Blue Lantern by Gil Hogg Page B

them, and led her away to a Chinese man on the other side of the room. Vanessa realised she was being protected and was grateful.
    Vanessa found she was engaged with customers most of the time and had little opportunity to get to know the other girls; they were proud and unfriendly. The youngest ones seemed the proudest of all. She thought they were probably very rich, because she was getting three thousand a month for herself; it was more than the Chans needed at home, and her thoughts were moving toward a new apartment. Vicky told her that she must be especially attentive to the three men who became her regulars. Two were fat old businessmen. She found out all about their work, their wives and concubines, their travels, their cars and villas – it was all they talked about. After a while this information ceased to be very interesting, and Vanessa had to force herself to listen and remember. Occasionally she asked her client the same question twice, and this was embarrassing. It caused offence when she confused the import business of one in Manila, with the timber business of another in Brunei, or remembered being told of a house in Singapore which was actually in Macao.
    The third of Vanessa’s regular customers was younger, a real estate dealer, tall and thin, with a hollow chest and one protuberant front tooth. He was a bespectacled forty-five, and had something good natured, and gentle about him. They talked well together. He was not married, and never had been. Unlike the others, he never spoke of his women, and this made him more acceptable to Vanessa. He spent most of his time at the office, and only came to the ballroom briefly to relax. He was a fine dancer.
    When Harry Lu finally asked her to go out to supper with him, Vanessa asked Vicky. Vicky not only agreed, but implored Vanessa to be very kind. Vanessa had fetched her bag from the powder room, and the two women were alone for a moment. Vanessa was surprised to be told that she would get an extra thousand for the evening, and that it was a big opportunity.
    Harry Lu took Vanessa to her first nightclub. In the taxi he gave her two bills saying they were a present. She tried to tell him she was already amply rewarded, but he wouldn’t listen. Inside the club, at first, she was attracted by the food in so many delicate dishes, the scintillating walls and ceiling, but the band – she counted more than twenty Filipinos – began to deafen her, and the floor show of near naked white girls from Australia was a sight she looked away from. Harry Lu said they weren’t really girls at all, which he seemed to find amusing. Waiters kept filling her glass with sparkling wine. Harry Lu was saying nothing much, laughing occasionally to himself, his tooth glowing in the dark. In the toilet Vanessa unfolded the money Mr Lu had given her, and found two five hundreds. That meant she was getting two thousand for the night. It was absurd. She danced with Harry Lu. He held her very tight, quite unlike their posture at the Majestic. Coloured dots from the sparkling ball in the ceiling flew all over the room. The light turned the white shirts blue, and hurt her eyes.
    Then Harry Lu took her to a black cellar with a jazz band. She was getting tired of his smile – and his bad breath. Two thousand or not, she said they ought to go after half an hour. Lu grinned agreeably, and helped her into a taxi. But the taxi did not go north to Sham Shui Po; it went south to Tsim Sha Tsui. When Vanessa protested, Lu merely smiled. The cab stopped at a hotel, a big, hotel with marble columns and a uniformed doorman. Lu paid off the cab and pulled her out. Vanessa wanted to ask questions, but she was towed past the leering doorman, across the lobby, through glass doors, over carpets, up elevators, beneath arches, past floor-boys with bowed heads, into a luxurious scented bedroom with gold silk bedcovers. Vanessa felt that the glistening ball which turned in the ceiling of the