omar | TLV: IC Inbox

Really.

Gonna have to fix that, at some point.

Where would you take me? If we could go absolutely anywhere, drop of a hat?

[Another moment of quiet, but there's a slightly different quality to it -- less like he has to mull it over and more like he has to decide if the answer that first comes to mind is the one he wants to give. His voice stays low when he speaks again.]

Been thinking on that beach in Puerto Rico, last couple of days.

[And while he honestly hasn't thought much about Reynaldo since his arrival here, that does make him feel just a little bit guilty.]

Tell me.

[Urging him, already softer, more steady.]

Just this place my boy 'Naldo told me about. Little place out by the water, white sand, all that...

Kinda place every man think about in the lock-up, right? Every man want his Zihuatanejo.

Oh, I remember beaches. God, stretches of blissful white sand, stretching for miles and miles.

The ones I been to, they ain't look like that. Gotta get out there for something like that.

I like them, but I like rivers better. Hot, damp, shadowed river beds, with a jungle so loud it roars.

That where you'd take me?

[He thinks about it. Lights a cigarette.]

Or Hong Kong.

Why Hong Kong?

[He smirks, a little tease in his voice.]

Need you with me to get by out there, is that it?

You'd be so f- hooped without me. You know Baltimore, but I know the triads, darling. You'd find your feet fast, be a terror in a matter of minutes, but those first few days, you'd need me to get you in and out of Kowloon, the walled city.

Did you say hooped?

Hooped. In trouble.

['Fucked,' Omar, but he's trying not to swear for you, happy?]

[Yes, because that's adorable, but... hooped? He laughs.]

A'ight. Hooped. We easing the language barrier already.

Look at us, on a meaningful cultural exchange.

What about China, though?

Hong Kong. 1965. Six and a half acres, thirty three thousand inhabitants, living on top of one another like a hive. The Kowloon Walled City was an old military for that went- entrenched, when Britain leased Hong Kong. They never even attempted to extend government into the place. An anarchic, decadent island within a tightly ordered society. Drugs, prostitution, gang activity, money, corruption, and bodies pressed in like you have no way of understanding until you've been there. Being physically crushed in a press, a surging near-riot of a night, except every night. The smell of medicine and dried fish and human sweat.

[He closes his eyes on his end, listening, imagining.]

Do sound like my kinda place, don't it?

Except maybe the fish part, anyway.

The city is built right up, straight into the sky, blocks joining and crossing and honeycombing together, so tight that the sun only comes down in squares a few feet across, and only every few hundred feet along, at that. Like old catacombs.

Mm.

[That, he sounds more doubtful about.]

Everybody know everybody business, then, right? Need to be sure of everyone in like a five-block radius to go to ground in a place like that.

Unless you got someone in good, I suppose.

Plus, Hong Kong in the sixties, you and me, we're a half head taller than everyone for miles around, as well as not being ethnic Chinese. We're not blending in.

Thought you was supposed to be taking care of me out there, man. Starting to sound like this ain't much of a vacation at all.

...I got distracted by how neat Kowloon used to be.

All right, a vacation. Um- beaches? Batu Ferringhi up in Penang, if you want to see where I was born. White sand, lots of honeymooners, that sort of thing.

Doesn't have to be no beach.

[There's something a little funny, a little reticent in his voice. A little guilty, still.]

River, jungle, all that work too.

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