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City Girl



by Kitty Yip Kee Wah

...continued from last issue

By the time I got onto the island, Gene Lam was bordering on irate. Combine this with his natural ugliness of face and basically he looked like a bulldog licking ants off a nettle. "Don't worry," I said, "I've brought this boat for you! How did you get stuck out here?"

Gene Lam harrumphed and fixed me with a gimlet gaze. "It was that little brat," he said, "Georgie. Bloody stranded me here."

"Oh, no," I said, "I'm sure it was just some kind of misunderstanding." He didn't seem to buy it. I didn't know what to say, so I just turned round to look across the lake. In the distance I could see Annie playing tennis with my aunt. I always enjoy watching Annie play tennis, not because she's particularly good (though she is) but because she looks so funny with her massive feet flapping around like clown shoes. Honestly, her feet are really, really big. One time when she stayed overnight at my house, I woke up to find that someone was apparently using my shoe rack to store two canoes. Of course, it turned out to just be Annie's shoes.

Actually, that's a little cruel and unfair. I don't think her feet are really canoe-sized. It's all comparative anyway. I do own a very small shoe rack.

Just as I was pondering Annie's shoe size, I heard a squawk behind me, followed by a stream of Cantonese expletives. I turned round to find that Gene Lam was being assaulted by a pair of angry flamingoes (who clearly knew a bad egg when they saw one). He shrieked and ran away from them, pursued by one of the flamingoes - the other one came for me. I bolted after Mr Lam, who was scrambling out of the flamingo's reach on to the roof of the ornamental pagoda. Frankly, he exhibited an agility I never would have expected from such an old, fat, ugly bastard. I clambered up there too, though not without being severely pecked in the ankles.

And then there we were, sitting on an ornamental pagoda, with two flamingoes stalking back and forth beneath us, watching....waiting... it seemed we were stuck.

To be continued...