Page 14 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
“Of course.” James smiled. “It’s Hong Kong. There are always people at work.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding decisively. “Let’s do that.”
They walked to Jordan Road and had to wait only a few moments until James hailed a cab. They climbed into the back seat together and as the vehicle pulled into traffic, something impelled Magda to turn her head to look out the rear window at the street behind them. She didn’t see anything at first, but then, just as the cab turned a corner, she saw him again: the pale, gaunt-faced man, standing on the pavement near where she and James had been just moments earlier.
It was almost as if he had been following them.
The Artisan Hypothesis
The taxi carried them through glowing, bustling streets, and Magda consoled herself that they were moving at a decent speed, too fast for a man on foot to follow them. And they were already far enough away that she doubted the gaunt man would be able to find them even if he had managed to hail a taxi.
You’re talking like he wasdefinitely followingyou. You’re making up stories from a man waiting for a taxi.
“My office is in the ICC,” James said. Seeing it was a meaningless acronym to her, he elaborated: “The International Commerce Centre. Tallest building in Hong Kong.”
Magda watched the passing city. The driver’s window was open, and the warm air felt good as it tousled her hair, even as worries plagued her mind.
She was being paranoid, surely. The man hadn’t been following them; it was just a coincidence. She fretted over that as they drove, glancing behind them again, and then looking at James, wondering if she should ask him if he had noticed anything. But James was gazing out his own window, smiling to himself contentedly like a man with a full stomach and no troubles to speak of. She turned her face back to her window, trying to concentrate on the warm air. At some point she realised that she was drowsy, her full stomach, the warm evening, andthe jet lag cutting the strings that tied her to reality, letting her mind float off like a balloon. Then the car jolted to a stop, waking her, and she realised she had been dozing.
“We’re here,” James announced.
“I wasn’t asleep,” she lied.
“I believe you,” James replied, his eyes crinkling and twinkling with amusement.
“No, you don’t,” Magda replied, but she couldn’t help but smile back at him.
They clambered out of the cab and stood at the foot of the Commerce Centre. Magda craned her neck, running her eyes up the impossible height of the building to the night sky beyond.
“Wow,” she murmured, feeling suddenly very tiny. “Corporate offices in London were never like this.”
James led her into a vast lobby that was so cool it felt to Magda like plunging her face in ice water. She saw smartly dressed people coming and going, some leaving the building, others arriving with bags of food or cups of coffee. “You’re not wrong about people working late,” she commented, as James waved an acknowledgement at the man behind the reception desk.
“The culture is to work hard,” James explained as they stepped into the elevator. “And to be seen to be working hard even when you don’t need to. Lots of presenteeism.”
The elevator carried them to the eighty-second floor and they emerged into a lobby area, a square box with a polished marble floor and black leather couches facing each other over a low coffee table. There was a security door with a pass reader in the frosted glass wall on the left side of the space, and another door behind the reception desk opposite the lift. A young man in a dark suit looked up from the reception desk at their arrival and gave James a friendly nod. The two men exchanged a few words and Magda signed a visitor book, and then the receptionist handed her a visitor pass on a lanyard. James used a pass of his own to buzz them through the security door and then they were in a large open-plan office space that was mostly in darkness. A small number of people were dotted about, sitting in puddles of light and squinting at monitors. Magda immediately remembered her days in corporate law, longboring hours in open-plan offices dreaming of a more rewarding life. That was before the novels, and before the Society, and as they walked through the hushed, serious atmosphere Magda found herself counting her blessings that she wasn’t like these workers anymore, trapped in the everyday grind.
“In here,” James said, pushing through a set of double doors at the end of a short corridor. Magda followed him into a rectangular room dominated by a long table. The entire far wall was formed from a floor-to-ceiling window revealing Victoria Harbour and Hong Kong Island, the buildings below lit up in blue and purple and white electric light. James flicked a switch on the wall and spotlights flared into life above them, casting a reflection-ghost of the room onto the windows.
“I’d never get bored of that view,” Magda murmured, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“Come have a look,” James said, bouncing enthusiastically around the table, like a kid wanting to show his friend a new toy. He slid open a glass door in the window wall and led her onto the balcony beyond. A warm breeze fluttered around them as they stepped out together.
“Wow,” Magda said, moving across to the chest-height glass balustrade at the edge of the balcony. It was an amazing sight, the harbour more than eighty floors below and Hong Kong Island in front of them, dazzling and packed, Victoria Peak touching the clouds high above it. This far up there was little noise, just the wind and the distant hum of traffic from the highway along the coast of West Kowloon. It was a ridiculous, incredible view to have from a meeting room. There was a table and a few chairs on the balcony, and one of the chairs had been pushed up against the balustrade near where Magda now stood, as if someone would come out regularly to just sit and enjoy the view, perhaps with a coffee. Magda could understand why.
James came to stand next to her, resting his hands on the barrier, and Magda looked up at him, seeing his hair waving in the breeze. “Hong Kong is so much easier to enjoy this far above the crowds,” he said, grinning. And then he looked at her and their eyes met and held. It felt like a special moment to Magda, an image she would always remember, James gazing at her against the backdrop of Hong Kong.
Put it in the book. Whatever book you write, something like thishas tohappen.
Still smiling, James reached into his inside breast pocket and removed a small parcel made of red tissue paper. “Here you go.”
She frowned at him. “What’s this?”
“The unknowable object.”
Magda gaped at the parcel, her mind catching up with what he meant. “You had it on you the whole time?”
“I didn’t want to leave it anywhere,” he admitted as she took the parcel from him. “But I thought you’d want to inspect it somewhere private.”
