by Jason Y. Ng
Oh yes, he will. He thinks you are paralyzed by his charm. He needs to prove that. He needs to nourish his ego with unconditional forgiveness from a vengeful whore. He needs to watch tears well up in your eyes.
The voice was right.
“I thought you were bouncing at the mahjong school tonight,” I said.
Kit Zai’s a cop, now a victim of the newly established anticorruption agency, ICAC. Unlike its numerous predecessors which would go away after getting paid, the ICAC seems to mean business, and has caused a financial crisis in the force. Many, especially plainclothes detectives like Kit, have started bouncing at nightclubs and gambling dens and whatever to sustain a lifestyle they had long taken for granted. The same mix of cops and thugs are now hanging out at the same dumps under a different symbiotic arrangement. A comedian once suggested solving the triad problem by recruiting more police: The law of conservation tells us that having one more cop means one less thug on the street.
“Hardly anyone there so the boss asked everyone to go. The boys went for food and drinks, but I thought I’d come to see you instead. Romantic, huh?”
“I’m touched. Where’re the flowers? For your information, Ah Miu’s not home yet.”
“Come on, be nice!” He appeared more pleased than surprised that I had brought up Miu. “That was only a one-time thing which you have no proof of.”
Listen! He confessed! He called it a one-time thing. That means they did it more than once!
I smiled sweetly. I’m a pro in smiling sweetly.
“Lawyers call it allegation, you know, based on circumstantial evidence. It doesn’t count. Hong Kong’s a lawful place now, Feng baby. Even we need evidence before charging anyone. Yesterday, my inspector told us no more forced signatures on blank statements or bathroom beatings until further notice. Otherwise, we’re on our own. Imagine. Crime rate’s gonna soar.” He winked and showed his straight white teeth.
He was technically right. I had come home unexpectedly one afternoon exactly twenty-two days ago. I was supposed to be swimming at Tai Wan Shan, the new modern government pool everyone talks about. It was closed for emergency maintenance so I took the bus back. I suppose it was one of those bad luck cases designed by God to trap multiple victims at the wrong time in the wrong place. I thought I heard a hushed confusion inside as I unlocked the door and the triple-bolted gate. Her room was closed. This early? He was “napping” in mine, a bedcover pulled over his lower body. Aha. I yanked it away. He was in his briefs.
“Are you not warm?” I asked. The noisy air con in my room wasn’t even on.
“Hmm . . .”
Sure, Kit, you’re drowsy all right. I’m a much better detective than you lot.
I noticed a wet spot on his underwear. I quickly yanked them down before he could protest. A condom was semi-attached to his limp little brother. “Why are you wearing a condom?”
“What? Am I?” he said blearily, eyes half-closed. What a stupid response, so unlike him. Pathetic. His mind must have had gone blank, or frozen.
But mine wasn’t. I didn’t push. I went to the kitchen for a glass of water, to think.
I saw the chopper, but quickly decided against using it. I didn’t want to slice him up, partly because he had a gun. What about Ah Miu? I had always known her to be streetwise but brain stupid, but to do this behind my back? With Kit Zai? Right here? Why? What for? A real orgasm? To hurt me? Come to think of it, I shouldn’t have bragged to her about Kit. Whatever her reasons, the betrayal is infuriating, yet forgettable if unforgivable. I’ll get her, no hurry. Perhaps Bull Dog and his boys will give her a good gang bang, one that she’ll never forget. But right that moment, I had to play dumb and pretend nothing had happened.
When I returned to my room, he had put his pants on. I wondered if he was still wearing the condom. He lit a cigarette, and said he’d had a long shift, someone got stabbed a few times, bled to death in the gutter, a 14K Red Staff Warrior, one of Broken Tooth’s boys, and . . .
I didn’t register the rest of his diabolical bullshit. The blood in my head was roaring, but my mind was still somehow calm and calculating.
Hey, nothing happened.
What other option anyways? It’d be stupid to push him into a corner.
That’s right. Nothing happened. Not yet.
He lit another cigarette with the butt before stubbing it in the ashtray. I smiled sweetly.
