The Deal
New Canton Teahouse, it’s not great, but it is busy and that’s what I needed. The heaving crowd of locals were packed into the open-air building with nothing but a roof and a web of bamboo stilts to keep it up. It made every journey to the bar counter painfully slow, but interesting. The ornaments hung from the roof on loose bits of string. Everything from an eighth century monkey totem to a Bruce Lee collectable figurine held morbidly by its neck.
Despite the impenetrable crowd, a familiar figure emerged and made his way towards my table. That bleached, poorly cut mohawk and that tattered leather jacket are unmistakable. He was the dealer. He deftly danced around the support beams and people, still holding a cage with a black cloth draped over it. He swung around the final pole and stared at my table disappointed.
“No drinks?” he blurted, “How the hell are we supposed to do a deal with no drinks?”
“I did order drinks, our waitress has been fighting the crowd for about ten minutes now,” I said, pointing to the bar and a timid woman clutching the drinks tray like there’s no tomorrow.
“Oh, my mistake,” he said slapping my shoulder. He flopped down on the chair opposite me and put the cage on the ground. As soon as it hit the ground it began rattling and making muffled noises.
“Um, what-”
“AY GIRL!” he screamed, looking at the struggling waitress, “TWIST LIKE THIS!” he said, making a twisting motion. She nodded and started copying the dealer, freeing herself from the overwhelming crowd.
“I’m sorry, t-this is my first day,” she stuttered as she put our tray of tea down.
“Ah no worries, girl,” He took out a colossal wad of dollar-paticas out of his jacket and flicked the top few over to the waitress. I could not for the life of me tell you how he fit that in his shitty old jacket. “You’ll figure it out.” As she dove back into the crowd he continued staring at her.
“Uh, you wanna get down to business?”
“Not yet,” he said hurriedly, turning his attention to the tea, “My boy, you gotta learn how to do business.”
“I’ve done millions of these deals and I’m pretty sure I’m older than you.”
“Well…” he said, pouring out his tea and not once breaking eye contact “…they clearly didn’t know how to do business the right way,” he raised his dainty teacup, fully covered by his hand, “To good business,” and threw back the piping hot tea.
I stared at the empty teacup and the boiling hot teapot, puzzled, “Uh…how…how did-”
“‘Nuff niceties, time to do business,” he said, waving his hand in my face. He leant over and hoisted his cage onto the table. “VOILA!” he yelled, tearing the cover off with a flourish. I widened my eyes at the contents of the cage, how did he screw up this bad? It was a fucking monkey. And a pissed off monkey at that. He looked smugly at me while I stared at the creature, flabbergasted.
I looked back at him and then put my head in my hands, “Where…where’s the drugs?” I said, looking up at the idiot, “My boss wants at least half a key, this is…this-”
“Oh yeah, I’m not stupid. The drugs are IN the thing,” he said, pouring himself out another teacup. I scrunched up my face and locked my gaze at the monkey.
“…how d-”
“Trust me, you don’t wanna know,” he said, throwing back another cup as if it was vodka.
“…then…why?” I asked.
“It’s about 4, right?” I took out my phone, 3:59.
“Yeah, but-”
“ATTENTION TEAHOUSE PATRONS,” a robotic voice from the outside bellowed, “THE HONG KONG-MACAU JOINT POLICE DEPARTMENT ARE CONDUCTING A RAID OF THE PREMISES, IF YOU LEAVE YOU WILL HAVE CHARGES LEVIED AT YOU OF RESISTING ARREST.”
The dealer smirked, “They do raids of the dealing hotspots every ten years, I just saved us from jail,” he said tapping the cage.
A…thing dressed head to toe in black stared at me, then rotated its head to the dealer. “NO ILLEGAL DRUGS OR DRUG PARAPHERNALIA DETECTED, YOU ARE CLEAN,” it said before turning and harassing the table next to us.
“Your tea must be cold by now, let me get you another one,” the dealer said dumping my teacup on the ground and pouring from the teapot. Fuck it, he seems like he knows what he’s doing.