I say, Akemi, right.
Deciding she’s had enough chit-chat, she bends down to pick up her neat pile of folded clothes. I enjoy watching her get dressed. Deliberate in the way she moves, easing her panties on, then her bra, then her skirt, her blouse, and finally her heels.
She checks herself in the mirror, twirling her hair around back into the bun she wore this morning.
Eyes still locked on her reflection, she says, See you later, then.
You don’t want the thing I stole from you back? I ask.
The door clicks shut behind her.
T
HREE
My phone says 9:10 pm, four and a bit hours after Akemi left my room.
Outside, the city is starting to light up – streetlights, car lights, neon lights.
Aeroplanes drag their blinking red dots across the night sky. Over there, a satellite draws a golden, sweeping line on its way around the earth.
I tried to go back to sleep after Akemi left. It didn’t work. So I just lay on the bed and watched TV.
Old repeats of Quantum Leap dubbed in Mandarin. Taiwanese soap operas in Hokkien with swooning females and dramatic music. Period wuxia films with half-bald, half-ponytailed guys flying through bamboo forests. A late-night news bulletin featuring an old hoarder man surrounded by piles and piles of handwritten letters. Another late-night news bulletin featuring rows and rows of Chinese tanks, then footage of a missile launch, all apocalyptic fire and smoke. Adverts for McDonald’s that look exactly like the adverts for McDonald’s back home.
I speak fluent non-Hokkien, and even more fluent non-Mandarin, so all I’m left with is a bunch of flashing pictures and a made-up commentary in my head.
I get off the bed and take a piss. I sniff. I smell like the inside of Akemi.
Time for a shower, I guess. It’s been a few days.
Thanks for using up all the hot water, Akemi, I love cold showers.
I towel myself dry and look around my new makeshift home – the puke-covered trousers from last night, collapsed in the corner. The used condom tissue, lurking around the wastepaper basket. Crumpled crisp packets of exotic flavours, sprinkled around the floor in between the crushed beer cans.
Wait, there’s still a crisp in this packet.
I munch. Lobster and seaweed flavour, nice.
This hotel room is starting to depress me. I could, theoretically, be doing all this luxurious living in a Premier Inn down the road from our flat in London.
Taipei boils me as I walk.
The smell of rotten eggs. A stench stifled by a nose pinch when I used to visit as a kid with my parents.
It radiates from the pavement, from the buildings, from the toxic exhaust pipes sput-sput-sputtering on the road.
A thick haze covers the city at night, making everything look soft and blurry round the edges.
Mia uses this word I’d never heard before: ‘close’. I laughed the first time she said it: What the hell does that mean?
She told me to bugger off.
Now I get it. The word was created for this place in the middle of summer. A billion little spheres of sweat bubble and trickle down my brow, my nose, my neck, my back, my crack. My feet stick to my socks, my socks stick to my shoes.
Traveller rule number one: explore the neighbourhood you’re staying in. This one here, right now, nothing special.
Beat-up electronics shops, worn-out restaurants, signs of us western raiders: Starbucks, Ben & Jerry’s, H&M.
My stomach whines.
Across the street, a giant pink doughnut with arms and eyes sits on top of a cafe, its puny legs dangling over the side. Monsieur Donut, the best donuts in town! glows the sign.
There’s only so much crisps and beer can do for you. A coffee and a doughnut should provide better nutrition. I wait for a gap in the traffic, cross the road and walk in.
The chill hugs me and my body goes limp like I’ve been constipated for weeks and I just, finally, had the biggest dump ever.
Everything is bright. Stark white walls and pink booths. A plinky-plonk muzak version of ‘Looking with My Eyes’ plays quiet on the speakers.
There’s a free table by the window, so I go to the counter and the zit-blasted boy behind it, point to a picture on the laminated menu, take an age to count out the unfamiliar money, and sit down before anyone else can walk in and grab my seat.
While I wait, I think about Akemi. How is it that she thinks I’m someone she slept with a few weeks back?
Across the street, I see a guy in the darkness, moving away, calling after someone: Guo lai!
Seductive and singing and sly.
Shadows pass under an infinity of blinking neon signs, ill-looking taxi drivers cruise around for their next fare, and nighttime in Taipei unravels slow.