* * *
Everyone in our marginal world has stained teeth, panda eyes, and liver-colored smudges on their lips. They are marks of our lowlifestyle. But Kit’s teeth are sparkling white despite two packs of cigarettes a day. His lips are red and plump and fresh-looking, though he does have dark circles around his eyes. I loved kissing them, probably still do if we ever kiss again. You see, I only sell parts of my body, parts that good girls regard as sacred and untouchable. But I never kiss my clients—not the mouth-to-mouth kind with tongues crossing anyways. Kissing is a big deal to most of us working girls. If we kiss someone—trouble. I kissed Kit Zai the third time we slept together, after he had brought me my first bouquet, and given me my first orgasm ever. Look at the trouble we’re in.
He was born to break hearts: handsome, tall, strong, boyish, cheerful, and pleasant; savagely scary if pushed. I’d heard about him before, so I can’t say I wasn’t warned. Let’s say he’s quite popular with the girls. But in our business, you don’t believe everything you hear, not even if it comes from your own mouth. Plus, what do you expect? If all the guys were like him, prostitution would suffer. Many of us would be doing it for free.
Before Kit, a fuck was a fuck to me. There was no such thing as good or bad.
It used to be two hundred bucks plus a cut of takeout fees when I worked the nightclubs. I was young and pretty, highly educated by their standard. My photo was prominently displayed in the reception area: Sexy School Girl Little Phoenix. Had I not quit college after the first term and gone on to become a teacher, I would have had to work at least two weeks in my old school to make two hundred bucks. What an educational sludge tank that was, corralling the poor and hopelessly disinterested until the boys were ready for a career with the triads or the Royal Hong Kong Police, and the girls were ripe to join the nightclubs, or enslave themselves to a factory, making happy plastic babies. We were color-coded as soon as we entered subsurface society. The boys became yellow if Royal, black if triad. Girls like me turned red under the light which people saw us in. Those joining the factory class remained colorless, invisible. Same difference, we were all bred from the same pot. In that dump, I was weird. I secretly enjoyed reading. I had read Dream of the Red Chamber and the erotica classic Jin Ping Mei by ninth grade. Of course, I kept that a secret lest I get teased, even bullied, for being “bookishly antisocial.”
Well, good old days.
I’m still quite popular, mind you, and increasingly affordable. Anyways, suffice to say I’m not easily impressed by male performance due to professional exposure. Except Kit . . . I really don’t know how, or why. Maybe it’s age. Alice might say it’s karma. Perhaps I can no longer suppress a hidden desire to have a real man who brings me flowers and makes me come. It’s infuriating. It’s a cliché that working girls like cops, but, oh well, analyzing the reasons would be too philosophical for right now.
I know your misters Wong and Chan out there think prostitutes are anything but cultured, never mind philosophical. Their ignorant opinions could not be further from the truth. In the old days, when women were mostly illiterate, and their only “skill” with men was limited to blushing with the head down, courtesans could read, write, sing, dance, and play instruments—real and euphemistic ones—in and out of bed in a hundred different positions. Brothels were the only place a gentleman could find a worldly, elegant, irresistible, learned, challenging, understanding, interesting, and amorous woman. Many five-star courtesans became multimillionaires and eventually married distinguished suitors who immortalized their charm and beauty with poems. Household names such as Ma Xiang
Lan, Li Xiang Jun, Dong Xiao Wan, and Chen Yuan Yuan still trigger fantasy and admiration centuries later. And how could I leave out Xiao Feng Xian, the love of revolutionary hero General Cai E in the early 1900s? There must have been a dozen movies made about their love story. Her haunting memorial verses, sent to his funeral, are even studied in schools.
Xiao Feng Xian—Little Phoenix Fairy—was a phoenix like me. What a beautifully whorish name I have—Feng Yue—Phoenix Moon. Can’t say my mother lacked foresight when she named me. Unfortunately, Xiao Feng Xian was the last celebrity prostitute. This is the 1970s, the modern world. They even made polygamy illegal a few years ago, after so many thousand of years. Can you believe that? What man would be happy with just one wife if they could afford more? Some girls thought it might bring us more business, but we have seen no evidence of that so far. The law has simply driven junior wives underground. They’ve become secret mistresses—less accepted, less recognized, less protected, children relegated to the shadows. The senior wives are now more suspicious of their men than ever, wondering what their mistresses are like, feeling more insecure. Nobody gains. Stupid.
