“People have always expected me to be bad and thoughtless and shallow, and I do my best to accommodate their expectations. I sink to their expectations, one might say. I think it’s the ultimate suggestibility of most of us. We are social beings. We live in a social world with other people and so we wish to be as they see us, even if it is detrimental to ourselves.” She laughs, lifting her face toward his. Her eyes, her skin, they glow, distracting him. “What do you think?”
HE WOKE with a startle, then exhaled heavily in the hot air, slowly noticed the fan moving sluggishly overhead as consciousness surfaced. Perspiration covered his body and the bed linens were soaked. Her voice was as clear as a bell in his head, her sharp, vivid outline moving against a dark background. He had forgotten how much she loved her own pronouncements, how she would philosophize over a cold drink, how she was startlingly insightful at the oddest times.
She was waiting for him, expecting him to save her.
What would become his story now? he wondered. And there was Claire, who had grown important to him despite himself, in whom he saw his undeveloped self, nascent, with her silly prejudices, her cherished ignorance, and, surprisingly, her moments of clarity. Her naïveté was a salve to his battered expectations. Wasn’t love always some form of narcissism after all? She came unbidden to his dreams too, battling with the other woman, the one who haunted him day and night. Claire, with her blond and familiar femininity, English rose to Trudy’s exotic scorpion.
The black night beyond the window was velvet and welcome in its anonymity. He got up and opened the windows. Hong Kong ’s warm, intimate smell came into the room, redolent of human bodies and the ever-present sea, even at this elevation. It was never crisp here, just moist and close, though not always unpleasant. The darkness enveloped him. A lone light winked in the distance-a boat? A fellow insomniac?
He heard her voice again. It sounded more desperate now, more shrill.
He knew it was time to act.