Alchemy was changing the sky. The sun was burnishing the leaden dullness to silver. In turn the silver was shrouding blue. It was going to be a nice day after all.
A nearby furry rock lifted its head, blinking. It looked at me sorrowfully and mooed. I hadn’t been this close to a cow I wasn’t eating since... who knows? Wales, for all I knew. Hong Kong glistened in the distance, through the haze. Skyscrapers, construction, clamouring upwards like trees in a jungle.
My cordless telephone rang and triggered an instant relapse.
Fuck, what have I done! Please God let me wake up! Please!
The cow mooed dolefully. Fuck. Fuck. Double Fuck to the power of Fuck squared. I am a lawyer living in a world where ‘thirteen’ means ‘thirteen million bucks’ and I am bunking off work like a schoolboy skipping double maths! The Taiwanese! Think! What excuse is serious enough, plausible enough, and yet too implausible for it to be a lie? Kidnapping? No, a heart attack? Avril knows I’m on medication. A seizure? Think! Serious, violent, incapacitating vomiting, then why aren’t I on the boat, I’d need to pay a doctor, I’d need a receipt, and a reliable witness—
Answer me! Answer me!
I clicked ‘answer’, and said, er...
Neal, isn’t it about time that you decided what constitutes a crisis?
Er... Nothing. I listened to Neal’s heart. It sounded like a percussion grenade in a neighbouring valley.
‘Neal? Neal?’ Avril, sure enough. ‘Neal, where are you?’
A large fly landed on my knee. A gothic tricycle. My relapse was over.
‘Neal? Can you hear me? Chaing Yun’s here. He’s being very polite, but he’s wondering what is so important that you are late for this meeting. And so am I. And so will Jim Hersch. And if Chiang Yun isn’t important enough to warrant your valuable time, Mr Gregorski from St Petersburg has already phoned you twice, and it’s not even 9 a.m.’
I looked at my Rolex. My, my, how time had flown. The cow frowned. I smelt its shit near by.
‘I know you’re there, Neal. I can hear you breathing. This had better be good. This had better be jolly good. Because nothing short of a capsized ferry is going to save you this time. Neal, you hear me Neal? Okay, look Neal, if you’re unable to speak, then tap the phone twice now, all right?’
Aha! Doubt was creeping in to her contempt! I chuckled. Avril the ever-resourceful. Avril will go far will Avril.
‘Neal! This is not funny! You are royally messing up one of the biggest contracts we’ve ever seen! One of the biggest that has ever been heard of ! I’m going to have to tell D.C. You can’t seriously expect me to take the flack for this!’
Ah, shut the fuck up. I clicked the thing off and placed it on the warm rock.
A buzzard circled, and there was an anvil-shaped cloud.
You never see them coming. They lurk in the overlooked and undusted places. They grow to huge proportions, and all along you don’t even dream about them, not in their true form. And then one day a chance meeting happens, a glimpse of that you didn’t know you wanted, and a latch is raised...
Avril tried my beeper. Jesus, I was armed to the teeth with telecommunications devices. Like John Wayne unholstering himself after a hard day slaughtering Hispanic bandits with bad teeth, I unclipped it. I clicked open my briefcase. There was the Mickey Kwan File — whoops — and Huw Llewellyn’s calling card. I put in my beeper and cordless phone. I stood up, took a big under-arm swing, and hurled it into the void. It drew an elegant parabola, I could still hear my beeper, a costly, mewling kitten. The briefcase hit the mountainside running, and spun down the slope in terminal leaps... in big beautiful wheels, fast enough to kill on impact, like Mama Lion, like a tumbler, like a lemming, like Piggy from The Lord of the Flies.
My briefcase hung for a moment in the morning sun, weightless.
Then it plummeted like a gannet into the sea.
It seemed Katy had forgotten to cancel the maid.
The first week after Katy’s departure I came home one night to find my washing done, the dishes washed up and neatly stacked, the toilet and the bathroom cleaned, and the windows polished. She’d even ironed my shirts, bless her sour-plum little Chinese nipples.
I certainly wasn’t going to cancel that. Weekdays, I had to plan in my Filofax when I was going to shit. Seriously.
The maid didn’t take long to work out that Katy had gone.
She came one Sunday morning. I was lying on the sofa watching Sesame Street. I heard the keys, and she entered as if she owned the place. She was not wearing her apron.
She locked the door behind her, walked over to me as though I was inanimate, knelt on me, and started massaging my cock with one hand. Big Bird, Ernie and Bert were singing a song about the magic ‘E’ that makes the ‘A’ say its name. I tried to kiss her but she shoved my face back with her hand, and kept it there, her hand coiling me tighter and tighter. She pulled off my T-shirt, and pushed my trousers down with her foot. Athletic girl. She pinched the skin between my balls, like a ring through the nose of an ox, led me to the bedroom, and laid me down on Katy’s side of the bed. She slid out of her pants and knelt on my rib cage. I started unbuttoning her, but she made a tsu-tsuuuu noise, slapped me and dug her fingernails into my scrotum until I capitulated. Then she spoke, for the first, and almost the last, time.
‘Say: you want me, you don’t want Katty Bitch.’
‘Yeah, I do.’
‘Say!’
‘I want you, I don’t want her.’
‘Say. Katty Bitch is bitch trash, I am real woman.’
I can’t say that.
Still keeping my testicles hostage, she pulled off her top with one hand, and unclipped her bra. I heard her giggling in the other room. Her nipples rose and darkened like something in a tale.
‘She was a bitch. Trash. You are a real woman.’
‘You would give money. You would give her stuff. All of it. A present.’
‘She took a lot back with her.’
‘She left much things. Mine now. Say it.’ Her hand slid up my shaft, tighter and tighter.
‘It’s yours now.’
She put my hand onto her breast. ‘Say: You stronger than me.’
‘You are stronger than me.’
Formalities, rituals and contract-signing over, she lunged down on me. For a fraction of a second I thought about contraception, but the warmth and wetness and rhythm nudged me further and further away.
Once I tried to get on top, but she bit me and elbowed me and rolled me back over.
Afterwards the fan droned on our bodies. Nothing left of all that fire but the smell of low tide. I felt... I don’t know what I felt. Maybe I felt nothing. The theme music of Sesame Street played itself out.
She got up, and sat down at Katy’s dressing table. She opened the drawer, and took out a coral necklace, and fastened it around her neck. Slenderer than Katy’s.
I wanted her again. This was costing me more than money, so I may as well push for maximum value and damn myself properly. I got up and fucked her from behind, on the dressing table. We broke the mirror.
Sex with the maid became a drug. Once pricked, I was addicted. I thought about her at work. When I got back in the evening, my erection would start even as I inserted my key. If I could smell Katy’s cologne in the entrance hall, it would mean she was waiting. If not, well, if not, I’d have to make do with whisky. Hugo Hamish and Theo at the office tried to persuade me to go drinking at Mad Dogs a few times, thinking I was cut up about Katy, but the truth is, she didn’t cross my mind that often. She was living in another compartment, and I didn’t have to encounter her unless I went looking for her. The maid was different: she came looking for me.