Now That It's Over

1

AI LING

The body lies on the quiet beach, its long hair wild and brittle, streaking across the face and back. It has floated for a day on the waves, before finally being deposited on this stretch of fine, pristine sand, the shoreline of a tiny island that lies nine kilometres southwest of the coastal town of Phuket, Thailand, one of over four hundred such islands sprinkled all over the Andaman Sea. Until the body arrived, the only presence on the island has been a family of crabs that found refuge there—digging holes in the sand, multiplying in great numbers—as well as the occasional seagull that would pause and rest on its way to or from Phuket.

In its wake, the body—a woman in her mid-thirties—has brought along a school of dead fish, mostly red snappers and garoupas that the fishermen in the vicinity hunt for their livelihood; the decomposing piscine bodies litter the beach, their silvery corpses sparkling under the sun, already starting to reek.

A seagull flies down and lands on the lower branch of a coconut tree. It eyes the sea with a weary, suspicious stare, and then scrutinises the woman’s body, as if waiting for her to stir. But she remains motionless.

It had been Ai Ling’s idea to go to Phuket for a vacation.

“It would be a nice change to our usual year-end holidays,” she told her husband Wei Xiang over breakfast. “The price of air tickets is cheap, thanks to the promotions going on for the December holidays. It’d be easy to get tickets to Phuket.”

“It’s already November, isn’t it too late to plan? What about work?” said Wei Xiang, looking up from the newspaper. “And you were in Thailand just last month.”

“I’ll get someone to cover for me,” she said.

For the past four years, Ai Ling had worked as a preschool teacher in a childcare centre, taking care of children aged one to five. It was the longest job she’d had after graduating from the National University of Singapore with a Social Sciences degree. The job market was in a bad shape the year she graduated, and for years all she could find were temporary contract jobs that only lasted from two to six months. Fortuitously, she was able to find something more permanent, as a secretary at a mid-sized air-con repair company—a job recommended to her by Cody, a close friend from university—which she held onto for a year before quitting out of boredom. She hated the idea of taking calls, making coffee and scheduling her boss’s calendar as a long-term career, even though the pay was decent enough and her boss treated her well. When she told Wei Xiang she wanted to quit, he tried to reason with her: the job was stable, regular hours, no overtime, good salary. But with her mind made up, there was nothing he could say to change it. The teaching job at the childcare centre came along just a few months later, reinforcing the belief that she had made the right decision.

Once Wei Xiang agreed to the Phuket trip, Ai Ling went about checking the prices of tickets online and borrowing Lonely Planet guidebooks from the public library. Cody had visited Phuket two years before with his boyfriend Chee Seng, and over coffee one afternoon, Ai Ling asked him to join them on the trip.

“It would be fun, just like old times. God, how long has it been since we last travelled together? Since our university days?”

“Yes, years ago,” Cody said. “To Bangkok, for our secret getaway, where I broke your heart, and then you married Wei Xiang after. Do you still remember that trip?”

“Asshole, still dare to say. Lied to me and dragged me into the mud with my little crush.”

“You were too blind to see it, so obvious to everyone else. I made it very clear to you, but you didn’t pick up the hints.”

“How could I know? It’s not as if you had a sign over your head screaming ‘gay’,” Ai Ling said, mock-punching Cody in the arm. “So how, you want to join us?”

“I don’t know. Does Wei Xiang mind if we tag along?”

“He’s perfectly fine with you guys, you know that. He won’t mind at all.”

“Let me ask Chee Seng then, see whether he’s interested. He hates when I make any decision without asking him first.”

A few days later, Cody called and told Ai Ling to go ahead and book the tickets for him and Chee Seng. His voice over the phone was upbeat but somewhat restrained, as if he were carefully mulling over his words. When she asked if anything was wrong, he said, “There’s a lot of shit going on in our lives right now. So I think we really need a break to get away, you know? To sort things out.”

When Ai Ling pressed for more details, Cody became cautious and vague in his replies. She gave up trying after a while and put the whole matter aside; she’d take it up later when the time was right.

Fortunately, there were still available seats on flights to Phuket during the Christmas period, after she checked with several budget airlines. It would be a good idea to spend the holidays away from Singapore, she convinced herself, to leave behind their busy lives, even for a short while. Good to take things easy, and maybe then she could drum up the courage to break the news to Wei Xiang. She did not think she could keep it from him any longer.

So Ai Ling bought the tickets. They would fly to Phuket via a nine o’clock flight on the morning of Christmas Day and come back four days later.

2

CODY

Your eyes snap open as the television suddenly flares to life. First there are only faint voices, a static buzz of broken, disconnected vowels. Then images appear on the screen, wavy and distorted. Disoriented by the intrusion of light in the dark hotel room, your thoughts scatter in every direction. You peer at the television screen from your position on the floor: the patches of darkness floating on the fuzzy sea of white have slowly assembled themselves into vague shapes and forms. You stare at this ghost of a ghost until your eyes hurt.

The images resolve into a hazy shot of a middle-aged Caucasian man in a tailored suit, sitting behind a desk. The man is nodding his head, his mouth moving, the sound of his words breaking up in stuttering bits. The image jumps and scrolls upwards. You can’t make sense of it. In the corner of the screen, a video is playing within a rectilinear frame: shaky images captured with a mobile phone of the waves sweeping in to shore, toppling huts, smashing into trees and buildings, swallowing everything in sight. The image shifts, now showing the wall of water approaching, with people in the foreground, unaware: food hawkers milling around, a bunch of skinny children drawing in the dirt with their sticks. The video is cut off mid-scene, and the man behind the desk appears again. You pick up the remote control next to you on the floor and switch the television off. The hotel room returns back to tight silence, broken only by the rasp of your breaths.

