Red Bars

Chapter 2: Elephant

Chapter 2: Elephant

Walter Lee is the millionaire who lives in the penthouse just a floor above me, or least he was up until last week when his son suddenly and unexpectedly disappeared without explanation. In the days after the son's disappearance the media showed the world a rich man in a state of disarray, sadness, and a deepening depression. Lee ignored cameras and interviews and meetings. All of the things he once took pride in doing suddenly shattered before him and lost there meaning. His son meant the world him and now, without the world he choose to dig a deep pit to bury himself alive in. Walter, after fits of rage, shortly went the way of his son never to be seen again. The media went into a frenzy like a great white at the smell of blood and with the constant stream of reporters swarming his apartment, (as if someone were home) word of the disappearances inevitably trickled down to me.

The media perception of the story was that of a banking, millionaire with a dark side. A man like Walter Lee must have had his fair share of enemies, they assumed. There was a general conscious that his son had been held as leverage to con Walter Lee out of his life savings as well as his life. The man loved his son and that was no secret. Many articles prior to the disappearances documented the average day of Walter Lee and his prodigy son.

So to me, the disappearances were nothing more than Hong Kong's petty sob-story. The most annoying thing about these stories is that people often forget the facts. Of people who have truly suffered in Hong Kong, Walter Lee is nothing. Even if he died climatically with his son at the hands of an angry mob it would be unfair to say that he didn't live a good life. The guy was a millionaire. Who cares?

A phone number rests dug into a scrap of notebook paper on my desk. It's digits are quickly and almost violently scratched on in black ink. I lift my head up slowly to notice tabs of news articles on Walter Lee dominating my monitor and the streams of light shining through my window sting my face.

I look around my quiet, empty room in a sort of dazed trance before directing my tired eyes back down to the scrap of paper.

4672-6489

Use the English telephone in the lobby

The number seems to be in order (phone numbers are 8-digits in HK) but the instruction below is very strange.

My mind stretches to figure out what Red is talking about. I strain to remember such a telephone and I do.

My apartment complex is fairly old. The sides of the building are water-stained from hour upon hour of Hong Kong's downpours. The interior has these dusty, old marble floors that make footsteps echo loudly down hallways and meanwhile paint chipped walls reveal all sorts of strange colors hidden under the surface. It's to be expected of a place built in the 1950s but what's not to be expected is its lobby

My apartment's lobby, on the other hand, was renovated only last year with this awesome minimalist design. The walls are all cream-colored and clean, the chairs are soft with pattern less backs, and the main desk is well-lit and rarely messy. Only one object sits out of place in that lobby. It's an annoying, old English payphone from the 1980s.

You see, back before 1997, Hong Kong used to be a British territory. Hence the rise in English speakers and also hence the most poorly placed payphone in the history of the world. Out dated by about 25 years, It rests on an otherwise completely blank, white wall. The glossy finish has been chipped off slowly, through years of decay and a series of messages have been scraped into the metal surrounding the earpiece. Some are phone numbers while others are bits of crude lettering, names and addresses, that sort of thing.

God, I hated that payphone with a burning passion.

I sit across from the abomination with the scrap on paper in my hand. I'm staring the payphone down in disgust. The ugly old thing was just so unnatural. It was like Red in that sense. The thing seemed out of control like a mad dog violently clawing at your eyes. It stares back at me and for a moment I consider leaving. I consider heading back upstairs but dispute my hatred of Red I had to admit that she was interesting enough to peak my curiosity. In the end I had to call.