Leung Mei-ling was on her hands and knees when she eyed the culprit. Kneeling on sudsy tiles, Ling held a spray bottle of disinfectant (Kills Germs! Prevents Mould! Removes Scum!) cocked in her right hand. It was useless against this foe. Ling set the bottle down with a clunk. She sighed. Then she extended a gloved hand to the mound of short, dark, curly hairs clogging the drain of Shower Number Three in the Ladies’ Locker Room of the Hong Kong Ladies and Gentlemen’s Social Club.

        The Hong Kong Ladies and Gentlemen’s Social Club (formerly The Hong Kong Gentlemen’s Society) was the oldest, most venerated club in Hong Kong. At least that’s what the Assistant Director had said back in January on Ling’s first day at work. The Assistant Director was a well-groomed, grey heron of a man who welcomed all new staff to the Club. “Of course,” he said, “there have been numerous changes over the years—among them the admittance of women, children, and, of course, the Chinese after a series of slanderous articles (all inflated and overblown, mind you) by a journalist (back in 1982) whose membership application (just between you and me) had been denied.” The thin man in the pinstriped grey suit sniffed. “But even now (at the dawn of the 21st century) the club has the longest waiting list in Hong Kong.” The heron, who, Ling noted, had a habit of lowering his voice conspiratorially (even when his meaning was not particularly conspiratorial), folded his grey hands in his grey lap. Then added, “For our Members (who are very distinguished, you know), the Club is a place of leisure, important business, and high society—(an escape from Hong Kong’s dreadful overpopulation, you understand)—a shelter of sorts, a place apart, a safe haven, a—sigh—home away from home.”

        Ling blinked.

        The heron droned on. “You’ve been hired as an Attendant,” he jabbed his index finger into his desk, keeping time with his words, “and that’s precisely [jab] what [jab] you [jab] are [jab] to do [jab jab]: ATTEND [jab jab jab].”

        “Be attentive at all times!” the heron’s voice now soared somewhere between a crow and a croon. “Keep your eyes open! Look around! See what’s in front of you!” His voice plummeted conspiratorially, “There’s always a job to do.” The heron smiled perfunctorily and his eyes disappeared into pasty wrinkles.

        Ling nodded.

        And with that she was directed to the Ladies’ Locker Room supply closet, the dimly lit home of rags and bleach bottles and feather dusters, where another attendant would teach her the myriad mundane ways in which to achieve the Assistant Director’s lofty goals.

Five months later, crouching in Shower Number Three, Ling’s mind was indeed attentive, her eyes wide open. Like a murder sleuth or a mother-in-law-to-be, she was cataloguing and calculating, assessing and hypothesizing. The index finger of her red rubber glove poked at the pillow of short, curly hairs, which rebounded like a dark cloud on a humid day. It had been several times now, Ling reflected, that she had come upon, not just the random hairs and soap remnants and old Band-Aids that showed up daily in the showers, but these uniform, coarse curls clogging the drain. Five times in fact. And always, she confirmed, counting the weeks in her head, the last week of every month. But there was more. Her mind prodded her like a pitchfork carving through hay until, yes, that was right, it was not just the last week but the last Wednesday of every month. And always, Ling concluded with satisfaction, in this shower stall.

        Actually, she corrected herself sharply, once it had been Shower Number Four—that was two months ago—but Ling, again congratulating herself, had even then duly noted this aberration in the pattern before she’d come to realize the full pattern, here, today, now.

Ling, a trim and not unattractive woman in her early forties, was the best Ladies’ Locker Room Attendant the Hong Kong Ladies and Gentlemen’s Social Club had ever had. She was, as per instructions, attentive to everything. She mopped floors and wiped down walls and cleaned toilet bowls. She polished the brass handrails in the bathroom stalls and used special Oil Soap on the mahogany benches. Ling disinfected toilet seats, often a dozen times a day (even Ladies sprinkled when they tinkled, she’d found), and scoured counter tops, removing stains that had been left by other attendants for permanent.

        On days when the Ladies’ Locker Room wasn’t busy, Ling scrubbed in between shower tiles with a toothbrush. She knew every glaring inch of missing grout, like her father’s checkerboard smile, and had already reported these areas to the Repair Department. Nothing had yet been done about it. Ling knew which doorstops’ rubber ends had been worn down (also reported to the Repair Department), which brass hooks had developed a wobble in their mountings (on her repair list for next week), and which faucets’ Hot and Cold labels had been worn through (better add that, too, she thought).

