Last Night in Hong Kong
Their last night in Hong Kong began with the words, “Driver, surprise us.”
While the meter spun, the cabby drove Scotland Ross and his buddy, Pretty Boy, down the left side of the road through the downtown business district. Still under British rule, these people drove on the wrong side of the road behind a wheel on the wrong side of their cars. Of the two dozen countries Scotland visited during his enlistment, this was the first place he’d been that used a Mercedes Benz for a taxi. It was the only time he’d ridden in one, too, but he couldn’t enjoy the ride that night because headlights came at them from the wrong side of the street and, every time, he forgot for a split second and felt they would die.
The driver said many things in a thick Cantonese accent before Scotland figured out he was trying to say “1776” in honor of America’s Bicentennial—a month away. “God bless America,” the driver said as he rolled to a stop in front of a high-rise with a ground-floor storefront that sported a hand-carved wooden sign, which read “Bull and Bear” with a bas-relief depiction of each. “Extra nice pub,” he said through his accent.
The place looked as decent as any for them to start.
“Good beer,” the cabby said. “Brit girls. You like.” He held two thumbs up and flashed a jagged row of teeth like corn kernels.
The thought of beer and British girls turned Scotland and Pretty Boy into vertical launch missiles. Access to beer was mandatory. After so much time aboard a ship at sea, Scotland had nothing but sober time to remember all the things he wished he hadn’t. He wasn’t proud of himself, but since carrying his baby’s white ash casket and setting it in a hole in the ground two years earlier along with a marriage that had died at the same time, all he wanted to do was forget. His only chance to do so was in port, on liberty, with beer. Lots of beer.
They forked over wads of the local funny money and the driver got out, opened the door and shook their hands as they exited the cab. “Thank you, kind gentlemen, very much,” he said as he pumped each of their hands.
“This is going to be a great night,” Pretty Boy said.
As they walked, Scotland noticed the curves of the buildings and the shapes of the windows. It was his nature to peer into all the darkened doorways. He did this everywhere he went—looked toward every house he passed. People often looked back, and that’s when he felt connected to a place. Eye contact with a local in their personal space meant more than seeing sights he could look at in an encyclopedia. And this was a different kind of scene than the junk boats floating in the harbor and the open-air markets shown in travel brochures. This was an area near the lights and the high-rises and the wealth of the Far East. “It’s hard to believe the Brits have to hand this place over to China in twenty years or so.”
“Yeah, well, fuck that. We’re here to party tonight!” Pretty Boy said, and clapped Scotland on the shoulder.
Scotland stood six-two and had twenty-five pounds on his buddy, but the jolt forced a charge into his brain. Pretty Boy was right. They had one purpose on this electric night—to do as much damage as they could reasonably get away with, because tomorrow their ship would set sail again to resume sentry duties in the Pacific, where they could meet their ends through mishaps or foul weather or the Soviets.
“Yeah,” Scotland said. “Hell, yeah. Let’s do it to it!”
***
The pub ran deep as a football field, but narrow, high tables lining the wall opposite the bar. No pool tables or music, just British businessmen in fancy suits enveloped by all the familiar beer signs, British flags, and rugby memorabilia that hung on the tan-colored walls. Wood beams crisscrossed the ceiling. Just the same as all the British pubs Scotland had seen on The Benny Hill Show.
Scotland and Pretty Boy threaded through the crowd of suits. They weren’t the only ones in blue jeans, but Scotland didn’t know if that would work for or against them. And there just weren’t as many girls there as he’d hoped.
Clots of guys stood—some in circles, some paired off and talking toe-to-toe—holding foamy pints and loud conversations. There was much laughter, and the thick-necked barman ran from tap to tap filling glasses with more and more beer.
Pretty Boy and Scotland shouldered through the crowd of suits and bellied up to the bar. Scotland ordered a Guinness. Pretty Boy ordered a pint of John Courage and rum shots for both of them. He wanted to run hot right out of the gate.
