibank are both singing under their balcony every night, and they sing more sweetly than we do. If we don’t have the Mickey Kwan gains to offset the upsets in Bangkok and Tokyo, we’re history. And D.C. is going to know exactly why — I’m not going to take the rap for this. You might be happy spending the rest of your life managing a McDonald’s in Birmingham, but I want a little more out of life. Now tell me your password! You can change it when you get to work. Your “security breach” is going to last 49 minutes. Come on! If you can’t trust me, who can you trust?’
Absolutely Fucking Nobody, that’s who I can trust. I pulled my jacket over my head and held the phone in my armpit. Quasimodo Brose. ‘K-A-T-Y-F-O-R-B-E-S.’ Don’t tell her not to snoop. That would make her snoop. ‘There. Happy?’