How long have you been lying here?

As long as you keep breathing, time is immaterial. There is nothing else to consider; every memory or thought is held at bay. The only thing you can feel is a debilitating heaviness, seeping into every part of you—it is a deeply familiar sensation, from a time long ago. A distant memory surfaces: the death of someone—but whom? Your mind is blank.

The curtains are drawn and the lights remain off even with the return of the hotel’s power. All you want to do is to sleep, to slip away and become nothing; there, nothing can touch you. Outside the hotel room, in the flooded streets, the world has turned to water; the infinite sea that thrums with life has taken everything away. You’ve been spared, while Chee Seng—

You blink rapidly. The curtains lighten—weak morning light seeping through the worn, dirty fabric—and then darken again. You feel no thirst or hunger—only the tightening knots of guilt and numbness in your stomach. You turn on your side, pull your knees to your chest. Maybe if you can stay like this, you’ll disappear, slipping into something similar to death, a realm of non-existence. But only if you keep very, very still.

A knock on the door, followed by a pause, and then another few quick raps. Vague shadows in the narrow gap between the bottom edge of the door and the floor. A voice deep and urgent—someone calling out—the words indistinct. Another two knocks. The shadows hesitate, then move away, footsteps fading down the corridor.

You stay very still, close your eyes and wait to fall into the deep well of your dark, swirling thoughts.

3

CHEE SENG

A sharp smell assaults my senses as I stir awake. The hard, wood-planked bed beneath me creaks as I try to move; every stiff muscle in my body shrieks with pain. A frayed stale-smelling blanket is draped over me, looking as though sewn together with different rags. The air in the room is warm, almost suffocating. I manage to lean up onto one elbow; I appear to be in the living area of a small, sparsely furnished hut. Slender beams of sunlight stream through the only window in the room, illuminating the dust motes that dance languidly in the stuffy air.

Directly opposite the bed, a dented soot-stained pot is boiling on a stove, with soft plumes of steam rising from its jumping lid. A sharp hunger comes alive inside me, though my body is too weak to move. No one seems to be around; everything is still. Outside, a songbird is trilling. I open my mouth but no sound comes out; my tongue is thick and my throat feels scraped raw.

I turn my head and see a ceramic bowl holding some kind of dark liquid, on a wooden stool beside the bed. I inch towards it. I try lifting my hands, but they are so sapped of strength that they barely move. I lean over the edge of the bowl and sip—and almost immediately my gag reflex kicks in, and I vomit up the little that was left in my stomach, leaving behind a rancid aftertaste. I spit onto the floor, strings of yellowish saliva sticking to my chin. I start to cough, which causes me to double up in a knife-sharp convulsion of pain. Once it subsides, I lean back and sink deeper into the folds of the rag blanket, and close my eyes, exhausted.

I hear something, the scuffle of someone stepping into the room, and crack my eyelids open to see a figure in silhouette. It approaches the bed and presses a hand to my forehead. Then the hand moves to the back of my head, raising it up. My lips meet the rim of the ceramic bowl. The bitterness of the brew once again causes me to gag, but before I can retch, the foul fluid is poured down my throat, forcing me to swallow it all. Then my head is laid back down, and I fall instantly into a sleep as deep as death.

Dipping in and out of wakefulness, I lose track of the reality around me; the only thing that makes any sense is the recent memory that keeps looping through my mind.

I was lying on the beach after a long tussle with the sea. I could feel the gritty texture of wet sand on my face; my lips were crusted with salt, and a residual metallic taste lingered in my mouth. My stomach churned, and I began to tremble violently, as though I were still trapped in the sea’s undercurrents, being whipped and tossed about, drowning. I forced myself to calm down, then opened my eyes again and surveyed the beach. The harsh sunlight had bleached everything of colour. I had no clue where I was; the long expanse of beach seemed to stretch without end in both directions. Apart from the rhythmic sound of the lapping waves, it was utterly silent.

With great effort, I flipped onto my back. The sky was smothered with billows of heavy rain clouds. I could have lain there forever were it not for the sharp little flints of raindrops now hitting my face. I jerked backward on the sand, away from the breaking waves, suddenly overcome by the primal fear that the water would take me again. I had to leave the beach immediately; despite the pain, I struggled to my feet.

Past the beach was a thick grove of palm and coconut trees, a forest that led to a hilly, craggy ridge via a narrow dirt path. A world of shadows beckoned from within. I took a step, and then another, and stumbled my way into the dark forest.

4

WEI XIANG

The man hears a deep rumbling coming from the distance, a collision of noises that grows into a forlorn, bewildering cry. And he understands what it is, after a while: the crashing of waves.

The sea is coming for him.

The man is standing in a hotel room, looking out of the glass-paned door to the balcony. A woman lies on the bed, deep in slumber. Her pearlescent naked body shines against the white bedsheet; her fingers twitch, the wedding ring catching the pale light from the window, flashing once, twice. The man bends down to the bed, hesitating over whether to wake the woman. He breathes in the warm, musky smell emanating from her body.

The sound of waves grows louder, more insistent. He turns back to the window, to the world outside the room. The sky is grey, made impenetrable by a thick bank of ashy clouds. He opens the balcony door and steps outside. The sight below him is unlike anything he has ever seen before: a tempestuous sea stretching to the horizon. He shivers uncontrollably.

A hand touches his shoulder and shakes the man out of the spell. The woman. The man stares at her, unable to comprehend her immediate presence. The woman turns her gaze to the roiling water, her expression slipping swiftly into disbelief. And for a long time they stand there, side-by-side, mute and unmoving.

