 
**Praise for** _ **Benny Platonov!**_

" _ **Uneven."**_ __ - __ ROBERTO BOLANO JR., _Lee Harvey Oswald Jr._

" _ **Yes, uneven."**_ __ - __ JATINDER SINGH, _Poe-down Review_

" _ **Weirdly uneven..."**_ \- AYA NAKAMURA, _Chicago Whinge_

" _ **Indefatigably uneven..."**_ \- MONICA LI, _Toronto Skips_

" _ **[The author] gives us a reference to the unevenness of the writing within the novel itself, begging the question: Is this just a didactic, novel-length response to his own shortcomings as a writer?"**_

\- STOO SEPP, _Funk n' dunk Magazine_

"... _ **from the opening paragraph it is apparent that this 'thing' was written by a pervert. A few more paragraphs and we can add misogynist. I dread to think what kind of writer we'll have by the end of it..."**_ – TOSCKA, _Schlock is my frock_

" _ **I was out by page twenty. Crap."**_ __ \- SIMON WARDLE, _Pol Pot Pit_

" _ **[The author is a] PISS FUCKING, CUNT WAFFLE, DICK TIPPING, SLUT CAMPER..."**_ _-_ ANONYMOUS, _the Internet._

"... _ **it is hard to understand almost seventy five percent of what is written here, but somehow we are left in no doubt that it is the work of a genius."**_ \- RITGER HAUER, _Not Rutger Hauer Magazine_

"... _ **a mad professor of words, Puncher writes 'drunk scenes' like no other since Bukowski..."**_ __ \- LEMONY FUCKING SNICKET, _I've run out of magazine names Magazine_

"... _ **a guy sits in a park drinking beer and watching tramps with fannypacks, and he's hurting, apparently. So what have we here? He's gonna pick them all up and turn their lives around, get them jobs, give them some self-respect and change their lives? Ah no, wait...that's right, he's a writer. He's gonna write about them..."**_ __ \- TREEHORN, _The Internet_

" _ **Uneven."**_ _–_ KWOK FU SHING _, Golden Four_

"... _ **goes on and on and on and on and on, and, just when you think you're out, [the author] puts a part two in there and drags you back in."**_

\- LUKE McCONNAGHEY _, Woodenbear_

**BENNY PLATONOV**

**G** **upter** ******P** **uncher**

**A Year Zero Book**

**Year Zero Books**

****

This novel was originally written by Gupter Puncher. It has been slightly revised and updated to both Hong Kong and the modern era, but is still, inherently, Puncher's work.

The lovely giant rat, man, bench and grey background on the front cover were created by Bradley Wind.

'Benny Platonov' is first published in this edition. It is copyrighted under the Writer's Guild of America West, 2008.

All Rights Reserved.

Copyright belongs to Oli Johns.

The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

I think this just about covers my ass.

**** Thanks to:

George

Kenji

Andrei

Thomas

Rudy

Gupter

Year Zero

...and all those who told me I couldn't write for shit. You were half-right.

_**INTRODUCTION____________**_

**Gupter Puncher** , little known writer of the seventies and child (and later an exile) of the East German-Soviet State, disappeared from this world on January 16th, 1980. On a beach near Yokohama was the last place he was seen. Some commented that winter had always been difficult for him to endure and for that reason he had killed himself, while others suggested that his compatriots from behind the Iron Curtain had finally caught up with him. Whatever happened that day, his stories remain.

' **Benny Platonov'** was originally called 'Jurgen Platonov', the last name taken from the Russian writer, Andrei Platonov, a writer whom Gupter Puncher had a lot of affection for. He wrote in his notes many times, 'all of us come from the earth, and we will all fall back into it. We are the ones who create the differences.' By differences he means the class system and money, and in this novel he targets both.

**Puncher** set his version on the streets of Berlin, when the State controlled so much of its citizens' lives. His 'Jurgen' had the same arrogance, the same struggling ambition, the same guilt that 'Benny' has, and they both focus their rage on the powers that they believe are creating the 'differences': In East Germany, 1973, it was the State and the wealthy; in Hong Kong, 2008, it is merely the wealthy. So, in their own limited way, they try to attack what they see as the major fault of the world, using what they believe to be their gift; words/literature. But what do they actually get done? They dream of glory on their terms, saving the poor, becoming heroes or martyrs. They fuck women they despise, they teach students more publishable than them, they contradict their own opinions with their actions, and they lose themselves in their own thoughts. They start things, but don't finish them. Most of all though, they care about those on the streets, they really care, and it hurts.

**The two locations** and their respective eras are opposites, of course, and several changes had to be made. Details like the short film, the coffee shops, the behaviour of the foreigners and the locals have all been added to this version to make the switch to Hong Kong more comfortable. Some of the cultural references have also been updated, although others, like 'The Night of the Hunter', have remained. The rest of the story is a simple translation of what Puncher wrote.

**In his notes,** Puncher insisted that the novel begin with a quote from the main character himself, in order to introduce the belief system that becomes prominent throughout. It is unclear from his notes if Puncher was a determinist as well, and, frankly, it doesn't really matter as he never claimed that he was any of his characters.

So, the quote:

' _By my own reckoning, but not anyone else's, I am presently seven years old, with my eighth birthday only four months away [too stiff maybe...reckoning? Presently? Does anyone still use these?]._

_I was born at twenty. Well, either twenty or sixteen depending on mood; most of the time I choose twenty, but I'm never completely sure. I could go back even further, to when I was five years old, if you count your true birth as the arrival of your first distinct memory, which I don't [I'm assuming a difference between natural and intellectual birth...should I make this clearer??). That was when I was five, I think. I remember running around a patio in dungarees and mop hair being pestered by what I thought at the time was a giant but was merely my father. I don't know what he wanted but he had shown a very stern face when talking to me, so I guessed that it wasn't good. That was the first thing I could remember of my life so you could say, as Joseph often does, that that was the moment I was born. That would make me, by Joseph's [Should I mention the others or stick with Joey?] reckoning, twenty-two years old. I don't agree with this but you might. No, in my view, I still had fifteen more years of luck, chance, misdirection and external decisions beyond my authority to sail through before I would term myself born. And then, another seven years of books and experiences which I can now reflect on as an adult [right tense? Can or could?], before I would be ready to imprint myself on the world._

_But now I am ready. I understand all that I read with total clarity and I have thoughts in a second that most others fail to have during their whole lifetimes. Another year, I think...just one more year and others will know.'_

[Benny Lowrissa, writing in his notepad [5th draft], Hong Kong, 2007.]

**Benny** **** continues with the parks and the playgrounds and those that should be sitting in their boxes...

Benny laid himself out on the bench and let his arms dangle down, his fingers an inch away from the dirt on the ground, just like the man two benches away from him.

The park around them was still, obedient, with its leaves and bricks and fallen cigarette butts not troubling anyone. Not that there were many there to trouble, the only noise coming from two women, possibly whores, sat on the wall, and a local walking a long circle behind the benches, talking to his dog.

Benny ignored the voices and focused on the fingers of the man in rags, trying to see if they were touching the ground.

On the other side of the bench, Captain kept on talking.

"...rub it against their thigh, only for a bit though, then they grab it and they just whack it in, mate...no half push or anything to warm me up, they just stick it straight in there and-...and then what, they lie back and wait, and moan a little, but they keep an eye on you, like they'll raise their head and look down, to see how it's coming along." He leaned back on the bench and tilted his head towards his crotch, mimicking them. "...and mate, they yawn. Seriously, with a cock in them, they yawn...not because it's me, but just in general, for anyone they get. And-...that's not even the worst of it, mate, some of them go and put the fucking TV on. They stop looking at me and look at that, and-...that's when they cross the line, putting the TV on. If they do that to me I don't give a fuck about them anymore. I just hold their legs up and finish it. I drill them, mate, and I don't give a shit where they look."

He laughed, pleased with his use of a good alternative word like 'drill' in place of 'fuck', then tapped on his can when he saw Benny was elsewhere.

"Where are you then, mate?"

"What?"

"You're touching the ground..."

"Me? No, I'm-...I'm just lying down. Tired..."

Captain looked around and saw the tramp sketching along the ground with his fingernails.

"You're looking at that guy."

"Which guy?"

"You're copying him, mate, I just saw you. That guy, him." He pointed at the tramp with his foot then moved it over and pointed further along. "There are two girls over there with skirts you could put in your pocket and you've got your eyes on a tramp. You're a weird fucker."

Benny pulled himself back up and drank from the beer they had just bought from the conveni round the corner. He had reached for another brand, but Captain had seen the one they were drinking now and told his friend of the last seven months that it was a tramp's drink. Special Brew, eight percent, cheap, and with associations of poverty, Benny got two for himself and two for his friend.

"Ok, yeah, I am. But it's not-...I mean, I'm watching him because he's hopeless, isn't he? He's got nowhere to go. He's lying on a bench. Don't you think that's interesting?"

"They're not waiting for anyone, mate." Captain was still with the girls. "It's been an hour almost. No one's coming for them. Unless they're-...no, they wouldn't-..."

"Captain?"

"I'm listening. What?"

"Over there, the guy. Don't you think he's-..."

"Interesting, yeah, I heard you." Captain turned round to look at the man and scrutinized him for authenticity. "You said he's got nowhere to go, but how do you know? He might be looking at you thinking the same thing. No, hang on, you're white."

The man opposite them shifted onto his left side and faced the two girls with the non-skirts. Benny watched him, waiting for him to get up and start some drama. The man did nothing, just stared. Then he lifted up his beer and took a sip. His watcher, instinctively, did the same.

"Seriously, mate, he's just a tramp. What do you expect him to do?"

"I bet he's got an interesting story..." Benny muttered into his can.

"Here's his story: Woke up poor, grew up poor, got no education, couldn't get a job, spends his life in this park. It's sad, mate, but only sad, nothing else."

By the time his analysis ended, Captain had moved the old man off his screen. He was looking at the girls again.

"Go and ask him for me," Benny tried.

"Talk to him? Fuck off..."

"Go on."

"He won't understand me. I told you, I speak funny Cantonese. It's off. To them it's off, actually it's proper, the way it used to be spoken. I told you this, right? My parents are from a village, I live in a village. I don't speak like they do here."

"They speak it wrong, you speak it right?"

"Yeah, exactly, mate. Example, "neih", that's 'you', it means 'you', they say "leih", while I say "neih", which is the proper way to say it. I was talking to my parents on the phone about it last week and they said I was saying it right. I listened to the way they talk and that's where I get it from, I copy them, and they speak proper Cantonese. They've scuffed the language here, mate, they all speak common..."

"But they still understand you, right?"

"Yeah, but they laugh at it even though, technically, I'm right and they're-..."

"So just go and ask that guy how he got here, onto that bench or whatever...however you wanna put it..."

Captain drank more from his tramp's beer then crushed the can.

"I'm gonna speak to the girls instead."

He threw the can into a bin nearby but didn't move. The tramp stayed on his left side as Benny finished his own can and put the flip flops back under his dirty feet. There was only one of them tonight, not enough for research, and if Captain wasn't going to talk to the guy then it was better to go back. Next time, he'd come alone and stay longer.

The tramp lifted a double page of newspaper off the ground, straightened it out then lay back down on the bench and used it to block out the park.

Benny, tired and frustrated over the waste of another day, pushed open the door from the stairs to the corridor leading to his apartment and heard the sound of tiles falling onto an invisible board and an old woman, who had probably never uttered a quiet word in her life, shout out in victory. It has to be mah-jong, he thought, he heard them playing it at least five times a week. What were they doing except playing that fucking game? What were they talking about between tile placements? In a more distant apartment there came a stop-start line of piano, a few seconds of rehearsed performance, a pause, and then the same few seconds, perhaps slightly improved. Benny didn't think much more on it as music wasn't a keen interest of his. It was a lesser art, an art that only appealed to the senses, not the mind. That was why he classed himself as a writer. "If I can get the authenticity of poverty then I'll have a story," he told himself as he opened the cage protecting the wooden door to his apartment. "Those other ideas are good, but they're not calling cards, not like this one. I'll come back to those when this one is done." The cage and then the door were opened and he walked into his modestly-furnished apartment, kicking his flip-flops off, turned on the thirty-eight inch TV he had bought after only two days of doubt over the expense of it, and put the kettle on before finally letting his shoulders drop down in comfort.

The news came on the screen and by the time he was sitting on the couch it had moved onto a story about rebel fighters in Sri Lanka flaying some monks who had wandered, tourist-like, into their area from the opposing side. The Tamik tigers, they said, had killed over a hundred innocents within the last month in order to protect their territory in...Killinoti? Killinocki? How did he say it...Killinokiti? That was an achievement. A hundred people in a month, three and a limb each day. Another monk, a friend of one of the skinless monks perhaps, came on and talked about "peace first, and then justice for these immoral, disgusting crimes." His face looked familiar, someone who had featured in Benny's own life at some point. Is there a link between them, he wondered? We met in the past and he went that way and I went my way, and now he's facing the prospect of getting flayed while I'm living in this fantasy land where people never get flayed. What would it be like to wake up in the morning and think that, on that particular day, someone might catch you and take a knife to your skin? There were places like that all over the world and he was nowhere near any of them. Well, Sri Lanka is close, he reasoned, and Tibet is closer, but it's not in the same world. Hong Kong didn't know violence like that. People died here, sure that happened everywhere, but the percentage was so small. Only eight-hundred and fifty-seven destitute in a city of seven million, he recalled. Not even one percent, krist.

The story on the TV changed to the elections in Russia, forcing Benny to shake his head as if every country were more dramatic than the one he was currently in. Another country with a recent history of suffering that put Hong Kong to shame. The Cold War, snuff movies in warehouses, Chechnyan militia, the rush to sudden capitalism and riches and surplus warheads, the tanks moving into that renegade arm of Georgia; why wasn't I born a Russian?

He drank some water out of a clean glass and turned his computer on. He would try to make up for the days waste and write for a bit, then sleep. The air con blew into his face, reminding him that it was working on in the background, and the news reporter said goodnight from inside the TV screen. The music played out and the studio went dark and a preview came on for 'House', with Hugh Laurie being pulled over by a cop, a familiar cop, the guy from...what? White hair, big, six-five maybe...scrunched up eyes, who was he? When his computer loaded up he stared at it for a few minutes before connecting and going to Wikipedia. He searched for 'House' and scrolled down the page until he found the cast list, and then the list of recurring characters, and went down that until he-...David Morse.

"Ha! David fucking Morse..." he cried, and sat back relieved while outside the window, down in the estate below, amongst all the trees waiting for the light to come again in the morning, the benches lay empty, alone, tramp-less.

The banners were up because it was summer. The bars lining both sides of the main hill where most of the foreigners went to drink in Hong Kong were busier outside than in as people drank and watched the newcomers strut up the main stretch and paid careful attention to where the prettiest ones stopped.

Benny sat at the back of a high table with Captain, Michelle and her boyfriend in front of him, outside a bar on one of the branches of street shooting off from the main climb.

"Why are they all coming here? It's not even clean, mate. Look, that shit on the kerb over there. It's only the insides that have any class to them, that's what they come for."

"What were you doing last week, Benny? I called, but you didn't answer. You didn't phone back either..."

Captain had spoken first, Michelle second. Benny ignored the first, figuring it didn't need an answer, and tilted towards the woman who was five years older than him, with the boyfriend in shadow behind her right shoulder.

"Last week? I was-...I can't remember where I was. When did you phone?"

"I'm seeing the same faces going past too...that one; she just went by not even two minutes ago. Where are you going, love?"

"I phoned twice on Sunday. You didn't pick up, honey."

Benny smirked, noticing the boyfriend's hand come out of the shadow and place itself on hers. What was his name again?

"Didn't I?" he drawled.

Nearby, another conversation coasted over, this one political, manned by two middle aged men in suits.

"...it could've been millions, it really depends what figures you rely on, but, the thing is, the thing that makes it so frustrating is the lack of justice. That's the only reason we're even talking about it and-...hey, you're knocking the table...watch it. No, ok it's straight...yeah, what was I-...the lack of justice, that's it, that's the problem. All those people who died and their relatives now aren't going to get any-..."

"That's always happened though, always." A quick sip off the head of the beer while the other shook his head. "And justice? You're overlooking history. Listen, every struggle has a winner, and they write the story. They win, they make changes, the country moves on. Now the Chinese government, and I'm not defending them here, they did what they had to do, they modernized the whole area because it had to be-..."

"Had to be what?"

"Modernised, and it was. They were all farmers and religious nuts, and that's what needed to be-..."

"Religious nuts? Jesus, talk about broad strokes..."

Captain continued across the table, oblivious to anything but the people in front.

"They're repeating themselves, eight of them at least anyway. You ever hear that theory, mate, there are eight people in this world, in any country, that look like you, exactly like you. I think it's true..."

"So where did you get to?" came Michelle again.

"Fine, they modernized the country, maybe, but so did Stalin, so did the British in India, and they killed thousands doing it, you can't forget that. That's what the price is..."

"I'm not forgetting it, I'm just making the point that-..."

"Benny?"

"...no, wait a minute. Wait a minute, let's be clear here, you're trying to brush it away, you're saying it's all ok. That's the classic ulitaria-...ulititarianism-...no, what's the word? Ulit-...Utit-...fuck off, I know it...Utilitarinism, that's it. That's the classic (spoken slowly and cautiously) u-tili-tari-nistic attitude right there, isn't it, and you think it excuses everything, that's what you're saying." A deliberate shake of the head from the speaker, a bitter sip taken from his pint. "But it's not justified. If you're honest, you'll admit it, but you won't, will you? You know what I mean...ulititary-...fuck, you're saying it's ok to murder in one village if it makes a whole town happy somewhere else...that's what you're saying."

"Benny, are you in there?" Michelle repeated.

"What? No, I don't know where I was on Sunday. Writing maybe, I don't know. Why, you wanted to meet up?"

Michelle pulled her hand away from her boyfriend (Andrew? Alex?) and edged her stool closer to Benny.

"I always wanna meet up, but you never do."

"No, that's-...that's not true, Mish."

The boyfriend pulled her away with something in Cantonese, and Benny drifted back into his seat, closer to the politics...

"I did study this at Cambridge, Tone. You don't have to draw examples for me. And how do you know what I'm saying, you aren't even-..."

"People died, people starved, thousands of them. That's fact, complete fact. And you're saying that's just history, let's brush it...let's brush it under the, the...whatever, the carpet and move on."

"Wait, hold on, hold up. You're making my argument-...that's a straw-man you've-...that's a straw-man. I'm not saying any of that..."

"Straw-man? For fuck's sa-...tell me what you're saying then. Go on, tell me, explain it to me..."

"Yes, fine, give me a second to actually speak and I will..."

"...two of me already. Did I tell you that?"

Benny tuned out of their conversation and picked up Captain.

"What?"

"Not the exact same faces though, right?" Michelle asked.

"No, two of me, mate, exactly the same face. One in Egypt, one back in the UK. Seriously, there was a guy who was me, in Egypt. The Arabian me or Egyptian or whatever you call them. I'm not lying. He was a taxi driver, mate, sitting-..."

The volume of the politics got louder...

"So, burn them if they protest too? Is that it? Great, well then that's just crap, they've got every right to protest, they're not a minority over there, they're-..."

"Who said protest? What are you talk-...you're having your own conversation, Tone. No, don't shake your head, you're doing it again. Every time I speak. Jesus fucking-!" one of the suits turned away in further disgust and stroked the hair on his arm just above the plated watch that looked to be genuine silver. Benny watched him covertly, annoyed that they were talking about suffering. What did they know about it?

"I think I've just seen eight of the same faces on this fucking hill alone. And there's another one, she's local, isn't she? Yeah definitely, she's-...what's that? She's got a-...krist, she's hanging onto a French guy, a French guy, mate. That's one country that doesn't have my face, I know that much."

"Hey Benny, you didn't answer my question..."

"What's that?"

"You're dreaming, aren't you?"

"No, I'm here. What is it? You phoned me, right?"

"Yeah, but you didn't pick up. We said that already..."

"I didn't notice the calls, sorry Mish."

Benny gave her his face and tried to remember, honestly, why he hadn't picked up her call. I didn't ignore her, did I? He recalled the phone lighting up and her name on its screen, but with no sound, and where was he when that happened?

The boyfriend leaned into her ear and said something in Cantonese. She nodded in response, no smile, no turn of the head to face him. He patted her shoulder and slipped quietly back into his chair.

That guy, krist, the information giver...Benny wanted to lean in close, grab her by the other ear...Mish, you've been with that guy for two years...two years. What is he doing for you, really? He suspected...no, he knew, it was simply the sway of familiarity and...what...the other one, routine, or regularity. That's what they have, thought Benny as he scanned over the boyfriend's bland features, familiarity and regularity, but not love. But wasn't love simply familiarity, the repeated waking to the same face for so long? There was a story in there, beyond the aphorism, definitely a story.

"And why are we in the only local bar in this whole area?" continued Captain in his own bubble.

The two amateur politicos were getting up from their table and had retreated into silence, perhaps aware that a few more lines of dialogue would end their night. They grunted options for the next bar, put on their jackets and picked up their briefcases, politely pushed the stools back in and then they were gone. The waiter came over quickly, his face slipping as he saw there was nothing but the two empty glasses to take away.

"I had a new idea for a story, Mish." Benny brought himself closer to the table and his listeners. "You wanna hear?"

"You write...a story?" the boyfriend asked, surprising everyone.

"He talks more than he writes," laughed Captain, coming back from the street.

"No, he does write..." Michelle started.

"I'm writing."

"...on Sundays. When his friends have their only day off."

"I'm writing all the-...what? No, last Sunday I-...I had to, it was important. Anyway this new one..."

"Short story or longer?" Captain butted in again.

"It's about a-...mostly short, but just listen, this one...it's-..."

"Is it the poverty one you were talking about?"

"What? The poverty-...no, not that..."

Captain leaned over the table to Michelle, towards her ear. The boyfriend stayed still and smiled harmlessly.

"He's been dragging me to Mong Kok to watch tramps. He copies them and tries to get me to talk to them. He says it's research, but I don't get it, how can you research that? What does he want them to do? They're just people in a park, mate..."

"Ok, just let him tell his idea, Cap..."

"I am, I am. I was just saying..." He stopped and left the space open for Benny to talk into.

"It's not the poor people one, it's a newbie. And I wasn't expecting them to do anything, I was just watching them to-...I don't know, to get a feel for them, I guess. I can't just use my imagination on something like this, it's gotta be real. Anyway-..."

"How do you mean get a feel for them? They were lying on a bench, mate. Tell me how it's impossible to imagine that..."

"It's not just the fact of it, it's the details, it's-...it's hard to explain."

"Mate, if you're gonna write a story like this you need one thing. A main character you can empathize with, that's all. Poor or not, you've gotta make me give a shit about who you're writing about."

"Cap, I didn't say who the main character was...what are you-...you haven't even heard the story yet..."

"Alright mate, take it or leave it, I'm just trying to give some pointers."

"...and I haven't even started that one anyway."

"I know, I'm just giving some pointers, mate. And it's true, the books I read, they've always got an asshole as the main character and what does he do? He walks around smoking and he drinks and fucks around with women, and he says all these smart, clever things, but who gives a shit? No one, mate, it doesn't work. I'm just telling you that you need someone sympathetic as the main guy. That's all, take it or leave it."

Benny patted the table, nodded, then turned round to the street behind them and twisted his face in frustration.

...fucking street, slabs of know-it-all, know-everything stone shit, never wrong fucking pavement, go fuck yourself...krist!

He came back to the table with a conciliatory smile.

"I'll think about it, when I write it. If it's natural..." He wanted to put a dig in but the 'natural' line was all he could manage. "Anyway, the new idea...you wanna hear it?"

"Of course we do," Michelle said.

Captain nodded, the boyfriend smiled.

"Ok, the abridged version then...basically, it starts with-...or you've got a guy who wakes up and everything seems normal...he's in Hong Kong by the way, living out near Tai Po, like a village house or something...and, so he lives his life as normal for a few days, going to work, coming back home, sleeping, eating and all that...he doesn't have many friends, I think, maybe just people he sees once a week, and then most of the time he's at home, alone, and-...so everything's normal, it starts normal, but then one night he gets a visit from a man in black, who kinda barges into his apartment and starts acting weird for a few minutes, pointing at things and shouting, and before the guy can react and ask him to leave, he's been knocked out and dragged upstairs to his bed. The guy then sits down by the bed and waits for him to wake up and, when he finally does, the guy-..."

"Hang on, mate, which guy?"

"Which one? You mean, who knocked out who?"

"Yeah. I mean, who's been knocked out? The guy in black?"

"No, no...the guy in black is the intruder, he's the danger...the other guy's been knocked out..."

"The man who owns the house?"

"Yeah, him, he's been knocked out..."

"Ok, mate, go on..."

Benny nodded and turned towards Michelle.

"...so, the bedroom...in the bedroom, the guy watching him, the man in black, tells the other guy this huge revelation, that a few days earlier the man, the one who's just been knocked out, had been turned with drugs and chemicals and shit from a Christian to an Atheist, only he doesn't remember any of it. The whole process wiped his memory of his past life, it's all gone and he totally believes himself to be fully Atheist. So, the man in black gets out his own needles and tells the guy he's gonna change him back, but the guy in the bed is obviously petrified as he's only got this guy's word for it, and I didn't really mention it before but the guy's dressed in black and seems really intimidating, just this huge black figure looming in front of him like Robert Mitchum, 'Night of the Hunter'...you ever see that film? No? It's pretty old, I guess...but, ok, the guy, he's like a complete righteous psycho, and he's huge and has these grand fucking needles so that makes the Atheist guy even more panicked, so-...after a bit of drama and struggle with that guy he somehow gets away, I'm not sure how yet but he does, and he goes off to hide in the shittiest parts of the city, like Lai Chi Kok, Sham Shui Po, Mong Kok, all the dirty Kowloon areas, and, to cut it short, after a few nights watching his back the Atheists find him and he finds out that there are a load of these guys running around the city, using all these chemicals to change people while they sleep. But the thing is, the conflict is, he knows he's been changed against his will into an Atheist, but he also thinks like an Atheist now, so there's some kind of torn feeling there, like which side should he pick...that's the basics of it. Which one is right...which one should he choose?"

He leaned back, stretched out his arms and tried not to look at Captain.

Michelle nodded, a positive nod. "Sounds interesting."

The boyfriend, who couldn't have understood much of it, smiled and nodded, his lips altered into a 'y'know, it might just work' expression.

"Yeah, I think the idea's decent," Benny said, his arms still stretched out.

"It sounds a bit messy, mate," Captain decided.

Benny's arms froze in front of him. He spun his wrist a little to give a sign of life.

"Messy...really?"

"It sounds good, at the moment," Michelle said, patting his arm as he brought it back down to the table.

"It sounds good, yeah, but still a bit messy. You'll have to make it more logical." Captain, again.

"It's going to be a satire, I think. Logic won't be so important."

"No, it doesn't matter, you've still gotta have logic, mate. That's a part of satire. If you make it too ridiculous then you'll lose the audience, and then that's it, you're done."

Benny thought it through. He had seen at least fifty satires in his life and he had read them in their most common genre, Science-fiction, and he was almost completely certain that logic wasn't a crucial part of the formula. Did Vonnegut use logic in 'Cat's Cradle'? All that stuff about ice-nine, Bokonism, the way the world ended in that little Caribbean State...that wasn't logical, it couldn't be. But wasn't that an absurd satire? He wasn't sure what the difference was, he wasn't even sure if there was a difference, but to say it out loud, how would Captain respond?

"Can't lose the audience, mate," Captain repeated with authority.

Benny bit both his lips and put a bag over his brain to stop it fighting back. There was no point arguing a point he might be wrong on, not with him, even though he was certain he was right.

"It's just an idea..."

"...it's not fleshed out yet, but that's the basics of it. Anyone want to comment?"

Benny sat on a low lying seat in the City University of Hong Kong library with twelve other seats organized around him and nine slightly younger faces, none of whom had been intellectually birthed yet, aimed at his. It was his sixth month teaching these students of English literature how to write fiction and one of them had just asked him if he was writing anything himself.

"It sounds really cool."

"Interesting beginning..."

"Yeah, I like the way the characters are like big party animals."

All eleven students (twelve, including that new one, the one with the pretty face, what was her name? Wendy? Winnie? Krist, she was more than pretty, she was a psiren, a beautiful witch...where was she today?), _except one_ , had so far failed to query Benny on his credentials as an instructor for them and were never willing to do any more than ask simple questions, the answers to which they would never be brave enough to dispute.

"I think it seems like science fiction, right?"

"Correct. Science fiction it is."

"Science fiction is cool, I think..." another student said.

"Yeah, it's good for ideas..." the first one agreed.

"Science fiction is amazing for its ideas," Benny stated. "Some of the best works of the last century came from Science fiction. Heinlein, Haldeman, Dick...they all wrote great books, but they never get the credit they deserve."

"Lucas..." burst from another seat.

"Lucas? You don't mean George, do you?" Benny asked back.

"Biston..." came from another.

"Who?"

"Yes, George Lucas, Star Wars. They made books about it, they were very good. Very exciting..."

"Oh..."

"Luc Biston. He made the Fifth element, with the woman in the white bandages. That was very good...very visual."

"Ah...Luc Besson."

"Yes, he's a visual genius, isn't he?"

"Ok, on film, yes, he's very good, but if we can get back to literature for a moment..." he searched the group for an intelligent face, "...does anyone else have any thoughts about the story idea?"

Most of the group looked down at their notepads. None of the students, _except one_ , had ever asked Benny which magazines he had been published in, or what issue his story had been featured in, or whether or not it was archived and available for them to see online.

"The three spaceships are a good idea, I like the symbolism of them and the way the crew all swap around and sleep with each other. It is symbolic, right?" another student asked, this one wearing a straight beret and possibly trying to become a Chinese Simone de Beauvoir...at least that was the image Benny had in his head as he rallied a defence to her attack. Yes, this scene: Her, the girl (perhaps in a black beret, not mauve), sitting next to Sartre, who is next to a printing press...and she's stuck to one side of his face, talking, performing, trying to drag him away from writing the words for Camus' obituary, who he's trying not to cry for. That's a striking image, thought Benny. If I could get someone to draw that up in a sketch and think of a plot, it could be my first love story, my second novel...no, wait, the poverty one...fine, the third then...

"The spaceships aren't strictly speaking symbolic, but the decaying interior is, to a degree, reflective of the decaying morality existent in the relationships between crew members. They're loose with their relationships, so the ship is loose with itself. The disintegration of the environment in parallel with the disintegration of the moral soul, you understand?"

The students nodded, held their pens tight, and wrote some of Benny's sophistry onto their notepads. None of them, _except one_ , had ever asked him where they could find the novel he had told them had been published two years previously and acclaimed by many critics as being a "fresh view of a society floating happily in decay". Some of them had gone to Amazon and other online book centres to look for it behind his back but had come up with nothing. They were curious, but not excessively so as they remembered Benny had explained once that his novel had been so scarring that it had been taken out of print and only a thousand copies now existed.

"I think the main character is promising too. You say he's in love for the first fifty pages but they drift apart, and then he loses himself in other women and men until everyone has had everyone..." said the beret again.

"Yes that's a key viewpoint of the novel, when I write it that is. He is the idealist, corrupted by himself and the boredom of all around him. The woman, in generic literature, would be his great love, but she gets cut off, and then you won't see her again for the rest of the narrative, just on the edges...the periphery if you will. It all comes down to a kind of abstract representation of nihilism. That's how it should come out anyway, if I do my job."

Most of the students laughed politely, ignoring the contradiction of "abstract nihilism" actually being represented physically and non-abstractly through the lost love Benny had just described, and thinking that there was no possible way that this radical novelist could fail to storm the world. Of course, none of them, _except one_ , had ever asked him precisely what techniques he used to convey his themes in his work and what he planned to use for this forthcoming novel. This was fortunate in Benny's case as for the last six months he had been making up his own names for techniques that he had talked about in their discussions.

So far he had coined about seventeen, the picks of the bunch being:

  * ' _dramatic refraction' –_ Benny's definition: _"_ a technique you use when you want to skip ahead in time during the narrative, only you don't give any reference to how much time has passed [he had name-dropped Proust as an example for this one despite never reading him, relying solely on the title and a front cover he had once seen – fuck it, it was a long book, they'd never check].

  * ' _ornalisation'_ – "a term given to description of landscape...streets, buildings, interiors, whatever else...when you don't want to actually waste time describing it [this one had been born abruptly a month earlier when he had read a student's story describing a hotel crumbling, with four pages of uninterrupted description, and accused the student of boring the reader out of the story. "There is no time for description," he had declared, "but if you have to do it then do it simply and only mention things that stand out. Ornalise your story, nothing more."].

...and his best one so far:

  * ' _Needle narrative'_ – "Basically, Pete, it's a technique, originating with Chaucer, where numerous, peripheral characters talk around a central, important conversation, which is being conducted by two other, major characters. So, it's hidden like a needle in the narrative. In other words, you have to scan through many lines of crap to get to lines of...well, hopefully, not so crap.

This last device had been lifted from Altman, the director who had made and delivered 'Mash' and 'Short Cuts' into Benny's teenage life, but that was film, not literature, and that's why it was so impressive to Benny. No one stole techniques from film and put them into prose, no one even thought of it; no one except him. [Of course, he was ignorant of well known writers such as Evelyn Waugh and David Foster Wallace, who often lifted techniques from the cinema and put them into their prose, but the students were also ignorant of them so, in their eyes, their teacher was still the prime mover.]

"I don't know if you noticed or intended it but the idea of the journey has potential too...the way that they have a vague idea of where they're going and how long it will take, but in between there's not really that much to do. Do they set up some kind of social system as they go or does it stay the same as when they leave? What kind of class system develops when they're all from the same class back on earth? I don't know, it's a good starting idea...it'll be interesting to see what happens to it."

Krist, it was him, the _one_ , Benny hissed and kicked a wall in his head.

This student, this _one_ , was trouble; a disputer, an asker of difficult questions, a stick-thin prick with shoulders narrower than his waist. He was the policeman of the group. Benny had known it since the second lesson, when the _one_ had asked (without raising his hand and, by this action, being the one responsible for the others not doing it thereafter) for a copy of his book. The first direct challenge to my regime, he had thought at the time, before rejecting the request. But it wasn't just that, it was his face, and his words, the language he used in lesson. He had a more phlegmatic gaze than the others, he was always slouched in his chair, was always phrasing his comments in a strange way, making sure that Benny knew there was no trust between them. He had asked about the magazines and the stories, he had questioned him on techniques and tried to catch him out. He was trouble, real trouble.

"The journey, Pete, is a metaphor for life, obviously. I mean, we all have ideas about where we are heading and we are all stuck on this planet after all, so, from this shared experience, this synthet-...this synergetic connection, isn't every one of us so sure of life to begin with? A job, a family, God, Jesus, all of the basics, but then-...then as we get older, isn't everyone less sure? You see, the longer the journey goes on, the more we question our purpose and, concurrently, the destination at the end of it all. The blanket of space and the walls of the ship naturally serve as our own self-constructed shields to the loneliness that exists where-...where others do not."

Benny stared for a moment at his own dogged Pat Garrett then roved around the rest of the circle, hoping for a question from someone else.

"So, when do you plan to write this novel?" Pete asked.

"I think it will be my next, definitely my next. I'll flesh it out in the summer, write it in the autumn then look for a publisher next year. That's the plan at least."

"Is it hard for you to find a publisher?"

"It's always hard to find a publisher, err...Charlotte." He almost called her Simone...that fucking beret. "I'm fighting against the market with the fiction I write."

"But you've been published before, right?" Pete again, krist. Benny looked at his watch to see if time was up for the day. It wasn't.

"I have, but, as I've told you before, it was taken out of print and hasn't been seen since. Not a lot of people got to know my name or my work, unfortunately, apart from those in the know, the underground."

Most of the students wrote something down on their notepads. 'Underground', he presumed. A beautiful word, so lovely and nebulous, and completely irrefutable. No one, not even Pete, could penetrate its-...its nebulousness? Its nebulosity? Krist, was there a noun for that?

"If you're writing this one now, what about the other one?" asked Pete.

"Which other one?"

"The one about the poor."

"Oh yeah, that one." Benny remembered he had told them about it a few weeks ago. These kids were like tape recorders, didn't they think of anything else?

"Yes, you said you were going to write something to right the wrongs of poverty and shock the world," confirmed De Beauvoir.

"I did, didn't I?"

"You said it wasn't fair on them. You said a true writer needs to be on a level with them in order to write with honesty, and if we just rely on our imaginations then we will only ever write the most fictitious and offensively fantastical fiction," added Pete.

Benny had in fact said all of those words in that exact order with the sole exception of the adjective "fictitious" to describe fiction three weeks earlier. But still, that was a ninety-nine percent accuracy rate...

"You've got a fine memory there...sorry, what's your name again?"

"Pete."

"Pete," Benny corrected himself, and then with a grin, "see, I can't even remember your name. Not so good for a teacher, huh?"

The students laughed politely, except two. Pete sat like a rock in his seat and De Beauvoir sat as a second rock in comradeship. She's close to him, Benny warned himself. They'll be the two to watch. I'll have to recruit other students onto my side to balance it out. Perhaps Wendy or Winnie, the psiren, the one who was missing. She would be on his side; she always listened attentively and made smart comments. Krist, she was pretty...

"And the novel?" Pete asked again.

"Which one?"

"The one where you save all the poor people."

"I'm still clocking up the experiences for that one, Pete," Benny said. "I'll keep you posted."

Benny held up his camera and pressed the button.

The old men crowded around the stone table were too far from the flash to notice that he was taking pictures of them. He moved closer and found a place next to another stone table a few stone tables down from their stone table, the stone table that was forbidden for him to touch, crowd around or talk to. He had tried it once before and they had slapped him away like a mosquito. It wasn't his area, it was theirs, and they had no time for others, especially foreigners, and especially foreigners who were interested in chronicling their daily cycle of hopelessness from which Benny had decided without fact or statistics they would find it impossible to break away from. There is no up for them, there is no higher education for their kids or grandkids to break the cycle, there are no positive axioms they can use to better themselves, he told his imaginary dictaphone.

Benny raised the camera again and clicked. One of the men noticed the flash and threw his arm down in brief disgust before turning his back.

No, none of the axioms Benny knew applied to the poor. "We are down here on our own, brothers," he whispered to the group ahead of him. "No one's going to help us, no one's going to come along and lift us up with proper donations...money that could actually buy us something necessary." He thought of one axiom in particular: 'Life is what you make of it', preached to the middle classes all around the world. But it wasn't speaking to the poor. Not the majority at least, Benny reasoned. There were some who broke away obviously, the ones who were pretty, or who had preternatural brains, or who took to crime and killed more than the others in the muck. They could have the money, but what percentage was that? Was it even one percent?

I am part of that one percent, Benny decided guiltily, as he raised his seven thousand [Hong Kong] dollar digital camera back again to the scrawny men in vests, but I won't leave you, any of you. I'm closer to you than any of those above. I will write your stories and you will see it, you'll understand I'm one of yours, and those others...they won't have a choice but to call me the truth teller, the one in the muck telling the-...the oracle in the muck. Just like Orwell, I'll be the same, his successor, and I'll write like he did, but better, truer, more-...

A shoulder collided with Benny's waist and he looked down expecting to see a child run past, but instead saw an elderly woman with a yellow calf and no backbone bending herself into the bin four yards away. The hairs on his arms pricked up and he raised his camera, framing her ass and her legs against the twilight around them, thinking about the ambiguity of the shot, the question people would ask, "...is she climbing out or going in?" Either way, there would only be a second of pathos before their attention would be elsewhere, but this woman, this poor woman, thought Benny, his anger building up inside, would have to do this same action everyday until the day she didn't wake up anymore...

He watched her struggle with the bin, the legs kicking out to push her further in. The camera waited patiently in his hand, his finger frozen over its button.

...and krist, how many others were like this in this city alone? And the rest of the world? All those people sitting in comfort every night, wondering where their lives were going and downing pills to ease off depressions that meant nothing, that were amateurish, that lacked any kind of suffering except what they allowed themselves to suffer, those fucking self-dramatists, those disgusting beasts in flash clothes, every fucking thing they bought was a luxury and they thought nothing of it, every dollar they spent on something that let them just pass the time was a dollar they should've spent on no one but this woman, this poor other stuck with her ass hanging off the edge of a bin. And it's me, isn't it? Oh krist, she's here for me and she's-...I'm the one, I have to get her out, don't I? Benny cried within, feeling bile rising in his throat that wasn't really there.

He put the camera in his pocket and hurried over to the woman with his hands out front and opened in a gesture of reassurance, but stopped as she pulled herself back out, her hand clutching a slab of cardboard, her prize. Benny dropped his hands and fished in his pockets for change he could give her, but only found a hundred note. What would she do with it if he gave it to her? It couldn't make any kind of difference to her life, could it?

The old woman shuffled off towards the next bin with her piece of cardboard while Benny stood inert in the middle of the park, in Sham Shui Po, the poorest area of Hong Kong. He folded the hundred and put it into his wallet, reasoning that it would've been futile to give it to her anyway; gestures like that were solitary in these parts and would total nothing. No, the things that had to change were structural, things like education, wealth distribution, the rich sharing all they didn't need. These things will never change though, thought Benny. They never have and they never will.

From the furthest edge of his eye, he saw a crater in the park that he had possibly seen somewhere before. Distracted, he left the woman dangling from the next bin along and took a few steps closer to the large hole. He couldn't have seen it before, he had never been to this place, but it did seem to resemble something he had seen, a borrowed image from another area, he presumed. He made it to the edge and recognized the shape of it, the stretched out kidney curves of a swimming pool missing its water. A template image from myriad places and myriad films, it was lurking in this park, parched.

Benny raised his camera again and framed the empty pool in shot. It's cinematic enough to impress someone, he reasoned. As he absently clicked off two pictures, he forgot about the bin-woman and the others living in the dirt, and didn't think of the clear symbolism that putting either one onto the pool floor would've produced.

"Ok, here's another idea. You wanna hear?"

Benny and a girl called Oggy Ho were alone on a bench in a children's playground at the far side of Victoria Park with a group of five boys, who Oggy guessed were somewhere around seventeen or eighteen, drinking by the climbing frame nearby. They had been there for almost an hour and had already tried the slide and the swings. Both of them had been too big to sit on the swings properly, but they had sat anyway, their legs being forced upwards to let their feet rest comfortably on the ground. Benny had thought it would be more fun than this to come to the playground, but it was where he had brought the others and it had made them happy enough.

"Is a story?"

"It will be soon," Benny answered.

Their feet were off the ground and on the bench, their bodies facing the side. Benny sat behind using his body as an outer shell, his legs stretching out past hers and his chin resting on the top of her head. To get closer, to close the shell, he hung his arms around her neck and moved his crotch closer to her ass, allowing himself the image of the dress removed and his trousers around his ankles, and the rest of him invisible inside her.

"Story about me?"

"Kind of. It's about a beautiful, young girl who shows her intelligence and steals the heart of a guy on the cusp of literary greatness. You wanna hear?"

"Litary greatness, what mean?"

"It means becoming a famous writer, which is what the guy wants."

She laughed even though it wasn't deserved. Benny brought her top half closer and buried his head behind her shoulders where she couldn't see his eyes rolling. She wasn't ideal, God knows she wasn't Winnie, but she still had a body.

"It's you and me?"

"Maybe it is," he said quietly, still hidden from view. "You wanna hear it?"

"Uh-huh."

"Ok, it starts in a bar with the girl. She's sitting there alone with a drink in front of her, when a guy, I think I'll make him an artist, comes over and starts talking to the girl, trying to come on to her..."

Benny continued the story, making up the narrative as he went along, confident that this girl wouldn't get caught up on any of the details. Just the idea of someone smarter writing especially for her would be enough to get her on her back, or on her knees. And, in truth, he was half-thinking about Winnie anyway, thinking of ways he could talk to her the next time he saw her in class. She was smart. Krist, a lot smarter than this one.

"So they have an argument in the taxi and the girl, who turns out to be really, really smart, makes him look really, really stupid and then walks off leaving him to pay for the taxi. Then she meets the other guy, the guy who's on the cusp of literary greatness-..."

"Huh? What it's mean again?" she interrupted.

"He's becoming a writer, remember?" Benny shot it out quickly, anticipating the delay. "So, she meets the writer and they have a really, really smart conversation and the writer guy, who I might call Benny, realises that he is in love with this girl, and-..."

"Girl you might call Oggy..." she said snugly.

"Who might be called Oggy," he conceded, "and they end up kissing outside in the rain and then..."

She had edged away a little so Benny pulled her back into him, trying to feel the tip of his cock against her.

"And...meh? What happen next?"

He couldn't feel anything so he put his hands under the thighs and lifted her up, trying to place her directly onto him. He pictured her slipping down onto him and imagined the glee of rocking back and forth inside her, right in front of the seventeen or eighteen year old boys in the background. He had sometimes thought of being with a girl in public, but never had. This was a chance.

"Hey, Benny, what happen next?" She was playfully pushing him away as he tried to lift her up again...

"Then...then they go back to his place and spend the night together."

"And? What can they do?" she giggled.

"What can they do? I don't know, they can go to sleep in each others arms..."

"Before sleep, what can they do?"

"Before?"

"Yeah, before...they do something?"

Krist, what did she want? He pulled down her pants, lined himself up against her hole, pushed it in, pumped back and forth a few times then lay back in complete fucking relief.

"The story ends before we find out..."

"No end?"

"Yeah, end...there is an ending, but it doesn't give answers. You know?" An ending with no answers, what's the name of the technique for that, he asked himself.

"I like it." She looked back and tried to catch his eyes. "You are genius la. Genius Benny!"

Yes, a genius who couldn't remember the name of that fucking technique. Solipsis? Prolipsis? It ended in 'sis', he remembered that much, but what was it exactly? Postlopsis? Prostlopsis? His tutor had written it on one of his essays once...

Oggy pushed her head slowly back into Benny's chest and made some more remarks, which Benny interpreted as noise.

...Postolipsis? That sounded right. Was that it?

He felt the head rubbing against his shirt and looked down upon it.

...she's ready to go back. Act Benny, get up and take her hand, take her back to your bed, he instructed. There's a dictionary on the desk back home, look it up after you're done.

He put his hands on her waist.

"Are you ready to leave, Ogg?"

"Where are we going?"

"My place."

"Your place?"

"I wanna finish the story. Don't you?"

It was a shocking line, something he would never put down on paper. But speaking it out loud, to an empty park and a girl like this...

"You want look at poor people?"

"Huh?"

"You say ar...we are in search for your story, remember?"

"Oh yeah, the research. I need more time for that, Ogg. I haven't sorted out the idea properly yet. Another time."

She nodded. She was a simple girl, really. All she wanted was to have someone to hold onto.

"Ok la. I think your place." A coy smile. "Let's go, Genius Benny."

About an hour earlier she had confessed to him that she couldn't be alone for more than three weeks. "Every time I finish with the guy, new guy come la," she had told him, realizing only slightly that he would now see her as a slut, which he did, but not in a negative way. It actually saved him a lot of time as he quickly understood what kind of person she was and what he could and couldn't get away with and how quickly he would be able to get her into his bed or up against a tree. He had reasoned that fucking her outdoors would be a stretch for their first time, that would have to be straight, eye-to-eye humping with him on top, but it would be more than reasonable for the second time. After that, she would be good for another month or so, then he would make himself distant, the messages would dry up, she'd get angry, he'd get mock-angry back at her, they'd fight miles apart from each other by phone or e-mail, and then she'd find another guy, a lot less interesting than him, who would also quickly find out that she was a slut and could be fucked up against a tree on the second date.

"When do you write story?" she asked as they walked, with Benny's arm round her back, patting her stomach every few seconds for the want of something to do.

"Soon, Ogg."

"I want to read, la..."

"Sure, I'll give you the first copy."

"But...my English not so good la. Maybe cannot read well..."

"You'll be fine, Ogg. I use easy words, not difficult."

"And you can name my book."

"Name your book? You mean sign?"

"Write the name on the book...'To Oggy, from Genius Benny' ar-ma."

"Yeah, sign it. Sure, I can write my name on it. And wrap it up in a little bow."

"Meh? Bow?"

"Like a present, Ogg."

She didn't get it.

"Never mind."

Poor Oggy, he thought. She was stuck in her place too. There wasn't a guy in this city that wouldn't jump her for a month and then leave. But it is in her own hands, he quickly thought to brush away his burgeoning guilt, she put herself in this place. Or life formed itself around her and put her into this place and, really, she doesn't have a choice but to do exactly what she does; that was his philosophy. But life would allow her to stop eventually. She'd find someone who'd marry her and allow her a few kids and a consistently dull life. She wouldn't ever be poor. She wouldn't ever find herself with her ass hanging out of a bin, fishing for cardboard.

Benny was standing outside Ferry Pier number four waiting for the concert to start. One hundred and eighty dollars free bar according to the ticket in his hand, and the best bands coming out of the Beijing scene. The ticket actually had 'Beijing scene' written on it, capitalized and bolder than the names of the actual bands. He read it again and then put it in his jacket pocket.

Captain was standing next to him, his back straight and arms folded aggressively, shaking his head at the music that was already escaping from the pier stage above them, while Michelle and her boyfriend had rejected the invite, sacrificing the night with their friends for a night together. "We haven't seen much of each other recently," Michelle had told him over the phone. "We need some time alone."

"Dinner and a movie?" Benny had asked.

"Dinner, yeah. The other one, I'm not sure. Yin doesn't really watch movies..."

"Yin..." Benny repeated. _That_ was his name...

"...he hasn't been to the cinema in a year."

"Krist, Mish...a year?"

"Ha, yeah. I could tell you why he doesn't go, but I think it might make you mad."

Benny didn't ask any further. He didn't really care why Yin never watched films. He already knew the guy had no imagination, and he knew what would happen after that dinner of theirs. A bland bang, a controlled post coitus-face from him, and then a smile to her, no fucking soul, like sex was just making a sandwich. Then he'd roll off, mumble a few words and they'd both fall asleep on opposite ends of the bed, him on reserve power, her dreaming of better sex and better beds. Krist, that was a bleak room...

"Alright, maybe next time then, Mish. Keep me posted."

In their place, another couple had come, Joseph and Caroline, a mixed pair, one Australian, one Chinese, who had been married for only eighteen months. They were standing close to each other, his hand gripped tightly in hers, both smiling and not saying much.

Beside them was Avon, a huge gentle giant of a man who was one of those unfortunate locals who had been lumbered with what their parents thought was a fashionable name. The three of them were looking at the type on their tickets while Captain [his parents had rejected fashionable names like Avon in favour of something a little more ordinary, like Captain. Captain himself always said he only kept it for musical reasons. "Rock stars," he said, "need to sound ridiculous."] was now moaning to Benny about the music.

"That music sounds shite, mate."

"Yeah?" Benny wasn't really listening.

"Local bands, they don't know anything. They don't know how to build up a tempo, they can't follow beats, they repeat chords, bad chords, and-...listen to it, mate, I can't believe I'm fucking here."

"You could teach them how to play properly."

Captain had learnt to play the guitar through his own tuition when he was fourteen. For the last thirteen years or so he had been building his talent along with his own ideas of how far it stretched. Since he had come to Hong Kong a year ago it had settled like this: he was a hundred times better than any local band and a hundred times worse than his many idols, including Neil Finn from Crowded House, who he had once, so he told everyone, performed with on stage. That left a very barren middle section of the talent spectrum that, in his own mind, only he was good enough to fill.

"It's too late for them to learn anything. They just haven't got it, it comes natural. You can either play or you can't. You can either make music or you can't. No, it's this way, mate; you should either make music or you shouldn't. They shouldn't. In fact, if they turn their backs, I'm gonna have those guitars and put them out of their misery. No, my misery, everyone's misery."

"Should you make music then?" Benny asked, not trying to be smart.

"I'm not good enough, mate. I'll admit it, I can't sing and I can't write songs. I know I'm not good enough and I'm not gonna embarrass myself in front of my heroes."

"But you could try..."

"No, I'm not good enough, mate. I'd be like them up there, embarrassing myself..." He gestured up to the stage to the band they hadn't even seen yet and whose music was being distorted by the distance and the structures between them. "Although, I'd be better than them at least. That's just shite."

A phone went and it was Amelia. She'd be a few minutes late but would find them in there. She didn't say she was sorry, she never did.

"She always does this..." Captain muttered.

"She's alright. Probably got held up by her friends," Benny said quickly.

"Yeah, mate. They're holding her up, right."

Benny let it go and the five of them went up the stairs onto the main pier and found the bar already packed at the back. Captain and Avon tried to order from the side and talked about the music [Avon had also taught himself guitar between exams in his youth, ready to cite the discontinued bands 'Reef' and 'Terrorvision' as idols if anyone asked, which they never did] until their drinks arrived.

"Ok, this song now, I can tell you the chords they're using and I can tell you what the chorus is gonna be," Captain broadcast to the whole group. "It's too easy, they don't know enough chords. It's like Green Day, only they've got no fucking class or quality."

"It's just shit," Avon added.

"It is. It's just generic, mate. This is why I don't write music, bands like this. They're almost as bad as DJs."

Captain looked at the band again and waited for someone to ask him what was wrong with DJs. Joseph, who had only ever met Captain once before, was the one to bite.

"What's wrong with DJs?"

"They press play, mate. They press play. They nod their fucking heads to the beat or whatever, but they've just pressed play. I've got no respect for them, no respect at all."

"Man, they just press a button?"

"They don't make anything. Yeah, a button, that's it. They don't create anything. They're magpies, mate, got nothing of their own to give so they just whack in a tape. And press play. That's the sum of them."

"I didn't realise..." Joseph started, but didn't finish.

"You're not a DJ, are you?" Captain asked, amused with himself.

"No, I'm not very good with music. I don't think I have very good ears for it."

"Yeah, but can you push a button, mate?"

"Just one button? I don't know, man, I'd probably press the wrong one."

Benny laughed, but Captain and Avon were already moving back towards the bar for another drink. He stayed near Joseph, who was an older friend of his, a friend he had met at the University applying for the same job as him in his first week here.

"Is he a musician?" asked Joseph

"Who, Captain? No, not really."

"He seems kind of-...I don't know, a little angry..."

"Ha, yeah, just a little. Usually when he's talking...there's always something nearby that's pissing him off."

"Like DJs..."

"Like any kind of musician, really." Benny checked the crowd to see if Captain was still on his way to the front. "He pretty much hates them all."

Joseph shook his head and reduced all his thoughts to, "man, what a life."

"Yeah, isn't it?"

It had never been hard for them to get along, not because of the language bond or the outsider role they both tried to play, but more likely because they shared the same passion; the love of words, language, stories. To each other they were the only "real" writers in Hong Kong, and in an even more blinding coincidence they were both "real" writers who had never been published.

"How are the students?"

"Unoriginal, prosaic, bland, dull as monochrome shit. Everything you'd expect from rich kids."

Joseph laughed but was drowned out by the shouting of the miniature, mop haired devil slithering on his ass across the stage.

"They'll still get published before us though, Joey, even in English. That's the joke of it," Benny continued
"I don't know man, that's the industry, isn't it? Ignoring anything a little different," Joseph chipped in, the two of them now trading negativisms.

"Anything new..." Benny nodded in easy agreement. It was a discussion they'd shared many times, but there was something about the way Joseph said it that made Benny cringe. Something sad, bitter even...did he sound like that too?

"I wrote some more of my novel before I came out...the one about the underground man. It's shaping up, I think. Definitely shaping up..."

"The one with the blind guy?" Benny asked, his eyes moving to the new band coming on stage.

"Yeah." He paused. "It's hard, man. He's still on his own at the moment, and I'm running out of ways to describe him. I mean, what he's doing, and-...he's just crawling around and eating things, and he can't see so I can't show anything from his point of view. I'm not sure if it's working or not..."

Joseph had taken part in an eventful life, the life a writer would kill to have. Born in Bangladesh to Australian missionary parents, who had been intent on repairing the country after Pakistan [on a whim seemingly indulged by the UN] had casually sneaked into the country and shot three million or so intellectuals there in the sixties, Joseph had spent his first eight years living in a large village on the edge of a city, going to the international school during the week then carrying bibles under his shirt to give to the locals on the weekend.

"...third person is the easiest way, I guess, but I wanted it to be more-...I don't know, more from his eyes, so you feel what he's feeling. I'm not sure if it's different enough the way it's written now." Joseph continued.

On stage, the lead singer was saying something to the crowd. Benny couldn't quite hear what it was...

"I was writing it today, and there was a scene...Adelphos is eating a rat, but he doesn't know it's a rat. I don't know if I've written it well enough though, man. It seems a little cheap at the moment..."

The singer shouted out his final words in Cantonese, and the drummer started up the beat for the next song.

"...I mean, how do I make it seem natural if he's eating a rat? I don't know, man, maybe this is beyond me..."

Benny drifted back and heard the words "eating a rat."

"Hang on, he eats rats?"

"...if I can't-...yeah, rats. Or anything down there, really. Rats, worms..."

"Moles?"

"A mole...hmm, I guess he could, yeah. He's pretty strong..."

"So he's like an animal?"

"Yeah...an animal, just scavenging and surviving..."

At twelve, he had been dealt his first brush with the idea of death; walking home along the coast he was cornered by bandits, who led him to the edge and held him over the side by his shirt while one of the others went through his pockets. They didn't drop him, but it was close enough to open his eyes a little. After that he was careful to avoid the coastal roads and tried harder to integrate himself into village life, going to the local school playground and talking to other kids instead of hanging around outside the international school. By fourteen, he was speaking Bengali fluently and had a small circle of good friends, but then a year later he was gone, leaving the village and following his parents to Israel, where the three of them curbed the "mission" and tried to live peacefully for a while.

"So what happens?"

"What, you mean in the story?"

"Yeah, if he's alone down there...you can't just have him eating rats and moles for two hundred pages, Joey."

"It's not-...no, I know that, man," Joseph's said back, his voice cut a little. "I mean, he does eat rats at first, but he moves around a lot...it's kind of interesting to see the environment...well, I hope it's interesting..."

Joseph wouldn't tell Benny this for another two months but his father had been responsible for their swift exit from Bangladesh, after angering the local Muslim community of their village, which, in fact, turned out to be the whole village. The day he chose to walk into a mosque to see how the other side worked was the same day forty-two Muslims were slaughtered by militant Christians elsewhere in the country, and it was while the father was upstairs looking at the Arabic literature that the congregation of this village discovered what had happened over eight hundred miles away and deduced that the white man upstairs could have instigated it, possibly with some hidden communication device which they would surely find after questioning him. The father managed to flee the mosque, only being knocked down to the ground twice, but from that point onwards his tenure in the village was untenable. In fact, if they hadn't left that very night, his tenure would've ended with the three of them beaten with branches and hung from one of the village trees.

"...and he's not alone. I've added a civilization down there who are these skeleton men and they have a city and torches so you get a light source about twenty pages into it..."

"Skeleton men?"

The guitars on stage grew louder, building up to something and taking Benny along with them...

"It probably sounds a bit strange, but it works, I think. What I've written so far works, at least. So, one of them takes Adelphos, the blind beast man, under his wing and teaches him everything, how to write, speak, fight and things like that. And there're two main ones...the teacher skeleton and his enemy, Klaus, they start a big war against each other and the city gets ripped apart, so, after all this happens, all the war and fighting, Adelphos and the mentor skeleton have to flee into the mountains."

The guitars stopped. Benny heard "mountains."

"What...mountains?" he asked.

"Well, I don't know, more like slopes, I guess."

"Underground slopes?"

"Yeah, it's all underground, until the end. There are slopes underground..."

Benny pretended to think it through. Yes, he had seen films which showed oceans and uneven land underground, but a city of skeleton men too?

The band changed in the background and Benny noticed that Captain and Avon had disappeared to the front to listen. The lights switched off then came on bright, bringing to life the two guitars now on stage. The bass guy was tall and had one side of the stage to himself while the lead singer was tiny and had hair covering most of his face. They started strumming fast, before the drums followed them in and matched pace.

"There are slopes underground, seriously man. If you read what I've written so far then it'll make more sense, same with any novel, I think."

"Yeah, maybe..." Benny said, dazed again by the speed of the new song.

Joseph had attended university in Israel for three years and learnt another language, Hebrew, and, incongruous with his new location, had dated a couple of Russian women, Russian immigrants seeming to look on the Promised Land as a place with huge financial prom-...potential. After those three years, during which he had lived through a lot of aggression and abuse from Arabs that he wouldn't ever fully reveal to anyone but his family and his wife Caroline, who was now standing awkwardly by his side not attempting to access the conversation or start any other conversations with those standing around her [a feisty, yet reserved woman, Benny had noted more than once], he had gone back to Australia, which he was a citizen of despite only spending a year and a half of his life there. It was also a country where he had experienced precisely none of his three possible birth moments.

To Benny, from what Joseph had told him since they had become friends, his birth had been earlier than his own, probably due to the more severe environments he found himself growing up in, and had probably happened around fifteen years old, when that first bus had been blown into little pieces of bus, glass and bone just a hundred yards in front of him. That was the moment Joseph claimed he had become fully intellectually aware of the world. "The bandits were frightening," he had said, "but I was twelve and nothing really happened. But that bus...the power of the blast...I can't describe it, man." That kind of thing had never happened to Benny. There had been no bandits, no exploding buses, only drunks and pushes, but he was convinced he was still aware of how fragile life really was. He still defiantly placed his own birth at twenty, seven years ago.

"It's hard to explain the plot and everything when you don't have it written down..."

The song finished and the band continued on into something slower.

"...I don't know, man, maybe it's too hard to follow..."

Benny woke up. The sense came back to the sounds of Joseph's words.

"No, I think I get it, I do," he said quickly. "It's a fantasy, right? That's a good genre, it gets a lot more respect nowadays..." Benny rubbed his eyes and smiled. He wanted to avoid offending the only friend of his who understood what it was to be a writer, even if they weren't quite at the same level.

"Yeah, a fantasy, but with a metaphor too..."

"I thought it had one of those...most fantasies do..."

"Yeah, there's definitely a metaphor..."

Benny nodded in agreement. They both looked into the space to the side of the other's shoulder.

"I guess it's-...what would it be? Man is blind...?"

"Yeah...or living-...living underground is like living in the city, just doing the same boring things like...like going to the office, going out drinking, shopping..."

"...eating moles..."

"Ha, yeah...I suppose so..."

Joseph had despised Australia when he had resumed his life there, and schemed of escape as soon as his first day under Perth's sky was up. He had to tolerate three years of University there first, and made almost no friends amongst his fellow students, preferring instead to mix with the exchange students, which was how he met Caroline. The truth was he hated Australians and they didn't think much of him. Two years of solitude and a job cleaning the University toilets, succeeded by one year of living with his future wife made him so resentful of the locals that in eight months time he would begin another novel, this one above ground and concerning a bitter immigrant who would take a huge fucking bomb to Australia and nuke it into nothingness.

And now he was in Hong Kong living with his wife and her immediate family in an apartment meant for four [but holding seven]. But really, after all this activity and turmoil, all this harsh, exacting experience of real life, how was it possible that he had come to write about a blind man-beast underground fighting skeleton men?

"Hey Benny!"

Unless it really was metaphorical or allegorical or...what was the other one? Metaphysical? Antological? But it wasn't metaphorical or antological or any of those. It was a mess. It was a kid's-...

"Benny. Over here, hey! Made it finally, sorry."

It was Amelia, with two smirking friends standing behind her. She leaned in and gave him a hug and two cheek kisses.

"What took you so long?" Benny asked.

She stood back again, tall as a model in her heels, not looking at Joseph or Caroline.

"These two, they wouldn't leave the mirror." The two behind her looked for not even a second at him, their eyes instead scanning the front of the crowd.

"What are the bands like? Have you been listening to them?" she added quickly, realizing her friends wanted to move.

"I've heard scraps. They seem average. These ones are a little better...they're playing fast at least."

"Cool, right...that's cool."

She looked at the bar and the people standing around them, before catching Joseph's eye.

"Hi, how's it going?" she asked, clicking a smile at him.

"Good...hmmm, good, yeah," Joseph replied.

They smiled again then shifted, Amelia looking at something near the bar, Joseph looking at Caroline's hand.

That's as far as that'll go, Benny thought. That argument they had way back, the thing about abortion and the clinics...

One of the friends poked Amelia in the back of the head and whispered in her ear. She looked at the stage, nodded and started forward.

"Ok, we're gonna hit the front. Talk later, yeah?"

"Captain and Avon are up there, see if you can find them," he shouted at her back, just as she was turning around again anyway.

"Yeah, I'll look for them." She seemed to smile then turned and followed her friends into the crowd.

He watched the top of her head find its way to the front then looked across the other heads to find Avon. He was on the other side, with Captain probably talking into his shoulder. He wasn't surprised that Amelia had avoided them, none of them were friends.

The band finished their song and tried to talk to the crowd. It was something about the art scene growing in Hong Kong and bands from Beijing leading the way for the rest of them, but the singer wasn't charismatic enough for anyone to care. They gave up and the bass player started a simple, three chord repeat to lead into the next song.

"So much for the Beijing scene," he mumbled to Joseph, who didn't hear it.

The bass played for a minute before the drums came in, and then another minute before the singer got the first words out. As he sang, his hands started to wind themselves round the microphone wire, a performance of anxiety or an anxious performer, one or the other.

Benny checked his glass and saw it was empty. He showed it to Joseph, who shook his own in response, and they moved off to the bar for a refill, leaving Caroline to fend for herself.

"Do you think you'll see her again tonight?" Joseph asked with a slight cut, probably still remembering the abortion argument.

"Amelia? No, probably not. I know what she's like."

"I guess she's still a good friend of yours..."

"She's alright."

"Yeah, she's nice, I guess. But she doesn't-...she doesn't say very much, does she? I mean, she doesn't seem to know very much. And she always seems to be drinking, doesn't she?"

