A Visit From Miss Fang!

Gigi's been sending me her short stories recently and it's got me thinking I should maybe get back into writing short stories again. Here's the first draft of one about something that happened yesterday.


Late last night, while we were lolling on the sofa watching "House", the doorbell rang.  We weren't dressed for company and definitely not expecting anyone.

Keith peered through the peephole. "Who is it?" I asked him.

"I have no idea." he said, pulling on his pants.

The doorbell rang again. And then came the knocking!

He let her in.  "You cheat me!" said an angry young lady in black cargo pants and a black T-shirt, wagging a sheaf of papers in Keith's direction.

"I beg your pardon?" said my outraged husband.

There was something vaguely familiar about our visitor and I wondered if she could be our landlady's daughter, only knew she couldn't be because our landlady, Miss Fang, doesn't have a daughter.  She has a niece who's a micro-biologist in Canada, but I've met her and this wasn't her!

And then I realised "Miss Fang? That's you? Good heavens, you look so different."

"It's because you no pay rent.  Two months, no rent. You make me starve. Look at me, I am so thin. You do this to me!" she ranted.

Keith was instantly spluttering with indignation. "Of course we always pay our rent."

But I was more pragmatic.  "You look so fabulous. Like you're 25." 

"You think I look young?" she said, completely mollified, with a slow grin.

She did look young. She's my age yet she looked ... OK, I lied about the 25 but she did look 30.

"Practically like a teenager." I assured her.  "What have you done to yourself?"

"I'm doing." She was cross again. "Every day I'm doing.  Running here, there, doing. Every day. Busy, busy, busy!  Too busy for this."  She shoved the sheaf of papers at Keith.  They were bank statements crossed, circled and arrowed with angry red ink.  "No rent from you.  See. No rent. September. January.  You cheat me for my rent."

Then she turned back to me.  "You truly think I look young?" she said again, her wide grin back again.

"I think we should stop paying you rent altogether and maybe you'll look 20."

Miss Fang laughed for a long time.

Miss Fang is one of a pair. We call them The Frankly Frightening Fang Sisters because when we first moved into their lives, it was constant fraughtness. I could never do anything to please them: they always knew better, knew someone better, knew someplace better, and whatever I'd buy they tell me they could have got it for me at a fraction of what I'd paid and I was such a silly duffer for not consulting them first.

"You do not know how to shop properly." I'd be told, first in Cantonese and then translated into English.

They used to pop in anytime, day or night, seemingly to check on us, but I put a stop to that with a sharply worded phone call to our agent, Mabel, and then was appalled to discover that I'd deeply hurt their feelings because they thought they were calling on us as 'helpful friends' to teach us the ropes of setting up an apartment in Hong Kong.

Talk about feeling like the meanest person ever, but we hardly saw them anymore and never without us ringing them first and ... well, I'm not commenting further on that development! 

The two Miss Fangs may be identical twins but you've never seen two women less alike.  The elder is grey-haired, old, angry and dowdy, always in cardigans and sensible shoes. She lives in Australia, doesn't speak English and sends all her money back to HK so younger Miss Fang can run the property empire they've created together.  The younger Miss Fang speaks English, and does a fine line in "Hong Kong Tai Tai Bling-Bling" and normally can be seen in tiger-print jumpsuits, sky-high cha-cha heels with your classic HK Dragon Lady nails and hair.

At least she did.  Last night, she was dressed like a Melbourne teenager with her only nod to her usual HK Bling being the diamantes on her low-heeled shoes.

As Keith scrambled through his bank records, "You've been traveling, haven't you?" I said to Miss Fang, hoping she'd say "Bangkok" because then I could ask "Bumrungrab?" and maybe ask the name of the surgeon who'd worked on her.

"Yes, I have been in Melbourne, in Australia."

"You had plastic surgery in Australia?  What where you thinking?"

Talk about not knowing how to shop properly!  We have a friend - no names -  who paid A$28,000 for a facelift in Australia, and when I checked out her scars realised she'd simply been given an "s-cut"; a procedure so simple it could have been done in a doctors' surgery under local anesthetic in less than half an hour and it didn't even have to be by a surgeon either, because it was done to the dermis layer.

I know this because I know someone - no names - who is a surgeon, who once did work similar work for a poor patient to stop her sisters taunting her for not being able to afford work done, and that this surgeon only charged her A$30.00 too and said he'd come out on top, AND the finished result turned out so well that even the nasty sisters wanted the name of her surgeon ... and, naturally, she never told.

But "You think I had plastic surgery?" said Miss Fang, thrilled beyond words.

"You haven't? But what have you done to look so young?"

"Oxygen massage." she told me.

 "It's clearly something I need to get into."

"You want this, you come to me.  I know how to get this best best price."

That's when Keith came out with his bank statements.  Yes, in September and January, our bank hadn't paid the rent.  "That must have been those times when they thought your credit card was stolen." I told them.

Keith immediately wrote out a cheque.

Miss Fang was thrilled it was so easy.  "I will buy you something with this." she said, playfully slapping Keith on the chest.  "What do you need?  Your airconditioners is seven years old.  I buy you new ones.  I know where to buy them best price."

Then she turned to me again, grinning widely, "Show me what you're buying lately. I know I could get them for you for better price."

Oh yeah, that's our Miss Fang for you!  A charming, helpful, genuinely likable lady! And that's when I realised how much I've changed during my years in Hong Kong because, well, I couldn't believe what I'd done last time she did this. In fact, I have no idea what was I thinking back then. 

I now get it entirely, and promise they'll be no sharply worded phone call to Mabel this time.