The Expat Diaries: Misfortune Cookie (Single in the City Book 2)

by Michele Gorman

  Bleurgh. It tastes of soap.

  ‘That’s horrible!’ Sam laughs, putting his hand over his mouth.

  ‘Squeaky clean breath though.’ I kiss him, savoring the moment. This is exactly how I imagined my life in Hong Kong. With Sam. We’d meet after work, hold hands and chat about our days, our pasts, our future. We’d discover new places together, occasionally share too many bottles of wine in a random bar, not caring where it was or who was there, not even noticing, because we’d be so wrapped up in each other. We’d start shopping for things ‘we’ needed, each settling into the other’s apartment, establishing little routines together. Sometimes we’d get together with friends and sometimes we’d spend entire weekends doing nothing but watching DVDs in each other’s arms. We’d try different spots for dinner, and share food that we’d never eaten before, and find our favorite haunts. We’d be a normal couple. I want that so much.

  ‘So, here it is,’ Sam says when we’ve walked all the way to Tsim Sha Tsui at the tip of Kowloon. ‘It’s kind of a weird entrance for a restaurant but trust me, it’s cool.’

  We’re standing on a narrow, very upscale shopping street. ‘Chanel does dinner?’

  He laughs. ‘I told you it was a weird entrance. Here.’ He guides me through a sleek office lobby to an elevator guarded by a bouncer, and we ascend at the speed of light. ‘Ow, my ears are popping.’

  ‘Mine too.’ He winces. ‘We’re going to the top. I’m tempted to cover your eyes when we go in, but I don’t want you to trip. Ready?’ He holds the elevator door open for me. ‘I wanted tonight to be extra special.’

  There’s no need to cover my eyes. We feel our way in the murky light through the elevator lobby to the restaurant.

  The whole front of the restaurant is glass. A shimmering panorama stretches to the edges of my field of vision. Across the harbor, lights from every skyscraper reflect off the water, but nature’s light show is giving this perfect example of modern beauty a run for its money. Twilight intensifies from pale pink on the horizon to deep blue in the sky. Despite the light pollution (as if you could call such a beautiful sight pollution!), I bet there’ll be stars tonight. ‘Wow, it’s so beautiful. Thank you, Sam.’ I kiss him while the host waits patiently to show us to our table.

  The table would be perfect if only Sam wasn’t sitting on the other side of it. He has gallantly given me the seat facing the windows. ‘Sit here next to me,’ I propose.

  ‘I don’t think there’s room.’ He frowns, eyeing the small bench.

  ‘Come on. Look at this view. Here, I’ll squish over. There’s room. It’s silly to sit there when you can sit next to me.’ As he snuggles in beside me with his arm over my shoulder, I know this is the best date I’ve ever had.

  ‘This is perfect,’ he says. ‘It’s my idea of the perfect life. I never thought I’d be so happy, so content. Not that I’m not usually content. I am. As you know. I loved grad school, and London. But this is better than I dreamed. Don’t you think so?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ I couldn’t be happier than I am at this moment. To hear my boyfriend say that confirms everything I’m thinking.

  ‘I can imagine living here for the rest of my life,’ he continues as the champagne arrives. ‘I’m comfortable here, and it’s the ideal place for my kind of work. The job is going really well, Han, and I love it, despite the long hours. I was really lucky to get it, don’t you think?’

  Work? Isn’t he talking about us, and our wonderful life? The paranoid terriers are snapping at my heels again. Why do I feel harrumphy because he’s talking about loving his job? Considering how few people do, I should be happy for him. And I am. I’d be even happier if he included our relationship in his idea of perfection. After all, I do.

  ‘Yes, although it is taking you away from Hong Kong.’ Just a small fact I’d like to point out.

  ‘That’s the only downside,’ he says. ‘Think how perfect it’d be if you were in Ho Chi Minh!’ He laughs at the look on my face. ‘Han, I’m only joking. I’ll be back here soon.’

