by Anna Ferrara
“Of course,” I said to C39’s girlfriend. “Men in Hong Kong don’t like their women being taller than them so you see where I have a problem?”
Her grin returned and she shrugged. “But you don’t have the same problem with the women, right?”
“Oh yes I do. Most girls want friends who are about the same height as them so they can look nice as a group. And they want friends men like to look at so that those same men will, in turn, take notice of them. I never fit the bill. Never.”
“That’s stupid. I think you’re a very nice height, Sandra Sum. You fit all my bills.” She looked right into my eyes and smiled. Beautifully.
I felt... weird when she did that; mostly because it made me feel... pretty good. I always thought myself as an oddity—too tall, too smart, too Western, too Asian, too single, too anti-social, too un-feminine—and no other woman had ever challenged that opinion of myself until... she did. My heart swelled with joy but I quickly reminded myself she was a practised liar and therefore likely a practised manipulator too. Why else would I be feeling that good all of a sudden? Apprehension returned underneath my skin and since I found myself unable to hold my eyes in hers without going into a panic, I looked away. “I think you’re a real sweetheart, Milla Smith,” I said to the flat plastic top of my Frappuccino. “Which is why I absolutely don’t get why you don’t have a boyfriend.”
I heard her chuckle. “Well... I think it’s pretty obvious I don’t want one, isn’t it?”
“No it’s not. When was the last time you had a boyfriend anyway?”
“Uh, a couple months back? That was when I figured a boyfriend was never ever going to work out for me. What about you? When was the last time you had... someone you loved?”
Damn. Seriously? Was I really going to have to tell her the truth about that? Her? I hadn’t spoken about my love life in years and had I the choice, I wouldn’t have spoken about it ever with her or any other subject. My cheeks began to burn and I only managed a few fleeting glances in her general direction. “Promise you won’t laugh.”
C39’s girlfriend laughed at once. “Why would I?”
“You’re laughing already!”
“Am I? Okay, okay, I’ll stop now.” She removed the grin from her face and gave me a deadpan. “So tell me.”
Her voice was excessively grave and her face was like Eeyore personified; I took one good look at her and burst into giggles which made her crack up with laughter yet again. We laughed together, so hard and for so long, the people at the tables around us glanced over and grinned too.
“Okay, fine,” I said when I finally managed to get myself together. “It was eight years ago. We dated all through college because we lived in the same hostel but once we graduated and needed to actually travel to visit each other, we both kinda realised we weren’t all that interested in making the effort. So we broke up.”
C39’s girlfriend pushed her unfinished Frappuccino aside and leaned in. “What made you fall in love with... that person in the first place?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Immaturity, maybe? Ignorance?” I stopped after I said those words because my honesty surprised me. I never felt comfortable talking about my feelings for Jackson, not even with my mother (and my mother had spent a good half a year trying to get it out of me but I never shared a thing) so I didn’t understand why I would be telling it to C39’s girlfriend. She was lying to me, possibly manipulating me, I should have just ended at ‘I don’t know’ yet I didn’t. There was just something about the way she looked at me that made me feel like she would... understand; even if she was a lying, manipulative, daughter of a mob boss. “He was... the only guy who ever asked me out on a date and the only guy who ever asked me to be with him so I guess I just grabbed the opportunity by the balls. I was just afraid I would never get another chance, and... well, who knows, maybe I was right because there hasn’t been another one since.”
I laughed but this time, C39’s girlfriend didn’t laugh along. She pulled her Frappuccino’s plastic cup back in front of her and began swirling its murky contents with its green straw somewhat absentmindedly. “Was there... anybody else? A... different sort of person... maybe?”
“No. He was the only one. I’d be lucky if I get another guy asking me out before the end of the millennium, I think.”
When C39’s girlfriend looked up from her Frappucino, all I could see was confusion.
“What?”
She looked away, removed the look of confusion from her face and said, “Nothing. Anyway, how’s that story of yours coming along? Learned anything new from the hospital’s report?”
“Not much. The photo department is still working on getting the photos developed. I’ve been trying to get the Hong Kong Immigration Department to give me information but all they’ve said so far is that they need to ask for approval so... I don’t even know where to start. It’s like my life is on standstill until other people get back to me with what I need to move along.”
A smile curled across C39’s girlfriend’s lips and she began smiling at me again. “You know, that’s exactly how I feel.”
“Why?”
She didn’t say but seemed to vanish into her own thoughts even as her eyes remained on mine. A tenderness appeared all over her face and her eyes became glassier than normal.
“What?” I said, after I realised my heart was beating faster than ever and nothing I was doing with my mind was able to slow it down.
“Nothing,” she said, as if she had only just realised she had been staring. She looked away. “Hey let’s go do that thing.” She pointed at the multi-coloured, sparkle and flower-covered photo booth outside the Hello Kitty cafe that was blasting cute anime music and Japanese phrases I didn’t understand.
It was the sort of photo booth that gave you tiny photo stickers with kiddie borders, unrealistic backdrops and cartoonish cosmetic enhancements. “Neoprint? That’s for lovers, or teenage girls!”
