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AVA SLEPT WHAT
her mother called the sleep of the dead, with no dreams, and oblivious to the external world. When she woke, light was pouring in through the bedroom window. She stretched her arms above her head, yawned, and felt energy coursing through her body. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and was about to head for the bathroom when her room phone rang. She glanced at the bedside clock and saw that it was eight thirty.
Daddy
, she thought.
“Hello,” she said.
“Ava, good morning, this is Uncle.”
“Yes?”
“Were you sleeping?”
“No, I just woke up.”
“And did you sleep well?”
“Yes.”
“So you have not had breakfast?”
“No.”
“Good, because I am calling to invite you to breakfast. There is a congee restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui, near the Pacific Mall and across from the Star Ferry terminal, called Morning Blessings. Could you meet me there in about an hour?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I was thinking about our conversation last night, and there are some things I would like to go over again.”
Ava closed her eyes. She felt butterflies in her stomach. Did he want to rework the money arrangement?
“I thought everything was settled.”
“Not quite, from my side, so I would appreciate it if you could come.”
“Okay, in about an hour,” she said.
She drank two instant coffees, showered, brushed her teeth and hair, and then put on a black T-shirt and her Adidas jacket and training pants. She didn’t bother with makeup and tied her hair back with a rubber band. All the while, her mind was turning over thoughts about the money. She was angry with herself for not having insisted he tell her over the phone why he wanted to meet, but she hadn’t been fully alert when the call came. She also knew she could have refused to go, but there was something about him — the careful, polite, almost concerned way he spoke — that she found hard to resist.
She got a taxi outside the hotel, and within ten minutes it was navigating the traffic circle at the Star Ferry terminal and heading towards the Pacific Mall. Victoria Harbour was on her left; across the water the Hong Kong skyline was glittering in the morning sun. The brilliantly coloured skyscrapers, sheathed in steel, glass, aluminum, bronze, and copper, soared dramatically over the water.
Morning Blessings was in a row of stores and restaurants that faced the terminal with the mall behind them. When the taxi stopped in front, Ava looked for the Mercedes and then for Sonny. There was no sign of either.
The restaurant had two rows of booths running from front to back, towards the kitchen. The booth walls were high and Ava couldn’t see Uncle from the doorway. She was halfway to the kitchen when she heard him say her name.
He sat by himself, his feet barely touching the ground, a pot of tea and a Chinese newspaper in front of him. He was wearing a black suit and white shirt, but as she slid into the booth and faced him, she saw that both looked freshly ironed; there was no lingering trace of the aromas of Ming’s Hot Pot. There was no trace of the night before in his face, either, as she looked into those clear, gleaming eyes. She diverted her attention to his newspaper.
“A racing form,” he said. “Horse racing is my hobby. Or, more properly stated, betting on racehorses is.”
“I hear it’s very popular here.”
“It borders on mania.”
“I’ve never experienced it.”
“Perhaps one day I can introduce you to it,” he said.
“Now, forgive me for being impolite and not offering you tea.”
“I would prefer coffee if they have it.”
“Only instant.”
“Perfect.”
He raised a hand in the air and a server appeared as if out of nowhere. Ava had never before encountered anyone who commanded such immediate attention. “Coffee for my guest,” he said, and then turned back to Ava. “The congee here is not quite as watery as is typical. Is that okay?”
“Yes.”
“I like mine rather plain, with mushrooms, some chopped spring onions on top, and salted duck eggs on the side.”
“I’ll pass on the mushrooms and duck eggs. I wouldn’t mind some chicken in it, though, and I like
you tiao
.”
“That is what we will have, then,” he said to the server. When she left, Uncle smiled at Ava across the table. She found his smile slightly tentative, and felt uneasy.
“I hope I did not call too early,” he said. “I did not sleep well. I was up by six and waited until what I thought was a reasonable hour.”
“I was awake, after a very good night’s sleep.”
“Well, as I said, I did not sleep well. When I got home last night, I received a phone call from an old friend in Guangzhou. After speaking to him, my mind kept going back to our conversation, and I realized I needed to talk to you again.”
“Uncle, I can’t revisit our money agreement,” she said quickly. “I have already called my client in Toronto and told him what I’ve recovered. It would cause him enormous grief if things changed. I can’t do that to him.”
“What made you think that is what I wanted to discuss?”
She shook her head. “I just assumed it had to be that.”
“It is not,” he said, as the server arrived with two bowls of congee.
Jennie Lee made congee several times a month, but her boiled rice concoction was more like gruel than porridge. The Morning Blessings version looked thick enough to support a vertical chopstick. Ava sprinkled white pepper over the top and dipped the tip of her
you tiao
, a fried breadstick, into it. She nibbled the bread while Uncle covered his bowl with pepper.
He tasted his congee and then put his spoon aside. “My friend from Guangzhou has a problem. He thinks that one of his employees, a bookkeeper, has embezzled millions. He wants to find him, find out how he did it, locate the money, and get it back. He asked me to take on the job. I told him I did not think I could, because I do not have the right people to undertake a problem of that size and complexity. He told me he would wait for me to give him a more definite answer. He is quite distressed. That is when I started to think about you.”
“Uncle, we went over this last night.”
“I know, and it is not my intention to repeat myself,” he said. “Tell me, what kind of business do you have in Toronto?”
“I have a small accounting firm.”
“One person?”
