The club was full with expats tonight, sailors too, dancing drunk in their white uniforms under the red light, tall above the sea of heads on the dance floor, swaying and screaming like drowning men. She had caught glimpses of their naval base on the bus rides through the tortuous mountain road. A slab of grey on the coast, piers sticking out like spikes into the ocean. At night it was supposed to light up like fireflies but she’d be too exhausted after work. The only time she saw the base up close was with a sailor who smiled a lot. He came up to the bar and spoke to her in broken Cantonese. She gave short replies in broken English. He wore a ring that night but didn’t when he took her to see the base the next day. They could barely understand each other so all he could do was smile and she would too.

A year later he was gone and so were his friends, and new faces came pouring into the club. Another year and those faces were replaced by younger ones. They would come at night and find Mel still standing behind the bar, with one more wrinkle on her face than last year.

“Still here, Mel?”

She checked her pager. Eleven o’clock, no messages. “Thank you, Jay.”

“Take care.”

As the back door closed behind her, the sticky smell of alcohol gave way to the sour stink of garbage. The music dampened into muffled growls. Somewhere a train screeched on a railway. Mel threw her hands into her coat pockets and walked under a Kodak billboard towards the bus station. It was starting to rain.