The Long Siege - Chapter 9

She doesn’t talk about mundane things like other girls, and every time she speaks, it tickles in the way my mind works

I allow a genuine smile to escape when I see Elise put her noodles on a spoon and blow to cool it. I lean back, letting my eyes see her entirely. Any other girl can act the same as this scene. You can see it everywhere, but Elise, she has a special place in my heart now. Or is it head? I don’t know for sure but her quick mind has impressed me.

As she slurps the noodles, she realizes I haven’t touched my food. “What? Aren’t you hungry?”

“I thought girls like to add lemon juice and extra spice into the soup,” I say.

She rests another swirl of noodles on her spoon. “I’ve had stomach problems since college. You know, working the night shift in a burger shop.”

So she’s like me, weathered and scared, and we are both striving no matter what. I reach for her hand, feeling the soft skin on the darker side. “My–Our kiss, is that real?”

She bites her lower lip. “It’s sexual assault on the other side of the globe.”

Yet, she hasn’t pulled her hand away. I feel so empty at the moment, my calculated mind, my suspicions, my doubts, even my way with words. I just stare into her colored lens and feel the heat rising from my chest. “The color suits you.” Should have been your lens color complimenting your skintone.

“The silver on your glass also suits your hair,” she says. Then, she moves aside, inviting me to join her.

That’s a couple sitting position. I slightly shake my head and she slightly frowns. “No hearts and flowers. You are as much as my equal now. This is how we sit, like partners.”

She dips her head and smiles. “Then I shall require a ring.”

I nod and signal at the food. “We should finish before they get cold.” I pinch her wedding finger before letting it go and return to my meal. I know that she feels it and is looking at me when my eyes are elsewhere. I keep them down, focusing on the food, teasing her as she has teased me. Only new blooming romances have this privilege. I think most marriages can be saved if the couples could keep this vibe, or at least remember it the way it was before complications and life tainted it. A withered flower doesn’t mean its beauty was taken by death.

We eat in silence and respect each other’s personal space. That’s what I like about her the most. She doesn’t talk about mundane things like other girls, and every time she speaks, it tickles in the way my mind works. I finish mine before she does hers and lean back to hygiene myself. My seat is facing the street, my back to a sticky, tilted wall, an old habit. The air is thick with the stall’s broth. Steaming, greasy pork bone rises and disperses under the rare sunlight of the peaceful afternoon. I recognize the tang of fish sauce under the acrid smoke of the charcoal stove. This is a traditional pork and shrimp noodle stall, passed down from generations of honest people. This is this city’s bloodstream, the one tourists experience yet haven’t understood thoroughly.

“So we got the money, what’s next?” she asks as she plants her chopsticks on the bowl.

“Do you have any suspects in mind?”

Her eyes dart to the ceiling for a second. “No. Not that I know of. But it could be from someone who wants to help Brooke’s family.”

“Or her dealer,” I say. “The guy’s been gone since her death. He might have tricked her parents into doing this… hideous act. He wants his money back since Aunty Three is gone.”

She raises a brow. “Makes sense. What’s your plan?” then she frowns so hard that it leaves three furrows between her brows. “Aunty Three is gone?”

I sigh at my slippery mouth. “She’s my godmother. The gang usurped her. I survived because… you better not know the full story.”

She reaches my hand, giving me a reassuring nod. “It’s over. You don’t have to dwell in that memory.”

I shake my head. “It doesn’t let me go, you see. This scoundrel haunts us.” I clench my fists. “This money belongs to Brooke’s family. Not him.”

Her eyes flare up in fear. “Don’t be stupid now, Harry. Give him the money and save us from this mess.”

My eyes also flare up and meet hers with intensity. “Do you trust me?”

Elise reluctantly nods, then she jerks back, shaking her head.

I grab her retreating hand. “The scoundrel is alone. This is too big for him to trust an errand boy. He has to pick up the money himself.”

She swallows her worry, and I can see her eyes weighting the risk. “Tell me your plan.”

---

The money feels like a live coal in my pocket, its heat searing through the canvas, into my skin. Hung Vuong park, 9pm, alone. The girl stays. That’s the appointment, the most important appointment in my life, and I don’t have everything prepared. I trust Elise’s demonstrated quick wits and myself, my other self, the Harry without mercy.