Benny shifted his feet and looked for the barman. He didn't want to criticize Amelia but there were things about her he didn't like. She had money for starters, or at least her parents did.

"She's not always drinking. And she's still young. I was drinking a lot when I was twenty-two, can't blame her for that..."

She fed off her parents and her friends too. She asked for gas money if she was driving. She would leave places and not ask anyone else if they were ready to leave. And she did drink a lot, five nights a week from what she had told him. But she was just having a good time, wasn't she? She was young, pretty, she had money, why couldn't she enjoy herself? An image of an impoverished figure advancing into a bin came into his head...

"Yeah, I guess. There's just something about people-..." Joseph stopped himself, unsure if Benny was the right man to be saying this to. He looked outwards for Caroline, who was standing immobile and frigid ten yards away, then turned back to the bar. "This sounds bad, but I just have this kind of disgust when I see people like her having a good time. I don't know, it just seems undeserved somehow."

"That sounds very un-Christian, Joey..."

"Sorry, man, it's just a feeling," Joseph said distantly, before realizing he should probably make a defence of his faith. "And it is Christian, I think. Not disgust, but the-...it's kind of the dissatisfaction of seeing someone acting like that. There were people like her living like that in the Old Testament."

Benny checked on the position of the barman, raising himself over the shoulder of the man in front. He thought of Amelia, and pictures he could draw of what Old Testament life might've looked like. It was harsh, way too harsh. She wasn't a killer or anything.

The barman was busy lining up five shots, so Benny lowered himself back down.

"She does drink, yeah, and act up. But there are quiet moments with her. It's just you don't see them, that's all."

"I guess so, man..."

Joseph said a little more, softening what he had just said, then turned back to the bar, where there was now a space for him to stand

Benny asked him to order for both of them, and then faced the stage. He looked for the heads of the tallest females and, after a few duds, pinpointed Amelia with her arms draped around one of her friends. Right there, in that shot, she was it, the Devil's wild girl, the sensualist who would always live this way and not give a shit about those who lived off the dirt on the streets. Joseph was right, wasn't he? It was undeserved, it was like the Old Testament, the-...what were they called, the Asamalites? Akamilites? The ones who drank, fucked and stoned their children, spat on the beggars. That was where it was all heading, what it was-...

He felt disgusted, sick in his head and stomach, and the imaginary bile quickly rose up again, threatening to spill out this time for all these wasters to witness, and what did he care about them?

But then the music ended, and just as quickly as it had come, it stopped. The lead singer turned his back on his listeners, Amelia put her arms down and the crowd applauded. He saw her turn to someone and smile, and the bile was pushed back down his throat. She's just having a good time, he wanted to say to Joseph, but too much time had passed.

The cool air stayed trapped in the exit behind him as he crossed over from inside to outside and into the heat.

Benny walked a few steps then stopped. The map back in the station had told him the route, but he had forgotten which road he was supposed to take.

Nearby, between two posts, was another map of the area. He walked over to it and found himself. It wasn't far to the overpass, but the roads didn't run straight. He'd have to pay attention to the turns.

"Krist, it's hot," he said into his sleeve as he wiped his forehead, his eyebrows, and his cheeks.

He walked off down what he knew was the correct road and paid attention to the turns. The area he was in had a few estates, but they were all low-rent, and for some reason the walls were yellow, not grey. They were always grey elsewhere. In Kwun Tong, Wong Tai Sin, Sham Shui Po, all grey. But here, in Choi Hung, yellow.

The buildings didn't stay yellow for long. A few roads later and they had turned back to grey.

As he walked he thought of things he could say when he sat down next to them. They wouldn't be welcoming, he knew that much. He had seen it before, with the men around the stone tables. They had shouted at him, something in Cantonese...it had sounded like, "Barrgghhh," to him, but it was probably their way of telling him to piss off.

"They don't know me, that's all," he reassured himself. "If I explain things...explain what I'm doing, how close I am to-...how much I understand them, then they'll let me in."

He felt a line of sweat about to drop from his forehead so he wiped it off with his hand. He looked down at his t-shirt and saw spots of sweat on the front and under the arms.

"Krist, it's a fucking oven. How do they walk around with those-...how do they sleep in this?"

He turned a corner and saw the overpass up ahead. It was late so the roads below were quiet, but the road above had the occasional heavy load truck running past, heading out to Sha Tin or Shenzhen. On the corner of the street was a conveni, so he went in and stood by the drinks to cool down. It was empty in there, only one worker, a woman reading something behind the counter. She saw him and picked up a pack of tissues and scrubbed at her face, but he shook his head and muttered "No thanks." She put them down and went back to her magazine.

After a few minutes he wiped his head one last time then went back outside. It was still quiet and there were no cars so he crossed the lower road and climbed up onto the wall that led to the concrete island under the overpass.

As he straightened himself he looked around the small, dirty area he had seen a few mornings earlier from the bus window. There had been two of them that day, passed out on the ground, but now there was no one, only newspapers and cut-up boxes.

"No, you were here," he mumbled. "I saw you...you were here."

He looked around, over to the park on the other side of the road, and then back over the road he had just crossed. There was no one around, nothing.

He went over to one of the boxes and looked down on it. One of the sides had been pulled down and the side opposite it had been bent outwards, probably from the curve of their backs when they slept. It was battered, but it wasn't broken. He lowered himself down, put his knees on the concrete and touched the box. He thought about them touching it, holding it tight to pull themselves up in the morning.

His hand tightened its grip.

He looked around again. A boy and girl were walking hand in hand along the road he had come from. They went into the conveni and he saw through the window that they were reading the magazines, but it didn't matter, they wouldn't see him. He put his hand on the bottom of the box and lowered himself into a sitting position. It wasn't poison, it was hot water, a bath to relax him...he slowly pushed his back against the bent side of the box behind him and kept pushing until he felt the wall. When his back was stable he stretched out his legs and lifted his hands, placing them carefully on the edges. He looked out at the world from his box.

There was no one and nothing to look at, only the island around him, and the box.

He looked at the inside of the box.

There were two large stains he hadn't noticed when he climbed in. There was no real colour to them; they were just two darker patches of brown.

"Krist, I'm sitting in piss..." he said.

He took his hands off the edges of the box and thought about pulling himself up. There had to be a public toilet nearby...a McDonalds or Café de Coral, anything...

But he didn't pull himself up. He continued to sit there.

The boy and girl came back out from the conveni and stopped at the edge of the road, looking both ways. They were going to cross.

Benny reached quickly for the newspaper and put it over his face. It was a little damp against his nose, and he wanted to shift it, but he heard the voices of the couple climbing up onto the island. He sat still, knowing they would look at him.

Words were spoken then stopped, some whispers, a film of sweat starting to seep through the newspaper against his head. He tried to stop his breaths then changed his mind and breathed louder, telling himself that sleeping men weren't quiet breathers. Some more words came, quieter than before, something dropped onto the road, some shoes or a woman's heel, and then the voices faded out again. He peeled off the top of the newspaper and looked out from behind his paper mask. They were on the other side heading into the park.

He took the newspaper off his face and looked at the stain. It didn't look like urine, and it wasn't big; it was probably just spit. Behind the stain he could see the words and a picture of one of the main leaders...the French one...the hardliner, what was his name? Sardovsky?

He looked at a few of the words then put the newspaper over his jacket and sat there a while longer looking at the world. He wondered if they'd come back soon, if they'd kick him out of the box.

He laughed.

"I'm sitting in their piss..." he said, then laughed again.

Benny pushed buttons and brought the treadmill to a stop while Michelle continued running and talking at a steady pace beside him. He put both hands on the side bars and dropped his head, letting the sweat drop onto the belt.

The rest of the gym floor was light that afternoon. There were a few lifters on the bench and a couple of others on the machines, but there were no queues and no one had noticed the two of them.

Benny raised his head and pulled his body up into the air, using his arms on the side to do a few tricep lifts. Michelle was talking about the boyfriend and what he would think if he knew they were meeting like this.

"What's there to think?" he managed between breaths.

"I know but-..."

"But?"

"His friends come here too. They're members." She looked around the floor certain that one of them was watching. "It could cause problems."

"We're just friends, Mish, he knows that already."

"Yes, but he's not here with us, and he's usually around when I see you, isn't he?"

"He is, yes..."

"He'll get the wrong idea..."

Benny finished his last lift and stepped off the machine.

"We came together, we'll probably leave together, so what?"

"It's dangerous..."

"Is it?"

"He'll think something. It's not that much of a stretch to imagine, is it? The two of us as a couple..."

He walked over to the wall, pushed his leg back and stretched. He did the same for the other leg then went back to Michelle.

"...not that he doesn't deserve to worry, the way he's been lately..." she started again before Benny had reached her.

As he walked behind her treadmill and round the side to look at her screen, he noticed the vest pushed tightly against her breasts. He didn't normally look at her in that area, and she didn't wear tight-cut tops often, but they were bigger than they had been before, he was sure of it.

"...and it's not just what he did this time, it's every time. Last year he took me to the same place, it was our two year anniversary, and he just sat there as if it was something special he had done..." she shook her head slightly without breaking rhythm, "there's no romance in him, Benny."

Benny put his finger over the 'increase speed' button and threatened to push. Michelle smiled, confident he wouldn't. He did it anyway, a few times, forcing her to adjust pace, her smile slipping a little. I am five years older than you and it shows, she thought quickly, before looking at his face again, his mangled hair that trailed off in different directions without telling other hairs, his small mouth that never opened. Her boyfriend was right to have spies.

"What do you think I should do?"

"Leave him," Benny said quickly, "break it up. Find someone different."

"I can't," she protested.

Michelle had wanted to break up with her boyfriend ever since she had started dating him. Their first date had been nice, that wasn't when the warning slap had hit, but the second date was in the same place as the first, and it was then that she realized what was in store for her if she stayed with him. But, she had thought at the time, if I leave him, this guy that I've taken from one of my friends and lost other friends over, what can I get to replace him? What if I'm thirty-two years old and alone again?

"If you think you can't then maybe you really can't."

"Wait..."

"What?"

"I didn't say I can't..."

"Then do it."

"I ca-...Can I?"

"Sure you can. If you're not happy, then you have to." Benny confirmed what Michelle had always known but had told no one. She wasn't happy, the guy was no good, there had to be better.

"Yeah, you're probably right. I have to act."

Just over a year ago, she had met Benny. It was in the outdoor pool over in Kowloon Park, with the water packed and swimmers colliding, and her head had been laying still on the surface of the water, dreading the inevitable marriage-kids-death cycle that was waiting for her when she stepped back out. What I need, she had decided, is someone to drag out of the water and back to the apartment, and then keep him there long enough for Yin to open the door and see us together. If he actually saw me with a guy instead of just imagining it then he might find the strength to dump me. But who would be the other? Amongst all the flapping children, she had spotted Benny, with his pinking skin and detached gaze, and it was him that she had chosen to drag, but he had resisted, eventually leaving her in the middle of Hung Hom station [just a few streets away from her place!] and pulling away from the hand that she had placed on his waist, which had been put there to tell him that it really was a fuck she was looking for. After that she had tried to convince herself that he was still interested in her [he hadn't realized how close her place was, he wanted to come but it was too fast, he was trying to play the nice guy card – in Hong Kong? Jesus...], but finally she had lost all heart and accepted friendship instead. The acceptance wasn't really acceptance though, she had promised herself, it was just a way to keep him around until he felt the same way. After all, he was perfect for her.

"With this guy what you're gonna get is consistency. He's gonna be there for you, as a person or, actually with him it's more like a body, a thing...you don't really share much with him, right? I mean, you don't talk to him like you're talking to me now, do you?"

"Not really the same way, no."

"Then he's a body that can speak and care for you in his own way, but honestly, he's bland. You know that, he's an ordinary guy who's safe. If that's what you want..."

"Not for the rest of my life."

Michelle had been nineteen when she first fucked an artist. It was at college, naturally, and that particular guy had been an asshole, but he had also been an asshole with ideas, and it was his ramblings on metaphysics and Kierkegaard and the way he studied her as they fucked that had made her dream of living with another artist one day, perhaps even marrying one, even though she knew he would be unreliable and destructive and leave her in misery, but still, it was there, the idea, the guilty fantasy of an ideas man. Since then she had looked for more of the same kind, going to obscure film screenings, poetry readings, artist villages and communes...she had found one near Hung Hom when she first moved to Hong Kong, a set of warehouses full of tenacious, impudent young pricks with paintbrushes who, when she had come in with polite and curious praise of their work one day, had pointed her back out sharply without even looking at her, chastising her for "breaking their flow," for being a "fucking tourist." She had walked back outside with her head down and her dreams shredded, and there had been no other artists since...until that pool, until Benny.

"Are you looking for a replacement then?" Benny asked, as Michelle slowed the treadmill down to a walking pace.

"I don't think there's much out there for me now..." she laughed, trying to imbue a little of the tragedy that might appeal to a writer.

Benny brushed his hand against her arm, instinctively. He had no intention of doing anything more, but it seemed apt in the moment. He kept it there the second time and stroked her skin lightly.

"It's a big city."

"Is it?"

Michelle's breathing slowed and her mind raced. Intimate, intimacy, intimacy, desert island, abandoned moon and intimacy were the runners.

"It's quite big, yeah."

"A big city..."

"Yeah, pretty big."

"How big?"

"What?"

"How big?" she repeated. Intimacy, abandoned moon-base, abandoned bed...

"How big?" Benny pulled back his hand and dropped it onto the treadmill rail. "It's a city, Mish. Seven million people. That's about three million guys at least, right? I'm sure lots of them would-...they'd go for you. If you wanted them to..."

"Yeah, you think so?"

She tried to get his eyes but he wouldn't look at her.

"Definitely. Way more than that, you're a prett-...you're nice."

Feigning a sudden distraction, he moved away from the treadmill and over to one of the machines. Michelle stayed where she was, body paralyzed, fantasies mobilizing. Abandoned bed, abandoned clothes, the last man and woman on Earth, on the moon, wherever...

She knew he had never been published. He had told her about the lies he was telling at the University and the doubts he had as to whether any agent would ever give enough of a shit to go with one of his stories and make a real writer's life possible for him. She had sat and listened with careful attention to all of his ideas, and she had read his short stories. She wasn't a critic, but she liked them, although she had never been sure if she liked them because he was really that good or because she adored him and simply had to imagine him to be that good in order to keep her fantasy running. But, no, she did like them and she had always told him how much she liked them. It made her feel special that she could help him in this way.

She walked over to his machine and smiled, waiting until he had finished his reps before talking to him.

"You haven't told me about your story yet."

He controlled the contortions of his face as he pushed up the last set, aware that she was watching him.

"The poor one?"

"Is that the one you're doing now?"

"Thinking about it..."

"What about the religious one?"

"Which one?"

"The one with the guy who changes from Christian to Atheist and...what was it...there are lots of guys from cults changing people."

"I vaguely remember it. The religious thing, yeah. I think-...actually I'm not really sure what happened to that one. Call it a 'lost in production' piece, I guess."

She watched him set a new weight, a heavier weight, and looked at his arms while his back was turned. He was slim and his arms were strong, bigger than Yin's. A man with ideas and strong arms, it was perfect. But was he really gonna make it as a writer? She never let it show but, when she did think about it, all she had were doubts. It had been a year since he had told her his ambitions and he was still unpublished, and worse, he wasn't completing any work. It was all nebulous at the moment and a nebulous man was no good to her. She had to have a successful artist, not a failed one. She couldn't live with a failed one, how could she? She'd have to pay the bills, he'd probably complain about her paying for him and everything else, he'd drink and sulk and eventually refuse to write anything, claiming that someone had to want what he was selling somewhere and if they didn't then what was the fucking point?

He started pushing the weight again, this time struggling when he reached the fifth rep. It looked like he wouldn't make it to ten.

She had talked to Captain and Avon about Benny's dreams a few times. They had all praised his determination and spirit and Michelle had told them how genuinely good his stories were, as neither Captain nor Avon had ever read any, but underneath it all there was a harsh concordance between them that he was doomed to failure and there was never any real chance that he could make it. Captain had said it the worst: "There are thousands of them, mate, millions even. They all think they're good. Now, out of all of them, less than one percent makes it while the rest of them carry on thinking they're good and everyone else is wrong. It sounds harsh, mate, I know, but really, what are the chances of him being a Salinger or Murakami?" Michelle didn't want to accept it, but the odds were right. It was a fantasy to imagine that he was somehow special, and it was reality to accept that he was ordinary. Part of her had accepted it too, and that part of her also condemned him for not waking up to the fact. "You have to accept a real job, you have to accept pensions and bills, you have to work in an office," it screamed at him. She had accepted it, why couldn't he?

Benny got to the ninth rep and rested a second before pushing for the final one. As the black slabs of uncaring weight slowly ascended it looked like he might do it, but then they stopped and he had no choice but to lower them back down. He breathed out and smiled anyway, as if he had succeeded.

Benny sat quietly in his chair with his caramel macchiato, trying to block out the foreign noise coming from the couple on the next table. They had been there for over an hour, almost as long as him, and they didn't seem to realize how loud they were. They're probably complaining about the locals, he predicted confidently to himself. Must be Colombian or Mexican...or maybe one of the smaller ones; Honduran, Guatemalan, Papua New Guinean.

In the chair opposite, Joseph was listening closely, trying to work out how similar the Italian words the couple used were to the French words he knew. If he had to guess, he would say they were talking about the nature of the locals they had come across, probably something negative. That's what tourists usually did; complained about the differences, no matter where they were from.

The woman on the next table held up her hands and puffed out her cheeks. Her brother sighed and shrugged his shoulders. "What can you do, it's the way of the world," he muttered back in Spanish. No one around them knew it, but they had been talking about the hegemony of the English language in every country they had visited, and how disgusting it was to see English people thrive on the advantage of it. "Bah, it's fucking luck," the woman spat. "If we had built more boats, when, two hundred years ago, this place would be speaking Spanish now."

Benny waited until he had Joseph's attention then rolled his eyes. Joseph nodded slightly in response, careful not to exaggerate his reaction in case the Italians noticed.

The Spanish pair continued on, overpowering the Cantonese coming from the rest of the coffee shop.

Benny filtered out the foreign sounds and stared at the seven lines of text on his screen. This was his poverty novel. He tried to study each line closely, but all he could see was a block of very small text overwhelmed by the blank white covering the rest of the page. Only seven lines, he whined, seven empty, tedious lines. But how could he solve this? It was impossible to write down for some reason. He couldn't think how to start it or where to take it once it had started and what position the characters would take up, or even what the characters would be called. That was important, to think up names.

"How's your one going?" Joseph asked.

...perhaps he should just use the names of people he knew and then change them later...

"Slowly..." Benny replied, only vaguely aware of the question.

"I'm stuck on mine, man. They're about to have a big battle and I don't really know how to write it."

...but how many times would he type the names out? If he started with them then it'd take an age to change them to the real ones later. He had to think of some now...

"All the skeletons have swords and arrows and all the right things, but I'm not sure how they should fight."

...no, forget the names, just put anything down. As long as there's something written down. But there's nothing written down, just two scene ideas. Some guy watching a tramp in a park, and the hero sitting in a cardboard box. There was nothing about plot, structure or dialogue, not even a plan

"They have their organs beneath the bones, and their brains under their skulls, so there is something there to stab, but I don't know, man..."

If the main character is writing about the poor, is he poor himself? Does he have to-...fuck this, fuck it! Benny cleared his mind of everything connected to this idea and plotted something else, something new...more words came to him, from Joseph. He was listening properly again, something about organs under bone and no skin...what?

"Hang on, they have no skin...how do they-...how does their body stay together?"

"It just hangs there, under the bone, I think, and-..."

"But what about their faces? How do they express themselves?"

"You mean facial expressions?"

"Yeah, how do they show if they're angry, or sad, or...you see what I'm saying?"

"They-...they just don't have skin on their face, that's all. They still have eyeballs and holes where their mouths are. They can still look and eat..."

"But they don't have lips or eyebrows?"

Joseph thought it out, drawing lines for eyebrows on a skull with a coloured pencil and lips with a red. Benny tried to do the same, adding eyeliner and rouge on the cheekbones and putting them all in battle lines, and-...

"They don't, no."

"So...I don't get it, how do they show expressions?"

"They just-...they use their eyes and their bodies. But it doesn't really matter, I think. It'll come from their body language mostly."

Benny gave up on understanding it and nodded. It was better not to think about Joseph's work too much. He closed his document on screen and opened up a fresh one.

"I can understand it in my head, man. I just can't really explain what-..."

The Spanish woman screamed something at her brother, knocking Joseph's sentence dead in the air. The nearest tables went quiet and watched. She screamed out the same sentence again. No one dared look directly at her except Benny, his whole body now shifted to face her. He was determined not to be beaten by this Latino hag.

Joseph hid, staring at his screen. He remembered his time in Italy, in that campsite near Bologna, when that caveman had started kicking out his tent pegs in the middle of the night. You can't look at these people, they always react, he warned himself.

The woman carried on talking, lowering her voice a little and ignoring anything beyond her own table. Benny finally looked away, convinced of his small victory. Joseph waited a few more seconds for other people to build up a layer of noise, and then spoke up.

"What about your one? Have you got any further?"

Benny took a sip of the macchiato, remembering his night in Choi Hung, the overpass, the box on the island.

"Actually, I'm thinking of going out for the night soon..."

"Sounds good, man. Where are you going? Lan Kwai Fong? Knutsford?"

"No, I mean, I'm going out...to see the poor."

"Oh, right...sorry man. I thought you meant drinking."

"No, I've done it a few times now. Little recon trips over in Sham Shui Po and Choi Hung. I told you about them, right?"

"Yeah, I think you said. You took pictures, didn't you?"

"Pictures...ha," Benny shook his head, "I sat in a box, Joey. One of their cardboard box-...boxes. I sat in it, some place near Choi Hung."

"Man...you sat in it? Was it clean?"

"Clean? Forget clean, it was real. It was a real box."

Joseph sucked his lips and repeated "man...you sat in a box" a few more times as Benny explained what had happened. When he had finished his story Joseph looked at him and repeated once more, "man...you sat in a box."

"I have to go again, Joey. And you should come too."

"To see the poor? I don't know man."

"It's just recon, nothing hands on."

"I'm not sure if I can-...I don't know, sitting in a box. I don't know if Caroline will like it." He fiddled with his water bottle. "Can I think about it?"

Benny took some more of his macchiato then put it down on the table.

"Sure, you can think about it for a while. No pressure."

Joseph nodded and glanced at his screen. Benny watched him for a few seconds, watched his fingers typing something out, his face grimacing as if he had made a mistake. He won't ever come, Benny thought. I'm alone in this.

"Actually, don't worry about it, Joey."

"I don't know man," Joseph muttered, still typing.

"Not everyone can do this kind of thing, I know that."

"Yeah, it's a brave thing..." Joseph said.

"Better to do it than not to do it though...beats being ordinary."

Joseph didn't answer.

Benny took some more of his drink, playing back the last sentence in his head. It was too harsh, wasn't it, to the rim of his mug? But he is ordinary. He's just like them.

Some more coffee, another look at his friend.

No, it was too harsh. It's his wife that rejects it, not him.

He leaned forward and looked at his own screen. He knew he should probably write something, even if it was just notes, so he started typing out some ideas he had had about making his own box.

As soon as Benny was engrossed in his own work, Joseph stopped typing. He leaned back into the sofa and observed the faces around them, making sure he didn't catch the eye of the Italians. It was a large coffee shop, larger than most as it was near offices and two international schools, the people within always wealthy enough to be habitually interested in coffee. And there was the University just round the corner, the one where Benny worked. The students always came here after their lectures to go over their notes. Perhaps that's what they think we're doing, thought Joseph.

The Spanish woman stood up and walked away leaving her chair out and the table a mess. The man got up and chased after her. The four tables nearest to the epicentre breathed again, waited until they were sure she was gone then pushed their chairs back a few extra inches.

Joseph thought about the students that he could've been teaching. There were probably some pretty ones in Benny's group. Girls in higher education, reading literature, talking about literature...they were always cute. And not just in Hong Kong, in any other country as well. The girls he had known at university in Israel, they were pretty, and the ones in Perth, not as pretty, but not too bad. And then there was Caroline. She used to be a student. A pretty student, a happy student. "You came back to me, honey, thank you so much," she used to joke every evening before burying herself in his shirt, singing that she couldn't live if living was without him. She still wore the same clothes as she did then...the same jeans with the wide cut at the bottom, the same University of Western Australia t-shirts, only the colours were fading now. Yellow marks were appearing under the arms, and the 'W' was peeling off.

His eyes drifted along with his thoughts and he noticed one woman nearby who seemed to be studying alone, probably one of those University students. She was tucked in tight against the table, close to her books, her bare arm showing flawless skin and the half of her face that he could see showing the corner of a brown eye, a beautiful eye. He thought about going over and talking to her, but he was married, he couldn't. And anyway, Benny was there, and he would ruin it for him, turn it into a competition. No, it was better just to sit and watch, to admire.

Benny wrote quickly, but he was aware of the people moving around him, and he had noticed when the Mexican woman had marched off. He had also noticed Joseph looking at the girl, who seemed to be studying on her own, and smiled behind his screen, disguising it as a smile provoked by what he had written and not his friend's character. He had always suspected that Joseph had that side to him, despite all his devout Christian protestations.

"She's quite nice."

Benny raised his head and purposefully scanned in all the wrong places, knowing that if he went straight to the one he knew Joseph meant then his friend would know he had been watching him.

"That one over there..."

"Which one?"

"She has the long hair and white sleeveless top. A nice tan..."

Benny made a show of finding her. He went past her twice before stopping and studying her. Her skin was clean, the face was young, her hair didn't have that horrible rinsed look that other locals were wearing. Yes, she was certainly pretty, prettier than any on the tables around her.

"She's pretty, yeah."

"You should go and talk to her. She might be perfect for you."

"I don't think so. She's probably waiting for someone. They always are."

"Come on, man, you don't have anything to lose, right? You're always saying there's nothing in this city for you. Well, she could be something, couldn't she?"

Benny looked at the girl and her textbooks, and realised she was a Winnie type. They were around the same standard, both students, both readers. It could be a dry run, this one, a toe in the water to see if he could actually do it...

"It's not a good idea, Joey. She's probably got a guy."

...but they were in a coffee shop, they were strangers. It couldn't work.

"I don't know, man. She seems to be alone to me."

"Perhaps, but I doubt it."

Benny picked up his drink and sucked up the rest of the cream, not adding any more words. When it was empty he thought about buying another. He looked over at the counter and saw people collecting new cups of coffee.

But it's thirty-five dollars, he cautioned himself. Don't do it, resist.

He pulled himself back to the table and joined Joseph in watching the girl with the flawless skin, without the girl noticing or looking their way. They could stare as long as they wanted in this place, no one would notice.

"Tell me about the pretty ones then, Benny..." said Amelia, leaning casually against the concrete wall, looking elsewhere.

"You sure about this? It borders on a philosophy."

She threw a quick look back.

"How long?"

"It'll pass the time for you..." replied Benny, aware that he didn't have her full attention, "until your friends come back."

"Ha! Come back? They're probably not even looking for me. They might've gone even...you know I don't hang out with nice people, Benny."

She laughed, but not towards Benny so he ignored it.

"Then I'll just pass your time anyway."

The party around them was exclusively for the wealthy who lived on the Island or in Discovery Bay, and it was only because of Amelia's connections that Benny had been invited there. The two of them stood close to the temporary kitchen and the buffet table, close enough to be holding hands if their relationship was of that type, but it wasn't, so both kept their hands on their drinks. Her friends had disappeared elsewhere, giving up on her after Amelia had taken too long in the toilets. Only Benny, who didn't know anyone else here anyway, had waited for her, and now they were alone in a crowd of wealthy suits and tucked-in shirts and polished boots and two models in particular, nearby, who were being interviewed by the press.

Benny had seen them while he was waiting for Amelia and instantly felt the bile rising up again. They were beautiful, especially the taller one with the dress that showed just a few inches of her thigh and the irregular hair that wouldn't work on anyone with a lesser face, but both were undeserving. He had looked away from them before the bile could infect his tongue and taken in the rest of the party environment. It was some kind of warehouse that had been converted into a nouveau art studio bar for one night, with tables and installations brought in by famous artists and placed against the cold cement floors and cheap, functional walls. Benny looked closely at the frame behind all the extravagance and pitied those blue-collar walls and that floor for being forced to stand there so awkwardly amongst all this wealth. How would they feel in the morning, having seen all this yet being forced back into drab, décor-less solitude, he wondered?

One of the models laughed loudly, attracting the attention of a male model behind her who turned and mimicked her outburst.

"They're all unnatural, the pretty ones. They're born like us, and they don't really know until they're eighteen or so if they're gonna be pretty, but then they suddenly are, and of course they're tall too, way too tall to be natural, and then they become models. But what part of it have they earned, Amee? That's the thing. They're winners of a genetic lottery, and all of us have to play, but they just got lucky, they're not special. But, then again, they are in this world, aren't they?"

Amelia finished her wine and swiped a new glass from the table in front of her. She gazed at the models through the glass as if that's how they had to be viewed.

"You're jealous of them then? You want to date one of them, but you're afraid. Nod once if I'm right."

He nodded twice.

"Nod twice if I disagree."

"What does that mean then? They're not good enough for you?" she asked.

The taller model pursed her lips and forced a smile for the camera capturing her. She tilted her wine glass in a mock-careless way as if she were going to drop it on the floor and let it smash into pieces. Even the glass itself seemed to delight in the charade, letting itself be hung downward, knowing that it would always belong to these kinds of parties. It was fake, it was disgusting, it made him want to grab the camera and turn it away from her and onto something important, someone on the street or a wreck dying quietly in a stairwell. That's what they should be filming, he fumed, not the pretty ones.

"You're getting me wrong, it's not them. Didn't you hear the lottery part? It's the idea of them, the idea of some people being prettier than others and the fact that there's some measure of importance to that in this-...in how we live." He paused before selecting what he thought was a truthful closing line. "I can't stand the differences, that's all."

He looked at his glass, full of wine from the bottle he could see on the table, which must've cost at least a few thousand dollars to turn up at a party like this, and he felt sick again, but there was nothing coming up. He put the glass back on the table. A waiter appeared within a second to pick it up. Benny stared at his face from the side and saw nothing but a blank mask. Wasn't he disgusted serving people like this? Didn't he look at those models and want to scream out in frustration, "luck, it's just dirty fucking luck!"

The waiter politely put the glass on his tray and moved back, unobtrusively, into the crowd.

"What's wrong? Have you had enough wine already?" she asked.

"I'm taking a rest."

Amelia was pretty too, almost a model, but not quite. She was pretty enough to get someone's attention here, and she probably would within an hour or two. Then the drinks would all be free and the night would be easier for her.

"So, you think models don't deserve nights like this?"

"No, they can stay." He tried to make it light but knew an Amelia tirade was on the way. She had money too, and she thought he was attacking her, which he wasn't, not completely. He knew she had been through a hard time, a long time back.

"I think you don't know how to have a good time. All these people here are drinking, they're happy, everyone except you. You're too busy observing everything and being critical. You can do that too much, Benny, it's not good for you, and it means people won't talk to you. They'll step around you and look for someone with a smile, y'know? Hey, don't smirk..."

Benny let go of the smirk.

She was smart enough even though, technically, she'd never finished high school. She had ideas and opinions and got fired up a lot, but she wasn't really a thinker. There wasn't much thinking you could do when you spent five nights of the week out on different parts of the town.

"I'm not criticizing you here, I'm just saying, you've gotta ease up and have a good time. There are interesting people here, artists and writers, you should try and find them. There's a famous director too, a local guy, I can't remember his name, but my friends told me he's here, somewhere. And forget about the money, it doesn't matter. Some people are rich, some people aren't, some people are here, so are you, what else can you do? Just go with it, y'know? Just meet the people there to meet and don't think about it so much."

She had never finished high school, there was no technicality involved. There was a reason why she hadn't finished of course, a horrible mix of her own actions and luck that had put her in a really bad place, but she still was what she was. Her family still had money to get her out of it, she was still able to go out and drink and have fun and live in some kind of prosperous environment. She still had a car and a license and a job teaching four times a week. Luck hadn't taken that much away from her, and it had taken nothing away from these others...these hoarders...

Benny looked at all the glasses of wine in the hands of all the hoarders in front of him and thought of all their bank accounts frozen on screens above their heads and the numbers that occupied those screens, the numbers that meant they could put on their suits and come here and chase each other around, laughing like fucking pre-schoolers...

"You wanna go look upstairs?" Amelia asked, sermon over.

"I might head off." He pulled his jacket tighter around his shoulders as if he were putting it back on. If he stayed any longer he'd have to do something about those differences, and he couldn't, not through action. Words had to be the way, not a public hissy fit. "I feel out of place here."

"Benny, it's only a party. Not everyone's a big evil with money."

"I know that..."

"Do you?"

"Yes, I just said, I know that."

He didn't know that and certainly didn't believe it as he looked at all the faces one more time. They all had money, or at least had the scent of it, the chance of getting it. Money was tied up in their lives inextricably, it was family, it was ancestral and generational, they would always have access to it and they would die if anything took it away from them. They were all emphatically evil, every showman in there.

"You're annoyed now, aren't you?"

"No, just leaving, Amee."

"Don't go, stay."

"I can't. I don't really-...I wanna get some air."

"There's air upstairs, come on..." Her leg was already two strides away from him. "Just have a look..."

"It's fresher on the street." He raised his hand in a half wave gesture. "Have a good night. Find your friends. Don't-..."

She had already turned her back on him.

"...talk to any strangers."

He watched Amelia reach the bottom of the stairs then turned his back on the party. He walked to the elevator and took it down to street level, watching the elevator attendant closely for blue collar resentment as he waited. Outside, there was a large queue of people, all dressed up and waiting to be let in to the party upstairs, the one he had just rejected. One of those faces would take his place up there and enjoy themselves. All of them would get in there and be dazzled by the opulence of the party, the waste of the food on the buffet table, the décor of the two floors, the extravagance of such a place and all set up only for one night! How much will they all throw away up there, he wondered?

He crossed the street outside and saw a line of taxis waiting, with the drivers either sleeping or reading papers behind the wheel. What did they think when they looked across the street? Did they have dreams to go to a party like this? It was impossible, they would never be able to climb so high, they would never have the slightest chance of accessing a place like that. Their whole life, until they lay down on their pillow and gave out, they would never go to a party like that. They would never have enough money to do any of the things the commercials enticed them with. They were in their taxis, the rich were upstairs, and it would always be separate.

In one of the taxis he saw the driver reading something. He moved closer to the window...it was a-...krist, he was reading a comic book.

The driver looked up and stared back until Benny had no choice but to look back to the street ahead.

"Krist, a comic book," he muttered. "That's what they're reading, that shit. Is there nothing else...do they even know there's a library nearby?"

He ignored the other taxis and walked further down the street, away from the queue. On the other side of the pavement was a canal that had been parched of rain, so he climbed down and sat on its floor, thinking. He brought back the faces from the party and the numbers signifying their wealth floated above their heads. Numbers, just numbers, that's all that separated the two of them, the rich and the poor; one side had numbers on a screen, the other didn't.

"They're not readers though..." he objected. "But-...the taxi drivers, are they even part of it? No, but-...they are reading something, they can read, but-...but, would they-...no, krist, I don't know...I don't know anymore."

He closed his eyes for a few seconds then opened them again and looked outwards at the ground around him and wondered where all the street-sleepers were. It's a perfect spot for the night, he prompted into the dark air and further into the hills of Hong Kong Island. But, no-...perhaps they were outside the library for the night, squinting at the books they had sneaked out during the day.

"No..." he shook his head. "No..."

Over by the slope something moved. A few seconds later it moved again, and this time he noticed. Was it one of them?

He waited for a dark figure in rags to emerge off the slope, but nothing came. Then it moved again, something small. He watched the dark shape slide across the canal floor. A rat, was it?

He stood up and got ready to move in case it came near him, but it didn't, it ran over to the slope on the other side and a few moments later disappeared into the dark.

Benny walked into the conveni and went straight for the fridge at the end.

There were tanned, dirty men in vests and shorts sipping microwave soups on one of the counters, but he ignored them. They were stick insects, nothing more.

He picked up a miniature bottle of Gallo's red and two king-size cans of Special brew, and walked to the counter.

"Bak Tak Tung," he said badly in Cantonese.

The teenager told him the wrong price in English and then asked if he wanted to pay by Octopus.

"Bak Tak Tung," Benny repeated sharply, and held his octopus card against the machine.

It beeped and Benny picked up all his things and left quickly, fiddling with the top of the wine bottle.

Outside the shop was the same group of five men he had seen before, all in vests and all drinking, but not special brew, and not miniature bottles of red wine.

Benny walked over and sat on the wall next to them. He was still trying to open the wine, but changed his mind and ripped open one of the beers instead. The men beside him glanced once then kept on talking amongst themselves.

"Krist, what a fucking waste," he mumbled into his can.

He looked at the conveni opposite, and then the shop next to it, which was closed. Then the shop next to that one, and then the one next to that, until he ran out of shops and decided to just look at the men directly.

They were strong for locals. Their arms were a decent size and they had tone. There was no flab around the shoulder or behind the triceps. What were they, construction? Bin men?

One of them looked at him and said something, and for a moment Benny thought he was being spoken to, but it was in Cantonese and another man from the group was replying. They weren't speaking to him, he was nothing.

"I'm a nothing, huh," he said again to his can. "Maybe...maybe now I am, but..."

He looked at the top half of their bodies again and imagined them all holding shovels. Construction, yes, with their tools in hand, ready to work...no, ready to-...the shovels changed to rifles. Ready to fight.

He drank from his can and kept drinking until he felt it lighten. He put it down and picked up the wine.

These men, if they had rifles...he imagined the scene with him outside of it, directing it from the wings, and the person who was him, the actor Benny, sitting on the wall was putting down the wine bottle and walking into that group of strong, working class men and telling them to listen, and they stopped and listened, and he spoke to them...spoke to them in Cantonese, or what sounded like Cantonese...he didn't know much, but the sound of the words was imitable, so it came out like that, and he told them that they were strong, that they had muscles in their bodies, that there was no flab around their shoulders or behind their triceps, and they had shovels and those shovels didn't have to be used solely for construction, did they? No, they don't, one of the men said back, but what do you have in mind? Well, the man who was Benny said, you could hit people with them, couldn't you? The men looked at the shovels that were now in their hands, and mumbled...but not just hit anyone, the Benny double continued, I don't mean murder, I mean something bigger...I mean...

One of the men finished his beer and crushed the can in his hand. He tossed it onto the ground near Benny's feet. It wasn't noticed.

...I mean revolution...isn't that what we should be doing? The men nodded and shouted out that they had been waiting a long time to hear that, and they gripped their shovels tight and held them as if ready to strike, and then the scene changed and they were all marching along a street, and the men had taken their vests off and were showing the muscles built on the construction sites, and in front, at the front of them, leading them was him, the one who was Benny, the only one wearing a vest, the only one wearing some kind of grey hat...the soviet hat...the hat of the revolution, with the little hammer and sickle...and at the side of the street some people cheered and others held shovels above their heads, and shouted for something in Cantonese...or the words that sounded like Cantonese...and he could hear his name being shouted, and he was happy, he directed a shot of himself looking happy, smiling ahead and raising a rifle above his head...and now behind him, all the men had rifles again, and they were holding them above their heads too...and...and then what...there was a building he recognized, one of the banks near Central, the one with the zigzag white line running from top to bottom, and he raised his rifle and told everyone to stop, told them this was the place...everyone stopped behind him, and the crowd at the side stopped too, and then...there were men being led out of the building, the zigzag building, and they were dressed in suits and they looked terrified...and so they should, smirked Benny as he put a finger to his lips and brought the crowd to silence, and then he started to speak, he spoke well...in words that sounded like Cantonese...and they were spoken quickly, as though words had to be said but as few as possible...and then his speech ended... and the rifles were raised again...and the last line of the speech was simply, "fuck words, spoken, written, heard...fuck words! Action is the way..." and the first suit man was brought forward and five of the construction men were chosen to come forward with their rifles...and they stood in line, they aimed, and on his signal they fired at the suit and took off half his face...Ha, they were aiming for his face! Not the body, but the face, the head, the brain...they knew there were no hearts inside-...

Another can landed by his feet, crushed. He blinked and saw the lights of the conveni in front of him.

He looked left and saw the group of men walking away, their formation shabby and disorganized. His army, they were running...

"Fuck words..." he said to his miniature bottle of red.

"Fuck words and all those stupid fuckers who can't-...don't read shit."

He fumbled with the key in the lock. He turned it sideways and tried to force it in that way, but it didn't work.

"Krist, what are you doing, huh? Be a key..." he jabbed the door in front of him. "...be a key, open for me. Ha! Open for-...no, come on, be a key, damnit."

He tried several more wrong ways of fitting the key into the lock before finally getting the door to open. He stumbled into his apartment and kept the cage and the door behind him open.

"I am the key-master!" he shouted as he fell down onto the couch. "Where's my box, then? Where are you?"

He looked around the living room and twisted his head to try and see into the kitchen, but it was impossible.

"Did you run away from me, Boxy? Did you-...did you run from me?" he stood up and walked over to the box on the other side of the room, which he couldn't seem to see.

"Boxy? Boxy? Come on, Box, we've got work to do...I need to-...ha, I need to sit on you. Or in-...in you, inside you."

He looked at every possible thing except the box until his foot hit something on the floor and he was forced to look downwards.

"Boxy music, there you are."

He picked up the box and brought it over to the table. There was no space so he put it on top of his laptop. He went to the kitchen and got the scissors then came back and sat down on the couch and looked at the box. He could see the laptop suffocating underneath.

"Krist, how did-..."

He lifted the box and pulled his laptop out, checking it for damage.

"It lives!" He patted the laptop softly with the scissors. "My little terminator, you're so proud of-...I'm so proud of you."

The laptop was put carefully onto the couch and the scissors brought back to the box. Benny looked at each side and thought about which one he should cut. Then he thought about the train ride to Choi Hung.

"No, wait...the train's over-...it's...what, it's shut." He scratched his chin with the scissor blades. "But buses are open still...I can take the bus."

But did he want to cut the box now? Wouldn't it be better if he did it when he got there?

He put the scissors down and thought about how to carry them. Could he put them in his pocket? He picked them back up and tried a couple of times to put them into his pocket. Blade first and it was dangerous. Blade pointing up and it was also dangerous. He put them down on the couch. I can just rip it, he thought.

"Ripperrrr," he said to the box.

On the bus, it was empty except for two middle aged Chinese men in green uniforms. Benny thought they looked like cleaners of some kind, or maybe technicians, but he didn't talk to them. Instead he sat, with his box on the seat next to him, and watched the night world of Kwun Tong pass by outside. Then the night world of Ngau Tau Kok, then Kowloon Bay, then...

...he woke up looking at the night world of Endor. Trees, trees, trees...

He sat up and put his face against the window trying to see beyond the trees, but they wouldn't budge.

A small child, maybe six or seven years old, was trying to see inside his box. He put his arm up instinctively, and the parent sitting a couple of seats down called the child away.

"What the-...why is there a kid awake at-...what time-..." he slurred at his box.

Outside, some buildings appeared, the usual grey estates, but they weren't familiar, not in this context. He stood up and walked down the bus to the picture of the bus route, turning back to make sure the child wasn't messing with his box again. It wasn't, it was asleep on its mother's lap.

The final stop, it said on the route picture, was Tin Shui Wai. He looked at the other stops and saw lots of places he didn't know. He looked up at the overhead sign and saw the name Tuen Mun appear.

"Oh Krist, that's-...I'm in the fucking countryside," he mumbled louder than he realized.

He got off in Tin Shui Wai and looked around at this new place and saw lots of the same shitty estates he saw in every other new place he had been to. All the buildings were grey too, no yellows.

With the box in his hand he walked away from the bus stop and looked for the nearest park or overpass. He had wanted to see some yellow walls at least, something to make him feel he wasn't that far from where he should've been, but there was nothing, only grey.

"Fucking grey...was that the cheap one then?" he asked nobody, still a little drunk from the beers and the miniature wine.

He walked past four estates that looked exactly the same, and then a line of shops and teahouses, then another estate. This one had a small playground at the end of it, but they wouldn't be in there so he kept moving. Before long the buildings dried up and he was left with trees and what looked like another forest. He stopped a couple of times and asked the box if it was really worth the trouble going on, and really, what the fuck was he doing on the other side of Hong Kong at three in the morning, but the box said nothing, and he decided to keep walking alongside the green, because at least it wasn't grey.

"Maybe they're in the trees..." he said to the box. "I know I would go into the trees if I-...if I wanted to sleep somewhere not-...not what? Not grey. And no people around. No people would be good, too."

He walked for what seemed like two hours and eventually the trees were left behind and replaced by more estates and a highway, and the road he was walking on became an overpass.

"Oh my overpass...about fucking time...high time..." he said as he jumped over the railings and staggered down the slope to the highway.

At the bottom of the slope he steadied himself and walked back along the highway to the base of the overpass. Across the two lanes and covered in shadow was the island, and he was sure he could see a box and newspaper and more newspaper a little further away. It was-...it had to be them.

He ran out into the road without looking and practically skipped up onto the island. He was right, it was a box and newspapers, and a lump underneath, it was-....there was someone sleeping there.

"Krist, you're here...you're really here."

He looked around and checked for others, but there was no one else. He walked over to the sleeping man or woman, he wasn't sure which yet, he could only see the shape, and put his box down next to theirs. The newspaper he had seen from across the road was actually two newspapers placed over the body, and the box was laying under the head, being used as a pillow, and-...not that he could see the head, he could only make out the grey bobble hat covering it, but the hat was on the box, and every hat had to have a head.

He got inside his own box and turned quickly on his side to face the sleeper.

"It's nice here, isn't it? I'm Benny..." he started. "What's your name?"

No response, no sounds, not even snoring. They probably don't know English, he told himself.

"I walk here...long time. Me...no house," he tried.

Nothing.

"Me...no house. House...bye bye. I go on bus....bus...and walk here...walking...very long time..."

He stopped and stared at the head he was talking to. There was something funny about that head. Even with the hat it was too small, and the body...was that-...

"Your head's kinda funny," he said out loud.

No answer.

He leaned across and pushed his finger against the shape. It didn't meet any resistance; it kept on going further into the newspaper. He moved his finger up to the bobble hat and pushed into what he thought was someone wearing the hat, and found that there was no head.

"But you're-...you're a fucking hat," he cried. "Krist, a fucking hat."

He pulled himself up and picked up the hat and threw it across the island. He breathed out in fury as it landed then turned to the box, picked it up and threw that too. Then he kicked out at the newspaper, standing on it and tearing it in two, and then picked it up, ripped it, scrunched it up into a little planet, and threw it as far as he could. When there was nothing left to throw he fell back into his own box and asked it why they were all running away from him. The box didn't say anything, so he spat on the ground, breathed out heavily and asked it again what he was doing under a fucking country road at three in the morning.

"I've got a new idea. You wanna hear it?"

Benny sat perched on the edge of his chair, ready to unleash all his thoughts on Michelle, who was sitting opposite without her boyfriend again; he was working late at the office and wouldn't be home until midnight.

The restaurant they were in wasn't busy as it was a few days away from closing down. Nearby, on the wall, was a notice telling the customers of the location they would move to, and how pleased they would be if their loyal patrons could follow them there. Next to the notice was a copy of the same notice, and next to that were pictures of local celebrities who had visited. Benny didn't recognize any of them and didn't care that he would never eat in the place again. It had been Michelle's choice, not his.

"Is it the one about the poor?"

"No, not that one. That one's for later. This one's even better anyway. It's-...it's kinda different than the other ones. It's an angry story, Mish, and-...it's not really a story, it's more a tool to-...to change things, I guess. Anyway, that part comes later, but the story..." He paused, preparing the description in his head. "Okay, the overview is...there's something on the Island, something dark and mysterious, and it's living off the streets. No one really knows what it is...some people who've seen it call it a dark shape, too big to be a dog, too round to be human...and this thing is eating all the trash, and it's being seen more regularly at night, in the alleys, in the streets even, but-...but this thing, it gets greedy. It wants more. It wants the things it sees moving around and talking. It wants to eat people...you know what it is? Not a dog or a bear, something worse, something people really don't like. You know? No? It's a giant rat, Mish..."

Benny stopped and saw Michelle was very focused on his face, but in a distracted kind of way, as if she didn't have anything positive to say. Maybe he hadn't explained it well enough.

"...see, it's a giant rat, and it's gonna eat people."

"Yeah..." She was staring into his cheek.

Benny picked up one of his own chopsticks and tapped it on the table.

"Yeah, it sounds good...interesting," she managed.

Benny put the chopstick down and leaned back in his chair. There was the subtext aspect to it, the anger of the working class...maybe she hadn't picked up on that. Should he-...

One of the waiters pushed against Benny's back as he went past, talking to the chef, telling him that he wouldn't miss the place when they had gone. Benny muttered an insult he knew in Spanish and reluctantly moved his stool nearer to the table.

"Have you sent off any of your short stories yet?" Michelle was wide awake again.

"They're pretty rude here..."

"Who? Him?" Michelle pointed her head at the waiter walking past behind her.

"Yeah, the waiters. They're fucking rude."

"It's a teahouse, he's local."

"And I'm paying for this. They should show some manners. Or someone should let them know what's right and what's not."

Michelle pretended to read the notice on the wall.

Benny followed the waiter around the restaurant, watching his arms as he wrote down an order. There was flab under those triceps, he observed, and around that shoulder...and that fucking apron, krist. He imagined a rifle in place of the man's pen, or a shovel even, but it didn't work, it looked wrong. Not all of them could be in his army, not him.

"He doesn't even care, does he?"

Michelle mumbled a quick "yeah" and kept reading. Benny came back to the table and picked up his chopstick again.

"What did you say before?"

"Just now?"

"Yeah, about my stories."

"The stories, yeah," she turned back to the table, "I was just curious if you had sent any of your stories to the magazines."

"The magazines? Yeah, not yet, later. Soon." Benny started tapping the table with his chopstick again. He had written seven short stories and had only ever sent one, and that was to the New Yorker. That had been four months ago and he still hadn't received a response. Fuck them if they couldn't recognize his art, he had to propel forward and write about the rat, the revolution. There was no time to sit and wait.

"It might help to get you published if you've been in a magazine..."

"I know, but it's hard. Millions of writers are trying to get published..." his voice started automatically. He didn't want to think of all the millions of others out there trying to get published either. They were faceless but they were there all the same, writing at the same time as him, or writing when he wasn't and some of them writing crap, others writing in a way he couldn't. He didn't want to think of how easy or difficult it was for them to write.

"And you have to be one of them, Benny, or else nothing will happen," she said with some sympathy.

He tapped the chopstick faster against the table edge.

"I know, you're right, I'll send more off, but it's hard..."

"Can I tell you something?"

"...if you've never been-...what?"

"I haven't told anyone else yet..." she continued.

"Is it serious?"

"I guess so, yeah."

"Is it personal?"

"I don't-...maybe, I don't know yet."

"It's ok, Mish. You know I won't tell anyone."

He stopped his drum beat and put the chopstick back on the table. It was the boyfriend. She was going to break up with him at last. He had done something wrong or he hadn't done something right for the last time and she had snapped. He wasn't working late, he was-...

"Yeah, don't tell anyone, please. I wanted to let you know first..."

...it was over between them and she wanted him. She wanted to fuck him, was that it? No, it wasn't about sex, more like assistance. She wanted to assist him. She wanted to read for him five days a week, every story, every line. Every artist needed a muse and if she couldn't be that then every artist still needed a cheerleader. That's the role for her, he decided in a frenzy, she's not a muse, she's my cheerleader, and without a job, she can run down the court whenever I write, and even when I'm not, she can read for me and tell me what I need to hear, the truth of what I'm-...

"I had an interview today."

...if she can help me make the work honest then-...wait, what? An interview for him? What?

"I'm going back into the film industry."

He picked up his chopsticks then put them back down again. He processed the words 'film industry'. That meant a job, going to an office and working with film. It didn't make any sense.

"It's not certain but the woman who interviewed me, she's an old friend of mine from the business, she said that the job is pretty much mine if I want it."

No sense at all. The Hong Kong film industry was a shit-heap, a fucking sweat shop, and she'd done years there already, hadn't she? Six of them...or seven...working till two in the morning and not getting paid for it, and-...and what, she was going back?

"You're going back to the film people?"

"Yup, back to the film people."

Back to the sweat shop, back to-...krist, they'd never see her again. There would be no one to give praise when-...there would be no outlet for his ideas if there was no one there to listen to them and consider them without-...

"Are you sure you wanna go back to that?"

"I think so, yeah. She promised it wouldn't be as intense as my last job. I hope she's right."

"So you're going, you're leaving us..."

"Not leaving, I'll still be here, just working a little bit more, that's all."

Benny leaned back from the edge of his stool. It was over, all of it. She was going back to a real job and leaving him and the rest, Captain, Avon, Joseph, behind in-...in what?

"Anyway, it's not certain yet. Something could still go wrong so-...let's forget I said it."

"Yeah sure, if you want."

The waiter stopped at their table, asked Michelle something in Cantonese, put down the two bowls in his hands then walked off singing to himself.

"The prince of manners," Benny muttered.

Michelle picked up her chopsticks and effortlessly wound some noodles round them. Benny tried the same, but his noodles quickly slipped off.

"You never finished telling me your story plan."

"Huh, which one?"

"C'mon Benny, the rat thing you told me about two minutes ago," she laughed. "What happens with the giant rat?"

He tried to wrap some more noodles round his chopsticks, but failed again. What was there to say about the rat?

"You still wanna hear more?"

"Sure, why not."

Benny straightened himself and organized his next thoughts. This would be the last time he'd be able to tell her one of his ideas. After this, she'd be gone.

"It's gonna be a short novel, I think, maybe a hundred and twenty, a hundred and fifty pages...nothing too long." He stopped and looked her over before continuing. She was wearing something that looked like a Chinese bathrobe around her top half, the split in the middle showing itself, vulnerable, ready to be drawn apart. Underneath would be her breasts, and beyond that, her heart.

He remembered the other night, the men and the rifles, the overpass and the box.

Shouldn't he take her back to his place and have some fun before she left? If this really was the last time...

"That's not very long," said the bitch De Beauvoir.

"No, it's not, is it?"

"How long does it have to be to call it a novel?" another one of the students asked. This guy was new; he had come three lessons ago, very meekly entering their space with a ludicrous name [what was it? Emotion? Dandelion?] and a stuttered reason why he wanted to be there. He just wanted to listen and absorb if he could, as he was just a sudden learner who had come on impulse and had never written anything before. Since then, he had been irrepressible.

Benny clasped his hands together and beamed out at his audience. The lead insurgent, Pete, isn't here so it should be a fairly easy ride, he thought with glee. And Winnie's sitting right there, with that pretty face and that pretty smile and those pretty-...krist, she's pretty. I should talk to her after the lesson, get her number maybe...

"Well, I know Pynchon did one that was about one hundred and twenty pages. That was still called a novel. And Nakagami did one that was just under a hundred which was called a short story, so I guess the truth lies somewhere between."

"Over a hundred then?" the inquisitor asked.

Party, that was his name.

"As a rough guide, yes."

Party leaned back and smiled. Fucking Party, thought Benny in disbelief. A grown man called Party.

"That's my future figured out. One short novel every year and money for life."

"Well, that's if you get the first one published, which isn't easy. And even then you're not guaranteed to make your name off it. Don't forget this, Party, all of you, writing is not a prosperous career, it's a struggle and the kicker is, the better your writing, the more creative or original it is, the harder you're gonna find it to get it printed and out there because the market just doesn't exist for it." He looked around the hopeful faces, each one wondering if they would be the one out of all of them to get their work out there. "But, let's not give up, huh. Best pen forward, to paraphrase Twain."

The students drifted off into their own fantasies, expecting Benny to carry on talking, but he didn't. He was waiting for one of them to ask about his idea again, hoping that it would be Winnie.

It took forty-five seconds before Party took the initiative.

"Well, the basic idea for it is simple. It's about a loner, an outsider, who not only doesn't have friends but refuses to even make friends. He rejects anyone who comes close to him, people at work mostly, and lives for his books. He reads and reads and worships these authors, thinking of himself as magnificent and others around him as ignorant, and things continue this way for about twenty or so pages until, suddenly, one of these great authors somehow comes back-..."

"Sorry, I'm late."

"...to life."

It was him, thirty...thirty-two minutes late. Narrow, little-...

"Pete, you came for the last twenty-five minutes. What an honour."

"I thought I was only five minutes late, sorry."

"A bit more than five..."

"Yeah, a little bit."

He smirked and walked over to a seat that had obviously been left empty for him in the middle of the circle.

"And why are you so late?"

"Actually, it's weird...I was looking for one of your stories."

Benny flinched and tried not to blatantly squirm in his seat.

"My story?"

"Yeah."

He had been looking for the story. Krist. He kept his hands still on his legs and turned into a human-sized slab of stone. Had he found it? Of course not, it was impossible, there wasn't any story. They were all on his laptop, not in any magazine.

"Did you find it?" asked De Beauvoir, slithering closer to her Sartre.

"Well..." Pete started, still on his feet.

"They're quite hard to track down..." Benny jumped in.

How hard had he looked? Did he remember which magazine Benny had mentioned or was he using the wrong name to search? He looked smug, far too smug, and he wasn't sitting down, he was standing, hovering, like the prosecution...

"I found some magazines, but I'm not sure if I was searching the right name."

"You forgot the name?" Benny asked.

"Benny Lowrissa," De Beauvoir said quickly.

"Yeah...no, not that, I know his name. I mean the name of the magazine."

"You forgot the name?" Benny repeated.

"I could've done, I'm not sure. What was it called again?"

...but it didn't matter. There was no story to find so there was no way he could have found anything, which meant he hadn't found anything, which didn't mean anything as he hadn't looked hard enough. That's what he could say. And Benny knew for a fact that the magazine he had mentioned wasn't the kind of magazine that archived past issues, not even online.

"It's called 'New Metropolis'"

"Oh, right, that was it. I was looking for 'Metropolis'. That's why..."

Benny shifted sides in his seat. There was the other magazine he had mentioned too...

"Wasn't he published in another one?" De Beauvoir asked Pete.

"Yeah, there was another one, wasn't there?"

"What was it called?"

Pete turned from their public conversation before the group and asked him directly:

"What about the other magazine you got published in? What was that one?"

...but that one was defunct, dead, finished. They wouldn't still have a website, they wouldn't be traceable. Would they?

"'American Mercury'," Benny replied with a great deal of false calm in his voice.

"I'll have a look for that one later. 'American Mercury'"

"Mr. Benny?" Another voice broke in.

"Yes, Party?"

"Have you been published many times?"
Benny cleared his throat before answering. He wanted to look at Winnie again, but he wasn't sure what he'd see...had she seen him squirm?

"A few times, yes."

"So you're famous?"

"I guess..." he glanced at Pete, who was now taking his bag off his shoulder, and De Beauvoir in the seat next to him. "...not."

"I will see. I will look for you too, I think," Party said.

Pete smirked and sat down without his notepad. Benny noticed a few of the students twisting themselves towards him and grimaced. He wondered how long he could keep this job under such an onslaught. Couldn't these little shits just trust in him that he knew what was best for them? He looked at Winnie, but she wasn't looking at him anymore, she was looking down at her watch. Krist, she's bored already, he panicked, bored of me, or she's embarrassed by me, and all because of that prick. He's come and broken the spell with his fucking questions...the narrow, little stick-...no, don't...forget him, forget Beauvoir, forget Party...

"So, we were talking about how long a short story could-...I mean, how long a novel could be, and we-...I think we decided that there were several authors who had done some which were under a hundred pages..."

He followed his own command and focused on Winnie as he talked to the group about Pynchon and Carlos Fuentes and the short novels they wrote. He directed his surroundings until there was only the two of them in the scene, all the others, Pete, Party, De Beauvoir, the no-marks, reduced to faint figures in brief, apologetic shades of colour, an irritation to the artist to even include them, and he waited for her to look at him again. And he made plans. After this mess, when they were alone, he would win back her interest with words, with ideas...maybe even poetry as long as she didn't fully understand it. He had never understood it, not completely, but he was capable of writing the lights off and filling a page with vague, difficult, meaningless words. Ah, but she has a dictionary, what if she checks? What if...? What if...? It's dangerous, you've never been a poet, he warned himself, before remembering that he never used to be a writer of anything, and corrected slightly: You've never tried to be a poet.

Benny walked with her through the crowded streets of Mong Kok. It was a Saturday night and all the couples were out in force, and that now included the two of them. They weren't holding hands and weren't talking much, and wherever they were going was being decided half-heartedly by Benny alone. Thirty minutes earlier they had been on the train heading three stations further up to Kowloon Tong when they had stopped at Mong Kok, the doors had opened, and he had caught her looking ruefully at the station interior and the words spelling out the name on the wall in front of them, obviously offering her its hand, forcing Benny to ask her if this was where she wanted to get off, and she had nodded slowly like a dumb animal snared by one of those giant cosmetic firms and being asked if it wanted to have a spin in the wheel, so he had taken her hand and they had jumped off quickly, just escaping the squeeze of the doors closing.

"What do you wanna do?"

She shook her head.

"You wanna go somewhere around here?" he tried again.

She stared off at some of the buildings nearby.

"You've been here before, right?"

She nodded.

"So...?"

Nothing.

The streets they were walking on weren't the kind which had been made to impress women, with muck and litter and shitty little pieces of cardboard crawling against the kerb and across the drains. It was the kind of place Benny would come to on his own, to explore the side alleys and the hidden paths, to see them in the trash and in their boxes. If I could find a woman who would share that with me, he fantasized while leading the conversation along at the same time, a woman with a social conscience...that would be a woman to love. A woman like Winnie, perhaps...

They turned onto the main road pavement and the dirt became less and less apparent. The main road was always a little bit tidier than the rest, a gesture specifically for the tourists. The two pseudo-lovers walked past a karaoke place with bright faced people standing outside to pull them in.

"You wanna go in there?" Benny asked patiently.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Do you like singing?"

She nodded.

"How much do you like it?"

Shrug.

"Do you like it enough to go in there?"

She stared into the brightly lit edifice and pondered the question, then turned back and shook her head.

Benny walked forward shaking his own head. She wasn't a Winnie, that was for damn sure. Why was he doing this? Why?

They walked on and came to a small shopping mall, the kind where all the shop owners were just out of their teens and budding entrepreneurs. Benny knew someone like that here, another girl he had been with. She said she had owned a shop when she was nineteen, some kind of boutique, but she had complained about it too. The hours were long, she said, and you never made any money, not enough to make any kind of plan for the future. She was a smart one, he remembered. Where was she now?

"You wanna check out some shops, Kenix?"

She looked inside the same way she had looked inside the karaoke building, her head tilted slightly, her eyes sharpened, distrustful.

"They might have some cool little shops."

She wasn't even looking at him, as if he were going to send her in alone and leave.

"No?"

He looked at the entrance of the mall and saw the same kind of women as Kenix, wearing the same kind of clothes, the same shoes, carrying the same bag...

"No? Yes? Yes, no?" he tried again.

After running through all the possible ways the shopping mall could rape and ruin her, Kenix came back to Benny with a frown. He ignored it and leaned into her ear, whispering that it would be an adventure, a shit line, a shit, shit line, but he could get away with it with this one.

She frowned again, and then shrugged.

Can't she say two fucking words at least, he raged? He wasn't a radio. She could contribute if she wanted.

"I'm not a radio, Kenix. You can help me out here..." he repeated out loud.

This time she giggled. "Benny Radio," she managed to get out between controlled laughs.

Benny fucking Radio! Krist, this woman, this girl...no, this infant was inside out.

Benny Radio looked over at one of the many bus stops lining the road and thought briefly about just propping her body up next to it and walking away. He wouldn't stay with it, he couldn't even think of anything to say to it in the queue.

But they stayed together. The shopping mall became distant and they carried on walking down the road, both of them watching other, happier, more communicative couples sloping past at their own pace. She would come back to his place, that was why he stayed with her. He had known that from her messages. She was lonely, there hadn't been a boyfriend for ten months, or a year, [he couldn't remember which, there were so many dates he had to memorise with these women] and she would be willing to come back with him. If...if he could find something for them to do, something to entertain her.

There's that arcade near here, I could take her there, he thought. It won't be dull, and it's got Mario. Everyone loves Mario.

A few minutes later they were two floors beneath street level, in the arcade. Dozens of teens stood around the most popular machines while other, older men, gambled on the slots and plastic horses. None of them interacted with each other, and most of them didn't even speak. "A children's electronic playground for a scared, little child," Benny mumbled under his breath to the cashier, who heard nothing. "I like playing these games, don't you?" he said out loud to Kenix, then under his breath again, "as long as I get a fuck out of it."

He led Kenix with an imaginary hand [he didn't dare hold the real thing] and tried three machines without her trying any. There was no reason given, she just shook her head and said no. After the third machine he gave up trying to entertain her and did circuits of the floor. If another machine had a crowd then he'd stop to watch, if there were no crowds then he'd keep walking. Where the fuck was Mario? he kept asking each face, each machine.

"Do you wanna hear my story idea, Kenix?" he asked, seven circuits done.

She smiled and nodded. She did have a nice smile, and she was probably the prettiest one he had had for a while. Perhaps if he just talked, he could tolerate her long enough to get her back to his place. The train was two minutes away, and then it was only another twenty-five minutes to his doorstep.

"It's about a beautiful, smart, funny girl who doesn't have a name yet..."

"Kenix!"

A voice, more words, thank krist! He noticed a racing game with two driving seats empty nearby. He relaxed into one of them and gestured for her to take the other. She remained standing, awkwardly looking down on him.

"Kenix, that's a good name. Ok, a beautiful girl called Kenix who meets and falls in love with a guy who's an aspiring writer..."

She looked puzzled, briefly. That would be "aspiring" then.