        A few months ago Ling had lain on the cool tile floor to inspect the underside of each wooden bench and had removed all manner of prehistoric dust balls, chewing gum remnants, shriveled spider carcasses, and even a pair of dirty lace underwear stuck in the crossbars of the bench near the toilets. And last month she’d begun to check makeup mirrors after every use, as they often sported plaque spatterings from flossing or, particularly after an adolescent Lady had been at the mirror, the tiny dots of zit puss.

        The Ladies’ Locker Room had never been so clean. Other staff members complained and threatened Ling, saying she was making them look lazy, unhygienic, or worst of all, inattentive. But Ling, a woman of propriety and principle, clung to her meticulous routine of cleaning and service like bamboo scaffolding clung to Hong Kong’s skyline.

        As for the Ladies who frequented the Ladies’ Locker Room, they hadn’t yet perceived Ling’s fine ministrations. They hadn’t noticed how, at one dry gasp from a soap pump, Ling came running with the heavy refill bottle. Nor did they detect that a toothpick had removed the accumulated grime from the hairdryer’s striated handle or that the light fixtures no longer dimmed ivory with dust. They hadn’t discerned that their brass toilet paper dispensers were shinier than usual or that the clothes hangers, once a hodge-podge of various colors scavenged from the Ladies’ discarded dry-cleaning bags, had been sorted by color, disseminated evenly around the room, and, most painstaking of all, re-bent so that every hanger’s duck-like head and body curved at the same graceful angles.

        In fact, most of the Ladies, like ticket-takers at long movie queues, looked through Ling as she handed them a towel or pointed out the sign-in sheet or unlocked the gym door when they’d forgotten their magnetized membership cards. On rare occasions a Lady bestowed upon Ling the grim lip-press of a nominal smile. Ling smiled broadly back.

Now that Ling had discovered the recurring pattern of the curlicued clog in the drain (and her list of special cleaning projects had shrunk to jobs even more obscure than the bending of hanging ducks), she allowed her gaze, which had taken in every tile, every mirror, every fixture, every surface, to fall upon a new and multifaceted object. The Ladies themselves.

        Day after day, night after night, they paraded in and out of the Hong Kong Ladies and Gentlemen’s Social Club—or “the Club,” as the Ladies called it, speaking furtively on forbidden cell phones. (“I’m at the Club, Donna, and I’m not supposed to use my mobile, but I’m in the locker room and no one’s here. You’ll never believe who I saw with Shari’s husband…”) Ling, just meters away in her blue and white striped uniform, listened in silence. Though Ling’s spoken English was shy and unsure, her comprehension was quite good—but she found little interest in the news, fit for the society pages, that flooded the Ladies’ Locker Room. What Ling wanted to know, more than the latest infidelity or bankruptcy or fashion faux-pas, was the identity of the drain clogger of Shower Number Three (sometimes Four).

        Ling’s first suspect was Locker Number Fifty-Six, a permanently tanned brunette in her fifties, who attended the Club everyday. Fifty-Six wore gaudy gold jewelry, and her left hand wilted under the lead weight of a diamond ring. In her third week at the Club, Ling, who’d long ago learned from Hong Kong’s myriad advertisements the diamond ring’s significance, had garnered enough courage to congratulate Fifty-Six.

“Lucky woman!” Ling had said, pointing at the gem. “Wedding soon?”

        Number Fifty-Six, turning to check her makeup in the mirror, had scoffed, “Why would I remarry when I can afford a rock like this on my own?” She laughed loudly then stopped, her lipstick pencil midair. Her eyes narrowed upon Ling’s reflection in the mirror. “For your information, I have a small, secure safe inside my locker.” Fifty-Six looked back at her bared lips in the mirror and applied her smile.

        Though she had not attempted conversation since, Ling had learned much about Fifty-Six over the months, and not just from the low murmur of Ladies’ gossip. Fifty-Six used the facility each day as though she had no bathroom of her own at home, performing her most personal hygienic tasks in the public arena of the Ladies’ Locker Room. She bleached her upper lip, Q-tipped her earwax, plucked her eyebrows, and trimmed her fingernails (ostensibly over a wastebasket, though Ling found nail clippings in a four meter radius; once a sliver was perched atop the crystal cotton swab container). If Fifty-Six was comfortable performing all these intimate hygienic functions at the Club, Ling’s keen mind reasoned, why wouldn’t she trim her you-know-what when it grew unruly you-know-where? It was a lead at least, and Ling waited a full month to find out if her theory was right.