In any case, we don’t have the same good karma as our sisters from the dynasties. Phoenix is now a euphemism for chicken, which means hookers in Cantonese slang. Poets are extinct. We have become just chickens.
That said, I’ve met some very smart men over the years. Unless you’re a pro, you can’t imagine the kind of men who come to us. We’ve seen the most complete cross section of male humans. Most show up with tongue hanging and pants halfway down, as you’d expect. Perhaps less expectedly, some are more desperate to talk than fuck. They need to relieve secrets locked away from their wives, buddies, parents, siblings, doctors, priests, even themselves. Their secrets eventually rot inside, driving them nuts. I bet they have noises in their heads too. With us, they talk freely, for we don’t matter. A girl like me who’d been to college for a while is a real find to some men, though they’re usually not the type who pay extra, so I don’t listen unless he’s a regular.
A certain professor used to come and see me every Wednesday afternoon at three fifteen. He wore sunglasses even when it was raining, and a hat pulled way down to his nose. He was gentle but stingy. Academics are always stingy. After spending barely five minutes on my body, he’d talk about a boy he met in church. They had been to a movie, a love story. “It was so sad. He cried,” Professor told me, incredulous eyes glittering. And another week, they picnicked at the South Bay Beach. “He made Singapore noodles, absolutely delish!” He licked his lips.
“Sounds like you love him,” I finally said.
“Oh, no! We’re only friends!” He waved both hands frantically in front of his face, as if his nose were on fire. “I’d be ruined if they knew.” He looked like he was about to burst into tears.
“It’s okay, you can love him all you want in my house.” I hugged him like a friend, then asked him to get going. “I’m expecting someone in a few minutes,” I lied.
He apologized profusely for having taken up my time, then paid the exact amount. No tip for listening and counseling, or a momentary display of genuine friendship. Haven’t seen him for a while now. Perhaps he has finally given up women.
There was this super-hairy Brit who often looked for me after a few beers. If I was busy, he’d make an “appointment” and return after thirty minutes rather than giving Miu the business. He had my respect for that. He liked me partly because I could speak some English. One day he told me he was a spy, and showed me his pistol. “Look, cops don’t have guns like this!” He put it in my hand to let me feel it, then let out a huge beer burp.
“Choi! I don’t touch guns! Bad luck!” I gave it back to him right away. He grinned so hard his bushy eyebrows lifted like wings.
I told Ah Bill about the Brit. He checked through his Royal pals and confirmed that this guy was from Special Branch. “They can make anyone disappear. No fucking questions asked. You take care, huh.” Unfortunately, I could hardly understand half of the Brit’s boasts. He also took up too much time, but I was careful to be diplomatic. “Okay, okay, handsome James Bond. Bond girl need you fuck now!” He loved me calling him James Bond.
While our clients tell us their boring secrets, we girls hide ours.
We all have stories that would make you weep, stories we keep inside until forgotten, or until we die. I can hardly remember my own anymore—don’t want to—except that of course my mum was also a hooker, hopefully still is, a toothless wrinkly one working out of some lice-infested cardboard dump in Kowloon Walled City for five bucks a shot. Well, forget her. I haven’t thought about her for years.
Anyways, hard-luck tales are like ice water to a hard-on, the centerpiece of our profession. We are here to make life fun. We get into character like actresses do. Enjoy the sexy miasma of musty sweat! And the oral funk of alcohol and tobacco! Look at my sweet smile!
Inside every prostitute is an actress, psychologist, and philosopher. Her philosophy is a private interpretation of life to make it bearable. High-lifers talk about “philosophy” to look smart, to stroke the ego—something that she sold long ago. We are just chickens. Chickens are supposed to be dumb, with feelings only for money. Yeah! That’s right! Money money money!
* * *
This morning, as the typhoon landed, we “made love.”
The term normally makes me cringe. How do you make love by pushing a sleazy indiscriminate wiener into a KY Jelly dump? Just say fuck, for fuck’s sake!