"Aspiring means he wants to become a writer. So, the girl, Kenix, meets a guy in a bar and he starts talking to her, trying to win her affection...her love even. But Kenix is super, super smart so they end up having an argument, like a fight, and eventually, finally, Kenix wins and the guy is forced to run away. He has to leave because he's not a good guy. But everything is not good for Kenix as she wants to find a decent guy, a good guy, but all she gets are assholes. Then, finally, she meets the writer and they talk and he listens to her and tells her how smart she is instead of how beautiful...so, he says 'you are smart' not 'you are beautiful', right?"

She stopped and looked concerned. What was it? Smart over beautiful? Wasn't that what women wanted to hear, that they're smart, not beautiful?

"And he says how beautiful she is too..."

She still wasn't convinced...

"He says to her that she is the most beautiful girl he has ever seen and he doesn't think he will meet a more beautiful girl in his whole life."

Now she was pleased. Her smile brought dimples to her cheeks as she thought of a man really telling her that she was the most beautiful girl in the world. Benny turned to the side, away from her, and hid a quick burst of desperate 'KRIST!' within a cough, then faced her again, smiling. There were roughly three million women in this city and he guessed that at least a hundred thousand of them were pretty, prettier than her probably. What could possibly place her face above theirs? She was pretty, but when it was pretty against pretty how could anyone determine the prettiest?

"What happens at the end?" she asked, the accuracy of her English making Benny sit up a little.

"The end is...at the end, they kiss and spend the night in each other's arms."

She frowned again. Her body, which had been leaning into Benny's driving seat as he told the story, was moving away.

"How long?"

"What?"

"How long for-...when do they spend the night together?"

Benny saw what she was asking. She wanted to know if he fucked the girl on the first night.

"When do they fall in love you mean?"

She puffed out her cheeks and tilted her head sideways.

Benny stared at the blowfish face, at her legs retreating behind the driver's seat, and realized this one was done. There wasn't a hope that she'd come back to his place that night. All those messages she had sent, he hadn't read them properly, had he?

"You mean love, Kenix?" he rephrased.

"No...love takes a long time. When do they-...when do they go together, in bed?"

She probably wouldn't fuck him for months, maybe even years...

"When do they make love?"

He would have to talk and talk and talk about nothing, and watch her shrugs and nods for some kind of response, and even then it wasn't assured that she'd fuck him. Krist, where did women like this come from? Didn't they know anything about men?

"Yes." She blushed, looking past him at the car racing flawlessly on screen.

He would just have to take a risk and try and have a little fun with her. Perhaps even talk her round...

"Basically they make love the first night they meet. They realize they're right for each other and he makes her feel like a princess."

Only her eyes reacted, showing the panic of sudden claustrophobia. The rest of her face remained still, too scared to risk even the slightest movement.

"They make love all night," Benny added, "and then a couple more times when they wake up."

A couple of machines down, one of the lost children shouted out in victory. His plastic horse had clearly come in. Kenix used the distraction to look for the escalator out of there.

"Are you tired?"

"A little."

"What do you wanna do now?"

He got up and put his hand in hers and wasn't surprised when she shook it off. That was that then, time for some fun.

"How about we go back to my place and open those legs of yours a little?"

Her eyes blew out, as if a knife were about to strike.

"I'll go exploring with my fingers and-...maybe not then. You don't like fucking? You want me to walk you back to your-..."

She turned her back to him and walked straight into a real couple heading over to the slots. A craggy faced man and a tired looking woman, both smoking loose cigarettes, no hint of enjoyment. Kenix fled through their smoke and away from what she probably thought was a future image of her and Benny in a relationship, in love.

Benny let her go and slouched back into his driving seat. It was all a warm-up anyway, all these girls. He was just treading water until...until what? Winnie?

The woman in the Wonder Woman outfit, who Captain had placed around thirty, spun around the pole, slithering up then sliding down until her hair was reaching out to the floor and her hips were pointing, curved-pointing, to Avon, who had put himself four yards away from the action, somehow predicting her whole routine and where her ass would be at the end of it.

"That's a nice ass. A nice ass," Avon proclaimed in side whispers.

"You can't go wrong with a minge like that," confirmed Captain.

The three of them, Captain, Avon and Benny had formed a separate group away from Michelle and her boyfriend. It was her farewell party and there were a lot of people, most of them industry friends, standing in sonar lines around her.

The pole-dancing theme had been one of those friend's ideas. She was a budding dancer and thought it would do her group some good if they could showboat in front of a live crowd. So far, four of them had put on a show and four times Avon and Captain had been satisfied.

"You've got the best position though, mate," Captain told Avon, who was edging even closer to the pole. "Why don't you give them a slap?"

Benny let them talk around him and used the cover to look at the other women in the bar. There were some sitting down near the pole, a group of four...not pretty exactly, but not unforgivably bad...

"No way, they're friends of-..." Avon turned and pointed his face towards Michelle.

"Mate, she's leaving. And she likes it when men are men. She wants you to do it. Trust me, slap away."

Benny caught Avon's gesture late, and turned to see Michelle across the room. Next to her was a woman, one of those friends, a young friend...

"I'm not slapping, you slap," Avon said back.

Benny shifted a few steps towards Michelle and-...he could hear a faint west coast accent coming over...Los Angeleno?

"...I'm going back soon, just for a few weeks to catch up on a few things. I'll probably check out a couple of the studios and, y'know, pick up some scripts while I'm there..."

...yes, from LA, he confirmed. And she's talking about the film industry, which is-...it's a good thing, film is interesting, and-...that's a nice smile she's got, good teeth, subtle gums...and that chest...krist, she's got a chest...

"You want another drink, mate?"

Benny turned back to find Captain by his shoulder.

"What? No. Hang on, you're getting one now?"

"Yeah, I'm done with this one."

"They're expensive here."

"Yeah, they're extortionate, mate, but we're gonna be here for a while. Unless you wanna hit the conveni, drink a quick one there then come back? But that's cheap, innit? We can't be cheap in front of Michelle, she'll kill us."

"Yeah, I guess..."

The music cut out and that accent came back from across the bar. Benny glanced over, his eyes going straight to the chest.

"...I haven't seen him in ages, I think he might have forgotten me, but we'll see, I guess. And, y'know, I can't tell him about some of the things I've been up to here anyway..."

"Mate, you want another or not?"

Captain pulled him out from his listening post and shook an empty pint glass in his face.

"Another one? Yeah...yeah. I was just-..."

"Looking at the one with the tits, yeah I know, mate." Captain smirked and put the pint glass on the counter. "I saw her before. Michelle said she's working in Hollywood land, buying films like she does."

"She's American?"

"Don't know, mate, but it's a no go with her anyway." He pointed to one of the seats near the pole, to a stick man with a cowboy hat on. "She's fucking that guy...the silly cunt with the hat, see him?"

Benny nodded.

"Michelle said he's a rich kid. Got all his money when his Granddad died, lucky prick." Captain shook his head and picked up the pint glass again. "Waste of a good pair of tits, mate, big waste, but-...fuck it, you want that drink?"

"Yeah...one more," Benny said, still taken with the stick man.

"Ok, mate, I'll get this one, you get the next."

"Yeah, the next one."

Captain clipped Benny on the side of the head, told him to wake up then moved down towards Michelle and a space at the bar. Benny watched him walk past the film girl and brush his arm against her chest, turning back to catch Benny's eye, and then around to the bar again to settle in next to two of the prettier girls at the party. He talked to one of them, moving close to her shoulder but doing nothing with his hands, made her laugh a couple of times, touched her bag, her shoulder. Then her drink came and she walked away. Captain caught Benny's eye again, shrugged, then turned to the bartender and ordered. Benny didn't return any kind of expression, he simply watched the bartender, his uniform, his hair, his hands, as he poured out the pints.

"Benny, you're missing the pole," Avon nudged him in the side.

"Yeah, one second."

The man looked clean and well presented, but what was he really? It was dark so everyone looked clean, the uniform was given to him, his hair could've been greased, not waxed. There were no real signs that he was happy...and how could there be, thought Benny. He's working here because he's got nowhere else to work, isn't he? He's got a high school education, perhaps, most kids do, even if they're living in a forest shack, but he'll never be invited for interviews anywhere big, will he? Not unless he chances on something, a bit of luck from somewhere.

Benny shifted further along the counter, getting closer to the man in a pirate costume beside him. He watched the bartender pour out the second pint, his face giving nothing, as if he were merely at his own kitchen sink pouring a glass of water.

"Shit, another one coming, look." Avon had shifted across and poked him in the side again. This one had more force than the last and made Benny arch his back slightly to control the spasm of pain. Krist, he cursed internally, Avon, you giant, fucking-...

"She's good, isn't she?"

Benny mumbled a nothing reply.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah...back problems." Benny clutched his side then his back, and then his other side.

"Man, you should see a doctor. You never know..."

"Yeah...body armour might help..."

Avon turned back to the pole while Benny continued to massage himself.

"...or adamantium skin..." he mumbled to the giant's back.

Avon had once told them of a fight he had been in at seventeen. Some ruck with an entry-level triad his sister was dating, back when he was in college and doing things. It wasn't anything big, he had said, no swords or cleavers or anything. The guy had simply come to the family apartment, got mad, thrown a few punches, Avon had thrown some back, and then it had ended, as most fights do, with little marks and rookie bruises on both faces. No blood had been drawn, no victor had been declared. The guy had simply picked up his jacket and walked out.

As Benny turned to face the pole, forgetting the bartender, he glanced around the male friends of Michelle, at the stick in the cowboy hat, and compared them to Avon. A man that size against one of these other male sticks, triad or not, it wouldn't have ended with the guy just picking up his jacket.

The other girl, a local one with no ass whatsoever, came up to the pole and started to twist around it, just as Avon had said. Captain returned with the drinks, handing one to Benny and taking in the lack of ass that had replaced the ass he couldn't go wrong with.

"That's not an ass. That's-...it's just nothing. There's nothing there, mate," he informed both of them. "Get off the pole, love," he said under his breath.

Later, in another bar just off the hill of Lan Kwai, the five of them and a few stragglers sat looking out onto the crowd outside. The heads and the bodies moving up and down the street were loud and vibrant, the ones inside hushed and observant. 'Here comes the summer' drifted out from the lead singer of The Undertones in some long ago recording studio, and out over the bar, the only sign that there was anything of interest happening inside.

"They don't have asses or tits, that's the problem. I'm sick of seeing bee-stings and flat asses everyday, where are all the busty ones? Where are the tits?"

Benny left Avon to deal with Captain while he stared at Michelle, who was sitting silently next to the bland boyfriend, with his arm cupped around her waist as if they were posing for a camera that wasn't quite ready for them. He recalled his own hand on her waist. When was that?

"Back home, you'd see tits everywhere. You'd see heifers too, but that's the rub of it. You're always gonna get a mix, but here, there's no mix. There's just flat."

"Yeah, right, just so flat," nodded Avon, listening closely but not fast enough to add anything of his own.

"Part of the fun of meeting a new girl is whether or not she's got a good body, right? You get to know her, yeah, but every time you see her you're checking out her tits and ass too, seeing if she's got any, seeing if your first assessment was right and if her legs are long or if there's any flab on the arms or round the stomach. That's part of the joy, especially when you get one with tits..."

Michelle was really leaving. Like she said, she wasn't moving away from the city, but she was leaving their lives. Don't the others realize this, thought Benny? Don't they care?

"A solid pair of tits, mate. That's all I ask for," Captain repeated.

They all ordered a round of shots, held them up high and toasted to Michelle, who seemed slightly embarrassed by all the fuss being made over her and hid her head behind her boyfriend's shoulder in mock-shame. "We'll all still hang out," she said over the music cutting away the peace in the background, "you just won't see me quite so much, that's all."

They left before three in the morning and headed back home. It was too late to take the train, so they got on the minibus and went back under the harbour. On the way, Captain sat next to Benny and told him that they'd probably only see her once a month at most, while Michelle, sitting out of earshot near the front, kept her head straight, ignoring the boyfriend's shoulder next to her, and watched the buildings the bus left in its wake.

"You can't blame her though, it's her career. Teaching was just part-time, but this film industry thing is what she's gonna do with her life. You can't stand still, mate."

Benny didn't ignore him, but he didn't answer either.

"I've gotta do the same soon. Holiday season is almost over for me." He laughed, unsettling the boy and girl in front of them. "There's only so much of this place you can tolerate anyway."

Captain had come from somewhere near the border of Wales a year ago and had planned on staying in Hong Kong indefinitely. This was something he had felt compelled to do, a getaway from the drudge of that bank. "Not that it was bad," he had explained, "it was just dull, mate. And I knew I had the house here, so it wasn't a hard thing to do." The only thing he needed, he said, was something to prompt him, a missing ingredient, and that had come soon enough. "This mate of mine, I knew him since I started at the bank. Saw him every day, went for beers with him, played with his kid. One day, he just drops dead, mate. Stands up and goes straight back down." The mate was thirty-two. Captain was twenty-seven. It was time to try somewhere new.

"I'll be glad to get back and listen to decent music, see decent women, talk to people who aren't like the drones here. You get real people back home, mate, they're not fakers. You can talk to them and you know they're alright. It's keeping me afloat, thinking of going back there."

He was right, his time was almost up. He would leave soon, Benny had no doubt about that, and he would probably miss him. Captain and Michelle, two of the better friends he had made since he had been there, and now they'd be gone and he'd be left behind without an exit door. There was no bank job for him to go back to, there was none of the office experience that Captain and Michelle shared and could just switch back on when they went back.

"Another two months I reckon, maybe three then I'm outta here. Good bye Kong of Hong, thanks for all the fucking no-titted bitches," he laughed louder, not caring if the whole bus understood what he was saying. "Not that any of them would fuck me..."

The bus reached the other side of the harbour and stopped somewhere in Hung Hom. The doors opened and Michelle followed her bland boyfriend into dark streets that the rest of them never used and never would. As the bus started up again, she waved with a smile towards the three she had promised to see again before the end of the month.

Avon waved back, Captain knocked his fist against the window. Benny sat back, looking at, and following, one of the hairs on the stranger's head in front of him.

There was no point looking. He knew she was out.

He sat on his couch alone in his apartment, watching TV with the sound high to match the noise coming from the neighbours on the other side of the wall. The news was on but all the important stories had been already, and now they had some pretty people with long legs walking up a red carpet to watch the premiere of a film they had played no part in.

Benny reached over to the table and pulled his laptop onto his lap, where it was supposed to sit. There was something he had to do, right then, before he lost the motivation, which had just sprung out of loose thoughts from the night before when Michelle had talked about his stories again, and that had taken him back to an earlier conversation from a different time they had met, when she had asked him if he was sending stories out to the magazines and he had told her that he had, many times to many magazines, which had been a lie. He had only ever sent two, one to the New Yorker, and one to a lesser magazine, the one he had actually told students he had been published in, 'New Metropolis', and neither one had replied to him. He had to find more magazines.

One of the reporters interviewed a model and asked her what she thought of the film. She said she hoped it would do well and that bigger films like this tended to be dismissed as entertainment and not praised for the subtleties that went into the making of them, most notably the one she was there promoting and not any of the other bigger films. The interviewer thanked her, the camera went down her legs to the ankles and back up to her face, and then she disappeared from the screen.

Those weren't bad words to be quoted on, thought Benny. She wasn't Samuel Beckett exactly, but she could have said a lot worse, and in front of the camera too when she knew people would be listening. Not bad for a model.

"There was anger in Sheung Wan today as a local protest over the continued harassment of street artists threatened to sprinkle out of control..." the reporter continued with a smile, despite the step down in story glamour. "Spiral, sorry, threatened to spiral out of control," she corrected herself.

Benny ignored the TV and searched for magazines he could send to. There was a list he had saved but he would have to click on their individual names to get a link to their websites, and then he'd have to find out if their submission guidelines were kind enough, and what type of stories they were looking for, and what the word limit was and if there was any chance of sneaking over if the material warranted it. That seemed like it would take a lot of time. Did he have long enough to do all that, for all the different magazines? He found the list, scrolled down and counted up the total; eighty-seven names. Even if he started now it would take him to at least two in the morning to get ten magazines done, and on top of that he didn't have any recognition of these names. They didn't even give him the countries they could be found in. For all he knew he could be sending his work to some fringe rag in Slovakia.

"That would have a certain prestige, wouldn't it though? A little, I think, yes."

He remembered a story he had read that might've come from Slovakia, about a man who sold his own house and everything else he had to build a tunnel under a river, using convicts and beggars as a workforce, and-...the man went missing, and the story kind of fell in on itself, but it was definitely weird enough to be worth something. If he referenced that in his acknowledgments, it would give him his own little piece of ground to stand on. Yeah, I've read Slovak literature, he imagined himself saying in front of a crowd outdoors. I've read all the stuff from the Balkans [was it the Balkans? The new/old eastern bloc? Where the hell was Slovakia?] and it's good, it's good because there was something happening to them there. There was a crisis. There was social annihilation, not just the social-...the social what...social equalib-...no, the other-...social malaise...the social malaise we always write about in the West...

"Don't I have too much freedom here then? If I could get a job somewhere where there's a crisis..."

He thought about it quickly, thinking of possible countries to look at and possible jobs he could get there [English teacher? Krist!] and possible ways to get there fast. Then he stopped. On the screen he saw the list of magazines waiting for him to show interest again. Yes, the magazines, my short stories, he remembered. They must be dealt with first.

He put the laptop back down. He would do it tomorrow when he had more time. Then he could do them all in one grand gesture, with a wave of the hand, eighty-seven possible avenues to publish his words. One of them had to accept, one of those editors had to find some merit in what he had written, which wasn't much admittedly, but it was enough to get him a name or a reputation, and if he had one of those then he could have a career. He'd be reputable enough for magazines to hire him, he'd be able to use his name to write columns for papers the world over, and he could use it to write his novel. One short story published would be enough; just one of these editors to accept him would solve everything.

He got up off the couch and looked back down at where he had been sitting. It was a long couch, bought by whoever had lived there before him and probably for three people, not one. There had only ever been two other people sitting next to him on that couch, one was Captain, the other was one of those girls, and that was only because she had got up before him and made herself breakfast.

He went to the fridge to fish out one of those heavy bottles of water, but there were none there. He checked the side table in the living room and found the remains of his previous one. He had drunk it all the night before. "For fucks sake!" passed through his mind, but he didn't say it out loud. It was only ten past twelve; the conveni would still be open. He put his flip-flops on and went out the door.

In the corridor he could hear his neighbour's TV as if he were in their living room and wondered why no one came to their door and warned them to turn it down. Was that his responsibility? He was the closest to them, but then what about the apartments above and below, did they hear any of it? He walked past their door, briefly curious as to what they were watching so loudly, but it was just bangs and dramatic violin so he kept going. None of the other apartments were making any noise, which meant they were all asleep or everything electronic was turned off and they were talking like proper families, assuming that there were families living there. He wasn't sure as he'd never seen any of the other residents; he'd only heard the mah-jong women and the TV next door and the piano round the corner. Who else was living there? What kind of people were they? They couldn't have been too low down on the salary mountain otherwise they wouldn't be living there alone; all they could viably be was lonely.

"On-ly the lone-lyyy," he sung under his breath as he walked into the stairwell and down to the ground floor, "live in thisss fucking place."

The security guard sitting through the night shift waved him across the buildings lobby and said something in Cantonese, which Benny guessed was "Are you going out?"

"Going to get some water," he replied in English then added "water" in Cantonese to try and ease their struggle.

"Ok, ok," The guard said back with a smile.

He's a friendly guy, Benny decided, always smiling, always making an effort to talk to me in English. Does he hate me for living here?

"Good night," from both of them and he was guided out the door.

Benny knew from their conversations over the last year that the guard had to work six nights a week, that he had to sit there doing very little from eight in the evening to eight in the morning, that he had to smile at the people who came in whatever condition, drunk or angry or depressed...the people who made and would always make more money than him...the people who-...the couples who would have children they could send to better schools, where they would get better teachers with better qualifications who would prepare those children for exams they would pass and then leave behind as-...as a memory of revision and diligence...and then they'd proceed to University, and then a career, while this guard, if he had children, would never have a chance.

"Good night," Benny uttered once more as the door closed behind him.

Isn't it sickening, isn't it disgusting, he continued on in his thoughts as he walked up the hill towards the conveni where his fourteen dollar, fresh-spring water was waiting for him. There was nothing for that guard to do but accept that job and be damned any hope he might have of doing something with his life. He was literally living without reason, just because his heart wouldn't stop its own beat, and the only purpose left to him after being born into such a life was to bring another body into such a life, with nothing to hope for beyond utility work.

"Krist, can't I do something for them?" he asked the hill ahead of him, certain there was no one nearby. "Aren't I a writer?"

Yet he had written nothing that was worthy, nothing with any kind of social ambition. He had written flights of fancy that would pass the time for the middle classes, if they were ever published, but they would do nothing for these people. They were the oppressed villagers waiting for the seven cowboys to come and save them, and he was all of the cowboys in one body and mind, but he hadn't come yet, he wasn't even on his horse, he was just lying on his bed in the saloon in another faraway town, thinking about when he might get on that horse while the actual horse stood patiently and exhaustedly outside and below the window, probably counting other horses trotting past, thinking, "those fuckers got the lucky crack, a decisive master." And the people, the oppressed, were they really just waiting for him? No, they were in another moment. The point of time where they had accepted what was being done to them and didn't possess any fantasy of a 'someone' who might make things different for them. And besides, he couldn't be alone in this. Weren't there others lying on their beds thinking of the same village, not being wished for by anyone?

The hill steepened before him as he neared the summit, fighting against his progress. There was no traffic on the road beside him and no pedestrians walking past to break him out of his thoughts.

A whole village of people without hope...no hero to the rescue...no one even trying to become a hero. He wanted to cry out and let loose tears onto the street, imagining in his still bright, sanguine fantasy of a mind that some beast of a tree would rise up, nourished by his despair, and offer life to those ragged women who disappeared into bins every night looking for trash. It didn't even have to offer life, just cardboard or a few notes to make their lives easier, then perhaps they could move up and get a home, and then the ones above them, the security guards and the utility workers and the counter staff in the convenis, could get their own notes and leave their jobs and go back to school or college, completely subsidized by his beast of a tree, and when done they could get new, better jobs and have hope that they might rise up higher, and if they were too old to enjoy it then the tree would make them young so they could enjoy it...

Benny stopped by the crossing and waited for the man to turn green. Across the road he could see some men hanging around outside the conveni, probably the same ones he always saw, drinking from the same cans of beer. You can be happy now, brothers, he thought, but it is only a moment. You still need me, you still need my words, don't you?

The light changed and he walked across, keeping his eyes on them all the way to the entrance as they ignored him, and when he went in and got his water and took it to the counter, he smiled fraternally at the guy trapped there and gave him the fourteen dollars. He wanted to give more, but knew it wouldn't be accepted. The man was too decent, and too scared, but mostly too decent.

As he walked back out he wanted to go over to the men drinking their beer and-...he could see they were drinking vodka too, good, and why not, they deserved it, they deserved a lot more for the way they had been treated, and he wanted to tell them that, and tell them that they didn't need shovels or rifles anymore because-...because he had his words again, he had the old confidence back in his blood, and he wanted them to know he was writing his next novel about them and that it would tell their story in a way no other story ever had and...and it would be published soon, and when it was he would make sure they were given free copies, which would be translated into their own language immediately, and then when it was a success he would use all the profits to rectify their situation, and luck and chance would have to keep their fat, fucking arbitrary faces out of it as this money would be determined only by his hand and he would make sure that it would go to them, but not in the form of notes and handouts, in the form of housing and jobs that would give them new lives so they wouldn't have to be distant anymore, and the housing...it would be a huge estate, with tennis courts and a sauna and a playground for their kids, who would go to better schools, and it would be the envy of those others who did nothing for them, those middle classers with their coffees and pills and annoying little depressions, and if they objected, if they tried to do anything to stop him then...then the shovels and the rifles would come back out and they would march...they would march together straight to the...the-...

He blinked and realized he was walking back down the hill to his estate. He looked behind him to check for the men he had wanted to drink with, but they were gone. There was only another of those women, her arm fully extended into the bin a few yards behind him. Benny looked away, unable to watch her, unable to help in any way. He was feeling it too much, it was too much to reconcile, but it would pass, it always passed. Then where would they be? He couldn't write them out of their lives into better ones, what was he thinking?! He couldn't write words strong enough to get that woman out of that bin, it was impossible, wasn't it? Even if he picked up the bin and hid it somewhere on his estate, she'd still be stuck in the same space, confused as to where the bin had gone.

He re-entered his estate with the tennis courts and the sauna and the children's playground and walked along past the trees that were lit up idyllically by the little orange domes lying underneath. Why couldn't they just come and sleep under these trees at night? Why couldn't all the estates do that for them? He remembered the figures, eight hundred and fifty-seven destitute in Hong Kong. It wasn't a huge number, if every estate let a couple in then it wouldn't be a problem anymore. If every estate just made up a simple job for them that would pay some kind of wage, wouldn't that end it? But they wouldn't, no one would. No one wanted to see black feet and yellow legs hanging off their garden benches, not where their kids could see them. It would be too bleak, far too much ugliness. What a system we live in, he spat. Bits of yellow leg and bone poking out of skin that didn't even look like skin anymore, and the faces stuck to the ground because it was better to close your eyes down there than to look up at all those other faces...they, all of them, every fucking gangrenous shin, were finished in life, and just had to wait around until their bodies finished with them. Disgusting...it was-...

He was in front of his building. The guard was inside, watching him.

He went inside and put his head down to ignore the guard. He didn't want to see him again, didn't want to see any of them, not until he had fixed it. He took the elevator up, walked down his corridor which had been cleared of TV noise from the apartment next door, went back inside his own and put the computer back on his lap. He opened up a new document and told himself to write something, anything about them, something enflamed and tendentious, and he did, he finally started to write the novel he had been threatening to write for almost a year.

After four pages were done he stopped, elated and on his way to triumph, and saw that he had a new message in his inbox. He opened it up and saw 'New Yorker' printed in the subject box. It was them. Did he want to read this now? It might blockade his way to triumph. It might spear a hole in that elation he had only just started to feel. Fuck it, man, live in hope, he convinced himself, and opened it up.

He read the message twice then sank back into the couch. There was no one sitting next to him so he was able to collapse and leave himself motionless facing the blank TV screen. He got back up after a few minutes and walked to the kitchen and back again. Sat down. Stood up. Back into the kitchen, back to the couch. He told himself that it was only the 'New Yorker'. It was only one reader. It wasn't a final assessment. It wasn't anything. "The New Yorker? Who the fuck are they, really? What has a reader of theirs actually written?" Then he sat down again and listed all the writers who had ever made it into the 'New Yorker'. Mailer, Vonnegut, Pynchon, Auster, King, anyone with a fucking pen or computer. There were too many, it was too much.

He leaned over to the screen and deleted all that he had just written. As he found the back of the couch again and laid himself out, with his arms alternating between the foetal curl and the straight death pose, he said to himself over and over, "you're shit, you've failed, they hate you. You're shit, you've failed, they hate you."

**Benny** pursues harder and becomes a John Sayles type before looking closer and finding one person in his life wearing the costume of a snake, and another stuck behind those dark windows in Mong Kok...

They had just finished watching a play about a man fucking a goat [off-stage] that someone called Edward Alber or Albree or something beginning with 'Alb' had written a few decades ago, and if there had been a curtain it would have gone down, but the theatre was small and operated without one. Even the seats were merely raised platforms of hard wood without any arms to rest on. It was the kind of place he imagined might've been put up secretly under the radar of some occupation government [In Slovakia, perhaps? That man, that tunnel...] with performances scheduled off the cuff and angry, partisan words spat out by the rebel actors. Benny sat back, letting the edge of the wooden block behind him prod into his back. He was comfortable in this kind of place.

The other watchers around them made their moves to the exit, leaving the three friends alone. Well, two friends and Avon, who knew Benny well enough but hadn't met too many times with Amelia, who was already twanging her fingers against each other, desperate for a cigarette.

"That was weird, really out there," she said, standing and walking off the first block down to the exit tunnel.

Benny and Avon got up behind her and followed. Benny looked back towards Avon.

"Weird, but really fucking good. Dialogue was gold, how did he write like that? And absurd as well...it was just-...what did you think, Ave?"

"Well, weird, yeah. The whole goat thing-..." He finished the sentence by whooshing in a slow breath and laughing at the whoosh.

They caught up with Amelia and some of the more languid watchers who were having their own discussions. Benny listened in.

"The goat wasn't really an animal as such, was it? It was more an expression or symbol, I think, of what the man wanted, or maybe..."

"It was the irrationality of what he wanted, and his wife was the rational opposite. I think Albee was countering the two points, two extremes, one that I suppose you can almost comprehend and the other which you can't, really."

"But what about the son and the kiss, that was interesting..."

"Yes, very interesting."

"And the man's fixation with grammar and semantics..."

"Ha! Semanticist!"

They both laughed as Amelia dropped back a step and rolled her eyes. Benny dropped back too, half of him wanting to follow on behind and involve himself in that discussion, the other half disgusted by what he saw as their pretension.

"Pretentious pricks," his other half said dismissively to the other two later, while they sipped three glasses of red on the roof bar of the same theatre. It was small inside, but it had a nice aesthetic, with glassed art hanging on the walls and a low maintenance warehouse studio feel around the rest of its space.

"What pricks? The two who were walking out before?" Amelia rushed through smoke.

Benny nodded, Avon whooshed.

"I know, what were they talking about?" she continued. "The rational of the goat and the expression of the la-la-la..."

"The way they talked about it, I hate that. People like that. I bet they were just sitting there all through the play picking out long words so they could waffle on about it afterwards. And in front of us too, and the others. They knew people would be listening in. Fucking show-boaters!" Benny wanted to say more but 'show-boaters' was a good closer.

"Yeah, they just wanna impress," Avon added.

"The man was...what...fixated on grammar and la-la-la...dude, just watch the fucking thing and enjoy yourself," Amelia continued.

"And when they cracked up over semanticist, krist. It was barely funny in the play and they're trying to say it as their own in-joke."

"Yeah, trying to seem clever, and-..." Avon started but he couldn't finish, and another whoosh came out.

"What the hell is a semantitist anyway?" Amelia spoke into her glass.

Benny took some of his wine, noticing Avon looking his way in intellectual comradeship.

There's that early exit from high school showing itself again, thought Benny, before quickly changing his superiority into sympathy. Who the fuck am I to look down on her just because I know a word she doesn't?

"It means someone who has an interest in the meaning of words and how they are used..." Benny answered, sure he was right and also sure that Avon probably wouldn't know anyway. He had heard it in a John Cusack film years ago, and a small Cusack film, not one of the compromises. Avon couldn't have seen the film, surely, and even if he had, he wouldn't have remembered that word...

"Yeah, word meanings," Avon confirmed.

"Oh right, never heard it before," she smiled, without shame, "another word learnt for the day." She laughed and Benny laughed with her, pleased that she felt no shame, as it really wasn't her fault, it was fortune's fault. It wasn't like she couldn't understand the word once she knew it, she could, she just had. That was a sign of stupidity, if you had to be instructed again and again.

"There was another word they said too...what was it?"

Avon pushed himself closer to the table, holding his hands out like paws.

"In the play?" Benny asked.

"Yeah, near the start. I think they said it a few times. Proteritit?"

"Proletariat?" Avon said quickly, determinedly.

Benny dipped his head in agreement. Was the big lump competing against him now, was that it?

"Yeah, that's it. What does that mean?"

"It means..." he started and Benny let him continue to see what he would come up with. If it was wrong, he'd correct him, if it was right, he'd improve on it. "...working class people."

Benny watched Avon rock back in his chair and take a victorious sip of wine. He thought she was stupid. He was rocking in front of her in defiance of her stupidity, the smug giant. He didn't know why she was ignorant, he hadn't heard about what had happened to her between sixteen and twenty. It wasn't her fault there were knowledge gaps.

Another couple on the table next to them started discussing the play.

"You know, I think the struggle of the marriage was pitched perfectly, really well done, with the man sitting there confused and the wife breaking things. It was a shock though, wasn't it, when that vase hit the floor. I thought it was going to bounce up..."

"I nearly ducked for cover..."

"So, it just means working class?" Amelia asked one of them.

"The stage was so close too, I was expecting the little pieces to fly up and hit us..."

"Yeah, basically," said Avon.

"And the goat at the end...I can't believe she killed it. I didn't know if I should feel sorry for it or not...I kinda did though."

"If you're talking about literature, which they were in the play, it means a writer who writes for the working class, who becomes their voice in a way. It happened before, after the modernists like James Joyce, Virginia Wolfe, those guys..." Benny knew he had gone over Amelia's head, but he wanted to go over Avon's as well. "Dos Passos, Orwell, Platonov, they wrote about the condition of the working class, who they are, what they put up with, all that. It's a Marxist term originally, I think." He didn't think, he knew, but he didn't want to go too high.

Avon nodded passively and drank more wine. Amelia also nodded, understanding quickly, mused Benny, which means she is definitely not stupid. All she had to do was make the effort to learn, and then she'd rise. Perhaps he could help her do that, perhaps he could teach her a word a day or a concept, philosophy or literature, something to give her a defence against people like Avon who wanted to step on her.

"The goat was interesting. I thought that would happen at the end, I had a feeling," the man concluded.

They finished their wine and made their way off the roof and back down to the streets, away from the theatre and up the hill, past the galleries with mainland art hanging in the windows showing a mass of elongated, Chinese faces, the mainlanders existing, struggling, unseen on the other side of the border, then down another hill and onto the main strip of Lan Kwai.

They saw a crowd of shirts, with ties in pockets, standing outside the first few bars, some of them looking up and showing interest in Amelia, but they kept on going, into the Spanish bar further down the slope.

"It's quieter in here," said Amelia, and they followed her in, finding some stools looking out onto the street. She put her cigarettes on the table and asked if they wanted a drink. They nodded but didn't give a name, so she smiled and said it was ok, she knew what to get.

"You said Captain was coming tonight, right?" Avon asked, as Amelia left the table. Benny watched her waist, her legs, her ass, as she went. There was less fat there than before, she was narrower...

"Captain?"

"Yeah..."

"Did I ask him to come?"

Avon nodded.

The bar was quiet, but not silent. A couple of conversations drifted over to their table...

"I paid two mil, 600K for it, but it's my first building. If I wanted, I could sell up in two months."

"If you don't start drawing then what are you gonna show them when you go in for the interview-..."

"If I get an interview..."

"If you get an interview, right. Always the negatives..."

"Yeah, I asked, but he wasn't keen. I told him what it was about, he said he didn't wanna watch a guy fucking a goat," Benny replied.

"...but you will get an interview, you've got the qualifications, you've just gotta draw some new material, that's all."

"There's no point selling up though. I might even buy another place and then rent this one out, make some more cash that way. I've probably got the savings for it. Mind you, I haven't checked my account for a while."

"You don't check it every week?"

"Is he gonna join us now?" Avon asked.

Benny watched the two men talking about bank accounts, noticing the watches on their wrists, the ties in their pockets, the line of trouser running down their calves to their black, moneyed shoes.

"I just let it do its own thing most of the time. Every six months or so I check it, when I'm in pursuit. When I've gotta spend a little to get a little..."

The two of them laughed, both leaning back as if the space was theirs alone. If they're so rich, what are they doing sharing a bar with me, Benny thought, his shoes kicking against the legs of his stool.

"Benny?"

"I did some sketches last week, but I don't think they're portfolio quality..."

The other table, that was better. They're talking about sketching, they're artists, or one of them is at least, he deduced. These are the people I should be listening to, creatives like me..." he looked at their shirts then their shoes. "...unless they're rich kids. Are they? Probably are, krist, look at those shoes. And if they've got time to sketch, they must have-...

"Hey Benny, is Captain joining us?" Avon repeated.

"What?" Benny half-pulled away.

"That's what you've gotta do, start sketching then flesh them out. Move away from the lined notepad, man."

"Is Captain coming to meet us now?"

"Are you pursuing anyone now then?"

"No, he's not coming..." Benny let out the words lethargically.

"Someone told me about a t-shirt website too, they give you big money for designing logos and prints. I had some ideas for that..."

"There's this woman at the office, she's local and pretty hot, but she's a bit of a tard. Her English is a little faint too."

"He said he was staying home, looking for jobs, I think," Benny finished...

"I'll probably still give her a bang though...she's got a good body."

"He said he was leaving soon, going back to the UK..." and added some more.

"There was this one design I did where, it had a TV roped up on the cross, like Jesus being crucified..."

"But what about the interview, Clinton?"

"Leaving...yeah, he told me that too," confirmed Avon needlessly.

"I know, but-...fuck it, interviews are just non-personality checks. They just wanna see if you've got the lack of character to tow the line. I don't wanna go down that road...these t-shirts are the way-..."

"Shit man, don't go all-...don't pretend like your post-modern here. I mean, Jesus, you sound like an angry hippie who can't get a job. You've gotta cut that shit out, man."

"He said it last year and every week since, but I don't know...let's see what happens," Benny said, turning back to his own table.

Amelia came back with three glasses and sat down on a stool, ignoring the expensive shirts and watches that had noticed her, and reached straight for a cigarette. They won't try anything with two guys sitting next to her, Benny thought, not with Avon here. And they were too clean, too conventional. Amelia wasn't the smartest girl around, but she didn't like conventional men, no matter how many two mil, 600K apartments they had.

"You guys can buy the drinks from the next place, yeah?"

They both agreed and started on their drinks which were green and had little pieces of plant floating, hidden, beneath the surface.

In the next place, which was down the slope and up one of the side streets in a little bar hidden away and capable of holding no more than twenty people, Benny bought three more, slightly less expensive drinks and carried them back to the table. Avon had shut his eyes and was leaning away from Amelia on the sofa side of the table, while Benny took the chair with his back to the street. Outside, there was a bin with another dreamless old woman poking around inside, her head still visible while the arm did all the work.

"It's so sad, isn't it?" Amelia said between sips of her cocktail, which Benny had just paid seventy-two dollars for.

"It is and it isn't," he replied, turning his chair round.

"Ha, are you trying to be clever?"

"No, I'm serious." Benny placed the cocktail down on the table. "It's sad to see someone that low and desperate, but at the same time, it obviously isn't that sad because we're not doing anything about it."

"Come on, Benny, that's shit, it's still sad. Look at her!"

"I've looked at her, I've looked at loads of them. It's all the same. If it's truly sad, why aren't we helping them?" He picked up his glass to drink then saw what he was about to drink and put it back down. "I'm gonna help them."

"You're gonna help her?"

"I'm gonna try."

"How?"

"Through my writing, that's the only way."

"Jesus, Benny..."

"It'll give her a voice..."

"Ha, a voice in-...she'll still have her head in a bin."

"It'll make her real, as a person."

"But-...she is real, so is that bin," Amelia laughed, her elbow accidentally nudging Avon who remained asleep.

He picked up his glass and drank before he answered her. She never finished high school, it isn't her fault, he protested. That was true enough, but that was five years ago, she couldn't stay this way. She had money, they didn't, she had parents who gave her money, she had friends and she went out five nights a week and she was wasting her life, and being given the chance to waste her life, and she wasn't apologizing for it, she wasn't penitent which she should be.

"You don't understand what I'm saying; I'm talking about metaphysics, existentialism, the idea of dimensions and antological stuff...things like that. I'm talking about being visible as a person and not some idea, abstract idea, in middle class heads."

"Jesus, too many words. First the goat, now this..."

"That woman, you say you can see her, but can you? You see her like you see this bar, or that street, something that exists while you are around to see it, but doesn't when you're not. You know? As soon as you leave that woman isn't a person anymore, she isn't anyone but a picture in your head, up there with all that movie shit and the goat, and you'll tell people about it, but you won't think about it."

Benny checked on the woman to see if she was still there. Could she hear him defending her, championing her right to exist?

"Okay, relax professor. I know she's real, but what am I gonna do? I'm not Amelia the NGO. I don't even have enough money to support myself."

"You don't have enough to-...are you serious, Amee?"

"What? It's true. I'm broke."

"Broke? Jesus..."

"Benny, I am." She looked at the woman outside. "Maybe not as broke as her, but it's still a kind of broke. I mean, I don't have a lot of money in-...well, anywhere, I guess."

"Ok, you don't have much, but let's do a comparison. You and her. And I'm not having a go at you here, this could be anyone, but just an example. Your 'broke' versus her 'broke'."

Benny ran through the old woman's daily routine in his head before saying it out loud: She gets up from wherever she is down, wanders, probably around a specific area and not going further than two stations from it, checks on the bins, looks for cardboard, takes it to wherever they take it to get coins, then maybe dinner, one meal a day and not even a meal, just something to sustain her. Then back onto the ground, somewhere warm and into sleep...

The old woman extricated herself from what Benny didn't know was her eighty-seventh bin of the day and hobbled on to the next one. Two drunken foreigners passed her, they were almost double her size, and each one of their steps was four times the length of hers.

"Ok, but-...how do you know that's what they do? Are you following them?" Amelia asked after Benny had finished.

"I've seen the highlights. The rest is logic I think...they can't have more than one meal, right? There's no money for it."

"So, if more people just gave them more cash, there's no problem..."

"It's not money they need..." Benny murmured.

"...see, money gets them the second meal, which is what you-..." She picked up the cigarettes on the table and lit one. "...not money, ok, what do they need then?"

"No, money's no good for them. And that second meal, that's got to be every day, right? They don't save up those coins, they spend them therefore money's no good. It won't save them, not consistently. What they need is a structure to place themselves in, and to do that, what they need first is a voice."

She opened up to counter, but Benny continued, sucking in some of her smoke in the rush.

"Wait, let me-...what they need, what is crucial is someone to write something for them. Something that tells people what's really going on...and I know they may not get to read it, but-...actually no, they could if it was given to them, or if someone went to them and read it. If they have a story then maybe people will wake up, all it takes is a couple of rich people with a conscience to get involved, a few philanfo-...philantropists to get behind them, build an estate, create some jobs, and there's the structure. It's not impossible. And even if it is...even if they're stuck where they are, at least they'll have a little "fuck you" to everyone above them. Something about them, for them, and something that'll make those pricks in the middle blush and-...I don't know, maybe they'll even hate themselves a little for what they've done, or what they haven't done...which is absolutely nothing."

He looked back outside to the bin and saw that the woman wasn't there anymore. He pictured the rest of the hill in his head and the open forum area at the top where teenagers went to smoke, and imagined where she might be now. He remembered her shape and kept her there, making her walk slowly up to the forum.

Outside, they stood on the slope facing downwards towards the main crowd of drinkers. Avon had left an hour earlier and Amelia was four drinks worse off than Benny, who had slowed down his pace to allow himself to think.

"I'm still wired, dude. What time we have?"

Benny took too long to answer, his mind facing backwards up to the forum where the old woman could still be.

Amelia checked her phone.

"Ok, I see that hand...that means...it's three, ten past. There's a party on near-ish here...that might be good checking out, if you wanna?"

She took a few steps down the hill, on her way whatever his response.

"It's just round the corner...that corner...there...come on, Benny, legs move...move...they've got live music, some punks, punk band, they have guitars-...they play the fast way, really fast..."

Benny looked down the hill and at the corner. He knew what was round it.

"I'm probably gonna go then...am gonna go...am going. Three is way too early to go home, dude...three past ten..."

There were the populist bars of Lan Kwai, the German bar, the Spanish one they'd already been to...then further up there was Hollywood road...and then Soho, where the smaller parties were...where she told him her friends usually went...those friends...

She took some more steps and held an arm up to wave herself off.

"I'm off, I'm going. Thanks for the goat, Benny, and next week, next time, something normal for us, yeah? Normal is good...better."

He watched her feet move away.

"Amelia, you wanna go and sit up by the forum for a while?"

"Fordum?"

"Yeah, the forum."

"What's a fordum?"

Benny pointed up the hill.

"Up there?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Will there be a party? Cool people, Benny, cool things...anything cool?"

He shrugged, unable to tempt her with any star names. The only one he thought might be up there was the old woman and he didn't mind seeing her again. He could talk to her even, ask her a few questions.

"Hang on...I know you. You wanna eat the homeless-...meh, eat the...what? Fuck, I'm-...my head is-...I can't even say stuff. What was I-...no, you wanna see the homeless woman, don't-...you wanna sit next to her and tell her your story." She laughed back up the hill at him, not taunting, but slight mocking, as if he couldn't be their voice.

"I'm going up there, you wanna come or not?"

She pulled out a cigarette and lit up, blowing the smoke up the hill before shaking her head and telling him again that it was three past ten and the party had already started. She moved closer, gave a hug, covered him in smoke then turned the other way. He watched her walk to the bottom of the hill and saw her turn right and disappear up to where her party would be.

Krist, she'll do it within the hour, he thought with disgust as he turned and walked up to the forum steps. Fucking weakling...

He remembered her figure a few minutes before, her cigarette, her head turning to the bottom of that hill as if the thing were a magnet aimed at her neck.

Wasn't it his fault though? She was drunk, she had taken four more drinks than him, there was a magnet pulling her down...wasn't she relying on him to counter all that? Perhaps she was before but-...was it him? He knew he was going to exonerate himself, he knew that logically you couldn't be responsible for someone every hour of their life and that given enough time Amelia would've gone that way even with his help, but-...

He reached the open area, which should've been a stage in the forum, and moved towards the first step. There were two guys on the top step and another group a few levels down, but there weren't any destitute. There was only one bin in the area, near the railings at the side; the old woman would have come and gone quickly, an hour earlier.

Sitting down, he thought of Amelia again. If she had come here then they could've stayed together until it was time to head home. Then she wouldn't have gone to that party, she wouldn't have seen them, and he would've kept her safe for the night. For the night, maybe, but Amee, she was out every night...how many other parties did she know about that week? One a night, at least. She had a news-feed in every area with a bar, she'd know where things were happening, which meant...krist, there was too much he didn't know, too many hours where she could go unchecked, and-...

No forget about her, she's gone, he told himself. And you're not her nanny. She's never asked you to be her nanny.

The five kids on the lower steps got up, pushed each other a little then walked off. Behind them they left a mess; crisp packets, cigarette butts, cans, things that used to cost something.

He leaned back against the pointed edge of the stone and thought of the comfort of his own bed. It was waiting for him now, a little dot in the mass of the city expecting only him. He tried to think about the people on the streets tonight, all of those who were lying down without any thought of a home where they should be instead. To live without any picture of a room where you had a bed, to get up everyday and think about-...think about what? Did they have hopes? He remembered a story he had read recently, a long story he had found in the library by accident, about a man and his tribe...the man had been a student in Moscow and had decided to leave his fiancé and his prospective career to go back to his tribe and his mother, after years away from them in Moscow, and when he returned they couldn't speak to him, and they couldn't remember anything, no good times or times to strive to get back to, and the man had decided to lead them anyway, telling them that they were heading to a better place where life would be happier and they'd be able to hope again, but-...but they didn't have any hopes, and when they got to the place, all they could do was lie down on the ground and imitate death. They thought if they laid still for long enough then death would take pity and just take them. It didn't take many of them though and they were forced to live on, except the mother, who died off-page near the end. He imagined a hundred people lying prostrate on the ground, immobile, only the location had changed, it was now the streets of Hong Kong, and the people were Chinese, not Russian...

He laid himself out on the stone step and looked up at the stars. At least he knew that somewhere they could look at the stars too.

The two guys who had been sitting on the top step came down, laughing, and as they dropped off the last step Benny saw the expensive heel of their shoes and winced.

Fucking fancy boots, what right do they have? he thought, and pulled himself back up again. He looked around the forum and saw that he was alone.

Above him he could hear noise from another bar, but it was only music, not voices. He leaned down and scratched his leg, seeing a red mark there. Mosquitoes were eating him. They were eating them too. He scratched harder, trying to expand the red.

Over by the other steps, the ones leading up to all that noise, was the bin. The one she had stuck her arm in.

"I wonder..." he said out loud.

He got up and walked over to it. He looked across at the entrance as he went, checking for more drunks, and as he approached he pretended he was walking to the steps beside it. When he was sure there was no one watching, he moved to the side and put his hand on the top of the bin.

He let his hand glide across the roof and then down to the edge of the mouth. It wasn't dirty, in fact, it looked as if it had just been cleaned. The only muck he could see was a few specks of cigarette ash. He looked back at the entrance one more time, but there were no sounds, he was still alone. His fingers circled the mouth of the bin once then went inside. He didn't lean down to see where his hand was going, he just let it roam, excited about what it might touch.

"What treasures..." he said quietly.

He guessed that the woman he had seen earlier had taken all the good stuff, whatever that was....cardboard? That's what they fished for, wasn't it? And he was hoping that all the damp shit, the food remains, the drink cans, whatever else they put in that wasn't cardboard, was rooted tight against the bottom where he couldn't reach. Unless-...unless they didn't empty them very often and it all piled up into a kind of hill inside...

He pulled his hand up, but not out.

"It's not that bad...come on."

The sudden image of a scorpion waiting inside a tree trunk came into his head.

"Krist..." he pulled his hand all the way out. "If all the good shit's gone..."

The sound of something rolling came from behind.

He spun round, expecting drunks, but it wasn't...it was them. One of them, someone small, a man.

The man stopped the trolley and scratched his head.

"Hi..." Benny said, his hand patting the top of the bin.

The man moved his hand down and scratched his stomach. He wasn't wearing a t-shirt and Benny could see those red marks all over his chest, his arms, his legs...

"You know, I was-...I was just-..." Benny stopped patting the bin and tried to think of the Cantonese for 'I was just looking for something.'

The man stopped scratching himself and put both hands back on his trolley. There was a pile of cardboard up to his waist, but it didn't look like much; he was a short man, five-one, five-two, maybe, but his face...krist. Benny hadn't noticed when he first looked, but there was a huge lump bulging out of his temple.

"Do you want-..." Benny stepped away from the bin and presented it to the man. "Please...please..."

The man pushed the trolley over to the bin and looked inside. Benny stood still, his eyes unable to move from the lump.

"Do you-...is there...anything good?" he asked the man's back.

The man's arm came back out empty and he shook his head at his trolley, ignoring the other beside him.

"Nothing...?" Benny tried again.

The man put his hands back on his trolley and pushed it back the same way he had come, back to the street.

"Nothing," Benny repeated to the empty forum.

Captain sat on the second step, one above Benny, holding a can of special brew, with two empty cans sitting by his feet. It was just the two of them there.

"I don't see how it can help, mate, honestly. Most of them can't read English. Most of them can't read anything. How are they gonna understand any of it? The best you can do is to aim for the ex-pats here and how much of a shit are they gonna give? They have money, and most of them are that type, right, they shit out fifty dollars once a month to some charity and then forget what happens to it. They don't care about the poor."

Benny looked down at the ground, at the dirt stuck in the cracks. There were ants there too, amongst the dirt, crawling in line away from his feet.

"Even if you're a genius, which you might be, I don't know, mate, I've never read your stuff, but let's say you do have that talent, I still don't think they'll do anything. Writing doesn't change anything socially."

Benny watched one ant force itself over the back of the slower ones, as his ears picked up something about 'writing not changing anything'. He had an argument for this, but had no wish to bring it up. He had already made a mistake by telling Captain about his novel, and didn't want to throw any more wood. The fire's tedious enough as it is, he thought, even the ants are fleeing...

"And why do you wanna change Hong Kong anyway? It's a shit-hole. Do you even like the people here?"

"They're ok, some of them. It depends who you-..."

"They're idiots, mate, most of them. Every one I've met has been like a child. It's like you have to explain the world to them, they're so naïve. And I speak Cantonese so I know what they're like in their own language, it's not just when they speak English. It's all the time, mate, it's constant. You don't know it because you don't speak the language, but I do, and it's true. If you learned some, you'd understand. They just don't know about the world."

Benny raised his head. An old man with a bent back and a trolley half-full of cardboard had just entered the forum from the hill and was pushing his load over to the only bin. Was it him?

"Do you know how many homeless there are in this city?"

"Not that many. You told me before, what was it?"

"About nine-hundred, probably more if you count the ones who slip through from the mainland or the ones who duck the tallying."

"That's nothing, mate. You see, if you wanna write socially then you've got to pick a target that really needs help."

"So it's about quantity?"

"Quantity, yeah, and need."

"You don't think he needs help?" Benny asked, pointing like an actor to the man by the bin. He knew it wasn't the same one as before, but it had the same guise, the same abnormalities.

"Him?"

"Yeah, by the bin..."

They both watched the man's arm disappear into the bin, his face nonchalant, and his other arm scratching the red mark on his hip.

"Others need it more." Captain took down some more beer as if his sudden thirst was stopping him from adding more to his thoughts.

"But, generally, you think I can't change anything with my words. Maybe you're right, I can't." He saw Captain reading the letters on the side of his can, only half-listening. "I read a book about this writer...he tried to change the Middle East off the back of his writing reputation and got nowhere. He was-...he died of a heart attack before he got anywhere near the action so, yeah, I don't know, maybe you've got a point, what can I really do? But, I think, if I'm gonna write, then there has to be something-...or I have to write about something that means something. I have to try to help."

Captain put his can down and looked back at him, for a second, then watched two young looking girls flash past. He spoke as they disappeared down the hill.

"Is this book really gonna happen though? You keep talking about it, mate, but have you written anything?"

The old man came back out of the bin with nothing in his hand. He scratched his hip again, then his leg, then tidied up the cardboard he already had on his trolley.

"I wrote a few pages," Benny lied. "It starts at a party, two guys drinking and not giving a shit about anything. After that it gets more serious, the poor people seep into it and the main guy changes..."

Benny hadn't written anything, not even a coherent plan. He had no idea who the characters would be, he didn't know how he would represent the poor people, didn't know who the antagonists would be, where the story would go, how it would end. The only thing he was certain about was that it would have a man sitting in a box.

"Are you gonna keep at it though?"

"Always. I've just gotta keep some discipline, write every day. If I do that I could have it done in a few weeks."

Captain finished his beer and put it down next to the other two.

"You've gotta make it a satire, mate. There's gotta be something that you're aiming at, like the middle class, or the guys who don't help poor people. Don't think about saving them, you can't do that, it's impossible, just try to write something funny, something that people can relate to."

The old man pushed his trolley away from the bin and it took a few seconds before the trolley responded to his forced demands. As he moved across the forum his arms tightened, the scrawny muscle pushing hard against the skin.

"I don't know...I think it has to be socially responsible. It has to have an agenda, or show something. Like Orwell on the streets or Bukowski in the bars. If I can't do that then what's the point, right?"

"You mean George Orwell?"

"Yeah, him. He wrote-..."

"'Nineteen eighty-four' guy, yeah, I know him."

" 'Ninet-...yeah, him. And 'Animal Farm'...with the animals taking over and it's all an allegory of communism...the pigs are-..."

"But Orwell never stopped people being homeless, mate. They're still around..."

Benny straightened his whole body, passion acting itself out trying to put on a show for the old man...

"But he gave them something, and his writing had something different. It was honest, and-...anyway, there's no snap and it's all fixed. Change happens, but it happens slightly, kinda off-screen where you don't see it, and-...he probably did help some of them...the Welfare State happened after him, right? And, it wasn't just him that did that, I know, but-...I don't know, maybe I can't explain it. You ask why do it if you can't help them all? I don't know, why-...you can't help them all, but you can make people see for more than a moment. That's what I want...I want people to see the poor as they are everyday, like when you read Orwell, you feel his panic when he's got nothing to eat, you get used to hearing the numbers of currency they talk in, really low wages and coins and you think about how they do that everyday, right? Don't you?"

He didn't look at Captain. He looked over at the old man, who was now disappearing back down the hill, towards all the drinkers. He was running again...

"Mate, big words, but you're aiming too high. You should listen to me on this one, I know this place. You're not gonna change the world. You're not gonna change Hong Kong. It's set already and it's shite. And Orwell and all those other writers you said, they made it big but what happened? Nothing changed. They didn't change anything, mate."

Benny knew he was right, but there was something ugly in the admission of it. It's always better to be a crushed idealist, he thought between thoughts, than an active negativist who pisses on others. Always better...

"And like I said, you're in Hong Kong, they don't understand you. Let them deal with their own shit, and if they don't wanna deal with it then just shake your head and plan on getting the fuck out, like me. That's what I'm gonna do."

Captain looked for another can to open but there were no more. He had forgotten that he had finished them already.

"Two more months I reckon, then I'm out of here. Back to the UK and back to decent music and decent people. Halle-sodding-lujah"

He ran up the hill near his home, with music playing into his ears and a few people walking past to give him some background faces. There were no homeless people out near any of the bins and no construction men hanging around outside the conveni across the road, but perhaps they would be there on his second pass, or his third. Even if they weren't he knew there were at least nine-hundred of them out there somewhere, probably more...

He reached the summit and the crowd of Chinese faces thickened around him. Most of them were coming out of the station exit, busily trying to get back home and into their beds, knowing they had passed a pleasantly uneventful day and that the next day would proceed in the same way. He didn't like to look at the faces of these people as he always saw nothing looking back at him and he despised them every-time. He despised them for doing nothing, for dreaming nothing, and he knew he'd despise them in the future when they would ignore his novel, and even if they did read it they wouldn't do what it encouraged them to do. They didn't even know how.

As he turned down back onto the slope he saw some teenagers standing in his way up ahead. They were all wearing vests and baseball caps, with scrawny arms making the vests look bigger than they really were. These kids were no match for him, even if there were four of them. They never got in the way of foreigners here. As he got closer, he shouted out to them, expecting them to move, and they did look up and notice him running towards them, but they didn't move and he was forced round the side, off the pavement and onto the road. As he ran further down the hill he looked back and saw them standing still, in the same positions, staring at him. He shouted out at all of them, just loud enough for them to hear. He'd get them on the next lap. He'd run right fucking through them on the next lap.

Down the hill, the buildings and restaurants dried up until there were none. Only a fire station broke up the procession of trees lining the side of the road.

Benny still hadn't written anything. Worse, he didn't know if he could write anything. He had received another rejection from one of the magazines he had sent a short story to, and he expected more rejections to arrive within the next week as there were more magazines he had sent to, and they would have to get back to him in some form before long. Ever since he had sent off to that first one, after Michelle had told him to, all he expected was rejection. It had become part of him, part of his thoughts, taking a seventy, seventy-five percent share of his mind.

He ran off the hill and onto the road coming off one of the highways from Kowloon. There were no people around him here so he started talking to himself.

"If they reject me every time and I expect it then what's the point? Should I waste myself on a hundred, two-hundred pages for nothing?" he asked.

He had been rejected many times in his youth too, at high school when he had written essays and they had come back to him with comments like "original and different, but you haven't answered the question" or "you raise some points that have more to do with psychology than fact, and you still don't answer the question." Back then he had always bounced back, but now it was more problematic. He was writing in the real world, not towards it. What if he didn't answer this question? He didn't have the discipline to piece everything together, it was too much to remember, there were too many parts to put into place and he was bound to miss something, wasn't he?

"But, I'm older now, and it's my story. There's no question to answer, and if there's no question then I can do it whichever fucking way I please. They can't criticize me for doing things my way, just because they don't understand my way."

They didn't understand his way, that was the crux of it. Those stories he had sent had been done his way and he had planned them and read and re-read them and they had read just fine. There was nothing wrong with them but they had still been rejected, which meant they-...they weren't shit, they just hadn't understood them. Like Captain, or Amelia...they didn't understand him. They hadn't even read his work and they were critics. What was it that they didn't like?

"Fuck them, fuck them both. They think in axioms, things that I knew ten years ago before I was even born. They don't think about things the way I do, no fucking way. They're drones, not even properly born yet, and she's pissing it away in Wan Chai every night."

He was growing more positive about it all. Things were only bleak seventy, seventy-five percent of the time, but they shouldn't be. He was a good writer, he knew he was. Michelle had always told him so and Joseph hadn't been discouraging either. Michelle had even called him a genius once, when she had heard that idea of his way back, the one about the man who was lonely and brought Voltaire back from the dead. He remembered it clearly. She had touched his shoulder and told him he was a genius. Was he a genius? There was no way to know that. He thought of his writing group at the University and Winnie, Winnie something, the lovely Winnie Something with the smiling eyes, who he really wanted to see again, she had said something bland about genius being in the eye of the beholder, which was complete shit. Wasn't it? He thought it through...

"If it's true then what about Shakespeare? Who would say he wasn't a genius? Even if you didn't like him, wasn't he still a genius? And Mozart, Dostoevsky, Picasso, Klee, Einstein, all of the universals. They're untouchable, aren't they?"

But perhaps it was the wrong word then. Genius would mean something unnatural or something from the mind or soul that didn't have a place in the body itself. Those guys...what were they called...the duelists, they would say it was the soul and Shakespeare only created what he did because of something beyond the rest of us, something through the spirit. But wasn't that wrong? Wasn't he just a master of technique and craft? Wasn't everything in Hamlet just the result of thinking about his themes? He remembered a line "more kin than kind"...wasn't wordplay just thought, and why couldn't thought come from the brain and not the soul? It made sense to him, it always had. He had never thought of any of them as geniuses, not since his proper birth seven years ago, and he had never thought of himself as a genius.

"I'm just different, but in a good way. I can write well, but it's all from the brain. Thank God for my brain," he laughed. "Thank God!"

It was all from his brain and he did thank God for giving him his brain, but only because he wanted to perform some...any ludicrous act of gratitude. He didn't believe there was anything real he could thank, but the act was still valid, it gave him joy to have something to give thanks for and it made him feel more than ever that he had something special inside him. He knew it had been created out of biological fluid and that it had grown into a machine that just processed everything he saw, and that it was luck that had put every experience he had ever had into his path, and every reaction and incident and thought that happened to him now was connected through that, and he didn't care about any of it. He didn't wonder where his thoughts came from, he already suspected, and he didn't wonder why he cared about others, he already knew. It was explicable simply, in a way that no one wanted to believe anymore, it always had been.

"I love them, the street dwellers and the thieves, because I hate the rest of you," he said more quietly than before, as he was turning a corner and running through a crowd again.

He only cared because he hated. The Manicians had it right on that count, didn't they? There were two forces, both equal, both predictable. But that's what they couldn't accept, that people had evil within them. It always had to be reasoned out, if someone killed, if someone stole or lied, it had to be reasoned. What went wrong with them then? Krist, we're not like them, why are they like that? But...it was luck, all luck. Felicity, opportunity, chance...what was the other one...undeluctable? Yes, undeluctable actions that happened before we were properly born had made us what we were. Why was it so hard for them to see? If you took anyone, anywhere in the world, you could see it. People either stole because they were hungry or poor and they hated being hungry or poor, or they stole because they wanted to, which meant they had been denied excitement, and they hated being bored. Wasn't that too simple though? Could it all be reducible in this way? Luck had shaped him, but could he speak for others? Could he speak for them, the ones he didn't really know?

The crowd disappeared into the station exit and he started up the hill again, alone on the pavement. He remembered the teenagers from before, wondering if they would still be waiting at the top.

"Can I write for them when I don't even know them? Did Orwell really know them? He lived with them, but he always had a way out. Luck didn't put him with them, he did. What does that mean?"

Benny's clarity deserted him and he ran on in confusion. He wasn't a genius, there were no geniuses, was he good enough? Did they care if he wrote for them? He would write for them and they would love him, wouldn't they? Did they lie down at night and imitate death? They didn't think anyone was coming to help them, he was gonna help them. He had never been published, was he good enough? He had no discipline, he never answered the question, was he good enough?

He slowed his pace and thought about the boys at the top of the hill. They would still be there, wouldn't they? He pictured their faces on the wall next to him, and threw a couple of air punches. Fucking children, trying to play adults in those stupid, oversized vests. There wasn't any muscle there. He could take four of them. Their punches would be no worse than being hit by a cushion. And what did they know anyway? The only life they knew was standing outside convenis and arcades. They didn't know how to think like he did. Krist, if it could be measured, the gap in intelligence between them would be humiliating. He was a writer and they wore baseball caps. They would never understand what he had written, not even when they were in their twenties. Captain was right, people here were idiots, idiot children who didn't have the brains to grow up. And what did he have to prove to any of them? He was tired, he had already done two laps. Why should he have to run back up there just to prove a point? They hadn't beaten him, they hadn't frightened him. He had shouted back at them and they had said nothing. There was no need to go back.

He stopped running and walked back to his estate with its beautiful garden. They hadn't won anything, he repeated to himself. I'm just tired, that's all. As he entered near the front he saw four benches lined up in a row, unoccupied, sitting there without any purpose in the darkness. When the sun came up again they'd have bodies to sit on them, but until then they would be lifeless.

The novel, and those benches; that was the thing...

The door closed behind him and he took off his shoes straight away. They stank, and so did the rest of him.

He went into the bathroom and threw his running shorts and socks and Macau marathon shirt over the rail above the tub, and turned on the gas for a shower.

"Those fucking kids..." he thought as he washed out the smell. "I bet they're still there."

He turned off the water, dried his hair and his back a little, smelt his armpits, and then went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. There was one left, one of the special brews. He took it out, opened it and took a long swig.

"I bet they stay there all night..."

He took the can back into the living room and took off his towel. He sat down, wet, on the couch and looked at the blank TV.

Thirty minutes later he was back on top of the hill, in the conveni getting some more cans. One had made him go up there, another one would make him go over to them. If they were still there...

He paid for the can and went outside to the wall. There were no men there tonight, no women either.

Across the road he could see the spot where the kids had been standing earlier. It wasn't empty, there were other people there waiting for the bus to come, but the kids who hadn't moved for him, they had gone.

He sprang up onto the wall and drank almost half his can.

"They knew I'd be back..."

As there was no one to watch and no one to listen to, he was forced to drink the can faster than he would've liked. After five minutes he was done, but he didn't want to go home yet. He had walked all the way up the hill, he might as well stay for at least one more.

He jumped off the wall and went back into the conveni.

The second can fell into the bin and Benny looked at the conveni entrance. There are still seven more cans in that fridge, he thought. Perhaps this time I should get two.

