28Thanks to MargaretA66, Candylou, max2013, ErinJordan, caseykam, earthling1970, Cary Kate, Paulina Ann, GrabmeaCherryZero, TaoTheCat, MedalH, and everyone who read and enjoyed. We're still in Singapore, but the next chapter will belong to Frank for those of you who have been waiting to see him again. Enjoy!
Chapter 3
The workspace was smaller than Joe thought it would be for one attached to a multi-national corporation. It consisted of two small individual office spaces, one for Victor, the other for the lawyer – Gerhard Müller, Joe remembered – a multi-purpose conference room with a kitchenette attached, and a larger main office space with four desks. Three of the desks had computer monitors on them and had knickknacks scattered on them – pictures, one of those metal pendulum ball desk games, small colorful boxes, and the like. The fourth was empty. Just a computer monitor with what looked like a tiny hard drive attached to the back, a keyboard, and a mouse. There were no personal items. Not even a plant.
Joe indicated it with his chin. "One of these things is not like the other..."
"Ah, the memories… One of my favorite Sesame Street numbers." Victor's hazel eyes danced with laughter. "That's where our rotatee sits. Alice left a day or so ago. Allen should be here in a few days."
Allen… He means Biff. Joe considered the desk for a moment, eyes narrowing as a thought hit him. "Is the name thing a coincidence, or do they get sent here alphabetically by first name?"
Victor blinked, his mind obviously working through a list of names. "I… You know, I never thought of that. They just show up every couple of weeks. Hold on a sec…" His right hand reached up, tapping the side of his face several times. "Huh… I guess they do." Shaking his head to clear it, he looked back at Joe. "To a point." He let out a breath. "I never noticed it before. Weird."
Filing that information away, Joe shrugged. "Second set of eyes. When you get a chance, I'll need a list of who gets sent in and in what order." At the other man's nod, he asked. "Is there anything else you need to show me while we're here alone?"
As if the word 'alone' had conjured him, a tall, wiry, dark haired man walked through the door, starting when he saw the two of them standing in the middle of the office. A hand on his heart, he muttered, "Gott im Himmel," and staggered back a step before the hand lifted to adjust a pair of oval, wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. "Victor… Du hast mir eine Heidenangst eingejagt..."
Victor had the grace to look abashed. "Sorry, Gerhard. I didn't know you were going to be here today." He indicated Joe with a wave of his hand. "This is Joseph Hardy."
Gerhard took his glasses off, wiping them on the hem of his shirt. "You are the auditor from the central site, yes?" The words, while formal, were spoken without even a hint of an accent.
Joe nodded and held out his hand. "Yes. Nice to meet you. And it's Joe."
The handshake was short and perfunctory. Upon pulling his arm back, Joe watched the other man surreptitiously wipe his right hand on his back before lifting it to resettle his glasses on his nose again.
Nervous tic, Joe thought.
Once the glasses were back in place, Gerhard turned his gaze back to Victor. "If you will excuse me, there is a contract I need to check before the client arrives in the morning to sign it." He crossed the room, entered his office, and swiftly closed the door behind him.
Joe cocked his head to one side. "Well, that was… friendly…"
Victor shrugged. "Don't take it personally. He's always like that." He leaned in, lowering his voice. "The prevailing office theory is that he's on the Autism spectrum. Except for Imogen. She just thinks he's very, very German." A smile hovered around the corners of his mouth, although the corners of his eyes looked strained.
"Okay," Joe said, not sure what that meant, while noting the unexplained tension in the air. "I'll try to remember that. So what time do you need me here tomorrow?"
"If you could be here around eight-thirty, that will get you here before everyone else. Except possibly Gerhard." His eyes darted toward the closed office door before snapping back to Joe's face. "Everybody else comes in around nine. I'll get you set up in the conference room. You'll have our company laptop and plenty of room to spread out."
"Not here?" Joe pointed to the empty desk.
Victor shook his head. "No. The auditors always use the conference room. More privacy. Quieter. Staff will be coming through to get coffee and their lunches, but you'll mostly have the room to yourself." He brushed curls off his forehead. "I'll get Chona to bring you here tomorrow. Show you which buses and stops. It can be a little confusing until you get the hang of it."
"More confusing than Manhattan?" There was a dubious note in his voice.