Before their empty shot glasses hit the bar, Pretty Boy said, “Hit us again, my friend.”
The second shot of rum went down smoother than the first and Scotland allowed it to settle in his ribs, the warmth to radiate fully, before taking a pull off his dark beer.
He turned and rested his back on the bar while surveying the room. A few women in skirts mingled with the shit-talking suits. Almost everyone smoked. Off to the side, a freckled girl threw darts with a friend, who was better looking and obviously more interested in a guy in a suit at the end of the bar keeping her supplied with whisky sodas. The freckled girl threw her darts and looked over her shoulder as she retrieved them, giving her partner the opportunity to take her turn.
Scotland shook a Winston from his pack and pulled out his Zippo with an illustration of the USS McCreight on the front and lit up. Blew smoke over the heads of the crowd. And, like a hunter tracking wild boar, he zeroed in on the freckled girl because she was alone, and because she would do just fine to get them started.
He walked up to her and got close enough to feel the heat coming off her body. She didn’t back away.
“Hello, handsome,” she said, with a British accent and a grin of thin lips. “I’m Elizabeth.”
“If you beat me at a game of cricket, Elizabeth,” Scotland said, pointing at her darts, “I’ll take you home and make you glad you’re a woman.”
Elizabeth smiled to reveal more gums than teeth, which were the color of the walls. “I’m always glad I’m a woman,” she said, holding that smile, looking at him through the corner of her eyes, real easy to read. “And if you win?”
“That’s unlikely,” Scotland said, playing along. “I’m real bad at darts.”
“Why don’t we skip the formality, then? I live nearby.”
The offer was like getting goosed. He’d hit a homer the first trip to the plate. Only one thing slowed him down. “I can’t just leave my buddy,” he said, pointing to Pretty Boy.
She looked to where he’d pointed, saw the only other outsider there and smiled, “Oh, I don’t suppose a lad like that will be alone for long in a place like this.”
Scotland’s heartbeat double-clutched. Her words struck him as something he’d say if the situation were reversed. This was no shy girl playing darts and keeping to herself. She was something else entirely.
He waved Pretty Boy over. He stuck out his hand. “I’m Steve,” he said.
Elizabeth stood a little straighter and held back her shoulders like some sort of conditioned response she couldn’t prevent. Scotland got the impression Elizabeth would rather have met Pretty Boy first. She saw Scotland watching her and relaxed her shoulders, dropped the facade. Instead of owning the response, she leaned farther back—thrusting her pelvis forward—not in a sexual way, but rather as propulsion into a sneeze. She shot forward and over at the waist, but pinched off the sneeze to nothing more than a chirp. It sounded phony, but he didn’t care. Most girls had some involuntary reaction to Pretty Boy. That was the way it was. Since Scotland had known the guy, he’d made himself available to the second-string talent. After a while, he decided to strike first, as soon as they hit a room or bar, to give himself the best chance to make a connection before Pretty Boy sucked the attention out of the room. He’d rather have his choice of girls full of regret and obligation than have first crack at Pretty Boy’s rejects.
“So you guys should figure out where and when you want to meet up later,” she said to Pretty Boy. “When I’m through with him.”
They both laughed.
She said, “How about right back here in two hours?”
Two hours seemed like plenty of time to go at it once or twice depending on how much chitchat she needed before and after.
“It’ll seem twice as long with this guy,” Pretty Boy said, pointing at Scotland and laughing.
“Fuck you, Pretty Boy,” Scotland said because he didn’t want the negative connotation and he didn’t know how else to express it or contain it.
“I’ll walk you love birds to the door,” Pretty Boy said, gesturing the direction with his upturned hand.
Before they got far, the mood in the room turned.
“What’s all this then?” a husky British voice called out.
Scotland had his hand on the small of Elizabeth’s back.
They were halted at the door by a group of bruisers in polo shirts, sleeves stretched by heavily-muscled arms.
Scotland looked to Pretty Boy, who looked to Elizabeth, who said nothing.