He looked over at the bus stop and then towards the traffic lights, but there wasn't much happening. Two women talking, three other women not talking, a man in a vest stretching his legs out into the road. That was it.

"What's the endgame here?" he thought.

He shrugged and went back into the conveni, telling himself that endgames weren't that important really, and two more wouldn't take too much time out of his life.

When he came back out a rag-man was there, fishing in the bin. His trolley was parked next to him, filled with cardboard up to the handle and tied over with thin, blue rope.

"Krist...my endgame," Benny mumbled as he opened one of the new cans and sat back down on the wall. "Talk to this one, man. Talk to him."

The man's arm came back out of the bin holding what was probably Benny's second can of special brew. He tucked it under the blue rope and gripped the handle of his trolley, checking both sides before pushing off.

Benny held on tightly to his can, placing it in front of his face like a drawn curtain, and peeking out as the man went past. Talk to him, talk to him...

The trolley rolled within a few inches of Benny's foot, and the man's arm moved round the side of the handle to push it out of the way. The skin on his arm was black and withered, with spots of yellow dotting down from the shoulder to the wrist. Benny pulled his can away from his face and stared at it.

"What are you-..." he started under his breath.

He switched languages, realizing he could manage this in Cantonese.

"Leih Jyou mut yeh?" he said louder.

The man turned his ear, but not his face.

"Leih chu bin ha?" Benny tried again.

The man turned back to his trolley, checked the rope at the sides, and then pushed on, away from the conveni, away from Benny.

"The fuck you're getting away again..."

Benny leapt off the wall and threw his now empty can into the bin. He opened the other one and started walking after the trolley.

He stayed close behind, making sure the rag-man didn't notice. They walked together for two streets and two turns, before the man stopped at another bin and Benny stopped fifty or so yards behind and drank from his can. They wouldn't talk to him, he knew that now, but that didn't matter, he could still watch and take notes.

The man came out of the bin with a piece of cardboard and another can of something, and added them both to his pile. Then he moved on, and so did Benny.

How long does he do this for? Benny wondered. When is knock off time? I mean, the guy has to get some sleep, doesn't he?

He drank some more from his can and followed the man and his trolley as the road became a slope, and then a mountain.

"Krist..." Benny said, running the sleeve of his t-shirt across the sweat on his face. "No wonder you're topless..."

The man stooped down as the trolley became harder to push, and his arms bent as they tried to compensate for the struggle of the hill.

"This is a chance..." Benny said to himself, and threw his can down onto the pavement. He ran the fifty yards between the two of them and reached out for the handle at the same time as he spoke, in English:

"It's ok...ok..."

The rag-man still had his face pointed down at the concrete and hadn't heard anyone approaching. As soon as he heard the voice and the weight of the trolley lessen, he lifted his head and shouted out in Cantonese at whoever was trying to take his things.

His withered, black arm, with yellow spots running all the way down, struck out like a catapult and hit Benny on the side of the face, surprising him and knocking his body into the wall.

"Krist...you-..." Benny put his arms up to defend another attack, but the rag-man had stepped back into the road, also raising his arms.

As the two of them peered at each other through their arms and fingers, the trolley rolled backwards down the hill.

The rag-man turned first and watched his cardboard, rope, cans and wheels pick up speed and break carelessly out into the road at the bottom. It was almost inevitable that a car would appear and hit it at that exact moment, but it wasn't a car, it was a truck.

"Barrgghhhh..." the rag-man cried out in unison with the horn of the truck, and ran down the hill after his things.

Benny stayed against the wall for a few moments, his arms slowly dropping back down to his waist. He watched the old man reach the bottom of the hill and shout at the truck driver who had stopped and got out to survey the damage, and probably to do some shouting of his own.

Help him, help him, Benny told himself.

He moved slowly back down the hill and when he was thirty yards away the rag-man struck out his arm again and hit the truck driver.

"Krist..."

The truck driver was still in miniature from Benny's perspective, but he could see that the man was at least a few inches bigger than the rag-man, and it was no surprise when he recovered and struck out his own arm.

Benny moved faster down the hill, keeping his eyes on the struggle ahead of him, watching the truck driver chase the rag-man in circles around the fallen trolley, and by the time he was at the scene other people had arrived, two men in vests. Benny stopped by the edge of the road and waited to see what they would do.

At first they did nothing. A few shouts at both men, but no force.

Then two more vest men arrived....those vests, those arms, it wasn't-...krist, it was the same ones from the conveni...and as all the vests huddled into a group, the rag-man got worked up again and lunged at the truck driver, aiming kicks at his shins.

Benny stepped back and positioned himself against the wall as the construction workers or bin men separated the rag-man and the truck driver, and shouted at the rag-man to pick up his stuff and go, at least that's what Benny thought they said, as the rag-man did pick up his stuff and go. The truck driver tried one last time to get at him, but there were too many of them to stop him this time. He was shouted at too, and told to get back in his truck and leave.

Five minutes later, the road was clear.

Benny stayed against the wall, without a can in his hand, asking himself why he hadn't slowed down a little when grabbing that handle.

"I mean, krist, that's why he lashed out, isn't it?" he said. "That's why they don't stick around."

Joseph sat in his chair, comfortable with the laptop on his thighs, telling Benny in the chair opposite about the skeletons again. The coffee shop they were in was full of noise and each table was taken. There were no Spaniards around them, only students and their textbooks.
"The skeletons are chasing them now, and they're having little skirmishes with Adelphos and the mentor guy. It's like a big chase..."

Benny leaned forward and took some cream off the top of his drink, and then a bite from the side of his muffin. He wasn't particularly interested in the skeletons, but it was his turn to listen.

"And there's a traitor in the smaller skeleton group, but the mentor doesn't know about him. He's the best warrior and he's going to have a huge one-on-one fight to the death with Adelphos later, when they find out he's bad."

Benny had already brought up the topic of genius, before Joseph had even sat down, and had told his friend about his ideas of man being simply a biological machine with no soul and no genius, to which Joseph had shook his head and replied "explain Shakespeare, explain Mozart." Benny had explained them, but his friend's head had continued to shake. He had tried to stress that a better word to use was instinct rather than genius, and that it was the instinct that was different to the norm and that's what people mistook for genius.

"Adelphos is the blind beast, right? He has skin and a face?"

"Yeah, he looks different to them. He's got kind of a human body, so he's an outsider to them. Except his mentor, who treats him fairly."

"But the other skeletons want to kill him?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

"And there's a big battle between...?"

"Yeah, two battles. One in the middle between Klaus' army and the ones who are with Adelphos, and there's one at the end too, but it's more like a siege as there's only Adelphos and his mentor left. They get surrounded...."

Joseph had come back more fiercely than Benny expected, probably because he believed in the soul and genius and deities living outside in nothingness, saying that instinct was just as abstract as genius when you thought about it, so the mystery of where the artistic impulse came from was still a mystery. "Where do your thoughts come from?" he had concluded confidently, "and, I guess, when you think about that, where are the thoughts about the origin of your thoughts coming from? I mean, I don't know, but how can your brain think about itself and its own existence if there's no soul?"

"...then the mentor sacrifices himself to save Adelphos, so he can go outside, or up and outside, above ground."

"Hang on, the mentor dies?"

"Him? Yeah, man, he dies."

"But-...what about all the others, the army of bad skeletons? Where do they go?"

"They die too."

"What, all of them?"

"I know it sounds weird, but it makes sense because the mentor-...he climbs up to the plug and pulls it out so all the-...all the earth or soil comes down and suffocates them."

Instinct isn't abstract, Benny had said, only the thinking behind it is. Instinct was just a result of every experience and event of someone's life. And people had similar instincts because they had basically experienced much the same things. The differences appeared when the experiences were disparate, that was all. Joseph hadn't been convinced and had asked for evidence for this theory, which is when the discussion (like every metaphysical discussion) had ended, Benny merely gesturing at the people around him and saying, "Look around. That's my only evidence." Joseph had imitated the same gesture and said the exact same thing to back up his side.

"So the soil kills everyone?"

"Yeah, most of them, I think. Maybe some of them escape, but not many."

"But Adelphos doesn't die?"

"No, he escapes. He climbs out of the plug hole thing and sits down under a tree, but it's-.."

"Wait a minute...he comes out of the plug hole?"

"I know, man, why doesn't he get suffocated? But his mentor, before he pulls out the plug, he tells him what he's going to do. He warns him to hold his breath and swim to the top."

"Hold his breath?"

Joseph wound his fingers round the water bottle, and kept his eyes down.

"I don't know, man. It makes sense when you read it."

"Joey..."

"And it's a fantasy, so it should be a little strange."

Benny thought about a plug holding up the earth and how it might appear in a film. No, it was impossible, ridiculous...

"I'm sorry, it's just-...I'm having a hard time picturing this, Joey..."

"Which part, man? The plug hole?"

"Yeah, the plug hole, the swimming to the top of the soil. It's not-...sorry, Joey, but it's hard to picture all this."

Joseph took the lid off his bottle and examined it for an answer.

"I'll have to figure it out later, I guess. Or I'll just say that's the way it is, accept it." He laughed into his water.

"Well, yeah, you could." Benny tried to think of ways to make the scene work, but couldn't. A beast man swimming up through soil? Ridiculous. But compromise, encouragement, positivity. Joseph was his friend, wasn't he? "I don't know, Joey. I'm a tough audience. Maybe it works fine and it's just me."

"You mean it's just your instinct?"

"Ha, and it comes full circle. Yeah, my instinct."

Benny reached for his drink again, but there was only ice left. He asked Joseph if he wanted anything, despite knowing he never did, and then went up to the counter and looked at the menu. There was a new drink, dark berry mocha, a little more expensive than the others, but the picture made it look good so he ordered one, a tall size, but then saw the grande container and upgraded to that. He got out his wallet to pay, but was distracted by the muffin basket by the till. One more muffin, it wouldn't kill him. He picked one up and put it on the counter. The total came up, sixty eight dollars. Krist, more waste, he thought. No, fuck it, I'm writing, and it's a one-off anyway. Live merry for a day.

He went back to the sofa chair and put his things on the table. Joseph was staring at his screen so Benny did the same with his, and thirty minutes passed before Joseph stretched out his arms and asked about the students in his writing group.

Benny was staring at one line on his screen...

' _ **Tony Leung, the toilet cleaner, The Pakra Hotel, Venice, 1969**_ '

...a sub-title for a story idea he had been thinking about, but which on its own was meaningless. He gladly abandoned it and told Joseph about the only two things at the University that had been of interest to him: the student called Winnie, who had started saying more in lessons and was revealing herself to be as smart and perceptive and perfect as he had suspected, and secondly, he had created another literary technique, using those arcane instincts of his.

"This one only came about because that prick was putting me under pressure again," Benny told him.

"Peter?"

"Yeah."

"The one who's looking for your stories online?"

"Yup, the same. He's getting close too. He found out about 'American Mercury' dying in 1981 and asked if I had published my story when I was a year old, fucking smart ass. I had to make up some shit about a brief revival that happened away from any press, underground issues and all that, and he just smirked. He probably knows I'm lying, but as long as he can't prove it..." Benny finished by looking down and stirring his coffee, imagining scenes of his uncertain future played out on its surface.

Joseph waited a few seconds until he knew he could get Benny's attention.

"So, what's the new technique?"

"Oh that. It's ludicrous, the worst yet. I call it 'Dramatic inflammation'!"

"Sounds like a disease..."

"It happened quickly, in my defence. That prick was talking about different techniques and I didn't have a clue what he was talking about...I think he's been reading some textbook that lists all this shit, that's probably what I should do too, just to stay level with him and-...so, anyway, he was talking and asking me how to use them all and if I could point to any examples of their usage. He actually said usage too, the little shit, as if I've never said usage before, so-...obviously I don't know any usages, so I diverted him by saying all those techniques were archaic and there were newer, fresher ones...and that's when I said it. 'Dramatic inflammation'"

"Does it mean anything?"

"Well, it might have a proper meaning, but right now, and I'll have to remember this, it means drama coming suddenly into the narrative without any warning. Yeah, I know, even Pete rolled his eyes when he heard it, but I gave a list of famous writers who had used it and the rest of them seemed to accept it. It won't hold forever though."

Joseph took some more of his water, his eyes crumpled slightly in contemplation.

"You don't get it, do you?" Benny asked.

"Sorry man, I don't get it," he confirmed, replacing his water. "Doesn't drama usually happen suddenly?"

"Yeah, but I'm talking about no build up to it whatsoever. There are no predictive warnings in the text like, 'he had never been this happy in his whole life' or...what else...something like 'the house was secure and he was all ready for bed.' It's different, like it comes out of nowhere. You know?"

"But-...I don't know, it's got to come out of somewhere though, right?"

Benny slapped the arm of his chair, letting out a single sharp laugh.

"That's what cunt-face said..."

"Who?"

"Pete. He said the same thing."

"But you told him he was wrong..."

"I had to. I can't let him be right. He can't think that he knows something I don't."

"But...I'm not sure-...how was he wrong?"

"Yeah, that. Ok, look at it in terms of a film. You ever see those new horror films where someone gets hit by a bus or attacked suddenly, but there're no clues for it? Like, they're not wandering around with a tense violin behind them, they're just talking, maybe talking about their cat or something, and then suddenly, whack, they're gone. It's like that, but in writing. You distract the reader by having the character thinking about or doing something else, something unimportant maybe, that makes it more distracting, and then you kill them off, just like that." Benny tried to click his fingers but no sound came. "It's sudden drama."

"It sounds like regular drama to me, sorry man."

"It isn't. It's different."

Joseph opened his mouth wider but couldn't bring himself to follow up on the disagreement.

"Dramatic inflammation," Benny repeated aimlessly. "It'll be coined before long, you watch."

Joseph closed his mouth and played with his water bottle, climbing up the measurement lines with one finger.

"What is it?" Benny asked.

"Sorry man, but how did you ever get that job over me?" Joseph laughed.

"Ha, Joey...because I can make it look like I'm a genius, you can't." Benny said back to him with some venom, which was enough to stop his friend laughing. "The quality of the performance. The speed of reply. That's what they were looking for."

"I don't know, man..."

"It's true. All true."

Benny took some more of his drink and watched Joseph staring at the arm of his chair. Compromise, encouragement, positivity...

"We're both geniuses though," Benny added. "One day, they'll all see it."

"Yeah, one day, man," Joseph mumbled.

They drifted back to their laptops again; Joseph typing out more lines for his skeletons, Benny staring at that same line. After forty minutes he added another...

' _In the toilets, again, wasn't I?'_

It's a good line, he told himself, but what am I writing here? What's the point of it?

Benny scratched his neck and reached for his drink, but it was all ice again. He looked at the counter and thought about getting another one.

One more would be one too many, wouldn't it?

There was no queue at the counter, and the picture of the new dark berry mocha dominated the menu above. The cream alone was bigger than his head.

One more could be justified, he decided.

He got up and ordered another one, grande size, and got another muffin too. When he came back to his seat Joseph was staring at his chair, ready to talk again.

"You really like those muffins, man..."

"I don't think..." he took a bite off the side, "...I've had enough muffins in my life."

Joseph slouched back into his seat and talked about the skeletons again, and Benny listened while he ate his muffin, but as he ate he remembered something else that had been on his mind recently, something that he had mentioned to Avon, but hadn't fully discussed with anyone yet.

He put his plate back down on the table, made a final comment on the skeletons then asked Joseph if he wanted to take a walk.

Marathon Sports, Royal Sporting House, Nike.

They walked past them, ignoring the polo shirts and tennis rackets.

A clothes shop with a surfboard in the window. A clothes shop with almost no lights.

They didn't see anything.

Broadway. Dozens of expensive cameras in the window, some being pulled off their shelf by staff.

They stopped by the window and watched one camera being shown to a father and son.

"Joey, I don't think I ever told you this but..." Benny started, watching the man play with the buttons, "...I always thought about making a short film...no, seriously, since college, there was this film group..."

"You made a short film?"

"...and we-...yeah, well almost. I was kinda like a recurring member, I went to screenings and helped them out, but I never actually made one. I held the camera sometimes, and did some of the editing, but-...there were never any films that were mine." He sucked up some of his mocha. "But this isn't gonna haunt me, Joey. I thought about it and I decided, I'm gonna make one, here in Hong Kong."

The boy tried to grab the camera, but was slapped down by the father, who shook his head and handed it back to the man in grey.

Benny went on to say that if he had a camera then he would be able to make it, and that he figured a decent camera wouldn't cost too much, not if he went looking in Mong Kok, and when he had the camera all he needed would be actors, and that wouldn't be a problem as there were only two main roles, and he could use himself for one and Avon, who had expressed an interest, for the other. It would be easy, easier than he ever would've thought, and the way he saw it, it was better to do it and say you've done it than never to do it at all.

"Do you have a story for it?" Joseph asked, pushing his rucksack further onto his shoulder.

"I'm writing the script for it now. It's gonna be about the poor."

"The poor? Hang on, man...what about your novel?"

"Yes, but I can write more than two stories about the poor, Joey."

"Yeah, man, that's true, but what about the novel?"

"...and this short film is gonna be about a thief, not a homeless guy. Yeah, I'll still write the novel, but I wanna do this one first. It'll be like the rehearsal, the warm-up."

"And you're writing it now?" Joseph asked.

"Yeah, ten pages done already."

"So, you know the whole story for it?"

"Yup. You wanna hear?"

Benny told him as much as he knew about it. The thief would live inside the house and the other guy, a middle class man, around twenty-seven, quite well off, would be completely oblivious. They would share the house and at the end something dramatic would happen, perhaps inflammatorily, but what it all meant really, he explained, was how the poor lived so regressively compared to the middle class and how the poor weren't going to take it any more. Of course, he hadn't written ten pages, he had only written two, and that had dealt with the entrance of the thief into the other main character's house, so, at the moment, it was still directionless. All he knew was that the thief was gonna be humanized and people would sympathize with him and be disgusted by him at the same time.

"Sounds interesting, man. What happens at the end?" Joseph asked, shifting the rucksack back onto his shoulder again.

"I don't know. As long as they don't have a big showdown, I don't care...as long as it's true to the thief's nature."

"So all you need's a camera?"

"I'm gonna buy one, definitely," Benny said, surprising himself.

"I guess you've gotta take a risk to make anything happen..." Joseph agreed.

Benny drank some more slush from his forty dollar dark berry mocha and watched the father lead his son out of the shop, the kid almost in tears.

"Damn right."

They left the window and walked the full width of the mall, ignoring the rest of the brand stores, which seemed to be teasing more than selling that day, until they reached the bookstore. They went in and Benny led his friend straight past the immediate flat table of best sellers in front of them and further on towards general fiction. They walked down the third aisle of the foreign book section, which was bigger than the area with all the local literature, and was unsurprisingly foreign in the sense that all the books were written in English. Benny picked a book he thought he recognized off a lower shelf and opened it up, turning to a random page.

"'Que buscando aqui?'...is that even right?" he muttered out loud.

Joseph took his eyes off the top shelf and insinuated a 'what'.

"It's in Spanish, this part of it," said Benny dismissing something about it, "that's a hack's tactic, writing little bits of dialogue in another language, even if you don't have a fucking clue what you're saying."

Joseph nodded in agreement and went back to the top shelf, which was dominated by commercial hack-work. He didn't really have a view on writers using other languages. In fact he had done it numerous times in his first book, using Russian. He had used a dictionary to translate, but basically he had been writing without that "fucking clue".

Benny put the book back and shook his head. He noticed where Joseph was looking.

"What are you looking at? This?"

He took one off the top shelf, one of the many books there written by someone [who had probably] named [himself] Lee Child.

"'He picked up the brush and made his gums bleed, feeling the pain and seeing the red, liking it too.'" he read from one of the pages. "What is this shit?"

"It's pretty bad..." Joseph replied, thinking how he would've described that same character brushing his teeth. Was it so bad, the way it was written?

"It's fucking awful, Joey. Who brushes their teeth like that? 'Seeing red and liking it too'...Krist." Benny put the book violently back in its place. "Look, the guy's got the whole top shelf too. It's complete domination by Lee Child. Who is he? Who actually is this man? And down here you've got...krist, Dostoevsky has two books hidden away down here. This is depressing." He bent down and picked up one of the Russian's two representatives from the lower shelf. "...and it just gets worse."

He held up the cover to Joseph, who was still thinking about Child and his place in literature.

"It's-...what is it?"

"It's the flash version, Joey. Look at the cover: monochrome, a male-model against a wall smoking...this is 'Notes from the underground'. Look what they've done to it." He put it back down, even more disgusted. "If anyone buys that, just from that cover, they won't get past page twenty."

Joseph didn't really understand what the problem was and moved round into the next aisle. Seconds later, Benny followed, noticing another top shelf being dominated by a hack.

"Another one."

"What?"

"Grisham. He's got the whole shelf too. This is too much..."

"He must have a fortune by now...they seem to make each one into films."

"Which means film and literature are both cul-de-sacs. Not that that's gonna stop us...maybe others, but-..." He stepped back until his back was against the shelf behind him [which was dominated by Stephen King] and tried to take in all of the shelves at once. "Where do they put the good books? Where are they gonna put us?"

He followed the names along the shelves and slalomed down until he was by the 'L' authors. He found the space where he would be one day soon.

"Bottom shelf, I'll have this space right here," he pointed it out to Joseph, who was now trying to find his own spot. "No one's gonna see me down here, are they?"

"This is where I'd be." Joseph pointed out his own spot on the second shelf from the top.

"Not bad, Joey. Second from top."

Benny looked up at the higher shelf and examined the names on the book spines. Kinsella, Kundera, Kabin, all of them typed boldly and surrounded by bland, bland colours. Was that where Joseph belonged then? And wasn't it more of a coup to be nestled down at the bottom? He ran quickly through some theories to back himself up. The first and most persuasive one: It's prestigious to be unseen, and it shows class not to flaunt yourself like a Lee Child novel. Yes, this is fairly convincing, he thought. Bottom shelf is always better.

"If I ever get there..."

"You'll get there. We both will," Benny said with assurance. "I feel strangely certain of the future at the moment. Can't really explain why, but-..."

They walked down another aisle, past Stephen King, and then Murakami consuming a shelf of his own, which prompted Benny into commenting that he was a hack and obviously the only writer Japan had as there was no one else allowed on these shelves, and then asked Joseph if he had heard of Nakagami or Takahashi or the other Murakami, the one who had written about shooting up and orgies in the seventies, and Joseph hadn't, "which shows that 'world literature' has no business calling itself 'world'," finished Benny, before they turned another corner and saw a new Pynchon book, which made them both ambivalent as they had both read him and they had both been frustrated by him, and finally, as they approached the 'W' section, Joseph asked him to explain why he was so confident they would make it.

"Several reasons. First we're in Hong Kong, which is different. All those agents get are Americans, and they know America already, they don't know us over here. At the very least, it'll get us a response, I think."

"Yeah, maybe..." Joseph was already waiting for the next reason.

Benny picked up another book and flicked through pages that he didn't seem to like. He put it back, looked further down and muttered something to himself.

"What did you say?"

"Ridiculous..." Benny continued to look at a particular space on one of the lower shelves. "They haven't got him."

"Who?"

"Rudy Wurlitzer. One of the greatest writers around, and he doesn't even get one book here. It's not right, Joey."

"I don't think I know him...is he good?"

"Good? Joey...he wrote this book about an earthquake in LA and it was so-...it was just apocalyptic, like-...I don't know, it's hard to explain how good it was, but the plot...it's this guy who wakes up by this shitty hotel pool and he just gets up and walks around after the quake's done and everything's falling apart. Not the buildings, it's-...well, they are a little, but it's the people, they're all losing their minds, and their morals and-...it was just brilliant, the way it's done, it's really different to anything." He pointed back at the shelf where the book should've been. "Too different, obviously."

Joseph stared at the same space, waiting for Benny to return to the other topic.

"Not even one book...krist."

Benny finished his reflection and looked back at Joseph.

"What was I saying before?"

"I'm not sure...about why we were going to get pub-..."

"Right, the reasons why." He took a few breaths and brought himself back up to speed. "Ok then, second one, we're better than these pricks. We've got better stories, our ideas are better, we've got imagination." He lifted another book out of its space, shook his head then quickly put it back. "Although, that might count, it might not."

"I'm worried it won't..."

"Well, it can't hurt, having ideas, right?"

"Hope not."

"Nope."

Benny looked at the shelf behind them and breathed out in exhaustion. He looked around the shop and over to the shelves beyond them.

"Hang on. I wanna see if I can find something. Might be over there..."

He walked out of the aisle and Joseph followed him, still waiting for a third reason and hoping that it would provide more comfort than the first two. He hadn't told Benny this, but he had pinned a lot of his current future on the prospect of a solid career as a writer, and it was only recently that he had begun to doubt whether it was really possible or not. If not, it'd have to be a return trip to Perth and isolation, to do-...it wasn't directly apparent to him what it was he would do, if he had to do something beyond writing, but there had been that clipping Caroline had hung in front of his face last week, the army thing. Not fighting obviously, it was more to do with communications, which didn't sound too daunting despite his lack of any experience. At least he wouldn't be cowering in some unknown desert, with a rifle struggling in sweaty hands and being told to shoot someone, a 'someone' who was probably also being told by his own superior officer to shoot 'someone', meaning him. He couldn't do that, although the other guy would probably manage alright. But this was academic, like most of his thoughts had been recently...there was still the writing career. It wasn't completely impossible, not yet.

They walked across the store towards signs that promised 'religion', 'Chinese history' and the one they seemed to be going towards, 'Asian studies'. They stopped next to some shelves and Joseph saw the face of Mao, the name of Japan, something about Vietnam and Mongolia.

"I wanna see if they've got Nakagami," Benny said, distracted by his search. "He's our kind of guy."

"He's not famous?"

"He wrote for the poor, and he was from the poor, but he was smart. Very smart." He shook his head when he realized one of his heroes wasn't there. "Load of shit. They haven't got him. Fifty thousand Murakamis and nothing for a guy a million times better."

Joseph looked briefly at Mao on one of the front covers, but there was nothing to interest him in this section. What was that third reason?

"You know what I said about age that time?" Benny stated, seemingly starting his question without reference to anything. "And that you were born when you first understood the world."

"What's that?"

"Remember? When you first know about life and death and ideas...and you told me about that bus blowing up in Israel and I said that was when you were properly born. Remember that?"

"Yeah, vaguely. You said I was twelve years old, right?"

"That's it. You're twelve, I'm a bit younger, seven or eight, I think."

This was Benny's third reason. This was a belief of his that had solidified over the last seven years or so, and had now hardened itself to such an extent that it was indestructible in his present system of thinking. It was singular in his thoughts and perhaps his only true belief, and he believed it with the same tenacity as Joseph did Yahweh or a Muslim did Mohammed.

"And everyone else is still waiting to be born. I remember."

"Most people, not all. It depends what life does to them, which is what it all centres around. It's luck that you were born at fifteen, and it was luck how we are now. Mostly luck. Things happen and you're either lucky or you're not."

"So we're lucky?"

Joseph didn't really understand why he was bringing this back up now. He had just been talking about some Japanese writer writing for the poor, and before that it had been the reasons why they were destined to make it, and now...would they get back to the reasons? Should he just ask him directly?

"Nakagami was born early too, from what I've read of him. He knew about life and he had ideas. He made it into print. Ergo, so can we."

"This is another reason then?"

"The main reason, Joey. Look, I talk to you and I know you're different. I know I'm different too. You must know it when you meet people here, right? They are all so ordinary..."

"I guess..."

"It's true. Look at people we both know. I mean, I can't ever tell them this directly, but look at Captain, look at Michelle. I like them both, and I've always got time for them, but they're ordinary. They don't ever come up with anything extraordinary, do they? Have you ever heard anything special come from them? No, they can't do it. It's impossible for them and, actually, the sad thing is, I think they were born but then turned their back on it and crept back into their-...I don't know, into their space dome. That means they're office people, they've settled for relative possibilities, things that they might be able to accomplish if they just save a bit more money. You see? They're not living on a large scale anymore and they're not really thinking either. That's another key, they don't think like we do. If you write, you have to think, you have to have a theme that you're trying to write about, and they don't have that kind of trigger of thought, not like us. That's why we're still growing. We understand how life works and we can think about things...you following?"

"The theory of it, yeah, I think so. I'm not sure if it makes us any more likely to get an agent though..."

"Joey, it can. You see, you understand what I'm saying...they can't ignore us because our writing is too strong. It's real thought. No other hacks on those shelves over there are capable of it. They're all flash, they don't think. Lee Child doesn't think, he just moves his plot from A to B. Murakami doesn't know anything that we can't write better than him. I read this German guy, and he's this renowned writer and playwright back in Germany and he's got the little black and white picture in the corner of his book, and I read him and I was stunned. Not because he was good, but because he was writing about what I knew and I realized that I could write it better than he could. I felt like he hadn't been born properly, he was just imitating it. We can write it for real."

"But he was published, wasn't he?"

"Yeah, and he's famous too, but that's-...that doesn't matter. Shit gets printed as well as the good stuff, but now there's nothing good. All the real writers are dead."

Benny was getting louder and louder, but the Asian studies area of the store was practically deserted so there was no audience to fear. He didn't care anyway, even if there were. He knew what he was saying had truth, even though he wasn't convinced that Joseph was one of the real writers that he spoke of. Not while he was writing about skeleton men at least...

"Aren't you worried about age though? We're young, what do we know about life, that's what they'll probably say, isn't it?"

"Age isn't-...it's not what you think, it's deceptive..." Benny stumbled a little.

"I'm not sure, man. I mean, you have to know more when you're fifty than when you're twenty-seven, right? That's experience, the nature of experience, isn't it?"

"But-...that just doesn't make much sense to me anymore. Why do all the best writers do their best work first, when they're young?"

Both Benny and Joseph filed quickly through all the writers they could think of to check the truth of this statement. Benny brought up Mailer and West and Platonov and Easton Ellis, but he wasn't sure of their ages. He knew Easton Ellis had been spectacularly young, but what about the others?

"Is that true? I can't think of many..."

"Look at Norman Mailer. You know him?"

"Not really. I think I heard the name before."

"He wrote his best book first. He couldn't have been more than thirty when he wrote it, so there you go. Ever since he's been trying to write a better book but he can't, because he got older and regressed."

"I don't know, it still sounds a little hard to believe..."

"Actually, I think he might be dead now...I'm not sure, but anyway, the point is-...the point I'm saying is there's no reason why you can't be complete at twenty-seven. Think about it, really think about it carefully, your whole life and the things you do every day, it's all the same, isn't it? The repetition of things, the familiarity of events, everyone experiencing the same kind of shit, it means that you're not constantly moving upwards to some final point of ultimate wisdom or anything, it means you're stagnant in the same spot your whole life. But if you realize this and you're a thinker, if you think about everything that's happened to you then you progress. I don't think the thoughts I have now are gonna be so different from the ones I'll have when I'm fifty. In fact, I can almost feel what I'm gonna think then, I can picture it and pull it towards me now, and think about it. The big one, death, right? I think about that now and I'm twenty-seven. It scares me now, and I know it's not supposed to. This has to mean something. And it does. It means I'm...I'm wiser than-...or I have all my wisdom now and there is nothing that I have to wait for anymore...I don't have to grow into anything else, I am complete. So are you. And that's gonna come out in the writing."

"It's interesting, but-..."

"I can adapt to any story too. This poverty thing I'm doing, for example..."

"An example?"

"Yeah, a test, so I can prove it to you. Hang on." He dropped his head for a moment and stared at a row of books. A few seconds later he came back up. "Ok, this poor story, I know that I know nothing about them. Everything I've said about being born properly when you understand things around you, well it means that before you're born, basically you're in an ocean of luck, and it's wild in there, man...things are just happening to you, you can't stop the waves coming at you, right? And the fact is I wasn't born into poverty, the waves didn't push me that way. I don't know, is this making sense?"

"You weren't born into a poor area or family, is that it?"

"That's it. That's the easy part, you're either poor or you're not, and I'm not, so what do I do? You'd think I'd be stuck, but I know my own situation and I'm aware of their situation, the poor I mean, and the things that have happened to me in my life have made me into a writer, a good writer I think, so I've been put into a position where I can see their problems and use my skills to write for them."

"But-..."

"Wait, I'm still going. I know you're gonna say I don't know enough about them, but that's wrong. It's just experience, isn't it? I can force myself into poverty and I can find out what they think and more importantly, from my position, I can share their anger for what life has done to them. Most writers don't have that side to them, they don't give a shit about anything. They intellectualize things and worship the idea of the thing, but they don't get caught up in it. They don't spit on the page, you know? But I'm different, I know I'll never be poor as such, but I can spit and I know the rest of it is-...it's something I can gain."

Benny stopped, expecting Joseph to insert another 'but'. He didn't, so the theory went on:

"...and there's my social conscience, or my social heart...that's something that those others don't have, but I do...and not just from an ivory tower, looking down on them kind of way. And not as a fake-serf type wandering among them and studying them like specimens, thinking 'I'm a specimen too, but a better one'. I'm not a Golden butterfly pretending my wings are dull grey like theirs. No, I know my wings are dull grey like theirs, and we all came from the earth and we'll all fall back into it and all that, but...but I also know how the world is and that, yeah, we are the same, it's true, but we fly to different levels, and all it is, I can fly higher and do some things they don't have the chance to do. That's the only difference between us. I mean, everyone's the same, right? And if you want the truth of it, I feel more for them than I do for the others on my level. And I'm not middle class, not in the way that people really belong to a class, I mean the spirit that you have inside you...I'm not one of them, I'm an honorary member of the slums. I fly down with them on their level, like Orwell. I'm as close as you can get to them. And I bet he had better friends among the homeless guys he met, better than that other crowd, the ones he had to grow up around..."

Joseph moved slowly down the aisle. He had continued to listen even after his role had been diminished following his attempted 'but' insertion, but he wasn't sure he agreed with what was being said. Should I disagree out loud, he asked the face of Mao on the shelf below him? If I make a counterpoint, if I make him angry, won't he leave me?

"...we understand our subjects, Joey. Like no one else. They can't ignore us," Benny concluded. He went back through what he had just said and congratulated himself on the improvised butterfly metaphor, then realized how little his theory applied to the current writing of Joseph and how it applied completely to what he believed himself to be. It isn't all self-directed though, he thought to himself. Joseph can take something away from it, can't he?

Joseph tried to measure his response. He wasn't sure if the theory his friend had just laid out applied to what he was writing, and he even suspected that it was conclusively invalid to-...well, to anything, full stop. He dissected some of the points he could still remember. If you claim luck has shaped your life, and then after you're born properly, as he says, you can imitate something luck didn't place into your life, then anyone can do anything, right? And isn't there an assumption to all of this? Benny, my friend, please don't be angry with me for saying this, but you assume the poor are angry because you are angry. You claim you're not middle class because you hate the middle class. You claim you can be an authority on poverty by faking it, but you also claim that there is no way to fake anything. You say you thank God you have been put where you are and been given the brain you have, and then complain that life has given you no conflict. But if you had been given a war zone or the streets, you wouldn't have become a writer. It's your own theory, isn't it? You either are that thing or you are not.

"What do you think, Joey? I'm onto something, right?"

He looked at Benny and started to order his thoughts into an argument. He also thought of ways to soften his attacks. After all, he didn't want to make him angry.

"I hope so," he said finally, changing his mind. "I'm kinda hungry, man. You wanna get something to eat?"

The man pushed right into her and kept going. She brushed his touch off her shirt and then shouted after him to watch where he was fucking going.

"You wanna chase him down and kerb him too?" Benny asked caustically.

"He fucking pushed me, you think I'm not gonna shout back?" she said, switching some of her rage onto him.

"Ok, I was joking, relax." He reached out a hand to her waist and tapped it before quickly pulling back. "What did you say to him?"

Amelia didn't know a lot of Cantonese, but she knew how to curse. She had an excuse for this too, another piece of negative luck that had been pushed against her in her adolescence.

"I told him to fuck his mother's smelly cunt."

"Krist, that's pretty strong for the street, isn't it?"

"Not really, they all say it here. Fucking your mother's smelly cunt is the most common one. I'm not joking either, they say it in front of kids on the bus."

They were walking down a street in Hung Hom. Amelia had just finished work for the day at her English School and they were going to have dinner before hitting the hill of Lan Kwai. She had told him there was a party she had to go to there, and then a later one at someone's apartment. He had told her that he would go to the first one but not the second, and had seen from her reaction that she was relieved.

"You're not usually that angry though..."

"I've just had a nine hour day, Ben, give me a fucking break. And I didn't sleep much last night." She checked herself as soon as she said it.

"Did you go to bed late?"

"No, it's not that. I just couldn't sleep."

"Were you out last night?"

"No, I stayed home. I told you that already."

She looked around the streets, staring at people who weren't doing anything.

They ate quickly in the restaurant and didn't speak as openly as they usually did. In fact, they barely spoke at all. Benny told her about the short film script he had written and how he was still crusading for the poor, but she wasn't really interested. Then they paid up, with Benny covering most of the bill after she told him she had spent a lot of money in the last two months, probably going out, he thought. She told him that she owed seven grand to one of her friends and that the party they were going to that night would be her last one for a while.

They took the train over to Lan Kwai and walked up the hill, ignoring the old woman laid out on the concrete at the bottom, not even begging for money from the tourists, just laying there. Benny stole a quick look, thinking that she had given up on hope and was merely imitating death like the tribesmen in the story he had read that time, but he couldn't think about it for long as Amelia was shouting something at him, something about moving too slowly and sweat dripping down her back.

They sat in a bar on the hill, having one drink before heading further up to Hollywood Road for the party. Amelia was staring out onto the hill, leaving Benny to think of questions.

"Who have you been going out with recently?"

"No one, just friends."

"Do I know them?"

"No, they're from high school. Ages ago now..."

Benny knew what her high school friends were like. He knew what they had pulled her into, what luck had pulled her into rather.

"They're not the bad friends, are they?"

She turned round to him, looking sterner.

"Not those ones. Benny, I'm ok, honestly."

"If you're not, you can tell me. I won't judge you, Amee. I know you don't invite it."

Her face didn't move, except her eyes. It looked like everything except them was trapped in a painting. She's not telling me, thought Benny. She's doing it again and she's not telling me.

"I would tell you, if it was true. But it's not, I'm fine."

They finished their drinks and walked up to the first party, which was in a bar almost completely covered in darkness with groups of faces hidden in the booths. She knew about half the people in there and Benny knew no one, so he stayed close to her, not because he wasn't gregarious, but because he didn't want these friends to touch her and lead her off somewhere. Amelia talked to every face she saw while Benny tried to peer into the ones hidden in the corners, trying to discover if they were pernicious or not, if they had a plan for her. Gradually the light came in from the lamps on the street and lit them up, exposing them as nobodies, more drones with money who seemed to have no interest in her at all. For the two hours they were there, only a few of them looked her way and that was only because she was pretty, not because they wanted to corrupt her. They left, with Amelia on Benny's arm, telling him that she loved him more than any other friend she had. That's shit, thought Benny, smiling affectionately back at her, you've known me less than a year and I see you once a week, and you're not telling me what's really going on with you. I'll be Gandhi's fat fucking ass if that's the best friendship you have.

She leaned in closer to him and draped one arm around his waist as if she suddenly saw him as more than a friend.

"I love you, Benny of Bennys. I do. You're always there for me, you always let me talk. No one else does that."

He felt her breast move against his arm, and pushed back a little, feeling the flesh collide and settle into each other

"So why do you wanna go to another party if you love me so much?"

"Yes, the party, let's go."

Her body moved forward, away from his, and the breast followed.

"You've had a bit to drink, Amee. Why don't I take you home, call this one done?"

"Party number two is waiting, home is for old people," she barked in his ear, drawing the attention of two tall guys walking by, speaking in Canadian accents.

"No, party number two will be shit."

"Nuh-uh. Come on..." she said, closing her eyes.

They walked on with Benny talking about things he had noticed recently and trying to guide her quietly back down to the train station. He needed to get her home and then think of something for her to do over the next few weeks, something to distract her and keep her away from those friends. The short film...

"Hey Amelia, what do you think about acting in my short film?"

"Huh? Yeah, later. Party first."

"I'm serious, there's a role for you if you wanna do it."

She stopped, confused, and looked around the street. She had just realized that Benny had been leading her back to the train station.

"This is the wrong way, we've gotta go back up."

"What are you talking about?"

"The party, it's up there..."

"You really wanna go there?"

"It's already started, Benny...fucking hell..."

She pulled his arm and tried to turn him around to face the hill they had just come down.

"It's too far now. Let's just go back..."

"It's ten minutes away...come on, move Benny, I can't pull you..."

"It's too far..."

"Move...move your legs...come on..."

"Why? It's just a party..."

"It's already started...an hour ago..."

He stopped and kept hold of her arm.

"But the train station's right there..."

"I don't wanna go to the fucking train station!" She shouted it out and let go of him at the same time. He wanted to knock her out and fling her over his shoulder but there were too many people watching. What else could he do here?

"Amee, I know what's gonna happen at that party. Please, I know you, you don't wanna go there."

She stood confused again, straight as a post. She was tall in the heels she had on and pretty beneath all the make-up she was wearing.

"You go home, I'm going to the party. That's where my real friends are."

"Amelia, come on. I know what's happening with you." He tried to tell her what he knew, but there were still people around them, listening. He couldn't let them know, as then he'd have to explain to all of them how it wasn't her fault, and that they couldn't look at her that way for what had happened. It wasn't her fault. "You can talk to me on the train. Come on."

"Just go home, Benny. Fuck off."

He heard the same words in Cantonese that she had screamed earlier. There was nothing to say back.

She turned and he watched her walk back up the hill, past the beggar woman trying to fall back into the earth, and towards her party, where they were waiting for her.

The shop was full of people, most of them hiding from the heat outside, but one or two interested in the same thing as Benny.

He was standing by the DV cameras near the back of the shop. He had thought of going to a different shop, but it was an oven outside so he had ducked into this one before his shirt got wet. Next to him was a couple, maybe a few years older than him, stroking hands as they tried to choose the right camera.

One of the assistants saw them struggling and came over, showing the different functions of the machine while Benny listened in the background, letting him run through his routine and confident the couple wouldn't buy. It didn't matter if they did, there were probably many more of them in stock, but he knew they would falter when the price came out.

The couple picked up the camera for themselves and the man pointed it playfully at the woman, but they left soon after, shaking their heads and telling the assistant that they might be back when it was a little cheaper. The assistant wiped them from his memory and prepared to start all over again on someone else. It was the busiest part of Mong Kok, and there had to be over a thousand customers coming in there every day, all with some money to spend, just on a hobby. What a waste, thought Benny, spending on something they didn't need while others trawled through the trash outside. Who was it that said every dollar spent on something that wasn't vital to your own survival was an extravagance that killed those others, the ones who had nothing? It was true, everything in their lives was a luxury, and everything in this shop was unnecessary. Rows of cameras and phones, lines of I-pods and blackberries and handheld machines that were trying to-...what, huh? Trying to do what? What was the point of any of it? There wasn't, it was-...

"Are you looking at this camera, Sir?"

The assistant had noticed him and changed to English.

Benny let him go through the pitch, and after twenty-five minutes he had the camera. He handed almost fifteen grand to the man and thought about the hole it had left in his bank account. I'm not a rich man, he thought, and this is probably gonna come to nothing, but what is life without risk. Not that this was a huge risk for him; he still had over thirty-thousand Hong Kong dollars left in his account, which was thirty-thousand more than those on the streets, and which made him, perhaps not a rich man, but a comfortable man.

He got outside the shop and phoned Amelia. She hadn't spoken to him for more than a month now. He knew she had been going out to more parties and the fact that she hadn't contacted him meant that she felt guilty about what she was doing. This wasn't conjecture on his part, this was basic psychology, at which he knew he was more adept than most. If she had slipped then she wouldn't be able to hide it if she spoke to him.

He kept the phone ringing for a long time and only gave up when the tone gave out. She wasn't gonna answer his calls, she was gonna wait until-...until what? Until she was spacked out in some guy's place in Mong Kok or Tin Shui Wai or wherever it was she went? Krist, Amee...

He left the phone tight in his hand in case she called back, and walked further into the crowd. Above him were dark windows, hiding those kinds of places; amateur porn, mah-jong scrambles, money counting, all the things he knew were going on up there. And the worst, the needles, fucking heroin...those scabby bastards taking it, the worse ones selling it, buying into it, buying out of it...the girls lying back and spreading their legs and fucking for it, any of it, in debt of it; was that where she was now, up there in the dark?

It's not right, he protested inside his head as he pushed his way down the street, it's not fucking right. The script was ready, Avon was ready. He had set up the house near Sai Kung for a few Sundays so they could film there, he had bought the camera. This could save her, it could distract her; it was far away from her friends, from the needle, and the windows were bright out there. Those parasites, why couldn't they just let her answer her phone?

"Just point the camera, hold it steady and make sure you get us both in the frame. No, start on me but keep some space behind me, that's where Avon's gonna walk into at the end of the scene. Don't move the camera to fit him in, ok?"

They were in the living room. Benny on the couch as the middle class waster, Avon lurking as a giant mass by the stairs in the far corner, dressed down in mucky jeans and tattered t-shirt to perform convincingly as the poverty-stricken thief, and Joseph trying to hold the camera steady with both hands by the front door.

"Don't start it until I say, Joey..."

"Right."

"And when it starts, don't let it shake."

"No shaking, right."

Joseph's hands started to shake.

"Am I-...is this the right way to hold it?" Joseph mumbled the last words, afraid that Benny would see him shaking.

"Yeah, perfect." Benny heard, but didn't look.

"It feels heavy..." and Joseph's voice faded out.

Benny had chosen himself to direct as no one else existed in his life that could do the job better than him. Captain had briefly expressed an interest and Benny had smiled and grinned until that interest had waned (self-destructed by his friend's own negativity), determined to make this his piece, not anyone else's.

Joseph searched for the start button to take his mind off the jiggling camera. He couldn't find it.

"Man, how do you start it again?"

Benny raised himself off the couch and came over to the camera. He bent over and flicked the dial onto record then pointed at the red button on the side.

"Just press that when I say."

"When you say, right. I'll try."

"Ok, good."

Joseph started to shake again.

"It is kinda heavy though..."

"Use two hands."

"Ok, I'll-...no, I'm doing that already, man."

"Then put one underneath."

Joseph put his left hand cautiously underneath and moved the camera so it hovered over the rug and not the hard tiled floor.

"Better?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Just try and keep it as still as you can, Joey. There's no pressure." He spread his arms around the whole living room. "It's an informal set here."

Joseph smiled slightly and felt a little more convinced he could do this.

"Press play when I say, yeah?"

"Right. Ready."

Benny returned to the couch and gave the command.

The scene proceeded with the camera focused on Benny staring impassively at the TV, while Avon moved down the stairs in the background and into the shot, his face phlegmatic and unreadable.

They played it back afterwards and Benny shook his head, turning to Avon who was perched next to him, a couple of inches taller.

"You've got to put some anger into your expressions, Ave. You're too passive at the moment. It's like you're supposed to be in the house, but you're not, remember? You're an intruder and you don't belong there. If he turns round then you're fucked, so there's gotta be some panic. But there's subtext too."

Benny glanced briefly at Joseph, wondering if he had realized what this film was really about.

"Do you know what the subtext is?"

"Yeah, I think...he's in the house but he's an intruder, isn't it?" Avon was unsure. He had heard of the word subtext, and could guess what it meant, but what if he guessed and got it wrong?

"No, it's not that. That's the text."

Avon nodded as if he realized his mistake, and Benny continued.

"The subtext is he's poor and I've got money. I live in this house and he resents me for it. It's the classic divide, isn't it? Rich Vs Poor, diletic materialism, I have lots, he has nothing, and that's why he's angry, that's why your face has to show that you hate me for what I'm doing. It's a kind of instinctive hate that's always there."

"So you want him to show panic and hate in the same expression?" asked Joseph, confused.

"Yes, kind of. I want some kind of alertness, like he's darting looks all around the room as if something's gonna fall down and reveal him, and then, as he edges closer and sees me watching TV, lying on my ass, he has to add some anger to it."

"So you're suggesting he's angry because he's poor then?" Joseph asked again, harder than he had intended.

"What, you think he wouldn't be?

"No, I don't know, man. Maybe."

"...I think he would be. No, he definitely would be. He doesn't live in a house like this, he doesn't have these things that I have, and he knows it's not fair. That's natural."

"But I'm not sure I understand-...why is he angry now? Isn't this like a holiday for him?"

"No, course not. He's seeing what the other side live like and it disgusts him, can't you see? If you were like him and you had nothing and you came into a house like this and you saw the owner lying on the couch doing fuck all to earn it, wouldn't you be pissed?"

Joseph scratched his head and finally nodded in concurrence. He didn't believe he would be pissed if he were that guy, but he could see that Benny would drag this on if he said anything more. In his mind, the poor guy was a thief and he was used to taking from those who had more than him, so this house wouldn't offer anything new or surprising. And if anything he would feel superior to the richer guy as he was coming into his territory and taking something from him. It is a mistake, he thought, to assume the perspective of someone you don't really know. Isn't it?

The players returned to their positions and prepared for another take. Avon sat down on the stairs and waited for the signal, worried that he wouldn't be able to pull of a double expression successfully enough to satiate Benny. He had acted in a couple of amateur plays at college, back when he was too young to worry about being anxious in front of live faces, but he was no Robert Duvall.

"Alertness and hate, Ave," Benny shouted across the room.

The words triggered something inside Avon, a magma-like rage that rushed up the volcano chamber without being allowed to erupt. You fucking try it, the rage spat, all you have to do is sit like a robot on that fucking couch, and me-...why do I get the challenge?

"Ok, I'll try," Avon responded, not quite as loud as his friend.

The scene started again and when they played it back later they all saw Avon creep forward through the living room to the edge of the couch, looking like two confused people in one body, sweating and looking around in panic one second then still and slightly annoyed the next. When he got to the couch his face twisted itself into a kind of parody of rage, a Dennis Hopper mask perhaps, and looked down onto a blank-faced Benny, who, it seemed, was attempting not to act at all.

"Not bad," commented Joseph.

Benny and Avon both nodded in agreement. I'm still no Robert Duvall though, Avon cautioned himself.

Later, Benny took Joseph to one side and told him that for the remaining shots he should dim the lighting so Avon's face wouldn't be so clear. He explained that detail would've been better, but darkness could give them the mystique angle and that it wouldn't harm the overall theme of the film. Joseph nodded and pretended to fix something on the camera to hide his bemusement. There seems to be something about film that makes people mad, he thought to himself. Even in a home video.

Amelia still wasn't picking up. Once was forgivable, forty-seven times was not. Benny threw his phone down onto the bed in frustration and turned to Joseph.

"Krist..."

"She's not answering?"

Benny shook his head and threw his weight down onto the bed.

"Does she know she's supposed to be in it?"

"I don't know, man. Yes, maybe, I don't know..."

Benny raised his fist and hit the bed that wasn't his, in the house he had borrowed from a remote friend. The friend was in Canada for a few weeks so Benny had been given the keys and was under strict instructions not to damage anything that looked like it would be expensive to fix, which meant everything in the house. He hit the bed again then pushed his face into the pillow, trying to bite into it.

"Can we do this scene without her?"

Benny raised himself back up and wiped his mouth dry.

"Fuuuuuuuuuck!"

The scream raced through the bedroom wall and around the whole house and probably into the surrounding houses too. Joseph thought about taking a step back, but he was too tense to move.

"Err...can we?"

"Fucking idiot bitch, I'm trying to help her-...what?"

"Is this-...I mean, can we do this scene without her?"

"This scene? Krist, I don't know, Joey. I don't know." Benny shrugged and put his hands down on the bed behind him. "I guess we haven't got much choice. We'll have to film it next week. Fuck it, we've still got one more Sunday."

Avon appeared in the doorway, dressed in the same clothes as the previous week. Benny had told him not to wash them and he hadn't.

"What's going on?"

"She's not coming," Benny answered quickly.

Avon had been taking orders for the last two weeks and hadn't questioned anything. He had done a lot for this film, even though he didn't really understand what he was being told to do most of the time. It seemed to him that he was just a thief who wanted to have a rest for a few days and then steal things, but Benny was convinced, and had sermonized to him many times, that it was a metaphor for the co-existence of the two classes and the intrusion of one into the other. To him that seemed like a bit of a stretch, but he didn't say anything.

"How are we gonna do this next one?"

"We're doing it next week."

"Ok, cool," Avon nodded and thought of something harmless to tack on, "what are we gonna do now?"

They were supposed to be filming a sex scene, with Benny bringing a girl, the absent Amelia, back to the house and into his bedroom where they were to roll around with each other, kissing and stroking, while Avon crept up to the door outside and watched through the crack.

"I don't know, we'll have to shoot some later scenes."

"Go back down to the kitchen or stay up here?"

"I don't know...I don't know."

While outside the room Avon was supposed to put his hand down his pants and tug himself off while watching the two lovers in bed together. In the script, Benny and Amelia were actually fucking, but Benny had relented and told the other two that it would be implicit and off-screen. He didn't see Amelia in that way, he never had.

Benny got up off the bed and held his hand out towards Joseph, beckoning for the camera.

"Ave, come in here..."

He took the camera and went to the end of the bed, crouching down to get the mattress in frame.

Avon entered the room. He knew what scene he was about to film and for some reason he was excited. He had decided when he read the script that he was gonna let himself go for this one.

"Take your pants off and lie flat on the bed," Benny directed.

Joseph, who hadn't read the script and was just doing whatever Benny instructed, asked what scene they were doing.

"It's the day after the sex-scene. I've gone out and he's alone again."

Avon lay down on the bed and pushed himself into the mattress a few times to warm up.

"What's the plan?" Joseph asked, guessing a stroke of the pillow or perhaps even a kiss.

"He's gonna fuck my bed," replied Benny.

"Sorry, what?"

Benny hadn't heard him and was now giving direction to his star:

"Ok, Ave, here's what you're feeling. You saw me with a beautiful girl last night, you saw me fucking her and you're angry. You've seen what kind of woman I can get and you want it too. You want to be me, but you still hate me, so it's not just her you're thinking about here, it's me too. You've got me bent over and you're fucking me, you're fucking me because you hate my body, you hate my money, you hate my whole life. I am a disgusting beast that deserves to be fucked, I do nothing to help you, none of them do, and right now, I am all of them in one, the whole middle class, the ones who've ignored you and shat on you, I am all of them, complete, incarnate. Every one of them, the monster's head. Got it? You ready? Ok Ave, you're on top, I'm right there so, do it, fuck me, rip me to pieces, rip up my bed, stab it, stab through it, fuck it to pieces! Go!"

Benny mouthed action and flicked the dial on the camera. Avon started to moan and pushed slowly against the sheets in short, controlled motions. Then he got louder and, as Benny stepped onto the bed and pointed the camera down onto the giant body below, the pushes became stronger and more violent, and Avon, as he promised himself earlier, really let himself go.

Joseph watched quietly from the doorway, still trying to place the metaphor.

"We're gonna go upstairs and I'm gonna guide you into the room, you follow, and then we cut."

Benny was on the bottom step explaining to the girl what she had to do. She was standing still next to him, her hand close to his and her eyes attentive. She has done well so far, she hasn't murdered her lines, but she's not Amelia, Benny told himself over his instructions

Joseph stood on the floor above them, with Avon on the next flight of stairs waiting to film his scenes outside the door.

"Ok, Joseph, call it," Benny shouted up the stairs.

The scene played out and took the two of them into the bedroom, where it was scripted they would stroke and kiss each other. As they stopped by the bed and waited for Joseph to shout cut, Benny looked down at her breasts and decided that he would touch them in the next scene. She looked at him and smiled, showing a fair set of teeth, and he further decided that he would kiss her full on the lips too.

Joseph shouted cut and came in with the camera.

"I think that one was ok."

"Let's do the bed part then," said Benny, excited.

This was supposed to be Amelia's role but she still wasn't returning his calls. He had phoned her ten times every day for the last week and still got no word back. He suspected she was miserable; going to parties one night, and then crying herself to sleep at home the next.

Benny led the replacement girl to the bed and laid her down on her back. Benny looked down at her body and thought what it would be like to actually fuck her on film. He thought of what would happen if he suggested it to the others. The two of them could go under the blanket and he'd tell Joseph and Avon that they were pretending, but he'd tell the girl different, and tell her that she was pretty and that it would be better if he was really inside her.

"How are we gonna do this?" asked Joseph, waiting to be assigned a position.

"Stand at the end of the bed and just film, then slowly move in on her face. When she sees Avon at the door and says her line, then you can cut."

They had given up on Amelia doing the role on the Friday, two days earlier, and Benny had sat at home, agitated, knowing that it was his last Sunday to film and that if they didn't get everything shot then it would be a failure, and he couldn't fail. If I don't finish it, he had thought then, then they won't get their voice, and no one will see how low they have fallen. That's when Avon had found the answer.

"Ok, we're ready. Go."

Joseph turned the camera on and Benny started placing kisses on her neck, trying to attach them to the skin with care, determined to make her feel something. How can I be this close to her and not do anything, he thought. His lips wandered back and forth across her neck and she began to respond. He moved to her lips when he heard the first noise and brushed his own lips across hers, not pushing forward onto them, but keeping a distance so she would have to reach out, if she wanted him.

"You're so beautiful," he whispered straight to her, without shame.

She was Avon's friend from high school and had always been interested in acting, but had never done much of it. When she was told about it and what she would have to do, she had asked who the other actor would be. When she had found out it was a foreigner she accepted, curious to see what it would feel like to be touched by someone other than a local.

"I want you," he whispered again, and again she moaned as his lips brushed against her. Joseph was still at the end of the bed filming, but Benny had forgotten all about him and the camera. Even the film was unimportant in this moment, even those he had sworn to save. He just wanted one kiss, one gliding touch of that breast.

Her lips pushed forward and touched his. He pushed back and they kissed, his hand given the all clear to move up her waist and stomach and onto the edge of her breast. He reached it and drifted softly over the surface, dipping down only for the nipple, talking to himself inside his head, telling her that he had always wanted this, that she had always had the most beautiful breasts, that he had thought incessantly, obsessively, about being on a bed with her like this, and whispering into her hair that he could save her, if she just gave him the chance, he could-...

"Ok, man, cut," said Joseph.

Benny stopped his hand and pulled reluctantly away from the breast. He raised his head higher and looked down on the body beneath him, watching the face weaken, break and slowly return to its own reality.

The four of them sat on the couch watching the footage they had just shot. The girl was sitting next to Avon, her hand close to his thigh, which made Benny wonder if they had ever done anything with each other. Avon had said she was just a friend, but people always lied about things like that.

All the scenes played out and when it was done Joseph was the first to tell Benny that he had done an amazing job and that it would make an interesting little film.

"It's interesting, but I don't know if people will get what I'm trying to say. It might be a little too opaque in its subtext."

Everyone nodded, two of them not knowing what opaque meant, and no one realizing that Benny had only learnt its meaning for the first time two days earlier and had been possessed (while the film had been running) by a sudden urge to make himself sound opaque in front of the others.

"It still plays quite well, I think," said Avon.

"Yeah, it looks great," echoed the girl.

Benny framed her next to Avon and evaluated. Bland face, bland mind, she was a plastic bag of a person, better only when she was a body on his bed. Avon could have her if he wanted. The film was more important than any woman.

"So what happens next?" asked Avon

"I find someone or somewhere to edit it. Then we take it to one of the festivals and see what kind of reaction it gets."

Benny had heard there were two short film festivals in Hong Kong and had read about some of the recent entries. There was one about a dancer prancing around the streets of Hong Kong looking for people with soul and space in which to express herself or some pretentious crap like that, and that had won a fucking award. If that was a winner, then they couldn't fail to recognize his.

"You think it'll do well?" asked the girl, unaware that she had been practically banished from Benny's thoughts. He was even thinking about cutting her from the film, if he could get Amelia to come and do a re-shoot.

"I don't see why not. It's got a good story, it's got a subtext, it means something and it's actually decent. There's nothing like this out there..."

Actually, there were a lot of films like this out there, but Benny didn't know that as he didn't know much about film. He was imagining different festivals in different locations, coated in different seasons, and all the different shapes of award he would receive for this film. They would allow him speeches and he would tell them all exactly what he had tried to express in this film and how important it was for the hopeless to be spoken for and saved. Then they would clap and praise him and feel embarrassed that they had done nothing to help the poor, while he had done everything.

"Do you know anyone who can edit it?" asked Joseph, still cynical. He didn't know much about film either, but he had read that post-production and selling the piece was harder than the actual filming process.

"I'll take it to the University and see if they can help. If it costs anything I'll just befriend someone and get them to edit it for nothing. There're always some sad, helpful fuckers hanging around on campus over there."

"And if there isn't?"

"There will be, trust me. I've seen them. This film will get made."

Benny turned off the camera, already thinking ahead to the University and the department with the sad, helpful fucker he would need to find to get this started.

He sat next to her, this time using a different bench, but in the same playground and the same park he always brought them to. It was quieter that night, no teenage gangs prodding and howling at each other on the fringes, no older, more lugubrious types smoking and [probably] talking shit by the slide. It was just the two of them and no one else.

"You know what I'm gonna do?" he asked the girl.

She adjusted her position on the bench, bringing her shoulders closer to his hands so he could touch her.

"Sure, I know," she said back.

"Really?" Benny acted out a little surprise. "What's that then?"

This one he had met in a club the week before. He had simply been leaning by the bar all night until a girl he considered pretty enough, this one, came to stand next to him. He had smoked that night, out of a continual weakness, and that had probably driven away half of them, but this one had come over to him and smoked too. Another infant flapping around in the amniotic fluid, not yet properly born, he had realised by the end of the night. Since then there had been one other date, where he had done most of the talking and she had laughed where she thought she was supposed to. She had never dated a foreign guy before, although she told him she had.

"You wanna kiss me," she said.

Benny's arms stayed motionless. He hadn't expected to kiss her so soon.

"What? Kiss you?"

"I thought you say you wanna kiss me."

"Oh right...no, not yet. Later."

"So you gonna do different thing?"

She pulled a cigarette out of her bag and lit up, offering Benny one too. He was tempted, but he didn't wanna smoke that night.

"Yes, I am..."

He was thinking about two people and neither of them was the girl next to him. Not that she was completely out of his thoughts; he had thought of her vaguely a few times that night, thinking how he could get her back into his bed quickly, that night in fact, but since they had been in the park he had cast her out. There were more important things to think about, like Amelia, and Winnie. They were out there now, somewhere; one needing his help and not returning his calls, the other blossoming in every lesson.

"...I'm gonna make a short film about you," he concluded.

"About me?" she looked suspicious. "Which kind of film la?"

"Ha, not that kind of film. It'll be a love story."

He wondered if Amelia had been answering anyone's calls. None of the other people he knew were friends with her, and none of her friends were friends of his. He knew where she lived so he could go round and knock on the door, but what would he say to the parents? They would have no idea she was back on and he couldn't be the one to let them know, not after last time. If only she'd answer his calls, then he could at least-...

"The story is me and you?"

"Yup, the two of us."

"Which kind of story la?"

Benny recalled a few ingredients from previous stories he had come up with for other women and pieced together something a little different. It didn't have to be brilliant, not for this one, it just had to be a story.

"Well, it starts with you walking the street at night, I think you're in a rough area, maybe Sham Shui Po or Lai Chi Kok, somewhere industrial and slummy, and you're walking along alone when you realize someone is following you. You look back and-..."

Would he use this same tactic on someone like Winnie? No, she was too smart for something like this, wasn't she? She'd laugh at the simplicity of the story, the sentiment of the guy, the false intelligence he gave the girl. She'd mock him and ask him if he did this for every girl he met, and then she'd walk away and never talk to him again. Not that she had been especially garrulous with him so far. They had barely shared three words together, and none of those had given him any idea what kind of tastes she had.

"What happen next?"

"You mean to the other guy?"

"The guy who attacking us, yeah."

"Right, the mugger..."

"Yeah, that guy."

"...I hit him hard and he falls down and then runs away quickly, and we're left together, you shaking, me shaking too."

He laughed and acted out a trembling hand for her. There had to be a measure of modesty in the story otherwise she would expect him to be a superman, which he wasn't. It was enough that he had hit the guy.

"So when we can fall in love?"

"Well, after that I walk you home and we talk and by the time we get to your place we both realize that we have strong feelings for each other."

"After one walking?" she laughed mockingly, her chest falling backwards, away from him. He didn't try to pull her back.

How long would he have to wait for Winnie then? It wouldn't happen quickly, she was too smart for that, but he got the feeling she wasn't going to be too conservative about it and disallow him access indefinitely. There were women like that in this city, the closed shops, but Winnie wasn't one of them.

"They take a really long route back to her place, and you don't understand what they talk about. It's deep on both sides."

"Deep, what do you mean?"

"You don't know deep?"

"No..."

"Wow, I thought everyone here knew that word..."

Her face hardened, her hands stopped.

"English is not my first language ar..."

"I know..."

"...I study only two years, y'know?"

"No, I was wrong, I'm sorry. It's not your fault, it's mine."

"Yes, your fault."

"Yeah, it is, really. And your English is very good...trust me."

Her hands drifted towards him again, her face softened.

"You learn Chinese la..."

"Yeah, exactly, I can't even speak it. I'm the idiot."

He took her hand and stroked along the edge, trying not to think about the concession he had just made. Krist, me beside her, and I'm the idiot...

"What is that word mean, Benny?"

"Oh yeah. Deep? It means they talk a lot about their feelings, and that's why they like each other so much at the end of the walk."

"But they can love each other, can they?"

Winnie would know what deep meant. She wasn't an idiot. She was at the second-best University in Hong Kong, and she had class, a lot more class than this one, but that still didn't mean she'd be frigid; she'd keep him waiting for a month, six weeks at most, then he'd have access. She would light up that little smile for him and spread those little legs, and they'd be together. She could help him too, with his work. They could go out at night together and spend time on the streets watching the poor and making notes and observations and he'd tell her why he was doing it and what it meant to him and what it would mean to those he would speak on behalf of, and she would idolize him for it, she would tell all of her friends and her family that she was with someone who had a social conscience and, more than that, she would tell them that he was stronger and more resolute than those others, the ones who claimed to help them...

