NVK by Temple Drake

Author:Temple Drake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2019-11-25T16:00:00+00:00

AS ZHANG WAITED IN THE LOBBY, the dinner guests paraded past, the men in black tie, the women in haute couture or traditional qipao. He was trying to imagine what Naemi was doing in the bathroom. Was she using one of her syringes? If so, what did it contain? Heroin? It would explain why she appeared not to eat—though he had never seen a junkie who looked so healthy. He wondered if he should he share his suspicions with Mad Dog. At the very least, it would put a stop to all his talk of ghosts and ghouls. He also wondered if being with Naemi would get him into trouble. It was just as well he had connections in the Shanghai police. The deputy commissioner’s nephew worked for him, and had become a kind of protégé.

“My brother!”

Zhang looked up to see Jun Wei’s pockmarked face, his swollen upper body crammed into a white tuxedo, his blue-black hair slicked back. Standing beside him was Xiang Jin, formerly known as Cherry, an ex–bar girl who he had installed in a modern one-bedroom apartment ten minutes’ drive from his office.

“You were miles away,” Jun Wei said.

The two men shook hands.

Jun Wei looked around. “No date?”

“She’s in the bathroom—”

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Zhang.”

He felt someone take his arm, and turned to see Naemi at his elbow, her eyes clear and dark, her hair all shining tangles. He stared at her in awe, but also in bewilderment. If it hadn’t been for the small red mark near the edge of her right eye, where she had struck the window when she passed out, he would have found it hard to believe that anything untoward had happened.

Jun Wei was also staring, his mouth hanging open. Xiang Jin punched him in the ribs, but he didn’t seem to feel it.

“What’s wrong with you?” she said. “Have your batteries gone flat?”

Zhang smiled.

“This is the most beautiful foreign girl I have ever seen,” Jun Wei said.

“That’s very kind,” Naemi said in Chinese, “though you do make me sound a bit like a painting or a vase.”

Jun Wei stared for a moment longer, in shock, then his head tipped back, and he laughed his eerie, silent laughter.

Xiang Jin hit him again. This time he grunted.

“Show some respect,” he said.

She stepped closer, tilting her face up to his. “You show some respect.”

Jun Wei might act indignant, but Zhang knew that he found Xiang Jin’s insolence and vulgarity provocative, in contrast to his wife, who had the build of a fridge, as Jun Wei liked to say, and the temperament as well, and who he kept in a gated residence on the outskirts of the city, along with his twelve-year-old son.

The two couples moved towards the lifts that would take them to Peace Hall, the grand dining room and ballroom on the eighth floor.

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