Bauhinia Star by Robert Blain

Author:Robert Blain [Blain, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-07-29T00:00:00+00:00

Swain met Vanessa at the Lantau Island Ferry Island ferry terminal next morning. It had been raining heavily in the night and had dawned cloudy, but so far the rain was staying away. Vanessa tried her best to smile, she was nervous. She looked at him briefly with her coal-black eyes as if to confirm their shared intention. She was turned out in a grey tank top and turquoise-coloured shorts. Her hair was pulled back perkily in a ponytail.

‘So what’s it like working at Asia Sports?’ enquired Swain, as they scanned their octopus cards over the ticket reader and headed towards to the ferry.

‘It’s awesome!’ she enthused. ‘I’ve always wanted to work in journalism and now I’m doing it. They said if my internship goes well I might get offered a full-time position – I’m pretty driven to succeed.’

‘What’s it like working with Syme?’

‘He’s cool. He’s your friend right? He’s a funny guy.’

‘I’ll tell him you said that, no one’s ever called him cool before,’ Swain joked.

She giggled. ‘Wait – so how did you guys meet?’

‘We shared a flat together when I first came to Hong Kong.’

While they walked together Swain got a sense of what a magnificent physical specimen she was. She moved like a young lion. He was aware of the glances she was attracting from some of the male passengers as they approached the vessel for boarding.

As they crossed the gangplank Swain got a pungent whiff of diesel on his nostrils as the ferry snorted and bobbed on the jetty. He guided them to the open-air section at the back of the ferry. As they settled into their seats, she leaned forward slightly and across him into her knapsack for some water and he felt the pressure of her breasts in his lap. A thrill of electricity went through him. Instinctively his hand went to the small of her back.

Swain noticed a tattoo of a tiger on her right shoulder blade. The word ‘hope’ was etched into her skin below the carnivore in a jagged font like thunderbolts. The propensity of young women to wear tattoos surprised Swain. It seemed that more women than men had tattoos these days.

‘I like your tattoo,’ he said as she sat back upright.

‘Thanks. I got it when I was seventeen – Mum and Dad still don’t know I’ve got one.’

‘Do you regret getting it?’

‘No.’

She unscrewed the cap of her water bottle and took a sip.

‘I’ve never climbed Sunset Peak before. I’m stoked,’ she said.

It had been well over ten years since Swain had been on the dating scene and although the principles still seemed the same, the words were different.

Awesome. Wait. Stoked. The language had evolved since he had last hung out with women in their twenties.

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