The Shanghai Gesture

Poppy:
You said Doctor Omar. Doctor of what?

Omar:
Doctor of nothing, Miss Smith. It sounds important and hurts no one. Unlike most doctors.

'Mother' Gin Sling:
[of an ordinance that would outlaw her establishment] I've lived by my own ordinances for a long time now, and I intend to disregard all others.

'Mother' Gin Sling:
[on being a sex slave] My soles cut open and pebbles sewn inside to keep me from running away!

Poppy:
The other places are like kindergardens compared with this. It smells so incredibly evil! I didn't think such a place existed except in my own imagination. It has a ghastly familiarity like a half-remembered dream. *Anything* could happen here... any moment...

Poppy:
You don't drink, Mother Gin Sling? Is your name Chinese or English?

'Mother' Gin Sling:
Indeed Gin Sling is English. It's a nickname as common in this part of the world as the drink sold over the counter.

Poppy:
Why Gin Sling? Why not Whiskey Soda?

'Mother' Gin Sling:
There was a girl called Whiskey Soda too. And another one - Martini. And one called Scotch Highball, another Benedictine. In other places I might have been called Rose, or Violet, or Lily, or, eh, even Poppy.

Omar:
The moving finger writes, and having writ - it moves on. Nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it.