said.
She was Chinese, I could tell that, but they spoke in Japanese. He had a saxophone case, and a small backpack with airline tags still attached. They could barely have been out of high school. He needed a good long sleep. They didn’t hug or cloy over each other like a lot of Chinese kids do these days. They just held hands over the table. Of course, I didn’t understand a word, but I guessed they were discussing possibilities. They were so happy. Sex twitched in the air between them, which made me think that they hadn’t done it yet. None of that lazy proprietorship which settles in after the first few times.
Right at that moment, if Mephistopheles had genied his way from the greasy ketchup bottle and said, ‘Neal, if I let you be that kid, would you pledge your soul to the Lord of Hell for all eternity?’ I’d have answered, ‘Like a fucking shot I will.’ Nipkid or no Nipkid.
I looked at my Rolex: a quarter past midnight. What life is this?
I was wrong about the sky. It’s not dreary white . . . when you look you see ivory. You can see a glow, there, above the mountain where the sun polishes it pearly and wafer thin.
And the sea isn’t blank, there are islands out there, right at the edge.
Soft brush strokes on a fresh scroll hanging in Mrs Feng’s room, four floors above us.
Ahem. May I remind you, Neal, that you have credit card bills that would make Bill Gates twitch? That your divorce settlement will gouge out most of the money you thought was yours? That lawyers with fingers in the kinds of pies yours are in simply do not miss appointments with Mr Wae. These Taiwanese shipping magnates eat breakfast with politicians powerful enough to make skyscrapers appear and disappear.
Ten seconds before the third bell and the barriers come down! Worry about your existentialist dilemmas during your lunch hour – right, when did I last have a lunch hour? – whenever – but get on that fucking boat right now! I am not telling you again.
A man gallops down the walkway from the shops. Andy Somebody, I know his face slightly from my Lantau polo club period. Not that you can find a single fucking pony on the whole fucking island. His Ralph Lauren tie is flapping like a live snake, his shoelaces are undone, my, Andy Somebody needs to be careful. He might fall and break his crown, and ill Jill’ll hill crumbling after.
‘Stop that boat! Wait!’ My, my, Andy Somebody is Lawrence of Olivier.
Is this how she observes me? This indifference, laced with mockery?
The Chinese barrier guard, most likely the bus driver’s brother’s half-twin stepcousin-in-law flicks his switch and the turnstiles close. Andy Somebody’s flight through the air ends gripping the bars, and he represses the howl of a demented prisoner. ‘Please!’
The Chinese barrier guard makes the faintest gesture with his head at the ‘Boat Departures’ board.
‘Let me through!’
Barrier Guard swishes his head, and he goes back to his coffee booth.
Andy Somebody whinnies, fumbles for his mobile phone, and manages to drop it. He walks away speaking into it to Larry, inventing excuses, and pretending to laugh.
The turbo ferry pulls away from the jetty, and buzzes away into the distance.
I don’t understand you sometimes.
Katy insisted that I didn’t see her off at the airport. Her flight was in the afternoon, it was a manic Friday. My desk at work had become a canyon floor between two unstable formations of contracts. And so the day she left we had taken the bus before my usual one and drank a cup of coffee at the jetty café. That café, there. In the window seat Andy Somebody has pulled out his laptop computer and is hammering the keyboard as though he’s trying to avert a thermonuclear war. Sitting hunched like that is going to knacker his back. Nope, he doesn’t know it, but Andy’s sitting at the very table where Katy and I staged our Grand Farewell.
It was not a Noël Coward Grand Farewell. Neal Brose and Katy Forbes
She was Chinese, I could tell that, but they spoke in Japanese. He had a saxophone case, and a small backpack with airline tags still attached. They could barely have been out of high school. He needed a good long sleep. They didn’t hug or cloy over each other like a lot of Chinese kids do these days. They just held hands over the table. Of course, I didn’t understand a word, but I guessed they were discussing possibilities. They were so happy. Sex twitched in the air between them, which made me think that they hadn’t done it yet. None of that lazy proprietorship which settles in after the first few times.
Right at that moment, if Mephistopheles had genied his way from the greasy ketchup bottle and said, ‘Neal, if I let you be that kid, would you pledge your soul to the Lord of Hell for all eternity?’ I’d have answered, ‘Like a fucking shot I will.’ Nipkid or no Nipkid.
I looked at my Rolex: a quarter past midnight. What life is this?
I was wrong about the sky. It’s not dreary white . . . when you look you see ivory. You can see a glow, there, above the mountain where the sun polishes it pearly and wafer thin.
And the sea isn’t blank, there are islands out there, right at the edge.
Soft brush strokes on a fresh scroll hanging in Mrs Feng’s room, four floors above us.
Ahem. May I remind you, Neal, that you have credit card bills that would make Bill Gates twitch? That your divorce settlement will gouge out most of the money you thought was yours? That lawyers with fingers in the kinds of pies yours are in simply do not miss appointments with Mr Wae. These Taiwanese shipping magnates eat breakfast with politicians powerful enough to make skyscrapers appear and disappear.
Ten seconds before the third bell and the barriers come down! Worry about your existentialist dilemmas during your lunch hour – right, when did I last have a lunch hour? – whenever – but get on that fucking boat right now! I am not telling you again.
A man gallops down the walkway from the shops. Andy Somebody, I know his face slightly from my Lantau polo club period. Not that you can find a single fucking pony on the whole fucking island. His Ralph Lauren tie is flapping like a live snake, his shoelaces are undone, my, Andy Somebody needs to be careful. He might fall and break his crown, and ill Jill’ll hill crumbling after.
‘Stop that boat! Wait!’ My, my, Andy Somebody is Lawrence of Olivier.
Is this how she observes me? This indifference, laced with mockery?
The Chinese barrier guard, most likely the bus driver’s brother’s half-twin stepcousin-in-law flicks his switch and the turnstiles close. Andy Somebody’s flight through the air ends gripping the bars, and he represses the howl of a demented prisoner. ‘Please!’
The Chinese barrier guard makes the faintest gesture with his head at the ‘Boat Departures’ board.
‘Let me through!’
Barrier Guard swishes his head, and he goes back to his coffee booth.
Andy Somebody whinnies, fumbles for his mobile phone, and manages to drop it. He walks away speaking into it to Larry, inventing excuses, and pretending to laugh.
The turbo ferry pulls away from the jetty, and buzzes away into the distance.
I don’t understand you sometimes.
Katy insisted that I didn’t see her off at the airport. Her flight was in the afternoon, it was a manic Friday. My desk at work had become a canyon floor between two unstable formations of contracts. And so the day she left we had taken the bus before my usual one and drank a cup of coffee at the jetty café. That café, there. In the window seat Andy Somebody has pulled out his laptop computer and is hammering the keyboard as though he’s trying to avert a thermonuclear war. Sitting hunched like that is going to knacker his back. Nope, he doesn’t know it, but Andy’s sitting at the very table where Katy and I staged our Grand Farewell.
It was not a Noël Coward Grand Farewell. Neal Brose and Katy Forbes
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