"What?" he had forgotten the question.

"Are you listen to me? Hey!" she poked him in the ribs and suddenly he wanted to get up and leave and go look for Winnie.

"Yes, I'm listening, don't poke."

"I said, why they can fall in love?"

"They don't fall in love, not yet. They just realize they have strong feelings for each other, that's all. Anything else would cheapen it, make it cheap."

Winnie had a social conscience. He could tell that much from the stories she had handed in. Young women from poor backgrounds, struggling a little, stuck in factories or sales jobs, trying to get out and better themselves. She didn't go as low down as to write about the rag-women or the trolley-men, but her characters weren't affluent either, so the principle was still there. And the last story she had shown him, the one with the young woman trying to raise enough money to get into medical college, but not quite making it and being rejected solely for her lack of cash...that was something, wasn't it? Not particularly well-written, true, but its theme...she was interested in the same things as him and that was important. Of course there was a chance, a strong chance she didn't know how much they shared thematically. She had come into the class late in the first semester, and had probably missed most of his mission statements, so perhaps she was unaware of the extent of him. But then, that didn't mean she didn't know, not while there were people around to tell her...and on a university campus, it was almost-...

"Hey, listen! Benny!"

A finger jabbed into his ribs again.

"I'm listening..." came out of him, an impulsive defence.

"What happen after they going her house?"

He looked at her, feigning passion and brought her face towards him, touching her with his lips. He kept himself there for five seconds then pulled back.

"Another one, there."

"Where?"

"To the left. Near the railing. The woman, err...the woman in brown boots is next to him," Avon confirmed.

Captain searched for the guy and found him strutting up the hill with his jacket tight, his tie loose, and the briefcase still in hand, looking around as if it were his first time there, while the woman next to him looked down at her heels.

"Found him. That guy's a knob."

Benny sat with his phone to his ear, again trying to call Amelia. She had phoned him the night before, out of nothing, but he had been drowsing on his bed. When he had woken up and seen it he had phoned back and had been phoning continually all day, but nothing.

"A huge knob, yeah."

"Fucking salesman, mate. He's on ten grand a month max. And he still comes here."

"Fucking salesman!" Avon said strongly.

"There's nothing worse, mate. Seriously..."

Avon had been a salesman once. When he was nineteen and had just quit college, there had been nothing else to do but sales. And what was it exactly? Four years of throwing catalogues at people and taking friends out for dinner so he could try and flog shitty computer parts to them for a cut price fee. That's what it was, and that's what had pushed him over to the States. Three years of college and no more sales, he had practically eaten the plane ticket out of the travel agent's hand. Six years later, he was back, twenty-nine, independent, a fluent English speaker, and still without a degree after dropping out again. Back in the family apartment he sat down with his sister and they tried to lay out a plan for him. "Think hard, what do you want to do?" she asked. He shook his head, unsure. He didn't want to work in sales again, or marketing, or any other department that would slide over his life. There was no fun in that. "So what do you want?" He wanted to have free time, thirty hours a week maybe, a solid wage, fifteen-twenty grand to start with, thirty-five when he was more established. "Thirty-five?" she smirked. "Teach English ar ma."

"...when I go back, I've got a job waiting for me, my old job, thirty grand a year, sterling. And the thing is, they do a similar job here and they get almost nothing. It's a joke, mate, I don't know how they can offer it. I wouldn't even look at it," said Captain.

"It's a joke," Avon said.

"It is, it's a farce, mate."

Avon had been teaching for two years now. A school out in Tsuen Wan, band two, not the best, but not disgraceful either. "At least it's work," his sister said, and it did give him time to drink and have fun, but recently, for some reason, it had become tiring. "It's the details of it," he complained in the kitchen, to his sister, "the low pay, the dead ends." Despite his hopes of thirty-five thousand a couple of years down the line, he had convinced himself there was no future in teaching. For one, he had a Chinese face, and parents didn't want a face like theirs speaking to their kids in a foreign language. And two, he wasn't even a native speaker, so there wouldn't be many higher-paying schools that would take him. "There's got to be something to side-step into, right? Something else we haven't thought of?" he asked, smoking again. "Sales ar ma." she replied.

Benny put the phone down on the table, but kept it covered with his hand.

"She's a waster, mate." Captain had noticed his friend's look.

"She hasn't called in ages. I just wanna see what she's up to."

Avon let them take over the conversation, pretending to listen while he thought about how to tell them he was quitting his job to become a salesman.

"She's up to nothing, trust me. And she won't phone you back either. She's that type."

"You don't understand-..."

"No, I understand it, mate. She's not returning your calls. She never turns up when you invite her anywhere, and when she does she only stays for five minutes before floating off with those dizzy bints she calls friends. She's rude, mate. You can't do that to someone and expect them to keep phoning you or talking to you. You should leave her and let her do whatever it is she does, drink, fuck around, whatever..."

"You don't understand what's happening to her...I know what you think of her, and I know-...but this is different."

"Nah, she's rude, mate. Don't make excuses for her. She's fucking rude. People have done that to me before and I've deleted them from my phone, I've never talked to them again. You've gotta have some standards."

"You're talking about normal people, she's not like that. There are lots of things you don't know."

"Ok, mate, fine..." Captain was annoyed.

Benny thought about telling him about all the things that had happened to her, things that had been outside of her control. Then he would be more lenient towards her. He might even start to like her. But he couldn't tell him, and he couldn't let Avon hear it either. They barely knew her and if they saw her they'd-...she might find out that he told them.

"...you pick up the phone and keep dialling, see if she picks up. I'm sure she's worth every second."
Benny brought the phone off the table and looked at the button that would redial. He knew she wouldn't answer if he phoned again.

"You pick your friends, you keep phoning if you like being treated like shit. If you think she's your friend..."

Benny listened to Captain's temper rise, but didn't panic. He would settle down after another few minutes, that was one of his virtues, he never stayed angry for long. He might even apologize for losing himself.

"...but she won't pick up, mate. Guaranteed, she won't pick up."

Avon had noticed that one side of the conversation had become a little flammable and tried to broker some peace.

"How's the short film going, Benny?"

"What? The film? Yeah, it's-...it's good."

"Cool. I've been thinking about it, the posters. I mean, the posters you can make." Avon had somehow found himself on a third sentence and didn't like it. He needed a question to ask, fast. "Are you still taking it to festivals?"

Benny briefly pictured the film tapes sitting back in his room at home, the last one they had used still in the camera. He hadn't found anyone to edit it, in truth he hadn't even looked.

"As soon as I befriend an editor. Soon..."

It wouldn't happen soon, it probably wouldn't happen at all. Besides, writing was his primary art, not filmmaking.

"Cool, maybe you can show us when it's ready."

"Sure, man. When it's done..."

"Cool."

"...and we get a premiere. Lights, cameras, all that shit," Benny spread out his arms as if the premiere was on the hill in front of them, "and then we'll turn it into a feature. Ninety minutes, one set, two stars."

"Mate, I hate to burst your bubble..."

Benny dropped his arms and the premiere disappeared.

"It's good to keep a little hope, Cap."

"Yeah, sorry, mate. It's the Hong Kong new wave. Go ahead..."

Benny didn't answer. He looked at Avon for help.

"...you're whats-his-face, Godard, and Ave's-...what the hell is he?"

"I'm nothing," Avon answered.

"We'll see what he is when it's finished..." started Benny.

"Ok, mate."

"...and I think you'll be surprised. It's actually pretty good, the stuff we shot, right, Ave?"

"Yeah, it looked good."

Captain smirked. Benny lay back on the railing and turned his head to the bars behind them.

It would never be finished, Avon knew that much. He had been around Benny long enough to realise the guy had no follow-through. He talked, he started, he dreamed, but he never finished anything. It didn't matter though, not really. He liked acting, but he'd never be an actor. He was too big, too unwieldy...what would they cast him as? He wasn't handsome enough to be a romantic idol, and he wasn't funny enough to do comedy. He would only ever be the villain and that wouldn't last long. No, he'd have to get something else, something more stable. And that's what he did have now, but how could he tell them? His new job started in a week and the company wouldn't give him any time to see them. Fucking sales, it had dragged him back in. He'd be in the office till late every night like Michelle, there'd be no time for fun anymore. How could he tell them this was it?

The group sat placidly in their seats listening to Benny give feedback on their latest stories. It had been a fairly simple assignment: write a short story, no more than a thousand words, about something that you've seen around you, something that you think matters.

"This one, I won't say who it's from," he held up four pieces of printout, waving them around without care, "is about someone writing a diary entry. The style is casual, lots of commas, which could've been good, but...but, honestly, this story is symptomatic of what's wrong with your work, the whole work of the group in fact."

"That's my story, isn't it?" said Pete, sitting forward, shoulders hunched, palms flat like shark fins and pointed directly at Benny. De Beauvoir was absent today and had been replaced at Pete's side by Party.

"Yes, Pete, it is."

Benny had started the discussion with a quick, and mostly invented, speech about the importance of writing with a social conscience, with allusions to the great proletariat writers and those that wrote from within the swamp of poverty. He had quoted one of his favourites, Platonov, the Russian janitor, to back him up: "we all come from the earth and we'll all fall back into it." The kids had listened, intrigued by the references, but remote from the effect of such words. Ninety percent of them were second-generation rich dilettantes, who had been shipped abroad during their teen years to get an English education, and had then come back to Hong Kong [the Eastern girl wearing the costume of a Western whore] to enjoy their privileges and swim in their parent's money. Poverty, to them, was merely a thing, an abstract to be discussed. They hadn't seen, and never would see any kind of struggle in their life, and Benny knew it was his role to show them that writing singularly from this perspective, the mansion-eye view, would damage their writing in the future. In fact, by ordering them to do this particular assignment, he had wanted them to realise just how far they were from writing anything of meaning or value, and that the only way to find any meaning at all was to struggle.

"What's wrong with it?"

"For a start, it's about you, Pete. No offence."

Benny had struggled in his life. When he was younger, before he was intellectually born, when he was stuck travelling between one external event and the next, forming his thoughts and character as things happened around him, he had been without luxuries for a long time. His mother had fled his bully of a father and their home town when he was only seven, which was one of his first memories, but not a complete one nor an intellectualized one, and for twelve years or so they had struggled. Benny had never received computers or bicycles like his friends. He had never been as well dressed as his friends and had even experienced a brief spell of bullying [from twelve to thirteen, a whole year!] because of it.

"You said to write about what I saw around me, and to me, a diary entry is the best way to show that. Or is it the style you don't like?"

"No, not at all. If you'll let me explain, the diary form of writing can be powerful, if your main character or narrator is someone in a difficult situation or someone with an interesting mind. That's why people still read the Anne Frank diary, because it's got a tragic historical context. Your diary entry, Pete, is a little different."

"A little different?"

"Well, a lot different actually."

"Why? Because I'm not living through genocide?" He was growing restless, his hands pushing against each other.

Benny cast his eyes away from Pete and onto the only other memorable person in the group. Adorable Winnie...whatever her last name was. She was sitting passively, three seats from him, listening without picking a side, he thought. Did she like Pete or did she despise him for questioning the teacher? Did she like him, the teacher?

"That's one part of it, Pete. You are not living through genocide."

"But that's-..." He struggled for the right word. Was he gonna use 'shit'? Benny wondered, amused. "That's ridiculous."

"Yeah, it's silly," confirmed Party.

"Is it?" Benny addressed them both.

"It's stupid. How can I help it if there's no great, big-...thing, event, if there's no great, evil event happening around me?"

"You can't help it. It's not your fault in the slightest."

"But-...but you're saying...you're punishing me for it."

"No, I'm not. I know you can't make a holocaust all on your own. You're too small. It's ludicrous."

"Then what's wrong with my story? It's about what I know, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is."

"Then there's nothing wrong with it."

"There's nothing wrong with it apart from the diary style framing the whole thing."

"What? I don't get it." He really didn't. Neither did the others. Except Winnie perhaps; she was a bright girl.

"I don't get it either," said Party.

"It's a personal story in first person," continued Pete. "The diary style is perfect for this kind of story. And I know others who have used it, others who weren't in a genocide either."

"They weren't in a genocide?"

"No. They were normal."

"Well then, if they weren't in a genocide, they shouldn't have written a diary." Was that true? It didn't matter. Pete was stuck thinking of the names of those others, unsure if he was right or not. Benny, knowing his enemy was on his knees, forced himself upon the silence. "Anyone not in a holocaust, genocide, massacre, fascist state...what else...police custody, prison, death row, exile, slum, any of those, doesn't have any business writing a diary style piece of literature. That's a fact any writer who's not an amateur or hobbyist would know. Don't touch diary style unless you've suffered, unless you've been tortured, unless you've had a gun to your head or...or a knife nicking at your balls or...down there, down on the cold, hard pavement licking up piss stains. That is suffering."

Most of the group shuffled forward to the tips of their seats, fascinated by the sudden dirty lyricism of Benny's words. Benny too was surprised at himself. 'Knife nicking at your balls'...krist, what a line that was. You don't have anything of that quality up there, do you Pete?

"Let me compare-...let me make a comparison for you. George Orwell..." he held out his fingers and began to tick off the writers. "...lived in poverty, Dostoevsky, hard labour in Siberia, Platonov, poverty, Pavese, exiled, Fante, poverty again. Who else? Takahashi, did prison time, Nakagami, outcast, poverty. You see? They all suffered, they can write about it, and they've earned the right to use diary style. You, Pete, have not. You are the norm. You have money. You..."

When he was at university Benny had worked two jobs to keep money in his account. Two days a week he would hand out flyers outside the library, and three days a week he would work behind the bar in the union. He hadn't been on the streets exactly, but it was still a struggle to keep going and, looking at it now, he wondered if that was when he had started to take pride in poverty. He didn't believe it was possible to trace a person's adult character to particular events in their previous life, but there were moments that seemed to be more important than others. Like when he had read Fante and Platonov at the same time, two writers from the same muck in different countries, and realized there was something in their writing that meant more than the rest of them, those writers of style and technique who wrote about wealth and academic themes, while these two, and more that he would discover later, wrote about filth and desperation and eating flesh raw just to have food in the body, things that seemed to be worth writing about. There was an unspoken, unwritten mandate given for that kind of writing, a mandate that demanded suffering in return. All those he admired had been granted it, and now it had been granted to him, a writer who knew what it was like to have no money in the pocket and no favour from the world. Yes, he hadn't been far from that kind of suffering.

"...you, for better or worse, are a middle class college student who goes home to his mansion in Happy Valley and has dinner at the same time every night and, honestly, so far in your life, has experienced nothing...nothing of importance, nothing worth writing about. That is what's wrong with your work, Pete. You're writing a diary, but you've got nothing to say. I asked you to write about something that mattered to you, and I-...I guess I hoped that you would all go out and look on the streets and find something that made you angry and impassioned, like poverty or-..."

"Poverty again?"

"...drugs, teenage delinquency. Yes, Pete, it doesn't go away. Poverty is always around."

Pete put his hand out, freezing the moment.

"Wait, wait. I'm confused. You're saying that I can't write a diary because there's no holocaust, but I can write about the poor?"

"No, I don't want you to write about them because you don't know them. Only write about something you know or feel. You have no idea how they feel, not from your peak."

Some of the group gave each other questioning glances.

"But-...huh? You just told me to write about the poor, didn't you?"

"No, I didn't. I told you not to, don't write about them."

"No, you said to write about them then changed your mind."

"I didn't say that..."

"You did say it, Mr. Benny." Party came into the fray. "You said we should go onto the streets and write about poverty..."

"Yeah, and then you told me I couldn't," finished Pete.

Benny tried to track back through all his responses to find the contradiction, but he knew he couldn't be seen trying to give himself time. Fucking Pete, fucking Party...

"I said to observe poverty and..."

"You said to write about it."

"...and, no, observe poverty, and drugs and teenage delinquency."

"No, you didn't say that."

"If you observe these things, like drugs and teenage delinquency then-..."

"You didn't say observe, you said-..."

"If you observe them," Benny increased the volume, "then you can write something about your observations. You cannot write about them. Cannot."

"You didn't-...that doesn't make sense."

Benny rubbed his eyes and breathed out dramatically. They were challenging him on everything, every word...before long there'd be swearwords, and then there'd be more rebels, and the beret would creep out from behind a bookshelf, and then he'd really be fucked.

"Excuse me, Pete. I am the teacher and perhaps you should listen more closely to what I am telling you. Do you understand?"

"But you didn't-..."

"Young man, do you understand?"

"No, I don't."

"What?"

"I don't understand either," said Party.

"I mean, I don't understand what you are telling me. Can I write about the poor or can't I?"

"Like I said before, twice, you can observe them but you cannot write about them. It wouldn't be real. Why is this so difficult for you to understand?"

"So I can't write about them?"

"No, you cannot."

"Because I'm not poor?"

"That's right. That's it completely."

"Ok now I understand. Thanks." A smile darkened his face. "But, excuse me Mr. Benny Sir, are you homeless?"

"What?"

"Are you homeless?"

"Am I homeless?" Benny said too slowly.

"Yes, do you live in a home?"

"A home...no, I'm not homeless, Pete."

"Are you teaching us for free? Do you have money? A bank account?"

Benny leaned back and stretched out his arms, momentarily blocking Pete from his view. He knew where this was going, he had parried it before, somewhere else, with other doubters...

"I have all of those, now. I am very lucky. But, there were times when-..." He took a moment to search for some 'times'. "I've had hard times in my life. Very hard times." No 'times' found. "That's all I'm gonna say." Benny looked back down at the paper in his hands. "Anyway, going back to your story, Pete. I think what you've-..."

"So, where is your story then? Your novel on the poor?"

"That's not what we're here to talk about..."

"I'm curious. Have you started it?"

"Pete, listen. If you don't like what I've said then argue that point, don't try and attack someone else's work as a cover."

"Sorry, it's just an inquiry. I know it's your own business but I'm curious about these hard times of yours. You'll put them in the story, right?"

The rest of the group didn't exist. It was and, with the small exception of Party, had been up to this point a protracted battle between Pete and Benny. There were no others openly choosing a side. Benny did wonder though, if he put it to a vote, who would side with him and who would side with the child who, intellectually, hadn't even been born yet.

"It's not autobiographical, but there will be things that-..." Come on, something, anything. "...like I said I've lived through some hard times and that means my book, when I finish it, will be very authentic. I promise you."

"Can you just give us an example?"

"We're not here to talk about my work. This is your time, not mine."

"Just one example of the hard times..."

"No, it's very personal."

"But you're putting it in your book, right? Go on, just one. No one minds..." He gestured around the group to prove his point. All faces were alert and certainly didn't mind any part of the drama that had burst out suddenly, inflammatorily even.

"You don't believe me?"

"I believe you, of course. You're the teacher, why would you lie?" Pete gave the line some space and time to reach the audience. "It's just, looking at where you are now, it's hard to imagine these hard times in your past. You know?"

"Is it, Pete? Hard to imagine..." Benny took in every face slowly while inside he rushed around throwing on costumes and ideas. This was the time to perform, they were demanding proof. He had to give them something. He brought his eyes back onto the main doubter. "People who reform always look different when the worst is behind them, but there are scars," he jabbed at his forehead, "in here. Where you can't see. Where you don't want to see. Yes, I've seen some terrible things in my life. I was on the streets and I saw-...I saw-..." don't spoil it, he whispered to himself from the wings of the stage, don't describe anything. "You can't imagine the things that happen there...you just can't...some were just babies, you see. They never had a chance...not a chance." Benny's right eye moistened slightly and he wiped it with his sleeve. Babies was a nice touch, came a voice from the wings.

Pete looked around the group to see if anyone was convinced by these words. He certainly wasn't. He had known for a long time that people he didn't know could lie about their past and colour themselves anyway they wished. And babies? Why was he talking about babies?

Benny also looked around the group, hopeful that he had brought himself some breathing space. Most of them had reclined back into their seats and seemed to be looking for something, their notebooks or a clock maybe. He let a few more seconds pass, waiting for questions. None came, no one dared say a thing. Even Pete was quiet, his body slumped and resigned to the fact that there was no one willing to second him, not even Party.

Perfect, it was over then. He folded his arms and looked over at Winnie, and thought of how his victory had looked from her eyes. She wasn't smiling exactly, but she didn't seem upset either. Was she impressed then? It was hard to tell her with her, she didn't speak much, in fact, she hadn't said a word the last two lessons, but that didn't mean she didn't speak, she did, she had. In the first few lessons she had made it very clear that she had read a lot of literature in her twenty one years of pre-life. If Benny had to guess, he would say that she had been born recently, perhaps a year ago, which would put her intellectual birth-date around the same time as his. Would her character have similarities to his then, or would she go a different way over the next six years?

"It's up to you whether you believe me or not, but it doesn't change the point I made, that all of you have to find something to write about, and in my mind, the only true thing worth writing about is social struggle, at the bottom level. That means poverty, drug abuse, prostitution, the homeless, all of those groups. Anything else is just ornalisation."

He called an end to the discussion, cutting Pete short as he was about to open his mouth again. Benny knew what he was going to say anyway, and he had comebacks for all the points he would have raised, but he was tired and in no mood to mould a mind he didn't even like. Let him remain ordinary, he thought, I don't want to see his name on a bookshelf, not in my lifetime.

When all the other students had left, except Pete, who was still coiled tight in his chair reading the notes on the story Benny had given back to him, Winnie came over and told him how much she agreed with what he had said in the lesson.

"I'm sorry about what happened to you before...with the babies, whatever it was that-...I'm sorry."

"Everyone has their pain. I just had a higher dose, that's all."

"It sounded hard...a hard dose."

"Yeah, hard." Benny looked at some of the retreating students to avoid saying any more. "What can I do for you...Winnie, isn't it?"

"Winnie, yes. I was just-...I was wondering, did you have time to read my story?"

"Yes, I did."

"Oh. I was almost hoping you'd say no. It's terrible, isn't it?"

"No, it wasn't anywhere near terrible, Winnie."

"Really? Wow, that's a relief." She faked a sigh and pushed her fringe to the side. "So, ok, I have to know. Was it anywhere near competent?"

"Honestly?"

"Yes, hurt me, be honest, I don't mind."

He had read her story five times. He had rehearsed the comments he would say if she ever asked him. Now, this was the moment...

"The writing was good, the content wasn't. You're a little different to the others as your characters have a struggle and they're from a poorer background, which is interesting, but-..."

"But they're not convincing, are they?"

Benny stopped his train of thought. She was finishing his sentences for him and she was finishing them well.

"You think they were unconvincing?" he asked, curious.

"I think, they weren't-...I don't know how to say it. You say your bit first..."

"I think they weren't what you intended when you started writing. I think, at the start of the story your character was poor, but by the end you had made her middle class in her view of the world, even though her situation hadn't changed. You gave her different eyes to see the world with, I think."

"Yes, different eyes. You're right."

"Don't fret about it, Winnie, you compromised yourself, that's all. Lots of writers have done it, even the best ones."

They smiled at each other as if each could picture what would happen next. We like each other, thought Benny, checking off a list in his mind. We're both smart, she knows a little bit about poverty, she has the same sensibilities as me, she's-...

Pete was standing to the side of them.

"Benny..." he started.

What's this? He's not dating her, is he? He can't be, she doesn't like-...why would she like him?

"...I have another question."

"Really."

Winnie stayed quiet at the side and let Pete continue.

"Yeah, I couldn't find that short story of yours."

"Sorry, which story?"

He was talking about the story. He was gonna mention 'American Mercury' right in front of her.

"You said that magazine that died, 'American Mercury', was still alive, but the weird thing is, when I looked for it online they said it had been out of print since 1981. They said nothing called 'American Mercury' had existed after it."

Out of print yes, but it had been out of fashion for a lot longer than that. There was no way Benny could've been published in that magazine.

"I told you before, Pete, that's the old one. The new one rose out of the ashes about ten years ago."

"With the same name?"

"Almost the same name...they call it 'New American Mercury' now..."

There was no new magazine. Nothing had risen out of those ashes and nothing ever would.

"...but it's underground," he continued, "You have to know other writers to submit, and it's not online so if you search for it you probably won't find it."

"Oh. That's convenient."

"It's not convenient if you're a new writer," Benny countered. It was a risk to play the superior card over a student who had actually been published three times more than him, but if he didn't play that card then he would be discovered.

"Could I find a print copy anywhere?"

"No, not in Hong Kong."

"I have family in Canada, what about there?"

"No, not there either. You see, Canadians, they don't like magazines that stress their Americanism."

This was getting dangerous, much too dangerous. He'd have to watch his lies before he let them out.

"Does the editor have an e-mail?"

"Yes, I think-...yes, he does."

"Do you have it?"

"Somewhere at home, yes."

"Could I have it?"

"Why?"

"I want to submit a story."

"Your stories aren't ready, Pete."

"The editor might like them."

"I don't know, I remember him being very discerning, very hard to please."

"Really? That sounds bad." His eyes didn't move, he wasn't finished. "Still, I have been published in Hong Kong, it can't hurt to give me a try, right?"

Benny glanced sideways and saw Winnie looking at the clock on the wall. Krist, just give him something, anything...

"Ok, I'll bring the e-mail next time. Let's give you a shot, shall we?"

"Yes, a shot, thank you."

He stood there without leaving. Why wasn't he leaving? It couldn't be for her...it just couldn't-...

"Is there anything else, Pete?"

"I looked for 'New metropolis' too."

"What's that?"

"The other one you were published in."

"I know. And?"

"Couldn't find it. There were no records of any magazine with that name."

"Really? That's strange."

"I think so..."

"Wait, did you say 'New Metropolis'?"

"That's what you told me."

"No, I don't think I did..."

"You did, you said-...why?"

"Because it's wrong. It's 'New Metropolitic', not 'Metropolis'?

Pete stood rigid, certain that he had heard something different the previous time they had spoken. Benny kept his body loose, aware that he had said 'Metropolis' before and knowing that this was the last time he'd be able to dodge on this magazine. He'd have to go home and think of something better. Krist, this persistent little shit, didn't he ever think about women?

Winnie didn't wave to him as he approached even though he saw that she had noticed him. He walked slowly over to the steps of the station entrance, and it wasn't until he was right upon her that she turned to him and feigned shock.

"Where did you come from? Hey..."

Benny thought about replying that she had just seen him and knew he was walking over to her, but, no, that kind of honesty wouldn't get him anywhere.

"I came from that-a way," he said, rolling off a pseudo-east coast accent.

"Oh, I didn't notice," she searched the space he pointed to, as if there was a trace of him still there, before turning back with a smile. "Where are you taking me then, Mr. Benny?"

"I don't know, I figured we could walk around a bit, maybe go sit in the park and talk?"

"Victoria Park?"

"Yeah, it's just round the corner. You go there a lot?"

"Yeah..." she scrunched up her face, but still looked pretty. The skin clear, no rashes or blots, the eyes unfamiliar...he hadn't seen those eyes on anyone else, not even close...

"What's up? You wanna go somewhere else?"

"Do you mind?"

"No, it's-...it wasn't a set plan, just an idea. Where did you wanna go?"

"Let's try this way," her lips widened, doubled in size, "I've never been this way before."

He looked at her eyes again, determined to understand what it was that was so beguiling about them, but still couldn't place it. They weren't soft exactly, the colour wasn't deep, and they weren't kind. What were they? He looked again and saw the pupil completely round and the shape around it oval. It was-...he had it, they were scheming. She had quick, darting eyes, bordered by oval lids, which gave her the countenance of a fox, a sly, scheming fox. Was that attractive to him then? A schemer couldn't be trusted, she would-...

"You know, you don't look around much, do you?" she said abruptly.

"Huh?"

"For a writer, I mean. I always imagined you guys looked around for inspiration or details, things like that..."

Benny quickly looked around the area to compensate. He knew they were walking from Tin Hau to Fortress Hill on the island and he had a rough sketch in his head as to what the area looked like. Dirty buildings pushed together, the odd tree-lined road, the occasional taller building with slightly more expensive apartments, some poor faces wandering for a block along the main road and looking distinctly out of place before disappearing down a dim, grey lit alley. It wasn't that different to any other area he had been to.

"I was distracted..." was his eventual response.

"Really? What was distracting you?"

He couldn't say it, it was too direct. But she wanted him to say it, didn't she?

"Sorry, why do you think I should be looking around?"

"I don't know, for your novel maybe?"

"Which novel?"

"The one you talk about all the time, or the one you used to talk about. The one about the poor."

"Oh, that one." He laughed loud. She had heard about it then. "That one needs somewhere a lot worse than this place to inspire it."

She looked around herself and seemed to pick out details without telling him. He tried to follow her to where she was looking, but he couldn't see anything distinctive, just normal looking people in normal clothes.

"Poverty doesn't always wear a sign," she said quietly, almost not wanting to be heard. "You have to really look."

"Yeah..."

Benny tried to think of a response quickly to show that he wasn't easily out-thought, but he couldn't think of anything clever enough, and besides, did he want to disagree with her so early on in their relationship. And was she wrong anyway?

She came back to him and pointed at a side-road up ahead.

"Let's turn down there."

"What's down there?"

"I don't know, I've never been here, remember?"

She wasn't wrong, not in any way he could think of. There were different degrees of poverty and the ones he had seen, the ones in the bins and on the streets, were the lowest level, and there were less than a thousand of them. Above them, but only slightly, were the other faces, the ones who looked normal and could operate day to day like other people and could walk into the same shops and restaurants as the people way above them, but who were, behind it all, without money and without hope. They had a place to live and enough money to eat maybe, but it wasn't any kind of ideal life, or even a sufficient life. He recalled the security guard in the lobby of his building, the construction men at the top of the hill in Lam Tin laughing. He had promised so many times to help them too, hadn't he?

The two of them turned down the next road and walked for a further forty minutes, talking about the University, the other students, writing, the city, the plans they both had for the future, until they reached a teahouse and Winnie pointed inside and said she was hungry. Benny concurred, already used to doing whatever she said, and briefly worrying as he opened the door that he wasn't leading as much as he should have been. I'm not strong enough, he thought, not for her...not for Amelia. Krist, Amelia...

Sitting down, Winnie kept the conversation going as Benny's thoughts leapt over the stream to his friend.

"I don't know if you noticed but most of my stories are just about me," she said.

"Yeah, I noticed..."

"Easy to tell, I thought so. Everyone tells you to write what you know, that's why. Isn't that true? Yeah, I'm not sure either. I guess it's because of the way I was brought up and-..."

Amelia had phoned him again two nights before. She had told him she was lying on her bed at home and she didn't wanna go out, but her friend was coming to pick her up soon and she was gonna go to a party in Wan Chai, but, really, she didn't wanna go.

"I don't know how to get out of it," she had protested.

"Just say you're not going," Benny had replied, trying to keep his advice simple and keep her on the line

"I can't, he's coming now. He's on the way."

"Tell him you've changed your mind."

"I can't, he's coming..."

"Is he a big guy? Is he aggressive?"

"No, he's decent. He's not a bad guy."

"Then tell him you don't wanna go."

"I can't..."

"Tell him, tell him you can't go."

"He won't take it, Benny, he'll talk me round."

"Get your parents to answer the door then..."

"No, no way, they can't know. They'll know if they see him, they've seen him before, it was the-...he was here then, the last time...they'll know."

He had been distant from her for so long he had forgotten how ineloquent she could be, but she had never been this bad before, which meant things were really bad. He had to meet her face to face, he had to tell her he knew what was going on and that he was going to help her get out of it. Would she accept it if he told her he knew?

"Amee, talk to me, tell me what's going on."

No answer.

"I know something's happening, you're erratic, you sound strange...what's wrong? Tell me, please..."

"Jesus, he's here, he's outside. What am I gonna say?"

"Say you're not going, tell him no."

"I can't, I can't," it came out in breaths more than speech. "I don't know what to do, it's all fucked up. It shouldn't be like this, what's happened, but-..."

"I wanna meet you, tomorrow. We'll talk about it, it'll be ok."

"Tomorrow, I don't know...I can't."

"Don't say you can't...just meet me."

"I can't..."

The line had gone dead after that and Benny had been left to think of her answering the door, not refusing the guy, getting in his car, going to the party in Wan Chai and then up to those dark apartments and-...whatever it was she did there. Things were erecting themselves around her, people were blocking her off like prison bars and trapping her in the middle. Amelia in tears and a torn dress, surrounded by stone blocks, unable to escape between them and being forced to the centre where a giant needle was lying on the ground waiting for her.

"...not completely. I mean, the last one I wrote was about me, but like you said, I changed it a little at the end. I became a coward right at the end."

Benny blinked and saw Winnie affecting an apologetic look across the table. His drink was on the table, untouched.

"Are you not thirsty?"

Benny leaned forward and picked it up, before noticing the steam rising up.

"Krist..."

"It's hot, right?"

"Boiling..." He shook his hand as if it had been on fire. "Sorry, I was listening..."

"It's ok."

"...I just wasn't expecting that kind of heat."

She smiled and picked up her own drink, no discomfort, and drank a little.

"What about your stories?"

"Mine? Sure, which one?"

"The poor one. I'm curious how you're going to write it."

"That one. I haven't written it yet, or much of it. I am writing it, or planning it mostly at the moment."

"How much have you done?"

"About a third of it," he lied. "It's gonna be short, about one-fifty. Short and sharp."

"One-hundred and fifty pages?"

"Yeah."

"And it's about the poor, all of it?"

"Kind of..."

"Is the main character poor?"

"No, the main guy's middle class, but he-...I guess he learns of their situation and tries to help. That's the main plot..."

She scrunched up her face again. Was she gonna ask some tough questions or was he safe? His mind was still focused on Amelia and where she was, but he had to forget about that, come back to her later.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Yeah, sure," he replied calmly.

She adjusted her position in the seat and turned side on to him.

"Do you really know anything about the poor?"

"What do you mean 'know anything'?"

"I mean...have you-..."

"Have I experienced it? Is that what you mean?"

She frowned, but Benny ran on anyway...

"No, I have. Really, I have. I've been out on the streets, I've observed them at night in all different places. I've followed them and talked to them and-...I know that it isn't enough, I know that to write about them you have to really know them and the only way, really, is to see how they live through the whole night, and I've seen that, really, I have, in Mong Kok, Sham Shui Po, all the shit-poor places. And Tin Shui Wai...I found some of them up there too. I sat down with them, in those boxes...I had my own box and-...it wasn't that bad, I could talk to them...so, I guess, yeah, I pretty much know what they're like, how they live, stuff like that."

He sat back and tried to relax his shoulders into the frame of the chair. He wasn't completely lying to her after all; he had been to those places and seen the homeless move about, and he had sat in that box, not when they were there, and not all night, but for some of it.

"I know you've done all that, but don't you think you need-..."

"...and the essence of it, well...I said this in the lesson before, the other day, but I haven't always had a lot of money throughout my life either. I mean, I have struggled before. Not as much as they have, but I think I know enough..."

"Yeah, I remember. The 'babies' thing..."

"Yeah..." Benny pretended to think back to the 'babies' thing. "...that was a hard time...really hard times."

Winnie wasn't smiling. She leaned forward, took some more of her green tea then put the cup carefully back on the table.

"Have you ever been really poor, Benny?"

"Well, define 'really poor.' I mean, I had to work two jobs to stay at University...and before that, back where I come from-...it was tough."

"By 'really poor' I mean, have you ever missed meals, have you ever been on the streets, have you ever really worried day to day what you're going to do for money?"

Benny thought about how to answer. The 'babies' thing had been a lie, as had the dark times he had talked of. He had never been that low down, but what did it matter? He could observe, he could see, he could fill in the thoughts for himself...

"I guess, although I have been through hard times, I haven't ever been that low, not living on the streets or...whatever else, drugs, whatever. I've always managed to get a job for myself...or two jobs."

"So you've never been at the lowest level?"

"Not exactly...not the absolute lowest level..."

"And you've always had a job and money?"

"Yeah, but-...because I made myself do it, and I knew I had to, if I wanted money-..."

"And you've been to University and graduated..."

"University, yeah, but with a huge loan from the bank and-...my family didn't have any money to give me, nothing, not even Christmas presents. My Dad actually went bankrupt, did I tell you that?"

"I don't think you did-..."

"And those three jobs, I self-funded myself through the whole degree pretty much..."

"Three jobs?"

"...it wasn't easy to do all of that and do the study...yeah, three jobs, there was another one I did...it was in-...it was something in the-..." Benny tried to quickly think of a third job he might've done. Barman? Club? Club bouncer? "...in the library, there was this thing I did there...it was-...yeah, three jobs in total. It was quite tough, but that was Uni life for me pretty much."

Winnie watched him through the steam rising up from her green tea. She wasn't distracted by anything happening around them in the restaurant, not the waiters, not the couple behind them. It was simply a location, and all the players had their separate stages. This table was theirs.

Benny picked up his own drink and put it straight back down when he realized it was still hot. She doesn't believe me, he guessed. Should I make up a story for the babies incident, would that help? What could happen to babies that I could've believably witnessed? A baby on the street, at night, in the cold of winter? It would have to be ill, really ill...would it be dead? Should I make it dead? Krist, he spat back at himself, I can't do this, it's fiction, shit fiction.

"Are you ok, Benny?"

"Yeah, I'm good, I'm fine." He picked up his drink again and forced some down.

"You look distant."

"No, I'm here. You've still got me."

"Do you want to order?"

"Yeah, good idea, what do you wan-..."

A waiter walked past and Winnie stopped him with a wave of her hand. She pointed at a picture on the menu and asked Benny if he wanted it. He nodded and she ordered for both of them. When the waiter had gone, she went back to her drink and said nothing.

I'm losing her, he thought, and looked at the woman on the table in front of them. She was sitting opposite a man, a boyfriend probably, and every few seconds she would look over at Benny.

She looked at him again.

Benny flinched and looked down at the table. It was too horrific, too local...that rinsed hair, those pencil drawn eyebrows, the dull fucking cow eyes...

The woman looked away and Benny came back up.

"Thinking about it, maybe you're right," he said.

"Am I? What am I right about?"

"About the poverty thing. My book is supposed to be about the poor here, the homeless. I don't know much about that, not in this city."

"I didn't think you would," she laughed.

"But I can. It's not impossible." He took more of his drink, comfortable with the heat of it. "I was thinking about making myself poor, like Orwell did...he went on the streets for a while and struggled for money, did you know that?"

Winnie did know that, and she also knew that Orwell wrote to a friend of his when he was really desperate, asking to be sent a stipend so he could continue his experiment.

"Are you really going to do that?"

"I might do...I mean, I've already half-done it. I've sat in a box..."

"If you did then it'd probably make your novel better."

"Yeah, it would," Benny nodded. "Winnie, I think you've just made up my mind. I'm gonna do it. In a month or so, I'll do it."

"You mean you're going to live on the streets?"

"You're right, I have to, if I wanna write a better novel. I have to know what they think, not guess."

"But, how long for?"

"I don't know, until I get desperate."

Winnie shook her head and took some more of the tea. And then some more...

Benny played with his fingers under the table. He knew that she wasn't impressed and that she was a lot smarter than any other woman he had battled with. She was studying literature and medicine at the same time, she was adept at both, she was way above any girl he had ever looked at.

The woman on the next table looked at him again. He put her in the background and waited for Winnie to put the cup down.

"But, you have to go beyond desperate, don't you?" she said, the cup still in her hand.

"Until the rats eat me?" he tried to joke, but she didn't laugh.

The waiter came over with two bowls of something a little paler than its picture on the menu. The larger bowl was put in front of Benny.

"I'm serious, if you want to do this then you can't do it halfway."

"Yeah, I know. I was joking."

"You have to be strong mentally. You have to stay in the box, even if it's raining or cold..."

"Yes, I know..."

"...and if you get hungry and you go back to your apartment then you fail. The whole thing fails. If you have money to save yourself then it won't work. Is this-...do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Yes, I know, Winnie..." He picked up his chopsticks, but changed his mind and put them back down again. "...I'm not new to this. I've been out there, I've sat in their boxes..."

"I know, you've done a lot. I'm just trying to say, if you want your novel to-..."

"...and I have been published before, I know how to write. It's not just experiencing it, I know how to get it on paper...the truth of it."

"I know, I'm sorry. You're probably right, I guess-...Zee-dan ar."

She fell silent and played with the bowl in front of her while Benny recoiled in shame. He had reacted like an adolescent, she had won.

At the next table, the woman with rinsed hair stood up and looked around the other tables. The waiter came over and pointed to the other side of the restaurant where the toilets were. She pulled down her shirt, showing most of her chest to Benny, then turned and walked off.

"Winnie, I'm sorry. I'm just-..." He picked up a chopstick and made circles in the pale noodles. "I know what I have to do to get this thing done, that's all."

He looked up and saw those fox eyes staring back, but not really fox-like anymore, they were different, compassionate...gizmo eyes.

"I understand. I was way too harsh. And you're right, I'm not a writer..."

"No, you are, your stories are really good. You write what you know and what you know is interesting. The rest of that group has never experienced anything so they can't write, but you have, and you can."

"Thanks, Benny Sir."

She blushed and looked down at her noodle soup.

The woman from the next table came back and looked at him with those dull cow eyes as she sat down and said something to the man opposite her. She leaned forward onto the table and let her tits rest on the surface, showing the cup of the bra and almost the nipples. Benny glanced once but didn't stay with them. She was nothing to him, just a pair of loose tits.

He returned to the foreground and looked at the top of Winnie's head as she looped noodles round her chopsticks, then down to her face, those eyes, that smile, and then the t-shirt, her own chest...

They sat and finished their food and talked some more, and as they went up to pay the bill Benny took the chance to touch her hand as he handed over his share of the money, and kept it there. She didn't pull away. When they were outside again, he forgot about Amelia and started to run pictures of Winnie, stills at first, then whole scenes. They would live on the streets together for a week or two weeks and both of them would write stories from their experiences, and they would sleep on cardboard together and maybe, although he winced at the thought of it, they would stick their arms into the bins and fish for cardboard. But wasn't she too pretty to do that, he thought as he looked at her skirt and her belt and the expensive bag that hung off her shoulder as they walked back to the station in Tin Hau. She was smart and she wasn't like the other girls in this city, but-...where did that bag come from?

When they reached the ticket gate in the station, Benny thought about leaning down to kiss her but changed his mind when he saw her side-stepping away from him. It was only the first date, it was too soon. Besides, the most important part had been accomplished, they had found common ground and they had shared the same thoughts. Next time, he would kiss her.

"Benny, about the poor thing..."

"Yeah?"

"It's not so important to live on the streets just to write the novel." She stopped briefly then started again. "I mean, there are different degrees of poverty, right? You don't have to do the lowest level."

"You mean I should look at the next level up from the homeless?"

"There are more of them. You said there are only a thousand on the streets, right? And the way it seems, the ones who have apartments but not much money are still without hope or dreams. They're not going to get any higher either..."

"I could write about them too," he smiled for the first time with her, still thinking of them on the street together.

She went through the ticket gate and he watched her legs walk away and become narrower and smaller, and the last part of her that he saw as she disappeared down the escalator was that bag...

They were waiting for the lights to change at a junction just north of Mong Kok. Amelia had her cigarette hanging out of the driver's window and was humming along to some local band that had come on the car radio. Benny was sitting next to her, quiet, waiting for her to start talking.

The lights changed and she took a wrong turn and the road snaked round and started to lead them back to the harbour tunnel.

"Which turn do I take?"

"You don't know?"

"No, I don't know. I don't know this area."

A sign flew by that said Mong Kok and Benny told her to take the next left. The car, her parent's jeep, which had cost them probably about the same as ten months salary of the washer-man in the car-lot, turned and followed the road as it straightened and laid itself out to Mong Kok.

"I hate these fucking roads..."

"Relax, we're ok now."

"They fucking lie. They never go straight. Fuck!"

She beeped the horn and a couple of other cars echoed noise back.

"Amee, calm down. We're alright."

"Am I?""

"Ok, pull over here."

"Why?"

"We're gonna talk."

"It's talking time, is it?"

"I think you need to..."

"Good, finally. I'll park up, here we go..." She slowed the car down but didn't park. "...and then you can tell me what a big fuck-up I am."

She finished the cigarette, threw it out the window, played with her fingers on the steering wheel then reached down for her pack and lit up another one.

"Just pull over."

They sat next to each other and she smoked, looking around the area they were in, which was a huge construction site. There was a sign hammered onto the fence nearby telling them that when complete it would be the largest shopping mall in Hong Kong.

"How's Captain?" she asked, still distracted.

"He's ok."

"And the religious one?"

"Joseph?"

"Yeah, the anti-abortionist."

Benny didn't react. Amelia just shrugged without apology.

"He's ok. He's leaving soon I think."

"Really?"

"So he says..."

"Where?"

"I don't know if he'll really do it, but he said Russia. He's gonna take his bike all the way across to Vladivostok."

"Shit..."

"Yeah..."

"Everyone's doing something but me..."

"That's not true. He probably won't even go..."

"Yeah, maybe..."

"Amee..."

He shifted in his seat so his whole body was facing her. She looked away, out through the windscreen.

"What about Avon? How's he?"

"He's gone."

"He left Hong Kong?"

"He might as well have. He got a sales job over at Manulife. He works late now, we never see him."

"At least he's got a job," she laughed, releasing more smoke.

"You've got a job."

"A nothing job. At a crappy school."

"So you can get a different job then."

She sucked hard on the cigarette, trying to pull it all inside.

"Yeah..." was all she said when she was done.

They sat in silence as other cars moved past on their way to Mong Kok, each one of them perhaps enacting their own little dramas within.

"I haven't even finished high school, you know that, right?" she said suddenly, in a voice that seemed to be mocking itself.

"You told me, yeah."

"Jesus, what am I gonna do Benny? I can't do anything, there's nothing-...I can't even get started..."

"What do you wanna do?"

"...and it's too late to start anything...I don't know, I can't do anything I want to do, it's too late. I don't have anything, no college is gonna take me, and-..."

"It's not too late Amee..."

"...it's all messed up, this whole fucking thing. I can't get away from it." She looked out the window at the mall under construction. Benny didn't say a word. "It's like, I'm seeing it everywhere, y'know? All my friends, those people from high school who-...they still go to the same bars as me, and they don't listen when I tell them I don't want it anymore...they just nod and try to get me to...y'know? And they won't fucking go away. I mean, there are other bars, why can't they go there instead...why not, why can't they? And they don't because they know it...they know I'll change my mind. I keep saying it to them, y'know, I tell them I don't want it anymore, but they know I do...I do want it. I don't want them to go to different bars."

She wiped the back of her hand over her eyes then her face, killing the tears.

She's never had a chance, thought Benny, pity and depression starting to envelop him and made worse by the car being parked next to that fucking construction site. She was doing fine until sixteen, until it happened. It wasn't her fault though, she was in a bad state, it was those friends that did it. They were the ones who had acted against her. He had been surrounded by those kinds of friends too, and other friends of his had been caught by the habit, but somehow he had escaped, by luck only, by the chance of not being in certain places at certain times. But Amelia, she hadn't...

"I was doing ok, Benny, I was forgetting about it, things were sorting themselves out, but they were still there, when I went out and...I started to see them more, and one of them, he was always trying to get me off before, he's so nice and friendly, he's such a nice guy, but he-...a couple of months ago we had been at a party and-...it just happened."

When her boyfriend, two years older than her and ready for college, had left her to go and study in the States she locked herself in her room. A week later, she had come out, dressed herself up and drunk her way through Wan Chai for seventeen nights. Then, sick, exhausted, depressed, she had gone back to her room, determined to stay there indefinitely. It was too much of a loss, even though her parents had told her she was young and it didn't mean much, and she didn't know how to react; exile or drinking...and that's when her school friends had come to her, telling her it wasn't a cure, but it would help her feel a little bit better for a while, and it had, for a while...but then the depressions had become worse and there were still too many times when she was alone in her room and there was nothing to think about except him and the high wasn't strong enough to help her, so her friends had introduced her to other friends, who had taken control of her life and convinced her to turn to the needle...but it wasn't her choice, she hadn't chosen to go that way, it was them that had given her directions knowing she didn't have the power to refuse and run back to-...to anywhere that was safe...

"He said he had some and if I wanted-...I mean, he knew I was going to the clinic and taking the meth, so he said it was my choice if I wanted to do it or not, but if I did then he had enough for me too, and-...it was right there, Benny, I watched him lay it all out, y'know, on the table right in front of me, and I tried to say no, but it was too familiar, it was right there, and...I don't know why but my life didn't seem so great suddenly, when I saw him shoot up, it just didn't seem that great, and I wanted to say no, but I was right there and it was like I had no choice, and I did it. But I said, before I did it, I said that this was the only time, it wouldn't happen again."

"It's ok, Amee. It's ok..."

"No, but it's not, it's not. I can't stop, I keep doing it and I can't stop. I don't know how to-...y'know, they're everywhere and...there's always a party and I can't say no. I want to, when it's daytime, y'know, but then when it's night again I just feel so-...I don't know, like I can't not go there and do it. It's too good, Benny, and I want to do it, I want to and I can't stop it anymore, I don't know how to stop..."

One time, after he had known her for a few months, she had told him some details. It was when she was a year into it, not even eighteen, and she had met some dealers outside a gas station in Mong Kok, where she sometimes went to pick up, and they had taken her, on foot, to an estate that looked quite clean and respectable on the outside, but, really, had at least ten or twelve apartments that were involved in the trade, and the dealers had taken her into an alley, without talking to her, and one of them had taken out a needle, turned to her, telling her to wait for a few minutes, then dropped his pants and injected straight into the vein running up his cock. It had gone hard, and one of the other guys had grabbed it and tugged a little, and then he said something to her in Cantonese, something about coming closer and touching 'the cock of superman.' She had run quickly, through the streets she didn't know, afraid that they would follow her and make her do things, and she was afraid that she would let them do those things if they explained to her that she could get high too if she let them. And she told him that, at the time, she didn't even know why she had run as she had gone with them in the first place and she had been desperate for smack. "Something unconscious must've kicked in somewhere," she explained. After that she had gone home and told her parents everything, and that's when things had really gone to shit.

"That night we went to see the goat thing, and you asked me to come up the hill with you, that was one of the nights too. That party I was talking about, they were there and I knew they would be there before I went. I knew what would happen and I still went..."

"It's ok, It's not your fault, it's not..."

"...I still went there and-...it is, it is my fault, that whole night I was looking forward to it...I wanted to go there, I wanted those friends to be there...if they hadn't been there I would've hunted them, that's how bad it was...how bad it is."

"It's not that bad, I'm gonna help you, it's ok."

"...No, that night, when you asked me, I knew that you knew. You did know, didn't you?"

Benny nodded reluctantly.

"...I knew it, even then and I didn't care. I didn't want to stay with you that night, I wanted to get away, I wanted to get to the party as soon as I could, and you-...you couldn't understand. I didn't wanna talk to you, you were annoying me, you wouldn't leave me alone, and I wanted to just walk off and say nothing. That's how bad it is..."

Her parents had never suspected anything. Her Dad had been a pharmacist for over thirty years but had no idea how to deal with a junkie, so they kept her in exile at home and took away her phone. If her friends called asking for her they would simply hang up, restraining themselves. After a few days, they realized they were way out of their depth and found a rehab centre for her out on Lantau Island. It was a house in an ordinary village and no one else in that village knew what kind of people lived there, so no one would ever know what had happened to her. She was there for two weeks before she escaped and fled onto the streets, heading back into Mong Kok to the old places she had been before...

"I don't wanna go to any more parties, Benny, really, but I can't stop..."

"Ok, listen to me. Stop. Listen, I'm gonna help you."

"You can't..."

"I can. Just listen. First, you've gotta get rid of those friends."

"No, I can't...they're there every time I go out..."

"Then you stop going out, right?"

"I know, I know that, but I can't, I've tried. It's too hard."

"It's the only way, Amee. If you see them, they'll make you do it again."

She closed her eyes and laughed.

"Ha, they make me do it? You don't understand..."

"They do...what, what don't I understand?"

"You don't-...they don't. It's me, I do it myself. I hunt them. I mean, shit, you think they care if I get high or not?"

"No, you're wrong, it's not you."

"It is me. It's all me.

"No, it's them, they're parasites."

"No, it's me..."

"It's not you, Amee. It's them. Listen to me. It's their fault, not yours. They know how to make you do things."

On the streets again she had stayed in a friend's apartment and watched other junkies come and go. She was too spacked out most of the time to recognize any of the faces and she said afterwards that she was lucky not to have been raped as she knew that other girls had. One night, another story she had told him, she had watched two guys, two friends of hers beating a woman from the steps of a subway passage. She hadn't done anything to help her, and worse than that, she hadn't even seen anything worth stopping. The only way she had got out of it was when her parents found out where she was and took her back to rehab. This time she had stayed, and then the methadone clinic when she got out, that had been a year earlier, and now she was finally coming off it, with her dosage down to the lowest possible level.

"It doesn't matter anyway. They push it, I hunt them, whatever, it doesn't matter because I'm back on, aren't I? I mean, the meth didn't work, and I'm using again. I'm a fucking forever-junkie."

"You're not, you're not at all. You've just got to surround yourself with the right people, people who care about you."

"I don't have many of those..."

"I'll help you. We'll watch movies at your place, we'll go to the cinema. You can come out with me and Captain..."

"You think so?"  
"...we can watch 'The Goat 2'"

She laughed and reached into her bag for another cigarette. That bag...he hadn't really noticed before, but it looked like-...no, it was the same as-...she had Winnie's bag.

"Not that weird shit again..." She lit up and drew the cigarette to her smile.

"It's good that you smoke too. I know that sounds weird, but it'll help."

"Yeah, I know. That's what they said at the clinic too."

"They're right, it's true. It is true."

He reached out and stroked her arm, briefly, then saw the bag between them and took his hand back. He looked through the windscreen, out onto the construction site and watched the sun turn up the heat on the unfinished building stumps. There was no one working there today. The site was empty, the diggers were asleep. The frame of the future mall had no windows and no design. A baby...no, a foetus...it looked like an impossible thing to finish.

He turned back to his friend, to his Amelia, ignored the bag and touched her arm, firmer this time. And kept it there.

"I'm gonna help you, Amee."

"Yeah, I know." She closed her eyes and put her head on his shoulder, her cigarette hanging off the side of the window.

"I'm gonna save you," he repeated quietly into her hair.

"Where did you get the bag, Winnie?" he asked with a forced smile.

They were walking past the mosque just outside the station in TST, heading over to the park. There was a spot in there that Benny thought might be a good place for him to make moves for a first kiss, some steps placed next to the pond just out of reach of the jet that burst out of the middle of the water. He could keep her there for an hour at least, and if nothing happened in that time then he'd have to make plans for wherever they walked afterwards. But ever since he had seen her come out of the ticket gate inside the station and walk over to him, where he had been waiting for over forty minutes [but it was Winnie, so he could wait], he had been distracted by that bag, that fucking bag again. He had seen that fucking bag a lot recently, hung off a lot of dull shoulders, and it was grating, and seeing her with it just grated even more. She's got a social conscience, he stressed, she grew up wanting; she can't have a bag like that.

"It was a gift," she replied. "I got it last Christmas. I think there was a sale on somewhere."

Benny looked at the bag for verification.

"It's probably fake, actually." She laughed, lifted the bag down and pretended to examine it closely.

"It's nice," lied Benny.

"Thanks. Even if it is fake you can't tell easily. I hope."

"I guess...how do you tell?"

"I think it's the colours. They're lighter if it's fake."

They both examined the bag.

"It's too dark to really see," Benny said. "I guess it's probably alright,"

"Yeah, in the dark it's fine," Winnie agreed, laughing.

Benny thought about it and decided to give her a pass. It was a gift, what could she do?

They walked to the spot by the steps next to the pond and watched the other lovers and loners share the steps and benches around them, both wondering independently how much time had passed in the couples' relationships and if they were happy when they came here, and if the loners had anyone waiting for them elsewhere, if this was just a brief vacation from the apartment they couldn't face going back to or if it was a more permanent loneliness, and after an hour Winnie suggested they go for a walk around the rest of the park, which Benny accepted, despite thinking that he was getting closer to a kiss and the beginning of their partnership.

"Are you still thinking about the streets, Benny?" she asked when they had walked from the pond to the outdoor swimming pool at the end of the park. All the lights were off and the water of the pool was still. A security guard was sitting on one of the benches on the path near them, watching the pool below in case anyone trespassed. Benny had gone over to the railing blocking off the pool and looked down; there was nothing there but water, which was muted in darkness and looked sad somehow without anyone splashing around in it. What is the guard protecting then, wondered Benny, already suspecting the answer. No one would go down there to steal water, they'd go down to rest, and that was what he would prevent. Krist, good shade for the morning, a few benches, a place they could use, and it's turned into a fucking dead zone instead...

He felt the bile rise up in his throat again, pushing it down quickly when Winnie came closer to him and repeated her question.

"I'm trying to. I think-...soon. I'll write it soon."

He looked at her and noticed the bag again.

"I had a new idea for a story," she said.

"Yeah, you wanna tell me?"

"Well, that's why I said it..." she laughed.

Benny pulled one hand away from the railing, annoyed that she had been caustic with him. He didn't deserve that, did he?

"I thought you might not be ready yet."

"Ah, sorry. It's just an idea, I don't mind telling you."

"Because some writers won't tell until they've written it all out. They want to know what the whole story is before they-...because some people criticize so quickly, it's better to have it mapped out in your head. I guess, for some writers..."

"No, I want to tell you. I really do."

He pulled the other hand away from the railing and listened.

"It's quite big in scope though, maybe too big, I'm not sure if I'm capable of doing it justice yet. Maybe you can tell me..." she started. Benny nodded and she continued on, while he looked at the bag, drawing Amelia back.

Since that day in the car she had gone off-radar again. He had phoned her ten, fifteen times a day but she never picked up and never phoned him back. He thought of reasons why, even after he had promised to help her, she would distance herself from him again and all he could think of was she was ashamed of herself.

"...so the protesters manage to get enough numbers behind them to revolt, and all the districts, like the poorer districts, Wong Tai Sin, Tin Shui Wai, Tseun Wan, Ho Man Tin, all of those areas, they march on Central and take over, and, it's people power, right, so China really has no choice but to recognise their new Government..."

There was another reason he had thought of...she wasn't ashamed, she was annoyed. She saw him as an obstacle to her having a good time and if he wasn't around then she could go to those parties and have that good time. But what about the next day? Didn't she want to call him then?

"...so they line up all the millionaires that were around before and they kick them out of their houses and put them on trial, and one member of the new people's Government wants to kill them in some kind of public performance to show that the old system is dead, but one guy resists and says they shouldn't do that, he kind of becomes the hero of the story, but it happens quite late so it's a surprise when it happens..."

Without Amelia's calls it was too hard to guess. The only thing he was sure of was the crux of it, the thing that really frightened her; that it was too late to transform her life. He had told her in the car that she would have to finish high school and apply to college and that it would take over five years to get into any kind of shape and she had added herself that, for those five years, she would have to avoid going to parties and live clean and focus on what she had to do, but she said it would be hard, really hard to avoid parties in college and five years was a long time to avoid having a good time.

"I know what you're feeling, Amee," he had told her in the car, when her head was still on his shoulder.

Yes, Benny knew, he was sure of it. Even the process of re-applying to high school was a daunting step and she had told him that she had looked at the form many times in the last six months and it had just reminded her of the others in high school now, kids that were sixteen and there at the right age, and then she would come in at twenty-three, seven years behind, and she had told him that she wished she could go back and change things, she wished she could go back and try sixteen again, and make the right choices this time. Poor Amelia, Benny had thought.

"Life happens around you all the time, Amee," he had told her before leaving the car, "when you are young you don't make decisions, not real ones, you just react as the person you are at that time. You have to wake up and realize what you are, that you're the finished product, before you find-...before you make any real decisions in your life."

Then he had got out and she had promised to see him the next day. That was nearly two weeks ago.

"...So finally all the millionaires are killed, and so is the hero for disputing the new Government, and then...then I guess the inevitable happens and the new Government becomes just as corrupt as the last one, and the poor get rich and others get poor, like the ones who used to be bankers or stockbrokers, and it's the same as it was before, pretty much, but with all the roles reversed."

Winnie had been speaking for a long time. Benny had heard some of the idea, a few words here and there, but as he switched back on, he realized he didn't know enough to comment.

"What do you think?"

They walked away from the swimming pool and Benny asked questions to confirm details until he had a good understanding of what her idea was. It was a big idea alright, a huge idea. She wanted to write about a revolution in Hong Kong and her argument was that radical change was ill-fated and that the rich were replaced with people who would become like them. "It isn't a new idea," Benny said to her as they walked, his eyes still taken by that bag lying nonchalantly on her shoulder, enjoying the warm evening air, "but it is an important one." He thought further, adding in his mind that it was probably too soon for her to try and write such a piece, as the platform she was going to use was too grand and far-reaching and she probably didn't have the skills to bring out all her themes yet, but she was still pretty, he still wanted to kiss her and, more than that, he saw her as a good partner, an intelligent lover for him, so he patted her shoulder, moved his hand down to her waist, and praised her for thinking of such an idea in the first place.

"What about the ending?"

"It's quite good. A little predictable, but I guess that's what's happened before in History..."

"I wasn't sure if it was too negative or not. I mean, the hero dies and the new Government becomes corrupted, so I thought maybe some of the poor might look on it as a criticism of them, like how it's impossible for them to change or..."

"No, I got what you were saying, it wasn't too harsh."

"...and the rich people, the millionaires kind of become sympathetic towards the end. I wasn't sure if that would be read wrong."

"As long as they pay in some way, it won't be an issue..."

Was that right? Sympathy for millionaires?

Benny thought of a stage and a showman introducing all the rich of Hong Kong and telling the audience of poor, homeless people and construction workers and bin men what they had done with their money and how much of it they hadn't given to them, and then one by one, each of the rich would be shot in the head by a lucky member of the audience. Hands were raised, numbers and names were called, rifles were given, bullets were fired, and the millionaires fell like sandbags onto the stage. When all in the line were dead, the audience cheered and the last shooter stood awkwardly with his rifle, unsure if he was supposed to shoot anyone else or not, and Benny left the image on him without feeling sorry for the ones who had been shot. The showman was right, he thought, they hadn't helped, they had enjoyed themselves and this was what they deserved.

"...I think the point is the one I want to make though, that revolution doesn't really change much or it can't-...whoever takes over can't keep it going straight or fairly. Does that make sense?"

"It is difficult not to be corrupted...yeah, perfect sense."

"...and I honestly think it's the truth of this-...of what would happen in this situation. I mean, if someone takes over, if there's a revolution then this is the kind of thing that will-...or might happen. Once they have power...right?"

"It might, it's true. It's a good idea."

"I think so..." She smiled, her head raised.

Winnie had always been fairly confident in herself and her abilities. Before she realized she would become prettier than the other girls she was already one of the smartest in her class, and, even though she knew she wasn't at the best school, she never saw her low money level as a permanent rock on her chest. Her father had let himself be pinned down like that and had warned her not to copy his mistakes. "Never accept what they say you should be having," he used to say from the head of the dinner table. "Never lie down for them..." He repeated it every night and after every report card she gave him, with his strong hands sitting on her shoulders.

Then he died.

That happened when she was twelve, just as study at school was getting harder. She came home late one day, her head struggling with the different types of rocks from Geography lesson, and three men in dirty t-shirts were sitting on the couch. A heart attack on one of the sites out near Fanling, they told her. She had overheard one of them talking to her mum in the kitchen afterwards, something like, "it was quick, he was dead in the ambulance," and she had wondered how his heart had become so tired so fast. He wasn't any older than the other fathers she knew, and he wasn't unhealthy. So what was it?

"The site and that work they put on him," she had concluded alone in her room, "all those bricks, they were too heavy, too big."

After that she had vowed two things; one; to never work a day of construction, and two; to never accept what they said she should be having.

They walked out of the park gates and onto one of the roads near Jordan. Benny gestured a hand towards the shops on the left, but she pointed right, and they headed back to Nathan Road.

"You make a fair point, Win," he said after a few seconds of silence. "Camus made the same point a long time ago, revolution was unsustainable and people will be corrupted by power and...it's a fair point to make again."

"Camus wrote a story like this already?" She let her mouth hang open after the question.

"Not really a story..."

"So, it's not the same?"

"...his story was kind of based on real life, the French and Russian revolutions."

"It wasn't a story then, it was an essay?"

"An essay, yeah, or tract, really philosophical about power and rebellion. It's not a story, but it's got the same theme as yours."

She breathed out, a slightly arrogant breath, Benny felt, as if she had already written this grand work of fiction. Not that she didn't have the ability or the determination to do it, she did, but there was something precocious, or insane, about trying to emulate a great like Camus with your first novel.

But Winnie had always been ambitious and, after her father died, the fire only burned brighter. She tried harder at school, received platitudes from the teachers, produced good exam results, and at eighteen found herself walking into the second-best University in Hong Kong. In fact, with the exception of her father's death, life had been very kind to Winnie, as not only was she smart, and not only had she become extremely pretty around seventeen, she had also never failed in her life. Everything she had tried, she had succeeded at, and as far as she was concerned that would be the measure of her.
"Never accept what they think you should be having," she would repeat to herself after every success, the photo of a solemn father tucked into her purse.

"I wanted to say that the rich aren't really that bad and they're just not in a position to really know about the poor..."

"Huh? What?" Benny hadn't caught all of it.

"...like if you don't know someone, you don't help them because they're not part of your life. If you knew them then you would help them."

Benny heard her this time.

"That's what you're gonna say in your story?"

"That's one of the points, yeah..."

"You're gonna say the rich don't deserve what they get at the end?"

"...but-...not totally, I mean, it's not that stark, it's-...they're still people..."

Benny saw the bag on her shoulder trying to creep out of sight, its body hiding behind Winnie's small frame as if suddenly aware of its wealth.