“Yeah, precisely why we should be doing it! Come on!”
“We’re way too old to be behaving like teenage girls, Milla!”
She didn’t care; she grabbed me by the hand and dragged me over to the booth. I found myself smiling when she did so; C39’s girlfriend felt a little like the female friend I always wished I could have, but never managed to find.
When I remembered all the other things I knew about her, however, I reminded myself to be careful and on guard at all times.
Chapter 9
30 Jun 1999, Wednesday
I needed to see what C39’s girlfriend would get up to when not with me so I told her, as we parted after our Big Buddha outing, that I would be busy with work till the weekend. What I didn’t say was that work for me was watching her go about her day from morning till night.
My first report on the assignment, which I worked on and sent off the Sunday after our Luk Kee Tea House trip, hadn’t been very substantial. All I had to report was that C39’s girlfriend was lying about her relationship with him, her name and also her place of residence. I couldn’t say why though. The eraser-sized camera I left under the chair on the ninth floor of King George Hospital for four days didn’t catch anything of interest so I couldn’t do anything with its MultiMediaCard. I did see the police going into Ward 912 a few times but they didn’t speak, didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. C39’s girlfriend and her posse never went back so there was nothing about that either.
I knew I was going to have to do much better if I was going to convince my office that I was worthy of a promotion so I spent the day after our Big Buddha outing with my tripod and video camera set on record and my binoculars over my face. I had breakfast and lunch—instant coffee, a packet of bun from 7-11 and Cup Noodles, as always—with my eyes on C39’s girlfriend’s apartment the whole time. It was like eating in front of the TV, only in this show, there wasn’t all that much to see.
Even though it was a Wednesday, a working day for most people, C39’s girlfriend didn�
��t do all that much. She remained in her bedroom with the curtains drawn till noon then shuffled out in her pyjamas and a mess of uncombed hair to cook herself a plate of scrambled eggs and toast which she ate on her living room’s sofa while in some sort of a daze. It was all boring and uneventful—so I moisturised my hands and entire body with my new bottle of moisturiser while I waited—until she tossed her plate aside and went to stand next to the black cordless phone set she had on one of the white shelves in her living room. There, she chewed down her nails and stared blankly at the phone set for a good fifteen minutes or so.
That got me interested. I could tell something was up and I was dying to know what. Planning to go see C39? Planning a hit? A crime? Or... what?
She lifted the cordless handset from its charging dock and held it in her hand for another ten minutes. During that time, she alternated between staring hard at it and sighing with her eyes on the ceiling.
I had my binoculars pressed against my window’s glass at that point; I couldn’t wait to see what she’d do next. I could tell there was something she wanted to do that she didn’t quite dare to; likely something drastic, given the amount of time she was taking to deliberate doing it.
What? Who are you planning to call, Milla? C39? The men who keep C39 locked up? The 81M men? Your father’s men? My hidden cameras wouldn’t record audio—they were too small for the microphones of that time—so I kept my eyes on her lips and prepared myself to read what she might say. I wasn’t afraid of missing a word; five whole years of lip-reading while on the C31 assignment had turned me into an expert lip reader. All I needed was for C39’s girlfriend to remain where she was, with her back to the wall and her face to the window, and I would be able to get the job done.
After what seemed like forever, C39’s girlfriend brought the handset up to her face and punched in a number.
I watched and I waited and I didn’t dare blink.
She put the handset to her ear with one hand and put the other hand over her mouth. She looked like she was taking little deep breaths, a little like those I would take to calm myself down, and looked almost... petrified.
I leaned in, pushed my binoculars all the way to the surface of the window pane, then jumped when my Nokia’s high-pitched repetitive ringtone suddenly forced its way into the silence I had been sitting in.
In the emptiness of my new apartment’s bedroom, the noise bounced all over the walls and sounded wholly deafening. Shit! I can’t pick up now, Alpha! I thought. I kept my eyes on the hand C39’s girlfriend had over her mouth and didn’t even turn to look at the Nokia lying on the floor next to my floor-top computer.
C39’s girlfriend didn’t remove her hand from her mouth. She stood as still as stone with the handset on her ear.
Is she talking yet? Is she talking under her hand? I couldn’t tell. Lip-reading proficiency is useless if you can’t actually see a person’s lips. I frowned and stared at the back of her hand, all while willing the exasperating ringtone to end.
C39’s girlfriend removed her hand from her mouth and began pacing the space in front of her big screen TV like she was getting impatient. Her lips didn’t move; I couldn’t tell if she was listening to a person talk or just waiting for the call to connect.
My Nokia stopped ringing. I was relieved, glad to be back in familiar silence again, until I saw—
—C39’s girlfriend removing the handset from her ear exactly a second later and pressing on a button at the top of her handset’s keypad—likely the ‘Redial’ button. When she put the handset back to her ear—
—my Nokia began ringing all over again.
I froze and stared at her whilst my heart began trying to beat its way out of my chest. Is it what I...
My Nokia kept on ringing.
C39’s girlfriend kept on pacing.