"Not necessarily more confusing," Victor said. "Different confusing." Victor said. "Unless you were paying careful attention on our way here?"
Joe rubbed his eyes. "Not really," he admitted. As much as didn't want it to be true, the twelve hour time change had gotten to him – probably a side effect of getting older, he thought – and he hadn't been as observant of his surroundings as he wanted to be.
"No worries. The babysitting is part of what we pay Chona for. We want our guests to be comfortable. And not get lost in a foreign city. Do you want to head back and rest or would you rather grab some lunch and do some sightseeing? You're probably feeling the need for a nap, but, trust me, it's better to stay awake and get on local time."
The mention of a nap pushed a wave of exhaustion over him, but the mention of food made Joe's stomach rumble. "Lunch," he said. "Biff… Allen is always telling me how good the food is here. Let's do that. If I nap now, I won't sleep tonight, and I want to be alert tomorrow."
"Great," Victor said, some of the tension leaving his expression. "First stop, Chinatown."
After spending some time on a transit bus, a short ride on train, then a longer ride on a double-decker bus, – "If you can get a front seat on the top, you totally need to do that," Victor said, dragging him up the narrow stairs – Joe's eyes were starting to close. Until Victor poked him in the arm.
"We're here. Come on."
He stumbled down the stairs into something that, except for the giant red gates at either end of the street, looked like a slightly watered-down version of the Chinatown in New York. For a brief moment, his brain started thinking that maybe going back to the apartment for a nap wouldn't have been such a bad idea after all, and was about to say something to that effect when Victor stopped in front of a building that looked like a warehouse.
"Here we are," the other man said, waving an arm out like a television presenter. "The food centre."
Joe regarded him with half-lidded eyes and a sneaking suspicion he was being played.
Victor just grinned and pulled at his arm. "Come on. You'll see."
Three steps into the building, Joe's eyes went wide, the tired feeling falling away in the cacophony surrounding them.
The building was jam packed with different food stalls. Hundreds of them, crammed against every wall space. And with people. So many people. Most Asian, but many other nationalities as well, speaking what seemed like dozens of different languages.
Staring at everything, Joe followed Victor to one stall where they bought hand-pulled noodles in some kind of broth, another that featured chicken that was roasted a perfect golden brown, and a third where they got pan-fried dumplings with some type of dipping sauce that Joe was sure he was going to be wearing.
Once his stomach was full, he perked up a bit and asked to see more of the city. I probably won't get to do much sight-seeing once I get to work, he thought. I might as well get some pictures for Kara.
Victor grinned. "You asked for it," he said. After a visit to the very confusing on-site bathrooms to wash up – he had never had to grab toilet paper before going into a bathroom – Joe got a whirlwind tour of the highlights of Singapore.
Bus stops and train stations blurred into one another, with Chinatown blending into Little India, which merged with the shopping district, and then slid into the National Botanical Gardens, which turned out to be fairly close to the company's apartment.
Which was a very good thing because as interesting as it all was, and as lovely as the orchid section of the garden park had been, by the time they got back to the apartment, Joe was both completely lost and totally wrecked. He waved goodbye to Victor, stumbled into the living room, and took out his phone.
It was just past seven o'clock. Chona was out of sight, but there was a light dinner of rice and broth laden with vegetables waiting for him on the dining table under a covered dome. Despite everything he had eaten earlier, he managed to empty the bowl, savoring the delicate flavors. Then, using the international texting app he had downloaded before leaving New York, he called Kara.
The call went straight to voicemail. While Joe was sorry not to get to talk to her – he figured she was probably working a case – he knew he wouldn't have been coherent enough to do justice to everything he had seen today. He ended the call, and instead sent a short text with some of the orchid pictures he had taken.
They aren't as beautiful as you, he wrote. We'll have to videochat so you can see the apartment. It's amazing. Let me know a time that works. I miss you.
Then he set an alarm for seven in the morning, stumbled back to the opulent bedroom, and for the second night in a row, was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
The day didn't start off well.
Rather than his alarm going off, he had woken to the feeling of someone shaking his arm.
"Alarm," he said, shoving his face deeper into the pillow. "I don't need to get up yet."
The shaking continued, making Joe groan.
"Get up now, or there is water on your head," came a small but insistent voice from the side of the bed. "I count to five. One. Two. Three."
A drop of water fell on the side of his face. Joe bolted upright. "I'm awake. I'm awake!"