"You can't say that, I thought you knew-...why is that your point?"

They turned onto Nathan Road where there were more people moving past them, but both ignored the sudden herding. Benny kept a straight path, letting others move out of his way, while Winnie hunched herself up, her feet tracing small steps and her face pointed down trying to pick out her defence from the cracks of the pavement.

"I'm just-...I mean, I'm not saying the rich are blameless and the poor are evil, I'm saying that killing the rich people in the story is an evil act. It's a jealous act. I'm not saying the rich don't deserve some kind of punishment."

"But you're gonna make them sympathetic in your story, right? When they're executed, you want the reader to feel sorry for them. That's the bit I don't get..."

"No, but that's only part of it. I mean, I'm not going to make them completely heroic, I just want to try and say that it's wrong to kill them outright."

"But-...are you gonna kill them?"

"The rich?"

Benny nodded.

"Yes, I think so, probably."

"And you'll make it sad when they die?"

"Benny, it's just an idea, it's not-..."

"I know, but will you make it sad when they die?"

Winnie looked up and let out something between a sigh and a shot of laughter.

"I don't know..." More laughter. "How can I know that?"

"You must have some idea..."

"...I haven't even started it yet."

"You know the rest of the story, so you must know what kind of mood you're aiming for, right?"

"I don't know everything. It's an idea, that's all."

"But you think it will be sad, at the end?"

"Sad at the end..."

"Yeah."

"...yes, probably. There will be some tragedy at the end, just for you. Ok?" She tried to make it light, to make a joke out of the whole thing, but Benny wasn't laughing. He wasn't even smiling.

"Sad for all of them?"

"Benny, maybe we should change to something-..."

"No, this is interesting, really." A smile for her, fading with his next breath. "So, is it sad for all of them?" he asked again.

Winnie looked back down at the pavement, but it didn't help. There was no crack large enough to hide her.

"Winnie? You there?"

Her face stayed down as she spoke.

"Ok, in my head, at the moment, the hero will have a sad death, but-..."

"The hero..."

"...not all of them. Yeah, only him."

"But the hero, he's the conscience of the story, so that means-...that means you're making us feel sorry for rich people. You're making the hero-..."

"Not completely, just the killing part-..."

"...no, you're making the hero honorary rich, and he's apologising for them. Why? I don't get it."

"But, I'm not-...I don't understand what the problem is. He's not apologising."

"He is though. He is apologising. And you are too...you're forgiving them."

"I don't think-...why is this such a big deal?"

Benny stared down at the top of her head, surprised at how short she really was. He wasn't the tallest guy, he was around five-eleven in shoes, but she was small and the difference was definitely there.

"You wanna know what the deal is, Winnie? What he's apologising for?"

Winnie stopped speaking, raised her head from the pavement and let him give her the lecture. As he talked she looked at his face and thought that it was still attractive, with his deep brown eyes and pale lips, and she could see why she had been attracted to him, and why she had thought about sleeping with him, but he was impossible to talk to. She couldn't talk so seriously all the time and she couldn't take it if he was going to dispute everything she said. And besides, she already had five other guys interested in her, and they were all a lot easier to talk to than Benny, much easier. And there was Anthony back in England. He'd be back for the holidays soon, so she wouldn't need any of them for a while, especially not Benny...

"...they know their role, and if that shit really did happen they should know what to expect. And if they haven't done anything with their money to help the poor then you can't excuse that. Even Louis XI knew that, when he walked up to the guillotine...he understood why it was happening, he didn't complain about it. The rich ignore the poor, he knew that. They keep the money between themselves, always. And what do they need all that money for? There is no excuse for it, there isn't, none, and if you say the poor play their role, then the rich have to play their role too. If they do nothing then they get shot when things change, and there should be no pity. If they help and give back, and then they still get shot when things change then, I don't know, maybe you can show pity. But, they don't, they ignore all those on the street and just help the middle classes or "Africa", whatever they think that means, they don't even know what their money does there, so there's no excuse when they get caught because they haven't done anything. They never do anything."

He realized by the time he said 'Africa' that he was in the eye of a tirade and at the same time saw the distance forming in Winnie's face, her whole body shaping itself to turn and walk away from him. She probably won't kiss me after this, but isn't this more important, he thought? She said she had been poor, or not poor exactly, but restricted by money when she was growing up, so why did she want to write her story from the peak of their world?

"So, that's the rich is it?" she said sharply.

Benny saw the bag sneaking round to her front again, sensing that it was safe to show itself.

"That's some of it, the way it seems to me..."

"Right."

"Look Winnie, I'm sorry if I got fired up there, I think your story is good, I do..."

"Really?" Still sharp.

"Yeah, it's a good story, a good idea. I just get a little out of control when I hear the word "rich". It's like a trigger word, I guess." He tried a laugh, but she didn't smile back.

"I think I better head home."

"Now? It's only..." he checked his watch; it was only nine-thirty.

"My mum's expecting me back."

They walked back to the station and Benny kept on apologizing for losing his temper and tried to convince her that it wasn't normally in his nature even though it had always been in his nature, even before he was properly born, when life was happening around him, it had always been a first reaction of his, to fire up, and it had been carried over into his proper adult life. There had always been "trigger" words and he had been unable to shake them off. He wondered if he would ever loosen up and lose all traces of his rage and become like one of those ascetics up in the mountains, but he doubted it. It had happened too many times.

They reached the station exit and Winnie turned to face him.

"Well, see you around," she said, her eyes already leaving.

"Winnie...I'm probably gonna spend a night in Mong Kok next week, if you wanna join me for some of it?" Benny asked, trying to keep the rest of her with him.

"I'm sorry, I can't. My boyfriend comes back next week."

"It's not a big deal if-...what?"

Benny lost his thoughts for a moment as his mind repeated that word. Where-...when-...she never said-...

"I think it's a bad idea if we meet again. He might get jealous."

"Boyfriend? But-...when did you-...how long have you been with him?"

"Four years..."

"Four years?"

"Yeah, four years."

"And this is-...what's this?"

"What's what?"

"This-...this, us, now."

"We're just walking..."

"No. Not really. C'mon Winnie, what? We were sitting by that pond next to each other."

"Sitting as friends."

"You let me put my arm around you..."

"You put your arm around me. I didn't put mine around you."

"You didn't push me away. You didn't say anything."

"I thought it was sweet."

"And if I had tried to kiss you?"

"I would've told you to stop. I have a boyfriend, Benny."

Benny didn't know it but Winnie had had several boyfriends during the last four years, even when her boyfriend had been in town. He was a local Hong Kong boy but had gone to one of the London Universities for the last three years, so he had no idea what his girlfriend had been up to. In her defence, her boyfriend had been disloyal to her also, but, if it mattered to either of them, he had been disloyal fewer times than she had. All of this was irrelevant to Benny anyway as he wasn't aware of any of this information and never would be, and therefore he had no responses to give when she told him that she was a faithful girlfriend who just liked to make new friends. He had no choice but to play the child to her adult, and be humiliated as she called him things like "sweet" and "so adorably cute".

"Is it serious?" Benny asked.

"Well, I think it is," she lied. "We usually live together when he comes back here."

"You said you lived with your parents?"

"My mum, yes, but only sometimes. He has an apartment for us when he comes back. It's overlooking the harbour in Hung Hom, it's very nice..."

"He bought that-...Jesus, how old is he?"

"Same as me. His family has quite a bit of money behind them."

"What-...You've-..." Benny had no idea what he wanted to say, it was all too sudden. As in suddenly Winnie was rich and she was a different person.

"Actually I can stay in the apartment while he's back in England." Winnie smiled, stroking her bag like a pet. "I guess that makes me one of those rich people you hate, right?"

"Winnie..." Benny started, but didn't know how to finish. If he had known Winnie let her boyfriend pay twenty-thousand Hong Kong dollars for that apartment every month, and that she only used it when she wanted to sleep with one of the other guys she had met without her parents finding out, he could've finished his sentence. But he didn't know that, and never would.

"By the way, what you said about my story before, I think there's something you don't understand."

"Winnie...I understand." He was still trying to respond to everything she had said before, but she was moving on to her next line. How had it come to this, he wondered? An hour ago he had sat with his arm around her in the park, and had thought about kissing her and the time they would spend on the streets. But now she was rich, she had a boyfriend, he had money...

"No, you really don't. You think rich people should spend everything on the poor, don't you? But it doesn't make sense. If they did that then why would the poor desire to be rich?"

"What? That's not the point...you're-..."

"It is the point, Benny. You're a snob. You don't like them because they enjoy their money. And why can't they? Because you think it's unfair or unjust or whatever it is you think? Well, that's being a snob, and it's not attractive. It's not attractive at all."

"Winnie, what are you-...I'm not a-..." He couldn't answer; he was still stuck on the old words. "Wait, are you engaged to him?"

"Benny, come on. Does it matter?"

"Are you gonna marry him? Is it that serious?"

"We're in the street here..."

"Is it that serious?"

"Yes, ok? We're very serious."

Benny looked both ways as if there were a road between them that had to be crossed. All the other walkers were circling around them, perhaps aware of the drama.

"You didn't tell me any of this, Winnie. I just-...I don't get what's happening here."

"Look, I'm sorry, but I really have to go."

"When does he come back?"

"Bye, Benny."

"Wait-..."

She turned to her side, the bag clinging on to her shoulder.

"See you around sometime."

She walked off, down the steps and into the exit, with others moving into the space she had occupied seconds earlier, erasing all traces of the event.

"You're not rich, Winnie, you're a fucking whore," Benny blurted out, but she didn't hear or didn't respond as if she had heard. She kept on walking down the steps then turned out of sight, the bag being the last thing he saw.

Benny stood outside the station exit for another few minutes before deciding enough time had passed for Winnie to have left on the next train, but a few steps into the entrance he counter-decided that he didn't want to go home just yet, and turned, heading back up the few steps already taken and out along Nathan Road. The road was the longest in Hong Kong, going straight from the harbour to Prince Edward, about four stations along. If he wanted he could walk all the way, but he thought it would be better if he stayed close to where he was, so he headed back into the park and walked along the concrete path winding through.

"She was lucky," he repeated more than under his breath. There weren't many people walking the path with him so he could afford to be gregarious with himself. "She was lucky and she'll always be lucky. A lucky whore, that's what."

He thought of her face and her figure and the misguided brain that lurked, scheming, under that salon hair, and he knew that she would always be lucky. There wasn't any way she wouldn't be able to make a decent life for herself with those looks, looks that had merely developed themselves, without any assistance on her part. She didn't have to supplement anything or follow precise directions to become pretty, it had simply just happened without her.

"And she has the boyfriend, the first one with money, but they'll be more, when she gets tired of him." He spoke quietly as he passed the pond where they had sat together earlier, when he had his arm around her and was thinking about kissing her, and when he thought she had possessed some kind of social conscience akin to his own. But that was wrong, he had been wrong. Her stories were a subterfuge, a cloak just to make apparent her brains. She didn't really feel any of that. That last one she had written about the med student, he should've seen what she was then, it was obvious, blatant, right there in the text, and she had said it herself too, "At the start she's poor, but at the end she's got a middle-class view," that's what she had said, exactly that. She started poor but at the end she had changed. Yes, changed and rejected poverty and everyone else down there. She was a snake, a schemer who was set on climbing up and treading on people and only feeling a slight twinge about it. A snake in the grass. No, a snake disguised as a blade of grass amongst all the other grass, that's what she was.

"Hissss..." he made the sound of Winnie in the grass, unaware that two people had just come into the park and were walking behind him. He imagined Winnie in the grass, in a costume, an expensive costume paid for by her boyfriend no doubt, and the costume made her look like a blade of grass, a thin green strip with a straight-edged cut at the top and a small hole just below for her face to poke out of. She was in a field and she was waiting, pretending to be like all the other blades, and one of the other blades, a few blades away from her, was someone else familiar, it was Amelia. Her face was pale, but she was trying to smile...

"Amee. I need to phone you, you've gotta see me," he told himself as he left the park and walked back onto the pavement beside Nathan Road, "it's not your fault."

It wasn't her fault. Winnie had been thrown unbelievable luck whilst Amelia had been pelted with everything else. It wasn't fair, it wasn't. He wanted to believe Winnie would be punished for something, that all the things she had schemed would sway and fall back on her at some point, but he knew it wouldn't happen. There would always be boys with money chasing her and she would always be smart enough to land herself in their arms and she might even be talented enough to become a writer. There was nothing that couldn't happen for her, simply because, for the first eighteen or so years of her life she had been blessed. Nothing damaging had formed itself in front of her, had it? No, it was impossible, he could tell by the way she talked and moved and held that fucking bag on her shoulder. There was confidence there that could function in any environment she would come across. Maybe fate would put her in a war-zone or something, he thought hopefully, then she would be helpless, and that pretty face would get her put in a shack and tortured, and her precious little rouge fingernails would be ripped off and her tiny, pale white ass would be held up and-...no, that was too far. The fingernails would be enough, as long as they were ripped clean off. Could that happen now, he wondered? Life was arbitrary, but no, she was born now in Hong Kong, far away from insurgents and torturing shacks, and even if she were there, as one of those coy women with blankets wrapped around their faces, she would still elude capture because she was a schemer; she had some control over where she would end up. She would open those fox-eyes and point fingers and suggest other doors to open when they came for her, and that was the full, damning truth of the liar whore Winnie whatever her last fucking name was.

"Krist, what a thing she is..." he muttered, finally lifting his head and taking in the surroundings.

He didn't really know how but he was out of the park and back at the station exit already, so he did a full circle and looked for some place he could walk into and stay for a while. There was a shopping centre across the road, but the crossing was over another road to the side, and the man had just turned red again so he'd have to wait a few minutes to get there. It was too long to stand still and it was movement he wanted. To his right there was the mosque, which he had walked past many times, three times that night and twice with Winnie, but had never been inside, so he walked over to it and up the steps and nodded to the two guys taking their shoes off on the top step outside the entrance. He did the same and asked them if it was alright if he came in and took a look around. One of them said it was fine and told him that the prayer rooms were upstairs and there was some literature in one of the rooms up there that was in Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, English and French, and if he wanted to read some or take some home then he was free to do so. Benny thanked them and followed respectfully in through the entrance, hoping to avoid questions of what religion he belonged to, but one of the men in front didn't let him get to the stairs before asking his faith.

"I'm just curious now, open minded." They seemed pleased enough but Benny couldn't help adding more. "I used to be Christian when I was a kid, but-... [Jesus failed me, he's a fraud, Old Yahweh was a monster, he killed, never reformed, traumatized poor Abe, let Winnie get rich, threw Amelia into the shit! Isn't it all a little unjust?] I'm not anymore."

"Ah, it's interesting. Perhaps after you look around, you might have some question. We will be happy to talk with you."

"Thanks, I'll try and think of some."

They smiled and said nothing more so he nodded once to them and walked up the stairs to the side and ascended to the first floor and into what he first thought was a prayer room, but then he saw books on shelves and realized that the room was too small to be a prayer room. He picked up one of the books, it was in Arabic, and looked through it quickly. This was a strange religion, he surmised without understanding anything he read, didn't they worship a prophet who married a nine year old girl? Didn't he have visions when he wanted something, like a kid crying for a new toy? Joseph had told him that, a few months ago. It was probably true too. Joseph had studied all the religions before he settled on becoming a Christian. He wondered if Joseph had been there before him. He should tell him about it and bring him over before he left on his trip. That damn trip of his, why was he doing that? What part of his child years had created that urge inside of him to go to a huge-...the hugest, most desolate country in the world and ride a fucking tandem across it? And with those wolves and tigers there, covered in loose snow and creeping out of the scenery...they'd rip him to pieces if he wasn't careful. Even if he was careful, there might be two or three of them, and then what would he do? Life just made it impossible for you sometimes.

He put the book down and looked at the rest of the shelf. He saw some with English on the side but didn't feel like reading any of them. It would be better to just sit somewhere and think for a while.

There was another door in the room which led somewhere else on the floor, but Benny ignored it and went back to the stairs instead. He went up to the second floor, the top floor, and walked into a larger room, where one or two guys were sitting down for what he assumed was prayer. He had thought, or Joseph had told him once, they all prayed together at the same time, but here there were only two of them. He sat down a distance away from them and faced the window that looked down onto the street outside. They were so different out there; none of them ever came in here and saw all this. It was a different world, trapped next to the continuous noise of Tsim Sha Tsui, and he wondered if he was intruding himself. Probably, there weren't any other white faces he could see, but they had let him in. Perhaps only to tempt him, to sit in a circle and tell him their side of the truth, but they had still let him in.

He placed his hands behind him, the palms flat on the carpet.

This wasn't an intrusion, it was just a moment of peace they had given him. And sitting in their circle wouldn't change anything, no matter how tight it was. There's this truth, and the reality of this, and this guy once flew off on a winged horse, isn't that incredible? They could say anything, but it wouldn't change him; it just wasn't possible. The way he had been shaped before he was born, all the experiences that had been put before him had made him resistant to all of this. Even Joseph had recognized this in him, that's why he had never talked persuasively about his own beliefs. It would be a waste of words.

"I would've been polite enough to listen though," he muttered, amused by his own thoughts. The room was quiet, but the other two guys were too far away to hear him. "But then...if I had grown up a Muslim."

His family would've inculcated him with all the literature, the Qu'ran, the other one with all the war-mongering verses in it, he couldn't remember the name. He would've believed it too, unless there had been a counter-point to it somewhere. Some of them had that, he reasoned, friends or, what was it...aposite? An aposite family member or something, that's why they broke away from it when they were older. But if he had been put into a proper Muslim environment, he would've been Muslim indefinitely. If you're raised by penguins, you become a penguin, right?

Krist, a penguin, he thought, and tried to recall what sound they made. All he could think of was a seal, but it wasn't the same...

A penguin, nothing but ice and fish...was he lucky then? Wouldn't I have been happy anyway, even if it had happened, he wondered? I wouldn't have suspected anything, I guess. And I wouldn't have been a writer. Or I would've been a very bad one, he laughed. Thank Allah for putting me elsewhere.

He looked up at the ceiling, keeping the action simple. "Thank you," he whispered almost without sound.

The two guys got up and walked out of the room, leaving him alone. He looked at the room around him. It was huge and the design was grand, but there was no wealth to it. It wasn't extravagant, it was just grand. The walls were bare, with the exception of gold lines running along the edges of the wall, and the pillars were simple. There were no opulent arches or golden statues. "At least you're not exclusive," he congratulated the room. "If the poor did rise up, I think you'd be spared."

He took a few more moments to take in the room then he got up and went to the window. On the street below, outside the entrance, there was a man with his face down on the pavement. He had no arms and stumps for legs, and Benny assumed he was asking for money, although he couldn't see any container for him to keep it in. The people walked by, with the occasional hand reaching into a pocket and throwing coins down into his lap. That isn't going to be enough, Benny thought. Not coins...

A girl walked past, tall and with the same hairstyle as Amelia, and gave nothing to the man with no arms. Was it Amelia? He followed her towards the station entrance until he caught a glimpse of her face and saw that it wasn't her. What about Amelia though? Where was she now? A cemetery flashed into his thoughts, and a headstone with a girl that looked like Amelia buried on top of the ground, face down like a wretch...

"It's not her fault," he repeated five times to no one. "It's not."

He knew what she was doing right now. She would be at a party with those friends and she'd be-...she'd be making herself unhappy again, and they wouldn't be trying to stop her, not like he would, if he were there. If she'd pick up her phone and let him help her. But it wasn't her fault, they were preying on her. And it had never been her fault; she had just had the worst luck, the luck that Winnie had never been given at any point in her blessed little fantasy life. And it was funny too, almost funny, he thought, because Winnie wasn't that much prettier than Amelia. Well, she was a little, but not much, both had been lucky in that respect. But it was different with Amelia, her luck had been redressed, as if someone really was up there, regulating it all and deciding who got what, and seeing Amelia and reasoning that she had been given the looks so what she needed was something thrown in her way to pull her back and disjoint her. It seemed to Benny like that was exactly what had happened, because it wasn't fair. Other people had been given looks and they had chosen to take a bad path, or they had been given looks and grown up unaffected by anything, with perfect parents, within a perfect environment and that wasn't fair, not when you thought about what had happened to Amelia. And not when you thought about what hadn't happened to Winnie. That's the kicker, thought Benny, what hasn't happened to Winnie.

He looked down at the man with no arms and saw that no one was giving him coins anymore. He fumbled in his own pocket and pulled out a twenty note. It wasn't much, but it was all he could spare. He left the prayer room and went back down to the ground floor and said thank you to the guy behind the desk, a different guy to the one he had spoken to before, and went back onto the street and stood next to the man with no arms who still had his face down on the pavement. He played with the twenty note in his hand and thought about what the man would do with it, picturing noodles, beer, cigarettes, but that didn't matter, it would be his twenty then so he could do what he liked with it.

"Here you go, friend." He placed it down, acting a little theatrically as he bent over before the man, and then tried to look into the man's eyes, but his face remained on the concrete. "I haven't forgotten you, I swear. And this..." he shook the twenty in his hand, "this is only the start. It's all I can give now, but it's only the start."

He got up after the man continued not to look up at him and walked slowly away, back to the exit. That wasn't all I could give, he thought, and he pictured the two one-hundred notes in his wallet and the other hundreds placed safely in his bank account. Every dollar you spend on luxury, every coffee or cocktail you buy, is money that should be going to them, he told himself. But I can't do that, he protested, not yet.

He walked to the station entrance and took the steps two, then three at a time, hitting the bottom and almost running to the escalator. As he went he sang to himself, a song he had just invented, "Amelia, Amelia...she's dying in the grass, help her, help her."

On the platform he waited for the train to take him home, keeping the words in his head, his new slogan, his new heart:

"Amelia, Amelia...she's dying in the grass, help her, help her. Amelia, Amelia, she's dy-...help her, reach down, pick her up...fucking help her, Benny."

There was no noise in the corridor when he got back home that night. Usually when he came in there were tiles hitting the board in the apartment two doors down, and in the place next to his there was the volume of Cantonese TV, always the opening beeps of the news which seemed to wait until he arrived back before playing, and on the other side of the floor there was the man or woman, he had never seen who it was, rehearsing the piano for, he didn't know what for exactly, but he assumed it was at least semi-professional as the melody was often classical and well performed. These noises had become part of his life in the last year, but for the last week or so something had changed. All the noises, not just one, had ceased to exist. He had thought about asking the guard downstairs if everyone on the floor had moved out or if there was some kind of emergency they had forgotten to inform him of, but instead he had assumed that everyone had just adjusted their routines a little, or a couple of them had gone on vacation at the same time. Things like that did happen, although there was something eerie about walking onto his floor and hearing nothing alive around him.

He opened his door and walked over to his sofa without even turning on the lights. He saw the computer waiting on the desk in front of him but didn't turn it on. The remote for the TV was on the table in front of him, but he didn't want the background sound either. Instead, he sat there for about twenty minutes, looking out of the window at the estate around him with all the other apartments seemingly lit and occupied, and ran through everything one more time.

"Amelia, Amelia...she's dying in the grass, help her, help her..." he mumbled every once in a while.

After what must've been around twenty minutes of looking at different windows on the estate outside he reached over to his laptop, which had been sitting there since the morning, and loaded it up. He would check his e-mail first then he'd write.

The computer came on, and he checked his e-mails and found a rejection letter from another magazine. He had sent them one of his shortest stories as they had claimed a strict word limit, and now they had written back, telling him that his story was 'well written at times, but ultimately too uneven to warrant publication in our magazine at this time'. Krist, that again. What does it actually mean, he thought? At another time it might be acceptable? Next month, if he resent it, it would suddenly lose its unevenness and be acceptable to them? He left his computer on but turned away from it.

"You can't write, you're no good," that's what they were saying. He was uneven and would always be uneven, and it couldn't ever be eradicated because he didn't even know which parts were uneven. "What am I supposed to change, for fucks sake?!" he shouted around the apartment, not caring if anyone did hear.

"Amelia, Amelia...she's dying in the grass, help her, help her," he heard himself say. "But Krist, Amee, I'm not good enough, they said-...they said I'm no good."

He got up and turned on the lights then sat back down, his movements agitated.

"Not good enough, not good enough. Uneven, imbalanced, and not fucking good enough."

He turned on the TV and the news came on, something about a press conference and more protests over Tibet and whether or not China had killed a load of people there fifty years ago. He wasn't really listening though, because he still wasn't good enough, not fucking good enough to save her from-...from what? What can actually happen if I-...if I went and-...

He noticed the pictures on the TV. There were Tibetans talking to the reporter about something, and the last one they showed looked mad, beyond mad...his face was sweating he was so mad...Krist, he-...is he even Tibetan? Benny wondered, his eyes a little wider now. He looked Pakistani more than Tibetan, or Bengali maybe...and what was he so mad about? If it was Tibet, if he really was Tibetan then it was Mao, wasn't it? Or China, Mao and China and the other one that came after...what was his name...Depong? DeJong?

The report finished and the news changed to the weather, but the Tibetan man stayed in Benny's head.

"Krist, he was mad," Benny repeated back to the weathergirl. "He was climbing the fucking wall, what-...was it his family then? Did they kill his family?"

He traced the outline of the south coast of China on the TV weather map and imagined the story he would write if he were Tibetan and his family had been killed by Mao. It would be something to write about, if he had that anger, that man's anger, but what if he wrote it and sent it in and they came back and told him it was too uneven to warrant publication.

"Uneven, uneven, imbalanced...simply not fucking good enough." He brought his fist down on the arm of the couch, then held his hand out and examined it for marks.

On the TV, the weather finished and the news anchor wished everyone a good weekend then someone turned out the lights and he faded into the black of the studio.

Benny saw the computer on the desk, still active.

"Amelia, Amelia...she's dying in the grass, help her, help her." He sat forward and shook the non-existent injury off his hand. "Amee, Amee..."

What kind of mess would she be in by now, he wondered? She would probably be at one of those parties while he was here, fuming at the walls and the TV like a fucking child. How could he help her? Honestly, how could he really help her? He had never taken that junk, he didn't know what it felt like, he didn't wake up every morning and think to himself whether or not he would be able to phone his best friend for some fucking help. It was an alien life to him, he didn't know it, and she knew he didn't know it, she knew he couldn't help, not really, not unless he knew about it. Not unless she told him about it. She had already told him some, but she would have to tell him more, she'd have to tell him a lot fucking more...

He lay still for a minute thinking, staring at the TV screen across the room but not listening to a word.

"If she told me about it all, I could-..."he spoke calmly to himself now. "I could write for her, couldn't I?"

A commercial came on, a small park with a woman sitting down on a bench and a green cloud coming out of her skirt. Her face turned red, too red...possibly a special effect. He watched it, confused.

The woman went back to an impossibly white bathroom, took a can of something and sprayed under the skirt and on her thighs.

"Her muff is sweating? What?" he asked the sofa.

The bathroom faded and the park returned, and she wasn't embarrassed anymore. She sat down on the same bench and flowers appeared from between her legs.

Then it finished. Buy 'Ultraflush', it told him.

He picked up the remote and turned the screen off.

"Amee, Amee...Can I write it? Krist, can I?" he muttered.

"I've got most of it mapped out, just need the stories now..."

Benny talked to the arm of Joseph's chair, while his friend typed on his computer, half-listening. There was plenty of background noise around them in the same coffee shop they always went to, and all the faces seemed contented. Even the chairs and tables seemed contented. They had it pretty good in there, after all. There wouldn't be any insects climbing up their legs, no drool or muck from the beggars corrupting their surfaces, and if drinks were spilt, at least they would be fine, quality drinks.

Benny moved his body over his own chair and leaned over to see what Joseph was writing. It's probably the skeleton story again, he thought.

"Have you finished it yet?" he asked.

"No, this is a different one, man." Joseph looked up from his words. "This is new."

"What happened to the skeletons?"

"I finished that a month ago. I thought I told you...didn't I? Yeah, anyway, that one's pretty much done..."

"That was fast..."

"...I sent it to a few agents too."

"You've sent it out already? How?"

"It wasn't that hard, man. I was kinda surprised about it, but-...I guess it's good, I've had six replies so far, and two of them said they wanted to see the whole manuscript."

"What?"

"Sorry, man, I thought I told you about this."

Benny shook his head, astounded. How has this happened, he wondered? And two of them want to see the whole thing. A story about underground skeletons, and desperately overwritten. Krist, these are the people I have to attract...

"Yeah, it's looking good. That's why I'm starting another one."

...and what genre was his one anyway? A skeleton book was fantasy, ridiculous fantasy, and it would find its way to a ridiculous fantasy agent, but his one; what was it? Poverty fiction?

"It's about a guy who tries to blow up Australia. It's pretty dark, I guess. But it's a comedy too."

Benny nodded, still shocked, still unsure how his friend had found two agents, still trying to place himself within literature.

"Have you nearly finished this one too?"

Joseph laughed, both arms resting on the side cushions of his chair.

"I'm just writing a few pages before I leave. I won't finish it."

"Before you leave-...what?"

"Yeah, before the trip."

"Hang on, what? When are you leaving? You said two months right?"

"No, man, it's in two weeks. We booked the tickets a few days ago."

"Two weeks? Krist, Joey..."

"I've told you the last few times when I was going. Don't you remember?"

Benny was sure he didn't have that memory, but checked back anyway. He could remember meeting him in Sai Kung and going into the national park, he remembered that, it was a few weeks ago...they had gotten lost in the trees and Benny had told him about the mainlanders who hid there illegally, and he had wandered further into the trees hoping to find them...and Joseph had followed, asking him if they were dangerous, and Benny had said they were, but it didn't matter, they were poor and they wouldn't touch them because-...something about class spirit, and-...and then they had gone even further and found the path again, and then the road, and-...and Joseph had been telling him something as they were walking, perhaps about this trip, but in his memory the sound was off, he couldn't hear a word.

"You probably did, I just forgot, I guess. Two weeks..."

"It's not long. I doubt I'll get any more word back on the skeleton novel before I leave, but they can contact me when I'm on the road, it shouldn't make a difference, not much."

"You're gonna get published, and you're leaving in two weeks. I can't believe it."

"Yeah, it's starting to seem real."

"You still feel ok about it all?"

"Yeah, I think so, man. I'm not really scared, or I'm excited more than scared."

"You're ready for this?"

"I think-...yeah."

"Caroline's ready too? She's been riding the bike to get in shape?"

"She's ready, man. We're both ready."

Joseph looked at his screen and distracted himself by picking out words, but in his mind he was checking off a list of preparations that they had to do before they left. He knew he was ready. He had been out on the bike four times a week for the last few months, and he had organized all the visa documents for Russia and the Ukraine and all the official stuff, but what about Caroline? She hadn't been on the bike for a while. She had told him she would work right up until they left because they needed money for after the trip, when they were back in Australia. Would she be alright for Russia? He would be at the front of the bike and could supply most of the effort, but she would have to do some. Would she be fit enough? If something happened to her, on the road between towns, and those roads were long between the towns out there, then what would he do?

"Has she been riding every week?"

"Yeah, always. She's on the bike with me three times a week," Joseph lied.

To make things worse Joseph had attempted to make their trip even more special by writing to travel websites and asking them for sponsorship, his sell being that they would be going for the world record for a couple cycling around the world on a tandem. He hadn't thought this would be a problem as he was pretty fast on a bike and had been riding most of his life, but Caroline hadn't. The target he had set for them was four months, which meant they would have to cycle around two-hundred and fifty kilometres a day, which wouldn't be so much if he were on his own, but with Caroline there too, and if she got injured along the way, then...

"Well, if you're sure you're ready then good luck, Joey, really."

"We're ready. Thanks, man."

Benny looked at his friend's face above the laptop and wondered for the first time about the scale of the trip he was about to take. The two of them weren't so different, not by much, just cosmetic things he had thought, but here his friend was, about to cycle across the world with seemingly no fear or restraint. Benny had always prided himself on being fearless, but was he really? He talked about a lot of things, he was aware he did that, but did he actually do anything he talked about? There was the novel he had told everyone about, and he hadn't written it, and there was the short film, that hadn't been edited yet, and...there were more things, he was sure of it.

"But-...I heard there are wolves in Russia, right? Far out on the east side, near Siberia, or something."

"There are, but-..."

"What if you get attacked?"

"We probably won't, it'll-..."

"Have you got anything to fight them with?"

"No, man, not yet."

"Joey..."

Maybe he wasn't completely fearless, but the novel he had talked about, he was still going to write it. It wasn't a failure that he hadn't written anything yet. He still had to get the experiences for it, and...and he had been distracted by the Amelia story, that was the one he had to focus on now, for her sake, and the only reason he wasn't writing it right now was because he didn't have her stories yet and she wouldn't answer his calls, but when she did, then he could write it, then he would write it, without delay.

"I did think of that though, if there are wolves. There probably won't be, but if there are-...there was this website I found that sells this kind of pen, it's like a stun gun, but in the form of a pen."

"A stun pen?"

"Yeah man, kind of. I don't know, they say it just knocks them out for about five minutes. If it touches any part of their body and you click it at the right time, it knocks them out cold. Wolf, or humans too, I think, if someone tries to steal the bike or our money."

"You're gonna fight a wolf with a pen?"

And the short film thing, that wasn't a failure either. He had been fearless enough to film it in the first place. He had written the script and had organized everything, so that showed he had something about him. It wasn't finished yet, that was true enough, but that wasn't his fault either as there was no one he had met that could edit it for him. He had gone to the University that one time a few months back, but they wouldn't do it for free, and they were kind of bland so his charms hadn't worked, which wasn't his fault. That wasn't something he could've foreseen, was it? Basically, the only thing that had failed him was other people. They just didn't have the same drive as him, although there must've been people out there that did; he just hadn't found them yet. That was the reason for it all. He was just as fearless as Joseph, he just had different ideas that was all. If he wanted to cycle around the world, if he really set his heart on it, he knew he could.

"No, I think, only if it attacks, then I'll have to. The only thing I'm worried about is if the pen doesn't work."

"Yeah, exactly."

"Man, if it doesn't work and the wolf is there..."

"...and you hold up a pen...."

"I don't know, man. What would I do? Maybe take the bike and ride into it."

"...or sign its fur. Assuming the pen has ink."

Joseph laughed into his water, Benny laughed out around them.

"I haven't bought it yet. I'm still thinking about it..."

"Buy a gun, Joey. Buy a rifle, seriously."

The sign for the methadone clinic was a lot smaller than he had expected.

The word 'clinic' was written in green, with black Cantonese symbols placed below it, but it was all tiny. And the sign-board itself, that wasn't much bigger than a letterbox.

"What are they embarrassed for, huh?" Benny asked, standing under the elevated walkway opposite the clinic entrance. A few yards away from him were men in vests and long pants, most of them old, but one or two young and strong, with tattoos of snakes and daggers on their arms. It was a strange mix, but not jarring; there were groups like this all over Wan Chai.

Benny drank from his bottle of water and took out a tissue to wipe his face. He had just been walking around Central, but it seemed hotter here. Hotter than Lam Tin, and Tsim Sha Tsui. Hotter than the beach out at Shek-O.

The tissue in his hand took off most of the sweat, but as soon as it was down his face grew damp again.

Krist, where was this heat coming from? The buildings weren't that much closer together than the ones in Kowloon, and there were fans up on the wall. There was a fan on the clinic wall nearby, some of its wind blowing into him, but it didn't make any difference. He ran the tissue across his face again and moved a couple of steps to the side to feel more of the wind.

One of the old men in vests got up from the ground and walked over to the clinic entrance.

"No fucking way..." Benny muttered, watching the man disappear inside.

The other men carried on talking amongst themselves. Two policemen walked past and looked at them, didn't say anything and kept on walking towards the main road.

The old man came back out of the clinic talking to another guy, a younger guy in a trashed Dinosaur Jr. t- shirt and flip-flops, who looked tired, really fucking tired. They walked together towards the main road, towards the police, before the old man put a hand on the Dinosaur Jr. t-shirt and whispered something in his ear, and the young guy listened with his eyes still looking at the main road, but he didn't move that way, he came back, with the old man releasing his hand and seemingly leading him under the walkway on an invisible leash. The young man hovered at the edge of the group of vest men while the old man talked to one of the younger guys and took something out of his hand, which was then passed on to the young, tired man, who took it and swapped something back into the same hand, and then he was gone, walking quickly to the main road, his head dropping down and staring at the concrete.

Benny watched the young man cross the road and then turned his head to the stairs leading up to the walkway and watched the group of vest men from the side of his eye. They were dealers, weren't they? Amelia had told him about them, how they waited outside for meth users and sold to them, but she never told him they went inside. That wasn't-...that wasn't fair, not on her.

He pulled out his phone and lit up the screen. It was empty, no one had called.

She wasn't coming here alone, was she? Not with them around. He looked at the arms of the younger guys, the ones with the tattoos, and could see that they had some muscle behind them. The triceps were tight at the back, the bicep wasn't huge, but there was that line just below the shoulder, the one that split the shoulder muscle from the upper arm. They were probably stronger than him, and there were three of them, and-...and even if they weren't there, one of those old men would have a knife or a hammer or something. They were seasoned, they had been young once. They wouldn't be standing there with nothing.

"Amee...call me...call me, come on," he mumbled into his arm as he wiped more sweat off his face.

Another person came out of the clinic, a woman...tall, black hair...

The fan above the entrance blew the fringe over her face and Benny had to wait until she brushed it back to see that it wasn't Amelia.

One of other men in the group detached himself and went over to talk to her.

It wasn't her, but it looked like her, a lot like her...

Benny stepped forward, putting his phone in his pocket and taking out his keys. He gripped one between his middle knuckles and walked over to the wall of the shop next to the clinic, watching them...watching him...that scrawny, old fuck...

The old man put his hand on her waist and whispered into her ear, and she stopped, looking forward at the main road, and then back at the group waiting under the walkway. She didn't try to move the man's hand as it snaked round to her stomach and started to pull her back...

Benny edged along the side of the wall, his key ready...he was only a few yards away...but what was he gonna do? Stab him? He didn't think he could, and the others, the young guys with that muscle line, they would rip him to pieces...but Amee...it was almost her, the height, the short black hair...

The old man leaned away from her and said something louder in Cantonese. He started to walk back to the group, beckoning her to follow.

He said something else.

She shook her head and turned away, and walked quickly to the main road. The old man took a step forward to pursue, but she was too fast, and the green man had come up. She walked across without looking back.

"Barrgghhhh," the old man shouted at her back, and then something else, something worse.

Benny put the straw into the drink he had never heard of before and re-acted a second and a half too late as the straw bobbed back up and out of the glass, his hand going too high to intercept it, and fell onto the edge of the table before slipping down to the floor of the bar. He looked down at the primary red remains and kicked it further under the table where no one would see it until after hours. The floor looks clean enough to take care of it, he thought. The whole bar looks clean enough to lick, he thought further as his eyes took in the place that Captain swore they had been to before but had absented itself from his memory.

On the other side of the table Captain was talking:

"They don't get it here. It's always about the long ball and trapping it and then doing some silly fucking swivel before they lose it. They don't look up, and they're not sharp either, they take an age to pass. It's a different game here, mate."

Apparently, as told by Captain, they had all come here on one of the public holidays last year. The two of them, who were the only ones left now, Michelle, who hadn't contacted either of them since she had started her new job, Avon, who had disappeared completely into the fourteenth floor of his insurance company's building, and Amelia, who had only come that night because her other friends were busy and she knew he would keep her from scoring.

Benny left the fallen straw and pushed himself back up onto his seat. He was sitting on a high stool that put him way above the table in front and, despite not being the shortest guy, made it awkward for his feet to touch the ground, so he left them hovering. Captain was standing and looked small, his elbow reaching a little to lean itself on the surface.

"I only played once, it was on concrete..." Benny started, knowing Captain would take over before he had a chance to finish.

"It's all like that. Every surface is hard, mate, the ball bounces up to your waist every time and when you're running with it, it's even worse, it sticks to the ground. You can't move it unless you pull it really hard. You basically have to scrape it off the fucking ground. And the guys here are wankers to play with, wankers, mate."

The last time they had been here they had been rooted to the same section of the bar all night due to the dense crowd, or so Captain said. Nothing had really happened that night, only one real incident, but it didn't amount to much. Captain had noticed a girl at the bar and had tried to move closer to her, but in the process he had bumped into her friend and knocked the cocktail out of her hand. He had apologized but it hadn't helped. Both of them had left soon after and that was what he still remembered. The rest of the night had simply passed without drama.

Benny tried to recall his own memory of that night. He could picture a bar that resembled the shape of the one they were in now, but the colours were different. In his picture, it was red and orange and it was warm, with lots of bodies mixing and moving around each other, whereas the bar they were in now was colder, with only a few other bodies, and all of them keeping to themselves, and instead of reds and oranges he saw blues and greys, and the walls and surfaces all seemed to be turning into a monochrome hue, making him an astronaut without a suit on one of those cinematic space ships the military might actually make one day, in a couple hundred years. I'm not in deep space though, he reminded himself while Captain raised his voice to talk over the four suits who had sat down at the next table, I can get up and walk around outside and see people, and if I wanted I could even find Michelle and Avon, if I really wanted to.

"...my foot was about knee height but it wasn't doing anything, and the guy moved out of the way, but the keeper comes out, even though the other guy hasn't said a word, and he starts shouting at me, calling me a twat in Cantonese and I just say 'what's that, mate?' and stare at him, and he goes mad, he starts trying to get at me, but his mates are all holding him back and he's saying in English "come on then", he keeps saying it, the way locals repeat phrases in English as if they're fucking fluent. That pisses me off too, but I didn't really care this time. Back home I would've lamped him, but here, fuck it, I just turned my back on him. See, they're posers here, mate, back home they wouldn't survive a day, they wouldn't even dare walk down the street."

The conversation started to drift over from the next table.

"He didn't plan it. He just got up and winged it again."

"Yeah, hello power-point and absolutely no detail..."

"He did it last time too, right?"

"Last time, Jesus-...yeah, it was last week, wasn't it? I remember...did you hear about this, Pres? No? It was ridiculous, we were all sitting there...and Keith, he comes in ten minutes late and-...kinda, y'know, fiddles with his tie, and-...he doesn't even apologise, just sits down. I mean, it's a joke, isn't it? As if he's-..."

"Just sits down? Doesn't even say sorry? No? Dear God, that kind of attitude...someone needs to have a word with him. We all know that, right? We've all seen it, I've seen it. And I'm not even joking, I can give you a list, all the ways this is going to harm the company: It's unprofessional, it's making the company look amateurish, it's gonna hit shares."

"Jesus, you think so? Is it that bad?"

"It's that bad, seriously, and it's gonna hit shares, Tony said it himself last week, after the meeting."

Benny and Captain glanced over at the table and saw the four of them sitting almost straight on their stools, all dressed up, the table respectfully still with their elbows resting on it.

"They're all wankers here, mate," repeated Captain, his face contorted with disgust as he watched the men with more money than him slowly become more relaxed.

Benny looked around the rest of the bar and saw more suits. It was their bar, and their environment. When people like him came here, straws were dropped. He tried to imagine one of the homeless figures he had seen, sitting at one of these tables, on one of these stools, but it just didn't fit. The stools would sense wrongness and topple themselves and force them off, like straws, and the tables would refuse their elbows.

"There's a meeting on Tuesday...it's going to-..." one of the suits started, but was overpowered by the music around the bar becoming louder.

Benny left the suits and listened to the song. The voice was saying something about Hell and flying away, and Benny recognized it. The singer, he couldn't remember the name, but he was dead, he had drowned at sea. He played what he thought were the right lyrics back in his head: "There's no ladder from Hell...no time now for the soul to fly me away...is it my time coming soon...I'm not afrai-ai-d, afraid to die."

"Good song..." Benny said to Captain.

"Jeff Buckley, mate." He was still looking at the four suits. "Better than this place deserves."

"Buckley, that's it. Didn't he drown?"

Captain finished his drink quickly and nodded at Benny.

"Let's go, mate."

Benny shrugged and they slipped off the stools and left the bar, walking down the road and down some steps until they were at the top of the main hill of Lan Kwai. Across the road they saw tall, well-dressed people waiting outside one of the more exclusive clubs in the area, all of them with their faces screwed up and inconvenienced and practicing for the moment when the security would question their worthiness to enter such a place. Not all of them could get in, and most of them weren't beautiful enough to be seen in there, but they had money to compensate for that and it would be enough. Benny followed behind Captain, dodging the same bodies as him, wondering if he was like any of these people. Would he wait for a club like that? He had heard that one drink was close to a hundred and fifty, which was ludicrous if it were true. That kind of money spent just to have a bit of fun, while people were bedding down under highway overpasses for the night. He felt the bile coming up, the invisible bile that almost brought tears to his eyes with its-...

"Down here, mate." Captain turned a tight corner and Benny followed him down the hill towards even larger crowds.

They looked inside a few bars on the main strip, but all were crowded with suits and decorated people, so they went to the conveni and bought a few cans of cheaper stuff and walked up to one of the little parks which sat around Lan Kwai Fong and held the lesser ones like students and teachers and artists, and sometimes tramps.

The park was small and only had three benches. There were some steps leading down to the public toilets and a new club, which meant there was a constant flow of people moving through the park, but the club didn't interest Benny.

As they sat down on the bench furthest from the entrance, two police officers entered the park and stopped by the two possible artists on the first bench. It looked like they might have something on them as the police weren't moving. They checked the cards and asked a few questions then scanned over the other two benches, pausing briefly on Benny and Captain. There was something they didn't like about one of them. It's not me, is it? Benny wondered, not really too concerned if it was. He looked to his right and saw Captain staring back at them, challenging them with his tight, shrunken mouth. It's fucking Captain, what is he doing?

The officers conferred with each other but didn't move any further into the park. A minute later, they were gone.

"It's like the fucking military here, mate," Captain said to the whole park. The two guys on the first bench shook their heads in agreement but didn't come over. "Fucking police state," he muttered only to Benny then went back to his beer and continued onto a new thread.

They opened the first cans and Benny waited for a chance to tell Captain about his story idea for Amelia, but the chance didn't come for a long time as his friend was concerned about something else, a piece of luck which his Dad, who lived back in England, had told him about a few days earlier. There was a law in Hong Kong that gave sons of village residents in the outer territories like Tai Po and Sai Kung free land to use any way they wished, and the only stipulation, as Captain told it, was that each son had to prove that he was a resident of over ten years. This should've ruled him out as he had only been in his village for a year and a half, but his uncle had been able to cut through the usually firm red tape and get him the land without the hassle of sitting on the ten year waiting list. As Captain said over and over, "It's the most amazing piece of luck that my family has ever had." Nothing like this had ever happened to them, apparently, and it meant that he would be financially secure for the rest of his life. "This sorts out my future, mate," he said with a muted face. Benny caught that face and knew exactly what it meant.

Two empty cans lay under the bench they were sitting on and four full ones stood straight, waiting to be opened. Benny had been listening to his friend for over an hour and was getting more and more desperate to tell him his own news about Amelia. But whenever there was a gap in the conversation, and Captain drank from his can and looked around at the other faces in the park, Benny remembered how critical his friend was when it came to his ideas, and it was this thought that gagged him, striking a nail into his tongue and pinning it to the floor of his mouth.

"I don't know, mate, what do you think about this free land thing? I don't know if it's good for me or not. It'll help me and give me some more money in the bank, but I'll be stuck here, won't I? I won't be able to go back home, not if I wanna keep the land."

There was a space for one other body on their bench and Benny put Michelle there and sent Captain off home, and then explained his idea to her, remembering that she was always receptive to his ideas, even if they were just a bud and had yet to sprout and were hopelessly underdeveloped, she would still listen and pick out the positives.

"I guess I could stay here though, if I get a good job. If I meet some decent people...I think there must be some, right? Not that you're not decent, I don't mean it like that, mate, you know that. You're probably my best friend here. If you go, I'm fucked. I mean that. Avon said it before he disappeared too, and he read it straight, totally dead on, he said if you went, I'd be lost. Well, he's right, mate, you're like me, you're from back home, you understand me."

"Yeah, we're similar, I guess. You don't meet many people like us here, it's hard."

Benny was half-aware of what Captain was saying and kept it going with platitudes he must've picked up from some programme or film somewhere. They weren't that similar though. His friend didn't listen, Benny did. His friend criticized every idea he had, Benny never did. Should I tell him my idea, he asked himself again. I wish Michelle were here, she'd listen. My little cheerleader. My side-kick. He thought about her a little longer while Captain used up all his energy and finally, after what seemed like an hour, sank back into the bench, spent.

The two police officers from earlier appeared and stood by the park entrance. Captain didn't notice, Benny did, but decided not to worry about them until they actually came over and said something.

"You remember Amelia?"

Captain nodded and made some kind of confirmatory sound.

"I'm gonna write her story, if she'll-..."

"The druggie waster?"

"...let me, if I can-...what?"

"She's on crack, isn't she?"

"How did you-...did I tell you?"

Benny couldn't remember telling him exactly, but he had, a few weeks earlier, when they had been drinking cheaply in a different park. Captain had said then that he had known she was hooked on something; he just hadn't been sure which drug it was.

"Nah, mate, I guessed ages ago. I can tell, I've seen that type before."

"You guessed? Shit...I didn't realise."

"I had a friend when I was just going into Uni, he was on it. He died in his bedroom. That's how I can tell."

Despite the authority in his voice and the solemnity of his face, Captain couldn't tell at all and was stealing another story from someone he had semi-known back when he was fourteen or fifteen; he couldn't remember exactly who he was stealing from, but he was aware it wasn't his story. This was something he had been doing a lot since he had come to Hong Kong and, although he felt bad about starting all his friendships here with lies, he reasoned that it was safe to do so as no one here was connected to his life back home, and if it was safe to do it then why not continue? Someone might question him eventually, but he doubted it, unless they really did confront him. But they won't, he coached himself, they don't even suspect. And it's not like I lie about everything, only ten, maybe fifteen percent of things. It's not that big a deal.

"Well, she's had a rough time and if I can, I'm gonna write about it," Benny said.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, mate."

"Write about her? Why not?"

Captain drank from his can and searched for something around the park. The two police officers looked back at the same time he found them.

"Fucking hell..."

"What?"

"It's the SS in blue."

"Forget them, just keep talking."

"They're gonna come over, mate. I fucking know it. They're after us..."

"What were you saying before?"

"Mate...this is a hustle."

"Cap, are you listening? What were you saying before, about Amelia?"

He kept his eyes on the officers.

"Her? About you writing for her? Mate, that's obvious. Her stories aren't big enough for fiction."

"Ok, I think you're wrong, but go on."

"I'm not wrong. This is the truth of it." The police officers followed a group of young girls into the park. Captain rolled his left hand into a ball. "She's a rich kid and she's an English teacher. Her Dad's loaded and she takes a lot of it, that's what I heard, so she's got money and she just shoots up, right? She doesn't deal or get really deep into the dealing part of it, does she? Therefore, what have you got? There's no story there, mate, nothing sympathetic. And the rest of it...it won't be dramatic enough, it'll just be a rich kid shooting up and no one will give a shit. It's gotta be more dramatic than that, more drama and incident."

The people on the first bench gave their ID to the police for the second time. Captain relaxed his fist and looked back at Benny.

"My friend back home, he had a story. He died from it, mate."

The dead friend was actually a kid from school who had been good friends with a friend of one of Captain's classmates, which is where Captain had first heard about him. He had only remembered a few details at the time, but after reaching University, and over the years that followed, he embellished the story with pieces he had seen or read elsewhere, and claimed it as his own. In his version the friend was in his inner circle, and the aftermath of his death had derailed his life. The worst part, he would often tell new faces in the student union, was that, "I went round his house to see him just an hour, one hour after it had happened. It was practically me that found him." Sometimes it was him who had found the body in the bedroom, sometimes he toned it down a little and made it the friend's Mum while he was waiting in the living room downstairs.

"I'll see what stories I can get out of her then I'll make a story out of it."

"There isn't gonna be a story there, mate, honestly."

"I think there will be. You don't know what she's been through..."

"Mate, I know what crack can do to people. I've seen it."

"...no one does-...no, I'm sorry, maybe you have, but I'm just gonna wait and see what she says. I know she's got some stories."

Captain shook his head, unconvinced. He had never read any of Benny's stuff, not a word of it, and he was beginning to wonder if his friend had any kind of talent to go with his constant stream of wacko ideas. The chances are, he thought coldly, that he has none and this story will be shit.

The two police officers looked over at them from near the entrance gate. Captain leaned back into the bench and raised his voice in retaliation.

"Honestly, mate, listen to me, I've seen Amelia, I've met her and she's not a character, she's not interesting. She's a party fiend, nothing more"

"But she's got all these stories and the addiction..."

"So what, she's a crack hag too? That doesn't make her fascinating or entertaining. She's blank, mate."

"Ok, Cap, she's blank then..."

Benny did what he usually did when he had just told Captain one of his ideas, despite screaming at himself not to, and looked the other way. A plant growing innocently nearby, it's straight stem reflecting the pride it felt for being planted in such an affluent area, felt the full force of Benny's contorted features. He wanted to spit on it and all the earth around it, to dig it out and crush it under his shoes.

...fucking Napoleon, where's your fucking creation, huh? What the fuck have you ever done? Shit and piss on me, but where's your fucking art? Fucking drone, fucking shop dummy, fucking midget...fucking pug-face Seth Green...

He turned back and drank from his can, still spitting at imaginary plants inside his head. Captain didn't know about Amelia, he probably didn't even know about heroin. It was even possible there hadn't been any close friend that had died in his bedroom.

The police officers walked in a line towards them, making it appear they were next. Captain relaxed his position even more, lifting his can and drinking like he was on stage. He spoke loudly again.

"I'm not saying it's gonna be bad, I know you're a good writer. I'm just saying, she's not a great character, in my opinion."

"We'll see if she is or not."

Benny drank more and then started bending the tops of his fingers. The police had stopped by the second bench and were asking questions, but he wanted them over here to lecture the fucking clown sitting next to him.

Captain continued on, stressing how much Amelia didn't do with her life and how she would never be accepted by a reader as a main player. Benny parried, slowly becoming more and more barbed with his replies, wondering if he would have a snapping point with Captain and if it might be on this bench, this very night.

"She's just a party piece, only meets people when she's wasted. There're no quiet moments with her..."

"You don't know her that well..."

"...she doesn't think about anything, not the details..."

"You don't know her."

"If she's the centre of your book then you're gonna have to put a load of entertainers around her...she's not enough on her own, she's too light."

"She's gonna carry the whole thing, she's not light."

"She is light. She's a lightweight person, mate."

"How many times have you met her?"

"It's not about that, mate, it's-...you can just tell, in conversation with her..."

"How many conversations have you had with her?"

"You're being silly."

"Answer my silly question then."

"Fuck off, mate, you know she's light. You've just got some kind of fantasy playing up there that she's not."

"Fantasy..."

Benny put his can down on the ground and stayed hunched forward.

"She's not an interesting person."

"Yeah, well..."

He picked the can back up, looked at the label, turned it round once then placed it between his thighs, his hand covering the top and pushing down.

"...and she doesn't belong in literature, mate. I'm sorry, but it's true. She's a skank."

Benny put all his weight on the can and tried to push it through the bench.

"You're always the master critic, aren't you?"

"Mate, I just say it like I see it..."

"Sure you do, yeah...so what about you, Cap, what have you done lately?"

"Mate-..."

"No, what have you done in the last year? What's your product? You're always pissing on my ideas, _mate_. Nothing much to your name, but you're still pissing on me..."

"What?"

"What? You heard me, I said you're always pissing on me, and I'm sick of it."

Benny took his hand off the top of the can and gripped the side. It still had some left in it, but he didn't drink.

"Mate, you're in a bad mood, fine, but if you keep talking to me-..."

Something in Cantonese broke through.

"...the way you just did-..."

It was the two officers standing in front of them. They looked down at the two men on the bench, examining them for some kind of offence. Their eyes settled on Captain, who had turned away from Benny to stare back up at them, his arms folded.

They spoke to each other then turned back and said something to Captain in Cantonese. Benny waited for Captain to say something, but nothing came. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his friend raise his can to his mouth and drink.

"What's the problem?" Captain said finally.

The officer spoke again in Cantonese. His partner added another line on at the end.

"Sorry, mate, I don't know what you're saying. I'm not from here. What are you saying?"

The officers exchanged frustrated looks and one of them tried in English.

"What you do here?"

"What do you mean here?"

The officer who had spoken checked with his partner and then tried again.

"Why you here?"

"Mate, that's a question. Why am I here? Where? In the park? On this Earth? I don't know what you're saying to me..."

"You speak Cantonese?"

"I speak English. I'm English, mate. From England."

The officer glanced at Benny but didn't ask him the same question.

"We're having a beer, what's the problem?" Captain gestured around the park, pointing out the others drinking the same thing. "We're not alone here, mate, there are others. But it seems like you're picking on us because we're English. So, what's the problem?"

"You have card?"

"What's that, mate?"

"You have Hong Kong card or not have? You living in here?"

Captain folded his arms again and shook his head for the whole park to see.

"You living in here? Show card, please."

The officer turned to Benny and repeated the question.

"Mate, this is a joke," Captain said, only half looking at him. "Don't show them anything."

The officer held out his hand, flat as a tray.

Benny put his hand in his pocket and fished for his card.

Two hours later and Benny was on the minibus back to Lam Tin, having left Captain to make his own way back home thirty minutes earlier. After the police had told them to leave the park, he had made some kind of apology for his own words, but Captain had been more enraged about the police and their treatment of foreigners to notice. As they walked down past the other bars and talked about other things that were wrong with the place, it seemed like he had completely forgotten what had been about to happen between them. At the bus stop, they had parted with nods and Captain had told him with a grin that they'd go out somewhere in Kowloon mid-week. "Our kind of people over there, mate. No posers, no twats in blue."

Now he was alone again.

Sitting on one of the middle seats of the bus, ignoring the couples that were taking up most of the seats around him, he held his phone in his hand and sent Amelia a message, laying out his whole plan for them in every detail. It was a lot to type but he had to make her know he was serious about this, because Captain was wrong, she could belong in literature, and what a thought that was for both of them; him the creator, her the model.

The message left his phone and went off in its search of Amelia, and Benny returned to his assessment of Captain. Was he wrong to be mad? No, it had happened too often, there had been too many nights like this. He recalled all the other times he had been offended by his friend's words and found at least five right off the first sweep. There was that time, walking through the Miramar, and there were those cameras outside recording something for TV, he had criticized the idea he had told him then, the one about the three spaceships and the crew swapping with each other, and what had he said...it was too dangerous to do science fiction if you didn't know any science, and you've gotta know all the technical words, and "do you know anything about science, mate?"

The bus jumped to a stop and brought Benny's thoughts back to the people around him. A lot of the couples were getting off, which meant they were probably somewhere in Hung Hom. He looked out of the window and confirmed it. Another couple got on before the doors closed and the girl moved down the bus as her boyfriend paid the driver. There was a free seat next to Benny, and another single seat on the other side of the aisle, and she stopped between both, waiting for the man to catch up to her and decide. He came as the bus kicked forward again, saw Benny tucked in by the window then pushed her onwards to a seat further back. Benny smirked into the darkness outside. His seat had been empty the whole way, which is what he had expected. No one sat next to the foreigner unless they had to, and even then they would balance themselves over the edge as if merely touching his leg would infect them. Captain would mock them for it if he were here, thought Benny. That's his way, always critical.

He closed his eyes and drifted back to his list...

And there was that other time, the first time he had told him about his plans for the poverty novel and he had grimaced and told him back, "there is no way you can save the poor and if you write about it then what would you write because you're not poor, are you, mate?" He said that he had to get down and dirty with them if he wanted to capture it. Which was true, but then the next time, when they had been in the park, the first time they had stayed late in Mong Kok, and Benny had told him that he was observing them, the poor, Captain had contradicted himself, blatantly contradicted himself by saying that you couldn't imitate poverty, and even if you lived on the streets and burnt all your money you'd still never be poor, which was wrong, he was wrong. He is wrong, raged Benny, still angry after forty minutes alone. He was one of them or he would be, and he would write for them, he would...and Captain, what would he do? Lie on his couch all day and stroke himself off over whichever slut was on camera...cry into the tissues and swear at the screen after it's done; how far would that get him? He was scared, always too scared to chase anything, always too scared to think anything big or confess to things he didn't know, and there is a lot he doesn't know, Benny fumed. He's one of those with narrow thoughts...thoughts spinning in small orbits around planets made of nothing but the fucking obvious...Axiom-2, planet of easy thought, a place to say your line and never be wrong...that's where he should live, somewhere he can't be wrong. Krist, he could even become Chairman if he stayed long enough, if he-...

There was a pulse in his pocket and it continued. Someone was calling him. He pulled the phone suspiciously out of his pocket, expecting Captain, perhaps an apology from Captain, but it wasn't his name, it was Amelia's. She was phoning him now...

He pushed the button to accept the call.

"Amee..."

**Benny** **** looks west, but moves east, following Captain, learning about the whores and living through the night...

Benny walked from the living room to his bedroom with the laptop in his hands. He looked around and considered a few places to put it, crossing off each one as too open, before finally putting it on the top shelf of his closet and piling some old clothes over it. The window was open a few inches by the bed. He walked over, put his hand on it then changed his mind and walked back out into the living room.

He did a quick appraisal of everything there. A shelf with over a hundred DVDs. A thirty-two inch television with a flat screen. A smaller shelf with books and a few CDs. That was all the expensive stuff. He walked over to the DVDs and went through a few of them, picking them up and reading the summaries. Then he walked into the kitchen and got some plastic bags, came back, and started to fill them with the films. He had collected them over two years, but it didn't matter. Even the ones he hadn't seen, fuck it.

When he had done six bags, he went over to his regular bag, which was lying on the sofa. He took a notepad and pen from the table next to it and put it in. He closed up the bag and put it on his shoulder. Then he paced the room for a few minutes, walked over to the door, opened it, closed it then came back again. He opened the bag and took out the notepad and pen. He wouldn't need them. His head would store it all.

He picked up the six plastic bags and opened the front door and then the cage. As he closed them he thought about not locking them, to give someone a chance, but passed the thought over and locked them both.

He walked down the stairs and thought about how long it would take for the security guard to accept his gifts. He'll refuse more than once, he warned himself, so I'll just have to leave them and walk away. Then when I come back, if I come back, I'll force the TV on him too. I'll give him everything.

He sat motionless on the bench, in another park the name of which he had forgotten, watching one of his projects lost in another bin. The only other person there, a man with a radio, got up from another bench and walked quickly out of the park, leaving the two of them alone.

Not much time, Benny thought. Captain will be back soon.

It was hard to conduct his experiments with him around, but not impossible. He could just let him talk about his wall and secretly follow the man bin to bin around the park.

The park near Olympic station, he remembered suddenly. Well, the name of the station at least. But he already knew where he was geographically, and he knew the area he needed to go to wasn't far from there.

The man came back out of the bin without looking around to see if anyone was watching him. He had no idea anyone would be chronicling his journey through the night, why would he? He wandered away from the bin, looking at something in his hand. He had something there that Benny couldn't quite make out, what was it? A coin, a note? Would anyone throw money in there? Maybe it was a piece of jewellery, a watch fallen from a careless wrist. That's a major find, if that's what it is, thought Benny, his eyes going with the man to the next bin.

"I've got to try talking to them again," he said quietly to himself. "He won't understand me though, will he? He'll just run like the others."

He stood up anyway and made a few steps towards the bin across the park.

"If I just ask what's in his hand, with gestures, then he won't be scared. And if I could explain to him I'm a writer and that I'm writing about him, then maybe..."

He took a few more steps forward.

"If he knew I was trying to help him then he'd be friendly, they all would. And I have to do it before Captain gets back or...or I'm stuck."

Benny took one more step, froze himself then turned back to the bench.

"But-...he won't understand anything. It's pointless."

He walked back to the bench and sat down, deflated by his own direction.

"Think about it some more. He's in his position and he accepts it. What could my words possibly do for him? He won't even get to read it, unless someone throws it in the trash and he thinks it's cardboard."

The man came out of the bin empty handed and expressionless. He walked on to the next bin, without any thoughts of bettering himself or improving his place in society. He wasn't even thinking about what might be in the next bin.

"I don't know him. I don't know any of them. They're faceless as soon as I lose sight of them. How can I help them, how?"

He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees, and then his head in his hands.

"But isn't this the mission of literature, to work for these people. Haven't the greatest writers thrown themselves into such challenges? They have, I know it, I don't even need to ask the question, but they didn't go low enough, did they? They strived for the workers and toiled for the peasants...Platonov, Orwell...Fante..."

He raised his head and slouched back into the bench, remembering the book he had just finished at home.

"...and what about West, who did he write 'Miss Lonely-hearts' for then? Wasn't it for those who suffered? But that's not true, they weren't beggars, they already had some kind of position...didn't they?"

Benny followed the tramp to another bin and tried to place him as a character in West's text. There was the cripple, he had a similar stance. But they weren't the same. The cripple had a wife, and a place to live...

The tramp put his arm into the bin and searched around.

...the cripple never had to search bins. They weren't the same. West had written for sufferers with homes, never for tramps.

The tramp pulled his arm out holding nothing. He wiped his hand on his trousers then went back in, deeper this time.

And what about that film he had seen a few nights earlier, the old black and white with the studio director hitting the slums and freight trains to discover the truth of poverty? That had a heart beating over every line, didn't it? But the ending, on the plane, when he was safe and dry and clean and had reached his conclusion..."there's a lot to be said for making people laugh." That wasn't what he had wanted from that film, that wasn't the message he needed. It was a confession of weakness, of being able to do nothing to help them, except charity and making shitty comedies to make them forget for a moment everything that was-...that was going on.

It isn't good enough, it's pathetic, raged Benny.

