Exciting Times(35)

‘You’re not noticing because you’re white,’ Edith said. ‘People see me and assume I’m from here.’

‘But you are from here.’

‘Kind of,’ she said. ‘But you miss things when you spend your teens abroad.’

It sounded like something a therapist might have told her, oddly phrased to squeeze developmental insight into not very many words.

She added that many people, her parents included, had a misplaced nostalgia for the British Empire because at least it wasn’t China. ‘Hong Kong is the one place where the late-twentieth-century rebrand has worked,’ she said. We both found it hilarious that Brits thought their international image was one of flaccid tea-loving Hugh Grantish butterfingery. If they’d been a bit more indirect during the Opium Wars, or a bit more self-effacing on Bloody Sunday, then our countries would have been most appreciative. ‘That’s why they can’t accept that they did colonialism,’ Edith said. ‘They see themselves as people who can’t even get a dog put down.’ We agreed also that the British obsession with dogs was creepy, both because of the volume of other animals they ate and in light of their historic and contemporary level of regard for humans.

We talked fast together. I was always slowing down in Hong Kong, either to help the kids understand me or because Julian said everything at leisure and I felt I should stay in rank. Only with Edith could my mouth get ahead of me. The other mercy was that in the thick of assertion I could pretend not to notice her knee against mine.

We did shots, then went down Aberdeen Street to the pier. It was too late to get a decent view, but she said she liked watching the boats and imagining their shapes by drawing lines between the lights like a join-the-dots. Our walk started with ignoring everyone around us and ended with no one to ignore.

‘You know,’ Edith said, ‘it used to be illegal for locals to live on the Peak. I’m not sure about Mid-Levels, but definitely the Peak.’

‘Why?’ I said. ‘Who lived there?’

She laughed. ‘The British, of course.’

I wanted her to give me one of her spiels, with her gestures like bodily extensions of her facts, but she left it there. It was 9 p.m. The office buildings sported a few dark windows like punched-out options on a game show, but plenty still burned bright. I pictured a thousand Ediths and Julians hunched over tables, hitting targets, making waves, spitting out productivity. In front of us, though, the water held still.

‘I wonder if there’s a time in Hong Kong when not a single person is working,’ I said.

Edith turned to me slowly. ‘I hate my job,’ she said. ‘I work hard, it’s good to work hard, but I hate it. I just want my mum to be proud of me. Which is stupid, because the things she values aren’t the things I value, but she’s my mum. I care what she thinks.’

‘Just tell yourself you’re doing it ironically,’ I said.

‘Do people still say that?’ Edith said.

I cast for sincerity.

‘I like girls,’ I said. Then: ‘I like you.’

She kissed me.





27

We texted throughout the following week. I did it at work, or while walking around shopping malls. I tried to wait fifteen minutes. I’d write in the notepad app to stop her from seeing me type, count the seconds, then cut, paste and send. But I soon found once I’d written something, I needed to show her right away.

Among these messages: so do you want to get coffee or something.

The three elliptic minutes watching her type had a gravitational field all their own. She did not want to get coffee or something, or anything. The kiss, you see, was done in pastiche. Why was she taking this long to say no? Just say it and leave me for the worms to find.

Then: yes, i’d like that.

We got speciality coffees in Sheung Wan and laughed as we drank them. Mine was charcoal with cashew milk and hers was bright pink dragonfruit. I considered asking if this made me the man, but decided ironic heteronormativity was still heteronormative, and also that it was too early to make that joke.

I wondered which was better: a first date after three months of knowing someone, or moving into their apartment after three but still being ‘friends’ with them half a year later. Neither seemed wildly successful, but I was too happy about Edith to mind.

*

I couldn’t focus at work. I would sit correcting papers, then think of her and cross my legs tighter together. In class the children asked me what words meant or whether a spelling was correct. Instead of making them use the dictionary like I was meant to, I just told them the answer. It was fine. They had smartphones. Through the walls I heard the other teachers giving stern instructions, and wondered if my problem was that I didn’t want to teach like they did, or that I didn’t want to be a teacher at all.

I hated being in charge. I wanted Edith to tell me what we were and how it worked. Whenever Julian did that, I hadn’t liked the answer. It struck me now that maybe I could have – for instance – told him that, with words, instead of pretending to be okay with it. Then I felt glad to have a new chance. I’d lied to Edith, too, but not as consistently, and not about how I felt.

My favourite students were the girls with neat copybooks. I knew they’d grow up to be like Edith, and was glad Hong Kong had a long-term supply. Connie Qian kept glue and a small pair of scissors in her pencil case. She cut out choice paragraphs from my handouts and stuck them in her notepad. ‘I like your notebooks,’ I told her. Then I wondered if I should have said it more bossily to make it clear that I was not trying – ever – to be anyone’s pal. Connie considered, then accepted my praise. ‘I like them,’ she said – no ‘too’, perhaps to show her judgement was independent of mine. This also seemed like something Edith would do.