Oh my goodness. I forced myself to take in a long, deep breath, did that whole visualisation of calm thing Benny had taught me, then set the suddenly heavy binoculars in my hands down on the floor. The parts of the binoculars my palms touched were shiny with sweat; I wiped my damp palms down and went to kneel in front of my Nokia.
Its blinking screen informed me an ‘Unknown Number’ was calling.
That could still be Alpha, right? Coincidences did happen, did they not? They did, I decided, but I still needed to take precautions. I went to my floor-top computer, pulled it out of its sleep, and clicked on the folder of ‘Sounds’ I had buried in the depths of my ‘Documents’ folder.
I scrolled through the many MP3 files in it and clicked on the one labelled ‘Office Chaos.mp3’.
Vague human murmurings appeared in the empty room the moment I did so; I heard phones ringing in the distance, paper fluttering close by and a fax machine somewhere trying to connect to send a fax out. Perfect. I put the phone to my ear and pressed the button with the green phone symbol on it to answer.
“Hello?” I sounded flustered.
“Sandra?”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Milla. Just... calling to see if the number you gave me works.”
“What?”
“Yeah... Anyway, is this a good time?”
“Not exactly, I’m kinda in the middle of... work right now…” I went back to my window and put my binoculars back in front of my eyes.
She was standing right in front of her window now, holding on to her window pane as if she wouldn’t be able to keep herself up without it. “Sorry, I’ll be quick. I uh... I just moved into a new apartment because a friend wanted me to... house-sit and I was just wondering if you’d like to come over and have dinner with me? Tonight? I could cook you some American cuisine to... thank you for... showing me around and taking me out to dinner.” She dropped her head against the window pane and winced as if telling me all those things was just about the most painful thing she ever had to do. Her face was now as red as a cooked lobster too.
I began to feel as traumatised as she looked. For some reason, her nervousness was contagious; it crossed the distance between our apartment buildings and touched down on my skin. The hairs on my arm stood and my knees became wobbly. I told her it sounded nice (even though it really didn’t) but, “I’d be preoccupied with work till evening so…”
“It’s okay, I can wait, no hurry, whenever you’re done.”
“Okay. Well, how about... eight? Tonight?”
“That’s perfect. Do you have a pen and paper on you right now? I’ll give you the address?”
“Yeah, wait, let me get it…”
I remained by my window with my binoculars over my eyes and watched her turn her back to the window and slide down with her back against it as if she couldn’t keep herself standing a minute longer.
“Uh huh,” I said when enough time had passed. “Go ahead.”
C39’s girlfriend dictated the address of the very unit I was staring at.
I didn’t have to write it down, I already knew it by heart, but I waited for more time to pass so she would think I really was doing so.
In the meantime, I watched her remove herself from the floor and go back to pacing her living room with one hand plastered on the side of her cheek.
“Got it,” I said and frowned.
“Great! I’ll see you tonight!”
“Okay.” I was about to say goodbye but suddenly got a better idea. “Oh, hey, by the way, there’s a wet market just five blocks away from that address. It closes at four but if you go now you should be able to get some really cheap and fresh seafood and meat and stuff. If you need some, that is.”
“That’s just... perfect. It’s like you read my mind. I was planning to go get food after this anyway. How do I get to that market?”
I explained how she could get to the market on foot—a route I knew would take her at least half an hour each way; an hour in total to and fro.
“See you tonight,” I said when she had gotten the route memorised.
“Okay. I’ll see you.” She sounded...
very happy.
We hung up and, to my horror, C39’s girlfriend collapsed, face-down, onto her sofa immediately after. She didn’t move for a long time after that.
I found myself leaning against my own window pane for support when I saw her do that, my nerves all over the place; I didn’t know what to make of what she was doing, what she had done. The tortured expression she had on her face while on the phone with me scared me. What the hell are you up to, Milla Milone? What are you planning on doing to me? Why the hell are you freaking out so much?
An hour later, when C39’s girlfriend peeled herself off her sofa, changed into a casual black dress and left her apartment, I grabbed my Jansport backpack—already stocked with wads of plasticine containing fully-charged cameras that had blank MultiMediaCards in them—and scurried out of my own apartment.
“Beware the tiger with the smiling face,” Benny once said. “You can’t trust a subject, not even when she’s smiling at you.”
I made sure I didn’t.
Ten minutes after C39’s girlfriend embarked on the journey I sent her on, I was back in her apartment swopping the ten hidden cameras with the ones in my Jansport backpack. As I did so, I counted every second that passed in my head. Benny always said ten minutes was the maximum duration an agent was allowed to take on a camera swop mission. I could do a whole apartment in eight by that time but I was bent on becoming even faster because ‘even a hundred-foot-high bamboo can still grow taller’.
That afternoon, I pushed myself as I always did; went that little bit faster, grabbed chairs to climb on, noted once again how useful my natural height was for the job, and replaced the hidden cameras with the artistry of a seasoned furniture mover. I kept the count of seconds going in my head the whole time, finished the living room, dining area, kitchen, second bedroom—still empty—in a comfortable six minutes, but lost my flow the moment I stepped into C39’s girlfriend’s bedroom and caught sight of what was now on the side table next to her bed.
