The talk

This is how it begins.

It starts with shared, mutual silence. An agreed silence that no one agreed to, but no one disagrees, so it stays. A thin, wavering silence that is unsure, like a girl who wonders about the affections of a boy she likes. The nervousness is the same, the general briskness in the air that bristles so no one dares move. And so, no one moves.

I sit on our bed, reading, but not really since I am seething. He sits at his desk, checking his emails, whatever. I look at his spotty, pale back as he scratches it, leaving annoyed, red lines, skin that does not like to be touched, much less clawed at. That is his move, the scratching, because of that general briskness in the air, that bristly quality that makes skin itch. His move, thus, is to scratch himself.

Good for him. Now it’s my turn.

I put my book down.

Did you check on the kids?

Yes, they’re ok.

I look at the words in my book but they are black little lines and loops and circles that mean nothing, burnt black from my anger.

Well, dinner was a waste of money.

Yes, it was.

Why did you take us there? Have you been there?

Oh, a friend of mine recommended it. Now I know he has bad taste.

Well, if you’d made reservations at Fondue Palace we would’ve gone there instead.

You should’ve called me to remind me, you know how bad I am about these things.

Gee darling, it’s not like I have nothing to do all day.

I know, I’m sorry I’m so forgetful.

Except he isn’t sorry. He never was. Sorry people cry and try. Instead, he does other things. Like mop the kitchen floor or vacuum, as though cleaning would revive his memory.

Did you at least like the souffle?

Yes, that was nice.

I take off my glasses and turn off the lamp.

Good night.

G’night, babe.

Did you put the dishwasher on?

My eyes are closed and my feet find their familiar nook in the middle of our bed.

No.

Oh, c’mon.

I forgot.

The silence closes in.

4.30

You stay in there until I say you can come out.

With that, I closed the door. I didn’t lock it since the lock is on the inside. Would I have locked it if it was on the outside? Perhaps, but maybe not because what would people think of me? Even if there aren’t any other people in the house but Pete and I. And of course, Grandma Julie.

And Shan.

Shan who woke up at 4.30am and had been waking up at 4.30am for the past week or so since it’s been getting light so early in the morning. It’s as though the universe thought I could use just one more thing to make it harder for me to get through the day. Just one more thing. Let’s see if she breaks.

I could hear her muffled cries. She was probably biting into her pillow, staining it with tears, angry at herself for crying, angry at me for imposing on her this stupid new rule that she had to stay in her room until the short hand on the clock pointed to seven. Angry that her dad was not awake to save her.

I ignored her torment, and shuffled to the bathroom. I looked at my tired bags. I imagined that they were filled with cotton that a strong wind my blow away. Instead, I turned the tap on and dabbed my face with the icy cold water. I should go back to sleep because it’s four goddamn thirty in the morning. Even the birds are still asleep. Pete was. His guttural mating call signals that I should at least go back to bed, see if I can’t persuade him to stop and do something about it.

Just as I climbed into bed, I hear a door open. It’s Grandma Julie. Mother-in-law Julie. What did she want at 4.30 in the AM? And then I hear another door open. Talking. What. The. Fuck?

I slid out of bed once again and shuffled to the door. I opened it, and like two lovers caught in the act, I saw my mother-in-law hugging Shan, who had indeed been crying. She looked at me with both disdain and guilt.

She’s awake already.

I know. I told her to go back to bed.

It’s okay. You can come downstairs with Grandma.

It’s 4.30, Julie.

Well, she can’t go back to sleep. We might as well have something to eat.

I seethed.

She had only eight hours…

She can’t go back to sleep. Come, sweetie.

Shan hesitated. Her look turned to confusion.

Come with me, I said.

I took her hand and led her to our bed. Pete, still making earthly sounds. Shan climbed in between and laid there.

Are you tired?

Yea.

I curled an arm around her head and stroked her hair.

Let’s see if we can sleep.

Okay.

Outside, a door closed.

Games over

There she is again, leaning over her balcony, pretending to take in the laundry. Even from here, I can see her eyes sweep around for me.

She is wearing the white shirt of her school pinafore. Not exactly the most enticing but she is not wearing much else below that. A pair of dark blue shorts and red wooden clogs. In between rusty stilts of steel, I see long, fair legs, unblemished by misadventure. She is a bookworm.

As the girl struggles to haul in an awful pink bed sheet with daffodils, her eyes never leave my verandah. Disappointment slowly spreads over her face. She does not see me because I’m watching her from the shadows of the coffee shop’s kitchen.

Someone calls. Sharp irritation takes over and she answers loudly. She scans hopefully once more, and takes in a small boulder of laundry.

I return to skinning potatoes before Old Chin discovers my little voyeur. Newly naked and pale yellow, they fall into a bucket of cloudy salt water, ready to be sliced and diced for a variety of tomorrow’s offerings of ‘economy rice’ at the stall, a staple among the working masses in our town. Three ringgit for a plate of rice, a meat dish and a vegetable dish. If they knew how much of each day’s leftovers went into the next day’s cooking, nobody would eat it, much less pay three ringgit. Old Chin is a miserly bastard. Why else would he hire me?

As I deftly slice, my eyes dart around the deserted kitchen. Old Chin and his wife are at the front of the shop, serving the dwindling late afternoon crowd. I spot Mai, our new Cambodian maid, cleaning tables, clearing away used plates and cutlery and wiping down the surfaces vigorously with a dirty old rag. She is quite pretty, although her hair is cut too short, a requirement of the maid agency which got her over here. It kept away the lice and ‘lowered maintenance’ for the employers, as if short hair was immune to dirt and sweat. They do not want the maid to waste time preening herself when she should be labouring away. Now she looks more like a pretty young boy than a girl. Such a shame.

I look across the street again at Miss Coy’s apartment. Still empty, but the doors of the ‘cage’ intended to keep away uninvited guests from breaking into the house by climbing over the balcony, are still open. This means she plans to return and perform one of her many little skits.

Like yesterday, when she pretended to read, most likely for my benefit. Who reads standing over a balcony? As usual, I’d smile, pushing my fringe back the way I know makes me look confident, as I blow smoke sideways. And as usual, she’d pretend not to see, or to be annoyed, and quickly go back to her book. For about ten minutes, we play our little game, right until my break is over. And then I stub out my cigarette and return what is left of it into my shirt pocket. They are an expensive habit.

I peel my last potato and drop it into the now filled bucket. One rinse and I have the arduous task of slicing and dicing them for a variety of tomorrow’s dishes. Braised chicken with potatoes. Crinkly French fries. Minced pork and sliced potatoes in a spicy soy sauce. It was always the same. If not for the variety, I would never eat potatoes again.

Mai comes in with the filthy rag to give it a wash. She glances over and I give her a polite smile. She happily beams back at me, the way the supposedly innocent village girl in Chinese serials grins at a boy she likes and you know for sure that she intends to end up with him. A shiver runs down my spine and I rinse off a knife to start on the potatoes, ending our brief communication.

A car drives up outside the verandah. I glance out and see a bright red Toyota. It parks but does not cut off the engine. The man driving it does not get out.

