S

IX

A plinky-plonk muzak version of ‘Looking with My Eyes’ plays quiet on the speakers.

The next night, and I’m back at Monsieur Donut. The same music on loop all day, the same striplight glare, the same customers – no wonder Zit Boy behind the counter looks like he’s about to off himself.

Death by doughnut.

The cafe is just as busy as it was yesterday. Everything is the same. Good.

Who has a business card with just a name and no contact details, anyway?

Wait. Everything is the same, except the table me and Charles Hu were sitting at by the window yesterday – there’s a couple there, holding hands, staring into each other’s eyes like a pair of retarded morons.

I go up to them and stand there. Just stand there, like I just recovered from some serious head trauma but I’m not all there anymore.

Staring at them with my mouth open and my tongue lolling out.

The young guy looks up at me. Picture a nerd – thick-lensed wire-frame glasses, long hair parted right down the centre and seasoned with little flecks of dandruff – not the kind to start something, that’s for sure.

I don’t even look away, I don’t even move an inch.

What I do, I start making this low, rumbling sound that comes from my gut.

I drool a little, making sure the string of saliva oozes onto the table.

Overkill, maybe, but you can’t half-arse these things.

The young guy, he has no idea what to do, he’s never seen anything like it. He’s just staring at me, thinking through his options.

Before he can do anything though, his girl stands up and grabs his arm. He glides back and away from the table.

Why is he sitting on a chair with wheels?

Oh.

Ah well. Table now free, I sit down and wait.

See? Act crazy, no one messes with you.

It’s quarter to ten, fifteen minutes before Charles Hu appeared out the blue yesterday and asked if he could sit with me.

There’s a half-eaten doughnut and a Coke left on the table, so I munch, and I slurp, and I kill me some time.

Do you mind if I sit here?

My watch says 10 pm.

I wouldn’t be here if I minded, I say.

He takes a seat in front of me. The white hair threw me yesterday, I guessed he was in his sixties. Looking at him now, I think I was a decade over.

It’s the eyes – they’re slick and bright and they shine. You know, like the way little kids’ eyes shine.

Another sharp suit he’s got on. Navy this time, hanging perfect on a body that’s lean like a featherweight’s.

He just sits there, looking at me. Smiling.

I sit there, looking at him.

Ah, here they come, he says.

And just then, Zit Boy brings a platter of eight doughnuts to the table. Musty body odour wafts out of his short sleeves and gets stuck at the back of my throat.

Please, says Charles, Charlie, Mr Hu. An open hand, palm up, points towards the platter. A thin rectangular watch with a black crocodile leather strap peeks out of his cuff. Nothing chunky, or extravagant. But expensive-looking.

A pink one with sprinkles for me this time.

I say, You don’t like doughnuts much do you?

I’m celebrating, he says, as his finger hovers over the remaining seven, one by one, before settling on a glazed doughnut.

I say, How’d you know I’d be here?

A feeling, he says.

He wipes the corners of his mouth with a napkin.

I take it, he says, that you’re accepting my offer?

S

EVEN

Mr Police Officer barks something from behind his high-up mahogany desk, separated from the rest of the room in his glass cubicle.

I have no idea what he is saying.

He’s looking at me, so I get up from the bench and walk up to the perspex box in the middle of the room.

He barks at me again.

I shrug my shoulders and I say, English. Do you speak English?

Mr Police Officer lifts his hand to his ear in the universal sign for I can’t hear you.

So I shout, I don’t speak Mandarin! Do you speak English?