        When Number Fifty-Six showed up makeup-less and disheveled on the last Wednesday in June, Ling paid close attention. She watched Fifty-Six don her black one-piece swimsuit with the green stripes down the sides and shuffle to the pool where, rain or shine, Fifty-Six swam laps. When she returned, she (as always) appeared taller and straighter and took the towel from Ling’s outstretched hand with a faint snap. After her shower (always in Shower Number Three, Ling had noted), Fifty-Six painted her toenails then padded (toes tucked with cotton balls) around the locker room, naked, brushing her teeth with an electric toothbrush. By the time Fifty-Six left, with makeup, a pedicure, and clean teeth, she was a new woman. Ling ran to Shower Number Three to see if the new woman had left any new arrivals in the drain. No such luck.

        All that day Ling couldn’t stop thinking about the drain. She went about her tasks of sweeping up hairs and emptying sanitary napkin receptacles and folding bath towels, but her attention was elsewhere, watching the constant stream of Ladies in and out of the bank of showers. Though it took tremendous will power, Ling resisted the urge to check Shower Number Three after each use. After all, she had myriad important tasks and services to perform and couldn’t be running to the shower every ten minutes. Furthermore (and this, her whirring mind admitted, got closer to the truth), the process of checking the drain was too cumbersome to do frequently. It required looping up the shower curtain, removing the first and second slats of the drainage platform, and carrying them to the hall. Only then could Ling lift up the third platform and check the drain. She’d always waited until the evening rush was over to clean the shower stalls. And for good reason, Ling thought wistfully, listening to the shrieks of a herd of little girls showering, two and three per stall, after a day at the pool.

        By nine o’clock, when Ling lifted Shower Number Three’s varnished wooden platform (the anti-skid granules needing touch-up by the Repair Department, Ling noted) the dark, curly hairs were in place, as expected. Yet Ling had no new clues. It had been such a busy afternoon—so sunny and crowded the Pool Director had declared it a Members Only day—that Ling had had little time to gather any data beyond the depressing news that Number Fifty-Six was not the culprit.

        But Ling’s sharp mind, always there to save her, immediately offered another solution. Instead of waiting listlessly till the last Wednesday of each month and hoping for some miraculous revelation, Ling decided upon a more direct, though perhaps less tasteful, course of action. She would monitor the Ladies’ habits—and the Ladies’ hair—more closely.

        The very next day, Ling began surreptitiously examining the Ladies as they defrocked their Dior pants suits and Ralph Lauren dresses and Victoria’s Secret panties. She paid close attention as they donned Speedo swimsuits and Calvin Klein bikinis and Nike gym clothes. With her attentiveness focused on a small triangle her eyes had heretofore avoided, Ling was surprised to discover all the various hairdos, so to speak, of these well-coiffed Ladies. Ling saw French waxes and Brazilian waxes; red rashes from shaving and raw dots from plucking; the exploding jungle look, and, on one Lady, no hair to “do” at all. Her cataloging mind was captivated. Ling, who personally felt no compunction to coif anything below her shoulders, had no idea Ladies had so many choices—or, her mind ventured, so many demands—when it came to their intimate grooming

        And so, in the name of research, Ling’s mind filed away the Ladies’ personal habits and growth patterns alongside their shower stall preferences and attendance schedules. She would find the culprit yet.

Over the next weeks and months, Ling developed many suspicions. There was Locker Number Twelve, a razor-thin, short-haired Lady who attended the Club’s Ladies’ Night every Wednesday evening. Twelve showed up early, say three or four o’clock, so she could get in a game of squash, a shower, and a cocktail or two (and, on the last Wednesday of the month, who knew what else? Ling thought) before the festivities began at six. Twelve liked her drink. And she was one of the few Ladies to talk to Ling. But this only on particular occasions.

        Last Wednesday had been typical. When Twelve arrived in the afternoon, she went about her usual routine, slipping in and out of the Ladies’ Locker Room with nary a glance at Ling. But as the evening wore on, since the locker room was the closest WC to the bar, Twelve’s visits continued. And Twelve grew chummier.

        By the end of the night, her hand squeezing Ling’s shoulder, Twelve was slurring for the fifth time, “So wha’ d’you think about thi’ change of dressss code for the dining room? Myself,” Twelve flopped her skeletal hand to her surgically-endowed bosom, “I don’ see wha’ the hubbub’s about. It’s a mooove to the future, a sign tha’ the club isn’ so stuffy as evr’one thinks.” Twelve moved toward the bathrooms. The lock on the first stall clicked shut. Twelve continued, “Who needs jackets-and-ties d’ring the week anyways? Who wants dinner jackets d’ring the week, I say.” Ling heard the fumbling of a Coach purse and a silver belt buckle and silk pants sliding down beanstalk legs. “Whose hus’and wants t’wear a din’ jacket d’ring the week? Does YOUR hus’and wanna’ wear dinner jacket d’ring the week, Lin?” Over the months, Twelve had never gotten Ling’s name quite right. “Does he, Lin? MY hus’and jus’ wanna walk round in his scivvies af’er work, ya’ know.” Ling heard giggling, then the sound of piss hitting water. “Hus’ands don’ wanna wear a godamn jacket-and-tie. Am I righ’, Lin? Am I righ’?”