Chona stood next to the bed, a pot of water clasped in her hands. "Good morning, Mr. Joe," she said, her expression serene, but her eyes dancing. "Breakfast is ready. Do you wish to shower before or after eating?"
Joe glanced at the clock. It was six-thirty. He rubbed his eyes, then glared at the small woman. "Why are you waking me up now? I had an alarm set for a half hour from now. That gives me plenty of time..."
She cut him off. "The buses and trains get crowded. If we leave earlier, there aren't so many people. It is easier to teach you how to get to the office with fewer people around."
He let out a breath, realizing both that she was right and that he had probably sounded like a petulant five year old. Chona was doing her job. Just like he needed to. He sighed. "Got it. And thank you. I'll shower before I eat."
A smile quirked at the corners of her lips as she lowered the pot. "You are welcome." She bowed and walked toward the door. "I will keep your breakfast warm."
As she was about to close the door, Joe held out a hand to stop her. "Hold on. Would you have really dumped that water on my head?"
She blinked at him twice. "Yes. Mr. Biff said it might be necessary." There was no hesitation in her voice. The door closed with a soft thudding sound.
Joe sat up, now entirely awake. "Okay, then," he said. "Good to know." He mumbled a few uncomplimentary things under his breath about his friend, then crawled out of bed and headed for the shower.
It turned to be a good thing Chona had accompanied him. Even with written directions and paying close attention to the numbers on the buses, he was sure he would have gotten on at least one going in the wrong direction. Manhattan might be more densely populated than Singapore, but it was a city he was accustomed to. Singapore was different. Temples were visible through the windows on one side of the bus while gleaming skyscrapers whirred past on the other. It was all very… foreign.
Not foreign, he thought as he stood holding on to a pole halfway down the aisle. Cosmopolitan. And it's clean. No graffiti. No litter. No smokers… A sign that had caught his attention the day before and had forgotten to ask about made him bend down, and poke Chona gently in the shoulder. "I get the no smoking and no drinking," he murmured, not wanting to draw attention to himself in the quiet that permeated the commute, "that makes sense given how clean this city is. But no hedgehogs? Why would someone bring a hedgehog on the bus."
She let out a breath, and he got the distinct impression she was trying hard not to roll her eyes. "Not hedgehogs. Durian. No durian is allowed on public transit."
"And durian is?"
"A fruit. It is…" She stopped, obviously trying to think of the right word. "Pungent. Some people find it delicious. Others find it stinky." She pulled at his arm again. "This is your stop. Let's go." Once they were off the bus, she pointed to a building, then disappeared back into the crowd without saying goodbye.
Looking at the skyscraper in front of him, he swallowed, a light sheen of perspiration unrelated to the temperature covering his forehead, feeling very out his depth. He let out a breath, then followed the crowd inside.
Once at the office, the feeling that he was an impostor washed over him, but he pushed through it and made his way into the suite where Victor was waiting to usher him into the conference room.
After spending a good fifteen minutes fussing with the laptop he had been given – it refused to boot to anything but a DOS prompt, which Joe was sure wasn't supposed to happen – he gave up and brought it to Victor, who then spent another five trying to fix the device before giving up with a rueful grin.
"Technology," he said, "you can't live with it, you can't chuck it out the window." He nodded toward the main office. "We'll get a new one shipped out, but for now you'll have to be in here with everyone. Is that a problem?" At Joe's head shake, he said, "Good. I'll get you set up at the rotatee's desk. It's got a wired connection, so everything should work. Come on."
A small voice in the back of Joe's head said, Frank would have known what to do. Shaking his head to clear it, he followed the other man out, getting to the empty desk just as the monitor came to life.
A ringing phone sent Victor back into his own office, the door being shut a few seconds later. Joe's eyes flicked to the other closed door. No noise had come from it, but that didn't mean the lawyer wasn't in. Rather than worry about it, he shrugged and started tapping on the keyboard, looking for the location of the spreadsheets on the shared server.
After pulling up the pertinent data and staring at it for a few long seconds, he shook his head, wondering both what exactly he was supposed to be looking at and trying to figure out why he had agreed to take Frank's place on this assignment. As he turned back to it, determined to find something that made sense, the door from the hallway opened. His shoulders sagged in relief.
A small group of people crowded through the door.
