Kylie Chan - Hell to Heaven

I entered the Landmark and took the escalators up to the pedestrian overpass across Queen’s Road into Alexandra House, an unremarkable office building with a plain, tiled lobby full of people like me who were just passing through. I walked across another enclosed pedestrian bridge over Ice House Street to the Prince’s Building, which was all shiny white tiles, glittering glass and jewellery shops displaying gemstones the size of pigeon eggs. Stern-looking Sikh security guards armed with sawn-off shotguns stood at the doors.

I passed a couple of tailor’s shops and took another pedestrian overpass to the Mandarin Hotel. A huge crystal chandelier adorned the staircase that swept from the ground-floor lobby up to the second floor. The Mandarin’s coffee shop had been on the ground floor, with large windows looking out onto the street and providing a fascinating view of life in Central — the immaculately dressed tai-tais on their way to their daily salon visit, the couriers riding their heavy Chinese-made bicycles with full-sized gas bottles in the front basket, usually wearing nothing but a pair of filthy shorts and a grimy towel around their necks. Recently, however, the coffee shop had been moved up to the mezzanine floor and renamed something that sounded more upmarket — and was therefore unpronounceable. The cheesecake was the same though, which was why I’d arranged to meet Venus there.

Theoretically I had precedence over him as First Heavenly General (Acting), but it was politically sensible to arrive there first and do him the honour of waiting for him. The waiter guided me to a table next to the window overlooking the street, and went through the tedious rigmarole of spreading my napkin, offering me the over-priced bottled water of the day, filling my huge balloon wine glass with chilled water from a silver-plated jug, and handing me a menu that was mostly blank paper in an expensive leather folder. Finally he established that I was there to meet someone and left me to wait for Venus.

Venus arrived five minutes later, accompanied by a pair of Retainers who had taken the form of burly Chinese bodyguards. He was in the form of a mid-thirties Chinese, slim and elegant, wearing a tailored grey silk suit, his long hair held in a traditional topknot and flowing to his waist. The waiter escorted him to my table, did the napkin and water thing, then hurried back to the entrance to take the bodyguards to another table nearby. A couple of diners noticed the bodyguards and took surreptitious photos of us with their mobile phones, probably hoping to catch a minor celebrity meeting with his foreign mistress to sell to a gossip magazine. Unfortunately for them, all they would get would be movement-blurred images no matter how still they held the phone.

Venus toasted me with his glass of water: ‘Lady Emma.’ It was a polite alternative to the traditional salute in a modern setting. I nodded and toasted him back, then we checked the menus. The options hadn’t changed much since we were last there so I just folded it and waited for him.

‘Lord Leo wasn’t able to join us?’

‘I asked him to come along, but he said he had some errands to attend to at the bank,’ I said. ‘He’s still establishing his identity, and the bank is giving him trouble about the new accounts.’

‘He doesn’t need to worry about these Earthly issues any more,’ Venus said. ‘Why hasn’t he taken up residence on the Celestial where he belongs?’

‘He says he belongs here with us, his family,’ I said.

Venus nodded his understanding. ‘He is unusual in his swift return to what he was doing before he was Raised. Do you think it has something to do with his Western heritage? Most Chinese are well aware of what lies in store for them should they attain Immortality. Westerners, however, seem to have little idea.’

‘That may have something to do with it,’ I said. ‘What did Meredith do?’

‘I have only recently made Master Liu’s acquaintance, I’m afraid. You should probably ask her. I’d venture a guess that she was assisted by her husband.’

I nodded; that made sense.

‘Leo must start to take his place among us, Lady Emma. He should be at your side when you are undertaking your official duties in the Northern Heavens. He is the Retainer of the First Heavenly General now, not a simple human bodyguard.’

‘Try telling him that,’ I said. ‘And good luck.’

The waiter approached us, ready to take our order, and I opened the menu and pointed. ‘Vegetarian pasta.’

‘Hainan chicken,’ Venus said, and I choked with laughter. He looked at me. ‘What?’

‘Very good,’ the waiter said, and took our menus. ‘Wine?’

‘No, thank you,’ we said together, and the waiter nodded and left.

‘What’s so funny about Hainan chicken?’ Venus said.

‘Do you know what steak frites is?’

‘It’s a restaurant in New York.’

‘No, the dish itself.’

Venus nodded. ‘Steak and chips. Horrible Western meal.’

‘Well, Western restaurants all over the world do steak and chips, from the most down-market greasy-spoon diner to the top five-star hotel restaurant. It’s everywhere, they just make it with less or more expensive ingredients and trimmings.’

‘And this has to do with Hainan chicken how?’ Venus said, then his face cleared. ‘It’s the same, isn’t it. You can go get Hainan chicken from one of those chain cafeterias, or from a noodle shop in Tsim Sha Tsui, or from a top-class hotel like this. It’s the same dish, just with different trimmings.’

‘And everybody orders it!’

‘Well, it’s good,’ Venus said.

‘Not when the chicken’s so underdone that the bones are red,’ I grumbled quietly.

‘Chicken is best underdone, it is tough when overcooked,’ Venus protested. ‘You are with a Celestial, you have no health risk!’ He realised he had been speaking too loudly and dropped his voice, his face alight with mirth. ‘The best chicken is done so that the meat is just cooked and the bones are still raw. It is a shame that in the last ten years or so they have become concerned about things like bird flu and have started cooking the chicken all the way through. Terrible waste.’

Our dishes arrived; mine was a monstrous plate of ribbon pasta with a thick creamy cheese sauce and large pieces of broccoli, carrot and mushroom. Venus’s Hainan chicken was presented on an elegant platter, with one dish holding the gently boiled and cut-up chicken; three small sauce bowls; a bowl of rice that had been steamed in chicken stock; and a bowl of the stock as a soup.

He gestured dismissively towards the meat. ‘See? Overdone. Cooked all the way through. At least they have chilled the skin so that it has become jelly — white chicken.’

‘You do realise that if they roasted the chicken, the skin would become crisp and juicy?’ I said.

‘I have had Western chicken before,’ Venus said. ‘It is good, but different. This,’ he waved his chopsticks over his food, ‘is the way chicken should be done.’

We ate in silence for a while, the waiters occasionally topping up our water glasses. Venus raised his head, his face blank, then returned to his chicken.

‘They’re checking on me,’ he said. ‘I am never left to my own devices for even two seconds.’

‘I know the feeling!’

‘At least you’re not telepathic,’ he said with humour.

‘No, so when they contact me with an emergency, I have to call them back on my mobile, or wake up this goddamn cranky stone.’

‘I resemble that remark,’ the stone said.

‘Isn’t the correct term “resent that remark”?’ Venus said.

‘It’s a lame Western joke,’ the stone said. ‘Emma uses it all the time.’

‘So my Western lameness is rubbing off on you,’ I said. ‘Compounding your Eastern lameness, making you even more lame.’