“Move?” My empty stomach growled at this appalling news. “But it’s dinnertime.” We were in a restaurant, for God’s sake.
“What?” Steerforth snapped. “You’ve just had five almond slices.”
“He’s hungry,” Lorna observed.
You can like somebody straight off, can’t you? I felt drawn to Lorna. Mame clapped her hands and laughed. We ordered nosh, some more enthusiastically than others. I practically infarcted over the menu—one column was dense with dollar signs—and started an uneasy sparring over costs with the baffled money-shunning waiter, but Mame only fell about some more and told me to order what I liked.
“It’s my treat,” she said, on her fifth swig. “All right with you, James dworling?”
More merriment. I decided they were an odd lot.
The grub was mild as mild could be but flavorsome. Even the colors were moderate and pastel. A lot of it was fish, I remember. The dishes were small yet kept coming. After a while I got the hang of it: Get going on the ones they fetched, and they brought another wave.
“Isn’t he just sweet?” Mame said every now and again at a slight angle. Once she said in tipsy confidence to Lorna, “You’re going to have yourself a time, honey!” but Lorna only shushed her, smiling. By the time we’d finished, me a late last, Steerforth was fuming. I could tell. The women were merry. They’d tasted the dishes, the way they do, but not really eaten as I understand the word.
By then I’d had a glass or two of wine (tip: Don’t drink Chinese rice wine; it climbs up the glass at you and fells you first glug). Under its influence I agreed to dance. Then this oddity: Waiters kept slipping Steerforth tickets in the gloom. I only noticed by accident. Next time it happened I drew breath to ask but felt my ankle hacked so suddenly I yelped. Mame laughed aloud. I couldn’t help spotting that the tickets coincided with every second melody played by the glitter band. Two tunes, one ticket.
Even when we were jogging asynchronously to a strobe-lit fox-trot I saw a waiter slide a chit under Steerforth’s wine glass. Betting slips? Stock deals? I forgot it.
One last innuendo. Steerforth was saying as we rose, “Look, Mame. I’d better go through the details of these antiques we’ve spotted for George.” He glanced towards Lorna, who gave a faint nod to Mame.
“There’s a rest lounge.” Mame immediately led the way with sudden decisiveness. We followed. No money I could see changed hands, yet they let us go. A free restaurant?
Odderer and odderer. Still, we separated and a uniformed serf signaled lifts for us, the smallest lifts you ever saw, barely room for two in each.
“See you aloft,” Mame gushed, still rolling in the aisles. The doors hissed shut, and me and Lorna ascended in an angular womb of red velvet.
“Lovejoy?” Lorna said. Her eyes were downcast.
“Yes?”
“I’ve… I’ve never done this before.” Shyness. Never done what? I glanced about. Did she mean dine with a stranger? Cull antiques info in Hong Kong? Possibilities were infinite.
“Never mind,” I said kindly. “You’re great.” Whatever the hang-up, her conscience would soon come out of its scrupulous overdrive, because consciences always do.
They’re not up to much.
We emerged just as Steerforth and Mame were weaving giddily towards the farther of two alcoved doors. He turned and lobbed a key. By the time I’d retrieved it from a potted palm their door had slammed. I heard Maine’s high-pitched laugh cut off.
“Separate rest lounges!” I said, pleased. I couldn’t have borne much more of that giggling.
My gasp was overworked. Everything I’d seen so far brought on more and louder exhalations. This lounge was luxury squared. Even the goldfish looked rich. Lorna too was quite affected. The view was panoramic through a tinted full-wall window and we stood side by side before the spectacle saying how we felt we could reach out and actually touch the ferries in the harbor, really original.
“How crowded it seems!” Lorna said. “The apartment blocks like kiddies’ toys!”
“The junks! Sampans!”
“Very quiet, isn’t it?” Conscious of silence for the first time, we stood closer, listening and watching. “It’s beautiful,” I said.
“It is, Lovejoy.” Lorna didn’t glance at me. Outside it was full day. The glassy harbor was busy with hydrofoils and small craft shuttling between godowns and the big cargo ships offshore. A gray-green warship flying the Red Ensign was gliding out. “Do you know, Lovejoy, I was really scared when Mame said to come along?”
“Scared? What of?” I already knew the answer to that. Hong Kong had damned near done for me practically without trying.
She gave a shy laugh. “Of you, I suppose. Being here. Mame’s been calling me fuddy-duddy for ages.”
Ah. I got it. There’s that neurosis, isn’t there, scared of going outside and meeting people? I put my arm round her. “Look, Lorna,” I said, all paternal. “I understand. But try not to worry. All life is encounter.” I brightened. “Tell me about your home. Irwin.
Your people. And maybe there’s something on telly.”
“You’re sweet,” she said.
So we sat on acres of floor cushions and I made her a complicated American drink—it seemed to be mostly gin—under her directions, got it so wrong we finished up laughing. She reminisced about America, how hubby Irwin and his pal had set up their vast antiques syndicate, a hellish merger with some Los Angeles sharks. She told of her one escapade, some bloke in the US Army Irwin never suspected. I became intrigued, wanting to know chapter and verse. She was astonishingly frank.
It’s inevitable, I suppose, when two people discover an affinity, as if they were favorite friends without having known. In fact Lorna said this, softly rubbing her index finger on my face. “Like we were together in a former life.” I wouldn’t have this. Such talk makes me uneasy. I don’t want it to be true.
Whatever, we were beyond recall within an hour. I’m not very proud of myself most times, and this was one. But I mean it wasn’t really my fault because after all I’d been not long restored to the land of the living and so was feeling happy and had already tasted ecstasy in the antiques display. What more natural than that I wanted more?
Paradise doesn’t come so often it deserves spurning.
And I mean I was even less to blame still, because once we succumbed, Lorna was like a wild woman. She went on and on, in variation quick time. She even started being bossy, seizing control in a sort of headlong frenzy of experimentation. We had a button device for dowsing lights with and controlling the known world. Of course it got lost among the cushions from passion, stupid thing, so I couldn’t draw the curtains or switch the telly off. Nothing luxurious is handraulic anymore. Anyhow there wasn’t really time, and no letup. It was as if all that shyness Lorna’d confessed to had been discarded in a terrific catharsis.
From the things Lorna exhorted that torrid afternoon, I told myself I understood Lorna’s predicament pretty well. She was trying to make me feel more confident in myself, guessing that I’d had a rough time. Maybe there was an element of reward in it somewhere, too? I mean, she’d probably sussed out that I was the one divvy, that Brookers Gelman, Inc., was going to make a killing in the forthcoming auction. Which was kind of her. For me, there was also that inveterate hunger, any port in the storm of life. And Lorna was such a lovely, loving port. Love is a rare commodity, so should be allowed to flourish where it will, right?
The rest lounge was still when I awoke. The lights had gentled down so the long window showed all Hong Kong like a huge gleaming crystal set against the dark-blue night. Shimmering, it seemed alive. For a while I watched, naked but entranced, at the glass before calling Lorna over to see.
She’d gone. Just like that. Vamoosh.
Except for this note on my jacket.