The Promised Land by David Hewson

Author:David Hewson [Hewson, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, General
ISBN: 9780330462518
Google: dI9N73Ih_MYC
Amazon: 0330446347
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2007-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

They watched me slink off to the bedroom, ostensibly to think, after I watched the newscast one more time through Lao Lao’s magic silver box. While I was sleeping Alice had gone out and bought me some clothes: cotton pants, a couple of shirts, all the other practical stuff a woman would think about, knowing it would pass me by completely. I dressed, looked at myself in the mirror, and was surprised by what I saw: a middle-aged man, not fat, not thin, not remarkable in any way, dressed in the kind of clothes that seemed to go down well in the twenty-first century. I was anonymous, which was, as Alice, smart, lovely Alice, had quickly realized, definitely look of the month for me.

After a while I went downstairs and joined her. It was now gone six in the evening. A wonderful smell of Chinese food was coming from the minuscule kitchen squeezed next to the bathroom. Lao Lao was working away in there with a wok. Eventually she came over with two plates of noodles and meat and vegetables, dumped them in front of us and said, ‘Even dead people gotta eat. I work downstairs for a while now. Old Fred need me.’

I tried the food and, for a moment, couldn’t say a word. It contained all the flavours and colours that had been methodically removed from everything that ever went on a plate in jail. I wanted to put it in a box and carry it around, ready to sniff when I started to feel sorry for myself again. For a moment, I thought this new century couldn’t be all bad.

When I got my voice back, I said, ‘People. She called me “people”. Not jerk. I’m coming up in the world.’

Alice shook her head. She’d gone out and got her hair cut that afternoon, the way women did at such idle, uneventful points in their lives.

Or – and I hated myself for this suspicious, conniving thought – when you’d fixed some secretive meeting with the boss.

‘She’s not so bad. She kept me alive when no one else was interested.’

‘How the hell could that have happened? You’re smart. You’re beautiful.’

‘Bierce …’

‘No. I mean it.’

This had to be asked. She was in a fresh white cotton shirt and pale fawn slacks. Almost business gear. Looking at her, she could have been a tour guide or an office receptionist. Talking to her, you might have upped that to some kind of postgrad student still working her way through college. Her hair was so clean and shiny, and her face, long and intriguing, in an imperfect, half-Chinese way, was definitely the most interesting I’d seen in a long time. Something had happened to Alice Loong and I needed to know what it was.

‘Where did your dad come from?’ I asked.

‘A boat.’

The hard stare told me that wasn’t going any further.

I pointed to the small scar above her left eye.

‘And that?’

‘That what?’

‘The scar.’

‘Oh. The scar. Fight. A man, naturally. I wouldn’t lower myself to fighting other women.

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