Heart of Glass

Heart of Glass Ivy Ngeow ISBN 978-1-913584-00-9 Copyright © 2022 by Ivy Ngeow All rights reserved. A Leopard Print book First published in 2018 by Unbound 6th Floor Mutual House, 70 Conduit Street, London W1S 2GF www.unbound.com with ISBN 978-1-913584-00-9 This edition published in Great Britain in 2022 by Leopard Print Publishing The moral right of Ivy Ngeow to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. “Wherever you go, go with all your heart.” - Confucius Contents Part I Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Part II Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Part III Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Before you go FREE BOOK About the Author Also by Ivy Ngeow Part One 1980 Chapter 1 Picture This I woke up. I was dreaming of music, and it’s free to dream. I was going to get caught very soon and I could feel it. My nose was tingle-a-ling-ling. Things were on the decline. No, seriously. Only that very afternoon I contemplated selling my wine-red Gibson Les Paul deluxe guitar in its silver padded bag, in order to live. Last night, I met Paolo. I was 23 years old. I had 24 dollars left in my black patent clutch and some belladonna tabs. Four, if I remembered right. It was freezing cold, and just like the night in Blondie’s ‘Picture This’. It was November 4, 1980. The streets were celebrating the former Hollywood actor, Republican Reagan beating Democrat Carter in a landslide. TVs in bars were showing the firework displays. My throat was also on fire. Outside I was ice but inside I was baking. I was dying of thirst and I hadn’t eaten for three days. It took an hour to do my Maybelline makeup to look just like Debbie Harry. Dallas would be proud. I wore my red-framed plastic glasses. I was more Warhol than Debbie. I headed straight for the Drake Hotel, open every night since Prohibition era ended. I eyeballed a guy who was a little on the short side, perhaps five seven. He was at least 40. He looked smart, sexy if you were into that kind of guy, skinny. The three Ss. He had small neat hands, like those of a teacher. He was dressed immaculately in a shark-skin suit with an unbelievably pointed collar and I assumed he was Italian. His face was tanned and chiseled like a doll. If I was speaking Dallasese, I would call him an Italian pimp-dog, a know-it-all émigré sonofabitch. After a couple of drinks at the bar, I asked him if I could have a cigarette. I only had six dollars left, after cabs, tips and so on. “Join us,” he beckoned and called, “We’re celebrating.” I assumed he meant the elections, but Dallas said to always answer with a straight question. This way you kept the conversation going. If you said, “Yee-aah, how ’bout that, huh?”, then what would they or you be able to say next? So I played the ingénue. “Really? What are you celebrating?” “We’re goin’ into partnership to open the first and the best pizza restaurant in Asia — in Macao.” He said McCow. Wow, I thought to myself, but I wasn’t about to act like some dumb broad. “If you’re the first, then how can you be the best?” I said. He squinted and looked at me. “Waiter, can we have another glass?” He snapped his fingers real quick and twice. The waiter came back with a champagne flute. Paolo rolled his eyes and shut them, as if he had been sent a message from the Heavenly Father in Naples. “Gentlemen, this young lady is a mathematical genius,” he said. “Dja think we oughta drink to dat? Huh?” They each raised a glass and laughed. He poured me a glass of bubbly and I tentatively took a sip. “What are ya? Who are ya?” I shook my head. I put on a real serious look. The three guys roared with laughter. “Italian?” said Paolo, when the laughter died down, only he said it more like Eyetalyun. “Well, no, actually my mom is Chinese from Singapore and my dad is from here, from Chicago. Irish.” “Bella,” he said, looking at me approvingly, “bella. That’s why I thought you were Italian.” I kicked myself under the black shiny tablecloth with a real red rose on it, just lying there as if a gardener from a country mansion somewhere had cut and left a single rose before running off. Why did I tell him the truth? I feared the three things that all immigrants feared: cops, hunger, truth. Something about him, his voice, his hands, made me tell him the truth. Dallas would kill me if she knew. The deal was a different story each night: we were the Queens of Magical Journeys into the Unknown, whatever that meant. I felt I was too old for this game and the stories had run out. Paolo was with a couple of