One of Pinky’s former husbands Tang-Top showed up at her wake at Spicy Island,  bragging about how he broke into the house Pinky left behind for a free night. Puffing smokes through his untrimmed grey beard, raising his mug to mark his wit, Tang-Top coughed out a laugh,  "Hey I bailed her out in India. You don't set up a fire in a temple, and walk away!" His arms crossed on his torso that was about to burst out of the tang-top he would wear all seasons.
    Other dramas of Pinky’s were "celebrated" with shared enthusiasm, catalyzed by a bottle of Qingdao, perhaps with the help of a joint.   How she died was a tragedy; how she lived was drama. 

     Few remembered Pinky occupying a hot seat at Politics Week before she came to Lamma.   

     "Sex in the office was a SCREAM!"  Her career dived when she slipped into a scandal with her American consultant, who never left his wife as promised.  Pinky lost her marriage with her wealthy husband. She never regained her corporate glamour but she defended,  "I never needed to work since I turned 30." 

     One afternoon on a ferry I saw a woman with her hair adorned with a purple, striped scarf. Holding a mirror, she defined her eyes with a solid thick eyeliner. Blinking her eyes with a streak of blinding purple shade, putting aside her mirror, she then noticed someone staring at her.
    "How have you been?" I was embarrassed. Bossy had she been, with a wild smile, "Couldn't be better. Money has been good to me." Blunt and flat.  

     One of Pinky’s "honeymoons" brought her to Lamma. Falling in love with the village life, she swapped her Happy Valley flat with a few houses on Lamma.  Collecting rent, she had become a full-time landlord.  For years, literally lived at Spicy, she was there sometimes to sign a lease with a backpacker or with a government teacher – eager to inflate the rental claims to fund a few bottles at Spicy. Other times, she would talk about her latest ventures. “I’ll sell snake soup here this Winter.  My nephew knows every trick!” She announced once. No talk about her snake venture since. But a lot about her new house in Panyu, Guangzhou.  

     Pinky's lifetime dramas continued to be celebrated till late. It wasn’t until everyone was under the influence of the Qingdao that anyone dared to talk about Pinky's final drama. She was locked in her Panyu house as it caught fire. Police found her body in a twisted final pose with one hand stretching out for the door knob.  She was cremated alive! There were speculations about her Panyu nephew's role in this tragedy. But no one on Lamma had seen him.

MEMORY FLASHES LASTING SOURCE OF INSPIRATION

Our Old Man gave us in a dream a year after his passing a Canon 600d camera launched in 2011, with its memory card slipping out. We need no memory card to remember our times together. 

Old Bean, do you remember the Nikon you got Sam in 1982 when he turned 15?  That was a big portion of your salary to spend supposedly to engage a troubled teenager freshly booted out of school.  His manager said having him focus on that expensive hobby would beat the undesirable peer influences. Through the lens, rolls of film were exposed to Sam’s Hong Kong scenes. He would then develop prints in the darkroom of the photo shop he worked for.  The shutter would click at a zoomed-in full moon, a closed-up vivid violet bauhinia, a neon-sign-illuminated skyline from the peak – or a young girl in sight.  But it never captured an image of yours. 

The flashes of memories, a lasting source of inspiration shared between me and Sam, beginning with you making us a toy pistol from a block of wood. You fashioned the gun with a wood file, carved out details on the surface, polished it, and then shaded it with black ink. It turned out just like the PLA soldier’s pistol we saw in the movies.  I was foolish to attempt to craft a piece like yours. The knife cut deep into my thumb, causing bleeding through my broken nail.  Rushing me out to the clinic, your slam of our door snipped at its hinge the fur and the skin attached to the neck of a pigeon raised in the yard. My thumbnail still bears today the mark of that trauma.

Oh, you walked away from teaching me to ride a bike, annoyed by my screeching cry over a fall from your Phoenix bike.  Still, you declared me a cyclist after you convoyed my first wobbly ride!

The memories improve: You gave me money prizes to approve the prose I wrote in 1975 when I was 12. Yeah!  When you saw my coin savings rising in the jam jar, you topped 10 more dollars to it to encourage me; I used the money to buy an agate ring when Mom turned 36. 

Old Bean, we even picked up smoking to be more like you!  Sam is running a food factory; he said he was inspired by you, remembering you managed a toy factory with 3000 workers in 1986.

A massive stroke locked you in the hospital for three months in 2010.  When I received the sad news from Mom, I was on the way to the hospital and Sam was on a boat, fishing.  Neither of us registered the parting.  But we saved the flashes of images of you with no help of a memory card.