Tony Parsons - My Favourite Wife

‘For blokes who can’t practise law here,’ Shane said, ‘we sure are busy little buggers.’ He yawned and stretched, and sat on Bill’s desk, squashing a stack of files marked Department of Land and Resources. ‘Enough for one night, mate. More than enough. Let’s get a beer.’

A beer sounded good. Bill knew that Becca and Holly would have gone to bed hours ago. Now that he was sleeping in the second bedroom so as not to disturb them when he came back late, and when he left for work early, it didn’t really matter when he got home. A little unwinding sounded like just what he needed.

‘I’m going to tell you how it works out here,’ Shane shouted, raising his voice above a song that Bill couldn’t quite place. Something about making things more complicated. ‘I’m going to tell you what we call the Kai Tak rules, okay?’

‘The what?’

‘The Kai Tak rules. Pay attention. The Kai Tak rules are very important.’

They were in a place called Suzy Too. ‘Everybody comes to Suzy Too,’ Shane said. It was loud, smoky, crowded beyond belief. There was a dance floor in one corner, although people were dancing all over the place, including on the bars.

There were young Chinese men with dyed blond hair and Western women in jeans and T-shirts and Western men in stained polo shirts or business suits with their ties hanging off and Chinese women in short skirts or qipao or jeans that said Juicy on the back. Lots of them.

A woman pulled at Bill’s sleeve. She looked hungry. She tapped in some numbers on her mobile phone and showed it to him. It said 1000 .

‘One thousand RMB,’ Shane said, taking Bill’s other sleeve. ‘That’s about £70.’

‘But eight hundred is okay,’ the woman said. She blinked, dazed by the smoke and exhaustion.

Bill stared at the handset, trying to understand.

‘Are you looking for a permanent girlfriend?’ she asked him.

Bill had pushed his face close to her, just to hear what she was saying. Now he reared back. ‘I’m married.’

The woman took this in her stride. ‘Yes, but are you looking for a permanent girlfriend?’

‘No thank you,’ Bill said, aware that he sounded as though he was declining a second cucumber sandwich at the vicar’s tea party.

Shane put a cold bottle of Tsingtao in his hand.

‘You know Kai Tak?’ the Australian said. ‘No? Kai Tak was the old airport in Hong Kong. Kowloon side. Your missus said she visited the Big Noodle as a kid. She would remember it. Before your time, mate.’ Shane’s free hand, the one that wasn’t holding a Tsingtao, impersonated a plane making an erratic landing. ‘Where you came in through the blocks of flats hanging their laundry on the balconies and you would often land with someone’s pants wrapped around your neck. Sometimes your own.’ He winked, clinking bottles with Bill. ‘And that’s the point.’

The woman with the mobile phone said something in Chinese as she draped an arm around Bill’s shoulders, an act more of weariness than desire.

‘You’re beautiful,’ Shane told Bill.

‘Who says that?’ Bill asked. ‘You or her?’

‘Her,’ Shane said. ‘To me, you’re just about cute.’

The woman turned to Bill and said something, her eyes half-closed.

‘She loves you,’ Shane said.

Bill stared at her. ‘But we just met,’ he said.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ the woman said in English, leaning against him. ‘I have financial issues.’

Shane laughed, said something in Shanghainese and she turned away with a shrug. Then he looked quickly at Bill. ‘You didn’t want her, did you?’

Bill just stared at him. He managed to shake his head. Shane leaned in. This was important. This was crucial.

‘Kai Tak rules means that we never talk about what happens when we are on an adventure, okay?’ he continued. ‘Kai Tak rules mean omerta . It means loose lips sink ships.’ Shane gently prodded a thick finger against Bill’s heart. ‘Kai Tak rules means keep your cakehole shut, mate. You do not talk about it with your wife, your girlfriend, or the married stiff in the office. Whatever we get up to, you do not confess to Devlin, you do not boast to Mad Mitch. It’s the first rule of Fight Club. You do not talk about Fight Club – right? What happens on tour stays on tour.’

‘I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about,’ Bill said. But he sort of knew. Already there was the first glimmer of understanding.

It was different out here.

There was an eruption on the dance floor. Notes had started to fall from the sky. They looked up and saw one of their German clients – not the old rock and roller but the other one, Jurgen, the conservative-looking one – grinning foolishly from the DJ box. He was throwing his cash away with both hands, making a Papal gesture every time he released a fistful of RMB, as though he was blessing the crowd.

‘This will all end in tears,’ Shane predicted, as the dancers fought each other to get at the cash, which drifted slowly to the dance floor before it was seized upon by leggy Chinese girls in qipao and sweating Western businessmen.

Two women wrapped their arms around Bill’s waist, laughing and sighing and smiling as if they had mistaken him for Brad Pitt on an off night. Shane made a slight motion with his head and they went and did exactly the same thing to a small bald Frenchman who was slumped at the bar. He was about sixty-five and they acted like they had mistaken him for George Clooney. Bill stared at Suzy Too with appalled wonder.

‘Does this go on every night?’

Shane nodded. ‘And some say that Shanghai’s commitment to late nights shows just how few people in this city really have serious business in the morning,’ he said. He swigged Tsingtao. ‘They may well be right.’

A woman with wild eyes and a Louis Vuitton handbag was dancing on a table, slowly moving her narrow hips, looking at the mirror on the wall, lost in herself. Another woman, all sinewy length and hardened flesh, no waste, was out on the floor, laughing as she eased herself into a scrum of businessmen clumping their feet to some thirty-year-old rock song.

Bill was certain that he had seen both of them at Paradise Mansions in the scrum of women who had gathered around the stalled red Mini. And, now he came to think of it, the one with the mobile phone looked familiar too. But it was not easy to tell who was touting for trade and who was just out on the town.

‘Are these women all prostitutes?’ Bill said.

Shane thought about it. ‘It’s prostitution with Chinese characteristics,’ he said, looking up at Jurgen the German in the DJ box. The money was all gone but Jurgen was still standing up there with that foolish grin, as if he had made some kind of point. ‘There goes Jurgen’s profit margin for the last fiscal quarter,’ Shane said. ‘Prat.’ He nodded at the laughing girls at the bar. They were stroking the Frenchman’s head and cackling. ‘I know those two. They’re teachers. Mathematics and Chinese. They’re just making a little money on the side for their designer handbags and glad-rags. Prostitutes? That seems a little harsh, mate. That seems a little brutal. Some of them are just here to dance the night away. They’re as innocent as you and me. Well – you. The Paradise Mansions girls are saving themselves for the right man – even if he is married to someone else. That’s the theory – at Paradise Mansions they are all good little second wives – although of course they do have a lot of lonely nights. The others, they just want their small taste of the economic miracle that they’ve seen on TV, and they can’t get that on what a bloody teacher earns, which is, oh, a few peanuts above nothing.’ He thoughtfully chugged down his Tsingtao.