Kiss Me, Hadley: A Novel

by Nick Macfie

  I was half a second from slamming the door behind me, but in the end gently pushed it to. You can’t slam glass doors anyway. I headed for the lift lobby, hands in pockets and staring at the floor.

  “Hadley, wait up.” Baxter was behind me.

  “You want to ask me more about girls’ names?” I was walking fast.

  “I’m so sorry, Hadley. I had to go through with it.”

  “Why?”

  “In case the walls have ears.”

  “In case the walls have ears? What are you talking about? In case everyone’s got your number, is that it?”

  The last question was aimed at Zeb who had joined us in the lift lobby. The smarmy, evil, blue tooth-telephone fucker.

  “Whoa, hold on. What’s that supposed to mean, buster?”

  We were alone in the lift lobby with no one in earshot. I turned on Zeb and laid my forefinger on his chest.

  “I’ve got your number, pal.”

  “Again, what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m thinking of writing a story about you.”

  “Well, that’ll boost our ratings,” Baxter said.

  Hold back that hostility for now, I told myself. Was it possible to hold it back? Was there a need? Yes. Because Terry had a detailed and early plan. I didn’t have a detailed and early plan. I didn’t even have a simple, broad-brush, last-minute plan.

  “But if I did write a story about you, Zeb, I would have to reread it and I wouldn’t be able to believe what I was reading. So I would have to spike it. Because this is a family agency, I would have to consign the story to the spike. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Baxter unfolded and refolded his arms and shuffled his feet. “No, I don’t, Hadley,” Zeb said. “You’ve had it in for me ever since you came back.”

  “Bollocks.”

  “You need some professional help. Too much booze and whoring in Wanchai. I wouldn’t be surprised if the doctor is right in any diagnosis he comes up with. You’re over the hill. I’ll tell them as much.”

  I stepped closer. “You think you can get out of this by threatening me? You are nothing, Spike.”

  “Cam down, Hadley,” said Baxter. “And why do you keep calling Zeb Spike? It’s all so confusing.”

  “He’s lost his sense of perspective, Rodney,” Zeb said. “You should take him off the casino story forthwith.”

  “Fuck forthwith,” I said. “Your career’s over, Zeb. What career? You never had a career. You can’t write, you can’t edit, you can’t report. You can’t even put words together in a sentence. Gone, gone, gone the career, fuck-face. You are a complete waste of space. You talk to that girl once more and I will kill you. You go on that boat once more and I will kill you.”

  Hold that hostility back for now. Well done, Hadley. I was shaking as the lift went “ping” and opened its doors.

  “You think you’ve got my number?” Zeb called out as the doors began to close… and then began to re-open again. He had been advancing on me and then stopped as the doors opened wide. We stood looking at each other awkwardly until the doors started to close again and Zeb advanced again. Baxter looked so confused and unhappy. Oh dear, Zeb left it too late to follow me into the lift. What a prick. “I’ve got your number,” I heard him shout. “I’ve got your number.”

  I didn’t hear any more. I pulled out my hip flask, tipped my head back, took a pull and shouted “you dozy fucker” at the ceiling fan before I noticed that I was not alone in the lift. A tiny, prim, middle-aged Cantonese woman wearing glasses on a string and holding a clipboard to her chest was looking up at me with her mouth open.

  “I am so sorry,” I said. The lift stopped three floors down. It was the Asian office of a monthly Methodist magazine called The Method, which ran stories about sins of the flesh and redemption. The woman stepped out walked slowly with her eyes down. I thought I may have given the magazine its lead story. Hold the front page.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “HE KNOWS I KNOW,” I told Scout by phone the same night.

  “Oh boy.”

  “I didn’t mean to let him know, but I did. I told him I’d kill him if he came near you. Or if he came near the boat.”

  “Oh Em Gee.”

  “I was so angry. It just spilled out. I said I’d kill him, for fuck’s sake. I didn’t say I’d smack him, or hurt him. I said I’d fucking kill him.”

  “What did he do?”

