Trouble

Alan and I have known each other for ten years. Alan is my kind of womanizers: the kind of men who would, like my father in his youth and my friend Clyde, go up to a girl and look at her in silence for a minute to see if she would break or if she is real--and they would take her offer of friendship if it is born out of that moment because there is always another woman, plenty of room in life to see what unfolds. The kind of male friends who say, 'Write something about me' and with such a genuine intention that I cannot turn away from--I am most giving when people are straight.

'You can't blame anyone when you have 'Do Not Disturb' written on your face half of the time!'

Alan said to me one night four years back, when he was driving us to dinner in the countryside. We were brushing past endless trees, old houses and a pregnant dog bouncing on the pavement. Alan is a wonderful driver: swift and steady, humming to music, though his legs always seem too long in his car--at 6 2', he is very tall for a Chinese guy. You would have thought he was a basketball player or a swimmer, but Alan's passion is soccer--he played so hard in his teens that he needed surgery on his knees by the age of 21.

'Do I?' I asked.

'Yeah, like you don't need the people around you.'

'They don't have to do a thing. I don't want much at all.'

'You're cursed, my young lady.'

I gave him a squeeze on the arm. We laughed.

***

Besides womanizing, playing soccer and driving around town, Alan loves to go horse back riding. A few years ago when Hong Kong was gearing up for the Olympic equestrian events, Alan signed up at the Equestrian Federation for lessons. A woman he was interested in--a tough and bubbly lady who would bitch to his face--was a great rider and Alan wanted to know what the fuss was about. Alan is game for just about everything, as long as he has the time and means.

'Are you sure you don't want to come with me?' he asked me.

'It's too expensive for me, and I'm afraid of falling,' I said. 'It'd happen sooner or later.'

Alan fell. He suffered an elbow fracture and had to type with one hand for a long while. His parents were aggravated. In their 60's they had enough of witnessing all these injuries to their boy. 'They can't hold anything against me!' Alan said to me during his recovery. We were having a coffee in a Starbucks near his office. 'I grew up with three sisters; I always had to go look for other friends, boys on the island.'

Alan grew up on a remote island in Hong Kong, though remote island is as good as any crowded district in my town with all the shopping, entertainment and tourism. I have met his family a few times. I seem like a good and sensible girl to his folks, who wish I could exert some positive influence on Alan.

'Nicole always lets me be,' he said.

***

Alan is five years older than me and much more driven--he works long hours in a purchasing job, follows the news and any interesting advertisement on the exterior of a bus, talks to people he runs into in a hotel or a food market and expects to be surprised, all the time. People who lack enthusiasm or personality are a blur to him--he looks at them as if they were school students who handed in crappy essays to pass the course. At the sight of these lazy souls, Alan wants to scratch his arm, get up and go.

'You say I have no patience,' I said to him today at lunch. 'Even I have problem keeping you entertained, sometimes.'

'You respond to the moment and who you're dealing with. There you're very emotional,' he said. 'Once you walk off it's over your head. And some people think you pine for them...'

Alan pulled a sad face. I giggled and ate my salad.