City Girl

by Kitty Yip Kee Wah

Hello!

Kitty here. The weather's been getting hotter, which has enabled me to make best use of my frisky summer dresses and my extensive collection of stuff from Shanghai Tang. If only Beijing presented an audience worthy of the sight of me in such raiment, rather than the dusty, pan-faced morons by whom I am so very constantly surrounded. It's enough to make a girl up sticks and go back to HK. Sadly, sometimes a girl can't afford it.

I am on the verge of ditching my latest bit of arm-candy, a nice but dim New Englander called Derek. We had a dinner date the other night, so I phoned him to ask what he was going to wear (I wanted to co-ordinate at least a bit). He said he didn't know - a suit? This vexed me more than somewhat. In the end I just tried to wear something neutral that would go with anything short of Hawaiian surf gear. Then he managed to pick me up fifteen minutes late because his taxi was in a car crash on the way to my place - I pointed out tat if he'd set off fifteen minutes early, it wouldn't have happened. We set off and hit serious traffic, arriving a full twenty-five minutes later than we'd planned at Hatsune. By this point, I was on the verge of tears, as I realised it was almost impossible we'd get a good table.

Worse was to come, as we were seated in uncomfortable proximity to my nemesis, that bitch Madeleine Wong from the hotel publicity department. Worse, her date was clearly wealthier than mine. I think I threw up in my mouth slightly when I saw him give her a gold-plated mobile phone as a gift, but I knocked it back down with some sake and managed to pretend I'd swallowed too much wasabi in one go.

We grabbed a taxi from Hatsune (Madeleine left in a Merc, damn it damn it damn it) and went for a drink at Centro. I was surprised to bump into Angel Chu there, though I probably shouldn't have been. She was in fine fettle. We joined her and her boyfriend Rick at the bar. I noticed there was a strange scar on Angel's left calf and after a while got up the courage to ask her about it.

"Oh, that was Rick," she said. "The other day, we were at his place and he just grabbed a laminated chopstick and drove it into the back of my leg! Look, you can see a little bit over here where it started to come through the other side!"
"And you didn't call the police?" I said.
"Oh, no," she laughed. "He's a bit kooky, but I love him. I really think he's the one!"

Well, I suppose romance isn't dead after all. Though in the case of Angel Chu, it's clearly sustained some kind of massive head wound.