“Excuse you?” I stamped my foot.
“This is what I mean,” he said. “You have to fit in with the expectations. Otherwise, we’ll cause a ripple in the Echo. I mean it, Stacey. You have to do your best to be present and be part of it.”
“If I’d known this was going to be a colonial reenactment I was volunteering to act in, I would have stayed home.”
“I told you to in the first place.”
“Yeah, well. That may be, but you don’t have to be a prick about it.”
He paused to consider this, and his face cracked.
“Look, you’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m just as terrified as you are. It comes out as blame. I don’t think this is going to be easy for either of us. I am not the best at fitting into polite society, and I’ve been by myself so long I don’t even register human emotions half the time. Most of the people here would have spit on me given the chance when I was alive.”
“Well, we’ll both have to suck it up, then,” I said. “Look. There’s a big group of smokers in that corner. And a group of ladies in the other. What say I go check out the menfolk and you pester the women?”
“That is—that’s a great idea, actually,” he said. “Alright. Meet in the kitchen in half an hour?”
“You got it.”
We broke, both of us heading our separate directions. I felt self-conscious walking up to this group of men, but there was nothing for it.
“Canape?” I asked, and my voice sounded almost too high.
“Ah, finally, something to nosh!” a large mustachioed man was saying, swinging his cigar. “God Bless you, girl. Ah, where was I again?” He swallowed the bit of frog and chewed, hardly seeming to taste it, and he smiled. “Amazing. You have the greatest cooks on staff here, I always said it. Tremblay knows his business—in the home and out.”
“I was interested in something you were saying earlier, Duke Arden,” another man said. This young man had greased-back hair and a rather thin, pencil-like mustache. “You said that business was booming as far as trade and export goes. How fares the Chinese markets?”
The mustachioed man turned to face him, and I saw it, then—the briefest of flickers on his face. It was a tell.
“Ah, yes, lots and lots of exports that a ways,” he said. “Hong Kong is the premier export target of our international trade. They need our iron and copper, and of course, we have a booming mining operation in the Congolese that provides most of it.”
“I see,” the young man said. “I have heard twitterings of the Queen in charge likening American and other foreign nationals as ‘savage barbarians,’ and had thought it an unwise investment.”
“Oh, it’s not so serious as all that,” Duke Arden said. “Look, she’s little more than figurehead, and I have men on the inside that tell me her reign is nearing its end. Hong Kong is our way station, you understand. Not ‘ours,’ I suppose I ought to say, as in Tremblay and mine’s directly, but ‘ours’ in a general sense. Savages we may be—and isn’t that a laugh—but the Chinese need our metals.”
“A colleague of mine tells me there is a rather large black market for illicit materials,” another man said. “You know. Medicinals. Opium, I have heard, though I hardly think anyone would do such a disservice as offer that foul substance.”
The Duke coughed, suddenly.
“Ah, I’ve heard nothing of the sort,” he said. “Naught at all.”
The third man squinted down his glasses.
“How bizarre,” he said. “He was quite certain there was a flourishing black market. I wondered if you had heard—”
“The first rule in business, my friend, is that talk is cheap. Nine pence a rumor, haven’t you heard the saying? People can say what they want to, but the truth is, legitimate international trade is the new target of the mercenary rank. We at Ar-Trem Shipping and Nautical serve naught but the above board needs of other countries.”
“Methinks the Duke protests too much,” another man said.
He was tall, willowy, and dressed flamboyantly. A mantle in red graced his shoulders, and tassels swung from his sleeves as he walked towards the table.
“William Corcoran, you flashy old peacock,” Duke Arden guffawed. “How fare thee?”
“Ah, you know how it goes. Are you yourself not also a man about the world? Life is in these times a series of empty, fleeting parties and soirees such as this, where men such as we flaunt and flap our gums to champion our ideals. We waste time fighting against the ennui. I myself have been bored; it is really the only earnest way to spend one’s eternity.”
“Queer of speech as ever, I see. I have heard rumors. You have spent much of your time in the craven alleyways of bizarre brothels in third world countries, have you not?”
“Ever I craved the longing touch of strange flesh,” William Corcoran said. “You must know, a showman such as myself takes inspiration from the exotic locales available only by travel. Need I tell you of my time spent in Peru, learning the mystic arts under the tutelage of a local Wise man? He gave unto me a drink in a half-fruit cup, and once imbibed, I saw all the splendor of the cosmos. I awoke, having discerned the meaning of the universe, in a pool of my own excrement. My lesson was that none of us are removed from the dull necessities of reality, as much as we may be spiritual beings.”