  ‘How do you know about this place?’ I ask between bubbly sips. Most of the tables are full, with a mix of Chinese and Westerners. There are little round tables along the windows for couples to enjoy ringside seats to Hong Kong’s show, and some bigger tables in the middle of the floor for groups of friends. Our table perches on a raised platform at the back, giving us an uninterrupted view over the heads of the other diners. A few of the men are in suits but it’s clearly more a social restaurant than a business one. Although looking at the prices, an expense account would come in handy.

  ‘It’s one of Pete’s favorites. When I told him I wanted to take you somewhere special tonight, he suggested it. It looked amazing from the photos online. It’s even better in person. He takes dates here when he wants to cement the deal. It’s sort of pricey.’ His look tells me he regrets divulging Pete’s seduction tactics.

  ‘Don’t worry. Pete’s secret is safe with me. And, by the way, you didn’t need to take me here to get lucky. You’re going to get lucky tonight.’

  ‘I’m already lucky.’

  He’s staring into my eyes. I feel lost in them. I’m so much at ease with this man. He makes me feel excited for our future. There are possibilities there.

  I’m sure we could kiss our way through the night, subsisting on champagne alone, but the menu is too tempting. Everything looks delicious. I just wonder if the chef can make a few tiny adjustments.

  ‘May I have the bresaola, please?’ I smile at the waiter, who has finally overcome his reluctance to interrupt our kissathon. He looks pleased with his own trendiness. ‘But instead of the salad, can I have figs? And instead of goat’s cheese can the chef use mozzarella?’

  ‘You want…?’ His composure slips as he struggles to understand why a patron would come to a restaurant only to treat the menu like the pick ’n’ mix at the cinema.

  ‘Well, you have mozzarella, here in this dish,’ I point out. ‘And figs here in this one. I’d like a combination of the bresaola, figs and mozzarella. Can your chef do that for me?’

  I guess they may as well know what they’re dealing with from the outset. I guess the same is true for Sam. Smirking, he says, ‘And can we please have some olive oil and balsamic, for the bread?’

  ‘Yes, sir. And for your main course?’

  ‘Let’s decide that later,’ I say. What I mean is that I’ll give them a break before altering more dishes. The waiter already wishes he hadn’t seated us.

  Even though I’m savoring each moment, disclosure, joke shared, every look, and the seemingly infinite details of his face and body, time is flying by. I desperately want to slow it, but I’m too caught up in its momentum. We’ve been making out like teenagers for most of the meal and I’d love to muster the social conscience to be embarrassed. It’s the very least my mother would ask. But I don’t care. I love this too much.

  ‘This is the best table in the house,’ he says as our main courses are cleared. ‘Look. Everyone in here is looking at us, wishing they’d done the same thing.’ Sitting together he means, within kissing distance.

  Why have I never sat next to my dates before? Probably because I’ve never felt like this before. I want to be in contact with this man all the time. It physically hurts when I have to leave him. My stomach clenches and I feel like sobbing. It’s silly really, as this happens even when we part for just a few hours. Sometimes I wonder if it’s healthy to be so in love. The emotion should carry a warning label. Caution: may cause panic attacks, sensitivity to harmless comments, and sinky-stomach upset. Can encourage long bouts of analytical discussion in some sufferers. Do not attempt to operate heavy machinery, and always follow your friend’s advice.

  By the time the waiter clears our main course plates I’m ready to alter his menu again. Something tells me he won’t like it any more than he liked my starter and main course suggestions. ‘I wonder if they have any dark chocolate, to go with the wine, for dessert?’

  Sam looks bemus
ed, dreading my next chat with our server. ‘I can ask,’ he continues gamely.

  It’s not fair to make my perfectly nice boyfriend make the waiter’s life any more difficult than it already is. He has, after all, proven himself capable of ordering one of the chef’s suggestions straight off the menu.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I say. ‘Is it possible to just bring us some chocolate for dessert?’

  The waiter definitely wishes he’d called in sick tonight. ‘Chocolate? Here.’ He’s pointing to the chocolate mousse.

  ‘No, that’s chocolate already in the dessert. Is it possible for the chef to just give us some chocolate, pieces of chocolate that he uses for desserts? Just the chocolate.’

  ‘I’ll check.’ He slinks off to hand in his resignation.