Kit once told me he loved me. I feigned disgust. “What do you think I am, your teenage darling? You’re sickening!” I bit his nipple playfully, a little too hard. I made him scream—though not nearly as loud as just now, when I cut off his dick. I kept swearing, even more foulmouthed than usual, and laughed hard to cover the tears welling in my eyes. It was devastating, the happiest moment in my life. I couldn’t sleep. I lay in his arms all morning, dreaming of possibilities, possibilities which I had never believed, and still don’t, possibilities so naive it’s too embarrassing to talk about. A whore has nobody but herself to blame for being that stupid with a man.
Five days later, I discovered him napping in my bed with a wet condom on.
* * *
But this morning I wanted to make love, knowing very well there wasn’t any. When we finished, I giggled. When I’m really sad, I sometimes giggle. It amused him. He finished a cigarette with a few deep drags, then popped a sleeping pill as usual. I dozed on and off next to him, suppressing the urge to cry, or giggle. I heard Miu coming home.
Then the voice woke me: Now!
The rest was easy. I hid his gun under the bed, took out the scissors, grabbed his dick, and snip. Boy did he scream. I ran into the bathroom, a cock in one hand, scissors the other. I closed the door and pushed the knob with my elbow to lock it.
* * *
The cops have arrived. Kit’s moaning again, now that there’s attention. As far as I’m concerned, he deserves the death penalty. He’s a cop. He should know better than to dick around with a whore’s heart. You can toy with her body all you want, but underneath the calluses that you rub and squeeze and lick is a heart so tender she doesn’t even dare to look herself lest it shatter into a thousand pieces. You, Tsui Man Kit, molested mine for fun, just to show you could steal even a whore’s heart, to brag to the boys in the locker room. You asshole. From now on, you’re changing with the girls.
* * *
“Police! Put down your weapon and come out with your hands up!”
The wind is up again, whistling outside. Action everywhere all of a sudden. How exciting!
Well, I’m waiting right here, officer. Kick down the door if you want me. About time you boys do something manly.
Oh dear, looking down at my feet, I can see that my toenail polish is badly chipped. Better remove the polish before they come to a committee decision on how to apprehend the naked and unarmed woman. I get up to open the cabinet above the washbasin, where my polish remover is kept,
and catch myself smiling impishly in the mirror, like a schoolgirl.
ONE MARRIAGE, TWO PEOPLE
by Rhiannon Jenkins Tsang
Ma On Shan
Lizzie
“Sweet pea, sweet pea, Mummy’s sweet pea!” Lily, my baby, our baby, had just woken from her afternoon nap. She was warm and cuddly in my arms, smelling of milk. I rocked her, singing my silly song, kissing the top of her head, drying my tears in her hair. “Let’s see! Today’s a special day.” I drew the living room blinds, putting on a smile and my cheerful Mummy voice. “It’s the thirtieth of June, 1997. Today the Crown Colony of Hong Kong is handed back to the People’s Republic of China.”
Our tiny flat in Ma On Shan had a superb view of the Tolo Harbour. Ma On Shan means saddle peak. It was this strange-shaped peak with its enchanting name and the other mountains in the New Territories that had seduced my husband Handel. Born and bred in Shanghai, he had seen his first hill at age eighteen and had been besotted ever since. I stared down at the black swimming pool twenty-seven stories below, cold, unblinking. When the sun was out, it was a beguiling South Sea blue. The window had a little safety catch. It needed fixing. Some days it seemed there was only one thing holding me back: Lily. I loved her so much.
Handover day and the weather was foul, a last defiant stand in the face of the inevitable—the coming of China. The wind whipped the sea into tufts of white, and low clouds gathered over jagged peaks. It looked like the gray-green Scottish highlands on a winter’s day painted by a Chinese artist.
“Mummy’s sweet pea, Mummy’s sweet pea . . .” I was singing again, to mask my fear and desperation, because I didn’t know what else to say to my child.
Anxiously, I turned to the bedroom door, taut like an animal anticipating a fight. Handel, too, was taking an afternoon nap. Even I had managed a little snooze. Soon he would wake. He had been difficult ever since Lily was born, worse in the last month.