        Ling made no response.

        The next time Twelve showed up at the Club, she was back to examining the fascinating spot, mid-air, to the left of Ling’s head. But Ling’s mind was pondering other things. Like last week’s discovery that Twelve’s platinum blonde hair wasn’t just a dye job. Far too light, she’d noted as Twelve stepped from Shower Number Three, to be the one.

        Because Shower Number Three boasted the best lighting and had its own mahogany bench built in, there were many Ladies who had made it their shower of choice. Like the young Lady of Locker Number Twenty-Seven who had recently learned she was pregnant. Ling, with her acute observational skills and diligent cataloguing of bodies, had also learned that Twenty-Seven was pregnant. Who else’s bosom went from size B to size D in less than three weeks, Ling thought.

        Ling had just finished polishing the large stainless steel scale when Twenty-Seven, a towel around her middle and one on her head, stepped upon its shiny platform. A despondent sigh issued from Twenty-Seven’s lips. Ling, looking up from wiping the counter nearby, thought to reassure the newly pregnant woman.

        “You grow big! Fat! Good!” Ling smiled, motioning a bulging belly with her hands and pointing to Twenty-Seven’s still relatively flat stomach.

        Twenty-Seven frowned and looked down.

        Ling, trying to make herself clear, mimed the rocking of a baby in her arms. “Baby! Big baby!” She smiled again.

        Twenty-Seven, who still hadn’t gotten up the courage to tell her boyfriend let alone complete strangers, scowled at Ling and slipped into the one private dressing stall at the west end of the room. Ling could hear muffled sobs and sniffles coming from behind the curtain. She was reminded that she needed to restock the Kleenex boxes. Ling hurried to the storage closet, consoling herself that at least that would help. When Ling came out, Twenty-Seven was gone.

        In the end, it was easy for Ling to rule out Twenty-Seven for two reasons. After Ling’s unsuccessful attempt at reassurance, Twenty-Seven’s attendance at the Club grew sporadic. Also, as Number Twenty-Seven’s belly indeed grew and grew and grew, she could no longer see, let alone safely trim, the mound of hair growing beneath her bulge. Ling crossed her off the list.

        It was easy for Ling to rule out the mothers in the Club as well. The ones with infants were too busy changing diapers. And too busy, apparently, to notice the changing table for that very purpose. These mothers preferred Ling’s disinfected counters, polished wooden benches, and frequently mopped floors for diaper duty. (As soon as they left, Ling followed with her spray bottle.) Moms with toddlers, Ling discerned, were also too busy. They were continually coaxing on clothes, soothing tantrums, and kissing away imagined hurts. And mothers of older children were swamped just trying to prevent their urchins from climbing on stools, swiveling makeup mirrors, and peeking under toilet stall doors at the Ladies doing their business. The Club’s mothers, Ling concluded, despite their affinity for Shower Number Three, simply didn’t have time to be clipping their curls.

        As the months wore on, despite determined sleuthing and relentless (yet inconspicuous) observation, Ling made little progress in her quest. Few Ladies followed a schedule so rigid that they showed up every last Wednesday of every single month. And those that reliable were generally the elderly Ladies whose blue hair on their pink heads had long ago thinned considerably. As had everything else, Ling noted. Ling’s prospects were looking grim. And Ling began wondering if she would ever unearth the tree-trimming Lady of Shower Number Three (once Four) of the Hong Kong Ladies and Gentlemen’s Social Club.

Ling’s breakthrough in the case finally came when she’d been working at the Hong Kong Ladies and Gentlemen’s Social Club almost a year. It was a quiet evening in early December and the day had been chilly and slow. Ling was vigorously scouring a particularly cemented gob of spit (despite the signs that read “No Spitting,” mucus blobs appeared quite regularly in the Ladies’ showers) when the palm of her thick red rubber glove sustained a gaping tear. Ling, rummaging through the supply closet, found the Club was fresh out of utility gloves. (One more thing to add to the supply list, Ling’s mind recorded.) She donned a set of thin, cream-colored latex gloves instead.