  Another man appears a few minutes later. He could be the bouncer from downstairs, who’s trained to deal with difficult customers. He claims it’s not possible to give us chocolate because all the desserts are prepared ahead of time, so the chocolate is already in situ. Fair enough. ‘Then can I please have a scoop of vanilla ice cream with a shot of espresso to pour over it?’

  He nods, baffled as to why I’d ask the bouncer for dessert.

  ‘Where’s that?’ Sam asks, perusing the menu.

  ‘It’s not on there. But they have ice cream, here with the apple tart, and espresso as a coffee option.’

  I don’t blame him if he never takes me out to dinner again. That’s okay. I’m happy to stay in his apartment all the time. We can always ask the hookers next door to bring us some food.

  The next morning I feel remarkably awake considering that we were the last diners in the restaurant last night, or rather, this morning. It might be the excitement of today’s adventure. Or maybe it’s because I’ve drunk enough coffee to give me palpitations.

  There’s a tree in Hong Kong that grants wishes. Sam’s as excited as me as we exit the MTR station, looking for a sign. It’s not exactly the ancient setting you’d expect to find a mythical tree. I envisioned mist wafting through temple complexes, with perhaps a few Shaolin warrior monks. But the station is modern, squat, concrete and functional. The streets surrounding it buzz with cars and buses. Perhaps we’re in the wrong place. There’s no sign for the tree anywhere. Surely magic trees can’t be so common here that they don’t merit any acknowledgement.

  ‘Can I see the map?’ I ask Sam, as he digs his ringing phone out of his pocket. I only do this to show that I’m willing to help out. I’m not about to challenge a man’s fundamental belief in his ability to navigate. Besides, my map-reading skills are on par with my driving skills. That is to say, best left to someone else.

  ‘Sure, though we were off the map about a dozen stations ago.’ He shrugs as if this is all part of a normal day. Everyone travels to the Chinese border looking for a mythical tree. ‘’Scuse me just a sec, it’s Li Ming.’

  What does she want now? They saw each other just yesterday at work. It’s a little inappropriate for a boss to call her employee on his day off. I’m sure HR would be interested to know that she’s cutting into his personal time like this.

  He’s telling her the name of the restaurant for tonight. He doesn’t sign off with kissy noises or murmur endearments into his handset, but I still don’t like it.

  ‘Sorry about that. She’s really looking forward to meeting you tonight.’

  My stupid imagination is making me insane. ‘Great, I can’t wait! I’m sure I’ll love her.’ I force a smile. ‘Should we ask inside about the tree?’ The moment passes when he reaches for my hand.

  The ticket agent says we’re in the right place. Helpfully he writes down a bunch of characters. ‘Number sixty-four bus. This stop.’ He points to the slip of paper, smiling his bon voyage wishes.

  As we wander to the bus stop opposite the station, I hand Sam the paper. ‘You’d better hold this.’ He’s a man after all. He’ll enjoy being keeper of the directions.

  The bus carries us through densely packed streets lined with shops, the ubiquitous neon signs, and people. Down narrow side roads I spy little clothing and food markets. It takes almost half an hour of crawling in traffic but eventually we reach the outskirts and the shops recede, leaving long stretches of barren road. It’s starting to look more like a place that wishing trees would live. ‘Is that it?’ I say, pointing to the bus’s electronic sign, which has been flashing each stop as we approach. ‘Hat, squiggle, four, squiggle, squiggle?’

  ‘No, it’s a house looking thing, seven, tepee, o with a line through it, chair.’

  At the next stop I say, ‘Is that it? Upside down V, squiggle, chair?’

  ‘No,’ he says patiently. ‘It’s…’

  This goes on for most of the next twenty minutes until, disappointingly ‘Lam Tsuen Wishing Tree’ appears on the screen. Still, we could have read it in Chinese if we’d needed to.

  The bus deposits us alone at the side of the dusty road. There’s no indication of a magic wish-granting tree, just a hand-painted sign down an embankment. A red arrow points into the scrubland. ‘Do you think it’s down there?’ I didn’t imagine trekking through the underbrush.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ He shakes his head. ‘It doesn’t look like anybody goes down there. Besides, there are probably snakes in there.’