A young couple came through the park gates and walked past the man with his arm in the bin. The boy nudged the girl and copied the bin-man, stooping down and scratching his head like a clown. The girl laughed, caught Benny's disapproving glare then stopped. She poked the boy in the shoulder and said something in Cantonese. He straightened up, saw Benny, and said something back before moving closer and laughing into her hair. Benny played with his knuckles and watched them move through the park, not cutting until they were near the other entrance. They both looked like they lived in the area and by their clothes he could see that, although they'd never truly be poor, they'd never rise above halfway either.

"Yeah, you'll have problems too," Benny spoke out silently to them, "but you'll still get something out of it. You won't suffer greatly, lucky fucking blanks..."

They left the park and Benny was once more alone with his bin-man.

He went back to the film again, and its coda. The start had been so promising, the director insisting that he couldn't make a film about poverty unless he knew about poverty, and he had gone onto the streets and had a couple of false starts, after which he ended up back in the Hollywood hills, in his mansion, with an impossibly beautiful down on her luck Veronica Lake, but then he had kept on going back into poverty, realising that he hadn't lived it yet, that he hadn't understood it, and finally he got to the point where he was standing over a bin, looking down at the scraps and thinking about putting a hand in, but that's when he broke and fled backwards again, only this time he thought he had understood it, and to prove it he was going to go back with dollar bills and give them away to the street sleepers, which wasn't the right thing to do, it wasn't the right thing to do at all, anyone could see that. He was reducing them to charity and giving them the same paper that was responsible for their plight, and the same sympathetic philando-...philantropy that was killing them...it wasn't enough to give them a day or two days of happiness with that fucking paper, it was insulting, but they couldn't see it. Then the end, the summary of his thoughts..."no, I'm not gonna make a film about them, I'm gonna make a comedy for them," a fucking comedy, something to make them laugh for a couple of minutes until they had to lie back down in the muck.

His thoughts drifted quickly. He brought in other faces, other thinkers, people he thought wouldn't like the film much either.

"Even Mao could see that was wrong, even Marx and Lenin, they knew this kind of giving was wrong. Not that it was wrong to help, but to accept your place in a system, that was wrong, that was the thing..."

He remembered that one book he had read about Mao, the one he had taken from the library last year.

Yes, the thing; that was what was wrong with it all. The system and the charity it gave out...that was the wrongness. To say they didn't think about their plights, to say they just wanted something to laugh about, that was the failing of the system. Mao had seen that much, despite everything he had done wrong, he had seen that the system was the problem and you had to change it, remould it, modify the peasants and the dreams of the peasants so they didn't expect handouts. Give them a system to survive in and a system to hope for...

The man pulled himself out of another bin and sat down on the bench next to it. He wasn't thinking about changing the system and had never learnt the details of the system that was crushing him. He thought briefly about school sometimes and regretted not staying in longer, but that was in the past. It's true, school might have made life easier, but he couldn't dwell on it. He had to meet the others later in Sham Shui Po and see if they had had any better luck from the bins.

Benny watched the man sitting calmly on the bench and thought about talking to him again. He had to stop thinking and move quickly as Captain would be back any second now. He had never told him about the box, or the other times, and he wasn't gonna tell him about what he planned to do tonight either. He wouldn't understand, he couldn't, it was impossible for someone like him. If he couldn't understand the thing with her...with Amelia then-...no, not her, not again. Switch, change it...the man, the tramp...

He stood up and walked over to the man in the bin, trying not to think about that girl, that child. As he got nearer the man seemed to notice him and turned to his side. Benny buckled slightly in his stride but managed to keep faith with himself and marched on, cautiously to the bench. He sat down on the edge, not looking at the man, but quickly edged further onto the seat and closer to his target. They sat next to each other in silence for a few moments, two strangers on a bench. Then Benny spoke:

"Nice night."

The man looked at him without turning and mumbled something.

"How are you?"

Benny wanted to ask so much, but he restrained himself, realizing he couldn't lose his man so early in the conversation. He just had to say enough to keep him on the bench.

The man turned until his face was pointing straight ahead, not away from Benny exactly, but not confirming his existence on the bench either.

Benny took another shot.

"Sorry, I don't speak Cantonese that well...I mean, I know a little, but-..."

The man grumbled and scrunched up his eyebrows.

"Leih jyung yhi...this park?" Benny tried.

The man looked down at his nails as if no one else was there.

"Leih Chu Bin ha?" Benny remembered overhearing this line sometime during his residence and tried it again.

No answer.

"Where do you live?"

Nothing.

"You live here?"

Still nothing.

"Sorry, I don't know...are you happy? Are you-...is this good?"

The man finally turned a semi-circle and faced Benny.

"Baaaaaagghh," he said, and waved his hand as if he were swatting Benny off the bench.

Benny stayed where he was and wondered what to say next. They always say "barrrgghhh," don't they? What does that even mean? Is it Cantonese? He thought about saying it back, but vetoed himself, sensing it wouldn't bring them any closer. No, what he needed to say, he was incapable of...something about how he was a writer and how he was there to help him and to change the system into a new system that would help him get out of this park and into a house...but he couldn't say any of it.

The man pushed himself off the bench when he realized Benny was going to stay, and lindled away towards the next bin.

Benny didn't chase after him. He pushed himself further back onto the bench, readjusted slightly when he felt the hard curve touch his spine, and looked up at the trees that had seen his failure and done nothing.

"Barrrggghhh," he said out loud. "They won't talk to me. Do I need to talk to them?" Perhaps that film was right on that one point, they don't consider their position in this world the way I do. They don't think of systems that would better accommodate them, not like I do. They don't think of saving themselves.

They're like children then, he thought. They are just there, nascent and waiting for someone else to figure something out for them. They're no different from all the others, all the people who have a position. They don't act, they wait for someone else to act, for history to shape itself around them. I am the one who must act, right? That must be my role.

He looked at his own nails. They had been bitten down, unlike the man's. Benny had seen them, there had been some dirt tucked under them. If they judged us by our nails then we wouldn't be so different...

But I'm not like them, he warned himself again, not in terms of position. He would crusade for them but Joseph was right, exiled Joseph in a far-away-land, he had been given an exalted position by chance, by basic fucking luck. And he had been given a gift too. Surely writing was his gift, even though it had yet to be celebrated by anyone. And through my writing I will save them, he told himself once more, aware that he was repeating himself.

"Bargggghhh," he said. "Learn tonight...learn everything."

Captain sat next to him on the bench and complained about the lack of women in the park. Each of them had a beer, a two for one deal that had totalled fifteen dollars, which was cheap from where they had been placed in life. As Benny looked up and down the length of the king size can, he wondered how easy it would be for that bin-man to afford a drink like this.

"This is too far away from Mong Kok, mate. No one comes here apart from the oldies."

Benny didn't answer him. He still had his eye on the same man he had been sitting next to earlier. He was nearing the exit of the park and had one more bin left to rummage through. Then he would leave and go...go where? Sham Shui Po?

"We'll finish these then head back to Mong Kok, mate," Captain said, hurriedly forcing some more down so it would happen faster.

Captain had taken a long time to come back from the conveni. Benny knew he had taken longer than he should've, but he had been too distracted to wonder why, and had never asked. The reason wasn't particularly important but it did show a disparity in the aims of the two friends that evening. For Benny, the night, and the few nights following it, was set up for research. For Captain, it was a two hander. Firstly, he wanted to talk about the wall which would keep him in Hong Kong for the rest of his life, despite the fact that he didn't want to be there at all, and secondly, he wanted to visit the red light district to get a fuck.

"Did I tell you about the wall...?" Captain asked.

"You mentioned it a few times."

Benny didn't look away from the man in the bin.

"Yeah, my Dad phoned last night. I was talking to him for a long time."

"Your Dad?"

"He was telling me this wall's the biggest piece of luck we've ever had. It's weird, mate, usually my family gets shat on...like when my Dad had to give up college to go to the UK...and when my uncle took all that money off him...we've had a really shit time of it, before. But this is the first time where something's gone for us instead of against us. Well, that's what he's saying anyway. I was just nodding along and saying yeah to whatever he said. Which is weird too...I've never got on with my Dad, we always end up screaming at each other, but now he's pleasant and talking about our future together. It's the first time I've felt like he's happy for me, the little prick."

The man had left the final bin and was walking languidly out of the park. Benny thought about getting up and following him, but he couldn't, Captain had him cornered. There's no way he'd want to pursue a street sleeper around all the shit-holes of Kowloon, not when Mong Kok was just around the corner.

"He said this wall and the land I get will take care of me for the rest of my life. The money I can get from it...I'll be set up basically. I won't have to worry about cash anymore."

"No more money troubles...that sounds like a good thing."

Captain ran his hands through his hair and breathed out dramatically, which was what he usually did when he was about to complain about something.

"Should be, mate...but, not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it means I'm stuck in Hong Kong for the future too. I'll have to look for a job here, a better job, and try and fit in somehow. That's what the wall has done for me."

Benny saw the man disappear from sight and predicted from the direction he took that he was heading to Sham Shui Po on foot. He wouldn't have enough money to take the train, would he? Probably not, and the way he was going wouldn't take that long.

I'll take the same route later on, he told himself. As soon as Captain's out of the way. Then I'll see them all in a group. Then I can talk to them properly, and stay with them, stay in a box for a few nights.

"It is lucky, don't get me wrong, and I am happy, but I don't know about this place, mate. I just don't know about it. Is it right for me?"

"Hong Kong?" Benny tried to stall his way back into the conversation.

"It's big enough and there's stuff happening here, but I don't know if I like it. I don't know if I like the people."

Captain breathed out again and stopped talking.

"You wanna walk around?" Benny offered.

"Into Mong Kok?"

Benny thought about telling him about the homeless congregation in the opposite direction, but he knew it wouldn't work. He would have to go to Mong Kok first then go his own way later.
"Yeah, sure. Bright lights, big Mong Kok," Benny agreed.

They walked past a goliath of a shopping mall, and all the expectant bodies filing into it, some pushing to get to the escalator first.

"The street with all the walkers is two blocks down, mate," Captain said, keeping a couple of paces ahead of Benny, who had to perform little bursts of acceleration every few seconds just to keep up. He suspected Captain had a plan to approach one of the walkers, maybe after two more cans, and that he'd be left alone. Or perhaps he would just go to one of those buildings with the pink signs outside that promised a solid forty-five minute fuck. 'Walk-ups', Cap called them.

They hit the end of the block and ignored all the people traffic to the left, which was clogging up Nathan Road and Dundas Street beyond it, and went onwards into the less hectic part of Mong Kok, where people still went and busied themselves, only in smaller numbers.

As they walked through the next blocks, the buildings stayed mostly the same. There were still convenis and restaurants lined up and down, but there were also those pink signs above surprisingly well-lit stairwells and women with slightly shorter and tighter skirts hanging onto their waists. Captain slowed down as he walked past two of them and stared from head to foot at both of them, considering an offer or waiting until they offered something to him, but nothing came and he kept on moving. Benny followed, giving the two women something of an apology in his smile as he passed.

It will be less than an hour before he buckles and goes up there, Benny thought. I'll have to find someone to talk to then. Or just leave?

Up ahead, Captain stopped and nodded to his left then disappeared off the street.

Benny caught up and followed him into the small park area bitten into the side of the street. It was tiny, just big enough for five benches and three very lonely looking trees. He sat down next to Captain, who was perched on the edge, his legs bent slightly to allow him to spring back up fast if the right whore walked past.

"It's an interesting little area, isn't it, mate?"

"It's got some colour," Benny drawled back slowly, examining one of the walkers sitting on the bench closest to the street.

"It doesn't look like it right now, but some of the women here are fucking stunning," Captain said, noticing the same woman that Benny had seen. "You usually have to go upstairs though, into one of the walk-ups. I told you about them, right? The ones with the pink signs. The first time I did this, when I first came here...Hong Kong, I mean, the first one I got was this mainlander...she was stunning. Her body was like an Olympian, I'm not joking, she had abs like a distance runner. That whole night...mate, if I could get her again..."

Captain had been up those stairwells three times, but Benny had only found this out recently. "It's hard for me to tell you this," Captain had told him when his restraint had finally been self-broken, "maybe because I'm ashamed of it, I don't know." He had explained further, telling Benny that the shame lay in the [slightly] false idea that he couldn't get a woman by natural means and had to resort to paying for it, like one of those others who had no other way of getting it. "But it's not shameful, mate, not really," he had said, and, after many hours alone in his village house in Tai Po thinking it over, he had managed to slowly turn it away from being the impediment he thought it to be and redirect it towards the idea of nothing more than a service, and as long as he knew in his head that, if he had to, he was capable of getting someone off the back of his words and face then it wasn't that much of an issue.

Captain held onto the arm of the bench, already recycling the story of the third time he had visited...

"...the shower first, it's kind of the regulation there, they have to get clean and when they get you in there they usually start tugging a little, maybe sucking if you ask for it, but this one, the last one I had, the one that killed the whole thing for me...she got in the shower, rubbed her tits against me a little then got down and...it was awful, mate, she grabbed me and started pulling on it, and there was no expression on her face at all, no joy or anything...she was just kneeling there tugging it like it was a lamp cord or something...like she was trying to yank a plug out of the socket. I don't expect too much, she's a whore, right? But there was no fucking romance in it at all, I could barely stay hard, mate, it was-...honestly, it was the worst fuck I've ever had in my whole life. I said to Avon after, I said to him, 'mate, I'm never doing that again. I don't care how bad it gets, never again.'"

Benny knew the story well as this was the seventh time he had heard it in three months. He didn't have to listen too closely as he had realized after the third time of hearing it that the details didn't shift and change like they did in most stories. It was always the same narrative in the same order, which probably meant that it had some truth to it. And the girl was always told the same way, a waste of flesh with no character. "Fucking housewife of the whore world, mate," Captain called her, and although Benny didn't doubt that she hadn't been desirable, he imagined her being very tired and very bored and that's why she had tugged at him in such a functional way. And that was the thing that stuck every time he heard the story; not Captain's misery, but the whore and her tugging. That was where the real pity lay, wasn't it?

Captain finished his story and stared at the street for a minute before standing up and telling Benny that they should try another place he knew. "It's better there, mate," he promised.

The two of them sat on another bench, in another mini-park as bland as the last one, and Captain followed one of the whores across the street as she bobbed up and down in her heels, found her pink signed entrance and walked up the stairs.

Benny left himself partly aware of what his friend was doing, but pushed most of himself into his own agenda and looked around the small park area they had found for themselves, trying to conjure up another desperate figure. There were none there, only strangers and stragglers, and one serious-looking man in a shirt and loosened tie, who was sitting opposite with a laptop, his whole figure displaced against the dim brown trunk of the tree behind him.

"Some people, when they sit in some places, they just look wrong. What's he doing here?" Captain commented after following another lady into the park and watching her sit two benches away from the juxtaposition.

"It's late. He's probably just off work."

Benny didn't want to come back with long replies. He wanted to be in other places, with other characters who could give him something to write. This was a place full of weirdoes and sleaze, not the put upon and oppressed.

And it was probably the kind of place Amelia the fraud had come to when she was treading water in the drugs world. That faker, that lotto winner...

"You finish work, you go home, right? Or for drinks or food or see a movie, something normal...you don't sit with the whores in the red light district working on your laptop. He's gotta be an oddball, mate. Maybe worse, he could be that killer on the news, the one targeting whores...that could be him. I mean, seriously mate, what's he doing?"

Amelia hadn't been in touch with Benny since...well, since her luck had turned. There hadn't been any build up, it had just happened, quickly, like a gunshot from a mugger on the streets, a real gunshot, a quick punch of a bullet to put you down and keep you down. To Benny, it had seemed impossible. There was no sequencing of events, no conference with her history, no thoughts on how unlikely it all was. She didn't process life the way Benny did. She didn't realise what had happened should've been impossible.

"That killer guy, he targets the ones who work alone in those apartments. You heard about them? They advertise online and you find their details and phone up and then they give you a time to come and you just go over there. No security, mate, no protection for the women...the guy just goes into her place, fucks her then gives her the money and goes. But that guy...I bet he's thinking more. He could do anything with her, if there's no one around."

Benny nodded and examined the guy again, affecting a look of analysis to decide if the guy was the kind of guy who would go further than just fucking and paying for it.

"I bet he won't stay here all night. He'll phone up and he'll go over to one of those girls. I wouldn't like to be one of them, mate, not alone with a nut like him."

Benny thought back to Amelia and played everything through again. He had played it so many times already over the last three weeks and every time it made him mad. How was it fair that something like that could happen? How could she climb out of that hole so easily, with so little effort? There had been a couple of times where he had landed on her side, or close to her side, and had reflected that, taking into account her circle of friends and the number of times she went to different bars in affluent areas, there was always going to be the chance of it happening. In that way it could be sequenced and expected, but still...

"They've got no choice, right? They have to take who comes..."

"Mate, you wanna know how it works?"

Benny shrugged, not really listening.

"You go up there, you don't have to call up beforehand, and you knock on the door and they open up and you take a look at them. They'll be standing there in their pants and push up bra thingy and if you like them, you go in. If you think they're nasty, you walk on to the next door. That's it, mate. So it's all on the guy. Doesn't matter what he looks like, he decides, and the whore has to let him in because he's paying."

Captain said the last few words towards the guy with the laptop, his arms stretched out and triceps tightening.

Amelia's sudden unfair fortune wasn't that unusual really, only in Benny's mind. He was right in his calculations that the number of times she went out into the night meant that she would eventually meet someone who would have the money to influence her, perhaps even to rectify all of her past history. And two weeks earlier, the inevitable had happened. A tall, young man, confident, with his own money, and a family with even more money to back him up. Another fucking rich kid.

Benny pulled the story back into his head and found the details. The typical beginning, in her own words; met in a bar, exchanged numbers, held hands while waiting for a taxi. Then the sucker punch; she had moved into his apartment, his plush apartment in Central, two weeks later, "just as friends," she said, "and anyway, he told me he's got a room free, and no one's using it, so why not? He just wants some company, not anything sleazy." It was a lie, obviously, not about the free room, but the company angle. In Benny's mind, the guy was transparent. He had clearly seen Amelia as a prize, something special he thought would be a struggle to win, so he had lied. Or he had padded the truth. And now she was living with him. But what did he know about her? That she was a recovering crack addict, still dipping her toes in? That she had amassed precious little experience of the world around her? And what about in the afternoons, when the crack was still in the bag? Did he know any of it? No chance, not a fucking word.

A short, distracted lady, who had been sitting nearby, got up with her phone held tight against her ear and walked back out of the park, with Captain watching her all the way. Before he had time to lament, she was replaced by another one, a tall, spectacularly blonde woman with pale features, who walked past without looking at any of the other faces there and sat down on the bench the other lady had just left. She sat with her back straight and looked at the other woman heading over to the pink sign.

"Fuck me, mate...we've gotta talk to her..." Captain blurted out.

"Her?"

"...and fast..."

"The blond one?"

"...before the nut fucks her. Yeah, the blond one."

Benny checked her and thought she was probably from one of the Baltic States, maybe even Russia. He knew some Russian, that could impress her, if they went over and started up. But what was the point, really? It was still a whore, a piece of muck...like Amelia, only on a bench and not in some plush, rich, disgusting apartment up on the-...

"You think it's weird if I go over there and say something. I can't do it alone though, it has to be two. She'll run if it's just me, she'll be comfortable if it's two. Come on, mate, what can we say? What's the first line? 'What are you doing here this late?' We know what she's doing here though...she's a whore, she's gotta be. She's blonde, Russian or something...she is, definitely. Maybe if I say we're-..."

Benny let him talk and went back to his thoughts.

He was playing it back from his only source, Amelia, the pretty woman, the Klute whore...but he knew what men were after, and he could balance it all out. The guy had let her into his home, rent free, he hadn't made a move on her [yet], he was spending a lot of his money on her in restaurants and planning to spend more on holidays. He had brought her closer to him by telling all the best stories about himself, how he had established himself as a partner in a prestigious firm at the age of twenty-seven, how he had picked up a guitar and learnt how to play within a month, how he had stood on stage and sung to crowds. The truth of it, Benny thought, is she's a two, three month challenge. Less if he finds out about the heroin. And the dazzle part of it...that was easy. If this guy, this showman, could show enough of the past history he had invented in his present behaviour [documents brought home from work, guitar in the living room] then the act would succeed and she would be hooked.

"...go soon, if I don't go then I'll be sitting here pissed off at myself for not going over there and saying something. Gotta go now, mate...right now...if I just do it and worry when I get there then-...I'll be there anyway so it won't matter."

Captain took a breath and looked at Benny for encouragement. Benny was only half there but managed something.

"Go, just talk to her."

"I'm not going alone, mate. You come with..."

"Fine, go."

Benny relaxed back into the bench, expecting his friend to delay for at least fifteen minutes, but it wasn't going to play out that way as Captain suddenly had a moment of complete freedom where he didn't care if she spat in his face or if all the other faces surrounding them saw him humiliated. He was going over there, that very instant.

He stood up and started walking...then, just as suddenly and with equal freedom, turned and came right back, his devil winning him over. He sat down and continued looking at her with a worried expression while Benny looked into the side of his face, amused.

"Mate, I don't know. Do you think I should?" Captain started up again.

"If you want something to happen..."

"You think she'll talk back?"

"If she wants something to happen..."

"Fucking hell, mate, this is serious, she's gonna go soon...tell me what to do."

"Go and talk to her."

"Now?"

"Or later..."

Captain stared at the woman, trying to keep her pinned down. He knew she'd be gone in the next five minutes. His knuckles tapped the arm of the bench, his only release of energy.

"Two minutes."

"That soon? Give yourself some time."

"Ok, five minutes. I'll go then, no excuses."

"She might be gone by then."

"You prick. Fine, I'll go now."

He got up on his feet again, just as Benny was starting to enjoy his own responses. It was apparent to him that sometimes he could hit a stride with his comebacks that not many others could match, except in those films where the characters talked a thousand lines a minute and set each other up for the next bite, or all those modern shit scribblings called novels where the characters leapt out of reality and became a great wit in every response and spat out personal philosophies that were blatantly personal to the author and no one else and-...and all those lines were designed and false, yes, falsely designed by a guy who had thought it over and over, over days and weeks and second and third edits and cigarettes and coffees and false starts and 'would they really say that?' criticisms followed by desperate ignorance of criticism and then settling on one, final line they thought would be hilarious and would make others read and think 'krist, this fucker's smart, to write like this'...that isn't real, thought Benny. What I just said was real, and as funny as real gets, if you don't have time to think...

Benny continued on through his self-congratulation and further thoughts of transferring his brilliance onto his written words before he snapped back to the park and realised Captain wasn't there. He had changed positions, he was somewhere else. His eyes searched. There, that was him, wasn't it? Fuck, it was him, he was sitting next to the Russian. He's actually done it, the human panic button has made a move. Benny let the colour and light from the park filter back in and watched the two of them talk.

After a few minutes of no sound he got bored and focused on the Russian's shape and drew up some options to explain her.

Perhaps, if I had to guess, I would say that being a Russian, she is here because there is no money back in her part of Russia, he thought to himself while the little scene played on in silence. Her town was small and after communism fell...when was that, '84? '85? Whenever it was, it fell, and only a few were quick enough to step on it and make their wealth. The rest of them...they must've been left with nothing...nothing left to share out between them. She looks young too, no more than twenty-three I'd say, which means she's missed college, but perhaps she has aspirations to go there, if this place pays enough...would they pay enough here? What kind of money do they make in this business?

Benny had no idea about the details of prostitution. All he knew came from film and literature, and the only authenticity that came from this knowledge, in his mind, was that he had watched realistic depictions of whores. He wasn't dumb enough to reference 'Pretty Woman' when he talked of what he knew about whores, but he was dumb enough to still conclude some kind of equality between film and reality, especially if those films were filmed in real light or black and white, like those old Italian films, where if you saw a whore you could swear that she was real, that the director had fucked her in real life.

The Russian, whose family, and perhaps herself if she was deceptively older than her face told, had been too slow to react to political and economic change and had been left with bread and soup for five days a week and nothing on the weekends, got up and left the scene. She walked out of the park and across the road, stopping briefly outside one of the stairwells with a pink sign above it to talk to another woman, this one blandly Chinese and local, then went up the stairs into a place Benny couldn't accurately imagine in his thoughts and instead had to conjure up another stolen image from one of those Italian films to compensate.

Captain stayed on the bench and waved his hand at Benny. His lips moved and said something, probably "come here, mate" so Benny stood up and went over. As he walked he tried to imagine the Russian meeting the guy she would have to service for the next forty-five minutes and, in greater detail, the walk to the room and whether or not they would speak to each other, where he would be allowed to touch her, how she would direct him to the shower, the way she would first touch his cock...

"Negotiations are under way..."

"I saw you talking..."

"She's quite decent, mate. A good talker. She was a bit suspicious at first, but I kept it simple."

"How simple?"

Benny abandoned the Russian and tried to think of fast answers again. If he could get a rhythm going, and if Captain didn't talk too much-...

"I didn't ask her if she was a whore."

"And she didn't ask you, right?"

...it was good practice for his work. If he could remember it all then he could write it like it was spoken. It would garner him credit from someone surely, to write with at least one foot in reality, like the Italians...

"Funny again, huh? Mate, she's fit and I think I can fuck her without paying."

"How so?"

"She likes me."

"How so?"

"I talked to her like she's a normal person."

"I thought normal people hated you?"

...it wasn't flowing though, not like before. The answers were stretched, too desperate to be funny. That wasn't what his work needed.

His mind wandered again.

Wasn't I thinking about her story a minute ago, he asked himself. That was the point of being here, wasn't it? If he couldn't follow the homeless then he had to replace them with someone equally marginalized, and who better than the trampled on whores?

"Who are you trying to entertain here?" Captain spat out, annoyed that Benny wasn't listening to his triumph.

"Sorry, normal answers from now on."

"Answer how you like, mate, I'm still getting a fuck."

Benny sat down on the bench and leaned back into it.

"So she's keen then?"

"Don't get too comfortable, she's coming back in a bit." He pointed to the stairwell across the road that she had disappeared up. "You can sit on the ground..."

Benny looked at the hard floor of the park and the dirt tucked into the cracks.

"You're gonna put me down there?"

"When she comes back..."

"Are you gonna read me a Yeshua story too?"

"What?"

Benny played the line again and realized it was too obscure to work. He shook his head and thought about the Russian again. Which part of the routine would she be up to now? What expression would she wear as she tugged at the guy? She wouldn't be thinking of Captain down here, would she? What then? Home? There would be her family, maybe a boyfriend too. Or would it be more general, a vague sense of 'why the hell did this happen to me?' or 'Krist of Russia, this tragedy is my fault and no one else's, why's that exactly?' It was unknowable, he decided, until she came back down and explained everything to him...

"You can sit on the arm over there, how's that?"

"Or she can sit on my knee..."

Captain's body coiled up.

"Fuck off, mate, she's mine. I talked to her first..."

"Relax, I was-..."

"I put in the ground work..."

"Cap, I know. She's yours. Calm down."

"I am calm." His body loosened up a little. "I'm just a bit tense. Don't fuck it up when she comes back. Don't say anything weird or intellectual..."

"I won't..."

"And don't talk about your writing..."

"I won't." He nodded and-... "Wait, what?"

"Doesn't matter, she'll be back soon."

"What's wrong with my writing?"

"Nothing, forget it."

"Ok, what's wrong with me talking about my writing? Is it dull? Am I dull when I talk about it?"

"What? No, it's just...she's not a reader, mate. Don't complicate things."

Benny saw a cigarette butt near his foot and kicked it away.

"Don't dwell on it, mate, I didn't mean anything by it. I'm not gonna talk about music either. I'm just gonna let her talk, and learn about Uzbekistan."

"She's Uzbekist-...Uzbekan? Uzbeki?"

"Yeah, Uzbek-...I don't know what you call them. She speaks Russian though. I think it's the second language there..."

"Has she told you her story yet?"

"Her story?"

"Why she's here?"

Captain looked confused.

"She's a whore, mate."

"Yeah, but why is she a whore here? Or why is she a whore at all?"

Captain's brow unknotted itself.

"I didn't ask, remember? And we're not going to."

"Unless she brings it up..."

"No, we're not going to, mate. Seriously, respect my fucking wish on this one..."

"Okay, Cap. No questions, I'll be good."

Benny moved closer to the arm of the bench, getting himself ready for her return. She would probably be on the bed with the client by now, and he would be inside her. There had to be tragedy in her story, to get her this far. It had to be undeserved as well, he couldn't write for someone who deserved it. He brought back Amelia...no, not her. He had been wrong about her. She didn't deserve his words...the whores did, the homeless did, not her. The whore...

"Just as speculation though...I wonder if her story's a sad one..."

Captain thought about it. He didn't want to get too involved in speculation about her past as it might be too big a switch to flick if she came back early and caught them off-guard. But she wouldn't be back for at least another twenty minutes, and he would see her coming from across the road so they could probably talk about it for a little while. He relaxed into the bench and the hypothetical.

"Ok, mate, here's my theory: it's all about money. There's no money in Uzbekistan, or it's getting shared out unevenly, so she came here."

"I'm not sure, that doesn't sound very tragic."

"It isn't. Not if she had a choice, but it makes sense..."

"But...if you're right about the money, then..."

"What?"

Benny tried to think ahead and lay out what he wanted to say. He wasn't sure what the exact words would be, but it was something about politics and the environment she grew up in and the fact that she had no choice because of the choices that were forced upon her. From there he thought he might branch out into the different levels of choice, how there was no completely free choice in the world and even if you took a choice that would give you more money, it was still restrictive in the sense that money was your goal and you never chose the system where money was decided to be the goal and...was there anywhere else to go from there? He thought back to how he might open himself up onto this topic...Fucking Captain, with Joseph he'd be saying it already.

"You think they make a lot of money here?" Benny asked.

"More than in Russia, mate...or Uzbekistan even."

"You think she was a whore back there too?"

"Might've been. She must have had some prep for this, right?"

"Right."

He tried to think back to his argument on choice and how luck defined the early stages of an individual's existence, but it was too much of an effort to create the words for the occasion and, as he looked at his friend's face, was it really worth all that effort for him? Wouldn't he just dismiss it anyway?

"I think she's just got dollar signs in her little blue eyes. Imagine how much she'd get in the exchange back to Uzbek cash."

"But what about what she's doing in there? And the people she's doing it with...she's doing that just for money?"

"If you do it enough times, it's probably not that bad, right? You just switch off, I reckon..."

Just switch off? Krist, was it really that way? It couldn't be. He couldn't write for a cynical whore, they were undeserving. If the choice wasn't oppressive enough, if it wasn't a case of this path, misery, that path, death, then the words wouldn't come. No, they had to be tragic whores...

"Maybe you're right..." he muttered.

...every-time they were being fucked by someone they didn't know, they had to be miserable. If they weren't then they were undeserving. If this Uzbek girl wasn't miserable right now, with a stranger's dick inside her, then she wouldn't get his words.

"You romanticize it too much, mate. That's the writer part of you. You want her to be a damsel so you can rescue her. Not that you could though. Her pimp probably has her locked up tight."

"I would have to confront him, I guess..."

"I wonder if he'll let her fuck me after hours...maybe she doesn't get to do any personal fucks."

Another woman walked up the stairwell across the road. Benny tried to invade her mind and grab her thoughts as she went up those steps. Was every thought to do with what was waiting for her or was she really detached like Captain said? It's only tragic in my mind because I've never done it and when I think of it, it's my first time in there, every time, it's the first stranger and the first sensation of dread and that's where the misery comes from, he told himself. If you do it enough times, it becomes routine. He played it back and forgot about talking to Captain, and the pair of them waited for the Uzbek to come back and tell them something about her life.

Fifteen minutes later she reappeared at the bottom of the stairs and walked back over to the same park.

She sat straight with her back away from the metal of the bench, in the space that Benny had released for her as she had walked over. Captain was keeping his distance but also doing most of the talking. He asked a few questions about Uzbekistan and her life in Hong Kong, skilfully avoiding the reason why she was there at all, before her curt responses forced him into talking about himself.

"I'm not a great musician, but I'm not shit either. I'm somewhere in the middle. I can play loads of songs, and I'm not afraid to get on a stage and-...what's wrong?"

"You speak fast..." she said with a smile, only half turning to look at him.

"Sorry, yeah. People say that, Benny says that sometimes, too fast." He gestured at Benny and she glanced at him quickly but wasn't captured by the moment. Captain continued, almost as fast as before. "I play guitar, you know guitar? Yeah, I play that and some piano, but I'm not very good at that. Bad piano player, me. But if I play on a stage, in front of lots of people, that's good. I can do..."

Benny sat perched on the arm of the bench, trying to get beyond her forced smile. There was something going on in that head and he had noticed that she kept looking at her phone, expecting a call or checking the time, and he knew she was sitting there because it was close to where she went to-...to do what she did. Or what they did to her. But her interpretation of it was the thing that was missing. Her face was impenetrable. But she can't just sit here and not be thinking of what she has to do again, he thought, and-...what time was it? Almost three...how many more guys would she have to do that night? It couldn't be more than three, surely...was she dreading each cock waiting for her up there, or was she indifferent? He had to know which.

"...they just press play, that's all they do, honestly. They press play, on the machine, and they make music. They get big money for pressing a button. Not fair, I think. I mean, I can do, he can do, you can do too, everyone can do, right? What do you think?"

Captain was still talking and she was still smiling and checking her phone. It wasn't going so well anymore, the conversation was clearly one way. It wouldn't hurt if he just asked one little question...

"Irena...hey..." Benny interrupted.

Captain half coiled again, but could do nothing but smile and politely let his friend step in. Irena turned slowly round, checking her phone one more time before reaching Benny.

"What time do you finish work?"

"Tonight. Five." She used her fingers to emphasize.

"Do you like working so late?"

Captain leaned away from Irena and faked a yawn so he could shake his head at Benny. 'Shut the fuck up,' he mouthed.

"No, five is very late. But...can do nothing."

"Can't do anything about it? Right. But what about the job, do you like it?"

"Mate..." Captain tried to interject but Benny didn't look at him.

"No, the job is no good. But I have to do..."

The words gave Benny confidence to go further. She had to do it, which meant it wasn't a fair choice...this was veering towards the tragic just as he had hoped.

"What about the guys? Are they nice?"

She thought about this one. Captain translated the pause as a dismissal and quickly stood up and went over to Benny.

"What the fuck-..?" he said quickly past his ear and into the empty space of the park behind.

"Relax, she's compliant."

"You're pushing her away..."

"I'm not. It's more honest this way. Trust me..."

"Hey, I have to go..."

Captain turned to face her, moving back to her side and questing for her hand.

"Wait, don't go, he was just joking. He's an idiot..."

"No, I have to go back. Over to there. Work."

She pointed back to the stairwell.

"Oh. Right."

"I come back, forty-five minutes. If you here."

"I'll be here."

She turned without saying any more and walked back over to her work place. Benny watched her cross the road and started the same process of thought as before, wondering how she felt as she climbed the steps, if she imagined the guy who might be waiting for her, if she had any dread. He was more confident now, after hearing her responses, that she would think these things and that her situation was-...

"Mate, why don't you take a walk next time?"

"Walk where?"

"Anywhere."

"And do what?"

"I don't know, buy a fucking brain."

"Come on Cap-..."

"...and then a fucking gag. I'll tie it on for you."

Benny moved off the arm and spread his body out like Gandhi.

"I was just asking some honest questions. And she was comfortable with it. There's no controversy here..."

"Not yet, but you're getting there..."

"Cap, if it seems like she doesn't like the question then I'll stop. I know you like her."

"Like her? I just want a fuck, mate."

"Man, whatever your motivation, I won't mess with it."

"If you're a decent friend you won't."

Benny nodded and sat back down, relieved that he had a little bit of leash still available to him.

"I know you're interested about her too..." he slipped out.

Captain didn't answer.

They sat side by side for another forty-five minutes, alternately talking about Captain's wall, the whore, where exactly Uzbekistan was in the world, what they could claim to know about it, Russian phrases to dazzle her with, and Amelia, again.

"She's a whore, almost. Back in the dirty days, she must've done some shit."

"She didn't..."

"Mate, I guarantee she did..."

"She would've-...or I don't think-..."

"...it's something she wouldn't confess to...and no one's honest, mate, even before they've lost themselves in some shitty drug."

"But, it's not the point...she would've been forced-..."

"...if the point is being a whore is hopeless and put upon you then it's the point. Isn't it the point?"

Captain left his hand out open in the space in front of him, offering the question out to the whole park as if it were somehow sided with prostitution. The trees stayed still, refusing to sway even in the light breeze. Benny stayed still too. They were arguing about the wrong thing and he didn't want to get drawn into that part of Amelia. The balance as he saw it was like this: Amelia had soared up a few levels by meeting this lawyer guy, but before then she had been held down by drugs. That was even, in his mind. But before that, she had put herself into that place by grabbing that first needle, and he didn't know with how much acceptance she had done that. That put the blame back on her, but, his mind reeling determinedly backwards into her story, wasn't she just a kid when that happened and weren't certain decisions too spectacular in their hugeness for her. A sixteen year old kid, depressed and unable to plot a way through to her twenties [the same way a lot of the future became clouded for him when he felt defeated, with blank time replacing those years ahead of him that his rational self would've realized as potentially active, 'anything could happen' stretches of time], was that her fault? But, what about the wealth she had grown up around? That was the starting point, wasn't it? Did anyone deserve sympathy if they had been handed that kind of wealth to begin with?

Benny turned his face away from Captain, wanting to protect his thoughts.

Krist, why had he thought of her again? It was gone already. Her story had lost its merit and its place in his scheme. She was lucky and undeserving and he wouldn't write it, and where was that whore anyway?

The whore returned, walking slowly across the road to the park, perhaps preparing answers ahead of the questions she knows I've got for her, Benny speculated.

Captain stood up and helped her down onto the bench. His hand placed itself around her shoulder and stayed there.

There was silence again as Captain thought of ways to restart the conversation without alluding to the thing she had just done up those stairs, while Irena sat still and regal, unconcerned about carrying any part of the responsibility of conversation. The phone stayed tight in her hand.

Benny stood up and walked in front of them back and forth, the prosecution Captain had tried to silence dressing itself once more.

"How was it?" he asked.

Captain moved his head back again to mouth more threats.

"Not so good..." Irena replied, smiling ambiguously.

"Bad guy?" Benny let a reciprocal smile sneak out.

"Bad guy."

Captain came forward, relaxing slightly, and ran his fingers through her hair.

"Really? What was bad about him?" he asked from the side.

"He is too..." she gripped Captain's shoulders and made a sound similar to something like a black bear.

"Aggressive?"

"Angry...he wants too fast and too..."

"Violent?"

She shrugged her shoulders unsure of the right word.

"That's not good," Captain said, moving his hand around her shoulder, "that's really not good. Bad guy." He wanted to move his hand down onto her chest, but there was no real way to make it sympathetic so he kept it where it was.

"Are many of the guys like that?"

She pinched her face in thought.

"Not every guy, right?"

"One in one night, I think."

"It's not good, so many bad guys out there," Captain said again, his hand moving down slightly.

Benny stopped his strides and watched Captain's hand creep down. He wondered if Captain really thought he could put his hand there without her noticing, and if Irena would bother to stop him. If his hand did make it down there, then it would conclude things for him. If she let him do that then she really was a tragic figure.

"Why do you do this job, Irena?"

"This job..."

"Yeah, why do you do this?"

"I don't know how I say..."

"You don't like it, right? You don't like the guys?"

"Of course, no."

"Then why?"

Captain's hand stopped its long march just south of her collarbone.

"This job..."

"Yeah, why this job?"

"Back home, I don't do this job."

"What did you do?"

"I was student. But no money...not enough money to get."

"So you came here?"

"No, I go many place. Not only Hong Kong. Thai. Japan. They like blonde hair and tall there."

"You go everywhere in Asia?"

"Next week, I go Shanghai. Then two weeks, I come here again. Every place same, no matter for me."

Benny stared down at the ground, momentarily losing all desire to write for her. The way she talked about this, it was the same way she had given her name to them. There was no change.

"It's good to travel, right?" Captain said, trying a laugh.

"I don't see the city I go. I go shopping in day then have to work night. I don't like this."

"Shopping...but you do it still?"

"I do for money, yes. I need money for home and family and college. College, maybe."

"You can't make money back home?" Benny cut back in.

"Not enough. I don't come here if I can, you know?"

Her fingers reached forwards to her knees and tightened while the rest of her body remained still.

"You give your money to your family?"

"Yes."

"So they know what you're doing?"

"They know dating and I tell them kiss and go club sometimes, but they don't know all. I never tell them. They think, some girl can do this ok, but they think too that some only kiss and dating. I never tell all."

Captain moved his hand in small rotations, aiming for the top of her breast with each sloping descent.

"You don't have to, you shouldn't," he whispered to her.

She straightened up without warning and moved her body away from his hand, which stayed briefly in the displaced air spinning the same circles.

"I never tell my boyfriend too. He don't know I do this."

She focused on Benny who nodded, inspired again. He could see the whole of it now, the totality of her life and environment, and the pervasive fill of tragedy. It was all set up, contrived even, for some kind of final drama, her death, murdered by the oddball sitting with the laptop on the bench opposite, and then everything she had ever touched would feel the overwhelming hopelessness of the whole story. And the coda that would make the tragedy, it would tell them, he would tell them in his writings, was that it was all ludicrously unjust and a woman like her never deserved to have things happen to her in this way...

"I have to go back."

Irena held the phone up in her hand and stood up.

...there were decisions on her part, like Amelia, but she was hobbled by things, by events, it wasn't a positive choice, it was reactive, wasn't it? She was in Uzbekistan, someone approached her, an Asian guy maybe, and she hadn't wanted to do it, but the money...she had a boyfriend, they were in love, they are in love...it's tragic, it's entrapment by events, it's-...

"They say last one."

She spoke to Benny again, not looking back at Captain, who was now reclined into the bench, still deciding on the importance of the boyfriend.

"You're gonna come back?" Benny asked, waking up to the conversation.

"I come back in-..." she looked at her phone.

"Forty-five minutes, right?" Captain said, his spinning fingers now fists.

"Yes, then I finish," she replied to Benny.

"Ok, we'll wait here."

She smiled at him and turned to the street again. Her heels made no sound against the park floor as she left.

"Or maybe we go, yah," Captain half-shouted after her.

"What are you doing?"

"Fuck this, let's chip." He stood up to leave.

"What?"

"I'm done, mate, I've had enough."

"But she's coming back."

"Yeah, to fuck you, you little prick. You twisted her to you..."

"She's not-..."

"She's a whore, I'm going."

"No, we said-..."

"I don't care, mate, I'm done, I'm going. Stay if you want, I don't care."

Captain walked away from the bench.

"Cap, wait..."

He stopped and turned.

"What?"

"You've got it wrong, I don't want her. I just wanna-..."

"Stay and talk to her then, I don't care."

"I just wanna talk to her and understand-..."

"Just stay, wait for her. I don't care, mate, I'm going..."

Benny stood up but didn't move forward. He didn't want to give any ground; he wanted him to come back into the park. Actually he still wasn't sure if it was better for Captain to stay or go...

"What's happened, Cap?"

"What?"

"You were having fun before..."

"Yeah before..."

"What happened? You changed so fast..."

"Before..." he started.

"Yeah, what changed?"

Captain came back towards the bench wagging a finger.

"Before I had a plan, I nearly had my hand on her tit. Another hour or two, I'd have had her back in a room somewhere over there. That was the fun part, but you kept asking your questions. And why, mate? To do what?"

"I wanted to know-..."

"Nah, five minutes ago she didn't have a boyfriend. Then you reminded her. Now, she's got that little, sad story you wanted, right? Well, fuck you, she's a whore. Why do you have to put something behind it all the time?"

"I'm not, I'm-..."

"Why can't you just let me fuck her?"

"I can, I did do that...you almost had your hand on her tit-..."

"Fuck off, mate. You brought up her boyfriend. Fucking clown, I bet he's a fucking shepherd tugging off cows in some fucking little village somewhere..."

Benny waited until the swearing had stopped then spoke again.

"Listen, it's not done yet. She comes back, we take her for breakfast somewhere. It's, what...almost five now, we'll take her to a teahouse, we'll talk to her, you can sit next to her, it might still happen..."

Captain shook his head.

"I wasn't taking her away from you, Cap. And I wasn't trying to fuck it up for you...the questions weren't the problem, you were just too eager. If you slow it down then maybe..."

Captain held up a finger and Benny took it as a sign to stop.

"It's gone, mate. I don't know if you fucked it up for me or not...I don't know if you purposefully did that to me, I'll think about it more when I'm back home...and if you did, fuck you, I won't be fucking happy about it and...if you end up doing anything with this whore, if you even get her number, I'm off and that's it mate, that's our friendship over, if you do that. Have a nice life, I won't fucking talk to you ever again."

He paused and looked over at the stairwell where Irena was taking part in her last private tragedy that night, until the next night.

"I'll stay for breakfast. But I'm warning you now, mate, it's not gonna be pretty. If she's cold again then I'm just gonna rip her to pieces."

"Why...just let her talk, don't take the piss."

"No, if I can't fuck her then I'm gonna have some fun."

"But it's not her fault, all of this. She's been forced into it by events and-..."

"Yeah, I'm sure her story's very sad and tragic, but I'm still gonna rip her to pieces. I don't give a shit."

"Cap...come on. Go easy on her, please."

"To pieces, mate..."

He sat back down on the bench, spreading his arms out and covering almost two thirds of it. To the side, a slanted figure edged by cautiously, moving over to the bin by the bench next to them. The top of the shawl, which looked like a cut-out piece of earth from the parks flower beds, covered the entrance and the bin let it enter undisturbed. It came out a minute later with nothing and left without any fuss. Benny saw the figure leave the park but couldn't quite draw up enough motivation to follow. He'd seen that type before.

When Irena came back, she found that the bench was a harder place to sit. Captain stayed splattered against the wood, smirking at her, while Benny smiled politely.

"How was he?" Captain asked.

"No feeling," she said to Benny.

"Not big enough, huh?" Captain continued.

Irena said nothing. Benny waited for the question to be forgotten.

"You wanna go and get some breakfast?"

She looked down at Captain before slowly accepting.

They walked out of the park, which was left empty without them, and away from the stairwell where another walker was about to ascend to do things that she may or may not have wanted to do. Benny didn't look back at any of the others. He had his subject already and didn't need to concern himself with variety of opinion; one was enough to know for sure if the subject was worthy of him. The only concession he made as they walked across Nathan Road and into the more respectable side of Mong Kok, where teens spilled out drunk from the karaoke holes, was dropping his pace to allow Captain to keep up with them. Irena, in contrast, seemed to have forgotten all about him and only slowed down enough to not lose them completely.

They kept on walking across streets in this awkward formation until they found a teahouse, which Irena recognized and had clearly taken breakfast in before [with other tragic, miserable whores, Benny imagined], and all of them sat down, Irena taking the far corner and covering the rest of the bench with her bag until Captain was seated opposite her, at which point she lifted it to allow Benny in next to her. Benny saw the disaster looming if he took that space so he moved in alongside Captain instead.

The waiter came over and Captain ordered for himself and then Benny in Cantonese before leaving Irena on her own, but she was comfortable with this area of the language and ordered, relaxing the coldness of her voice for the waiter, and even smiling at the end of it. Captain smirked and shook his head then threw the menu back at the waiter.

"You come here for breakfast a lot, Irena?" Benny asked, trying to keep things simple.

"After work, I come here. It's good food, and cheap."

"You must be hungry after work..." Captain added.

She looked at him straight, her mouth narrowed. Captain glared back at her, determined not to be intimidated by some whore, no matter how Russian or Uzbekian she was.

"What do you say?"

"He's just being funny..."

Benny nudged Captain with his knee. Captain gave one back and spat out "fuck-stealer."

Irena heard the remarks but said nothing. She knew "fuck" and she had picked up "stab" and "steal" from somewhere, probably a big star movie from America, but she had never heard "fuck" and "steal" in the same word. Did it mean one of them wanted to fuck her? The rude one, obviously, but what about the nice one, what was his name, Banny? She thought he did, but she didn't know if she would let him. If he knows this one, this rude little prick then maybe he's not so different, she warned herself.

One of the waiters walked past with someone else's food.

Captain kicked the bottom of their bench with his heel and mumbled, "fucking ho-bag" under his breath. Then he started talking about Benny's writing.

"What you said about Amelia for your story...mate, maybe it's not such a bad idea. See, thinking about it, who else have you got to write about? The Homeless? Nah, mate, they don't do anything. Whores? That's a laugh. What the fuck could you write about them? Let's see..."

Benny picked at his nails, listening to the list of all that was wrong with whores, and made panicked predictions of how far Captain was gonna take it. He had that face on him, that sour look, which meant he was gonna say something stronger to her. But what? And what would she do back?

"...problem really, as I see it, mate. They don't have any sympathy value, they're just fucking machines. Who's gonna read that? Perverts, yeah. That guy in the park with the laptop, yeah. But anyone else, no chance. It doesn't work. Why would they want a skank to succeed?"

Benny watched Irena for a reaction to "skank". She looked back at him without a smile.

Captain kept on talking for a few more minutes, pointing all of his comments into the side of Benny's face and keeping Irena isolated on the other side of the table. He didn't even want to look at her. If she got up and walked out, fine. It wouldn't bother him in the slightest.

The teahouse filled up with a few more late-nighters and the waiters rushed over to take their orders. Captain stopped talking and took note of the waiter serving the table next to them.

"Where are these fucking noodles anyway?"

"They're coming..."

"...from the fucking paddy field, mate. Where are they?"

"Cap, they'll be here in a minute."

Captain followed the waiter as he went back past their table, almost putting out his hand to pull on his apron.

"They're probably spitting on them back there." He lifted himself up off the bench and tried to see into the kitchen, which was sitting twenty yards away, covered mostly by a wall. "They never let you see inside the kitchen, and you know why...they've all got their fucking pants down and their cocks out, mate..."

Benny glanced over at the kitchen to offer Captain some support even though he knew he was being ridiculous. He was aware that Irena was still looking at him.

"...at home, noodles would take me ten minutes, not even that. All you need's the water and the noodles. Simplest fucking thing in the world to make."

"It's busy in here, give it a few more minutes..."

"Mate, it's noodles. A fucking five minute dish."

"Why you always complain?"

Captain looked at Irena for the first time since they had ordered. That sour look...

"What?"

"You complain every time in here. It's no good."

"Don't tell me what to say."

"Cap, come on..."

"No, I'm sorry, mate, but I don't let anyone speak to me like that. If I wanna say something, I'll say it."

"Why we have to hear this?"

"Excuse me, love, I was actually talking to my friend here, not you."

"Why not talk happy things, why always complain, complain? No one like to hear this thing every time."

Captain blanked her completely and faced Benny, his face even sourer than before.

"Mate, shut her up or I'm fucking going."

"Cap, can't you just-...stop talking until the food gets here. All of us, I mean...we should just calm down and stop talking for a minute. Just relax, please?"

"I don't even wanna look at her. I feel embarrassed. I honestly feel embarrassed that people can see me here sitting with that..."

"What he say about me?" Irena asked Benny from the other side.

"He say nothing. He's saying nothing. He's just hungry, that's all."

Captain shook his head and turned back to the table. He focused himself directly on the 'thing' sitting opposite him.

"Ok, we're calm now, right? The noodles are coming, we'll eat, it's fine."

A minute of silence. The noodles didn't come.

Captain folded his arms and kicked at the bench by her legs.

"I'm having breakfast with a whore...I can't fucking believe it."

"Cap, please..."

"She's had, what, six, seven dicks inside her in the last six hours, mate. And now we're eating noodles..."

Irena knew he was talking about her again. She recognized "dicks" and "inside" and could work out what they were doing in the same sentence.

"She better be a clean whore..."

Benny kicked him in the calf again.

"Don't fucking kick me, mate..."

"What you say?"

"What?"

"What you say about me?"

"Nothing. I say nothing," Captain said back.

"You say "whore". I hear it."

"Did I?"

"He didn't say "whore", he said-..." Benny tried to think of a word that sounded like whore. "...hoard. He said, hoard. A clean hoard. You know that expression?"

"I hear whore, not hoard."

"I think it was hoard. I'm pretty sure..." He turned to Captain. "You said hoard, right?"

Captain smirked.

"He said 'whore'," Irena said with her hand now a fist resting on the table.

"I said 'hoard'. You just can't hear properly, love."

Irena straightened her back and cocked her head slightly to the side. She knew he had said "whore". He was saying bad things about her. She thought about leaning forward and hitting him, but she couldn't, not yet. They would throw them out before the noodles had come, and she was hungry.

"Why you like this now? Because I move your hand?"

"I'm not like anything now...what are you talking about?"

"Before nice, nice...then I move your hand when you try to touch me here, and now, you talk badly. You are like baby."

Benny thought about kicking Irena's leg. If there's one word you don't use with someone like Captain it's-...

"Yeah, actually it's kinda rude to call someone a baby and I don't fucking like it." Captain kicked the bench again, hard enough for other tables to hear. "Especially when it's coming from a whore."

"You talk still like baby now. I do nothing to you and you talk badly. You talk shit to me."

"Cap, just relax. Irena, please...can you just be nice, both of you?"

"I talk shit to you 'cos you're a cold bitch."

"Cap..."

"Fuck off, Benny, you brought me here...having breakfast with some slut who's just spent the whole night fucking strangers for money. It's not this bad is it, mate, really?"

Irena stared at him, her hands hidden under the table. A few faces from the other tables looked over with noodles hanging out of their mouths.

"Aren't you gonna leave then?"

She didn't move.

"You're not? You sure?"

"I do nothing. I wait for my noodles, that's all. You have problem, not me."

"She's not gonna leave, mate. What a fucking joke. She's actually gonna sit there and ride this out..."

"Can you stop it...people are watching, Cap..." Benny tried again, making sure not to touch him.

Captain ignored him and turned back on Irena.

"You're actually gonna sit there and eat, aren't you?"

The waiter looked at the other two waiters and they all made their decisions about how long they would wait before going over.

"Fine. I'll be fucked if I'm gonna eat here then. Let me out, Benny."

"You're not-..."

"Let me out..."

"But, can't you just eat and-..."

"I'm not eating next to a whore. Let me out."

Captain stood up as much as he could between the bench and the table and Benny had no choice but to stand up and let him out.

"You're staying with the whore then, are you?" Captain said when he was out.

Benny couldn't move; the whore was the story and this was where she was staying. He stayed hovering over his seat, trapped in the scene.

"Well, fuck you, mate. Stay with her, have a nice life."

He marched out before Benny could say another word, trying to knock shoulders with one of the waiters on the way out.

The teahouse returned to its normal level of noise and noodles got sucked fully into mouths. Benny sat back down on the bench.

"Your friend is baby. I'm sorry for you."

Benny half-smiled and tried not to blame her for everything.

"He has good moments, and then those moments."

The food came and they ate and slowly forgot about Captain. They started talking about general things, with Benny hoping to gradually direct the topic back to her work, but, despite these intentions, Irena managed to wrestle back control of the questions and interrogated him on the events of his own life, something Benny was reluctant to shine any light on. He didn't want her finding anything out about him and he didn't want her opinions either. She was the experiment, not him. He answered curtly, and sometimes with spurts of dark humour [My Dad was too preoccupied to hit me, my Mum thought neglect was more effective], expanding on his childhood and, cosmetically, on his theories on the mind and when it was exactly that we first became who we were. She tilted her head when he talked of this, which he assumed meant that she was confused, but when she started giving her own views on what he put forward he realized she was genuinely interested in it. He cut her off quickly by calling for the bill and suggesting that he walk her home.

"How about you walk me into my home?" she asked, her eyes glinting.

"What?"

"Then we talk more about this thing. I like this, very interesting."

Benny paid for the breakfast, including Captain's, which the chef had apparently cooked before the walkout, and they walked back onto the streets of Mong Kok, with the sunlight poking its feet out from the horizon line and giving the faintest trace of warmth to those who were trying to imagine themselves already back in their beds. Her hand edged its way onto his, just as Captain's had edged its way down her chest, and when he didn't take it, she did, wrapping it up in hers and smiling warmly for the first time that night. Krist, it's turning into a fairytale, thought Benny.

They walked down two blocks, past people just arriving to face the day and those who had finally been defeated by the night, a man and a woman who looked like any other foreign couple hand in hand and not a man and his whore.

There was more talk, but Benny managed to steer it away from his theories and onto the future and how she planned to move back to Uzbekistan and whether or not she was going to marry her boyfriend. She replied that she would go back and apply to the college and forget she ever did this, and the boyfriend was left standing in the waiting room without an answer.

They turned another corner into a street Benny didn't recognize. He had been around Mong Kok a lot, but never here. Was it the whore district then? Was this where they were kept?

She gripped his hand tight and told him they were almost there.

Krist, we're almost at her place, Benny warned himself. Would she make me pay for it, if we did do anything? But we wouldn't, we won't, we can't, she's a whore, I can't do it. She's nice as far as it goes, but...Captain...if I go and do anything then the friendship will be-...

His phone shook inside his pocket and he took it out.

It was a message from Captain.

'Mate, you fuck her, our friendship is dead. Prick.'

She asked him who it was and he said it was no one, but she guessed and told him that a friend like that wasn't good for him, and that she liked him and was happy he had stayed with her. Benny smiled and told her he would come to her place for a little while. He told himself he would go in just to get her story and then leave immediately. But another part of him, the part that was pushing him in with eager hands, told him that he was gonna end up in her bed and that it was gonna be spectacular.

Benny had blocked it out all night, but he had often had that supposedly typical fantasy of saving a whore from a life of whoring. He had also had a supplementary fantasy where he would fuck her and she would be amazingly grateful for it, after which he would try to save her, but, alas, would be too late to do so, and she would die, perhaps not in his arms, but he would see her body at least and know that she was dead, and then he could deal with the feelings that might surround such a thing. But this had only ever been a fantasy. Complex, layered events like this never happened to him, he was merely dealt the mundane to write about. Before he was, anyway. Now, he was at the whore's door, or Irena's door if they were to be lovers, and he wouldn't have to invent fantasies anymore, he would have something genuine, something tragic.

They stopped next to a building with dirty walls, twenty, twenty-five floors in total maybe, and she led him by the hand to the elevator, which had plain wooden walls and two cages to pull across, and when it started, the system had to put an extra second into its pull before the floor of the elevator jolted up.

"Don't worry, very safe," she said as they climbed up to the tenth floor.

As she opened the cage and then the door to her apartment his phone went again. Another message from Captain.

'And I'll know if you fuck her. Prick.'

She took the phone out of his hand and turned it off.

In her apartment it was small and compact like most apartments in Hong Kong. The kitchen was like a closet and there was only enough room for one plate on the sideboard. The bathroom had a shower but no tub, the bedroom was practically the living room, and the bed ate up all the space in there, which left them with no other place to sit.

The bed itself looked like it was expecting crime of some sort. The mattress was still wrapped in its original plastic sheeting. The pillows and duvet had no covers. "I go in three, four days," she said as an explanation.

They sat close to each other, Irena's hand stroking Benny's thigh, and her mouth open, telling him how special he had been to her that night.

"You talk to me like person, not just man," she said.

Benny cringed and tried to hide it by looking at the walls around them. There were no posters and nothing decorative or ornamental to distract him so his mind fell back onto the situation in front of him. There was a body next to him, they were on a bed, she was stroking him, she was good at stroking him. He didn't want to do this but they were already on the bed and there wasn't much more to say. But Captain would know...if he did anything, Captain would know, somehow his guilt would be transparent.

"You are a nice guy, I think. Aren't you?"

Krist, nice guys and monsters and-...he turned onto his side, fumbling for the edge of the mattress.

"I think we should move off the bed a minute..."

She touched his arm and felt for the muscle.

"Don't you think?"

She pulled him back into the middle of the bed and moved her hand further up his thigh...

Krist, not there, he couldn't quite bring himself to tell her, down to my foot, go that way.

She didn't go down, she carried on upwards...

"Hey...I was wondering..."

She adjusted her position so she could reach the full length of his body, her hand almost there...

"I was wondering about your story," he started. "...how did you-...how did you actually get into this? How do they keep you here?"

"Talk later. Can we?"

"Or now? We could-...do they give you enough money here-...do you save money?"

She wasn't listening anymore. She leaned in and kissed him on the neck at the same time as her hand reached his cock. Benny let his elbow fold itself up and his body rest down on the bed. He let it happen and thought of how things like this just seemed to happen, without decisions being made.

As she went to work on him, he leaned his head over the side of the bed and saw a small book on the floor. The title and the author's name were in Russian, or Uzbek, but he knew the woman on the front, those shades, the tight black dress, yes, it was her, wasn't it? She was a prostitute too, but the kind of prostitute that you never saw with a man, and she lived alone...oh krist, that was good, that was really fucking good...but the-...krist...the book cover, it was the same as the movie poster, almost the same, only the colours around her were darker than they should've been. He reached out his hand to pick it up but was intercepted by her hand, taking him back up to the scene on the bed.

He woke up an hour later and realised straight away that he hadn't really been asleep. She was naked next to him, with the blanket up to her waist and the top half of her body open. He leaned back over the side of the bed and saw a tied-up condom sitting on top of the book, obscuring the Russian Hepburn's face.

"You don't sleep?" she asked with her back turned to him.

"Irena...I don't think-..."

"It's ok. I like talk to you. You are nice guy."

Benny knew he had let things pass to such a point that he was far from being a nice guy. He had reached the point where he would have to lie to Captain to remain friends with him, lie to her to stop her from thinking of him as a bad guy [at least as long as he was actually there], and still, somehow, coax that tragic story out of her without her realising that it would be the model of the new brand of social misery fiction he was developing.

"We can talk. I like talking to you too."

He started stroking her back, figuring that it was better to be doing something with his hands than nothing, and something sensual was better than just shoving a couple of fingers into her. I can't do it all again, he stressed clearly to himself.

"So how did you end up in Hong Kong?"

"End up? What does it mean?"

"Be here...how did you come to Hong Kong?"

"I tell you before. You remember?"

"You told me some of it. Can you tell me more?"

She reached her hand down and pulled more of the blanket over herself.

After a few moments of silence, she spoke again.

"Why you want to talk about this?"

Should he just tell her?

"I want to know more about you. I want to know everything. You can tell me anything, I will listen. I promise."

If he told her she'd kick him out. It wasn't that immoral what he was doing and what he had done, but she would still kick him out and he would've done these things that weren't really that immoral for nothing. He had to get this story out of her, and then write it all down. And perhaps save her too...and her friends, as long as they're equally tragic, he corrected himself. They probably would be if they were from the same place as her...

"Ok, I tell you..."

"Ok."

...he would write a story for each of them and save them all, and then lie back and be celebrated for his work. The whole writing establishment would know, the media and everyone back home, and all the writers out there would applaud. Salman Rushdie would come out of hiding and stand with his bodyguards and clap for him, and the film stars who would plead to make a film out of his work, they would applaud too, Dustin Hoffman and Jack Nicholson would be on their feet, clapping him, riding him...

"...but it's not good story, I think."

"It's ok, just say what you want to say. I'll listen."

...but they couldn't know that he slept with her. It would deflate it all, if they knew that. And on the first night too...it would look creepy, sinister even...Rushdie and Hoffman and Nicholson would disapprove for sure...well, maybe not Nicholson, he was a dog, but the other two-...he would have to lie about that part. To everyone, starting with his friends. What would they think of this? What would Amelia say to him when she found out? She was out there, with her own guy, her own thing that had just happened, while he was here with his thing...

"I was eighteen year old and my college, they say to me 'no, you can't come in', no entry there for girl like me with no money. My father, he tries to make more money so I can go college, my mother, she tries to make money, and still, 'no I can't come in,' they say to me. I don't know what can I do, and still no money, so I meet friend and she say she go Asia, she come here in Hong Kong and Japan, and...before, you know I never can do this, I never think can do this. I have boyfriend, three years, so I don't think can do this."

She froze the story to think of how to continue, either the grammar of it or the details, Benny wasn't sure which. It reminded him of something, of her, in that car...Amelia and her broken sentences.

Krist, Amelia, that little faker, she had landed well, hadn't she? Yes, a perfect landing, on a ground of fucking cushions. That story of hers, moving in with the guy, the lawyer, the fearless chaser of his own dreams, the rich kid, sharing the same bed as him and making plans for the coming future, holiday plans, 'get away for a few days' kind of plans...and suddenly she could lie back in comfort and make such plans because he had the money to initiate them, and if he was the kind of guy who insisted on her staying in his place and his bed, rent-free, after seeing her only twice, then he would also be the kind of guy to insist on paying her part of the plans. It was ridiculous luck, disgusting luck, and she was lapping it all up, every little thing he dropped on the floor...

"...only one time I think can do this thing, in Uzbekistan, this man at club in my town, he come to me one night and he tell me I can do this thing, I can make money by lying down he say to me, and I know he mean this kind of thing. I say no, I never do this, and he leave me alone, and my boyfriend come to me and I forget everything. You know, my boyfriend, he good to me, he become engineer now. He tell me to come back from holiday and he help me, but...he don't know I do this here. If he know, I think he not ask me to come home. I think about him sometime...I think about family..."

She stopped again and moved closer to Benny.

"No one is nice to me for long time. Not here, good example. You are nice guy, I think."

Benny let her cheek rest on his chest and didn't worry whether or not she liked a guy with hairs on his body. He just didn't want her to look at his face while he was elsewhere...

"We'll go to Japan soon, and then Thailand next month," Amelia had told him the last time he saw her. That was in Admiralty, a month back, in the one-fifth bar on Star Street, the one all the Spanish embassy workers drank at. "Some resort with a little beach or something." Benny hadn't ordered a drink, she had. He had wanted to leave as soon as he heard the guy's name, she hadn't. "I'll just sit there and wait for him to get his shirt off," she had said, smiling, ordering another glass of wine. Benny hadn't understood. He thought she was talking about the hotel room, not the beach. "Did I tell you? His body is seriously hot. His arms, his chest...he's like one of those Olympic swimmers." Benny had closed his eyes, mentally searching for the nearest train station. "Seriously, Benny, his chest actually has that big line thing in the middle, y'know, between the tits." He had opened them again. The exit was there. "But, I don't know, it's like he's almost too good, y'know?" He had stood up, told her to be careful, and then left. "Too good was right," he had spat as he walked into the alley behind the bar. The guy was an all-star, an impossibility that shouldn't exist in this world and she had somehow walked right into him. "Just swoops in like a fucking superhero, doesn't he?" Yes, like a superhero, he had come in and saved her without even realising she was in need of saving...come in just as someone else, a pathetic aspirator of a writer, was about to mobilise and save her himself.