After about half a dozen potatoes, I look at the clock. It is time for a cigarette break. I take out the leftover stub from this morning and light it, while walking casually to the verandah, knowing that my little friend is probably there, waiting, reading a book or doing her homework or combing her hair.

The balcony is empty. This is the first time in weeks that she has not shown up. As I drag on my cigarette, curiosity and even slight worry creeps in. Perhaps she’s just gone out.

A well-dressed young man steps out of the shadows of the stairs that lead to the apartments across the street. Smoking, he pulls up his pants, smiles at the man in the Toyota and gets in. They talk for a while before driving away.

Something creaks above, and I look up to see Miss Coy, closing the cage doors. She is wearing nothing but a long t-shirt. I smile, a little surprised. She glances at me, her face appearing more melancholy than ever. Has something happened? Seeing me, she hesitates. I nod at her, and sweep my hair back, letting my stare linger.

Can we be friends? I ask without saying a word. She answers with a look of disdain. We spend the next minute simply staring each other down. There is definitely something different about her today. She has let her hair down, making her seem older. And she really looks like she isn’t wearing anything underneath the t-shirt. My mind wanders and tension builds in my pants.

And that is when she throws open the gates, climbs up on her plastic stool and without warning, tumbles over the balcony.

A scream pierces the air from behind me. I whip around and Mai faints.

Commotion takes over.

This was originally written as a submission for nanotales. Sadly, it did not get picked, which is why it’s here. Do let me know what you think!

SecondLife

Through a grime-smeared window, the copper sky simmered.

Alice had her back turned towards the glare. She was too lazy to draw the blinds and wanted very much to get back into the dream she had been having.

The radio clock on her nightstand crackled into life. The last few notes of The Girl from Ipanema sounded, and a crisp voice female DJ started to talk about the origins of the tune. It was almost noon.

Crawling out of bed, Alice sat for a moment at the edge and stared out into the sky, letting her eyes adjust to the light. Her body still ached from the accident. The doctor told her it would take a while for the drugs to clear, and stiffness and numbness would persist for as long as two months after.

Outside, the day’s business was picking up. Mark’s Delicatessen across the street was just starting to fill up, while the corner Starbucks already had a line inside. A dog barked on someone’s balcony somewhere along her floor.

Pulling the cords gently, Alice closed her blinds, and began taking off her clothes. Slowly, she peeled away her camisole. Bruises the size of baseballs covered her chest, lower back and stomach, already yellowing in recovery. They did not hurt. None of her injuries did.

Alice examined herself in the bathroom mirror as she removed the rest of her clothing. Similar bruises marred her right upper thigh. On her face, dry skin flaked around the scalp, like dandruff. She peeled a piece off and looked at it, fascinated. It was grey and hard, like scales.

Another side effect.

As she stepped into the bath tub, the phone rang. The machine picked it up. A thin female voice spoke.

“Alice, it’s Ping. Just wanted to check if you wanted to go to the mall today. I need a new dress for tonight. Call me.”

She hung up noisily and the machine beeped.

Alice let the water run over her body. The sensation was always a little bizarre, a little fascinating. It was as though she had grown new, thicker skin. She could feel every droplet of water and yet, with the heat full on, the water did not scald. Yet another side effect.

“You have to be very careful not to hurt yourself because you won’t feel things normally for a while. It just takes a little work to keep reminding yourself not to drink anything too hot or do anything dangerous like stick your hand into the garbage disposal,” Dr Menaka had warned her.

Wrapping her towel around her, Alice stepped into her studio and some old Miles Davis jazz was on. Drying her hair, she listened to Ping’s message again. Alice picked up an S-shaped device from her nightstand and pressed it against her ear, before pressing a button to return her friend’s call.

“Hey. You called?”

“Hey! So how about it? I am evidently a man, because I have no dresses.”

“Come pick me up?”

“Oh so I’m your driver now?” snorted Ping. “Be ready in an hour.”

Alice hung up and thought about lunch. She should be ravenous after 16 hours of no food, but she only felt a tinge of hunger.

“You won’t feel a lot of things normally, for example hunger. You will need to remember to eat regularly, and your stomache will need smaller portions, which is great if you’re thinking of losing weight,” Dr Menaka had said.

She decided to get dressed for a latte and a croissant at Starbucks. Throwing on training pants and a tank top, Alice grabbed her keys and opened the door.

 

“Hey Alice!”

A bleach blonde in a black apron and the signature Starbucks t-shirt greeted Alice cheerily as she joined the long queue that had filled out the tiny Starbucks.

“Hey Pam. How are you?”

“Oh, can’t complain. How are you feeling, dearie?” Pam said, tilting her head back, holding Alice’s right shoulder gingerly, inspecting her from top to bottom with concern.

“I’m just a little stiff, you know. Otherwise, everything seems to be working.”

“You know what’s so funny? A close friend of mine from Tucson just had a similar thing happen to him? He’d been walkin’ around near the river, minding his own business, when this Harley on the road above him went out of control and sort of dove INTO him!”

“Oh my. I hope he’s okay.”

“Well, we weren’t at all worried, until his mom told me that Charlie – that’s his name – had accidentally triggered his SecondLife just two months before when he’d fell into the river during a damn rafting accident? I know, he’s crazy. But he’s fine, really. The thing worked as it should’ve.”

“Oh, I’m glad.”

“Well I gotta go back to work. You take care now.”

“Thanks Pam. You have a good day.”

“Don’t forget to eat!” Pam called back as she waded through the crowd toward the back of the counter.

“Yes!” Alice responded, smiling at her parting friend.

After Alice picked up her coffee and croissant, she decided to stop by the used book store next door to see if a book she’d ordered had arrived. The store was owned by a family friend, Kim and her husband Donald. Today, their son Saul was manning the place.

Saul had been flirting on and off with Alice since she’d moved to the apartments across the street a few months ago, but they’d never dated. And then the accident happened. Saul visited the hospital once and brought her roses. She didn’t know if that was some sort of signal but she liked Saul a lot, and hoped that he would ask her out soon. Last night, he called and had set up a double date “just to get her back into the swing of things”. Hence the dress Ping needed to buy.

Alice entered the cool confines of the store, breathing in the familiar, musky scent. The red afternoon sun filtered in through dusty windows to paint the store in tangerines and browns. Ella sang a crackled tune about blue skies somewhere in the store, which was otherwise deserted. The gentle tinkle of a bell had announced her entrance.

Saul walked out from behind a shelf. Seeing Alice, he smiled widely. Fingers brushed salt and pepper hair nervously, as he moved to the front of the store carrying a stack of books.

“Hey Saul. Did my book arrive?” Alice asked, her eyes scanning the some of the books on the counter and then settling on Saul as she sipped her latte.

“Oh yea. It arrived this morning, actually.”

Saul disappeared behind the counter and emerged with a golden brown book entitled Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion by Alan F. Segal.

“I could’ve brought this to our date tonight,” said Saul in the quiet, softspoken baritone that often made Alice wonder if he was not a serial killer in the making. She also wondered if he could sing. She’d noticed a guitar sometimes in the store.

