在香港某大夜總會當個臨時鼓手，休息時邂逅了一名伴唱女子。
打烊後，兩人坐在舞台一角，看着幾個清潔工人忙這忙哪。
我笑說：〝這種地方也可以清潔的麼？〞
她不睬，只瞅一瞅身邊的一杯特級法國干邑。
酒是我向經理討來的。我代他回復了積壓着的外語電子郵件。
給自己倒一杯冰水。我、一直以來跟煙酒無緣、絕緣。
冰水。
想起這句故鄉俗諺來：
Someone has to break the ice.
總要有人打破悶局的吧。
跟她開個玩笑看看。
〝你呀，唱粵調，真夠江南韻味！〞
剛剛說完，一隻粉拳就在眼前亮起來。不閃，由它落在胸膛。
〝俺是北妹，你呢？死老外！〞
不打不相識。相識了，也希望相知，在天涯。
她、一啖酒三句話地開始講自己。
講、也是帶引。 
她帶我到蘇州水鄉去看她的家，最後更帶我去看她怎樣淪落香江。
倒醉在我懷中之前，她抿嘴笑一下, 說：
〝他媽的人生。〞
——————
English Version:
FORGET THE PAST TENSE 
No story should be told in the past tense if it is meant to last. I can’t hold this thought of mine when she asks, presumably taunting this lǎowài, why Chinese verbs remain “unadulterated” irrespective of the timeline. Unadulterated? There’s something about this girl, I must admit, at the very moment we bump literally into each other. When? In an ungodly hour. Where? In a nightclub. We both get paid, though, as “night workers”. May I hurriedly add that I’m an hourly drummer. I just beat my drum. She has to make her customers’ hearts beat faster than normal. Neither of us can afford to miss a beat, pun intended.
I like her simply because she has a pretty young face that renders makeup obsolete. I like her more because she hasn’t so far accused me of checking her out (which I actually do). I absolutely do not take her for granted, and she knows that instantly and intuitively. 
Myself a teetotaler by nature, I imagine that I’m letting the wine flow for her and for her only, now that we have the whole deserted nightclub to ourselves apart from the shadows of a few graveyard-shift cleaning workers keeping their respectable distance. We have no reason to distance from each other on the abandoned stage where acting is not required.
She lights a cigarette but stops short of taking a puff on it, smiling apologetically. Oh yes, I don’t smoke. She can tell, period.
Never mind where and how we spend the remaining dark hours. 
Some years later, back in America, I am still young enough to pretend that I can plant a ci in her mind, which ends with these three lines:
口紅再印別離箋
知君原屬我
屬我未生前
Loosely translated:
Take this blank note of mine, rouged twice, 
To where you may be 
From where I am and will always be.
For her and for her only I don’t give the past tense a damn. Always in the present tense I remember her parting words, collectively a question:
AIN’T LIFE HELL?