Fiction: Group 3
I shot a quick ‘I really don’t mind’ at the waitress whilst grabbing the keys. There was a cozy little lift
wrapped with sixties’ jazz and Chanel perfume going up twelve floors. I got off at the fifth floor and found
the room provided for me with relative ease: 5809. And, without expecting anyone to be in there just yet, I
walked straight in on two things and accomplished one myself:
1.
A naked figure sprawled on a washed-down mattress
2.
The naked figure seemed to be smoking from some 19
th
-century pipe
3.
“What the hell are you smoking from that pipe?” I demanded
The naked figure simply gave a nonchalant snort and shrugged.
“Opium” she drawled in a rural accent “It’s to reenact our gruesome history. Pretty attractive, huh?”
She must have read the disbelief on my face pretty well to recede into a more normal tone, “Don’t worry.
I’m not really taking it. I’m just pretending. But clients seem to find a helpless, pathetic woman on drugs
increasingly attractive.”
“Strange idea of attraction they have there.” I retorted
“Well, you can’t really say anything better about yourself, right? You’re just the same as them. At the end of
the day, you just want a woman, high or not, naked in your bed”
This woman had cornered me into humiliation and was ready to pounce any second. ‘What should I say to
her next?’ I pondered.
“Ha. Not really. You see, I’m not looking for any… fun… tonight.” I began, my tongue slipping at the
word ‘fun’. “I’m just here for some company- Intelligent company.”
The woman barked out a diabolical laugh.
“Intelligent company? Then why the devils did you come to a brothel? You’d have better luck finding
someone with more of a brain in the drunken section of the pub rather than some of our girls here.”
“I wouldn’t say that” I coaxed, recalling my own run-ins with a few notorious drunkards in the pubs back
in Japan. “Besides, you seem like a fairly intelligent woman yourself”
This seemed to silence her for a while. She didn’t seem particularly angry or whatnot- there was simply an
eerie expression on her face.
Finally, she spoke, “You said you wanted company right?
“Yeah” I replied, propping myself on a stool next to the bed.
And so, I began pouring my heart out. I began saying things I would never even have told my closest friend,
never mind a lone, mysterious prostitute of another country. I told her about my rather dull childhood- if
you didn’t count the suicide of my older brother.
I told her about my university days where I presided as a drunk, sexual maniac. I think I slipped into
Japanese a few time, but she didn’t seem to mind. It was as though she was hearing the theory of relativity
for the first time. Her eyes flickered with interest and widened at the nasty parts.
I finished my story with a lame vigour that matched my personality. At this point, fatigue had washed over
me and my eyelids were beginning to cloud my view. I may have trailed off on a last sentence such as,
“And that is
exactly
how one successfully braises an egg, with a dash of week-old eggplant…”
As darkness engulfed all that was clear.
The next morning rolled around too soon. I woke up with the upper part of my body on the bed and my
legs perched on the stool. The woman was gone. I couldn’t even remember what she looked like… but a
lingering scent stubbornly stayed in the room. Her pipe was still on the sheets- it was the only reminder
that she had, in fact, been real- and not my own perverse delusion.
I left Shenzhen the day after. My research has been sparse and fruitless but I couldn’t bear to stay there
another minute. The woman’s scent chased after me no matter where I went. I boarded the plane with a
sense of relief and barrenness- as though I was missing something I could never retrieve. I looked down
from my window and saw the Pearl River delta glaring at me between suburban high-rise buildings. I sat
there watching the river before noticing something remarkable:
The murky shade resembled her lifeless, bitter eyes.