  “I don’t know. I got in the lift.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It was very heated. The lift arrived and I got in.”

  “Did he look worried?”

  “Not really. He looked defiant.”

  “What do you think I should do?”

  “He won’t go to the boat. He wouldn’t dare. He owes them money too.”

  “Shit.”

  “You carry on as usual, Scout. He can’t touch you.”

  “But the bastards on the boat can touch me.”

  “No, no. This will help us.”

  “Help us?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Why don’t I just run?”

  “Because if you run, you will disappear.”

  WHEN I ARRIVED in the office the next day, instead of five or six people at any one time doing general news, there was just me. The commodities desk was down to zero and the economics desk no longer seemed to exist. One man was wandering about looking at the air-cons in the ceiling and pointing a hand-held gadget at them. What had happened in my short time away? I found myself the hub of the Shrubs Asia news operation. I was it.

  The air-con man passed my desk.

  “The air okay?” I asked.

  “Okay.”

  “What does that gadget do?”

  “It checks the air.”

  Good to know. I logged on to find a “housekeeping” email urging editors to ensure “granularity” in all stories. Luckily, it went on to explain what granularity meant. It meant details. Okay. A story about Japanese relations with Burma was waiting for me. It was the first story of the day and was truly awful. Not because of what was there on the screen, but because of what wasn’t. It certainly wasn’t granular. I messaged the reporter in Tokyo. I could explain how the conversation went, but much easier to copy the exchange of Shrub Speak (as the in-house messaging system is known).

  Hadley Arnold: Hi. Many thanks for the story. Wondering if we shouldn’t mention Japan’s history in Burma. Just a brief reference, like we always mention Britain’s colonial rule of Hong Kong eg. Just a paragraph of boilerplate.

  Susumu Watanabe: Just a moment please. Let me see if I can get a paragraph quickly.

  Twenty minutes later.

  Susumu Watanabe: How about this: Japan has in the past distanced itself from the policy of Western powers in Burma, preferring engagement and dialogue.

  Hadley Arnold: Actually, I was thinking of more of WWII. Just to say Japan occupied Burma from ‘42 to ‘45. (I could have added ‘No pressing need to mention the Burma railway’, but didn’t.)

  Susumu Watanabe: Ah, sorry. That will take time. Can you send out the story as is and I will prepare that kind of paragraph for the next story?

  No, I don’t think so.

  Hadley Arnold: Nothing complicated. Something like this… Japan, which occupied Myanmar, then known as Burma, from 1942-45, will seek an improvement in diplomatic ties etc etc.

  Nothing for five minutes.

  Hadley Arnold: Hello Susumu? Is that okay?

  Susumu Watanabe: Sorry for my ignorance… Are you sure Japan “occupied” Burma? What source please? It is 1942 -45 for Japan’s “occupation”?

  Hadley Arnold: Believe so.

  Susumu Watanabe: Hang on. Double-checking…

  Well double-check my arse. I put the story out without waiting for an answer. The current generation of Japanese knows nothing about the country’s history. It’s scrubbed from the textbooks. This was living proof. In fact, it was living history, connecting the present with all the atr
ocities in Burma, China, Singapore, Malaya and Hong Kong! And then I thought… if Japan has its own history of events, then of course China, America and England have theirs. This is stating the obvious. But what if we had been completely hoodwinked, just as all Japanese have been completely hoodwinked? Japan had shown it was possible. Where was the truth? Somewhere in between? There was no in between. It was a funny old game, that of contexting a country’s history and presenting it in one paragraph.

  But enough. Things were beginning to come alive on the Asia Desk. A sugar story landed in the basket. Not my strong point. Sugar was a commodity and we had a whole desk dedicated to caring about commodities and editing the stories. But this morning there was just me.