The woman lowers her head into her palms, her body heaving as if in deep agony; the man puts a hand on her back, and strokes gently. He can feel the trembles rippling through her, unstoppable, as if the sea itself were churning inside her—urgent, fervent, alive.

Her body, the sea.

The man hears another sound, a cry. He looks out, straining to catch its source, his eyes scanning the surface of the water, and sees it: a small boy enfolded in the waves. The woman looks at the man with stricken eyes, willing him to act. But the man does not move. She takes a step backward, away from his touch, then leaps over the railing of the balcony before the man can even react, and is swallowed whole by the sea below.

In the long moments that follow, the man can only register the silence in his head—a dark, hollow pit that takes in all and gives nothing. The water around him continues to swell. Just as he is convinced that he has lost the woman to the sea, she suddenly breaks the surface of the choppy water, holding the unconscious boy in an arm-lock, their entangled bodies bobbing, appearing and disappearing with every wave. But then, just as abruptly as they first appeared, they are gone again: the waves have pulled backward, as if the sea has sucked in a deep breath, and dragged them both away.

The man lets out an anguished cry. The world he knows is finally gone, and there is nothing he can do to stop it.

Upon waking, Wei Xiang realises Ai Ling’s side of the bed is empty. He sits upright and rubs the sides of his throbbing head. Remnants of the dream are still playing in his mind, some parts so clear that when he closes his eyes he can see them again: Ai Ling and the boy in the waves, disappearing under the water, drawn away from him. He is seized by a sharp moment of panic; he breathes deeply and shakes his head, forcing the strange dream to break its hold on him.

Wei Xiang turns to the digital alarm clock on the bedside table: 8.37am. Ai Ling’s pillow is slightly indented; he reaches over to smoothen it out. He throws off the blanket, gets out of bed, and shuffles into the toilet. The area around the washbasin is wet, and Ai Ling’s toothbrush lies beside the tap; he replaces it in the glass container that they are using to hold their toothbrushes. The room smells of minty toothpaste and lavender-scented talcum powder. Wei Xiang stares in the mirror at the sagging eye bags and days-old stubble of his reflection; his eyes are lustreless, and his skin pale and sallow, the texture of bread dough. How did he get so old, so quickly? Only thirty-eight, yet he feels at least ten to fifteen years older, already a middle-aged man. He sighs, then turns on the tap and splashes his face with cold water, rubbing the skin roughly. He grabs a face towel from the rack and realises Ai Ling has used it that morning. He breathes in her familiar smell, then dries his face.

After stepping out of the toilet, he wonders where Ai Ling could have gone so early. She has always been a morning person, waking at least an hour before him, even on weekends. Sometimes, while half-asleep in bed, Wei Xiang could hear her moving through the flat, doing laundry or getting ready for a five-kilometre run around the neighbourhood park. Maybe she has gone out for a run; her Adidas shoes and running attire are no longer in her luggage. Whenever they travel, she always tries to explore the new surroundings when the day is still young with a short run. “Come on! The air is good!” she would say, trying to drag Wei Xiang out of the hotel bed, but over the many years, he has probably only joined Ai Ling a couple of times.

Wei Xiang checks the time again. Perhaps he should wait for her to come back so that they can have breakfast together at the hotel café. He remembers the porter telling them, when they checked in yesterday, that the continental buffet breakfast was available until ten o’clock. He changes out of his sleeping attire—singlet and boxer shorts—into a white T-shirt and Bermudas, then lies back on the bed. He stares up at the ceiling and recalls their lovemaking the night before: his mouth on Ai Ling’s engorged nipples, the fleshy swells of her breasts, her stifled groans as he moved within her. His skin tingles from the remembered pleasure, and an erection stirs in his shorts. He reaches in and gives his cock a few tugs, then stops himself. This can wait; it is still early.

Even with the windows closed and curtains drawn, Wei Xiang can still hear the sounds of the town coming through, soft and muffled. He thinks of the places they will go to later; Ai Ling has already planned a long day packed with activities and sightseeing. They only managed to check out Phuket’s shopping district yesterday after arriving from the airport, with a trip to its wet market and bazaar, and ended their day with dinner at a beachfront restaurant showcasing a panoramic view of the sea. Wei Xiang reaches for the printout of the itinerary on the bedside table; under one column, Ai Ling has listed some restaurants and cafés, and directions to get to them. She has also printed out a map of Phuket Island and marked down these eateries, highlighting each with a different colour for different days. So typical of Ai Ling, to plan everything down to the smallest detail.

The night before, after dinner, they took a walk along the beach, and stopped at a clearing of rocks on the shore. He noticed the worried look on her face, but when he tried to cajole her into telling him what she was thinking, she became taciturn, even evasive. Her moods can sometimes turn dark, as he has learnt over seven years of marriage, and leave her distant and distracted for days on end, even weeks. Each time she slips into this state, she pushes away from him, retreating into a secret place inside her to which he does not have access; it always pains him to think that his wife does not trust him enough to share whatever is going on in her life. He does not want his marriage to slip into that of his parents’, one that was virulent, destructive.

Even when he was just a young boy, Wei Xiang could clearly sense his parents’ profound unhappiness, flinching at the hurtful words they constantly hurled at each other. His parents’ lives had drifted apart, taking separate paths, until they were practically strangers living under the same roof. For a long time, Wei Xiang could not understand the causes behind his parents’ frequent fights, and where all of it would eventually lead. All he can remember is the fear that ate away at him, that the world was no longer stable and at any time would collapse. He carried this fear as a warning to himself, an old wound which he kept scratching.