“We can’t ’ave you Yanks come in here and hassle our women, now can we?” another of the thick-armed guys said.
Pretty Boy turned around and said, “Fellas.” He held up his hands by his chest, making a show of being unarmed and non-threatening. “We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here. These two kids are going outside for fresh air. I’m just walking them to the door. Why don’t we go to the bar and I’ll buy us a round?”
The first guy stepped closer. His chest could have had its own zip code back in the States and was right at Pretty Boy’s chin level. “I’ll ’ave another pint, but the girl stays here.”
Scotland didn’t know what Elizabeth was thinking, but she sort of folded up on herself like she was trying to be invisible.
“No offense, man,” Scotland said, “but I think she’s capable of making her own decisions.”
A finger as thick as a roll of quarters jabbed into Scotland’s chest. “Talk like that could get you hurt, Yank.”
Scotland no longer saw three or four guys looming over them. He forgot they were in a bar in a foreign country. Instead, he was a high school kid again, being disciplined by the principal. He did the same as then and swatted the guy’s hand away. “Don’t fucking threaten me.”
The first punch hit Scotland in the side of the head. It had been thrown by one of the other guys and Scotland never saw it coming.
Pretty Boy started throwing haymakers as Scotland shook off the ringing in his head. People dispersed into a half-circle behind them and assumed their roles as spectators. Scotland and Pretty Boy were outnumbered and overmatched, but they got their shots in, at the expense of taking a few.
The biggest of the guys had Scotland in a headlock and went to work crushing his throat with his rigid bicep. Breathing got difficult and flashes of light went off behind his eyes. Scotland’s arms were free, so he generated as much power as he could and punched him in the nuts. When he let go and doubled over, Scotland swung an elbow into the side of his head. The shot might have knocked out a normal-sized guy, but this one ignored the blood trailing from his temple, just kept hold of his groin and moaned.
Pretty Boy’s arms flailed over his head while one guy had him in a half nelson and another tried to crack his ribs. Scotland punched that guy in the base of his skull and Pretty Boy flipped the other off his back.
The room got quiet.
They scrambled toward the door and pushed out into the street, in a hurry to put as much distance between them and the bar as they could.
***
It had rained since they’d been in the bar and the roads were clean and slick like a fresh coat of paint. They stopped at a corner to catch their breath, lick their wounds, and laugh.
Pretty Boy took Scotland’s handkerchief and wiped blood away from the crease of his eye.
“Oh, thank God, you’re both okay,” a female voice called out.
Scotland had forgotten all about Elizabeth and seeing her stirred him. “What the fuck was that all about?”
“Yeah,” Pretty Boy said. “Why didn’t you help us in there?”
Elizabeth lit a cigarette. “Those guys are bigger than me.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“Are you crazy?” She blew out smoke. “I’ve got to live here. I’m not going to have the reputation of a girl who takes home random Yank sailors.”
“Whatever,” Scotland said as he smacked Pretty Boy on the arm and jerked his chin to signal shoving off. Scotland took a couple steps away and said, “Have a nice life.”
“My place is this way,” she said.
Scotland turned without stopping. “What?”
“I said I didn’t want the reputation. I didn’t say I didn’t want to do it.”
“Me too?” Pretty Boy asked.
“You can watch the telly while your friend makes me glad I’m a woman.”
***
They walked along winding streets from the business district through an industrial area. Scotland noticed the hard, right angles of the buildings and the rows of windows, but for the first time he didn’t look at the darkened doorways. Elizabeth talked, not like a tour guide, but rather about the group they’d encountered at the pub.
“You’re lucky to have gotten out of there so easily.”
Pretty Boy laughed hard enough to hold his ribs. “You thought that was easy?”
“I’ve seen them do much worse.” She stopped at the edge of a warehouse. “This is it.”
She led them up a flight of metal stairs not unlike the ones they climb to get to the brow when their ship is tied up pier-side as opposed to being anchored out in the harbor like it was now.