“Oh, I had some time. Thanks, Saul,” she said shyly, opening her wallet for some cash.

“Oh no, it-, don’t worry about it, Alice. It’s a gift.”

Alice looked up, and found his intense green eyes, looking fondly at her. She could not help but smile.

“No, are you sure? This is a $25 book, Saul.”

“No, it’s my gift. To you. Sort of a welcome back present.”

“Well, thanks Saul. I-…Thank you,” she said, touching Saul’s hand briefly. Alice let it rest for a second before picking up her new book and her coffee. As she walked out, Saul crossed his arms and his generous smile returned.

“I’ll see you tonight. Seven?” she asked, giving him a parting shot.

“Can’t wait,” he said, nodding.

 

The evening turned out splendidly.

Ping and Jason, Saul’s geeky friend from the hardware store a few blocks down, decided to visit a club while Alice and Saul settled on a bottle of viognier back at her apartment. Half a bottle went by before Saul drummed up the courage talk about Alice’s accident. They sat across from each other comfortably in mismatched armchairs, their socked feet on Alice’s badly scratched mahogany table, heels and toes resting against each other, touching, wiggling sometimes, listening to Peter White on Saul’s shiny black Pandora.

First contact. Footsie on top of a table.

“How did you know I like Peter White?” she asked, a little tipsy.

“I like Peter White.”

Alice sipped and snorted.

“What’s so funny?” Saul asked expectantly.

“The wine. Usually, I’d be floored by my third glass. Now, I’m just happy,” Alice giggled, taking another sip.

“Here’s to SecondLife,” Saul held up his glass. Alice responded in kind. Alice curled her toes and touched its tips to Saul’s big socked soles.

“Your feet are huge,” she teased, looking at them through her wine glas.

“Those are toaster covers, not socks.”

Alice laughed openly. Taking another sip, she stood up and started to move to Ken Navarro’s The Sky Today. She looked at Saul and held out her hand.

“Dance with me.”

A small smile played on Saul’s lips. He set down his glass and took her hand. And then he pulled her over gently.

Alice fell on his lap, her wine glass almost spilling. His arms reached around her, and Alice straddled his long legs.

Outside, night fell reluctantly.

 

Perhaps she should’ve waited a while before having sex. It was, after all, their first date. At least she should’ve waited until she got all her nerves back.

Still, it was nice. But nice was not nice for Saul.

Alice giggled.

“What is it?” asked Saul worriedly, bringing her thigh up to his under the sheets, stroking it.

“I can’t wait for my next medical. You know, they’d injected some sort of device in me to check my stats constantly. I’m guessing it shows I had sex.”

Saul frowned.

“Is it bad?”

“Don’t worry, it’s not infectious, Saul.”

“Not very appropriate after-sex talk, baby.”

They laughed softly and kissed and pretty soon, Saul was in her.

“You don’t feel anything?” he asked, moving gently.

“Oh I do. Like I said, I feel every little thing. Just that, it’s a little intense.”

Alice kissed the beautiful man in front of her.

“Is it painful?” he inquired.

“No, it’s not. Like I said, it blocks out all those kinds of sensations. Which is why you have to be gentle with me,” she smiled lazily.

“My pleasure,” Saul said, before taking her into his arms until they became one.

 

“How was it?”

Ping’s eyes were as wide as satellite dishes as they munched on salads the afternoon after.

“It was great. He was…very good.”

“Wow, ‘grats,” Ping said, eating hungrily.

“How was Jason? Where did you guys go?”

“We went to Machi’s, and then parted ways. He’s a nice guy but someone should tell him he might be gay.”

“Why didn’t you?” Alice asked, sipping cold tea.

“I didn’t feel like leaving and didn’t want to be alone,” Ping said after a big bite, looking at Alice cheekily.

“You had sex?!”

“At Machi’s. You know that little phone booths they have? It was nice. You should try it.”

“I think we might wait a while before we do what we did again,” Alice shifted her seat.

“That wild huh? Good for you!”

“I’m sure something somewhere tore but I can’t feel a thing. Maybe I should go check with the doc today,” Alice picked at the remains of her salad.

“I would LOVE to see what Dr Menaka has to say,” laughed Ping.

“You had sex after you almost died. It’s a natural, life-affirming thing to do.”

“But I didn’t. I wasn’t even in emergency. They’ve stopped sending out emergency crews to what they call Code Yellow emergencies. I was out probably two hours before someone called me in and picked me up.”

“Wow. So what is a real emergency?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a heart attack?”

“It’s so strange. A few of my cousins back in Vietnam just had like a bunch of babies, and they JUST had their SecondLifes injected. I mean, I’m almost 25. How backward is that?”

“A whole new generation.”

“Right. Apparently they have even more advanced ones these days, that I guess would make a heart attack a Code Yellow, I dunno. They had to pay extra for those.”

“Wow. I wished we had upgradeable ones. Or ones that reset faster.”

“So you can have wild sex sooner?” smirked Ping.

Alice threw a crouton at Ping.

 

A visit to the hospital always unnerved Alice, because she had to pass the geriatric wards on her way. After all, old age was the only thing that killed people these days. That was what the Code Reds were for now. Saving the human race from their natural expiry dates.

An old man hobbled past her tied to a drip. He nodded at her and suddenly started to cough violently. Phlegm shot out and onto the floor, dark green and thick. 

“Oh, I’m sorry.” He wiped his mouth feebly with a bare hand and looked around helplessly for a nurse.

“I’ll get that for you, mister,” Alice said kindly, pressing a button on the wall. A male nurse down the hall touched something on his wrist and looked up, before walking toward them.

“You’re very kind. Thanks miss,” the old man said, looking at Alice fondly. She smiled and continued on her way. Reaching Dr Menaka’s office, Alice knocked. A dark, Indian lady looked up from a clipboard around a bunch of machines.

“Alice! How are you? You’re not due for a checkup are you?” Dr Menaka asked cheerfully, touching Alice’s arm. She’s one of those women who should be a mother but is not. Which is great for the hospital.

“Oh no. I just wanted a zap to see if everything’s okay.”

“Oh. Why? Did you hurt yourself?”

“I might’ve.” Looking around, she whispered.

“I had sex last night. A lot of it.”

Dr Menaka raised an eyebrow, the ends of her brown lips quivering with a restrained smile.

“Okay. Wait here.”

Dr Menaka came back with a device that looked like a phone. On it was a touchscreen that made little bleeps when she touched it. Alice sat on the exam table. Dr Menaka tapped the device a few more times.

“Looks like you might’ve just had a small vaginal tear, nothing serious. The tracker indicates you’re going to be fine.”

The good doctor leaned forward.

“But don’t push it.”

Alice grinned.

“Thanks doc. See you in two weeks?”

“You bet. Have a good day, Alice.”

Her phone rang as she walked past the geriatric wing again, her eyes pulling away from people she imagined should’ve died a long time ago but for their SecondLifes. People who could’ve withstood anything had their systems not aged.

