The Feng Shui Detective Goes South by Nury Vittachi Page A

doorway force onlookers to squint but the entrance emitted deep, fearsome sounds that left him with serious concern for the safety of his eardrum. Who would want to approach such a forbidding scene? The whole building seemed to throb with low thuds that literally shook the ground—he could feel the movement from where he stood, a good fifteen metres away. He couldn’t hear any music as such; just the relentless thump-thump-thump of a disco beat, the stuttering background sound that had become ubiquitous on television and in shops. At this intensity, it was like the heartbeat of a panicking buried monster.
    Although he felt physically repelled by the scene, the geomancer noticed that it had the opposite effect on young people: there was a queue of them outside the doorway and it steadily grew longer as he watched. The individuals queuing to enter were garishly dressed. One young —creature (he couldn’t tell what sex it was)—was tottering slowly forward in the queue on huge platform shoes, surmounted by stick-like legs, and its white-faced friend appeared to be dressed in an ankle-length robe like a monk from a black order. Behind them, a tall young person with pierced ears and a shaved head was laughing next to another creature of indeterminate sex wearing a gypsy scarf.
    A flickering lamppost gave the street the look of an emergency scene. A slight breeze came from the east. There was a smell of frying fish in the air.
    It was dark. He was tired and hungry. He wanted to go home.

    There was a movement in the queue that caught his eye. At the same time he heard his name being called: ‘CF! CF! Over here.’
    He scanned the queue again. The creature with the stick-legs was waving at him. Could it be . . . ? Surely not. He narrowed his eyes, trying to focus on the figure. ‘CF! We’re here,’ it said again.
    It was his intern. He raised one hand in curt acknowledge– ment and set off across the road, his face grim, to join her.
    ‘This is him, this is him,’ he heard her say to her friends as he approached.
    The one wearing the robe said: ‘Cool. A real feng shooee man.’
    ‘Good evening,’ the feng shui master said.
    ‘Hey!’ said Joyce. ‘Thanks for coming?’
    ‘Yo, Mr Feng Shui Man?’ said a small thing next to her who was apparently wearing only black undergarments.
    Wong had read in How ’ s Tricks: Colloquial English II that sentences with rising tones signified questions in standard English, but he had long ago noticed that the majority of statements made by his young intern and her friends had rising tones.
    ‘My familiars?’ said Joyce. ‘Ling, Nike, Sammo and Dibby?’
    ‘Wotcher?’ said a tall creature with short, vertical hair, nodding at Wong.
    ‘Watch who?’ Wong asked.
    ‘No one,’ it replied, cheerfully. ‘Just wotcher?’
    ‘I see,’ he said, not seeing.
    As Joyce made perfunctory introductions, the queue lurched forward about a metre.
    ‘Dani’s blown us off,’ she said. ‘Dani Mirpuri was gonna come?’
    Wong was amazed to hear the name of a client. ‘Mrs Mirpuri is coming?’
    ‘Nah!’ laughed Joyce. ‘Her daughter. Mrs Mirpuri is waaay too old. She’d never get in.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Wong, who was considerably older than Mrs Mirpuri.
    ‘’Scuse me, Mr Wong. Which way should my bed point?’ asked a creature behind him. ‘Should be east, right?’
    ‘Well, I read that my bed should point north,’ said a thing next to it. ‘Which is right?’
    ‘Yeah. Which is right?’
    Wong looked from one over-made-up face to another. ‘Er . . .’ He hated having to answer questions that treated his complex and arcane art as a list of rules. ‘East maybe is right for one person, north maybe is right for other person,’ he said. ‘Maybe both is right.’
    Joyce laughed again. ‘Ha! That doesn’t solve their problem. They sleep in a bunk bed.’
    There was a general outbreak of giggling at this. Wong wasn’t sure if they were laughing with him or at him, so he merely