“I meet her in the gallery where I work. She’s a volunteer at one of our cocktail parties. She is tiny, cute, with a gap between her front teeth. She is the only thing that makes the night tolerable.”

I meet her in the gallery where I work. She’s a volunteer at one of our cocktail parties. She is tiny, cute, with a gap between her front teeth. She is the only thing that makes the night tolerable.

Her name is Bowie, like the singer, and later I tell people I’m in love with her. I am in love, I pronounce with certainty. I am in love with a girl named Bowie. That same night I meet her boyfriend, who studies art with her at university. He is quiet and handsome in a striped orange scarf. She wears earrings that are asymmetrical, like her haircut. I think I love them both – I love their artfulness and their youthfulness and their hopefulness and their hopelessness. But then, I am good at enthusing.

When it’s time to leave she asks me how to say I miss you in French. I tell her Tu me manques and she says Tu me manques and I say Bonne soirée! and she says A bientôt! But then the waiter says Non! so we say Pardon? and he says Arigato! and we cry Arigato, arigato, aaaaariiiiigaaatooo! to each other over the heads of the fiberglass pig sculptures, and we’re laughing because the waiter misheard us and thinks we’re saying goodbye and not see you soon, because of course we’ll see each other soon, and this isn’t anything as sad as goodbye.

We email back and forth, signing off with Bonne journée! and A plus tard! She tells me about her dreams, her annoying professors, the names of her imaginary pets. She writes that my smile is marvelous and she hopes I will always be happy.

I trill – my smile is marvelous! But as I begin to type the phone rings. It’s a client. I somehow forget to press send.

Bowie forwards me pictures of her artworks, asking for critiques. Sometimes I reply at length, sometimes I don’t at all. I suggest we exchange Cantonese for English and French, and she says, yes, avec plaisir, whenever I have the time.

One day she emails to say that a close friend has been diagnosed with stomach cancer. I write back, telling her to be strong for her friend’s sake. I promise to contact her again, just as soon as things quiet down at work.

And then I receive a message: she has paid a visit to the hospital. She brought her friend a gift, a piece of chocolate in the shape of a chicken wing. This made her friend smile, which made her smile, but then her friend felt sick and threw up. Afterwards neither of them spoke, and she sat holding her friend’s hand until it was time to go. Her friend’s mother stood at the doorway the whole time. Her eyes were red and dry.

I start to reply, but a man walks through the door and asks for the price of a painting. I mean to finish writing to Bowie, but I never quite get round to it.

A day and a month later she sends me a note attached with an image. She asks: What do you think?

I look at the picture and see an old white shoe on a stick, but of course that’s not what I say. Instead I tell her It’s nice out of indifference, and Thanks for sharing out of politeness. Finally, I inquire about its concept because I feel guilty and lazy and too busy to write anything real.

There isn’t really a concept, she answers. The shoe was a gift from a friend – the one who died of cancer. Please could I give her some feedback?

I immediately hit reply. This time, I remember to send.

*    *    *

Three months have passed since our first and only meeting. We’ve arranged to have lunch in a cha chaan teng.

So now I’m sitting in front of a girl I thought I loved, listening to her talk about real dreams, fake loves, dead friends and living lovers, and I can’t help wondering why she no longer fascinates me, why it’s so hard to talk to her in a way that feels natural, and why it is I can’t be a kinder, less selfish person.

I pay for our meal and we linger at the table, doodling halfheartedly on the receipt. She draws the characters for her Chinese name; one means metal, for strength, and another means beauty, since she’s a girl. We hug goodbye and I put the receipt in my pocket. Except that’s not where I put it, because when I look for it, I can’t find it anywhere. The next day I write her a thank-you note. I send her a link to my pictures, and say sorry for not sharing them before. She writes back almost instantly to tell me her favourite, a colour portrait from New York. She writes: The blue is burning like fire.

I glance at her message between phone calls. I turn back to my work, my life.

-Lara Day

Tags: fickle, hong kong life, languages, lost, love, short story, time
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