here we are
hulk: the main part of an object i.e. ship which is no longer used. One that is bulky or unwieldy; to move ponderously; to loom
together at last
hulk: big green monster with stretchy pants and rage issues and here
now
Can’t put it off, could just go, walk away, but he texted me, he contacted me, I am in his awareness he will remember that I didn’t show or will he?
Will he not in fact remember that he went to Rialto Bridge and perhaps we met and perhaps we spoke and perhaps it was wonderful and he forgot so really I could go now, and maybe his fantasy will be better than the reality what did anyone expect and
he turned, standing at the top of the bridge, and saw me, and recognised me.
Not, perhaps, me.
Words that described me. Black is the colour of my true love’s hair, her lips are like some roses fair…
If he didn’t guess who I was before, he knows now, I am staring at him and can’t look away, and he sees the truth of it, and doesn’t move, and neither do I, both deciding perhaps if we’re gonna bolt
a moveable bar or rod
a part of the lock
a sudden dash
flight
escape
desertion
a length of woven goods from the loom
woven goods, 
, a bolt of cloth, measure word, Chinese uses measure words whenever counting, most commonly 
also 
shitty shit what the fuck am I doing here
I can’t move, feet frozen in place, so he comes down to me.
“Hello,” says Luca Evard. “You must be Hope.”
Chapter 87
A café near Hotel Madellena.
He’s already paying by the time I notice.
No, I say, no, I’ll get it.
Too late, he’s bought the drinks, but thank you. He has never had a thief offer to buy him a cup of coffee before.
We sit. Checked red and white tablecloth. Luca put a packet of brown sugar in his coffee, stirred, anti-clockwise, four times, tapped the spoon twice, held the cup by its little handle, sipped, almost slurped, head rolling back, put the cup down, the liquid drained.
I watched all this, as a supplicant might watch a priest, then looked slowly from the prophetic grains of coffee left behind in the cup to Luca’s more eloquent face.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello.”
Silence a while.
Then at last, “I have a Dictaphone.”
“That’s fine.”
“Good. I’m… good.”
He laid the recorder on the table, digital, a single red light to show that you were winning, a USB portal at the back.
Silence.
At last, a laugh, a shake of his head. “I am being a bad policeman,” he said, “but now that we’re here, I’m really not sure what I want to say.”
I shrugged, and then to fill the silence chose bad words. “I heard you left Interpol.”
His head rose like a dog starting at the sound of a gun, and his bottom lip curled in and out before saying, quiet, “Sacked. Not left. Though the time was coming, I suppose.”
“Was it me?”
“Yes. You were part of it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
“Yes. I didn’t mean… sorry.”
Confusion; now that we’re here, nothing is what he imagined. Then leaning forward, hands palm-down on the table, pushing into it as if the world might drop away beneath him, holding on for dear life. “Did I ever arrest you?”
“Yes, once, in Vienna.”
He slapped the table top hard, leant back in his chair, shaking his head. “I knew it! All the notes, the paperwork, your fingerprints! We had it all but no one could remember — I thought it was a clerical error but the error was so big, it was all so neat, so perfect, in the end we let it go because thinking about how it had happened was more awkward than ignoring it, I told them, I said that we… how did I do it? How did I catch you?”
“You pretended to be a potential buyer.”
“I tried that several times, but it never…”
“It did. In Vienna I fell for it.”
“And how did you…?” He gestured feebly, looking for a word.
“You left me alone in the interview room. I waited for a while, then demanded to be released. Since the duty officer couldn’t remember who I was, he assumed I was what I claimed to be and let me go. Like you said, it’s sometimes more awkward to deal with a thing than to pretend it doesn’t exist.”
“So you just walked out of there.”
“Yeah.”
He let out of a puff of breath, a smile on his face, an injured man vindicated at last, justice, your honour, justice to the wronged.
“And any other time? Did I catch you in Brazil, or Oman?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“What about Hong Kong? The file, the information I received…”
“Yes, that was me.”
“Why?” The question burns, he shakes with the releasing of it, so many years, and now, the Dictaphone between us, his fingers white where they press into the table top.
I shrugged. “My buyer betrayed me, tried to have me killed. It seemed like a kind of… justice, I guess. And I wanted you to come to Hong Kong. I wanted you to be near me, You seemed like a good man. Sounds daft now.” A half truth, a half sentence, stopping myself short, frightened of everything the truth might mean, the truth of me, I am Hope, I am thief, I am stalker, I am the stranger you can’t remember kissing.
He leant back in his chair, fingers clinging now to the edge of the table, a climber just holding on. “In Hong Kong… no,” he stopped himself. “That’s not the order of things. A year ago I was contacted by the man you call Gauguin. He’d pulled some strings, seen the Vienna file, matched fingerprints he had from Dubai to your file. He said, ‘Look, you have her fingerprints, the paperwork from her arrest, you arrested this woman and now you can’t remember her.’ He was very persuasive. And I thought back through your crimes, and I thought back to São Paulo, Hong Kong, places where I’d followed you and where things had seemed… strange. In Hong Kong there was a night when I woke and there was lipstick on my neck. I hadn’t… but there it was and I thought… it was madness of course, but I checked the CCTV, saw… and there you were. I had to put your photo on the computer screen, tape it on to compare your face, but I knew, because I couldn’t remember you. We went into the elevator together. You were limping, I assume…”
“I’d been shot on Hung Hom Pier, yes. Said it was an accident at work.”
“And I believed that?”
“I don’t think you were expecting a thief to say hello. I’d approached you in São Paulo, I knew—”
“What did you do in São Paulo?” Incredulity, rage, beginning to rise, but he’s keeping it under control, just, pulling back the tempest.
“Nothing. We had a drink.”
“We had a drink?” The fingers of one hand grip white against the table, then jerk up, as if stung, hang for a second in the air between us, and for a moment I don’t know if he’s going to hit me or not.
Then there it is, the copper’s sigh, getting control of himself, pulling it all back together, jaw tight, eyes narrow.
“We had a drink,” I repeated. “I pretended to be a policewoman from the local service. It was just a drink.”
“Why?”
“You were…”
“Investigating? A good man?” The words came out edged with bile, and he heard it, and half closed his eyes again, and when they opened again he was calm, flat, listening, a cop on the job.