Exciting Times(44)

‘Does Julian mind when you take his money?’ She seemed unconcerned that this might be a procacious question coming from someone who couldn’t currently support their own head without the aid of both hands. ‘I mean,’ she said, ‘you’re just flatmates.’

‘Actually, he’s worried I’m not interested enough in it.’ This wasn’t necessarily something I’d observed in him, but could plausibly have been true and was interesting to narrate to a third party. ‘He doesn’t want anyone to like him just for him,’ I said. ‘He wouldn’t know what to do with the information.’

I wondered why I’d said that. I wasn’t drunk.

We hailed a cab. Edith tried to talk to the driver, who ignored her Cantonese. ‘Mainlander,’ she said, rolling her eyes, and she negotiated our journey up Mid-Levels in what I assumed was Mandarin. I was afraid to ask if she considered her father a different kind of mainlander. Outside Julian’s apartment block, Edith removed her heels and asked if I could take one for her. I wasn’t sure how she could carry a single heel but not two, but felt it would be unproductive to question this. The complex was virtually empty. Edith complained that the cement hurt her feet, so we rested for a while on a stretch of grass in the courtyard.

‘It’s not fair,’ Edith said. ‘I love you so much and you don’t want to stay in Hong Kong.’

‘I do. I’m always telling you I like it here.’

‘And I always say everything first. I asked if you’d be my girlfriend a couple of weeks back, and now I said I love you first and you didn’t even acknowledge it.’

‘Thanks, Edith. Thanks for saying I love you. I love you, too.’

And I meant it. This surprised me: I could never have been seeing someone for so short a time in Dublin and sincerely say I loved them. But there was room to feel it here.

‘Good,’ Edith said.

‘How often do you get this drunk?’

‘You’re obsessed with Julian,’ she said.

I’d had that exact thought before, in those precise words, and wondered if I’d ever told her. I said nothing.

‘You’re always asking what he’d think of everything,’ she continued. ‘You clearly have no interest in arranging things so it wouldn’t be a problem if he stopped paying your rent. Which, why would he do that? He sounds like a rich freak, and you know he’ll get bored of you sooner or later, because rich freaks are themselves boring people. It’s only their money that’s depraved.’ She spoke quickly and without looking at me very much, like she had said all this to herself before in front of a mirror. ‘And he gives you money. Why? Who leaves literally an AmEx for their flatmate? And why would he tell you not to have people around? I don’t think you’re interested in having a nice life. Which is arrogant, really, because you expect other people to help you maintain an existence that you yourself can’t work up any enthusiasm over. Don’t take this personally, by the way. I’m just observing.’

‘You’re hammered,’ I said. ‘I do love you, though.’

‘My family are disappointed in me. They try to hide it, but I can tell.’

Up in the apartment, I made Edith brush her teeth. She said she wanted to wear a bathrobe. Mine was in the wash, so I loaned her Julian’s, which hung like a ballgown on her five-foot frame. A bluish bruise was surfacing on her thigh. She thanked me for paying her bill. I said I actually quite liked the idea of Julian seeing the tab and thinking I was having fun without him. Then Edith said she loved me again and I repeated it back to her, thinking about how some people were squeamish about wearing others’ dressing gowns, but to some it was just like borrowing a coat.

We sat on the couch and she leaned on me. ‘Your family aren’t disappointed in you,’ I said. ‘No one’s disappointed in you. You’re an incredible person.’

‘Thank you,’ she said.

I had no authority to say that about her family. I’d only met Mrs Zhang, and didn’t know what their internal dynamic was like. Still, Edith looked pleased. She nestled closer into me. I felt like abandoning everything else I did to try to be happy, and just spending the rest of my life finding things Edith needed to be told, and telling her.





34

Next day at work I had a cough that cut off all my sentences. Joan gave me a mint-green face mask. I said I didn’t need one and she told me that if parents saw me coughing without it, they’d worry I’d infect their kid. At lunch I googled and discovered the mask was likelier, if anything, to breed germs by trapping hot air. This Web MD lore did not interest Joan. ‘Wear the mask,’ she said. I considered asking for sick leave since I was sick, but could tell she was in no mood for my funny jokes.

The twelve-year-olds were on the perfect aspect, God love them. They had just got to grips with the past tense, and the continuous would be next – if they survived. Present perfect if it’s continued up until now, e.g. ‘They’ve been together.’ Present perfect continuous if it’s been continuing, e.g. ‘They’ve been fucking.’ Past perfect if it: a) continued up to a time in the past, e.g. ‘They had been living together,’ or: b) was important in the past, e.g. ‘I had thought I loved him until I met her.’ There was more, but my windpipe filibustered it.