Hainan Dao

Book I Chapter 02

HAINAN DAO BOOK I

CHAPTER 02

Wedging myself through the front door and the people crammed just inside it, I oozed my way into the packed Chinese restaurant. This was Abby’s favourite spot. She loved coming here, mainly because of its roast duck. I could smell it now, the raunchy scent hanging in the air like sweaty chain mail fresh from battle. The restaurant itself was a little on the old side, and didn’t even have the luxury of air conditioning. It was up to the ventilation fan trapped in the window over by the far side of the room, to keep the smoke alarms from going off all at once.

Stretching up onto the tips of my toes, I tried to see over the heads of the men and women in front of me. The place was wall-to-wall people. At the moment, about twenty of them stood waiting around me by the front door, holding onto little slips of paper with figures on them. They kept peering down and checking them whenever the headwaiter called out a number, as if the writing could have possibly changed in the meantime.

Someone already seated at a table in the far corner waved to me. I grinned at the disappointed crowd around me and began swimming my way over to it.

En route, I passed by two men who were fighting over the cheque at the next table. One of them had been the quicker and had snatched it away from the waiter. The other man was reaching for it over the heads of his children. Now the two men were standing up, as they prepared to physically fight for it.

Like a pro, I stopped, changed direction, circled around the other way and sat down.

My sister Abby turned to me. “I didn’t wait for you. I ordered.”

I smiled. “Great.” I frowned at the empty spaces around the table. “So, where’s the other one?”

Abby shrugged. “Courtney couldn’t make it.”

“What? Again?” I adjusted my chair.

“Jimmy, I think this getting together thing is going to get more and more difficult. Maybe every month is a bit much, what with Courtney’s new baby and all. You know? You’re really the only one…”

“No, no.” I shook my head. “If we stop making it a point to get together, you know what’s going to happen. The three of us are just never going to see each other anymore.” I picked up my chopsticks and began wiping them down. “Besides, Court could always bring the rest of the family. That’s what I always tell Dylan anyway, just bring whichever girl you happen to be with that night…”

“You mean you actually spoke to him?”

“No, I meant on the machine.”

Abby shook her head and sighed. “I don’t know why you bother, Jimmy. You know I wouldn’t. The man didn’t even go to his own father’s funeral, what makes you think…?”

“Now, now. He’s our brother. You need to give him the benefit of the doubt. He probably had something…phenomenally important so he couldn’t make it.”

“‘Phenomenally’?” She waved her hand. “I’m sorry, but anything short of…of…Pearl Harbour is not going to cut it for me…”

I laughed. “Yes, but…”

The waiter began to load food onto our table.

As usual, even though there were only the two of us that night, I saw that Abby had still gone ahead and ordered the house special meal for four, the one that two starving hyenas together could not have finished. And the bubbling cauldron that stood in the centre of it all, the main attraction according to my sister, was of course, the soup.