Wei Xiang took it upon himself to do whatever he could to keep his family together. Without any prompting, he cleaned his room, put away his shoes neatly in the cupboard, washed his eating utensils, did his homework, folded his clothes, showered and ate and slept at the same time every day, and nailed down his daily routine into exactness and precision. He listened to his parents, obeyed their instructions, came home on time, did not ask to watch television, kept to the rules (and made some of his own), helped out his mother with the housework and went out on errands to buy newspapers or cigarettes for his father or a bottle of soy sauce for his mother. He passed his tests and examinations with flying colours, and received praise from all his teachers for his results in the year-end assessments. He performed as the lead in the school play in Primary Six, which his parents attended together; they even clapped for him. He kept everything in check and in order, and firmly believed that if he did everything perfectly, down to the tee, nothing would ever go wrong, not in his life or in his parents’.

And yet, the fights persisted, worsening in severity and frequency; Wei Xiang would hold himself responsible, believing that his actions, or inactions, were to blame, that he had not done the right thing at the right time—an unseen and unknown catalyst that had sparked off yet another chain of regrettable events. And he would redouble his efforts, adhering even more staunchly to his quest for perfection; he would not give in to negative thoughts, thoughts he would never share with his parents in any case. His faith in his own actions always depended on this belief, and he never swayed from it, even in adulthood.

Later, of course, he came to know the reason for the collapse of his parents’ marriage, a reason that caught him completely by surprise: the death of a brother he never knew. One night when he was in his early twenties, his father told him everything in a state of drunkenness: when Wei Xiang was seven, and still an only child, his mother went away for two months to stay at her sister’s to recuperate from a miscarriage. Alternating periods of sadness and neediness and silence ensued after his mother came back home, strange baffling episodes in which she would pull Wei Xiang into a hug as easily as she would push him aside or ask him to stay in his room and do as he was told. This had also been the beginning of the long stretches of fights that took place between his parents, their angry voices penetrating the walls of his room.

Wei Xiang was stunned by the news, and by the fact that he had been kept in the dark for such a long time, and at the same time he was intrigued by this secret part of their family history. He wondered how his parents had worked in tandem, through the long years, to keep any hint of the death from him. He felt betrayed by the secrecy that had led to nothing but pain for all of them.

Yet, even the birth of Wei Xiang’s younger brother, two years after the death of the unknown brother, did little to obviate what was ultimately the end of the marriage. His parents had hoped that the new son would take on whatever the dead son could not, but this was an unfair expectation, a false hope. The shadow of death loomed over the family, even if Wei Xiang and his younger brother were never consciously aware of it.

“But still, we tried, we really did,” his father slurred as he peered into Wei Xiang’s face, seeking some sort of penance, perhaps even forgiveness. Wei Xiang turned away, not knowing what to say.

In the end, Wei Xiang’s mother was the one who decided on the divorce, which was finalised when Wei Xiang was seventeen, in his first year in junior college. His parents sat him and his younger brother down to break the news to them, and he asked all the questions that could be asked about the causes and outcomes, but his parents provided only what he needed to know, and nothing more. Wei Xiang was furious at this obfuscation, but was even angrier with himself for not being able to forestall the divorce, for his faltering faith in his own beliefs and actions.

After signing the papers, his mother migrated to Hong Kong, where one of her sisters was living, and within two years she was romantically involved with a man who owned a chain of watch shops. Always the dutiful son, Wei Xiang kept in contact with his mother, and took two trips every year that his mother paid for, visits in which Wei Xiang took pains to be as obliging and accommodating as he could, to present his best self to his mother. But when she invited him to attend her wedding, a simple church affair followed by a reception, Wei Xiang politely declined, citing his year-end examinations.

After a brief period of uncertainty and adjustment, Wei Xiang and his brother continued on with their lives in Singapore. Wei Xiang fought hard to get back the life he had before, to achieve the sense of balance and control that had been hugely unsettled by his parents’ break-up, and to this end he devoted himself, sticking to his routine and habits with a doggedness that left little to chance.

His father, on the other hand, became a pale shade of the man he was before the divorce, cautious in his ways, defensive and prone to anxiety attacks. So different from the man that Wei Xiang grew up with: wiry, greasy-haired, bent over the nightly Chinese newspaper, his plastic-framed thick-lens spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose; dozing on the sofa after a meal, snoring like a drill; leaving for work, his shoulder blades sharp and visible under his short-sleeved shirt. His father had worked as a clerk in a heavy machinery firm that loaned out tractors, digging rigs and lifting cranes on long-term lease to construction and building companies, until he was retrenched when the company had to downsize. He never found a permanent job after that, making do with odd jobs here and there to support the family. Apart from his drinking—he now limits himself to two bottles of Tiger Beer daily—Wei Xiang’s father has little comfort or enjoyment in life, defeated, buckled by the forces of life.

These impressions of his own father have affected his thoughts on becoming one himself. He told Ai Ling more than once of his decision to delay their parenthood after they were married, and he knew Ai Ling silently took heed of it, though he could see it hurt her and conflicted with her growing desire to be a mother. He has softened his stance in the last two years, after seeing how affected Ai Ling was when one of the kids from the childcare centre went missing; it was clear how much she denied herself the pain of this loss, the disappearance of a boy she had grown very fond of.