Behind a steel door with flaking paint sat Elizabeth’s loft apartment—terrazzo floors and a high ceiling with exposed galvanized ductwork and black pipes thick as Scotland’s leg. She had black leather couches and a black lacquer wall unit with a Sony television in the center.
“Nice place,” Pretty Boy said.
It was the kind of place shown in the glossy pages of magazines.
She tossed her purse and keys onto the counter in the kitchen and offered bottles of Carlsberg beer, which they gladly took. Scotland held his bottle to the side of his head for a while.
“Are you okay?” She came with concern in her eyes.
Scotland caught her hand before she touched his face. “I’m fine.”
Her hand continued south and rested on his belt buckle. She tugged it. “Let’s go make you feel even better.”
With the door to her bedroom closed behind them, Scotland heard Pretty Boy changing channels, alternating between Chinese stations and English stations. It wasn’t his nature to wait patiently.
***
Afterward, with his pelvis sore and Elizabeth asleep on sweaty sheets, Scotland was tempted to close his eyes. The room smelled like lavender and Marlboros and sex. In a perfect world, he’d stay behind and soak up as much of her presence as he could. She’d fallen asleep nude, her hand cupping his balls. He wasn’t tired, but he wanted to stay there as long as possible and enjoy that feeling of togetherness.
Pretty Boy banged on the door. Scotland looked over to Elizabeth, but she’d slept through the banging.
“You about done in there?” Pretty Boy said. They were shipping out in the morning and there was other damage to do that night.
Scotland snuck out of the room.
Pretty Boy had the television tuned to a station with some sort of live shot of one of the floating restaurants in the harbor. There was no sound, merely an angle watching couples and families coming and going, their stomachs empty then full.
Scotland nodded toward Elizabeth’s purse slouched on the kitchen counter. “You check her wallet?” He hoped he hadn’t. It was a weird thing to hope for considering how much success he’d had doing just that from time to time.
Pretty Boy held up a wad of Honk Kong currency and a Visa card.
“Shit.” Scotland should have put his foot down and made Pretty Boy put it back, but she wasn’t Scotland’s girlfriend or anything. Just some one-night stand. A piece of ass that left them hanging at that bar to get their asses knocked around.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Scotland said as he buttoned his shirt.
Walking down the stairs was difficult for Pretty Boy. Scotland assumed his knee had stiffened up from being torqued the wrong way in the altercation at the pub. He held the handrail and limped down, one foot at a time. Once they got out to the street, he pulled out pieces of silverware, three Faberge eggs and the remote control for a television. “Look at this shit.”
“Ah, goddamnit.” Scotland’s shoulders felt ten pounds heavier, but he wasn’t surprised. “What are we supposed to do with all this?”
Pretty Boy shrugged. “We could throw them at shit.”
A bus stop structure down the sidewalk made sense to Scotland for a different reason. “Drop all that stuff over there on that bench.”
“What for?”
“We don’t need it.”
“We got cash and a credit card.”
“Exactly.” Scotland didn’t know which crime was worse, or why he suddenly felt bad about it.
“All right.” Pretty Boy lined everything up on the bench. “Fuck it.”
Seeing the items lined up on the bench struck Scotland as perverse. “No. Pick that shit back up. We can do something else with it.”
***
As they turned the corner, they found themselves in one of the Chinese districts of the island. Instead of signs in English, all the writing on the buildings was those funny characters they use. The upper floors appeared to be residential and wooden poles that jutted from most of the balconies held drying laundry.
“That’s their ancient Chinese secret?” Pretty Boy said.
They both laughed.
As they approached an open shop that could have been a little produce stand or convenience store, a skinny woman with a short broom worked to sweep the entrance clean.
“Give her an egg,” Scotland said.
The woman turned when she heard his words and stared at them, puzzled, but not startled. Looking.
Pretty Boy reached into his pocket and pulled out a green and blue decorated egg and handed it to Scotland.
“Don’t give it to me.” He pulled his hand back. “Give it to her.”
