The snot string is dangling back down out of his nostril again, so I get my hanky out and hold it against his nose while he blows.
At this point, Lawrence and Hillard have slid down the slopes of the Dell to squeeze a bit more entertainment in before we have maths.
What’s the matter, Ed Wet The Bed, Daddy-Waddy not make enough to buy you clothes that fit? says Lawrence.
And then he turns to me and he pulls his eyes into tiny slits and he says, Is it nippy out here or what?
Hillard thinks this is the funniest thing in the history of the world, and starts chopping the air, making kung fu noises.
I hope you haven’t brought any of that chinky food in for lunch, says Lawrence. You stink the whole school out when you eat that slop. Disgusting.
I know you won’t believe it, but at this point I didn’t know what to do or say.
Right then, I just wanted a ham sandwich, some Dairylea triangles and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps, like every other kid in school.
Lawrence and Hillard got bored waiting for a reaction from me and Ed, so they climbed back up the steep slopes and went looking for other kids to torture.
No playing, I wish I’d just socked Lawrence one right in the nose and smashed it into a million tiny pieces.
All I did, I picked up the shiny conker that Ed had spotted, and said, Here you go dude.
He said, Dude, I gotta keep my hands over my arse crack. Can you look after it for me?
S
IXTEEN
Charles Hu inserts a small, thin, wooden stick in between his teeth. He manoeuvres it up, pulls it out, reinserts it, manoeuvres it up again.
Ah, there you are, he says, inspecting the smudge of yellow food speared on the end of the toothpick. Revolving it around like it’s a diamond or something.
He puts the stick back into his mouth and sucks.
The kissing-teeth sound he makes, this is exactly the sound my dad used to make after every meal.
I took a pack of his toothpicks to school one time, got one out after lunch and started digging around inside my mouth. Kissing my teeth – just like my dad. For real, I didn’t even have anything caught up in there.
My friends thought I looked mint as. Mr Mills told me to stop it immediately and watch my manners young man or there would be lines to write.
Looking at Charles examining the food that’s caught in between his teeth and swallowing it back down, I’ll admit, it is kinda disgusting. No lie, Taiwanese aren’t so hot on their manners.
Charles’s place is real similar to that apartment we got into the other night. It’s in a big, tall building made out of steel and glass. There’s a fancy lobby area, six lifts servicing the building, long, winding corridors.
The apartment itself is huge, too. Bigger than the movie star’s place. An eight-bedroom mini-mansion at the top of a skyscraper, with a frigging rooftop garden wrapped around it.
A hundred per cent, Charles Hu is living The Dream.
Where the movie star’s place was decorated in your generic, no-personality way, Charles’s apartment is all intricately carved, dark wooden screens, floor-to-ceiling calligraphy scrolls, hyper-sized paper lantern lighting and Chinese sculpture.
Old, but modern in its own way.
I say, What do you do again?
He says, Oh, you know. He eyeballs a freshly impaled bit of chewed-up food. A bit of this, a bit of that.
Looks like you really lucked out, I say.
He puts the toothpick back into his mouth, eyes narrowing. Make no mistake, he says, the little wooden stick wagging up and down, I’ve had to work very hard to get to where I am today.
Hey, I say, hands up. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend.
Charles’s eyes go back to normal. He says, It’s okay. A lot of people assume my family was rich. But we were as poor as they came, he says. My father worked on building sites six days a week, seven if he could.
My dad, he worked hard too, I say.
Charles says, He got cancer in the end. Never spent the time to look after himself. When he died, my mother had to find whatever work she could to support us. Washing restaurant and hotel linen, cleaning at the local school. You name it, she did it.
My dad, he died of cancer too, I say.
Charles says nothing, and in the silence, I hear chants and shouts coming through the open window.
We go outside, onto the roof terrace. Down below, a pulsing dark mass marches through the streets. Pops of colour from the placards and the banners, but from this height, there’s no reading the words on them.
I say, What’s that about?
Charles, he’s looking down, a slight smile on his face. He says, Protesters. They’re not happy about the trade deal with China.
We watch for a little while as the bodies move along the street, as the shouts fade away.
