The Last Time I Saw Macao

After 30 years I was back in Macao, where I had spent my childhood. A little more than a week before, in Lisbon, I had received an email from a friend who I had not seen for ages. I knew that Candy had gone to Asia, attracted by its exoticism, or an easier life, I don’t know which… In any case, I had lost touch with her. In her email, she said that she’d yet again got involved with the wrong sort of men, but now there really was going to be trouble: a very good friend of hers had been killed in a quite harmless game of paintball. She thought she might be the next victim and that I was the only person she could still trust. She begged me to come to Macao where, to quote, "weird and disturbing" things were going on. Tired after the long flight, I approached Macao on a jetfoil ferry that brought back memories of the happiest time of my life.
João Rui Guerra da Mata