I stand under a shade, near the public restroom where junkies used to use it as a hideout for their shady trade and get high. Years have passed since that scene, the structure is a convenience store mixed with a coffee shop now. It’s closed, and the scandal of the park has driven good people away when the sun goes down. Only a few uncles gather around a bench, having what we call poor people picnic. A couple are playing badminton near where I stand, and on the other side, where they put the statues, are a few parents jogging with their kids. This is as good as any place in this crowded city. There’s no private life here.

I’m ten minutes early, and this is where I can see every direction, where I can anticipate and set my course of action. I will not be ambushed again.

A motorbike taxi driver stops across the street without a customer to drop. That’s no place to pick up as well for the building behind is abandoned, half constructed, but abandoned. I watch him for a beat longer, perhaps he’s just requesting his last ride back to his district. Yes, he drinks from his worn bottle of water and lights up a cigarette. Then, he opens a second phone and starts wiping. Perfectly normal.

A band of tourists walk by. Drunk, stumbling and laughing, having such a carefree time.

A woman in mid-fifties, maybe. Dressed in a simple set of clothes, a blaze drapes around her upper body. She is painfully thin, her shoulders hunched as if carrying an invisible, crushing weight. She weaves through the traffic on a rusty bike, her progress slow, mechanical. And her face. Even from this distance, even aged by a grief so profound it has carved new lines into her skin, I recognise her.

Brooke’s mother.

The world seems to slow, the noise of the street fading into a dull roar. This is no paranoid fantasy. This is the ghost, made flesh, pedaling through the night. She’s supposed to be with uncle Tam, what is she doing here? Has she tracked me down after receiving her husband’s phone? Impossible. Just as I come to the conclusion, she vanishes as if she isn’t there in the first place. Have I just imagined her? No, I remember now. She’s from this district, and like most people in this district, they have Chinese origin. They’ve been rooted here since the feudal age.

My mind snaps back to the sound of footsteps. It’s oddly familiar, yet nothing dear. I’ve locked this sound into a chest and thrown it away for over a decade. Then I heard that voice slicing through the rustling of leaves.

“Long time no see, son.”

I never expect this ghost to actually stumble out of the darkness. It takes me a couple of seconds before I can turn back to face him. My father is a wreck, a sculpture of ruin. His clothes hang from a gaunt frame, stained and reeking of cheap liquor and stale sweat. His hair is a wild, greasy mane, and his face is a roadmap of deep wrinkles and broken capillaries. But the eyes—bloodshot and burning with a familiar, desperate fire—are unmistakable. My father, the gambler, how fitting it is to play the part in this blackmail against me. How did the dealer contact him? “I paid off your last debt just two months ago,” I say, my voice is a grit of gears without oil.

“Yeah, yeah.” He scratches his dirty scalp. “But you see, we haven’t talked sometimes. You didn’t call, you didn’t text–”

“Shut up! Why are you here, father?” The badminton couple glares at us. Then the guy pulls his girl away from the situation.

My father signals we shall take the stone bench, but I refuse. I will refuse whatever he suggests.

“Someone tell me you will pay my debt, again,” he says, matter of fact, as if I will do it again and again, which I did.

I shake my head this time. Not like this, not when someone is targeting my back and using my father as a scapegoat.

“It’s bad luck this time, son. It really is,” he says. His body language and tone switches to that of a repentant man that he thinks it’s working on me. “They stake me, telling me the slot machine is giving the return. They are banned from the casino so they need someone like me, some loser, some addictive gamblers who never won, to grab the statistical luck.”

Same old story. I can feel the heat rise from my stomach. “You need a new story. This one you told me just sixteen months ago.” I walk to the pole of the badminton nest. I need some air and some light. My space is invading by a force I can’t just shoo away. “Is that K guy who staked you?”

“Yes, yes. K is your underling, right, son?”

Fucking liar. He doesn’t even know who I’m referring to. My underling, huh? Will my underling stab my back like that? My father is a liar and a stupid one at that. “So he isn’t threatening you to pay, but asking you nicely that I, his boss, will pay for you?”

He sees the flaw in his lies, but who’s my father? He’s a gambler, he has sold his self-esteem long ago. He just fidgets with his lips twice. “He is. If I don’t pay, he will smash my hands and kneescap.”

