Trying to Throw my Arms Around the World

Trying to Throw my Arms Around the World Part 1

“I’m all yours.”

“I suggest you finish your work downstairs and bring with you whatever you can’t finish. I’ll meet you here at two o’ clock.”

“See you later.”

The first afternoon I worked with Nathalie, aka Mrs Stevens, nothing happened. She explained what was expected of me and that was that. She told me to be there at eight-thirty AM sharp the next morning, all the while treating me like a perfect stranger. I actually started hoping she had forgotten about my dramatic teenage shenanigans, but I knew better. The next evening, however, after we had spent the day running around like headless chickens, and I had gotten my first taste of what work was really like − so damn exhausting − she wanted to take me out for a drink, to make up for having to skip my lunch break on my first day working for her. I accepted. That was my first mistake.

You see, I don’t develop a crush that easily, but when it does happen, I go all the way. And when I saw Nathalie again, all those years, a university degree, and a couple of semi-broken hearts later, I instantly felt like a silly fifteen-year-old again. All the reasons why I had spent so many nights thinking of ways to kill her boyfriend, and heroically rescue her from sadness and loneliness, became very clear to me again. I was smitten all over again. I knew it was ridiculous, but ridiculous things have a habit of regularly popping up in my life. So how was I supposed to rationally turn down this invitation? It was just a drink anyway.

Of course, in these circumstances, a drink is never just a drink. Well, it could have been, if it was just one drink. But one drink turned into many drinks, and Nathalie didn’t seem to be a stranger to downing several glasses of alcohol per night. I actually think she wanted to drink me under the table, like she had done on multiple occasions when we were younger, in my formative years. Somewhere around the fifth drink, she asked me, “What kind of a name is Lee Harlem anyway?”

“It’s my name. I like it.”

“I used to know a Lee Harriet, strange girl, that one.”

“With a name like that you can’t really blame her.”

“Oh, I don’t think it was the name, do you?”

“Definitely not.”

“So why did you change your name?”

“I thought Harlem suited me better.”

“I can’t argue with that. You do know I should have picked a more experienced secretary to help me this week, but when I saw your name, I couldn’t resist.”

“Oh yeah, why is that?”

“Really, you’re seriously asking me why?”

“Yes, Mrs Stevens, why?”

And thus the cat was out of the bag.

It gets interesting

Looking back on that particular night now, so many years later, I do admit I could have handled things differently. I should have walked away. My only excuse is that instead of being a silly fifteen-year-old, I had become a foolish twenty-two-year-old, but nothing else seemed to have changed much. To make matters worse, back then, shame was something I rarely felt, so when the hinges came off, there wasn’t anything, neither emotion, nor wisdom, to hold me back. It leads me to believe that nothing ever really changes, not like in this city, where the day seems like a mere distant cousin of the night, even though it never gets dark in Hong Kong. Light is everywhere, all the time. Maybe that’s what I need right now, maybe that’s why I ended up here. Not that I believe in fate, I don’t now, and I certainly didn’t then.