Winfred Wong: Son of the Tank Man

And he said, with an apparently forced smile, judging by the angle of how his lips parted, “Ashton, hope your new place is full of fun. Take care, and wishing you all the best.”

“Thank you, I’ll miss you guys so much,” I said, though I doubted if I would miss him, walked away and shot a sidelong glance at Brian, who was again smirking and standing by his swivel chair, and he ‘popped’ me furtively, with his back facing Betty, to come over.

So I went to him, leaned in as he requested, and he heaved out a sigh, then whispered, “Nine O’clock. Tonight. King’s Bar. I have something to tell you. Be on time.”

“Tonight?” I grimaced and kept my voice as inaudible to others as possible like we were conferring about a dirty little secret between us, this was our usual way of talking when someone else was watching.

“What? You are not free tonight?”

“Yeah, my sister has been saying she will throw away all my stuffs if I don’t tidy up the room. So…”

“Well then. What about tomorrow night? Look, what I have to tell you is important. So tomorrow night, same time, same place, okay?”

“Sure, of course.”

And I resumed heading to the elevator after he nodded. Back then, it never occurred to me that what he had to say would be something as far-fetching as something like him getting married in a few days because he had never even hinted he was seeing someone, and I had completely no clue that the bar he had chosen would eventually become my greatest nightmare. But I guess even if I knew in advance what was going to happen, there would be nothing I could do to change anything. Whatever can happen will happen.

Then as I jabbed down the elevator button, “Ashton,” Oli said, with a soft, alluring purr that compelled me to suck in a gulp of air in order to calm myself down. “Aren’t you going to say goodbye?”

Her charismatic voice was tinged with the perfect sum of gloominess and happiness, not too little, not too much, just enough to enthrall me, and was so magnetic and captivating that it literally paralyzed me. With my cheeks blushing crimson, I just couldn’t bear to turn around and look at her no matter how much I desired.

“Yes, I was about to—”

With every ounce of courage I can summon, I finally looked back at her, but when I tried to direct my eyes at the reception desk, I saw something that was too close to be seen clearly jumping right into my arms. Startlingly, I realized it was an enthusiastic goodbye hug from her.

“I’ll miss you. Call me when you are free,” she whispered in my ears seductively and wiggled out of my arms tantalizingly like a wet salmon, her hair soft and fragrant, but had an oddly salty smell, which fortified my impression that she was some kind of a fish.

When she was in my arms, my heart skipped a beat and I had actually forgotten to breathe. I wasn’t even aware of her wiggling away until my brain rebuked me for not respiring afterward, so I had to catch up with huge big gasps. “I’ll miss you, too,” I said with the softest voice I could emit, and I felt like I was falling in love at that moment.

Then she smiled when the elevator bell chimed and the floor vibrated slightly, signaling the arrival of the elevator.

“Goodbye, Ashton,” she said sweetly.

After some difficult vacillation between impressing her with a goodbye kiss and leaving just like that, I strode into the elevator and had my eyes riveted on her until the elevator door slid shut. “Goodbye.”

I wasn’t brave enough, but at least, I knew the feeling of the hug would remain imprinted in my mind and wouldn’t fade away for quite a long time, and to me, that was more than enough, I tried to convince myself.

The elevator bell dinged sharply again, which woke me up from a light trance induced by my erotic fantasy, as it stopped descending on the ground floor. The trip back home usually took longer than expected due to the nasty evening rush hour, which was the cause of a long line of vehicles getting stuck behind trucks and vans that clogged up the roads in this teeming city, and being single-track roads, there was no way to go around the traffic jam or to avoid the annoying din of unrelenting car horns.

Everything seemed outright ordinary on that day, except one thing very unusual I noticed as the bus jerked forward to a stop. A batch of naked freedom-pursuers was dancing in the middle of the road, singing the national anthem, apathetically and unnecessarily magnifying the impact of the congestion like they didn’t have anything better to concern themselves with, like the anthem could not be played at somewhere else more appropriate, but that wasn’t the most unthinkable thing I’d seen on that day, not even close, because very soon, dozens of irrational drivers, who were supposed to be the agitated victims, trapped in the jam actually began sounding horns in a way that it synchronized with their song while clapping appreciatively.

I thought I should have been furious about the stupidity I was witnessing, but instead I felt like dumbfounded, and I giggled. Perhaps I was the only fool who wanted them to go. So, harboring a feeling of detached from others, I pondered maybe it’s really time for me to set off on a trip back home, real home, back to a place with an effective government.

It was almost about eight when I finally got home, and mysteriously, the radio was already on.

“Breaking news. We have just been told that a homeless man, who has spent most of his life drifting from one corner on the street to another, struggling honorably to become the most creative man in the world, has just given up on his dream and has decided to embark on a career in finance, claiming he has had enough and he has been suffering for too long. He even threw a punch at our photojournalist, causing a nosebleed, and –”

I switched it off at the second when I almost choked on a swelling rage aroused by the outrageousness of what I just heard, and it stiffened my resolve to leave the country as soon as possible. It’s preposterous for them to report this story like they were trying to blame a helpless man for giving up his unachievable dream just because he yearned for a decent place to live, which, apparently, wasn’t even worth reporting. Giving him a helping hand instead would be the right thing for them to do. Didn’t they have better stories to report? I didn’t know, but there was one thing I was certain of, I was going to leave tomorrow.

Looking back, I would say it was a reckless decision, but I know that even if I have been given a chance to relive that moment, I would still have made the same decision as long as I don’t know about what will happen next. I guess what I heard at that time had only acted as a trigger. And about the homeless man, Alvin, I think I have met him once or twice in the house a week after I have arrived. He was telling stories about himself to some kids when I was wandering around looking for something interesting to do. So I joined the kids. Of course, he didn’t know me and I didn’t know it was him at that time. But as his story unfolded, it occurred to me that he was actually that homeless man. And I still remember how he described it when the story came to a climax, the punching a photojournalist part, and this is what he has said, “Kids, I was blinded.” It wasn’t something very deep or meaningful, but the way he said ‘he was’ did strike me as very intriguing because that’s something I could easily relate to.

But anyway, I then needed to get my suitcase packed, so I started dumping and shoving things, like razor, toothpaste, towels, papers, into my stainless silver suitcase I put in a wardrobe in front of the dining table I had bought a long time ago. After that, I placed a phone call to book myself an airline ticket, a one-way ticket, to my home country despite that I didn’t even know what I could do to earn a living over there or where I could stay for a night, but I guessed I would be able to figure everything out once I arrived. The packing took longer than I thought. It wasn’t until eleven o’clock that I could squeeze out a second to peek at the ‘fe-fee’, and as it ‘fe-feed’ over to eleven, the doorbell rang, twice.