Wrapped in the silence of the hotel room, Wei Xiang feels something constrict in his chest, an imperceptible ache that spreads across his body. He turns to face Ai Ling’s side of the bed again and runs his hand over the pillow. He plucks a strand of her hair and tosses it aside, then notes that half an hour has passed while he was daydreaming. What is taking her so long? A random image from the dream comes to him then—the sorrowful expression on Ai Ling’s face, her eyes drilling into him, before she plunged into the water after the boy, and disappeared.

Wei Xiang leaps up from the bed, suddenly uneasy. A wave of fear and nausea passes through him. Muted sunlight filters through the curtains. He opens the glass-paned door, steps out onto the balcony, and finally sees the new world outside the hotel room.

5

CHEE SENG

When I open my eyes, the world around me is shadows, and it takes a long time before they start to rearrange themselves into shapes and dimensions, shades and colours. The sounds, and then the smells, begin to make themselves known, little by little, as my mind struggles to make sense of these new, strange sensations. Slight movements out of the corner of my eye: a figure bent over a soot-blackened stove, swathed in layers of rags, stirring a pot, somewhat familiar. Steam rising up from the pot shrouds the face.

I shove away the dusty blanket, and pain shoots through my arms. I attempt to push my body upright and fail; I fall back on the bed, drained. The figure at the stove does not turn around or show any sign of noticing me; it keeps stirring the pot. The smell of garlic and eucalyptus hangs in the air, prickling my senses. My stomach rumbles with hunger, and then I remember the ceramic bowl, the bitter concoction.

Nearby are a small wooden table and two benches; on the table is a bundle of tiny yellow flowers with red berries—herbs?—and a water jug. At the ankle-high threshold of the doorway, two brownish-grey hens are clucking and pecking, sneaking glances into the hut. Morning light reaches in to expose the grainy texture of the cement floor. Near the far wall, three wooden chests are stacked on top of one another according to size. The dark figure trudges towards a latticed larder, and from one of the compartments takes out a glass jar. Removing its cover, it sprinkles the contents into the pot with two light shakes and continues to stir it with the ladle. Then turning around, it finally acknowledges my presence with a steady gaze.

I have a hard time deciphering the face looking at me. With a scarf covering the hair and deeply creased lines around the eyes and lips, the face looks ancient, otherworldly, like a stone carving that has weathered seasons of rain and sun. The eyes, however, set deep within the folds of wrinkled skin, beam with a sagacious, ageless intensity, the eyes of a cat in the dark. As the figure steps towards me, I notice that one of the eyes is actually a glass eye, slightly larger, unmoving in the socket; the other is assessing me closely.

It is an old woman.

Putting the ladle down on the wooden table, she pours some water into a cup and brings it to me. I drink it very slowly, but want more. The old woman brings the jug over and fills the cup again. I drain it. After I finish, she points to the boiling pot on the stove. She places the jug on a stool beside the bed, then goes over and ladles the contents of the pot into an earthenware bowl, the steam rising visibly. It is a thick broth, almost gruel-like, rich with herbal spiciness; I scald the tip of my tongue in my haste, and it leaves an acrid aftertaste in my mouth and a sizzle on my chapped lips. Holding the bowl, the old woman encourages me to eat more. It takes a long time to finish it all; by the time I’m forcing the last granular dregs into my mouth, the soup has turned cold. I lie back down; a warm, effervescent sensation infuses my insides, spreading out to the rest of my body. Once again, I feel drowsy, the irresistible pull of sleep dragging me under. The soft, nearly incorporeal touches of the old woman as she arranges the blanket around me and smoothens out my hair come to me as if from a distant place.

The next time I wake, the old woman is nowhere in sight. How long have I slept? A few hours, a day? There is no clock to tell the time. How long since I was carried off by the waves? I try to recall something else—anything—but my memories are all fuzzy and loose, untethered to any semblance of reality. I slowly sit up on the bed, some of my strength returned, and listen to the surroundings. Apart from the clucking of the chickens outside, there is hardly any other sound. At the foot of the bed are my shirt and jeans, dried out and stiff like pieces of a discarded husk. The old woman has dressed me in layers of dun-coloured robes, held together with frog buttons. Though it is warm, I can’t bring myself to shed the layers.

The cement floor is cool to the touch. I try to stand and the blood rushes from my head; I waver unsteadily, my knees almost buckling, as though the earth is shaking under my feet. Once the moment has passed, I hobble towards the doorway in small, tottering steps. The soles of my feet are raw and tender. Narrowing my eyes against the light, I look out, resting my shoulder against the wooden doorframe.

Outside the hut is a small, compact courtyard, bordered on one side with ramshackle wire cages with missing or unhinged doors, and on another side by a tidy garden plot, its perimeter marked out with trails of stones and pebbles, and a brick well in one corner. Budding knots of yellow flowers bloom in the garden, along with hanging fruits of berries, green limes and chillies. The raked soil looks freshly turned over; a brood of chickens prances and pecks on the ground beside it, seemingly aware of the boundary of the garden, taking care not to step into it. A stone-cobbled path, perhaps smoothened by years of footsteps, leads out of the courtyard and into a thick grove of trees about fifteen metres away. Beyond that, the hills rise and dip in smooth undulations, stretching to the distant coast.