Pretty Boy eased his arm in her direction. Neither of them knew a word of Chinese and Scotland didn’t think she knew any English. Instead of language, Scotland smiled and nodded until she reached toward the egg in Pretty Boy’s hand.
“It’s a gift,” Scotland said. “For you.”
The woman dropped her broom and took the egg with both hands and sort of pet it for a minute. She smiled at it and then up at them. She returned her attention to the Faberge egg and spoke rapid words they didn’t understand. They smiled and nodded. She smiled and bowed and spoke more gibberish. They waved and turned to leave.
The woman left her broom on the ground and ran inside her store, either to hide her new treasure for safekeeping or to show it to someone inside.
Scotland and Pretty Boy repeated this scene, giving away the other two eggs to similar old women. They found a kid who received the silverware with great suspicion. They didn’t understand a word any of them said, but Scotland had a great feeling of generosity, or at least novelty, as these local people received gifts from strangers.
***
With their hands empty of all but Elizabeth’s cash and credit card, it was time to find a bar and reignite the buzz they were working on earlier.
They found the Blue Diamond Gentleman’s Club and went inside to fill their gullets with booze and their eyes with titties.
The girls were a mix of Caucasians and Thais.
Scotland and Pretty Boy slammed rum shots at the bar before taking seats at the foot of the stage and settling in with their beers.
A couple songs later, a Slavic girl announced as Sabrina, took the stage. She had all the right parts and danced in front of Pretty Boy. She licked her lips, wagged her finger for him to come closer. She pushed his face into her breasts and spoke into his ear. Scotland usually felt slighted when that happened. It was always the best-looking girl in the place, too. He’d usually find the next-best looking dancer and do the same thing, but tonight he couldn’t stop thinking about Elizabeth.
Pretty Boy threw money around and Sabrina lap danced for him.
They downed rum shots and sipped on beers as they watched the girls and waited for Pretty Boy to get his fill, shoot his load or run out of cash, whichever occurred first.
Pretty Boy got uppity with the cocktail server every time he ordered another round of rum shots and beers. Scotland stayed pretty put together unless he was puking drunk, even-keeled.
They settled their tab with Elizabeth’s credit card, and left the bar stumbling drunk, and found themselves outside, where the streets had dried from the earlier rain.
“You hungry?” Scotland asked Pretty Boy.
“I’m always hungry.”
They walked on until they reached the end of a road that overlooked the harbor. It wasn’t the same side where their ship was anchored, but rather the side where the floating restaurant from the television sat. They walked down the hill and onto the dock. They found the video camera perched in the eaves of what looked like a big-ass houseboat turned into a Chinese restaurant. They waved and danced to give anyone watching on television a laugh.
Pretty Boy pulled the door handle, but the doors were locked. It was later than they thought and the place was closed.
“Son of a bitch,” Pretty Boy said.
Scotland picked up a stainless steel ashtray from a spot outside the door. It was heavy and the bowl part was filled with cat litter that spilled onto the deck as he raised it overhead and threw it through the plate glass window over a booth. Glass shattered and projected into the booth and onto the floor inside. No alarms sounded, but the noise was enough to alert three cooks wearing white aprons and hats, who scrambled out from the kitchen waving meat cleavers.
Pretty Boy and Scotland looked at each other. “Oh shit,” they sort of laughed as they turned and ran.
They got what he hoped was far enough away and stopped to catch their breath. Scotland bent over, waiting for the burning in his lungs to balance out. What he saw when he stood knocked the wind right back out of him.
It’s impossible to know if it was fate or if those fuckers had been searching for them the entire night, but they found ourselves face-to-face with the same sonsofbitches they ran into at the Bull and Bear. They looked drunker than they had then, but still not as drunk as Scotland and Pretty Boy were by this point.
The speaker of the group, the guy with the husky British accent and fingers thick as rolls of quarters, laughed. His teeth bucked out enough to eat an apple through a chain-link fence. “Look what we ’ave ’ere.”