  ‘You’re not afraid of snakes, are you?’ This is the man who took me trekking through the jungles of Laos.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid of snakes,’ he says, as if I’ve just asked him the most obvious question.

  ‘Really? I used to catch them to keep as pets. Not poisonous ones obviously,’ I hasten to add. ‘Just grass snakes. And garter snakes, though those were stinky. They peed on you when you caught them.’

  He’s looking at me like something he’s just dug out of the drain, but chooses to overlook my creepy confession. ‘I think the tree would be signposted,’ he offers. ‘After all, it has its own bus stop.’

  ‘Okay. Maybe we could ask that man?’ A lone workman has been standing beside his truck, following our lack of progress. ‘Where’s that little piece of paper the agent gave us?’

  Sam pats his pockets, looks sheepish, pats again, sinks deeper into sheepishness, pulls out his wallet, rifles, and flourishes the now well-folded if slightly tattered slip of paper. ‘Excuse me,’ he says loudly, to aid comprehension. ‘Do you know?’

  The man points across the street, away from the embankment.

  ‘This way.’ Sam takes my hand and hardly makes an ‘I told you so’ face at all.

  Back across the road is an open gate, and to the right is a large tree. ‘Are you sure this is it?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s where the guy pointed.’

  ‘It looks kind of…’

  ‘Sick.’

  The tree’s sparse branches are supported by tall wooden braces, those few branches rather barren of leaves. ‘How do you throw oranges into that?’ I wonder aloud. Sam’s guidebook definitely said that chucking our wishes, tethered to oranges, into the branches would make them come true. This is very disappointing, like finding out that Santa Claus doesn’t come down the chimney at all, but simply walks through the front door. A big part of the magic is in the delivery.

  A middle-aged woman wearing a conical straw hat sidles up beside us. Finally, some authenticity. ‘You get wishes. Two,’ she says, handing us each a sheet of yellow paper and pencil and leading us through a gap in the fence. My wishes pop straight into my head. I want to be happy. And I want to stay with Sam forever. Sappy, I know. I don’t care. I scribble them down and follow Sam’s lead, hanging the rolled-up sheet on one of the hooks drilled into a tattered board beside the tree. I’m smirking. He’s smirking too. We’re in this together, and I love it. The setting doesn’t matter. We could be gazing at each other on my sofa and I’d be just as happy.

  Maybe my caffeine buzz is wearing off, but now that we’ve found the tree, I feel a little deflated. That wasn’t the magical adventure in my imagination. But I suppose the important thing is to be with Sam, right? Still,
I feel like we we’ve been short-changed.

  As if reading my mind, he says, ‘I thought there’d be more. Maybe we should go to the fortune teller’s temple on the way back for some actual mysticism?’

  ‘Let’s do it!’ I’ve never had my fortune read. All I have is my fortune cookie fortune, tucked up in my wallet. It’s been right so far, hasn’t it? Following your heart will pay off in the near future. It certainly has. No one can accuse me of following my head. My heart has led me to Hong Kong with Sam, to this weekend, this day, this moment. So do I believe in fortunes? I think so. Unless the fortune teller says something bad. Then it’s a load of rubbish.

  Sam seems to know his way to the temple, which is a good thing because it’s not easy to find. ‘Have you been here before?’ I ask.

  ‘Uh, no. Well, once, but it was closing so we didn’t go in.’

  I have to keep reminding myself that Sam lived here without me. He started a whole life here with Pete, and his new job, and his colleagues, when I was still in London. He talked a lot about Pete (was he in a ‘disapproving phase’ then?), but he must have gone out with other people too. This is an uncomfortable thought. I can’t help it, I have to ask. ‘Who’d you go out with when you first moved here?’

  ‘Mostly Pete. You know that. We talked every day, remember? Han, why do you ask?’

  ‘I was just thinking that you’ve probably been to lots of these places that I haven’t. Because you’re away now, I guess I forgot that.’ I mean, of course, that he’s had an entire social life that I wasn’t part of.

  ‘I didn’t go out that much. You know that though. I told you what I was doing every day. I spent most of those first months just settling in, sometimes going out with Pete for drinks or dinner.’ He’s peering at me. ‘Does it matter?’