"...Now I'm here and I do, every night...one day in one week I can take rest but six days, one week I have to work and do this thing. I don't like but what I can do, I don't know. I think, not so good to do this thing and I want to be home but...there is money here and no money at home, what I can do? I have to stay here, I think."

She looked up from between chest hairs, to his face. Benny looked straight ahead, at one of the blank walls.

But what if Amelia wasn't saved yet? What if this guy, this rich-kid superhero was just a hobbyist with women like her? And if he dropped her after the first few fucks or if another girl came along and took him away; wouldn't she need him then?

"...I don't know, maybe my story not so good, but not so sad. I have bad job but everyone have bad job, I know. It is sad story, you think?"

There was no reward in saving a whore, was there? No one would recognise it, not the way they would with Amelia. She was someone he knew, someone who had been ignored because...he wasn't sure why exactly, because she had-...she wasn't a dramatist, she didn't scream about it to anyone. She wasn't obvious like the whore. And he knew her, he knew about her. That meant more than a whore, didn't it? And this guy...he would drop her, wouldn't he? He was a sensualist, he wanted her quick. He didn't want the problems she trawled behind her...he would-...did he even know about her yet? She hadn't said if she had told him about her history...and if he didn't know then he wouldn't stick around when she did tell him...he wasn't a cure, he was a quick shot in the vein...

"Benny, you think my story is so sad?"

She climbed up his chest, towards his face, like a child climbing their parent.

"You think it is sad story, right?"

It isn't even a story, he thought as her lips reached his.

He left the whore and her apartment behind, moving quickly to the elevator and not adding any more words to the ones he had left her with in the apartment.

"I have to go, work at the University," he had said as she got off the bed and came towards him.

"Can I see you again?"

"Yeah soon."

"Very soon?"

He had nodded and taken two steps towards her door, trying to forget everything he had done and seen in that place.

"You don't have phone number, right?"

"Yeah, I got it."

"No, I don't give to you. Hey!"

He was already gone.

The air outside was heating up when he stepped out of the building, and by noon it would be unbearable. But by then he'd be indoors, under the ice of the University air vents. Ah work, still, even after a night like this. He wouldn't be able to keep his eyes open, would he? And her, the whore, and what they did...it wasn't gonna go away. Shouldn't he just go straight home? He shook his head in protest, ignored the doubts and the new image of the whore falling onto the pavement beside him from her apartment above, and tried to concentrate his mind on the fastest way to the University. It was Kowloon Tong he needed to get to, he was in Mong Kok now, which meant he had to get the train, get to an exit nearby, and-...

He hadn't meant to do that, why did he do it? Wasn't she disgusting to him in that way?

He walked and hid from all the faces that passed him, even though none of them were curious about what he had done or where he had been at that hour of the morning. There wasn't an exit he could see nearby so he chose a street that had more activity than the others around it and walked on.

Wasn't there a way to get the story without doing that? He had got it, but it wasn't what he had wanted. It was sad, maybe, although he didn't feel any tears or even much sympathy, but it wasn't tragic. And he had sacrificed Captain because of it...he had put himself into a place where he would have to lie and keep to his lie. No, there was another way. He could simply forget it ever happened. He could do that, he was already forgetting her apartment and the details of her body...those legs and that hair...krist, he shouldn't have done it! And that story of hers...no, block it, forget it all. What whore? When? I don't remember that...

The street ended and turned into another which was slightly busier, with bodies yawning into the ground as they set up the market stalls in the street. I know this area, he thought. There was a park nearby that he could see, he had been there before. The station wasn't far. He looked at his watch and saw that he had time to sit down and think before he tackled the job.

He put himself down on one of the benches, one he vaguely remembered sitting on before, although he couldn't recall when it was. There was a man lying next to him, his leg stopping inches from Benny's thigh and the sole of his foot staring out at him. The man turned onto his side and revealed a tanned layer of cuts and gangrene on his calf.

A whore doesn't have that, he told himself, finally feeling sympathy for someone again, along with revulsion. If I care, if I really care, I'll pick him up and take him to the nearest hospital.

Benny didn't move. He sat there, still, until the man woke up and stretched out his leg, apparently not feeling whatever feeling a gangrenous leg would induce, and stood up. He didn't notice Benny, and walked around the circle of benches in the middle of the park.

Benny continued to watch him. The whore was still in his thoughts, but she was presenting herself differently now. A malevolent schemer who had entrapped him and misdirected him into her apartment and tried to get him to sleep with her, but fortunately he had resisted and left before she could have her way. And the story she had told to him, on the street and before she had a chance to tempt him into her apartment, was one of failed ambition, not tragedy. She had chosen to abandon her family and her home, and her boyfriend, who she didn't truly love anyway or she wouldn't have said those things to him when they were in bed togeth-...when they had been walking on the streets beside each other. She had taken her own steps and the choices weren't as limited as he had thought. The lying bitch...no, don't think about her. What whore? When? It never happened.

The gangrenous leg held the man steady as he plunged into one of the bins opposite Benny. It didn't buckle under the strain, although Benny expected it to. It couldn't have full strength, if it looked like that. It must be his spirit giving it strength, he reasoned romantically. He knows it has to hold him, or he won't survive.

The man came out holding nothing. He looked at the next bin along but didn't move towards it. His arm went down and scratched at one of the bigger cuts on his leg.

Benny stood up and walked quickly over to the man, feeling in his pocket for his wallet as he went. He knew he had some notes in there he could spare, and even if he couldn't spare them he was still going to give them. He opened the wallet and pulled out two one-hundred notes, looked at them, then put them back and pulled out a five-hundred note that had been hiding further back.

"No point in doing it at all if you don't give big..." he mumbled, not concerned about whether anyone was close enough to hear him mumbling to himself.

He followed the man around the outside of the benches and finally caught up with him near the same bench they had originally shared. He walked around the man and stood in front of him, saying nothing, just performing a series of slight nods. The note in his hand darted quickly across the space between them and planted itself awkwardly against the man's fingers [which were well tanned and surprisingly tidy]. The fingers didn't take it and the note was pushed and crumpled further into the skin.

"Meh?" said the man.

Benny nodded again and pushed the note harder.

The man looked at the number on the note and quickly took it into his hand. He looked back up at the taller, foreign man and waited for him to try and take it back. Benny nodded again.

"Dim-gaii?" the man asked.

"I'm gonna save you. This is just the start," Benny said back to him.

"Meh? Meh-wah?" the man asked again, before giving up and walking quickly towards the park exit.

Benny nodded once more at the retreating figure and watched him flee the park. He felt elated, better than he had ever felt before. He felt like abandoning all his notes, folding them up and placing them down onto all those palms, those grubby hands that had only ever known coins and shrugs, and seeing their faces as they saw the impossible, dazzling numbers looking back at up at them. The strangeness of it all, he marvelled, the sight of such high numbers in those hands, it was beautiful. He wanted to walk faster and find that man again, and talk to him and meet his friends. He wanted to heal that leg himself and heal all of his friend's afflictions and then take them somewhere, all of them, to a huge space, a huge, green space in one of the parks, and tell them of his plans, tell them that there would be something big for them soon, something wonderful they could be proud of. He wanted to write something quickly, the opening page, and read it to them, out loud. Where was his notepad? Where had he-...was there time to do it?

He looked at his watch again and frowned. The University, the students.

"But-...krist, I'll keep this feeling. This time I'll keep it. Keep it, keep it, keep it," he drummed inside.

He took the train to the University and lost himself in thought, ignoring the faces that were ignoring him, and only once experienced that moment where he became aware of himself being lost in thought and quickly wondered if he shouldn't be prepared for the lesson ahead.

As he walked along the tunnel from the station to the entrance of the University he felt vividly that he was crossing from one part of his life to the next, and when he departed the tunnel and walked briefly outside, noticing the Sun rising higher, he wondered if he shouldn't just quit and stay out among the trees and the earth. He hadn't prepared anything at all for the lesson and he would have a whole hour to fill as always. And then there was the Pete question and the Winnie situation and the thought that the rest of them would turn against him if either one of those two antagonized too far. What would happen if they lost faith in him then? It wouldn't lead to violence, they didn't know how to fight [neither did he] and he was certain he would be justifiably angrier than them if it did lead to that.

But it won't, he calmed himself. I'm still their superior.

The class was already sitting as he walked into the common area [there was no door to open and announce himself] and as he sat himself down he thought he could sense an almost tangible lack of respect hanging in the air. Pete was slouching in his seat talking in Cantonese to De Beauvoir, with his body only half turned to face his superior; Party was on the other side of him, close to his second ear; Winnie, who had been staring cold-eyed at his seat as he had come in, was continuing to stare at the same spot even with him in it. Krist, what did that mean? She was going to blank him and pose as if nothing had happened, but with a slight expression on her face detailing that something might've happened? The others in the group sat without notepads, waiting.

Fuck it, I'm their superior, he reminded himself.

"Today's lesson...will be a little bit different."

Pete coughed, not covering his mouth.

"Today, I'm gonna-..."

"I couldn't find your story," Pete cut in.

Benny didn't answer, which prompted Pete to speak again.

"It's not there. I looked everywhere."

"And?"

Pete stumbled a little, unsure how to respond.

"What's your point, Pete?"

"I want to know where it is."

"Yeah, I want to know too," said De Beauvoir.

"It's in the magazine," Benny said with a sudden, unreal feeling of confidence. "If you can't find it, it's not my problem. Look harder."

"But-...it's not there," staggered Pete.

"It is."

"It isn't."

"He's right, I looked too. It's not there," added De Beauvoir.

"And me," said Party.

"Look again then, all of you. Look harder. I told you."

"I have. We all have. It's not anywhere."

"So?"

He's not gonna do it, he can't, Benny realized. He's a sneak, not an outright protestor. A Stalin, not a Trotsky, the little prick.

Pete opened his mouth and began to accuse Benny of being a fraud and using false credentials to establish integrity and respect in front of the group, but he just couldn't make those words real. It was too much for him, and he just wasn't sure what would happen afterwards. What if he was wrong?

"Have you finished then, Pete?"

He muttered something in Cantonese and folded his arms.

"You're finished then. Great. Maybe we can actually focus on teaching you how to become a real writer now instead of wasting time on irrelevancies." Benny stood up and started to snake around the edge of the circle, making sure to go around the back of the students he didn't trust. "Today's lesson will be one based on humility. Every writer has to learn that they have their limits. A barrier they can't break. A ceiling they'll never smash. In fact, if you want the truth of it, some writers have to learn that they are not writers."

Some of the faces swapped anxiety. One or two turned to Pete. Party sat with a grin, waiting for people to look at him and understand that he knew this was going to happen all along. Fucking Party, who asked him to join anyway? Benny altered course and crept slowly behind him, making his next words louder.

"Some of you, and this might be painful to hear, fall under this banner. You are not writers, and you will never become writers. I'm sorry, I should've told you this a long time ago, really. You will learn, and it'll be your final lesson, that you just don't have the talent to succeed. It sounds cruel, I know, but if you look around you, and I mean look around the world, not your disgusting, shameful castles paid for by Mummy's and Daddy's dirty money, their immortal dig-...their immoral little diggings then...then you will see a lot of familiar faces looking back at you. Then you will understand a truth of the world, a truth that you have to understand very, very clearly. Everyone...is...a...writer. Every second person in every single country wants to be a writer. Yes, it's true, believe me, every...second...person, and the funniest thing is, the thing that's really gonna kick you here, is that the whole world is sitting in front of a computer screen at this very moment, thinking they have something the other billion don't have."

He moved away from Party, back past Pete and the pompously straight figure of De Beauvoir, past a few others, and stopped behind Winnie's chair. He lowered himself down and rested his hands on the back of the metal, close to her shoulders. She made no effort to turn to him, but he knew she felt him there.

"So, a billion of them, including all of you. Let's see. Well, there are twelve of you in this class and I can honestly say that I see nothing remarkable in any of you. It kills me to be so blunt, it really does, but that's the way I see it. Sure, you can dispute it, call me a liar or a fake or whatever, but I'm a writer. I've been published, numerous times. Therefore, there's a very, very strong chance I know what I'm talking about. And I do, it's true. I know all your failings. Example, some of you have an attitude problem." He looked over at the back of Pete's head. "You can't take criticism and you think you're better than you are. Others have a talent problem. You just have no instincts for writing. And then there's the other type, the character problem." He tapped loudly on the back of Winnie's chair, indicating that it was her he was referring to. "You had something to write about perhaps, but somehow you got confused, you decided to abandon truth and apologise instead. Perhaps you would've made it, perhaps not. Doesn't matter in the end though. All of you still have a common problem, the one that beats you every time. You have nothing of worth to write about."

"That again..." Pete said to De Beauvoir, loud enough for the whole class to hear.

"Yes, that again. Always that." Benny moved towards him, coming into the middle of the circle where a lot of confused faces could finally view him again. "You have no experience of life. You don't understand anything. Little amateurs who-...no, little ditellan-...dil-...little diledantes grabbing for ideas is what you are. You have a fascination and that's all you have. What would it be like to become a writer? You pick up a book and learn these techniques and copy styles and pluck words out of dictionaries and force them into your stories, yet, what are you doing exactly? The problem is still the same. You have no story. Write what you know, isn't it? But, you don't know anything. You are-...you're desolate, completely empty. I read your stories and there's nothing new. There's no insight there...what are you writing about, huh? What's the point?"

Benny stopped and stared at his own, empty chair. He wanted to continue but couldn't. There just weren't any more words left to describe how worthless they all were. And they were, they were embarrassing him, his students. He looked around the twelve, young faces and realized he felt nothing for any of them, not even a lingering trace of lust for Winnie. He did a quick count as he circled back around and found out that he even loathed three of them, and that was excluding Pete, the worst of the lot. There was nothing, he admitted to himself, he wouldn't allow to happen to that boy, even a knife to the ball sack. He wouldn't even flinch.

"I don't understand..." began one of the meeker students, who could barely look Benny in the eye. "Do you mean we should quit, Mr. Benny?"

"Jesus..." mumbled Pete through another cough.

"No, I think I'm telling myself to quit."

"Huh?"

"I don't think I can help you children."

"So...what will happen?" asked another.

"I'm not sure. You'll probably all disappear into some office, get married and have dull babies, grow old. Nothing too dramatic."

"This is a load of shit..." Pete said to De Beauvoir, and then repeated it to Party on the other side.

"Yes, it is, isn't it?" Benny agreed.

"You should go now then, if you're going."

"Yeah, why don't you go now?" asked De Beauvoir.

"Yeah, leave now," added Party.

"Maybe I will."

"Then we can get a new teacher who's actually been published."

Benny smirked at this jibe. If it had been said in any of those previous lessons then his mind would've detached itself and considered the attack and panicked and told the rest of his self that it was the end of everything and that if he started sweating it would be the proof of it, then everyone would know he was a fraud, but in this lesson he was calm, amused even.

"And one who knows what he's talking about," added De Beauvoir

"And one who knows how to shave..." concluded Pete.

Benny sat back on his chair and placed his hands behind his head as if he were about to respond with sit-ups. He knew he had four days of stubble, but he certainly wasn't gonna do anything about it. It was special, it had historicity. There was the whore's tale somewhere amongst it, and other things that he would invent.

"Now, we're getting somewhere..." he finally said.

"He's been drinking all night, hasn't he?" Party said to Pete.

"I bet you've been drinking all night, haven't you?" repeated Pete.

"I have been drinking all night, you're bang on there, Pete. I've been drinking for the past three nights."

"You're a mess. The admin.'s gonna hear about this, and-..."

"Actually, I've already quit, you entitled little shit. And to finish my story, I've been drinking three nights straight because I've been living on the streets, just like I told you I would. I've been living in the shit, like a real writer. What do you think of that, Pete?"

Benny was of course lying. He had been drinking that night, but those three nights before it had been spent at home, on his couch, in front of the TV, watching Superman 2 and worrying that he wasn't doing enough with his life and that he really should've been on the streets, not lying in comfort, from which nothing of worth could ever be written. After all, there was no social truth in General Zod.

"Three nights? I don't believe it. I think you're lying..." said Pete, shedding his last piece of restraint.

"I think I don't give a-...a John Candy morning shit what you think. It's the truth, if you believe it or not, whatever. I was out there, being a real writer for three nights. I talked to them and lived next to them and slept next to them. What the fuck have you been up to?"

There were mutterings around the circle in Cantonese, "he's swearing", "he's gonna snap", "what if he hits one of us?" Pete folded his arms and blocked them out, continuing on with his side of the battle.

"So, there's still nothing to read. Where's the book?"

"Right, little boy, you want it? I'll show you something to read." Benny leapt up and walked towards Pete with his finger wagging ahead of him. "I'll show you-...no, I'll show future generations something to read, something so good and so...so right it'll actually last for once, and there'll be kids...there'll be kids in a hundred years still talking about it. Your great, great grandkids will be reading about my three nights long after we're in the ground. They'll know my name better than they know yours. A colossus of scathing, gutter literature they wished was their Granddad, me, next to some guy who wrote a diary for a college class once." He stopped in front of Pete, and stared down on him, on that little stick-figure. "Can you see that future, Pete? I can, and it's-...it's luminous."

More muttering from the group, ignored again

"No, I can't see anything. Where's your book?"

"Yeah, where's your book?" repeated Party.

Benny moved around the back of the circle again.

"Oh, it's coming, Pete. And when it comes you can forget about your grandkids, because your kids are gonna get it first. They'll read me and they'll worship me like a statue. But not you, they won't read you. And I'll tell you another thing..." Benny paused, knowing what he was about to say and sure that he probably shouldn't say it, but-... "I went to Mong Kok last night, and I fucked a whore. The saddest whore in the whole of Hong Kong. Yeah, you're smirking, but you're wrong because...because I know her story now, she told me everything, and if you think you can imagine what she said then you're a liar. I can write her now, I know her. You will never know her. You'll never know anything."

Pete and his two lieutenants sniggered and said some words in Cantonese that Benny couldn't understand. He probably shouldn't have told them that, he was supposed to have forgotten it, but it still proved a point. He looked away from the laughing faces and came to Winnie, who still had her eyes on the chair he had left behind.

"Are you shocked then, Miss-...Winnie?" Benny asked her, still unable to remember her last name.

"Not shocked, no."

"What then? Your face is like stone."

She turned her head to the side, not completely facing him, but putting him in range.

"Nothing. I have nothing on my mind..."

"I have something. I'm wondering if you've ever actually written anything," Pete interrupted from the side.

"Oh, I write, I really write, Pete...I write the best-..." Benny grasped for words to describe how much he wrote, the desire out-pacing his vocabulary. "I've written a classic already, I write like a dream..."

He cringed at his last line, but no one else seemed to notice.

"More talking, great, but who's read this classic?"

"People have read it..."

"Who?"

"You want a list?"

"Tell us one, that's enough."

"Great people have read my book." He tried quickly to think of someone of suitable fame and gravitas. "Rudy Wurlitzer. He read it."

"Who?"

"Didn't he die?"

"You little amateurs. You don't have any idea, do you? Rudolph Wurlitzer, the Great American writer of the last century, said it was better than his first. He said, 'Krist...krist, Benny, you've just killed my book, completely destroyed it. Yeah...anything mean-...no, nothing means anything now, except this.' And no, he's not dead, he's alive, and that's what he said."

"I don't suppose you have those words in print?" Winnie asked.

"No chance, it'll be underground," sneered Pete in reply.

"It doesn't matter, I don't need your belief. He said it."

Benny stood there immobile, waiting for the next one. He felt like he could repel any challenge, from any direction.

"Ok, when is this new book going to be available?" Winnie asked.

"The new one? Oh, that'll come soon, real soon."

"Unless that whore writes it first..." said Pete, laughing as he spoke. A few of the others followed him into it.

Winnie ignored the noise and Benny ignored it too. She finally looked directly at him and he looked right back at her, and everything else became background.

"Peter's right. All I remember is talk," she said after a long silence, then stood up and got her bag, that thing that had tortured Benny incessantly over the course of two dates. "I'm going."

"Leaving your art behind, are you, Winnie?"

She ignored it.

"Or is your money man calling you? Gotta spread them anytime, that's how you climb up a class, right, Win?"

She turned sharply to face him again.

"You're a child. And this class was always shit." She spat it out, and then left, walking out into the wider space of the University.

Benny stood still, or tried to stay still. The worst thing he could be called was a child. There was no comeback, and there was no lower thing to be referred to. If he responded, it would confirm him as a child, if he said nothing then the barb would still remain. That fucking bitch, he fumed. I'm seven years her senior and she calls me a child! I'll fucking get her back. I'll hunt her down when she's with him and-...no, that's not it, that's not the way...I'll be smarter, I'll go to her and apologise and charm her back and get her into my bed and then when it's done, I'll tear her apart. I'll rip her to pieces...ha, to pieces, mate. It won't take long either, she's-...

"We should all go..." Pete muttered to his cronies.

Benny heard the comment through his thoughts and stood up instinctively to make sure his exit came first. He wasn't going to be left sitting in an empty space surrounded by ten empty chairs. Forget Winnie for now, this was his denouement and he'd be fucked if Pete was gonna steal it from him.

"This is the end, children. I'd say good luck with your future stories but, like I said, I don't recognize any writers here. Give up and move on, fast."

"Go on then, walk..." taunted Pete.

"...and thank you all for making me realise what a real writer is. Thank you for being so unforgivably shit that I can now hope that the rest of those billion people out there posing as writers is equally shit."

"He's still here..."

"Just ignore him...he's trying to be clever."

"One more word then. You decide yourselves how clever it is." Benny had walked a few steps from the circle but still wasn't content with his exit line, and Pete had riled him with that "clever" jibe. He had to leave them something superior that would perplex... "You all think you know a lot, that you've experienced a lot, but life, that's the thing. Life is what you miss, and writing is-...or life isn't what you-..." He couldn't think of the words. What was he trying to say? Fuck it, quote someone. Someone they wouldn't know. "Balzac, the great Frenchman, he knew about life. He hid himself away for months writing. Against that, you can say nothing about life...and he said...it's-..."

"Jesus..." muttered Pete. He turned his back on Benny and his cronies did the same. The rest of the group was torn between the two sides, their faces looking both ways for a sign of what to do. Benny sighed and shook his head as if the whole circle had betrayed him. There was nothing left to say now, nothing that would make an impression. He abandoned the exit line and just left, carefully avoiding any traps or pushed out chairs that might trip him up on the way out. He heard muttering behind him, but he didn't understand what was being said and wouldn't turn back for it. He would keep moving forward.

As he reached the escalator that would take him down into the entrance area, he thought about what he was leaving behind...a job, money, stability...a stable wage, a salary, something to pay the rent...would he be able to get anything else? Were there jobs out there for someone like him? Krist, what am I doing, he asked, feeling the sweat arrive under his shirt. Maybe I should go back, say it was all a joke...tell them they're better writers than I ever let on...all of them...krist, them, those money suckers...those swimming pool owners...those castle keepers...that's why I'm leaving, isn't it? I'm not one of them. There's no place for me there...it was-...

He hit the bottom of the escalator and saw the library entrance to the left, and the computer library on the other side, and the wall that stretched around the back linking them, and the wall opposite, and the posters stuck on it...it all looked so ordinary now, so-...what was that word...not moneyed, but similar, something like it...as if just enough had been spent to suck all life out of it and make it as it was, a divider, not an equalizer...a divider for them up there, the moneyed ones, to keep them apart from the others, from the muck...they could never come in here, could they? Krist, they would even see it themselves, as soon as their hand touched that door in front...their dirt against this-...this whatever it was.

He opened the door, ignoring the handle and putting his flat palm on the glass. Outside, the sun was glaring, and he could see the trees and the open grass and the earth waiting up ahead. "We all come from the earth and we'll all fall back into it," he said as he sat down next to one of the trees, then a few seconds later pushed himself down and spread his back across the earth and lay there looking up, as if he were falling...

**Benny** **** without money, with boxy...

The bus doors closed on him, almost trapping him inside and carrying him to his death. He did a couple of fast, fairy jumps further onto the sidewalk as if the bus were still clipping at his heels. But it had gone, and he was left behind.

It was somewhere near Tai Po that he had been left in. Captain lived in a village nearby, a famous one apparently. Every time he told someone where his friend lived, they had heard of it...something about Barbeque pits and a reservoir that was gonna be turned into an artificial beach within the next five years. Apparently, everyone in the city was looking at ways to get a business started out here, before the beach was done and in time for the tourists. But what did Benny care about that? It was five years away and he wasn't a businessman, he was a writer, and-...and it had cost him twenty-two dollars to come all the way out here. Krist, twenty-two dollars!

Remembering that his octopus card had just dropped into minus credit, he took out his wallet to see how much money he had left. There wasn't much in there, only coins and a couple of ten notes. He'd have to use the coins to get home. "Krist, Cap...I'm down to the fucking wire here," he muttered and put the wallet back.

Across the road was a line of Thai and local seafood restaurants with the customers sweating in the evening heat outside, and to the left of that was Captain's village. He had been there once before, when it was summer. There had been a barbeque that time, over in the famous pits, and everyone had been there...Captain, Michelle, Avon, Joseph and Caroline. Even Amelia had almost made it, cancelling at the last moment because of a family commitment, but later admitting she had lied and the real reason was that there had been smack available over at some guy's place on Lantau. He remembered the exact words...it had been the time in the spring when she wasn't picking up, and she had told him she'd been on her floor most days, crying into her hands, low as a rat.

She isn't low anymore though, thought Benny bitterly. She's busy getting fucked up on a cloud by that-...no, don't, not again...switch, put her out...

He quickly exiled her from his mind and pictured Joseph instead. Last he had heard he was camping in some backyard in the Ukraine and there had been a German guy trying to pull down his tent. That was a few weeks ago. At least they were still in touch, even though he wouldn't ever come back. It was still something to get messages.

Benny looked both ways for speeding minibuses, and then crossed the road, walking diagonally and jumping over the railings that opened up a shortcut to Captain's house. It was only a six minute walk from the stop so he didn't have much time to dwell on anything, only small things.

It had been two months since Benny had betrayed Captain with the whore. But Captain had never found this out. He had suspected of course as, when he had left them in the teahouse that night, it all seemed set up, but it had only taken one day for Benny to convince his only real friend left in the city that nothing had taken place and that events hadn't really been set up as clearly as it had seemed. Captain had believed him quickly, also aware that his list of friends had dwindled and it wasn't worth losing another one, and over a whore too. But there was still suspicion on his part. In fact, in his quieter moments when he paced up and down on the roof of his house he would admit to himself that Benny was a rat and couldn't be trusted with any woman he met. He had seen what kind of person he was that day, and next time he would know. In those moments, when he didn't have to perform for anyone or the prospect of there being someone nearby, he would rip Benny to pieces.

But on the surface, and in Benny's mind, they were secure, and that's why he was all the way out in Tai Po, wasting coins and writing hours walking past shitty village houses in the dark. They were friends, and this was one of the consequences.

He walked off the pavement and onto a path of dried mud, with a pop-up forest to the side. The village was a little further along, a few more minutes, but his hands were empty and bored.

"Should've brought the notepad...or the box," he shrugged, trapping the hands in his pockets. "Or I should've stayed at home."

Captain had called four times that day and Benny had ignored the first three. For the first time since he had lost his job at the University, or given up his job as he told himself and others he met, he had committed himself to writing. And not just short stories; he was doing the big one. Not that he had convinced himself to do it. No, he had simply been deprived of having anything else to do. After two months of unemployment, he was almost out of money and things to distract himself with, and after four straight hours of reading plot summaries of 'Boston Legal' and 'The Ghost Whisperer' on Wikipedia, programmes he had never even watched before, he had opened up a word document and written half a page. Ten days later, he had written twenty pages. After that, it was easy.

But then that phone-call...

He had been stuck around page one hundred and twenty-four, when Captain had called the first time. He had picked it up and seen the name, shrugged in annoyance, then dropped it back in his pocket. He wasn't going to get any further if he started talking on the phone, and Captain was garrulous enough to waste an hour for him. He had continued staring into space, when Captain phoned again. He let the phone ring for a long time, and the fourth time it went he gave in and picked up.

"Mate, that took an age. Where fuck are you?"

"Writing..."

"Fucking Dark Age...mate, pick up next time. I don't know when you're writing...there's no schedule, is it? You don't do a schedule...mate, I'm cunted, been drinking since....what time is it...six now, shit mate, it's six already. Ha...shit mate...ship mate, shit mate...not funny, is it? Ha...Shit mate, I'm cunted...absolutely wasted. There's this spirit was in my cupboard, it's fucked me...since eleven, mate. All afternoon I've been sitting on my couch drinking...where are you? What you doing? Writing....fuck mate, come round....come to my village, I need a chat with you."

"Wait, you've been drinking since eleven? What-..."

"Something's happened, mate. That fucking wall...all afternoon, mate yeah. I'm cunted. Remember that shit we had in that bar that time...the jugglemeiser thing...that spirit...yeah? I've been drinking shit worse than that...all because of that fucking wall. It's trapped me. I'm gonna die here now...I'm done, mate. Jesus...where are you? Come to Tai Po, mate. You...you know my village, right? You...where it is, right? There's a bus...there's a bus somewhere...there's a bus...the bus...I don't know where's the bus. Jesus...I'm cunted, mate."

Benny had coasted through another fifteen or so minutes before agreeing to come. He wasn't sure what the problem was but it was something about that wall Captain had paid for. It had taken most of the cash in his bank and he wasn't happy about it, but there hadn't been any problems with the wall itself, not so far.

"I wonder if he's drunker now," Benny asked the first house of the village as he stepped onto the path. "Or passed out."

He didn't really want to see his friend drunk. It was no fun when the other one was sober. There would be no precision in what he said, and it would all be complaints about the wall. And Benny would have to give him advice of some kind. That wouldn't be so hard, after all he usually gave out the same advice to most people he knew. "Don't over-think it. Let things happen, and then react." It would probably apply to whatever Captain would tell him, although he knew he couldn't let his friend give in to what he really wanted. He couldn't advise his friend to leave this place and go back home, even if it would make him happier.

"He is a negative man, but I can't let him go."

The other advice would appease him and make him feel better. 'Stay here and wait for the wall to make you some money'. That would be enough to keep him here.

Benny reached the gate to his friend's house. The lights were all off, but the front door was open. He knocked twice then walked in. Inside, there were no decorations on the wall like last time, and there was a blanket sprawled out on the couch, with little beer cans spread out in a storyteller's circle around it, but no sign of Captain. He called out upstairs but there was no reply. He walked up and checked every room, but there was nobody there. He went back downstairs, wondering if he had been hiding somehow under the blanket without him realising, but when he prodded it and turned it over, nothing came out. Benny stopped and took in the whole room. He noticed the lack of anything on the walls again. There was nothing on the floor either, no mats. The tables were all clear. The blanket and the cans were the only life in there. If I clear those up for him then it'll look like no one's living here, he thought.

Benny walked back out of the house and pulled the door right up to the edge of the frame to avert opportunists who might see an open house. He looked around the village and saw lights in some of the other houses. There was no one on the path outside, and there had been no one as he was walking up there. Where the hell was he then? He remembered the wall and tried to think where it might be. He had talked about it a lot on the phone, every line had come to an end with "that fucking wall" tacked on; perhaps that's where he was?

"Krist, one hundred and twenty-four pages, and I leave for this shit," he said as he walked back out through the gate, letting the metal latch slam hard into the frame.

Benny didn't realise it but his friend had been unhappy almost all his life.

When he had arrived in Hong Kong a year ago and crossed that far too long bridge from Lantau into the drab strangeness off the industrial areas of the city [the factories of Lai Chi Kok, the construction sites of Kowloon], he had been expecting some kind of change, a different location to create a different feeling, but the opposite had happened; he felt worse. Instead of hope, there was repulsion, and he instantly longed to return to England, despite knowing he had been miserable there too.

"What do I do, what do I do?" he wondered alone in the taxi, before he had even reached his new home. "If I can't be happy, what-...do I choose the place where I'm less miserable?"

The theory Benny held of luck holding you down and pinning you into its scheme of things had also been embraced by Captain, although he had refused to articulate it to others. Of course, he had shown it to them without knowing, but he hadn't expressed it in words. But, it was true, undeniable; life was truly a miserable thing.

There had been too many things that had happened to him, too many bad things, for him to accept that life was 'what you make of it'. There was the alcoholism of his brother, the vanity of his mother and her catalogues, the temper of his father. There was the failure of college, the acceptance of a lesser college, the body given to him failing to equal the performances of those racists he had to compete against in sport events at school. There was the racism at the bank. There was the racism at the bars and on the streets. There was the one thing he had done for himself, when he had learnt to play the guitar and expected some kind of reaction from those he met afterwards, but there had been no reaction. People had nodded and dismissed it. They hadn't said it, but he knew they had dismissed it. "I've done something with myself," he had told himself in a rage, "and it adds nothing to me." After that, he had embraced the idea of chance governing his life, but he had pushed it further, he had given it character; to him, chance was a thing, a subjective monster, and it hated him.

Captain kicked the wall but didn't feel the pain of one of the lesser bones breaking in his foot. The part of the village he was in was deserted. He guessed that it was two in the morning, but he didn't have a watch so he couldn't be sure. He looked around and saw shapes which didn't blur like people shapes would, so he assumed it was safe to kick the wall again. He kicked the wall again and broke another bone.

This wall had been the last straw for him. He liked to say that it was 'the straw that broke the camel's back' to pretty much everyone he met, and felt no shame in using such an outdated idiom. He didn't care, it was true; this wall had snapped that camel's back in two. It hadn't been his idea to finance it. He had never wanted to build the thing. He had planned to go back after two years, but the wall, unleashed by that monster on his shoulder, had trapped him in this place. He would've been back in England right now, in the pub, or down the Barfly watching some new band, some lead singer trying to do something a little different on stage, or he'd be back at home, in his own room, where he had posters on the wall and there was life around him.

But his house, the village, this fucking wall. He had nothing in this house, no faces to keep him company. He missed having company. He missed having a woman around him. Wasn't that the thing hurting him? Was it really this wall? His Dad had phoned him every week for the last year, telling him that the wall was their saviour, the one piece of luck they had always been denied in life. He talked of the sacrifices he had made, his move to England, the taunts and the shit through the letterbox, the petty crimes of the brother... "It's all been trudged through to get to this," his Dad had told him. The wall had to be built and it was Captain that had to sit beside it until it was done.

"It's you, you grey bastard."

He kicked the wall and lost another bone.

There was no chance of him going back now. Because chance had never been a friend of his, had it? It had always shat on him, when it could. He would have to stay with the wall now, until it was done, like his father wanted. How could he oppose his father, when chance had given him a whole lifetime of shit-kickings and he had only taken twenty-seven years? He couldn't. That stuff, the jugglemeiser, or whatever it was he had drunk a bottle of, suddenly darkened his thoughts and made him cry out in protest...

"Why did you put me with them? For fuck's sa-...IT'S NOT FUCKING FAIR, WHY ME?! WHAT DID I DO?!"

...he hated his family violently and briefly for a few seconds, hated them, loathed them, despised beyond despised...

...then quickly retreated back into sympathising with them. It wasn't their fault either. Fuck it, maybe I should go back and phone Dad, he thought. He can tell me about the wall again, why it's so vital...but he won't say anything new, nothing fresh. Fucking prick, fucking prison warden! A load of vital cement, how can cement be vital to us? And where the fuck's Benny anyway? I phoned him...when?

Benny watched from a distance as Captain pulled his foot back and kicked out at the wall. He flinched when he saw his friend didn't pedal down the power of the kick.

"What the-...what are you doing?" he said out loud, far enough away from both the village houses and Captain not to be heard. "There's bone there, you nut."

As he jogged across to the wall, which was only four levels of cement high at the moment, just a fledgling, he saw Captain fall to the ground and then lift his head up, screaming out, "Don't fucking push me, cunt." He moved faster and made himself known before daring to help his friend up.

"Where the fuck you-..." Captain mumbled from the ground.

"You left your front door open. What are you doing here, Cap?"

"Mate...I'm done. What is it now...two?"

"You're not done. It's...it's eleven. Man, how far gone are you?"

"This fucking thing..." he did an air kick at the wall, "it's ruined me. This is my future, fucking great, isn't it?"

"Calm down. You said it would make you money. You told me that, so it's a good future, right? It's good for you."

Captain got to his feet and tried to move closer to the wall to kick it again. Benny pulled him back by the arm, forcing Captain round to face him.

"Get off...you think I'm just a chink, don't you?! Get the fuck off me!"

He lost Benny's grip and marched on the wall, but instead of kicking it he climbed up onto it and stood as if triumphant.

"Cap, you're gonna break something..."

"I've already broken something. Who gives a fuck? This is my wall, no one else's. This is it for me. It's all set, mate, this is my fucking future. I hate this thing and-...look...look, look, it's not even built yet, little baby wall. Little infant..."

"...just get down. We'll talk about it..."

"...but when's it adult, then it'll have its hold on me, won't it? This is my future, mate. I am this wall. I am wall. What a legacy I have...and there's nothing I can do-...I can't get out of it, mate. I've tried to think, but there's no way out. He's made it impossible for me, prick, he had all that hard life and he thinks this is for him. What's the point, mate? He's gonna die anyway."

"Cap, get down...we'll talk."

"...I hate him. I fucking hate him sometimes. All the time. He's trapped me here. Trapped, a trap, mate, I'm the mouse, he's the-...the fucking-...what is he...the trap-man, the trap-man, mate, I'm the mouse and he's the trap-man...fucking Trappatoni, that's him, and-...and this wall is...it's him around me. I can see it growing his fingers, and those little legs, he gave me those too, the selfish prick...trap-man..."

Benny continued to listen, and offered positives when he could find gaps, but beneath the words his mind woke up, spread its wings and flew elsewhere. Page one hundred and twenty-four...

"Cap, come on, get down."

"I'm gonna stamp it into the...fucking...dirt...of...this...fucking...ground," Captain shouted while stamping down on the top of the wall.

"You're gonna fall, get down. There're rocks on the ground, come on..."

It was sitting back at the apartment, on an open screen. Page one hundred and twenty-four...page one hundred and twenty-four...

"Five years this is taking, mate. Did I tell you-...five years to build a wall? And I have to stay here all-..." Captain wobbled slightly, his arms flapping in the air.

"That's not that-...five years isn't a long time. But, ok, what about this way, a lot can happen in five years, right?"

"Or nothing can happen, mate."

Page one hundred and twenty-four. Then page one hundred and twenty-five, then one hundred and fifty, then two hundred, then...

"Tomorrow is another day, Cap. Anything is possible."

"There's no tomorrow. There's no future, mate."

"There's a bright future. Now, come on, get down...just step down."

...one thousand, one hundred and twenty-four...krist, that was a number...Infinite Jest, Gravity's Rainbow, that much on the first shake...it was impossible...it was incredible...

Captain let his body drop and landed clumsily on the ground. He stared at Benny and the village houses a hundred yards away, most of them unlit and closed down for the night. There was only the two of them, a small field, and a wall.

"You wanna go back?" Benny asked.

Captain answered by leaning back against the wall behind him and sliding down until he was sitting on the dirt. His feet stretched out and almost touched Benny's shoes.

"Don't go, mate. Stick around for a bit..."

"Yeah, don't worry, man. I'll stay."

Benny closed the door on the empty corridor behind it, used to the silence now. Those past sounds of tiles and piano keys were long gone, absorbed into the walls and lost with the departed of those other apartments, who had left months ago now. He didn't know who had replaced them, but he assumed someone had, and all he knew was they were quiet, deathly quiet. They didn't even turn on the TV.

He didn't look around his place as he walked into it. There wasn't much to look at anymore. All the DVDs on the shelf had been given away. The TV with the widescreen had been taken downstairs to the security guard, his face panicked at first, then embarrassed as he realised Benny was giving it to him for nothing. The Internet connection and his laptop were the only luxuries left, and the internet company had sent him two letters already, warning him that the service would be suspended within the week if he didn't pay up. That gave him another two or three nights to send e-mails then it was over.

As he sat down on the sofa he glanced to the side and noticed the other letter. This one was the real danger. He hadn't paid the rent this month and he wouldn't be able to pay it next month either. There was no job, no salary, and almost no money left to pay any of it.

His hand went towards the table to grab the remote, but it wasn't there. Nothing was there.

He picked up the internet cable from the floor and put it in the back of his computer, watched it start to load up then went to the toilet, as had become routine for him, so when he came back the computer would be ready for him. Then he would connect, go to his room, drop all his things, his keys, his wallet, his octopus card, on the desk by his bed, come back, pick up the machine, let it rest on his lap and then start writing. He wouldn't leave that position until one or two in the morning. Sometimes, whenever he realized the repetition of his life in procedures like this, he would sit in that same position with the computer sitting on him and take a moment and wait to see if he would cry. It hadn't happened yet.

Soon it wouldn't be a problem. He wouldn't have this place, and the repetition would be broken.

He put his feet up on the table and the computer on his thighs. There were messages for him. One from Joseph somewhere in Russia with the wolves; none from Michelle, Avon, Amelia, any of those nothing girls or even his family. Everyone had gone somewhere else, even if most of them were still in the same city as him. The rest of the mail was from the agents he had sent to, all rejections and none of them particularly contrite. One guy told him that his prospective novel had already been written; he gave him the name of the author, the novel title and the year it was written to prove it. Benny searched it out and shook his head as he read the synopsis, dismissing the similarities to his own work with the same confidence the agent had pronounced them.

He closed down his e-mail and drifted off onto a porn site, clicked on a link to a video called 'Outdoor hotel fuck', and stared absently at the still image behind the play arrow, a Chinese girl perched over a balcony, completely naked, her knickers clutched in her fist.

Benny had found the agents list two months earlier. It was at the same time he was nearing what he thought would be the centrepiece of his novel, and finding so many names all at once had accelerated everything; all his dreams and fantasies and longings for people to read his words, the idea that he would have enough power to actually be interviewed and listened to. With those ten thousand names on his screen, everything had been possible. "Just do it, reach for the sky, impossible is nothing," he had sung out to his apartment walls.

Now, two months on, the romance had lapsed and he was back in the dirt. It didn't matter how accurate his description of that park in Mong Kok had been or how real the whore was or the money in the hand of that tramp, because the list had been exhausted. It didn't matter that he had actually written the thing. Everyone who would reply had done so, and no one wanted it. It was dead in the water and below the surface as well, and even if a boat did coast by, and the captain just happened to be literate and stubbornly intellectual with a keen eye for social protestation, and was demanding much, much more from what he was reading-...fuck it, there was no such boat in the water and there was no such Captain.

The whole box of listed agents rejecting him caught his eye and the totality of them all together in such a way made him lift the computer off his thighs and onto the couch beside him. They didn't understand social responsibility or social action or social-...social pride? He couldn't allow them to govern him like this, even though they had no wish to govern him at all.

"Now you'll never have me, you little pricks," he told his empty apartment, acting out fake solemnity as if some of those agents were in the walls watching him. "You'll never get my genius," he added.

That rent letter unopened on the side caught his eye again. What was he gonna do when he was kicked out? Literally, where would he go once he was standing outside without a home? And the food he didn't have in the cupboards or the fridge, what was he gonna eat? Krist, it was becoming real. He would be kicked out, he'd be starving. He'd have to go to one of those areas, Mong Kok or Sham Shui Po and find a box next to all the others.

"Is this really gonna happen then?"

He picked up an imaginary remote and flicked a button. An imaginary screen came on and gave him a tall, Chinese man at a press conference, effusive and charming in front of cameras that probably expected it of him anyway.

He couldn't keep it going, it was too much. The Chinese man faded away.

That fucking rent letter.

I should be caring about this a lot more, he warned himself without much enthusiasm. I have no money, I'm gonna be kicked out.

He lay down and faced the back of the sofa.

No, no, think of the writing. Think of Platonov and the others. Think of the mandate you always said you were promised. This is it, this is your chance. This is where you become Orwell. He smiled to himself and even trembled a little. This is where I become Orwell.

Benny stood with the box at his feet and read the poem again:

_Big man, tiny life_

_Watching from the bench_

_Beggar man, back to tree_

_Shrugging off the heat_

_Eighty-seven bins_

_Thirteen bits of card_

_Where are the notes today?_

_Reached the road_

_Scratched his leg_

_Saw a time in the classroom on_

_The window of a bus_

_Mao on a book_

_Peasants in the wheat_

_Where're the bins, then,_

_In that huge, defiant field?_

_Mao sat dead, on a bench,_

_No, on a bus_

_His fingers in his ears_

_Watching the bins_

_A figure, grab, gone..._

_Now,_

_Big man, big ideas,_

_Sitting in a box._

_Oh Krist,_

_Oh Mao,_

_Paint my little box_

The words stopped. He looked back at some of the longer ones, at the structure, at the references to Mao, and shook his head.

"'In that huge, defiant field'," he repeated to the water below. "Krist..."

He flicked back a few pages to see what else he had written. Nothing much, just a few diary entries, notes for that Voltaire story, something about a girl he had to 'raise his game' for, and a number at the top of one of the pages. "Krist, seven months ago," he said out loud, "that long..."

He closed the notepad and put it back in his jacket pocket, mumbling something about never wanting to be a poet anyway. The can in his hand was light, almost empty, so he finished it

"If I knew the things now...what I didn't know then..." He shook his head and tried again. "If I could go back, I'd laugh...laugh at myself. Fucking poet..."

He bent down and put the can on the ground to his left, next to the other five. They were all empty. On the right were two more cans, and one miniature of wine. He thought about taking that one, but decided it would be better when he was in the box, and he had heard somewhere that it was a mistake to touch grape after the fourth beer. Where did he get that from? Captain? Amee? No, fuck her, it was Captain, had to be.

The wind blew in from the harbour and took some of the sweat off his face. It was nearing the end of the year, but the sky was still pretending it was summer.

Nearby was the statue of Bruce Lee. Further down was one of Jackie Chan. Along the harbour path were the stars and handprints of the rest of the local celebrities, the ones whose reputations had stretched a little, but not far enough to take them out of the city. Behind all that was the Cultural centre, 'the nucleus of the art scene in Hong Kong,' they boasted on their flyers.

Benny stared up at its roof and imagined slicing it off. The fuckers...all he wanted was to put some posters on their shelves, but the guy hadn't budged. "Sorry Sir, we need the authorization to do this kind of thing. Sorry, sorry, good morning."

"Fucking red tapers...make some decisions yourself...on your own heart...fuckers," he said to the building opposite him. "I know the real nucleus here...art nucleus, scene, whatever you say...I know it. I know it because I am it...it's me...the Benny scene, just you wait..."

He brought the can to his mouth, tipping too far and spilling some out onto his jacket. He swallowed what he had in his mouth then looked down and waited for a stain, but it was too dark to see anything. He shook his head and shifted his gaze onto the box.

"The Benny scene, boxy. You know it, don't you? You've seen it..."

There was a sound nearby, wheels rolling, then voices. Benny watched the corner of the building and waited for something to come.

"It's them..." he whispered.

The sounds stopped. The trolley wasn't moving. But they were still talking, he could hear them.

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the notepad and threw it down into the box.

"It's show time...showbiz time..." He picked up the last can of Special Brew and the miniature wine and put them carefully in the box. "Don't worry, don't worry, there'll be other boxes there...we're all friends...all good friends when it's-...it's..." He looked for a watch on his left wrist, but he wasn't wearing one. He pulled out his phone from his jeans. "Fuck me, all good friends when it's two in the morning..."

He walked towards the corner, slaloming between the pillars holding up the building, looking through the windows and inside at the shelves of flyers still lit up even at this time, cursing them again for rejecting his work.

"What the fuck's there they've got better than mine? What's that-...what's that paper they've got in there...what's so special about that? It's shinier than mine...glossier? Fuck, glossy...I didn't start this to be glossy...I'm underground...the Benny scene..."

He turned the corner and saw three shapes about twenty yards down, two of them sitting in their boxes against the wall, the other standing over his trolley. There were no lamps here, not this late, but he could see enough.

"...no glossy on me...see, Pete...no glossy on my covers..."

One of the men was talking loudly in Cantonese, none of it anything Benny could understand. The other two seemed to be listening, as he could see some movement in their shadow, around what he thought would be the heads. They ignored him as he approached, probably figuring him for a drunk.

"Opening line, opening line...what?" he mumbled. "What are you saying? What was-...Meh wah? What did you say...meh wah?"

When he got to them he thought about staying on his feet and saying his line, but the shape by the trolley, who he could now see was shirtless, stopped talking and looked at him, and then the other two, the nodding shapes in the boxes, turned to look at him too and he lost his nerve, even after six cans...

"Fuck...meh wah?" he tried.

...but he was holding a box, they were staring at him and they could see he was holding a box and-...

"Jyo mutyeh?" the trolley man said.

"Joe mutt...shit, man, I know that one...Joe...that's doing...mutt...what...what are you doing?" He said the line back to them. "What am I doing?"

The trolley man looked at him, his face, his clothes, his box, everything he had, then spat on the ground.

"Barrggghhhh," he shouted into Benny's face, and then something more he couldn't understand. Then he turned back to the other two and picked up where he left off.

Benny stood there for a moment, his face pointed at the ground and staring at the spit, before smiling and walking over to the men in the boxes.

"Barggghhhh" he said back to them and dropped his box on the ground.

The miniature wine bottle lying inside broke open and poured itself out onto the cardboard, just as Benny was crouching to sit. He was already on his way down, but was able to see the wine at the last second and managed to swing himself onto the concrete next to the box. His ass hit the ground hard, but he was drunk, and his hand was already reaching back into the box for the notepad, and then his other hand was in his pocket bringing out the pen, and while the three men watched his performance, he opened the notepad and wrote his first line of the night.

'Barrrgggghhhhh.'

He stopped after the apostrophe and flicked the top of the pen shut, then open again. That word...

"Barrrgggghhhhh...you guys always say it..." he looked up at the trolley man. "What does it mean?"

"Sei meh?" was all he could hear of what was a long reply in loud Cantonese.

"Ok, wait...slow man, slower...I can't-...say meh? I don't know what it means...slower, come on..."

The trolley man said something to the other two and they all laughed.

"Hey, don't laugh....come on...I don't know what you're saying..."

One of the box men said something to him and there was more laughing. The box man closest to him scratched his leg while he laughed and Benny could see that it was yellow and parts of it were eroding...

"Krist man, your leg...I'm sorry, but-...your leg, you see it?"

The yellow leg straightened up and the two box men lifted themselves onto their feet. The trolley man walked round the back of his load and started pushing, still shouting something to him...

"No...where are you-...bindo wah? No...Leih hai bindo wah?"

The two men picked up their boxes and followed after the trolley man, who was already a few yards ahead. They were still talking, but they didn't look back, and he was forced to jump quickly out of his box and onto his own feet, kicking out the broken wine glass and picking up boxy, and running after them...

"You don't know me...you just think you do..."

...then realising that they didn't want him there and it was probably a better idea to follow from a distance, so he slowed his pace until he was around forty yards behind, and watched them as they moved away from the harbour and onto the pavement next to the main road, where cars were passing and lamps lit up everything moving underneath.

"They just don't know me, Boxy...do they? They only think they do...ha, Delroy Lindo, 'Get Shorty'...you don't know me...that's the line, isn't it? What's that in Cantonese? Krist, that would do it...or the rent letter...krist, rent-o letter, no money...my house is bye bye...how do I say that? There's a way...there's always a way...they have houses here, don't they? So that's one word...and rent...fuck, rent, money, house...if I just know three words, we can talk...we can talk, and I can write it...talk, listen, write...fuck, how hard is-...how hard would it be..."

He paused and looked at the notepad in the box.

"Barrgghhhh...what even is that? I can't go home with that and one line...one line of that...krist, where are we going, Boxy? Where are they taking us?" He looked for his three pied pipers and saw them stepping out onto the road, ignoring the car horns. "Krist, what are they doing? That's the bars...the bars and people..."

He stopped completely and dropped his box on the ground, watching them reach the other side and disappear into one of the side streets to the left of Mody Road. As they went in, another group of men came out, drinkers, normal people. They turned back to the side street and shouted something, something bad at the trolley man and the two box men, it had to be...

"Krist...it's not even closed there..."

Some more drinkers came out of the side street laughing, and then some more. It was busy, only just gone two in the morning, and Benny knew the bars in that area were still open, he had been there before with Captain and Michelle, and he knew they wouldn't close for at least another two hours. And it wasn't just the people coming out from the street, it was the people who would be standing outside the bars, near the bins, drunk and watching...

Benny reached into his box and took out the last can. He opened it and used it to cover his face as a couple walked past, letting his vision blur into the label and the giant lettering of the can, trying not to put himself in their shoes and think what it looked like to see him this way...drinking beer in a stained jacket...standing with a fucking box...

The couple walked on and their words lost volume until Benny figured it was safe to come out from behind the can.

"Go over there or go home..."

He watched the side street, picturing all those people standing, waiting for him to come.

"But there is no home..."

He tapped the can against the wall and looked around. The Science museum was behind him now, and next to it was one of the big shopping malls, then the Culture Centre. He remembered the shelves, his posters, his novel...

"Fucking Culture..." he mumbled, and then turned away, back to his box. "We'll find somewhere quiet, me and you, boxy. That's culture for them or that....that fucking thing over there...that dome of nothing."

He checked both sides of the pavement for more people, and when he was sure it was empty he continued, louder.

"They don't know anything though, do they? They go in and they sit in there and-...what...watch some plays, some dancing, pictures...pick up some flyers... 'oh, some-...some what? Some little-...another little dance performance is coming here from Beijing, a nice little dance thing...and look at me, look at me and the culture I'm looking at...wow...oh....lights off, they're closing, doesn't matter, we don't need to stay here for culture...quick back to the house, and...oh, it's so comfortable...darling, remember the culture we just saw, that was good....oh yes, darling, what a feeling, and yeah, really, it's come back to the house with us, hasn't it? And aren't we fucking clever for watching it and understanding it and-...and part of this thing...I don't know, darling, somehow we're part of it...oh darling, yes, rah rah, let's go upstairs and fuck culturally under our paintings and pretend we painted them too...oh, rah rah...'"

He heard some more noise coming from the opposite direction, another couple. He quickly put the can up against his face and finished what he wanted to say.

"Rah, rah...back to the house. Fuck you."

The couple walked past and the man looked over the girl's shoulder at Benny, who was slowly coming out from behind the can. Benny winked at him, and dropped his hand to the side of his box, tapping it like a pet. The man pulled the girl closer and whispered something to her. She laughed and they kept on walking.

Benny drank from the can and then threw it on the ground. He looked straight at the man and the girl, at their backs.

"Fuck you, I live in a box. What have you done?"

"It's not about a real woman, obviously," he said to the girl. "That kind of experience is something that isn't really my style."

"You never go to them?"

"Them?"

She nodded.

"No, no way, never," he continued, predicting the nod of her head. "They're cheap, and there's no class in it, even if I were doing research.

"Yeah, it's dirty..."

"What did you expect me to say anyway?" he laughed and patted her on the shoulder and turned it into a push which sent her forward on the swing. "Not that I would do that kind of thing, but if I had then I wouldn't tell you about it, right?"

"Because I will run away la..."

Benny caught her shoulders again as she came back to him. He snaked his head round to her front and looked into her eyes askew.

"No, I would be ashamed. You don't deserve a guy like that, and I don't want to be that guy. I want to be a prince for you. I want to be your prince. You understand?"

She nodded a second time.

"You wanna leave, Magic?" he asked and gestured to the exit of the playground.

Magic followed it, but didn't accept. She pushed herself forward on the swing.

She's still suspicious, he thought, and warned himself not to push too fast. Did he even want her that badly though?

It was the same playground he had taken the other girls with ludicrous names. In the same park, with the same lines and the same expressions. It had been a few months since he had bothered with this sort, but he found that he could remember most of his lines.

She came back to him.

"When I can read your story?"

She swung off again and he waited till she returned into his grip before answering.

"Soon, but-...do you really wanna read it?"

"Yes la. So exciting."

"See, I've been lied to before. People have claimed to be readers and then I send them my story, and then nothing. They stop messaging me. You really like to read?"

"I like to read you." She laughed away from him. Her hair stayed briefly on his fingers before being taken along with her. She is fairly attractive, he told himself as she climbed higher into the park air. But not the brightest...how do I talk to another one like that?

The girl was fairly attractive because she had spent two hours making herself that way, knowing that the darkness of the park would hide anything she had missed in front of the mirror. She liked this one and didn't want to scare him off. She knew he liked books and he was a writer and was on the verge of being published, and-...she thought back to everything he had told her. There was the short film he had made, the one he had used his own money on. The short stories that had been published in that magazine, the one in New York where all the great writers had first shown their work. "You start off with New York then you move onto the book," is what he had said to her. And the book he had just finished. It was beyond her, she knew that as she listened to him talk, but if she showed interest and compliance then he would like her. And if she looked good for him, he would like her more. Then, she'd have a hold on him, a guy like him, with all those credits, and those two degrees...she could imagine, not the happiness of their future together exactly, but she could see the two of them standing next to each other. That was a start. But to get to that point, she had to be cautious. There was no picture of them if she let him take her back too soon...

She came back down and as the seat of the swing started to climb backwards, Benny stepped forward and let her crash into him. He faked injury until she was off the swing and comforting him.

An hour later they were walking into his estate and towards his apartment. He talked to her as he went, letting himself relax into his rhetoric as they had already kissed, and the fact of the night had practically been settled. The only thing left to deal with was the act itself, and the closer he got to his place, the more reluctant he became.

"It's hard, Magic. It's really hard for people like me. Not that there are many people like me here, not in this city. I'm almost alone with what I write, but, I mean, anywhere, it's hard for someone like me. In the whole world, it's a mountain, right?"

Magic had been found on the internet, same as her predecessors. The unusual part of this set-up was that she had messaged him first and he had merely responded. But after the shock, he had realised how easy it would be to nail her, and more than that, how easy it would be to talk at her and not to her. She had told him quickly that she had been treated badly before, which had made him tread carefully for a while, until she started to agree with everything he said. That's when he had figured out what type she was. And he had changed accordingly, strengthening his convictions, preaching instead of listening. She isn't even a person, he reaffirmed to himself as he was about to meet her earlier that night. There are no consequences to this, just ride the ride.

"I think you can be very famous soon. I can be your big fan," she told him with the sincerest look. She really did want him to make it, although she knew it would make her own position harder. Perhaps, realistically, she would have to console herself with merely being a small part of this genius's life, instead of a major contributor.

Benny saw the window of his apartment and trembled slightly. The lights were off in there and he didn't want to turn them on, not with her there. It wasn't empty anymore, and he had the TV back, but he didn't want to sit on the sofa with her. What was he doing?

"Those others, Krist...I mean, they are just not good. They are very bad writers. But they write their story, their shit story about rich people and middle class-...you know middle class? People with some money, right? They have all the stories and it's shit. I can't write that, but they can, and that's why they are famous. I can't do that, I can't. I don't know if that's bad, but it's the way I have to go. You understand?"

"Yeah, they are not good. Only famous, right?"

"No, not really. It's not that. Some of them are good. I mean, they're not bad exactly, they know how to write a story..."

"They are only little good?"

"No, not a little..." Benny exaggerated a shake of his head. "It's hard to explain to you, Magic, you don't really understand. It's hard if you're not a writer."

"Sorry, sorry, I know, hard for you to talk to me. I never good to do writing at school. Really bad for writing story la..."

"It's not just you, it's everyone though...it's hard to explain to anyone here." He took in a breath of frustration and just let himself spill out the things that had been inside his head for so long. He didn't care if it drove her away. "No one really thinks here. They just shop and try to look good and-...it's so shallow here. Women here, they're some of the worst ones I've ever met. There are no readers, no writers, no artists, no anything creative...where are they all? I feel like-...I think that I am alone here. The only one who thinks..."

"I never think anything....only stress of work lo," she laughed, determined to lower herself down further so he might be more attracted to her. With all the guys she had dated before, they had always liked her more when she didn't have a brain. "I am very stupid, I think."

Benny hadn't heard her properly when she had said this as, seconds earlier, they had passed a guy stretched out on one of the estate benches.

"What?"

"Just a silly, stupid girl." She expanded, as Benny tried to listen again while looking back at the sleeping man behind them. He saw the man's arm move and saw him wake up.

"You're not stupid...don't say that."

A woman moved along the path behind them and stopped by the man. He reached up with his hand and she spoke down at his head. A conversation started between them, and Benny realised the man wasn't one of his, he was a resident, a faker. He turned back on the girl, pulling his hand out of hers at the same time.

"You're not stupid, are you? Why do you say that? It's-...what's wrong with women here? You say you're stupid, but you don't mean it, you can't. It devalues you, it makes you sound like a little toy. Do guys here like that, really? They tell you to say stuff like that? Krist, the insecurities these guys have, to be happy when you turn to them and say things like that. It makes me sick, Magic. You see what it's done to you. You're not stupid, you're just trying to impress me in some weird, warped way. You think I want to hear something like that...do you? You think I want a girl who just fucking agrees with me and says she's stupid? This place is seriously fucked up...honestly, everything I hear now just-...I'm telling the truth here, I'm sorry, but you can't go around saying you're stupid. You're embarrassing yourself. Don't you see?"

"But I am a little stupid..." Magic said, unsure of what exactly he was saying and what to say to placate him. The other guys had never lost themselves like this.

"You're not. Stop it. They want you to say that, it makes them happy, so they can walk hand in hand and be the man, strong and clever. It's sick. What the fuck do they know that you can't know? And you're not even stupid, you just haven't read that much. All you need to do is hit the library, get a few books, get an interest, and then go back to these fucking clowns here and tell them they're stupid. If they start talking shit then disagree with them. Disagree with everything they say...trust me, they deserve it. They really do..."

He pushed his fingers hard against his temple, massaging the growing pain inside, and regulated his breathing until it returned to normal. There wasn't much further to walk.

"Deserve...what it mean?"

"Deserve, it's-...you don't know it?"

"I think I hear before..."

"It means, how to say...it's hard to explain. It means, you do something, something bad maybe, and then something bad happens to you. That thing is right to happen to you because you did something bad. But maybe it doesn't always happen..."

"It mean bad guy have bad thing happening them?"

"Not everyone...yeah, that's it. They don't always get what they deserve. Life isn't fair I guess..."

"I see la."

The girl ventured her hand back into Benny's and he let her have it.

His apartment block was in front of them now. He had brought her there and he had to take her up. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad. She was fairly good looking after all.

"Just don't say you're stupid again. You're not. And don't let guys call you stupid. Fight them..."

"Yes, I want. You are right la."

"I'm right about this particular thing, not everything."

"You are smart guy la. Smart Benny, famous writer."

Benny cringed when she said this; someone like her had no real concept of fame or literature, how could she predict him like this? And his novel, krist...his novel was just jumbled words without paper to put themselves on, floating out of the window. Years later they would come back to him, wouldn't they? As he died, they'd come and lie down with him in the ground, in his box, refusing to linger in the world without him, and then both of them would be boxed in together, decaying every day and hour and minute, each measurement of time taking away his entire meaning, the whole fucking point of him.

No, there was no novel and there would never be a novel. There were only one hundred and forty-seven pages of shit. He had failed, completely.

The girl realised they had stopped and guessed that they were outside his apartment. She hadn't intended to stay the night, but now it was the most logical thing to do. And now that they were there, she did want it. He would be a somebody soon, with his book printed and selling on the streets of Hong Kong just one month from now, and maybe she could still be a part of that, if he'd let her. Or perhaps a larger role, if she could play a clever enough game to keep him interested. Staying with him tonight wasn't a smart move, but his hand felt warm in hers and his bed was so close. It was easier to stay than to leave.

"This is your home?" she asked.

"Yeah, I guess."

The security guard in his clean, grey uniform came and opened the door for them and Benny refused to look him in the eye as he led the girl in past him. At the second door he started to sweat, on his face, under his arms, and he thought about turning back and apologising for everything; for taking the TV back, for letting his parents pay his rent, for bringing back these silly girls, for making him open the door, for the failure of the story that he had promised them, for the uniform, his life, his kid's life, his face and the decent food he never touched...but he knew it wouldn't be understood.

It's all ludicrous, he thought as he wiped his face and led the girl to the elevators. And it was never my fault, not really. It was theirs, them.

**The Next thing from Gupter Puncher...**

...well, it's either a novel on Mo Jack Dong...

...a big mess called 'PAKRA'...

...or something short, maybe one hundred and twenty pages, on a Japanese moon enthusiast who 'forever exchanges' with a boy from a college in Liverpool and becomes obsessed with a young American girl in California, goes to see her, finds he's not alone in obsessing over her, meets Channing Tatum, goes back to his house near the edge of the desert, meets Dennis Hopper gagged and bound in the closet, and discovers that the next big thing in Hollywood is actually an 8,000 year old witch with the same insecurities he had when he was a teenager.

...can I cram all that into one hundred and twenty pages?

**And the other writing available from YEAR ZERO?**

**_Brief Objects of Beauty and Despair_** **, the anthology of work from 13 Year Zero Writers, can be downloaded for free from the Year Zero Writers website:**

_www.yearzerowriters.wordpress.com_

**_Glimpses of a Floating World_** by Larry Harrison

Police corruption, heroin addiction, and an elegy to the lost underbelly of Sixties London

_**Songs From the Other Side of the Wall**_ _ ****_ by Dan Holloway

A teenage girl growing up in post-Communist Hungary dreams of following her mother to The West. Less Than Zero meets Norwegian Wood.

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