“Yes, just me.”
“And what type of customers do you have?”
“Individuals and some small businesses.”
“Do you find it stimulating and challenging?”
She was holding a spoonful of congee with shredded chicken in front of her mouth. She paused, wondering where he was going.
“I ask that question because, when you were just now talking about your client in Toronto, you used the word
grief
,” Uncle said. “I have no doubt, given that description, that your ability to recover at least part of his money has spared him a lot of grief.”
“That is true.”
“The people who come to me, like your client who came to you, are desperate. They have exhausted all their legal means. Most of them are clinging onto their businesses, their families, and their lives by their fingernails. We are their lifeline. If we fail them, what is left? The destruction of everything they have worked for? Personal humiliation? No future for their families?”
Ava thought of Mr. Lo crying on the telephone. “I think I have some understanding of how traumatic it could be,” she said.
“Now let me rephrase my question. What has given you the best sense of doing something meaningful since you started your small business?”
“The question is redundant.”
“I know it is, and I apologize for being obvious. My point is, you have special talents that you need to use. I can give you the opportunity.”
“Uncle, I don’t mean to be impolite,” Ava said quietly. “But despite all your talk about saving lives, you still charge thirty percent as a recovery fee.”
He nodded and smiled. “This is Asia, and the standard rate is thirty percent. If I charged less, there would be an assumption that we did inferior work, and I doubt that we could attract clients of quality. And as I told you, I pay all of the expenses associated with any job, including bribes. We are not always successful, and so those costs have to be absorbed somehow. Finally, I assure you I have never had clients complain about our fee when we return money to them. Seventy percent of something is far superior to one hundred percent of nothing.”
“But you are still making a healthy profit.”
“Of course the business is profitable. But the talents of people like Carlos and Andy are best suited to more mundane jobs, and those do not normally have large dollars at risk. I would like to be able to expand our customer base to include jobs involving more money and with greater challenges attached to them. It is not that those types of clients do not come to me. It is that in good conscience I do not think I could give them proper service, and so I have had to turn them away.”
“And if I worked for you, that would change?”
“Yes. Would you disagree that your training qualifies you? My friend in Guangzhou needs expertise, not muscle.”
“No, but I’ve already told you that I don’t want to leave Toronto and I don’t want to work for anyone else.”
“You do not have to leave Toronto,” he said. “I was thinking about this last night. What does it matter where your home base is? Our clients are all over Asia, and we have even had some enquiries from North America. Do you object to travelling from Toronto?”
“No.”
“And the travel might not be that strenuous. There are often time lapses between jobs, and my understanding of your profession is that much of it can be done by computer anyway. What do I care if you spend your down time in Toronto, or whether your computer is in Toronto or Hong Kong?”
“Even if all that is true, I don’t want to work for anyone.”
“What if you became my partner?”
He said it so casually that at first Ava wasn’t sure she had heard him correctly. Now he looked across the table at her with an almost amused expression in his eyes.
“How would that be possible? I have no money to put into a business,” she said, pushing aside the other, less obvious objections that were crowding into her head.
“It is hardly a business in the normal sense of the word. I have no office. My staff, including Carlo and Andy, come and go as the work demands. I have no need for your money, or for anyone else’s.”
“So what kind of partnership would it be?”
“The simplest kind. We shake hands and then we share risks and rewards on an even basis. I will provide all the initial financing at no cost to you, but after we accrue profits we can set some aside as our joint investment. And from the start, I will advance whatever money you need to live until our venture is self-sustaining.”
“Uncle, we hardly know each other,” she said.
“I learned a long time ago to rely on my intuition when it comes to trust. My first instinct has always been the strongest and best, and it is telling me that you are someone worth knowing and someone I can trust. Now, you may not feel the same way about me, but I think you must have some sense of how I work from the events of the past few days.”
She shook her head. “This is crazy.”
“Ava, I was born in a village outside Wuhan, in Hubei province. The Communists came to power when I was a young man, and I had to decide if I was going to live my life as I thought fit or to allow other people and other factors to live it for me. When Mao’s policies resulted in the deaths of those around me, I decided to leave. With some friends, I found my way to the coast. We swam to Hong Kong, where I knew no one and no one knew me. Still, I made my way in unfamiliar surroundings and created a life that some think has been successful.”
“And your family in Wuhan?”
He closed his eyes. “They are dead. All of them. My mother and father and brother all died within a year of my leaving. I was told they were reduced to eating grass. I have no other relatives that I am aware of. I have never forgiven the Communists.”
“I’m sorry.”
He stared at her. “Thank you, but I have never had a large capacity for grief. I prefer looking ahead to looking back. Swimming to Hong Kong limited my soul as well as my body. So trying new things, even at my age, holds no fear for me. I suspect you have the same spirit of independence and adventure.”
“I have to admit that I felt completely engaged and energized when I was in Shenzhen. But I have trouble accepting that I can or should do something like that for a living.”
“What pressing obligations do you have in Toronto right now?” Uncle said.
“Nothing special.”
“Then why not take one small step and see where it leads?”
“One step?”
“Guangzhou. Let us take on that job. If we are unsuccessful, I will pay you a decent fee anyway. If we can get some money back, I will split it with you. Give it a try. When you are done, if you do not think the work is for you, you can go back to Toronto and your business. If you want to continue working with me, you can do so with the understanding that you may terminate our agreement on a day’s notice.”