The US was the first country to adopt the SecondLife program on a large scale, simply because it was an American scientist, Sandy Masterson, who’d come up with the solution to end one of life’s biggest problems: death. That was 30 years ago. Today, a whole generation of SecondLife implanted babies had become adults. Alice is one of them.

The device, a combination of minute wireless biomechanical devices implanted in the brain and other vital parts of the body, could force the body to withstand any impact, virtually turning a human being into a superhero in a split second that lasted for a couple of hours, with neural effects lasting a couple of months. Skin and other protective tissue thickened. Blood vessels enlarged. Senses became acute.

The device tapped into a once unchartered region of the brain now called The Seventh Sense or the Survival Sense to create the chemicals necessary for the full process. What made it so ingenius was that it could only be triggered by a unique unmanufacturable chemical reaction, a condition we know as fear of imminent death. It is a state not easily manufactured, which made the device fool proof.

Naturally, the science triggered many ethical debates and soon, lawmakers began restricting how SecondLife was used and how the science should advance, to avoid abuse. All SecondLife could do today was to save a person’s life in the event of a vehicle accident or an unpredicted condition such as a person’s first heart attack or a stroke. Upon discovery of an illness, the device would be reprogrammed to only protect during imminent harm. Yearly health checks became mandatory. It was a small price to pay for life preservation.

 

“My doctor thinks we should lay off the sex for a while,” Alice muttered into Saul’s chest that afternoon, as they sat together at the couch, reading. She breathed in the clean scent of his shirt, and looked up.

Saul thumbed his glasses and smiled.

“Okay. How’s an hour?”

Alice chuckled, and turned a page on her new book, snuggling deeper into Saul’s chest.

“I’m glad you’re back, Alice.”

Saul kissed her hair and closed his eyes.

“Me too.”

Outside, the afternoon sun began its descent, making long and sleepy shadows on the burning pavement. Somewhere, a car screeched. Someone yelled. And then, the gurgling cries of a neighbour’s newborn took centerstage in a symphony of life’s little sounds.

The boy who broke my heart (finale)

What happened between Leroy and me proved, beyond a doubt, that belief alone is futile.

That no matter how much one wanted some things to be true, those things can remain as unchangeable as ever.

And you know how obsessive teenagers can be about these things. No one in the entire world wanted this to be true more than me.

Of course, to everyone else, it was doomed from the start. Even to me, although I chose not to see it. I believed it. I just didn’t want to look at it. It’s like having a dream you don’t want to wake up from. Have you ever tried attempting to stay asleep during a good dream? It’s impossible. You’re approaching the end of your last sleep cycle. You’re peeling back the phases. Your body temperature’s rising.  Your heart beat picks up. Somewhere, an alarm starts to ring.

It becomes just a matter of time.

The first time I noticed a crack in the illusion of my little coup was when Leroy and David decided to visit me at home.

Perhaps that was the last straw.

Back then, we lived in a small brick and wood cottage-like house built probably in the ’50s, which sat in the middle of a huge piece of land.

Our garden was gigantic. Mom never planted anything if she could help it, but at the very least kept the grass mowed regularly and the two papaya trees out back alive. Running around were my three dogs, an alsation named Milo, a cross-breed spitz named Mickey and a maltese terrier named Snowball.

It was a clean, mediocre house. And yet, I knew, in my 16-year old head, my little abode with its shining black cement floors buffed from daily moppings, and its cheap mismatched furniture from the ’70s, had somehow started the whole descent of Leroy’s supposed fondness for me.

He had not even tried to hide it, the disappointment on his face that I was not secretly some rich girl. Not even averagely so, he’d seemed to think, nodding and uttering lowly with that rich voice of his the words ‘aunty’ at my mother, who peered at him over her glasses as though he was one of the exercise books she was marking, and my Koo Ma, who happily brought biscuits and root beer cordial as though I’d just brought home a couple of marriage prospects.

David, who was ironically the filthy rich one, didn’t seem to mind the squalor in which, by the look on Leroy’s face, my family was living. It chafed, that look. I think I might’ve even winced.

And yet, again, I refused to see.

The very next day, it had all gone to hell. He didn’t call and I’d refused to call because I was afraid of what he might say. The next day went by and I’d stubbornly stayed my no-call course. And then it was a week before I’d heard from a sniffling Corinna that David had broken things off with her. That sort of sealed my doom, since David was Leroy’s wing boy and ‘financier’, for David was always the one forking out for the KFC lunches and pool tables and beers.

The week that was the end of Leroy and me ended with a call from Andrea. Like a death knell, it rang somberly one afternoon.

“Jenn? Andrea.”

Surprise.

“Hi Andrea. What’s up?”

“Are you free this afternoon?”

Hesitation.

“Er…sure. What’s up?”

“Wanna go for ice cream?”

This was bad. Had Leroy finally drummed up the courage to ask his bitch to break things off with me?

“Sure.”

“I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”

I hung up. Somewhere, a whimper escaped. I looked around the house that had betrayed me, and it stared silently back. My eyes started to sting with tears. Bitterly, I brushed them off and got dressed.

 

It was perhaps the worst breakup in the history of breakups. More so since the person that was breaking up with me wasn’t even there. He had, supposedly gone to the city looking for work, which was why he had not even called me the week before.

And he wasn’t coming back.

We sat in the restaurant with ice cream David, once again, paid for. So Leroy had both his bitches doing his dirty work. Perhaps that counted for something.

“You knew it was just a matter of time, right?” Andrea asked matter-of-factly. She showed concern that at the same time seemed to mock me.

“We could still hang out, you know?” said David, lighting up a cigarette. He looked at me for a moment, and in his eyes, I saw pity. He’d quickly averted his eyes, and instead watched traffic pass silently outside through tacky one-way glass panes .

I said very little that afternoon. Andrea talked most of the time, criticising Leroy’s heartlessness one moment and extolling his ‘virtues’ the next, going on and on about how people like him were just not practical for ‘people like us’. The whole time, I thought of nothing but going home and curling in bed with a good book. But there was still something I had to do.

From my left pocket, I drew out a little purse. It was bulging with shiny one-cent coins. I had been collecting these for a while because Leroy had told me that he was looking for a coin from a certain year which he said was very rare. This was a slice of Leroy that had remained from the battle Leroy, the boy, had lost to Leroy, the man. A memory of the guy who’d cheered me on at the pool four years ago. A memory I would hold on to for the rest of my life.

“Here. This is his.”

I handed the purse to Andrea. At once, she looked up at me, surprised. She glanced over at the men’s room, where David had gone. Deftly, she opened her backpack, and brought out a plastic bag.

Swimming in it were a million one-cent coins.

It was then that I realised how much of a fool I’d been. I stared at the gleaming pile, and then at Andrea. It was the first time in the two hours we’d been there that I’d actually looked at her. And saw her for what she was. Someone who was even more in trouble than me.

“I’ll give these to him when he comes back,” she said quietly, tucking the coins into their secret compartment in her backpack. It must’ve weighed a ton.

The burden of hope.

 

This is a story I’ve wanted to write for almost 20 years.

