“Damn.” Jane said suddenly ashamed and furious with herself that she’d lied to George. It was with a shock that she realized that she would have been elated if he’d taken the trouble to find her. Now what do I do? Think. Oh God what am I going to do? Got it! Phone the . . . What was the name of the hotel that I told him I’d be staying at? “Yeah, yeah,” she said. When she got nervous she began talking to herself. “Phone the Hilton, ask for George Alexander and if he’s staying there have him paged and then apologize.
“Think,” she said. “None of the dining rooms in the Hilton have harbour views. He must be at the Pan Pacific. I’ll wait for another couple of minutes and then scoot down stairs as if that was the game plan all along.”
Now she had to go to the bathroom. She always had to do that when she got nervous. Almost as soon as she closed the door, she heard the phone ring. “Damn,” she said. She washed her hands and was drying them on one of the hotel’s scrumptiously fluffy towels, when she glanced up and noticed the phone on the wall beside the toilet. “Nuts,” she said. The only reason she noticed it was the flashing light.
She pressed the button.
“Breakfast is now being served in the Pacifica Room. We have a table for two with a lovely view of the harbour.” This was strange. The message was in Cantonese. She wondered. Had he found her? Did he know that she spoke Cantonese?
There was another message.
This is your ten to seven wake up call,” a voice said.
“I didn’t put one in,” she said. Like most Canadians she was so painfully polite that she tended to thank bank machines for granting her her own money.
What’s going on for Pete sake? She might as well give up and go to breakfast alone as she would have done quite willingly if she hadn’t read the note on the back of the card. “I’m going to breakfast,” she said to no one in particular. “I’ve had enough of these carryings on. This fiasco will last me for quite some time.”
She got off the elevator on the second floor and entered the Pacifica Room. The headwaiter greeted her profusely. He took her to a two table with an absolutely divine view of the harbour. Jammed with commuters off for their daily grind in Hong Kong Central, the ferry was just pulling out from the Kowloon quay. She was mesmerized by the view.
“Ciao Baby. I tried to tell you but I wasn’t allowed to. Security you know.”
Jane felt as though she had been knocked out with a feather. She sat down.
“At any rate, I’ll be stationed here for six months. The deal in Iraq comes later.”
Jane understood why she’d lied to George and was she ever glad that she had.
“Do me a favour,” she said.
“Anything, Baby.”
“Change the ringer back to Mazy Doats and Dozy Doats.”
“Tell me. Are you surprised to see me?”
“You might say that,” she said. “Let’s order. I’m famished.”
The end