"Victor, we're… Oooh. Fresh meat!" The voice came from a sandy-haired woman of about thirty who had a wide, open smile that contrasted with the somewhat predatory look in her hazel eyes. "G'day, and what's your name, handsome?"
"That's sexual harassment, Genie." The cultured British accented words were spoken by an Asian man in a tailored suit with a patterned silk tie and matching pocket handkerchief who had been shouldered out of the way. "Not okay, and leave the poor bloke alone. He's new and not used to you." He rubbed his side where the woman's elbow had poked him in her rush to enter the office first. "Sorry about that mate. That's just Genie's way of saying hello. Mine is much more pleasant. Hello."
The woman rolled her eyes. "I'm not that bad..."
"Yes, Imogen, you are." This came from the door where a dark-skinned and clean-shaven Indian man was entering the room. "And I neither need nor want to have to go through the sensitivity training with you. Again."
Imogen let out a breath, under which Joe could just hear the word, "Spoilsport…"
"Good, you're all here." Victor's door opened.
"Gerhard's not," Imogen said, as if she wasn't pointing out the obvious. Joe got the feeling she liked teasing her office mates.
Probably I can learn a lot about them by watching how they react to her, he thought.
"As a matter of fact, he is." Victor's head nodded toward the closed door. "He's on a call, Imogen, so we need to use our indoor voices. And he met Joe yesterday." For the first time, Joe heard a slight note of exasperation in Victor's voice, saw a momentary tightness around his eyes that disappeared within a second as his expression shifted to a polite smile. "Everyone, this is Joe Hardy. Central office sent him to do our audit this time around."
Expressions of surprise appeared on all three faces. The Asian man broke the silence first. He turned toward Victor. "Laptop die again?"
Victor nodded, the tightness back around his eyes. He ran a hand over his forehead and through his curls, which were starting to frizz despite the more than adequate air conditioning in the office. "I'm going to see if Allen can bring a replacement when he comes."
As they spoke, the Indian man stepped forward, his right hand outstretched. "Mr. Hardy, I am Viraj. Let me know what you need, and I will make sure you have it."
Behind him, the woman's lips formed what looked like the word 'kissarse', and Joe had work to keep his expression neutral.
Up close, he could see Viraj was maybe three years younger than he was himself. Possibly four years. First job out of college? As the conjectures flashed through his mind, he held out his own right hand. "I will. And it's Joe. When people say Mr. Hardy, I assume they're looking for my dad."
The younger man flashed a smile. "Yes, sir… I mean, Joe."
As Viraj shuffled over to his desk, his place was taken by the Asian man. "Kenneth Leung. Finance Division. If you have any number questions, feel free to ask. I'm more than happy to help."
"Or, he can ask me," Imogen said, waving and tossing her hair. "You're not the only one who works in finance, Ken." She shouldered her colleague out of the way. "Nice to meet ya, Joe. Let me know if you need anyone to show you around. Either the office or… just, y'know, around…" She managed to make the last word sound suggestive.
Joe pretended not to notice. Better nip that in the bud, he thought.
Kenneth straightened his tie, a flash of annoyance in his dark eyes. "I'm sure he doesn't want to get lost, Genie, so leave the poor bloke alone."
"I'm happy to have any of you show me around," Joe said, letting himself smile just a bit. "I want to see as much as I can while I'm here so I can bring my girlfriend back some time."
The smile on Imogen's face froze. "Oh, you've got a missus. How nice." She let out an over-exaggerated sigh, throwing her hands in the air. "Victor, just once can't they be single?! D'ye hate me or something?" She walked to her desk, dropped her bag onto the surface, slumped in her chair, and then straightened. "Oh well. Can't win them all. Time to make money for people!" She turned on her monitor, pushed one of a set of earbuds in her left ear, and started sliding the mouse across the desk.
Kenneth and Viraj shared a look, then the Asian man shrugged his shoulders. "Welcome to the office, Joe," he said as he took his place at his own workstation. "It may be finance, but it's never boring." He turned his attention to his own computer, grabbing the handset of his phone just as it started to ring. "Capital Finance. This is Kenneth Leung. What can I do for you today?"
From across the room, Victor let out a sigh, then went back into his office, closing the door behind him.
Joe sat for a moment, just looking at the disparate group of people around him. This certainly was going to be interesting.