Sai Ying Pun, 1:57PM – Hot.

Entry 93

The past few days, a dull ache behind the eyes. Perhaps too much sunlight. My housekeeper informs me that it was not this hot last year, or the year before, but maybe it was two years ago. She also tells me that I got the voltage wrong on the bulbs I bought for a fancy lamp. Dust and hot glass. Tiles cool underfoot. I like it when she gives me advice because she has the voice of a grandmother and is one herself.

The air is still and the city deserted. The imposter apartment is open for impostering again and so I go to inspect the premises. The rightful tenant has only been away a week, yet there is that hot smell of throwing open a summer house at the start of the season. A comfort comes over me, of having nowhere to go, of opening the empty houses and looking in on them. In this heat, how hot the rooms sound. White. Sepia. Beige. Should I feel trapped? I do not feel trapped. I feel like it is quiet and there is so much to read.

My relatives live in hot places and the smell of a quiet house in the summer afternoon is a slow and lazy smell, like a boat chugging along.

As I think of it, twenty-two years ago, a grandmother wakes from her siesta and, without raising the blinds, makes her way to the kitchen to fetch her husband a glass of lemon soda from the subzero.