A notion crosses my mind and I need to investigate it immediately. My hand slips to my pocket and to my cellphone. I press on the series of keys and call my father’s number. It rings and he takes it out to take the call. I snatch it and before he can react, I go through his messages. “Stand right there or I’ll beat your ass.”

“Motherfucker, give me back my phone. You ass of a son!” He shouts for all to hear. “You want to beat me, your own father?”

I slink away, but surrounded by the uncles who have been drinking in the park.

“What kind of a son are you?”

“Give his phone back.”

“What a twat, looking like a rich person but treating parents like trash.”

I scan each and every of them, not looking for a fight, but for a con act. These people can be brought and bought here by the real blackmailer to help my father. I fight, I lose, I don’t fight, I also lose. My father’s phone is also like Elise. He receives messages about my shady act on campus and he is the one who has been sending me threatening messages. This blackmailer is more capable than I thought he is.

Then my father assaults me from my back.

“Motherfucker. Give me back my pension.” He jumps over me but I’m too strong for him now.

I shove him aside and step several steps back, forcing them to face me on one side. “Pension? I’ve been paying your debts for a decade.”

“No, he took my pension. He’s leaving the country.” My father lies through his teeth.

My rage is almost uncontrollable now. “No money for you. You will die under a bridge when I’m gone.” Then, I throw a bag of money on the ground.

My father jumps on it, the others just stand there, watching me. These people are my father’s mates, not even the blackmailer’s henchmen.

“The fuck? You motherfucker. Where’s the money?” My father screams and sprints towards me. I stand still, letting him rain a barrage of weak punches on my torso, my arms, and my shoulders. He dares not touch my head, and I dare not hit him back. I might kill him if I do and it’s an unredeemable sin.

“Stop it!” Elise’s voice cuts through the chaos. She steps between us, not with fear, but with a shocking, forceful authority. She shoves my father away, her rough hands finding purchase on his bony chest. He stumbles back, more from surprise than force.

“Coward needs a girl to protect him?”

“Lady, it’s a family business. Leave.”

“Raising them up to bite a hand that feeds them. I would rather raise a dog.”

My father stands up. He glances around, gathering morals from the drunken crowd. “See, see, as soon as they grow up, they will turn on you.”

I pull Elise back behind me. “He’s not the blackmailer,” I whisper.

“Now he got a whore to help him beat his own father.”

I slump back to the old Harry. My stance, my arms, my legs, all tense up for the fight. “I can’t hit my father, but you fuckers…” I sprint up against them.

They all back up fast, leaving my father in front like a shield. I stop, my nose a thin line from my father’s. “You see, no one’s there to help you anymore. I’m done with you.” I break the stare as soon as I finish my sentence.

The sirens come after, and two police officers step out of their vehicles. There’s not even a siren warning, they just appear like it is a set up. That’s why I didn’t hit them. No wound proof, whatever they speak now is useless. It’s me who gets punched.

“Sorry, I called the police,” Elise says.

“What?”

“I thought those four would jump you.”

“This is not over,” my father spits at me, then he turns and flees, melting back into the shadows from whence he came, leaving his son standing in a circle of nothing again, covered in the invisible filth of his past.

The officers approach, their expressions weary. “What’s going on here?” one asks, his flashlight beam sweeping over my disheveled state, the torn black plastic bag, the scattered paper of fake dollar bills.

Elise is already in motion, her voice shifting into a register of distressed concern. “Officer, that man… he just attacked my friend. He was demanding money. We were just sitting here…”

I say nothing. I meet the officer’s gaze, my face a carefully constructed mask of shock and victimhood. Inside, my mind is a vortex of cold fury. The blackmailer uses my father. They knew this would happen. They knew it would draw the police. This is never about the money. It was about applying pressure, about reminding me that every string of my life is still held in someone’s hand.

“Alright, both of you,” the second officer says, his tone leaving no room for argument. “We’re going to need you to come down to the precinct. Just to make a statement.”

I give a slight, defeated nod. As they are escorted towards the patrol bike, I catch Elise’s eye. In the shifting light, I can’t tell if her look is one of shared fear, or of quiet, calculated satisfaction. The trip to the local precinct is short, but every step feels like a march towards an inescapable verdict.

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