She found her mother in the casino, sitting at the baccarat table with a stack of twenty-five-dollar chips in front of her.
“I have to leave,” Ava said. “Uncle just called. We have a client in Wuhan who needs us.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Your father won’t be happy.”
“I spoke to him first and asked his permission. He told me to go.”
Her mother shook her head. “You can’t leave me alone with them.”
“Marian and the girls love you to death. And Daddy is still here.”
“You are the only one who understands me.”
You mean who tolerates you, Ava thought. “That’s not true,” she said.
“Stay until we get back to Miami.”
“I can’t. It’s a crisis.”
Her mother stared at her. When Ava didn’t capitulate, she said, “I think Bruce may try to throw me into the sea somewhere between here and Miami.”
“He probably thinks the same of you.”
Her mother continued playing while she talked to Ava, her stack growing larger as she doubled her bet on the banker. When she won, she doubled her bet again, with success. “I suppose I can’t stop you from leaving, can I?”
“No.”
“Well, have a safe trip and call me whenever you can.”
“I need you to do something for me,” Ava said.
“What?”
“My clothes — I brought this ridiculous suitcase with me and I have all these clothes that I can’t wear anywhere else. Can you take them back to Toronto for me?”
“What will you wear?”
“I’ll take my running gear, some T-shirts, my toiletries, and some jewellery. I’ll throw everything in my carry-on. I can buy some business clothes when I get to Hong Kong. I need some new things anyway.”
Her mother sighed and passed her room key to Ava. “Leave your case in my room.”
Ava leaned over to kiss her mother on the forehead.
“Be careful,” Jennie said.
Ava went to her room and turned on her laptop. She found a flight that landed at eight a.m. in Hong Kong with a stop in Newark. She booked it and then called Uncle. He didn’t react when she told him she was coming, and she knew he had probably expected nothing less.
“There is an early Dragonair flight from Hong Kong to Wuhan,” he said.
“No, Uncle, I’m sorry. I have no business clothes with me and I need to shop. See if you can book something for later in the day.”
“Where do you want to shop?”
“There’s a Brooks Brothers store in Tsim Sha Tsui,” she said, knowing that his Kowloon apartment was no more than ten minutes from the popular shopping district and tourist destination.
“I will send Sonny to meet you at the airport. He will take you wherever you need to go. Wong will have to wait.” Uncle paused. “I hear that his wife is very attractive and a real power in their business. They should know that we have the whole package too.”
(2)
There was no Wi-Fi at Curacao’s Hato airport but there was an Internet cafe, where Ava bought fifteen minutes of time. She emailed Mimi to let her know about her change in plans. The two women had been friends since meeting at Havergal College, a private girls’ high school in Toronto, and there wasn’t much they didn’t know about each other.
In recent months Ava had had some worries about their friendship. Mimi had fallen in love with Derek Liang, Ava’s best male friend and at times associate, when she needed the extra muscle. Like her, he practised bak mei, an ancient and lethal martial art that was taught strictly one on one. Their teacher, Grandmaster Tang, had introduced them to each other; they were his only two students in the discipline. Derek joked that the Grandmaster had dreamed they would one day produce a baby he could turn into the perfect fighting machine. Instead they had become friends, and occasionally employer and employee.
Ava had inadvertently brought Mimi and Derek together, not anticipating that the two would fall so hard for each other. Within days of meeting they had moved in together. As it turned out, Ava’s concerns about how their relationship would affect her friendship with Mimi had been unfounded. Mimi was as available and open as she had ever been. The only negatives were that Ava had to listen to Mimi’s graphic descriptions of their sex life, and so long as they were together, she didn’t feel she could ask Derek to work with her. Over the years they had confronted knives and guns and chains and even been outnumbered by three or four men. Now she didn’t see how she could put Derek at risk, knowing how devastated Mimi would be if anything happened to him. I can’t, she thought, and she closed her email by writing and give Derek a big kiss for me.
Ava thought about phoning Maria but sent an email instead. For someone who was so beautiful and intelligent, there was something almost heartbreakingly simple about the girl. When they were together, Maria was unfailingly buoyant, but the second that Ava left her side she was overwhelmed by waves of self-doubt.
“You need to have more trust,” Ava told her.
“You don’t understand,” Maria said, her voice quivering. “I lived at home in Bogota before I came here to Toronto. I have never been apart from my family, and my very Catholic family — especially my mother — would never have accepted my sexuality. So I led a life of secrets. I hid my true self. It’s only now, living in a city where I’m anonymous, that I’ve finally been able to be open.”
When Ava told this to Mimi, her friend said, “You need to give her more time. She’s still learning how to be in a relationship.”
“What scares me is her intensity. I’m not ready to commit to being a life partner.”
“Has she asked you to be one?”
“No.”
“Then enjoy her. Let things develop. There’s so much to love about that girl.”
Yes, there is, Ava thought as she sat at her computer and wrote: I have to go to Hong Kong and then China on business. I’ve been forced to cut short the cruise. I’m not sure when I’ll be back. I’ll email when I can. Don’t worry, everything is fine. Love, Ava.
She left the cafe and walked to the departures gate to catch her flight to Newark. As a rule, Ava avoided American airlines, but there was no way to get out of Curacao that made sense other than flying on Continental. She thought business class might be passable. It was — barely.
The flight at least landed on time, and once she had cleared Customs she boarded a Qantas flight that would take her directly to Hong Kong. Business class was only a third occupied and Ava had no one sitting next to her. She declined dinner, drank three glasses of Pinot Grigio, and then slept for the next eight hours. When she awoke, she ate a bowl of noodles and then debated whether to go online to research Wong Changxing or watch a Gong Li film. She opted for Gong Li.
The airline was screening both Raise the Red Lantern and To Live. She watched To Live first, quietly weeping three or four times during the movie. It was a powerful film, set in China during the tumultuous decades of the Cultural Revolution, that followed a land-owning couple and their descent into poverty. Li was at its core, her life a continuing tragedy that she bore with courage and tenacity. Ava couldn’t help but think of Wuhan as she watched. It wasn’t that long ago that it had been at the epicentre of the Cultural Revolution and women like Gong Li were going through hell.
Ava had never seen a Chinese actress as good as Gong Li, and Raise the Red Lantern only confirmed her opinion. Set in the 1920s, the film told the story of a young woman who becomes the fourth wife of a wealthy Chinese man at the head of a powerful family. In Ava’s mind the story was timeless, and she never watched it without thinking about her mother. Her father didn’t house all his families in a compound, but not much else had changed in terms of the essential relationship between the man and the women.
As the film ended, the plane began its slow descent over the South China Sea to Chek Lap Kok, the man-made island where Hong Kong’s airport was located. It was an overcast day and Ava couldn’t see the water below until they cleared the cloud cover. By then they were nearing land, and the ocean traffic was thick with fishing boats heading in and out, sampans that doubled as homes for families and their import/export businesses, and hundreds of ocean freighters sitting patiently offshore, waiting to be towed into Hong Kong Harbour to load or unload the containers stacked three and four high on deck. Kwai Chung Container Terminal was the largest port in Asia, and one of the largest in the world.