Three: the river was full of so much shit that a dead body would merely be another piece of waste in it. Human, animal, and organic discard alike had been thrown into it for a century. There were bloated cats in the water, and the occasional pig. If there were dead girls there, they were rotting in the same soup. And if the sea gods had taken enough kindness on them, washed them out toward the bay, then they were beyond Red Butterfly to find.
Fortunately, Lilian was finally tracked down by Lan’s old network of dancers. She was now performing for the elusive Society of the Long Night, the Dayehui, that had originated not only several highly popular getai stages at the three World parks, but alsoseasonal, roving parties infamous for their decadence and their exclusivity. They were led by the Prince of Night, a paranoid party boy whom Hsien had once been involved with.
“He’s afraid of being hunted down,” Hsien said, as she, Adeline, Ji Yen, and Tian piled into the second car, with the other four girls having gone ahead. “I heard he’s got guards everywhere now, and he’s been accusing people left and right of being rats. He even makes someone test his food.”
“Useless,” Tian said. “Who in the kongsi is using poison?”
“Well.”
“Good point.” Tian caught Adeline’s raised eyebrow. “You’ll see. The Prince is a certain way about his hungry ghost feasts.”
Pirate taxis were a dying breed now that the union cooperative had formed and that the kongsi who’d controlled most of them, the Black Beard Nephews, had been gutted out on some other charge. Nonetheless, there were still some drivers willing to overlook their passengers’ business so long as they could get higher prices, and the Butterflies had found two to take them to New World.
They didn’t need eight of them to accost one dancer, but a fun time was a fun time and Mavis, Ning, Christina, and Pek Mun were waiting for them under the amusement park’s dragon arch. Beyond it, a second, neon arch spelled outTHE NEW WORLD, but the Ws had lost power, leaving a gray gap tooth. The Shaw Brothers sign above it was still lit, though the cinema itself seemed deserted.
Adeline’s mother used to bring her to these parks, before the getais became exclusively for the ghost month. She could recite the names of all the stages from here to Great World—the Paramount, the Phoenix, the Menjianghong. Back then this place was packed: slot machines and dodg’em cars, taxi girls in cha-cha dresses roaming for dance tickets, a boxing match here and a Teochew opera there, a wedding banquet over at the restaurant on the other side next to the aquarium. A new world indeed, where Western circus and cabarets met wayang and ronggeng. But who needed amusement parks nowwhen there were shopping centers and televisions? The Butterflies paid their twenty cents to the bored gatekeeper and walked into a twilight zone. Half the overhead string lights were out. Only the faintest strains of dying carnival music echoed somewhere. Technically, there was no better place for a getai than a ghost town.
Adeline’s adventures with her mother had dwindled as she got older, but staying with the Butterflies had been stirring her memory. Perhaps she was only trying to assign sense where there was none. But she had remembered a day her mother had promised to take her to a show after kindergarten, except instead of a show, she recalled her teachers’ increasing worry as they tried to contact her mother, who had yet to collect her. She remembered their low, panicked voices, the sound of fire engines racing by outside one after another, and a sense of betrayal too vast for her little body.
It was after that day, she was convinced now, that her mother had first abandoned her morning prayers, a growing neglect that would eventually precipitate the abandonment of the altar altogether.
And that day, Adeline was sure now, had been the day the rogue Butterfly burned Ho Swee. It had been Hari Raya Haji—they had done arts and crafts in school; she had been tearing ketupat ribbons to bits as the hours went by. It was evening by the time her mother came. She swept Adeline up wordlessly and her skin had been burning. Adeline asked what was wrong.Doesn’t matter, her mother said.I have you.
“Your mother told me once that she liked the getai,” Tian recalled as they walked, as if she’d caught on to Adeline’s thoughts. Ahead, Hsien, Ji Yen, and Mavis had linked elbows and were swinging along. “There was that one that played in the street near the house. It was loud every evening this month and couldn’t be missed. But she never went with us.”
“Well, she wasn’t your friend.”
“There was a rumor she was close with the rogue Butterfly, you know. Before she killed her. I mean, everyone who might haveknown about it is in prison or has left the life or is dead, but I’ve heard it said. Maybe that’s why she was so different afterward.”
Adeline wondered again if Tian could look into her mind, felt the familiar two-pronged beat of jealousy and relief that anyone else had seen her mother change. “Do you ever wonder what made the rogue Butterfly do it?”
“I like to think she just lost control, like how people are flaring up now. Maybe it came out of her and she was only in the wrong place at the wrong time. If she did it on purpose, I hope I never understand it. I couldn’t imagine,” Tian said, after a funerary beat, “destroying everything like that.”
They had taken several turns by now. Adeline didn’t remember the park being so labyrinthine, the attractions shuttling and twisting before allowing them to a defunct dance hall called the Night Garden. Once, men would come here and pay a few dollars for a couple dances. Now many halls had closed and were often repossessed within months, their land hardly being allowed to go to waste. But the Night Garden still opened its doors every now and then, to those who were in the know.
Despite its pretty name, its outside was grimy, its windows blackened. Not even carnival jingles reached this corner. Two men, however, stood at its entrance smoking. They wore identical striped shirts tucked into dusky orange pants, and one of them had his sleeves pushed up to reveal the yellow-and-white clouded moon tattoo on his forearm. “Place is closed,” Rolled Sleeves drawled. “Come back tomorrow.”
Hsien stepped forward. “Luo Man invited us.”
The brothers of the Long Night exchanged looks. Rolled Sleeves exhaled smoke in Hsien’s face, looking her up and down in her short satin dress. “You know the boss?”
“Boss hates Butterflies,” the second man remarked.
“The night gives skillful birds sixty lieges,” Hsien said. She withdrew a cloth packet. “If you stop wasting our time.”
Another exchanged look. But the pass phrase was correct and had come straight from the Prince of Night, as Hsien had promised. Rolled Sleeves sighed and clamped his cigarette between his lips, then withdrew a pouch from his own pocket. He gave an instruction around the cigarette, indecipherable until Hsien stuck out her hand.
Adeline watched untrustingly as the man distributed flat brown tablets, which everyone seemed to take without question. When she didn’t reach out for hers, he beckoned at her. “Give me your hand, little sister.”
“Just give it to me,” Tian said.
“No, I want her hand.” He shook the pouch. Adeline raised her eyebrows. Pek Mun made a disparaging noise, snatched a tablet, and held it in front of Adeline’s face. Adeline’s first instinct was to balk at her, too. But Pek Mun had been surprisingly amenable to hearing that Tian was seeking out Lilian for Anggor Neo, had even volunteered to come tonight.
Adeline grudgingly accepted the tablet. She still hated the satisfied way the doorman watched her as she tossed back the pill, which tasted like bitter tea.
“All right,” Pek Mun said impatiently. “Are you going to let us in, or not?”
He did, but as they filed between the two brothers, he caught Adeline’s arm. His breath touched her cheek, smelling like the pill tasted. “If you get hungry enough you know where to find me.”
