Ian Hamilton: The wild beast of Wuhan

There were four Brooks Brothers stores in Hong Kong, but Ava knew from previous trips that this one was the largest and had the best selection of women’s clothing. She bought three button-down, no-iron tailored shirts with modified Italian collars and French cuffs, in pink, black, and white with blue pinstripes. She also purchased two pairs of black slacks, one cotton, the other linen. The slacks came in three styles; she opted for the Lucia fit, a clean look without pleats or cuffs.

She was about to pay for the items when she spotted a pair of black alligator high heels. They were gorgeous: soft, supple, classic. Ava turned a shoe over to look at the price tag. They cost more than eight thousand Hong Kong dollars, over a thousand U.S. What the hell, she thought, I’ll expense them.

It was almost noon when she walked out of the Ocean Terminal with her Brooks Brothers bags and another from Cole Haan with a pair of black leather pumps. She had two more shops to visit, but they were on Hong Kong Island, directly across Victoria Harbour from where she stood in Kowloon.

Ava walked to the Tsim Sha Tsui terminal and boarded the Star Ferry. The passenger load was light and she was able to find a seat near the front. Kowloon was the primary entertainment and shopping district in the Territory, but Central District on Hong Kong Island was where its financial and business heart beat, and its skyline reflected that powerfully. Directly ahead of Ava was Hong Kong’s southern shoreline, a virtual wall of modern buildings and skyscrapers that ran for more than five kilometres. She could pick out the two International Commerce Centres, both over 450 metres high and among the ten tallest buildings in the world; the triangular peak of Central Plaza; the steel and glass angles of the Bank of China Tower; and The Center, sheathed entirely in steel and lit up at night in a varying spectrum of neon colours.

The two shops she wanted to visit were a stationery store a few blocks north of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, and the Shanghai Tang flagship store on Pedder Street, only a few hundred metres farther. But as she exited the ferry, she felt hunger pangs. The Mandarin Oriental had a wonderful dim sum restaurant, Man Wah, on its twenty-fifth and top floor. It wasn’t quite noon, so she decided to eat now and beat the lunchtime mob.

Man Wah was just getting busy and she managed to get a table near the back. Within ten minutes of her arrival there was a lineup out the door and down the hall. She ordered hot and sour soup, chicken feet, har gow, and baby bok choy in oyster sauce.

As she poured herself a cup of jasmine tea, Ava noticed out of the corner of her eye a man several tables away staring at her. When she looked up at him, he turned away. There were four men at the table, all in their thirties and dressed in expensive suits, two of them wearing designer glasses. The one who had been staring at her looked vaguely familiar.

Her soup arrived. She was picking up her spoon when she caught him staring at her again. For the next fifteen minutes they played what she thought was a ridiculous game of cat and mouse. She was about to walk over to his table when he stood up and walked towards her.

“You’re Ava, aren’t you?” he asked.

She looked up at him. “I may be.”

“I’m Michael.”

Ava looked into his face. It finally struck her. Beads of sweat began forming on her brow and her upper lip. She dabbed her forehead with her napkin as she tried to think of what to say.

“Dad called me this morning from the ship. He said you had left and were coming through Hong Kong to Hubei. I just never thought I’d see you here.”

“How did you know it was me?” she asked, still dazed.

“Pictures. I’ve seen many pictures of you and Marian. You have very particular looks.”

“Daddy has shown you pictures of us?”

“For years.”

“I never knew.”

“I’m the oldest son, so if anything happened to our father then I would become head of the family. He wants me to take that responsibility seriously, and that means acknowledging and accepting half-sisters and half-brothers and aunties.”

“He talks to you about us?”

“Has he never spoken to you about us?”

“Actually, he has. And to my mother. But he’s never shown me any pictures.”

“Well, here I am.”

Michael hovered by her table. He shared their father’s distinctive thick head of hair, which he wore slicked back. His face was lean and fine-boned, and his eyes were slightly rounder than Marcus’s — Jennie had told Ava once that Marcus’s first wife, Elizabeth, had some gweilo genes — but they had their father’s darkness, depth, and warmth. Michael wasn’t as tall as Marcus, but he had the same lean physique.

“You look so much like him that I want to cry,” Ava said. “It makes me jealous.”

He smiled, the same easy smile her father used to win her over. “You look like him as well. Have you never been told that?”

“Now and then, I guess.”

“And as for being jealous — well, my father thinks you can do no wrong.”

“Nonsense,” she said, blushing. “Michael, do you want to sit?”

“I can’t. I’m with three colleagues and we have to head back to the office,” he said. “But here, take my business card. My cellphone number and email address are on it. Call me the next time you’re in Hong Kong. We can have dinner or something. You can meet my girlfriend.”

“I’d like that, I think,” Ava said, pulling out her own card. “You can call me anytime too.”

As Ava watched Michael leave the restaurant, she noticed that he walked like her father too, erect, relaxed, confident. He turned at the door and waved to her.

Ava looked down at Michael’s business card before slipping it into her purse. Despite what she had said, she could never imagine actually calling him. It was one thing to know and accept her father’s other families; it was another to meet them.

Ava thought about her father. She knew that he talked about his various children with her mother all the time, and that Jennie Lee took almost as much pride in their accomplishments as she did in those of Ava and Marian. And lately Marcus had become more open with Ava, especially about her older half-brothers. On her last trip to Hong Kong he had spoken about them quite freely. She hadn’t liked it at first but gradually began to realize he was trying to bring his families closer together. Is he feeling his mortality? She pushed the thought aside. She couldn’t contemplate the passing of Marcus Lee.

Her phone rang. Ava saw it was an incoming Hong Kong number and for a second she thought it might be Michael. But when she answered she heard Sonny’s deep bass. “Uncle told me to call you,” he said, almost apologetically.

“I’m just finishing dim sum, and then I have two more shops to visit. Tell Uncle that I’m on schedule and that I’ll meet him at the airport.”

“Are you sure you don’t want a ride? It isn’t any bother.”

“I’m in Central now and I’d rather not feel pressured to finish my shopping. I’ll take a taxi.”

“I’m picking him up at three.”

“I know. I’ll co-ordinate as best as I can.”

“I have your bag in the trunk of the car. I’ll wait for you at the check-in counter.”

“Perfect.”

She hung up and waved down the waiter for the bill. She paid, then walked out of Man Wah to finish her shopping.

It was three o’clock by the time Ava left Shanghai Tang with a new purse and a pair of deep blue enamel cufflinks with the words “good fortune” carved in gold Chinese script. When she left the store, she flagged a taxi, then sat quietly in the back looking at the city as the cab retraced the route Sonny had taken that morning. As they were crossing Tsing Ma Bridge, Ava took out the Moleskine notebook she had just purchased — something she used for every job she had ever taken, filling it with facts, figures, addresses, phone numbers, and a history of the job’s progression. She opened it to the front page and wrote Changxing Wong in large letters across the top.