  The commodities people handled Sri Lankan tea, jute from Bangladesh, gold and minor precious metals with names which rolled off the tongue like molybdenum and zirconium. What made a metal major or minor? I hadn’t got a clue. The agricultural “commods” were split into “grows” and “softs”. Grows were grains and softs were… what were softs? I could never remember the difference. Rubber was a soft because it bounced. Cotton was a soft/grow hybrid. Sugar definitely was a soft. So was the reporter responsible for the nonsense on my screen. My second story of the day.

  “He’s calling sugar a white sweetener.” I was talking to myself. I rang the bureau responsible.

  “You’re calling sugar a white sweetener.”

  “Not far off the mark, I reckon.”

  “Why can’t we call it sugar?”

  “I didn’t want to use the same word twice in the same sentence.”

  Eight-thirty in the morning. I was thinking of an ice cold Singha beer. On a beach. “How about ‘a white condiment often delivered in lumps’.”

  “If you think it works.”

  “Of course it doesn’t work. I’m being snide. I am going to call it sugar. It adds granularity.”

  I put down the phone, dispatched a powerful two hundred words on the state of the sugar market and picked up the gold report.

  The phone went. It was Marcus, the desk editor.

  “Hadley?”

  “Yes.”

  “I know it’s just you on the desk.”

  “Yes.”

  “Kind of busy, I guess.”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, I’ll make this quick. There may be a typhoon heading our way in a few days. A low-pressure trough is developing east of the Philippines.”

  “So what?”

  “I’m asking my wife to get in food, water and candles.” Long silence. “It’s possible the shop will deliver ahead of the aforementioned day.”

  “Okay. Thanks for calling.”

  Try as I could, I was unable to digest this information, to make head or tail of it. I studied the gold report.

  Gold prices ticked higher on Tuesday as fears about the euro zone weighed and traders took refuge in the shiny yellow metal.”

  Oh boy. I called the Singapore-based gold market reporter. “What’s this ticking business? And you’re calling gold a shiny yellow metal.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to use the same word…”

  “Hang on, aren’t you our new telecoms reporter?”

  “I am. Just filling in because we’re short. I’ve got another story here too.”

  “Is it a great story?”

  “It’s about coal. Is it all right to call coal ‘a black and dusty carbon fuel’ on second reference?”

  “No it isn’t.” Click.

  The phone went. Tokyo was on the line.

  “Hadley, is that you? Have been trying to get through to the economics desk but no one is answering. TV are flagging the PM tapping a fiscal hawk as the next finmin.”

  “Good morning Tokyo.”

  “Hadley? Did you catch that?”

  “I heard some words thrown together…” “We’ve got to get something out quick.”

  “…but I didn’t understand any of them.”

  “No time for jokes. Can you take a couple of paragraphs over the phone?”

  “Hadley!” This was the energy desk in the corner. I had completely forgotten about the energy desk.

  “Yes!”

  “Can you take the Japan treasury story? A fiscal hawk has been tapped as the next finmin.”

  “Yes. I’m taking dictation from Tokyo.”

  “Ah, great. It’s a great story.”

  If it’s so great, why can’t you fucking do it, I thought. And what is so great about it?

  Another fiscal phone went.

  “Hold on, Tokyo. Hello, this is Hadley.” I listened a short while. “But this is the desk,” I said. “You’ve come through to the desk. The editing desk. You want the reporters in the bureau. I’m up to my ears with the fiscal finmin. He’s a hawk.”

  The pictures editor was standing at my elbow. “Hadley?”

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  “You’re all alone.”

  “How can I help?”

  “Everyone’s left Hong Kong for China for the holiday.”

  “What holiday? Did we do a story?”

  “Yes.”

  “So how can I help?”

  “Today they’re coming back.”

  “Wow.”

  “Are you doing another story?”

  “To say they went on holiday and are coming back from holiday?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “But it’s a great story. Great pix.”

  “Maybe if they don’t come back we can do a story. Have you heard anything along those lines?”

  “No.”

  “Sorry, but I’ve got to get this Japanese finmin story out. It’s very fiscal. You wouldn’t be interested. Tokyo, are you still there?”

  “I think I would cry if I lost my camera,” the pictures editor said.

  “What?”