I remember trying once, on my dad’s Wordstar, a month after this happened. I started, and stopped at Page 17. The manuscript is perhaps still somewhere in a box in Batu Gajah, where my parents live now.

Why has this memory stayed with me for so long? It was the first time, I believe, that I’d ever fallen in love, brief as the whole experience might’ve been.

As for Leroy, we met briefly over a year ago at a club in KL, but as strangers. My girl friend Janice and her brother Clarence (incidentally people Leroy and I went to church with) dragged me dancing after the birth of my second child Skyler, lactating boobs and all. And there he was, in the throbbing darkness, gyrating to the pulse of the music – against another man.

So maybe it really wasn’t about the house!

The boy who broke my heart (Part Deux)

I should’ve suspected something was wrong from the beginning. But I was 16. And hopeful that I was, in all my 16-year old wisdom, wrong.

That the Leroy in KFC that afternoon was not the boy who offered his hand to me at the pool four years ago should’ve set off the bells like it was Sunday morning at Vatican City. From the strapping and wholesome boy-man, the president of a church youth club, he’d become Bad Boy Leroy Chan, lighting up a Salem and using the name of the Lord in vain more than a couple of times. 

When he blew smoke at me, he’d chuckled and pushed me playfully with his shoulder. I’d coughed and coyly averted my eyes, all the while wondering if I was dreaming. I’d ended up giving Corinna and hew new boyfriend death stares for no reason.

Leroy wasn’t the only one who’d transformed. Joanne had morphed into an ‘ah lian’ (Malaysian Chinese slang for a girl who tries too hard) version of Girl, Interrupted’s Susanna Kaysen. But she’d seemed unsure of her ‘new status’. Stealing drags from her brother, she’d give me side glances as though I was going to report her to the headmistress, and at the same time challenging me to do so. She was most definitely not the stamp-collecting, junkfood-eating, giggly girl Eunice had adored from four years ago.

And yet, sitting there, swathed in cigarette smoke, the arrogant me wanted to believe. I wanted to believe that all these years, Leroy Chan had against hordes of crazy teenage girls who, if rumours can be trusted, kept the family phone so busy his parents had to change their number, cradled a fondness for me. Who knew? Perhaps it was the way I laughed. Perhaps it was how I’d made him laugh. I knew my winning personality would come in handy one day.

I needed to believe.

 

I should’ve known something was wrong when Andrea called me.

Ah Andrea, Victor’s older sis. Big-boned, boisterous, plainer than even me Andrea, who had the bad fortune to always end up as someone’s big sister in school, particularly boys she liked. We’d hung out back when I was still attending church. It was the unspoken rule then that Leroy was hers. No one disputed that fact, not even Leroy. No one dared to.

When Andrea identified herself on the phone, I’d almost hung up, afraid that she would somehow jump out of the phone and beat me up for sitting next to her boyfriend. Was Leroy still her boyfriend? Was he ever?

And then I’d caught myself. I was 16. I was older. She might’ve been bigger than ever but I felt I had the chops to stand up to her.

The fact she sounded friendly did not make me drop my guard. Nice Andrea was scary, because she was well known for being crudely honest.

“So I heard you are going out with Leroy Chan?”

“Wow. From Victor?”

“Who else?”

A polite laugh, and then silence.

“We’re just friendslah,” I said quickly.

“You’re going out with him again tomorrow right?”

“A bunch of us are. I’m just accompanying my friend Corinna and that David guy. Are you co-”

“I need to tell you something, Jenn,” Andrea cut in

Another pause.

“Yeaa?”

“What if I were to tell you that Leroy is…he likes you?”

The room was suddenly very hot.

“Who told you that?” I turned on the standing fan. It started to whir loudly and I quickly switched it off.

More pausing.

“Leroy.”

She sounded disappointed.

“Er,…” I sat down noisily at my dad’s computer.

“Anyway, he wants to know how you feel about him. Before he, you know…tries.”

A part of me was jumping for joy. The other was holding that part down with one hand, and trying to continue the conversation coherently.

“I dunno.”

My best ‘blur’ act. 

Silence, and then a sigh.

“Do you like him?”

Eunice’s head appeared through the door. I held up a finger but was grinning so widely she frowned and came in.

“I dunno, Andrea. I haven’t seen him in so long,” I tried to sound all cool and reasonable.

“Well. It’s Leroy Chan, Jennifer. Everyone has a crush on him.”

I laughed politely.

“Maybe,” I said uncomfortably. And then “I dunno, man.”

“Well have fun this Saturday,” Andrea answered curtly.

“Okay. Thanks, Andrea.”

I spent the next 15 minutes jumping on my bed, shouting “he likes me!” while Eunice watched, rolling her eyes.

It was the happiest day of my life.

 

Leroy and I went out for approximately two months. We held hands. We snuggled. We looked into each other’s eyes.

On Valentine’s Day 1989, he took me for dinner with Corinna and David and then he drove around town.

The highlight of the evening was when we bumped into one of my seniors at school, Pauline, who’d proceeded to call the whole world after that to inform them of my undeserving good news. The next day, I went to school as the Girl Who Snagged Leroy. At recess, all the cool seniors came to sit by me, assessing me from top to bottom, suddenly very interested in the music I liked and the sports I played, while my friends ate their mid-morning meals gingerly, quaking in their canvas shoes, stealing reverent sidelong glances at my new best friends. These were people who never even looked at us before today. Only Corinna knew what was going on, and she’d sat chewing her fish balls happily as the Girl Who Introduced Leroy to the Girl Who Snagged Leroy.

THAT became the happiest day of my life.

The boy who broke my heart (Part One)

The first time I saw him, he was naked.

Except for two Speedos. One covering his unmentionables, and another his head.

Only 13, he was already a six-foot Greek God, with a voice like liquid wood. A lifeguard at the school pool, Leroy was tall, dark and handsome, exactly how women on TV said handsome men ought to look.

“You can do it, c’mon!” he shouted encouragingly from the other end of the pool, grinning at 12-year old me.

I don’t need your encouragement. I can swim fine, I thought indignantly before ducking into the water and kicking off. Five feet out, I broke the surface and freestyled across 25 metres of gradually deepening water.

A little over two minutes, I touched tile. Someone dived in over me, splashing my emerging head. A hand appeared, and then a face. Pristine white teeth and dark, black eyes.

“That was good!” Leroy said, that smile sending all kinds of nerves off.

I took his hand, lean and sinewy, and proceeded to hoist myself clumsily up. I almost slipped back into the water. And as though it was his fault that I was an oaf, walked off without a word.

That was my first encounter with Leroy Chan, the first boy who’d break my heart four years later.

*****

I had a principle about dating good-looking guys even when I was just a teenager. Because I was only an average-looking girl, popular boys were out of my league. It was a fact I accepted because it was fair. I wasn’t Teen Princess material, so why should I expect Teen Prince boyfriends?

This principle involved a very sobering sub-principle: that if a good-looking boy did look at me, he actually wanted something other than to ask me out.

Usually, I was the go-to for my pretty friends.

If not, I was the ‘go-through’.

Either way, I was being used.

And I did not like being used.

