The Night Tiger(91)

“Yes.”

Acton shot me a swift glance. “I didn’t realize that.”

“We don’t look alike.” I wondered why I always apologized for that.

“That wasn’t what I was thinking.” He grinned. “Anyway, do you want to see Ren? I’m going back myself.”

William Acton was a much better driver than Robert was. At least, he changed gears without gut-wrenching swerves. Spared the terror of death by motorcar, I studied him surreptitiously, struck once again by his disarming manner. I suspected the reason he could be so casual was because he didn’t really see me as a person, just another interchangeable local girl.

As the car began to climb the hill, he said, “Look here, Louise—on Saturday night at the party, did you happen to see a Sinhalese girl? Her name was Nandani.”

That must be the girl they’d been discussing at the train station. The one who’d died. “Was she there to see you?”

He glanced quickly up and out of the window. Guilty. “She came by the kitchen and Ren gave her some supper.” He was hiding something. A memory stirred in me: Ren’s frightened face, white in the darkness of a corridor, and then the old Chinese cook coming out to tell him something.

“I think Ren was searching for her in the house.”

A twitch. “Did he say anything to you? About why she was there?”

I shook my head. What he was concerned about? We were passing sprawling white colonial buildings now, beautifully set in manicured green lawns. The view from a car was very different from trudging along on foot. It was like a dream, the way the scenery slid by so smoothly, and I said as much to him. It was just small talk, but he seemed struck by it, and also eager to change the subject from Nandani.

“What sort of dreams do you have, Louise?” Acton gave off the same sticky sense of loneliness as some of the customers at the May Flower, the ones who stayed too long, paying for dance after dance. But now was my chance to find out if he really was the fifth one of us.

Yi had said we’d all gone a little wrong, perhaps in the way we’d failed to live up to our Virtues. My own choices—working at a dance hall, getting mixed up with a dead man’s finger, and telling lie after lie—could hardly be called wise, despite my supposed cleverness at school. I imagined the five of us making a pattern. A set that fit together naturally like the fingers on a hand. The further we strayed, the more the balance in our worlds distorted. Less human, more monstrous. Like the claw of a beast.

And what about the unknown fifth? The worst one of all, according to Yi. Of course, Li stood for order. Ritual. Doing things in their proper way, not shortcutting for selfish desires.

“Sometimes I dream about a river,” I said slowly. “There’s a train and a small boy who’s waiting for me.”

“That’s funny, I dream about a river, too.”

“Is it always the same? Mine is—night after night, like a dream that continues; a story that unfolds.”

“A story that unfolds.” He seemed struck by this. “What a poetic way of putting it.”

“What happens in your dream?” I was treading carefully here, feeling my way. I’d done this dozens of times at the May Flower. They said they wanted to dance but they really just wanted to talk about themselves.

“In my dream, I see someone standing in the river. She’s always there. And she always says the same thing.”

I shivered, recalling Yi’s red, impassioned face, his guilty confession of luring Ren over. “Does she ask you to come to her?”

“No. She’s very angry with me.” A ghost of a smile. “And that’s why,” he added under his breath, “I write letters instead.”

“Who is she?”

But the spell had broken. Acton laughed uneasily. “I must be boring you.”

“Not at all,” I said hastily. “It’s very interesting.”

He gave me a sharp look. “You don’t talk like most local girls.”

No, I talk like a dance hostess. But of course I didn’t say so. The whole point of spinning out conversations like this was to run up a tab. Or, in this case, find out more information.

A spark was burning in Acton’s eye now, a little flame that made me nervous. “You’re a very interesting girl, Louise. Seems like fate, doesn’t it, how we keep running into each other?”

We’d arrived at the hospital now and he’d parked the car, but he made no move to get out. Abruptly, I remembered Hui’s warning: don’t get into cars with men.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said, tugging at the door. The handle was different from Robert’s car, and for an instant, it stuck. I had a panicky moment when Acton leaned across me, but he was only helping to open it. Or was he? His hand brushed my knee. There were no bouncers here, no Kiong with his watchful eye, and I felt a spasm of fear. If he pinned me down, I wouldn’t be able to get away. I yanked hard on the door and almost fell out.

“Are you all right?” he said. And then it was sunny again, a bright innocuous day, and I looked ridiculous, half falling out of the car. I told myself I must have imagined that sudden predatory feeling as I stared at his hands. Clever, surgeon’s hands. They would have a viselike grip.

“William?” It was a woman’s voice. The tall, fair lady from Saturday’s party. She was standing under the eaves of the hospital as though she was waiting to be picked up, and now came over, her quick steps shod in patent leather sandals. White ones, in a style I’d never seen locally. I struggled up, red-faced and smoothing down my dress, hoping she didn’t remember me from the party, but her sharp glance told me that she did.