The old woman is sweeping the fallen leaves with a short rattan broom into the thick undergrowth of shrubs bordering the compound of the hut, stopping from time to time to pluck weeds from the ground. Despite her apparent advanced age, her strength is evident in the manner in which she is able to easily yank out the weeds, the roots still clutching clumps of damp soil. Across the sloping hills, the sun is descending, drenching the sky in yellow, purple and orange. The old woman continues to work, undisturbed, oblivious to my presence. I sit near the threshold in the shade of the hanging eave of the hut—standing has become unbearable—and watch her move across the courtyard, finishing her sweeping, then tending to the garden and herding the chickens back into the cages. She surveys the whole courtyard and walks to the brick well; she removes the wooden cover, picks up a small bucket attached with a rope to the side of the well, and throws it in. A hollow sound echoes from the mouth of the well, a watery slap. With a few tugs, the bucket reappears, water overflowing the brim. She splashes the dry, hard ground of the courtyard with the water, then repeats the motion. The water spreads across the cracked surface in dark, rapidly moving tentacles, until the whole ground glistens like a shining coat of oil. From somewhere deep in the forest, a melancholic howl pierces the air.

The old woman unties the rope from its metal handle, hefts the bucket of water and walks towards the hut, nodding at me as she crosses the threshold; her shrunken, furrowed feet are caked with grains of wet soil. I follow her inside.

She empties the water into two large earthenware jars and a cooking pot on the stove. With a quick strike of a matchstick, she lights a handful of dried chaff and shoves it into the hole of the stove, provoking the flames with a straw fan. Flickering orange embers glow from within. She starts to cook, taking out rice, eggs, cloves of garlic and stalks of leafy vegetables from the larder, and seasons the food with sauces taken from bottles coated with a sticky layer of grease. The smell of cooking conjures up fragmented memories of my childhood, of time spent in the kitchen watching my mother prepare dinners, a miasma of smells that lingered in the air long after the meals were done and the dishes put away.

The old woman performs the task briskly, knowing exactly when to add a pinch of salt or a dash of sauce, and how long to keep the lid on the pot to allow the soup to simmer. She does not ask for my help, though she throws pithy glances at me every so often. Sitting at the wooden table, I rest my cheek on my arm and drift in and out of sleep.

My dream is a broken reel of images and sounds: random faces, the terrible sound of waves crashing in my ears, a deluge of noises that shatter the silence. Amongst the images, I catch a glimpse of Cody’s face, staring into mine, expressionless, vanishing and then appearing again. His mouth moves, but nothing comes forth. I reach for him, but he is pulling away, receding farther and farther. I start to shout—in the dream?—and suddenly feel a firm pressure on my shoulder, shaking me, and I leap back into wakefulness with a gasp. The old woman is standing over me, watching me intently. She gives me a cup of water, puts her hand on my forehead, and motions to me to lie down on the bed. I fumble my way to the bed and collapse into it. Though I’m bone tired, I try to keep myself awake this time, afraid to slip back into my dream.

When the food is cooked, she heaps the rice and stir-fried vegetables onto a metal plate and brings it to me. Though I’m hungry, I can barely eat more than a mouthful of rice. She serves up a bowl of egg soup and nudges me to drink. I take a few sips and push the bowl away, suppressing the urge to throw up. I lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling. The old woman returns to the wooden dining table and eats quietly; other than the chirping of crickets out in the gathering dusk and the nervous clicking of darting geckos, the hut is silent.

The old woman has still not spoken a single word to me, yet I do not find it in any way strange. It has briefly crossed my mind that perhaps she is mute, or if not, that she has chosen not to speak for reasons of her own. Perhaps since she lives alone—I have not seen any other person in the hut or its surroundings—she does not need to speak at all, and maybe has already given up the ability. I myself am still too fatigued to speak, and even if I could, what could I say? Even the simple act of opening my mouth and forming words with my tongue seems like an impossible feat, one that requires a reserve of strength that I do not have.

After our meal, the old woman puts aside the leftovers in the larder, and washes the plates and bowls. When she is done, she dunks a rag in a small pail of water, then takes out a glass bottle filled with a dark liquid from a wooden chest beside the wall. She places a small stool before me and rests my feet on it. She starts to clean the dirt from the cuts and wounds on my soles and calves, causing me to grit my teeth against the pain. After pouring a small amount of the dark liquid onto another rag, she dabs gently. Some of the injuries are inflamed, while others are starting to ooze yellow pus. I bite my lip and taste blood. The pain tips over into numbness. For some of the larger wounds, the old woman applies a salve—from another jar—with her fingers. By the time she is done with my legs, and then my arms, chest and back, I have been reduced to a mass of worn, frayed nerves, beyond exhaustion, and I pass out.

Waking up later—is it the same night?—I immediately sense the absence of the old woman from the room. In the near darkness, I listen for any sounds of movement amidst the nocturnal noises of the night. A flute-shaped kerosene lamp is placed on the wooden table, emitting soft, feeble aureoles of light that throw the shadows of the objects in the room onto the walls in sharp relief. The wooden door of the hut is partially open, letting in the cool night air. I stumble to the entrance, using the lamp to guide me.

Outside, I can barely make out anything in the darkness, which has sealed the surroundings in a thick, impenetrable cloak. The sky is a lighter shade of purple-blue, and the scattering of stars seems to pulse with an irregular rhythm, like weak heartbeats. A wedge of light emerges from a gap in the tiny shed beside the hut. In daylight, the shed looked nondescript and run down, constructed out of uneven planks of wood and a corrugated-zinc roof; but now in the dark, it seems ominous, foreboding.

I hobble towards the shed, careful not to trip over any unseen objects or make a sound. The door is unlocked. I pull it open, adjusting my vision to the wan light provided by the lamp on the floor. The old woman is squatting just inside, her silhouette shaky on the wall of the shed, her body bent over something. I sidle up to her, and peep over her hunched shoulders.

Lying on the ground before us is a young boy, unmoving, his body enshrouded in a coarse blanket, revealing only his bloated face. And cutting across his closed left eye: a deep, red scar.

