Simon Giordano dropped his gaze from the girl because her large boyfriend had noticed and was glaring at him like a pit bull.  He kept his attention firmly on the coffee machine.

They were an odd couple.  The girl was a petite, Vietnamese beauty of exquisite features.  The boyfriend was a hulking, tattooed Lebo who would no doubt have a muscle car with a noisy sound system parked around here somewhere.  He had the look of a thug from a tribal crime family.

Simon chided himself for thinking the word, ‘Lebo’.  Lebanese Australian, he reminded himself as he kept his eyes cautiously on the frother.  He wouldn’t dare glance over there until they were gone but his mind he kept replaying the electrifying moment she’d given him the look.  Their eyes had locked for a second too long, alerting the silverback. 

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“Laura, I know you’ve been seeing your ex.”  Josh Barros looked at his girlfriend nervously, waiting for a response to the phrase he’d rehearsed with his communication specialist.

“What the fuck, Josh?  You bring me all the way to Taipei to start an argument about some crazy bullshit?”  Laura was smiling contemptuously with her ten-thousand-watt TV grin.  “I haven’t even seen him since we divorced.”

“No, I mean, the other one.  The, um . . . football player.”  Josh wished his voice wasn’t so whiny.  Even when he was shrieking at his employees, demanding to know whether they were lazy or incompetent, he always sounded like that.  No matter how diligently he lifted weights or how much he spent on tailors, everyone saw right through his tens of billions of dollars to his geek origin story.

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Getting rid of Chen was harder than Tan anticipated.

As soon as Chen sauntered into the lab, Tan knew he must be eliminated.  He was a kindred spirit – ambitious, ruthless, with a laser focus on obtaining the directorship of the Shanghai Robotics Research Centre and from there a high rank in the Party.  This was the exact path Tan had plotted for himself and there would only be room for one.

As soon as Chen arrived from Canada, Tan embraced him like his oldest and fondest friend, waxing lyrical about his counterpart’s magnificent achievements, enthusing about how honored he was to work alongside him.  Chen, of course, mouthed matching sentiments.

Each saw the other’s soul.

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Ben’s fibro shack broiled.  It was bleakly orange in the streetlights.  His neighbours escaped the desert heat by constructing their houses underground but Ben couldn’t afford it.  The new episode of Lost flickered unwatched on the TV.

“C’mon man, I’ve been stuck in Coober Pedy for three fucking years!” Jon whined.  He had only two tones; plaintive and contemptuous.  Tonight it was the former.  “Why’re you being such a dick?  I just need money for the bus.  Hundred and twenty-seven bucks.  Give me one job then I’m fucking out of here.”

“Not my problem,” said Ben.  He hated Jon like a bush fly.  “Don’t need more dealer.  Got them but got no ice.  I need supplier.”

“What happened to your old one?”

“Got bashed.  In the hospital, teef all fucked up.” 

“By who?”

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