  A third phone went. The hotline for urgent news. I put Tokyo on hold.

  “Shrubs. Hadley Arnold.” I listened a while. “What story am I writing? I just told you. It’s about a fiscal finmin. Which country is the finmin from? Bolivia. Yes. They’ve tapped him. Yes. Yes. Yes. Which part of Bolivia? Chiquitita. That’s right. I agree. Yes, I agree. It is one of Abba’s most poignant songs. But it’s also a great story. I have to go. Thank you. You’re very kind. Yes. Do I want to have dinner with you tonight? No. I don’t think so. No. No. As soon as you are off the line, I will. Yes.”

  I put down the phone. “For fuck’s sake.”

  The earthquake machine rang out a few whelps. This was a device which told you when a quake struck anywhere in the world. It showed a big red square over the Aleutian Islands, off Alaska. Seven magnitude. Seconds later, the overnight Washington desk had filed one paragraph saying there had been a quake but no tsunami.

  If anyone had seen a tsunami, I thought, it was probably an optical Aleutian.

  The blue hotline went. It was Beijing.

  “Hadley?”

  “What is it? Hold on a sec. Tokyo? Are you still there? I’ll be back with the finmin in one sec. Hello Beijing?”

  “Nuclear umbrella is too big for the headline. Reckon we could get away with N-brolly?”

  “This is a joke, right? Just as I am about to file a story about the Japanese finmin? He’s a fiscal…”

  “No joke. What do you think?”

  “I think…”

  “What’s a shorter word than deterrent?”

  “Cat.”

  “Can we say ‘nuclear bar’?”

  “You just said it!”

  “How about N-bar?”

  “Are you insane? Are you writing a story about a cattle ranch? Is this an episode of Bonanza?”

  “I like N-bar.”

  “Please leave me alone. Tokyo? I’m back. Give me one graph on the fiscal hawk.”

  COME FIVE IN THE EVENING I was exhausted and had plans to hit Hong Kong’s N-bars early. I started at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, a stately, colonial-era building above the Central business district whose members we
re mostly young, American bankers and clean-shaven lawyers with bleached teeth and smart blue suits. Years ago its members were reporters and photographers with broken, cigarette-stained teeth who probably could lay claim to one suit between them. I liked the place because it was quiet and served industrial measures of gin out of thin, highly polished glasses. The Irish coffees blew your head off.

  “The usual, sir?”

  “Please.”

  The usual it was, a double gin and tonic with just two lumps of ice. When I say a double, I am talking three fingers - half a tumbler, which was now frosting over with condensation. The trick is not to move it around too much. There the drink was in front of me, awaiting one final flourish that the bar staff only provided for me. The young barman came over, a wry smile on his face, and dropped it in with a plop.

  “Thank you, Captain,” I said.

  “My pleasure, sir.”

  Truth be told, I had never asked a slice of banana in my gin and tonics and it didn’t make the slightest bit of a difference to the taste. It was a bit of a nuisance, bobbing around on top of the drink, bumping into my nose, and it couldn’t be taken out easily like a slice of lemon without making a mess. But it had become something of a tradition, its origins lost if the mists of a drunken Friday night about five years earlier. It was possible that it was a huge joke at my expense, the high point of the barman’s evening - serving the infantile journalist toff a gin and banana. But I let them do it anyway. Now a couple of the staff were talking quietly among themselves, behind their hands, and grinning in my direction. Was it possible that they had done something to this banana? Could they have dipped it in something unpleasant? Or, worse than that, could they have inserted it somewhere? I pulled out my notebook and scribbled self-consciously, looking serious, trying to show that I had weightier issues on my mind. Suddenly there was a barman in front of, leaning over the bar to see what I was doing. What he saw was a clumsy cartoon of a Eurasian girl with a beauty spot on the right of her chin, her hair flowing over one shoulder.

  My phone beeped. It was a message from an unknown number.

  “I’ve been worked over big time. Mega-mugged. Totally heavy. I have no one. Please come.”