Then, as an unidentifiable hollow feeling swelled, knowing my stay would be short, I nonetheless decided to sidetrack myself by taking my time to examine this place as I didn’t feel like taking a nap at that moment, perhaps I was anxious, and I moved forward and plopped down on a linen sofa I found right next to the staircase, sitting right between a skinny lady with a plump nose leaning against the arm of the sofa and a reliable-looking, blue-eyed gentleman with an anticlimactic hairy mole on his protruding square chin that was seemingly even longer than his nose.
It seemed to me they were both pondering over something serious enough to give them a meditating look when I became the third men sitting. I knew I shouldn’t disturb, but there was something about this lady with this familiar plump nose. And soon it occurred to me that I might have met her before but my memory was blurred. And for that, I just can’t help gazing at her like a retarded.
“Are you ok?” the gentleman on my left gave me a strong poke at my arm and asked, in a low gruff voice that imperfectly blended in with his cold tone.
I had never expected him to notice my peculiar behavior, hence I could only call forth an astounded face with interestingly broadened eyes to deal with his sulky facial expressions. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Would you please stop staring at her like that?” he demanded, stressing the word ‘please’.
But before I could even move my tongue, “”(Hey, it’s okay, darling.) the lady, who quited thinking at the right time, said. “我識佢架。” (I know him.)
I was baffled. I bet she was telling him to chill out, and so I scrutinized her face again and spoke out my mind. “Lady, have we met before?”
“Yes,” the man said quickly, the same old cold tone, giving her no room to speak.
“The mask?” I continued without averting my eyes despite the slight surprise I got from his quickness, making two open C-shapes with my forefingers and thumbs, bringing my forefingers close to my nose and placing my thumbs exactly on my chin.
And then they conferred about something in their language again, though I felt like they were just slurring non-stop.
“The mask,” the man repeated.
“The mask!?”
“The mask.”
“I remember now, you were wearing glasses back in the hotel! Thank you for your help. The mask you gave me helped me a lot. And I’m honestly sorry for what I’ve done to you. Please forgive me,” I said, as a thought that extinguished my urge to apologize dawned on me. “But wait. Wait a minute. You’re the hotel staff. And so I suppose you are from around here. And that means you are not a foreigner. So, why are you here? You are one of – them?”
“Won’t be here if we are not,” the man responded as quickly as he just did.
I turned round to face the man. “What do you mean? Aren’t most of us here foreigners trying to escape?”
“Yeah, I am… pretty sure… they are,” he drawled hesitantly while blinking like there was a gritty grain of sand in his eyes and pointed to the two men on the other side of the house standing and chit-chatting by a closed window overlooking the front.
One of them had his elbow rested upon an iron bar extended from the bottom corner of the window. He was of the height of an average man and was observably a beach-goer. Tanned and fit, wearing jean shorts and a tight plain black T-shirt that highlighted his muscles, I wouldn’t be too surprised if he told me he had fought a lion before.
“That’s Ryson you are looking at,” the man continued. “By the way, I am Frederick.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Ashton.”
“She is Ciara. My fiancée.”
And I got to my feet immediately like the sofa was made of lava and remembered the feeling I had when Aaron looked at Oli. With my glance fixated upon him, “Sorry, I didn’t know,” I apologized, feeling embarrassed, probably because I could somehow comprehend what it’s like when some stranger was staring at my fiancée.
Then I remember I saw him suddenly began biting his lower lip quickly like he was waiting for his wife to deliver, with all his fingers interlocked at the tips, left thumb covering over right, and “don’t be,” he said, gazing at somewhere blankly, with a terribly flat tone that failed to tuck away whatever that was going on inside his mind, and pulled out a thoughtful grin as though he was facing a dilemma so that there was a strange atmosphere that hadn’t been there before springing up.
And I could tell from his distraught look he was really thinking over something very serious and heavy as he had bitten his lip so hard that I had actually worried he would hurt himself, and even at the moments which he wasn’t biting, he would shrink slightly and flinch. And after all the little movements, he finally looked at me and said, “Can I have a private moment with my fiancée?”
“Well. Why not?”
Of course, the whole conversation we had back then wasn’t quite a happy one and I was perplexed by his sudden nervousness. So, when I had bumped into him somewhere around a kitchen in the house on that same day I met Alvin, I immediately asked him about this. He didn’t remember what I was referring to at first, but after I had waylaid him for about an hour, he did say this, “Tell me, Ashton. Have you ever had that feeling? That feeling when you try to cover up the truth after telling someone something you’re not supposed to tell?” I didn’t say anything regarding this and kept on chatting about something trivial with him on that day until he had to go, and I have never seen him since then. And although I would love to know what had happened to him after he had been abducted, I was never able to ask.
Anyway at that time, I had once thought that whatever that was going on in his mind must have something to do with me. But however onerous I tried to dig deep into my memory and look for clues, I just couldn’t come up with anything. Therefore I simply walked away.
And I strolled toward the two men. The man talking to Ryson was so much shorter and thinner than him that he actually looked like a trunk of a young maple tree from behind. I couldn’t see his face as he was facing Ryson, but I could picture him being a handsome man as he had brownish curly hair that I had always dreamed of owning.
When I was close enough to speak, “Hi,” I said.
The shorter guy then turned to me in a way like he was performing ballet, partly ostentatiously, partly enthusiastically. “Hi,” he, who turned out to be an Asian with dyed hair, said, with a smile that was as amiable as Kaylen’s but looked a little bit more like smirking, dimpling his cheeks.
“Nervous?” I asked.
Shortly after they exchanged a strange look, Ryson replied, “Hmm. A little. You? Are you nervous?”
And I noticed that when he spoke, he tended to pull the corners of his mouth down with some jaw movements and there were some sounds going through his nose.
“You guys are from Mexico?” I asked.
“Good try, but wrong guess,” Ryson said.
I had expected him to go on to explain more and so never made a second attempt, but they seemed shy, fidgeting with red faces and hands in trousers pockets, and I figured maybe they just didn’t want me here.
“Oh, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” I said.
And they laughed at the same time perfunctorily, giving each other another strange look, throwing me some hasty glances occasionally, and kept on laughing for quite a relatively lengthy moment until I found it incomprehensible and rather annoying.