Butterfly, butterfly, butterfly.
By the time she made it back to town, her feet were numb and blistered in boots she hadn’t yet been able to break in. She was a distance from Neil Road yet, but she could already guess she would find it empty.
She had never been out this time of night, in the hungover gap between the late livers and early risers. Everything was closed and even the lamps seemed to ache, blue mercury lights murmuring dimly in their goose-neck brackets. The whole city was in rolling credits; the bright story had ended and the real world had not been turned back on. A blue nightsoil truck trundled past with its rows of doors rattling on its back, headed toward the disposal site at Albert Street. This was that hour, then, of disposal and accumulated waste carted away. Adeline found herself following it for half a street before realizing that’s not where she was going, and then realizing she didn’t know where she was.
“Meimei, what are you doing?”
Adeline swung around, but it was just a couple of scantily clad women loitering outside a shuttered unit, apparently finishing their last cigarettes before retiring for the morning. They looked genuinely concerned as they took her appearance in. “You okay? Someone hurt you?” asked the shorter of the two, in a clinging blue satin dress and elaborate curls.
“I’m trying to get to the White Orchid.” Adeline shocked herself with the sound of her voice. It sounded like someone had taken a razor to her throat, but of course it was just the smoke—Adeline could still taste it in the scratches of every syllable.
The same woman frowned. “The bar? It’s closed now.”
“I’m looking for the Butterfly.” Adeline’s chest rose and fellrapidly. “She was there a few hours ago. Short hair, tomboy, butterfly tattoo on her arm.” This got an exchange of looks. The woman in the blue dress mouthed something and the other shrugged. “You know her?”
“Sure,” the second woman said. “But seems like you don’t. You sure you’re looking for Red Butterfly? You’re in trouble with them?”
Adeline registered the Hokkien name,ang hor tiap. But it was thethemthat caught her. “There’s more than one of them?”
“Walao, meimei.” The second woman frowned. “What are you trying to do? Red Butterfly is a gang. Of course there’s more than one.”
A gang. Adeline didn’t think that one girl could have somehow beaten her home in time to set that fire—but if there were more of them, then of course. She tried to think through the surroundings of the fire, whether she’d seen anyone out of place or fleeing the scene. If there had been, she didn’t recall. Every image of that memory was just fire, and her mother, and fire again.
“I need to find that girl.” She was a broken record, but she had nothing else. “I’ll go myself. Forget about it.”
“Okay, calm down.”
“I’m calm!”
“Okay. Okay. My god. Choo, you go call. I take her to Wang’s.”
“Who is Wang?”
The woman clucked her tongue. “You just be patient,” she chastised. “We’re trying to help you.”
Wang’s was a coffee shop, shutters half up, the smell of coffee beans searing in melting butter and sugar just beginning to seep out onto the street. Adeline’s escort, who introduced herself as Lei during the walk, squatted to look under the grille and rap on the metal. “Ah Wang ah… you there? We come in, can?”
“Not ready!”
“Not trying to buy, just need somewhere to sit.”
Clattering, scraping, stomping. Slippers appeared in the gap, followed by a sweaty middle-aged man’s head with a dish towel draped around the neck. He tutted at Adeline. “All you young girls.” But he made a dismissive gesture, dabbed his forehead, and motioned for them to enter, pushing up the grille so they didn’t need to duck so low. Inside, he pulled two stools off a table. “Bah.”
“My hero,” Lei called cheerfully. “He’s grumpy, but he’s sweet la,” she confided to Adeline. “Not many people will serve us. But I go before the customers come.”
When Adeline sat, her body folded. Splotches flashed across her eyelids. She froze for a moment, stunned.
“Aiyo, you need to eat.Ah Wang…”
Lei’s charms won Adeline an enamel mug of Ovaltine and toast with peanut butter. Adeline took a bite without tasting it. “So who’s that girl? The one you’re calling?” The peanut butter stuck to her teeth. She ground her molars experimentally. Her eyelids fluttered.
“Ang Tian? At least, should be. Only Butterfly you would describe like that.”
She was surprised there was a girl at all in a gang. “You know them?”
“Sure, this is Butterfly territory, same as Neil Road. They go after customers who hurt us.”
“With fire?”
