"Smartly dressed in the well-pressed uniform of a PLA soldierette, the tall, beautiful Shanghainese girl reclines comfortably into a dark, leathered booth. 'The Poliburo knows how to dress 'em,' I muse. 'But how well does she undress,' I wonder. The triumphant smile and gleaming eyes of the despot sitting with her, either her lover or uncle or both, indicate 'that lucky bastard certainly knows the answer' to my wonderment.
With warm eyes and a soft, mischievious smile, the Shanghai soldierette dreams off into the distance, towards and beyond the blues, dreaming naughty thoughts, I'm certain. Somewhere, through thick smoke, a trumpeter 'Runs the Voodoo Down.' My Shanghai beauty quivers. Her despot romancer, taking a long drag on his slow burning cigarette, looks away from the beauty and towards the source of his blues, his eyes now without gleam but filled with jealously, as the trumpeter strikes chords in the Shanghai beauty that he, the despot can not.
From out of the darker recesses of the smoke filled room, a Shanghainese working girl slinks up and leans into me, pets me smoothly on the forarm and asks for the time. Shaken but not stirred, I remember now, we're in Shanghai's Cotton Club; part-time den of iniquity, full-time den of high priced liquors and thick, waffing, unmerciful smoke.
With slight displeasure, I withdraw my eyes from the soldierette beauty afar and gaze down upon the working girl's arm resting on mine. She sports an imitation Rolex watch (or is it?), the time on which matches the time on mine. Not my cup of tea, though, this working girl. I tell her, 'I do not have the time, sorry.'
With pleading eyes, and a well-used mouth, she begs again for time. 'Sorry,' I say, 'I'm busy now.' I reach for my cold glass of Chimay, and take another cool sip. The working girl slinks off to another expat patron further down the bar, to whom I see her mouthing her wellworn words, 'Do you have the time?' That patron proves more gullible; the working girl wins her first drink tonight and perhaps a bit more than that later."