Still, teenage life was a difficult time. As we all know, teens are not tactful creatures. All I cared about was how cool I was, being friendly with all these popular guys who were boyfriends of my popular friends. I was ‘in’ and that was all that mattered. I knew my time would come when someone would like me for who I was, not how I looked.

Which was why I was an idiot to think that Leroy was such a boy.

*****

When I turned 16, just one more year shy of a Form Five senior, I had dated several guys. 16 is a good age for a Malaysian girl. It is the honeymoon year in school terms. Just after SRP (The First Exam) and a year before SPM, aka The Big Exam. I had aced my SRP and earned my place as being cool AND smart. It was a great time.

By dated, of course I mean hold hands for two weeks while you get groped in the dark and chat on the phone ’til the cows come home or at least until your mom yanks the telephone cable off the wall. There was Andrew, who I sort of outgrew, literally. The last time I saw him in 1993, I was half a head taller. And Zam, who just wasn’t good for me because he’d dropped out of school and very clearly was in for the sex. In Malaysian Islamic law, if you’re caught having sex with a Muslim, you’d have to get married or pay $500. I didn’t have $500 nor did I want to get married just for the sex, so I declined less than politely and we broke up.

As for Leroy, we saw each other very rarely. For a year after the swim meet, we’d become church friends. He was the youth club president and I was a youth club member. It was a cordial acquaintance and he turned out to be quite a cool person, not at all the jerk I thought all good-looking guys were. His sister Joanne and my sister Eunice became best friends but fell out after a couple of years for some reason. And then we simply stopped going to church and I focused on my exams. We’d simply lost touch.

*****

The next time I saw Leroy was four years after the swim meet. I was 16, and had agreed to go with my friend Corinna to a group date because she was nervous about meeting someone named David and needed moral support. It was for lunch, after school, and we were going for ice cream or something at the spanking new KFC in town.

When we walked into the post-lunch almost-empty restaurant, on a table in the middle of the floor were four people. A chubby guy who was feeding his face. Another girl still in uniform with her back to us, holding hands with some guy still in uniform, staring romantically into each other’s eyes.

And Leroy Chan.

Wearing a loud floral shirt. And dark green school pants. Eating a banana split.

He looks up, sees me and his mouth curves into a languid grin, like the Cheshire cat welcoming its prey.

“Well oh my God if it isn’t Jennifer Tai.”

There’s that deep timbre of a voice again. I am awestruck. Is it possible but has he become even more good-looking? How fair is that?

I tug consciously on the straps of my turquoise school uniform, regretting the two noodles I had for recess.

“Do you KNOW him?” Corinna whispers, clearly shocked, her eyes never leaving the chubby boy, who takes a minute from the biggest bowl of ice cream in the world, and gives me a cursory nod. The girl sitting next to him turns around. It is Joanne. Her boyfriend is Victor, an old friend from church.

“Wow. Long time no see, guys,” I say meekly, sitting down on my designated seat in between Leroy and Victor. ”

Corinna has clearly forgotten about the coincidence as she snuggles, giggling, into the-boy-who-must-be-David’s ready arm. She wipes chocolate from his smudged mouth affectionately. I smile at nobody.

Leroy playfully bumps his shoulders at me. Joanne gives me an uncomfortable look. She wonders if I’m going to ask why she’s not been visiting Eunice. I do the right thing and keep quiet.

“So how have you been? Fancy seeing you here today.”

Leroy is flirting with me. I am awkwardly flattered, and suddenly aware that I am not exactly looking my best.

“Okaylah. How are you guys? How’s church?” I ask politely.

We talk about old friends and make plans for the weekend. Suddenly, I am one of them. And then I realise that I may be set up. Am I to be Leroy’s girlfriend in this little group threesome? Oh Shit. Me.

It is when I reach home that day that I am able to digest the afternoon. I mention to Eunice that I’d been hanging out with Joanne Chan, and she waves her off.

“She’s not my friend anymore,” she says casually. I can see it hurts her but she is also not someone who dwells on her feelings.

“She’s like all boy-crazy and everything. I don’t need her.”

“Well, we’re sort of hanging out this weekend. Going to see a movie.”

“You and Joanne Chan? Why?”

“Not me and Joanne Chan. Me and her brother Leroy, my friend Corinna and this new guy called David. Joanne and Victor. Remember Victor Aw?”

“No?” Eunice is being mean.

“Well, we‘re going out.”

“None of my business since I never get to go anywhere.” She goes out of the room and slams the door.

The phone rings. It stops.

“Fer! Phone!” my mother yells from the study. We pass each other and she smiles, “It’s a boy. But I don’t recognise the voice?”

I shrug.

I pick up the phone. It is Leroy. Holy crap. Corinna must’ve given him my number.

We talk about the afternoon and this weekend, and nothing important. I try to sound casual and nonchalant, a trick I thought I had down pat but it is hard to breathe thinking that Leroy Chan is actually talking to me on the phone VOLUNTARILY. Eunice comes in and stares at me, crossing her arms, rolling her eyes. I shoo her away and spend the next 20 minutes trying to sound uninterested.

In a few hours, I will be lying in bed, unable to sleep. I will be staring at my asbestos ceiling and listening to the loud whir of our floor fan, grinning into the darkness.

If this is a dream, don’t let it end.

(to be continued)

This tale can also be found at A Tale A Day.

The Escort

My mother believes that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.

I believe otherwise.

I know what people think of me. I may be a lot of things, but naïve is not one of them. I am in the business. Naiveté would be suicide.

Oh, I know the hushed tones that follow my wake. I know that when I walk into a room, silence falls like a fog, and at its heels, a sweeping low murmur follows, trailing behind as I hang closely on the arm of yet another gentleman.

Eyes, peering from corners, pierce and search and probe. Mouths purse and pulsate with words I know are ripping me to shreds. Sometimes, your carefully coiffeured heads even shake, ever so slightly, before turning away, unable to look on and yet, powerless to resist.

I know all this. I have learnt, with time, to look, instead between the eyes and at foreheads, at the frames of spectacles and the bridges of your arrogant noses. And most of all, into space, all the while seeming oblivious to the attention I am drawing.

As a technique to distract myself, and to make the evenings pass more pleasantly, I have also learned to listen, to absorb, digest and even offer an opinion on any of the topics my gentleman callers like to discuss. The deepening crisis in Darfur. The latest law suits against two Malaysian bloggers. The future of a Democrat-led US government. Of course, I leave most of the talking to the men.

After all, I am not paid to talk.

You, with your judgments and your resentment and your hurt. When will you learn? Did you really think that you could hold on forever? Did you really think you could win with your love and your understanding and your patience? Your youth. Your looks. Your spirit. They all slip away. Even for me, these things will one day take flight.

But not today.

Today, I am the one all your husbands and boyfriends and fiances are looking at. Their eyes, admiring, probing, exploring. I don’t mind. That is half of why I’m here. But they will return home with you, and I will just be a memory, a fantasy. A reminder even, perhaps. And that is all.

Until one of them decides to call me, that is. If that happens, then your disdain is perhaps justified. Of course, I may just be the tip of the iceberg.

