RainStorm

you, you don't need to do that. I'll tell you
    what you want to know. In person."
    I paused, then said, "All right."
    "Where are you now? Still at the hotel?"
    That's when it hit me. I knew how he'd done it.
    "Yeah," I said, testing my theory.
    "Well, okay, good. I'll come to you. Tell me, though, I don't
    know Hong Kong so well, what's the best way to get there again?"
    I smiled. "Taxi."
    "Sure, that makes sense. But give me some directions. I like to
    know where I'm going."
    Yeah, that was it. I'd been right. "Just tell the driver the name of
    the hotel," I said. "I'm sure he'll be able to find it."
    There was a pause, during which I imagined him looking
    decidedly nonplussed. "Damn, what was the name of the place
    again?" he asked, trying valiantly.
    I laughed and said nothing. After a moment, he said, "All right,
    all right, you got me. I'll meet you anywhere you want."
    "Why would I want to meet you at all?"
    "All right, I was out of line. Just wanted to see if I could sneak
    one past you, but you're too slick. But you'll still want to hear what
    I've got to tell you. Believe me on that."
    I thought for a moment. Of course I wanted to meet him. I
    needed to know what all this was about. But I would have to take
    precautions. Precautions that could prove fatal to Dox if things
    didn't go the way I wanted them to.
    "Where are you now?" I asked.
    "In a coffee shop in Central, ogling a table of Chinese girls. I
    think they like me."
    "They must not know about your sheep proclivities," I said.
    He laughed. "Shoot, partner, not unless you told them."
    "Stay put for a while. I'll call you back."
    "Where are you going?"
    "I'll call you back," I said again, and hung up.
    If this had been Tokyo, I could have told him immediately
    where we should meet and how. I had studied the city for the
    twenty-five years I'd lived there, and knew dozens of venues that
    would have worked. But Hong Kong was less familiar to me. I
    needed to map things out.
    I walked to the causeway, then headed west, toward Sheung
    Wan, looking for the right locale. It was Sunday, and the area was
    animated with the chatter of thousands of the island's Filipina
    maids, who were out enjoying a weekly day of relief from their
    labors. They sat on flattened cardboard in the shade of the long
    causeway ceiling and picnicked on pancit palabok and sotanghon and kilawing tanguige and other comfort food and felt, for a few brief
    moments, that they were home again. I liked how physical they
    were: the way they braided each other's hair, and held hands, and
    sat so close together, like children finding solace, a talisman against
    something fearful, in simple human contact. Despite their transplanted
    lives and the loss of what they left behind, there was something
    childlike about them, and I thought that it was probably this
    seeming innocence, joined incongruously to an adult sexuality, that
    drove so many western men mad for Southeast Asian women. Such charms are not lost on me, either, but at that moment, desire wasn't
    really what I felt for them. What I felt, dull and somehow surprising,
    was more akin to envy.
    I continued down the causeway, then moved south into the
    Western District, named entirely for its position relative to Central
    and without reference to culture or atmosphere. In fact, characterized
    as it is by the craggy faces of ancient herbalists concocting
    snake musk and powdered lizards and other such antique pharmacopoeia;
    the aroma of incense from its temples and of cooking
    from snake restaurants and dim-sum bakeries; the cries of its fishmongers
    and street cleaners and merchants, Western feels significantly
    more "eastern" than the rest of Hong Kong.
    I stopped in one of the innumerable bric-a-brac shops on Cat
    Street and bought several secondhand items, all of which were intended
    to distract the shopkeeper and would soon be discarded,
    save one: a gutting knife with a four-inch blade and a horn handle.
    The knife was nestled in a leather sheath and the blade was satisfactorily
    sharp.
    In my wallet was an old credit card, around which I keep wrapped
    several feet of duct tape. Thousand and one uses, they say, one of
    which, it seemed, was securing a gutting knife to the underside of a
    causeway banister. If I saw anyone following us or detected any
    other signs of duplicity, I would lead Dox past the banister, retrieve
    the knife, and finish him with it.
    I would have preferred to keep the blade on my person, but
    Dox wasn't