The rest of the rugby team or whatever the fuck they were sort of bounced where they stood. Once again, Scotland and Pretty Boy were outnumbered four-to-two. Scotland’s head still hurt from the last run in with these fuckers, but he was too drunk to run anymore. He looked at Pretty Boy, who had his feet spread and his hands up, ready to do what he could.
Without so much as a “ready, set, go,” the rugby team paired off and charged them. There was violence in the air all around and Scotland wanted to inflict some of it. He lunged out on the attack as they charged and landed a side kick to the leader’s knee—heard something snap. For a split second he feared it was his own hip, as he felt the reverberation there, but before he could test it by putting down the leg and bearing weight the other guy charging him caught the already-sore side of his head with a roundhouse punch that made him see cartoon stars.
The guy he’d kicked in the knee shouted, “Kill that bloody cunt,” as he pushed himself up on his good leg and hopped toward Scotland.
Scotland shook off the blow to the head and checked on Pretty Boy, who was holding his own with the other two guys. His feet moved constantly but slowly, drunk as they were, and he held his hands high in front of his face, protecting his asset.
That’s when Scotland heard the distinctive click of a switchblade opening—the second most recognizable and dreaded sound next to hearing a shotgun pumping a shell into the barrel.
The two guys facing Scotland had their fists clenched and were circling. Of the two facing Pretty Boy, the one closest had the knife, but Pretty Boy didn’t see it.
“Knife,” Scotland yelled and forced his body to move in that direction, ready to tackle the guy holding it. They guy turned in time and got Scotland on the arm, above the elbow.
Pretty Boy put a choke hold on him, but had to let it go as the other three guys descended on them. Scotland didn’t know how long it went on, but fists and kicks flew and he felt the searing pain of metal piercing the flesh of his abdomen. At some point, he went down, thinking we would die there on the streets of Hong Kong.
In the middle of this ass kicking, Scotland heard high-pitched noises. With his hands and arms covering his head it took a moment to recognize the noises as voices; women’s voices, shouting, in Chinese.
The rugby team began peeling off them and it was only when the last one stopped kicking that Scotland saw the three women swinging their brooms like baseball bats and shouting for the police. The rugby team gathered themselves and took off running into the night like kids running from a truant officer.
The kid they’d given the silverware to was there as well. He handed Scotland a towel and mimed for him to put it over the blood leaking from just under his ribs.
***
Scotland must have passed out, because he didn’t recall how he got to the hospital. He awoke in the emergency room, while being treated for an assortment of lacerations and contusions. Twenty stitches—twelve in his gut, eight in his arm. He could only assume Pretty Boy got his stomach pumped, but he had no way of knowing if he’d been hurt. The doctor was a Brit who spoke like royalty while the Chinese nurses did most of the work. Scotland didn’t understand much of what they said both because they spoke in their own language and because his stomach rolled into itself with angry waves.
All the while, he couldn’t let it show because he was sure he saw the freckled girl, Elizabeth, staring at him from the hall. He rubbed his face with the hand on his uninjured arm. It had to be the medication playing tricks on him. It wasn’t Elizabeth, just another decent looking chick, this one in a nurse’s uniform. Whoever it was, seeing her made his blood pump hard against the recently closed wounds. If it was her, she could be either anxious to help him…or seeking revenge.
The clock on the wall showed five-fifteen. They had forty-five minutes to make it back to the ship. Scotland jumped off the bed. His feet felt heavy on the cool tile floor. He stumbled past the curtain, but she was gone. The hall was empty except for three short women sweeping. He ran from room to room until he found Pretty Boy with his head and face bandaged.
“We’ve got to go now!” he said over and over until they ran out into the street.
Scotland closed his eyes and tilted his head. As rain fell cool onto his face, he wished for a taxi to get them back to the ship, late, but hopefully not too late. When he opened his eyes, the rain stopped. There was no taxi and he tried to remember the sound of his dead son’s breathing.