I almost always am.

Sometimes, after the deed is done, I make my curiosity known. Why, really, do men cheat?

“Variety. Lust. You’re impossible to resist,” says one of my more charming clients.

“Beauty. Men are visual creatures.” Usual answer.

The most profound answer I’ve ever gotten, which was also the scariest, was that cheating is man’s most harmless sin.

“I could do a lot worse,” this Datuk said to me, as his eyes held mine steadily. He did not even blink. The next day, I’d requested to never be paired up with him again. Luckily for me, he preferred another.

I know what some of you think, in those over-educated yet poorly exposed minds of yours. That perhaps I come from a poor family. That fate has forced on me a life of debauchery, perhaps brought on by inept parenting, severe neglect or worse, drugs.

Wrong again.

My father is a lawyer and my mother a newspaper clerk at the New Straits Times. I see them every two weeks and pained as they are to know what I do for a living, particularly my dad who avoids my visits whenever he can, they have stopped trying to change or understand me.

I was brought up as well as any child in the 90s could have been raised in a small town, on a steady diet of Sunday church, old-fashioned discipline by way of the cane, and tired after-work seat-of-the-pants parenting which resulted in me spending most of my time in my room, alone, reading.

Somewhere along the way, I discovered that I was different, somewhat removed from my parents, my friends, the people I grew up with. And they too discovered in time that I did not quite belong. And it wasn’t just my looks or the way my body had developed, for I had suddenly grown up one day, all breasts and legs and smooth, flawless, fair skin. So different from my dark-skinned, petite parents that even they were convinced that they had taken the wrong baby home. But no, it wasn’t that.

It was my soul that refused to fit in. My spirit, while addicted to pleasure, did not desire love. And so, I did not know how to show love because I could not feel or care for anyone. There is nothing in me that wants to love. Not for my friends. Not for all the boys in town who fell in love with me. Not even for my parents.

I am a walking abyss. And I cannot explain it.

Which, of course, makes me perfect for this job, doesn’t it? Can a person who doesn’t feel be judged for stealing away husbands and boyfriends? I do not want them. This is simply a means to an end for me. The pleasure. And the profit. That is all.

Two months ago, one of my clients has begun actively pursuing me romantically. He is extremely rich, and wants me for a second wife. He tells me that he is hopelessly devoted to me, and even loves me. In spite of my rather tragic…’condition’, he perseveres.

Yesterday, he proposed on bended knee. It was quaint and sweet. Without answering, we made fierce love because I had needed it. But before he left, I told him that I was going to keep the 14-carat princess cut diamond ring, but that my answer would be no.

He’d almost slapped me. What stayed his hand? True love? Huh. I know that he is an aggressive, physical man. I have seen his quivering, stuttering wife at functions and parties he insists I attend, even if it means being on the arm of his friends. I suspect he even knows that they fuck me after the ruse is over. Yes, I’m sure it is love, although I will never understand it.

I’m sure he will return. He has called me several times and left many messages, but tonight is a busy night for me. One of my New York clients is in town and he is one of few who makes me laugh. I enjoy his company immensely, and the sex after is often satisfying. If I am truly to settle down one day, with or without love, Tom is the type of man I will select. Of course, the real question is if he will want someone like me.

So you see, there is no use despising me. Since I do not feel, your hatred is wasted on me.

If I may give you a piece of advice: Accept that I will always be here. Accept that there will be more of us as time goes by. Such is the way of the world for thousands of years. It is odd that you, and your kid, still fight it.

So the real question is, when will you learn?

Pictures

I look at the oddly-coloured photograph.

Eyes that are supposed to be black had lightened to a reddish brown. A turquoise sweater had turned purple. I remember that pair of jeans. It was a light denim, but had somehow turned a reddish teal.

The photograph is at least 25 years old. Time and cheap chemistry has turned the memory of that day various shades of bloody.

I take it over to my study and tack it on the huge cork board above my rubber wood desk, this picture of me riding a pony with my hair tied back, beaming down at the photographer, very likely my mother, an avid hobby photographer. According to my father, everyone in the early 20s loved taking pictures because digital cameras had just been introduced, replacing ‘film’ cameras, whatever those were. But my mother, she was obsessed with photography.

I have many memories of Mother going everywhere with what she called her Digital Rebel, which was her first digital camera, a gift from dad. We would be driving along some lonely road in the country and she’d suddenly screech to a halt, scramble out of the car and then spend half an hour snapping away at the scenery. Fiona, my younger sister, and I would sit in the car and watch her. Fiona, who was only two then, would cry when she took too long, and Mother would wait for her sobbing to escalate to an undeniable level before packing her tripod up and moving along. It never occurred to her that someone could come by and take us away or, God forbid, harm us. Mother could never resist a photo opportunity.

Mother’s pictures are all over our family home. While she was obsessed with taking them, it was dad who had them organized, backed up on the computer, printed, framed and hung. And that was how my sister and I knew that my father was a man who was very much in love, for he was, and still is, not an expressive man. Very few Chinese men are, even though he is modern as they come. He is mostly only affectionate to Fiona and me. For Mother, he created a shrine of her photography.

And this is irony: When Mom died, we’d needed a photograph of her for the wake, and there was none. Most were family portraits, and even those were mostly of dad and us, since she was always the photographer. I remember having to go through hard disk after hard disk of family photos, only to come up with three choices that we did not have to crop. One was when she was in her wedding dress, holding up a glass of bubbly. One was a side profile of her and a newly minted me, sitting by a window. And the third was a black and white side profile of Mother, face obscured by her camera, taking pictures of the skyline at Alki in Seattle. And then Dad told us that he remembered taking a proper picture of her, just to test out a new Nikon he’d bought for her about ten years ago, which was to his knowledge, the most recent shot of her. However, that picture was never found.

“Your Mother had a bad habit of deleting most of her own photos because she said I took bad pictures,” said Father, at once angry and sad.

The discoloured picture of five-year-old me on a pony was taken when we were living in Washington, at a farm that also doubled as a school. Fiona attended preschool there for a couple of years before we moved to England. A few years later, Mother found out she had liver cancer. I was twelve and Fiona was nine, when I saw dad and mom hugging in their bedroom. Mother was crying, her back facing the door. They both were, although dad did not shake nor make the painful sounds Mother did. His eyes were red and he simply stared at me for a while through the open door. And then he brought his finger up to his lips, and signaled for me to leave them alone, and had moved his lips slowly to say, “I love you.” I’d nodded, closed the door quietly and gone back to bed, wondering if it was something Fiona or I did.

Mother fought 18 years before she finally succumbed. And even in defeat, her body bore little evidence that she had ever been ill. The miracle of modern medicine and, I believe, contentment with her lot, which is a principle my mother believes is underrated, preserved her on the outside, while only postponing the inevitable on the inside. During the last year of her life, Mother was mostly at home, in bed. That year, she stopped taking pictures. When she died, so did everyone else in my family.