        It was then, flimsy-gloved, on hands and knees in Shower Number Three, that Ling made her miraculous discovery. It was the last Wednesday of the month, and Ling reached out to retrieve the ball of short, curly hairs from the drain as she always did. As she sat back on her heels and cradled the heap in her beige latex-gloved hand, she realized something stunning: these curlicues were not the brown color that she’d always perceived. They were, in fact, tinged red. The red of her utility gloves had hidden this fact for months. Ling, looking down, marveled; there was a definite scarlet tint to these hairs.

        The very next day Ling’s racing mind began a catalogue of every Lady with red hair (both above and below) who entered the Ladies’ Locker Room. There were precious few who fell into both categories. And many, Ling noticed over the next couple weeks, did not follow a schedule that conformed to the drain clogger’s pattern. But finally, after three long weeks of careful observation, Ling’s eyes fell on a prime suspect. Locker Number Forty-Four. Why hadn’t she thought of it earlier? Yes, Forty-Four, with her carrot top of curls, showed up on Wednesdays and Fridays for her personal training session in the Club’s gym. She had ducked Ling’s close scrutiny before because Forty-Four, being rather modest, always used the private dressing stall. But, Ling recalled, Forty-Four did have a preference for the well-lighted, bench-endowed Shower Number Three. (No wonder, thought Ling, considering what she was probably doing in there.)

        Today, lucky for Ling, the private dressing room was occupied when Forty-Four stepped dripping from the shower, her towel tied tight around her bosom. As Forty-Four made her way to her locker, Ling kept her eyes riveted to her prime suspect. Of course, Ling made a show of wiping the tall banks of lockers with disinfectant. Ling was used to being invisible and had, in fact, grown quite good at it.

        But when Forty-Four’s towel dropped accidentally on the floor behind her, and Forty-Four turned, facing Ling head-on, to retrieve it, Ling could not help staring openly, her eyes wide, her mouth slightly agape, her sponge falling with a SLOP! into the bucket at her feet. Forty-Four, startled by the splash, looked up into Ling’s boring eyes. But Ling’s gaze was not, to Forty-Four’s horror, focused on her facial features.

In fact, at that moment, though Ling’s eyes appeared to be cast rather lower, they were not indeed focused on anything at all. For Ling, so near her goal, had suddenly been seized by a terrible sensation that wrung her chest like a wet rag. Whether it was a feeling of haughty power or utter aloneness, Ling could not yet tell. She only knew that she was, at last, grasping what was truly in front of her.

        Ling saw now how brightly her gaze had illuminated these Ladies, how closely she’d come to see them. She knew all their mundane particulars and details, all their news-breaking intimacies and secrets. Ling’s gloved fingernails bit into her palms. These Ladies had become shining and clean under her gaze. Their dirtiest parts illuminated, silently accepted, washed away. Ling’s chest swelled. But who was seeing Ling? She blinked; her shoulders tightened. Ling stood, sloshing bucket at her feet. She felt dark and shrouded and sneaking. She was all-seeing. And invisible.

        As Ling’s mind was spinning with thoughts they’d never before encountered, Forty-Four grabbed her towel, covered herself, and scowled at Ling with indignant rage. There was something disturbing about this attendant’s piercing stare. Forty-Four felt more exposed and naked and vulnerable than she’d ever felt in her life. She turned back to the wall and dressed as quickly as she could, grunting and humphing with every sleeve and zipper and button. Hair barely brushed, makeup forgotton, Forty-Four fired one last glare at the attendant, stalked out of the Ladies’ Locker Room, and marched straight to the Assistant Director’s office.

Ling, for the first time in her life, didn’t notice a thing.

The next morning, the Assistant Director met Ling at the top of the stairs, in front of the heavy mahogany and brass doors of the Hong Kong Ladies and Gentlemen’s Social Club. In his hand he held her final paycheck, as they would not be requiring her services any longer. But before the thin, grey man could begin his carefully prepared speech about trust and courtesy, lewdness and betrayal (thick with conspiratorial voice lowerings and impassioned crows), Ling said in clear English, “I quit.”

        Ling did not blink or nod or smile. She took the check from the grey heron’s hands, turned on her heel, and walked briskly down the steps. She had a ten o’clock interview with Serenity Spa in Causeway Bay, which was looking for a hair removal specialist. (“Must be friendly, personable, attentive. Will train,” the ad had said.) It paid twice what Ling made at the Club, and there was no chance, Ling knew, that she could ever be overlooked (Rrrii-iiiip!). With this thought, Ling smiled. And her attentive mind noted that the narrow walkway leading away from the Hong Kong Ladies and Gentlemen’s Social Club was lined with green shrubberies trimmed in shapes of castles and barnyard animals and begowned Ladies.

return to anthologies