6

AI LING

The pallid sun peeks out from behind a bank of grey clouds as a trio of sea birds glides across the sky. The waves lap onto the beach, leaving behind broken pieces of bleached wood, dead dull-scaled fishes and tangled coils of seaweed, occasionally touching the woman’s feet, leaving behind fizzing trails of bubbles.

The solitary seagull, glancing at the body, and then at a distant point in the sea, flies down from the branch of the coconut tree and lands a stone’s throw away from the woman. It ambles towards her, hesitant, as if wary of startling her.

The woman is wearing a white T-shirt, smeared with dirt and grease and in shreds around the neckline and sleeves, and a pair of lavender-coloured shorts that hug her hips snugly. Specks of grimy sand pepper the woman’s arms and legs; her exposed skin has turned darker. The seagull appraises the woman for some time before it ventures closer. It pokes its beak at her shoulder a few times and pulls back, waiting for the woman to move. Then it jabs her neck, harder this time, as if wanting to stir the woman out of her stasis. A tiny hermit crab skitters out of the shadow of the woman’s neck, its claws extended and snapping, and scrambles towards a nearby hole in the sand. It moves quickly, hardly leaving any mark. The seagull watches its movements for a moment, and then, in a swift motion, picks up the crab, crunches it down and swallows in a gulp.

Emboldened by the quick meal, the seagull lowers its beak to the woman’s face, its dark outline reflected in the dull surface of her right eye. It pokes at the eye, assessing its jelly-like texture. The half-shut eyelid reveals a brown-tinted iris. The seagull regards it for a second, and then in a sudden move, it strikes in sharp, precise thrusts until the eye pops out, restrained only by the optic nerve. Thick dark blood dribbles out of the socket and down the woman’s cheek. The seagull bends and holds the eyeball with the tip of its beak, giving it one last tug, freeing it. The eye catches the sunlight and seems to be taking in the seamless, thriving sea.

In the next moment, the seagull jerks back its head and consumes the lifeless object.

Her eyes were what Wei Xiang had loved most about Ai Ling, what most attracted him when they first met during a school reunion. They were attending the twentieth anniversary of their secondary school in Ang Mo Kio; Wei Xiang was three years older than Ai Ling, and although they had been in the same uniformed group in school, the National Police Cadet Corps, they had not known each other then—Ai Ling, being in lower secondary, attended the morning session while Wei Xiang came to school in the afternoon. The uniformed group was the largest activity club in the school, with hundreds of members, and had different activities for different secondary levels.

At the reunion, Ai Ling bumped into Wei Xiang as she was leaving the buffet table, almost spilling her plate of fried egg noodles and chicken curry on him.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so careless sometimes,” Ai Ling said. Wei Xiang stood a head taller than her, and his hair was neatly trimmed. She smiled up at him.

“No, no, it’s me,” he said. “I kind of surprised you there. It’s my fault, really.”

“It’s okay, no harm done,” Ai Ling said, suddenly feeling self-conscious. Her green-and-black geometric-print dress felt too tight on her hips. She should have worn a different ensemble, perhaps the blouse and skirt she had bought last month; she knew she would have looked better in it. She tried to smooth out the creases in the dress with her free hand.

They introduced themselves and traded abbreviated stories of their school days: graduation years, mutual friends and acquaintances, teachers they remembered, extra-curricular activities. That was when they discovered they had both been in NPCC, and puzzled over why they had not met before.

“I wasn’t really the most popular guy in school, maybe that’s why,” Wei Xiang said.

“Maybe,” Ai Ling said. “Although it’s not as if I was the most attentive person in school either. I was very blur and clueless then.”

They laughed, and Wei Xiang took a step forward.

“You have very nice eyes,” he said, holding his smile. “Your irises are light brown, very unusual.”

“Yup, I know. My parents’ eyes are black, so I don’t know where I got mine.” Ai Ling looked down at her black pumps, embarrassed by the attention that Wei Xiang was giving her. A salvo of noises erupted from the stage, where the emcee was adjusting the microphone on its stand, testing the volume. After clearing his throat, the emcee asked the guests to take their seats, so that they could commence the line-up of performances.

“Where are you seated?” Wei Xiang asked. Ai Ling gestured to a table with a nod of her head, where her old classmates were sitting and chatting animatedly among themselves.

“Can I join you?”

“Sure, of course,” Ai Ling said, and they walked to the table.

Ai Ling wanted to take the courtship with Wei Xiang as slowly as she could; her previous relationship had been a shaky, tumultuous part of her life that she wished to erase. Ian, her ex-boyfriend, was also someone she had known back in secondary school, and they dated during their last year in school through their junior college days; for a while, they seemed destined for marriage. At least, it was what Ian had planned, after he settled down with a full-time job in a bank, after serving his two and a half years of National Service in the army. Ai Ling, on the other hand, was not so certain about their future. Part of her doubt had risen while Ian was still in NS and after she had just started her course of study at the National University of Singapore; there, she made new friends and was exposed to different kinds of lives that were more interesting and nuanced than she had known before. With Ian, Ai Ling felt constrained by the ever-narrowing possibility of her choices, as if she were slowly working her way into tight corners and dead-ends. She was fearful of how her life could be neatly parcelled into fixed pigeonholes that would define it: career, marriage, children. Yes, these were things that would matter to her in the long run, but she was only twenty-one then and had not yet seen the world, and she did not want to settle just yet.