I go back to the box of Mother’s things. In it is Mother’s Canon Digital Rebel, another Nikon camera and the knick-knacks that, I assume, go on either of the cameras. Slowly, I assemble the Canon. Amazingly, the batteries still work. I lift it up and aim at my desk and the picture of me. Adjusting the angle, I click, and then look for the image to pop on the little screen. It still works. As though in disbelief, I stare at the camera.

“I am a Canon man,” my father’s voice breaks my reverie. He looks at me, a faint smile on his lips. It fails to hide the sorrow in his voice and his eyes. I smile at him, and return the camera to the box. He walks in and picks it up as though it is made of crystal.

“Always was,” he continues, looking at the camera and turning it every which way.

“This was state-of-the-art when it was made. But your mother decided after almost 20 years that a Nikon was the way to go,” he chuckles sadly and shakes his head.

“We had the biggest fight over it. In the end, as usual, she won. But she still used this old thing from time to time. It was her way of placating me.”

And without another word, my father returns the camera to the box and carries it out of the study.

The Gift

Clutching my faux Gucci duffel bag stuffed with dirty laundry, I stood by the roadside waiting for my cab. My heart raced with anticipation.

From my right jeans pocket, I fished out my shiny new Prada wallet, a belated birthday present from Martin, a co-worker. Poor guy must’ve spent his entire month’s salary on it. It smelled richly of factory-fresh leather. Has he not heard of Petaling Street? The guy must really like me.

Sighing, I opened my thousand-ringgit wallet. Inside the note slit sat two old one-ringgit notes that the government did not even make anymore. I’d managed to find them deep in one of my junk drawers in my rented room, among old expired Durex condoms, lighters and a few hundred or so pens accumulated since college.

And coins. I stuffed my left hand into my slightly bulging left pocket and touched the remainder of my single person’s wealth. I already knew how much was in there. Four ringgit and thirty sen.

How the hell am I going to get all the way across town?

I knew I should’ve just taken a bus, but the thought of lugging a fake but very real-looking, very heavy Gucci bag up and down a mini bus did not appeal to me. In fact, I might even get pickpocketed, and whoever it was that thought he’d struck gold by lifting my nice new Prada wallet would soon discover that I was not unlike every other working girl in the city of Kuala Lumpur. We are, most of the time, not what we seem to be.

Before I could change my mind, my cab arrived. I opened the back door and threw my bag in, climbing in after it into its dark confines. A strong, sweet smell of cheap air freshener assailed my senses, almost knocking me out. And the air conditioning was on full blast. The loud whirring almost drowned out the throaty wailing of Malay slow rock wafting from the radio.

“Halo cik. Section 17?” the young Malay driver asked me, turning his head slightly towards me as I closed the door.

“Yea,” I answered, closing my nose and mouth with a hand for fear of perfume poisoning. He nodded and brought the car slowly out of my condominium.

As we entered traffic, I tried not to look at the meter on his dashboard, which was still at two ringgit two minutes after we set off, but had begun to increase steadily as he accelerated towards our destination. Six ringgit. How far would that take me? Not as far as Section 17, that much I knew.

Money. It has always been a problem with me. I’ve been working for two years now, trying to stay afloat but by the middle of the month, I’m left with nothing more than Maggi mee money and bus fare. The reason I could not drive my car was because the tank was empty. I had no money to buy fuel.

Being 27 and broke is extra pathetic when you’re carrying around what people believe to be a very expensive bag and what you know to be an honestly expensive wallet with no money in it. But like many girls my age, life in big city Kuala Lumpur means having to keep up with the Joneses. Or maybe here we call it the Khans or Mericans or the Wongs. I love to shop, no doubt about it. The taxi driver, who probably earns a little less than what I get waiting tables at the pub (I’m an attractive girl, so the tips can sometimes be a little ridiculous, but I’m not complaining), has more money than I do, and he probably has a wife and kid. Two kids even.

The meter read four ringgit and we were only half way there. My thumbs nervously stroked the smooth leather on my new wallet and I brought it to my nose, inhaling the leathery scent so that it would somehow replace the stench of the air refreshener that was still blowing from the air conditioning at a hundred miles an hour.

Martin. He was an overweight, bespectacled nerd who did not fit in at all into the overall profile of a trendy Bintang Walk pub. And yet, because he was loyal and hardworking, the bosses kept him around to do the cashiering and perhaps even to help look out for us girls because of all the male waiters and workers at the pub, excepting the gay ones, he had never hit on any of us.

Of course, that was before he gave me the wallet. It was out of the blue as well, because someone even had told me that Martin might be gay since he was always so polite and courteous around us. Sure, he also looked a little like a toad and could stand to lose some weight, so he might just be shy, but why me? There were plenty of more good-looking girls at the pub. Did he choose me because he thought that because I wasn’t the most out of reach, that he might actually have a chance? The thought sent a chill down my spine.

I glanced at the meter. Almost six ringgit. And not almost there yet. I let out a loud sigh.

“Wah, penat cik? Apa buat?” asked the driver, trying to be cheeky.

“Banyak kerjalah,” I lied.

I turned my attention at the orange highway lights and tried to enjoy the drive, still breathing in the wallet because the perfume was beginning to give me a headache. Instinctively, I opened the wallet to allow more of the leathery smell out. In doing so, I began to admire the many finely crafted compartments of the wallet, so beautifully and lovingly made perhaps in Italy (when I suspected that it was most probably beautifully and lovingly made in China). I’d not really transfered all of the other knick-knacks from my old and worn Esprit wallet over, just the essentials. 

As I explored the wallet, I also explored ways to thank Martin without actually sleeping with the guy. Did he want to sleep with me? Would someone like Martin buy a thousand-ringgit wallet to sleep with a girl? It did not make sense. He was an old-fashioned sort of person, although he smoked and had tried to laugh it off when we asked if he was gay. He did not even say anything when he handed me the wallet. He acted as though it was an afterthought, stopping me as I clocked out, and then walking away quickly before I could even say a proper thank you.

Also, if he knew me, he would know that it takes far less than a thousand ringgit to get me to bed. I’m not cheap. I just don’t sleep around for money. I sleep around for the sex. And I have responded to gestures far less extravagant with far more ‘gratitude’.

Pondering this little issue managed to distract me from the looming problem of having to pay the cab fare of what looked to be over eight ringgit in about three minutes. As the taxi slowed down to turn the few corners that would bring me to my parent’s home, I fumbled with the coins in my pocket, grabbing fistfuls out carefully without dropping any into the abyss that is the pitch black floor of the taxi or under the front seats.

As I twisted and turned, something fell out of the wallet from one of the many compartments of the wallet that I had left open on the seat. It was a piece of paper, folded twice, quite thick and looked like a warranty or some sort of guarantee for the wallet.

The taxi stopped, and the driver pressed a button on the meter.

“Sepuluh setengah, cik,” he stated the obvious, adding a ringgit for answering the cab call. Great. Without thinking, I opened the piece of paper and out dropped a ten-ringgit note.

Happy Birthday, Kay.

Wishing you many happy returns, and all that.

Love,
Martin

ps. It’s good luck to put money in a gift wallet. Here’s hoping you like it.