Perhaps, in an unconscious reaction to her gradual drifting away, Ian began to hold on tighter to their relationship, to demand more time, effort and commitment. He wanted to spend every available second together when he booked out of camp on weekends, just them without their friends, as well as to have shared hobbies and activities, like badminton and swimming. For a while, to compensate for her waning interest—she did not dare admit to herself how she felt—Ai Ling often put in more effort to be more involved, to pay more attention to what Ian wanted. She gave in to him time and again, until her own wants and desires nearly disappeared.

“I feel like I’m losing you,” Ian told her once, over a dinner to celebrate one of their many anniversaries, one which Ai Ling could not remember. Ian bought her some flowers and a small plush bear. She had come to the dinner empty-handed.

“No, I’m just busy with schoolwork, that’s all,” Ai Ling said, pretending not to understand what Ian was implying.

“Is everything okay with us?”

“Yes, of course. Why would you ask that?” Ian shook his head and took hold of Ai Ling’s hand, giving it a squeeze. Ai Ling smiled, knowing that she had, once again, pushed back the inevitable; yet it gave her no relief whatsoever.

When Ai Ling met Wei Xiang, she was in her mid-twenties, and most of her friends had already got married, settled down, had a kid or two. A steady tremor of restlessness reverberated in her life; Ai Ling had expended much of her energy in her twenties trying to make sense of what she wanted, moving from one job to another, never staying longer than eighteen months in each job. Her parents had frowned on her decision every time she quit, but left her alone. Sometimes, she would feel that she was wasting her life, and that anything that followed was just mere existence. Yet, despite this, Ai Ling rarely envied her friends’ decisions to make do with what they had—husbands, children, good jobs.

With Wei Xiang, Ai Ling was motivated to grow out of her usual self, to move in an entirely different direction. She was a better version of herself with Wei Xiang, more competent and decisive. Wei Xiang was always sure of what he liked or wanted to do; he was the kind of man who, once he decided to take a certain path in life, would stick to it, and would never stray from it. He laughed at the thought of lost opportunities or opportunity costs: “I make my own opportunities.” At a different stage in her life, Ai Ling might have rolled her eyes at the bland, narrow truth of this trope. She had, in fact, done that with Ian, but with Wei Xiang, she could see the conviction of his actions, the force behind his words. She was drawn to it, attracted to something that she knew was lacking in her own personality.

“So, what was your ex like?” Wei Xiang asked her on one of their early dates. Ai Ling wanted to dodge this topic, but did not know how to avoid it.

“He’s okay. We had different priorities. I think he’s married now.”

“Oh, do you still keep in contact with him?”

“No. I heard about him getting married from another friend.”

Ian had got married barely six months after Ai Ling had broken up with him, to a girl he knew from work. Apparently, it had been a whirlwind courtship, something that Ian had orchestrated. He had even called Ai Ling to tell her about his wedding plans, his voice higher than usual: “I’m happy, and I want you to know that.”

“Yes, I can tell that you are,” she’d said.

“Will you come to the wedding?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why?”

Ai Ling had remained silent.

“I don’t know what’s the matter with you. You never seemed to be happy with me, and now you can’t be happy for me. Why? What’s wrong with you?”

“No, really, I’m happy for you.”

“You were never happy, and you will never be happy with anything. You don’t know what you want, and it’s really frustrating.”

“That’s not true. I just don’t think that what I wanted was something you could give me.”

“You are lying to yourself. And you’re lying to me.”

Ian had swiftly ended the call, and in the wake of it, Ai Ling felt battered by his accusation. Ai Ling had always known what she wanted, or at least what she did not want: her relationship with Ian. She had tried almost everything to keep them together: putting Ian’s needs before hers, being more loving, letting him make all their decisions, giving in to his requests for sex. But the more she committed to this role of being a good girlfriend, the more she felt out of touch with her own self, as if she were living a fabricated life divorced from her inner state.

“Do you still miss him?” Wei Xiang asked her.

“What’s there to miss?”

And Ai Ling believed the truth of her own words.

When Ian had brought up the topic of marriage, in their sixth year of courtship—he was working his first job, as a junior credit analyst with a local bank, while pursuing a part-time degree in business studies at a private tertiary institution—Ai Ling knew she had to make her decision sooner than planned.

So, over dinner one night, when she had drunk enough wine to calm her jittery nerves, she told Ian her decision. For a brief moment, Ian laughed, assuming it was a joke. And just as Ai Ling was about to take back her words—maybe she had gone too far—Ian saw something in her eyes that made him quiet down, to fully absorb what he was hearing. He stared at Ai Ling.

“Why?”

“I don’t think I’m ready,” she said.

“Then we can talk about this another time. No hurry in rushing into marriage.”

“No, Ian, I don’t want to get married. I don’t think…”

“Why? What do you want then?”

“I want us to think about what we both want, really. What you want. What I want.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I think we should just take some time to think about all this.”

“Bullshit,” he spat. “Just tell me what’s on your mind.”

“I want to be alone for a while.”

“Alone? Why?”

“I’m tired, Ian. I’m tired of being your girlfriend. I’m tired of where we are going. I’m tired about what’s to come.”

“You’re just fucking selfish. You only think of yourself. You never think about us.”

Whenever Ai Ling recalled Ian’s words, she remembered how they had struck a part of her that knew, despite her resistance, that he was right, that she was only thinking of herself, of how she had wanted to get out of something that no longer meant anything to her. She was only being fearful of what she did not know or want. And for a long time after their break-up, Ai Ling did not dare to date anyone. Even when she began to date again, she was often afraid of taking the next step in commitment, afraid that even at her age, she could still make mistakes that might have worse consequences than those she had encountered with Ian.

“So you are telling me that after Ian, you dated many guys casually?” Wei Xiang had joked over coffee later. He made a strange face at Ai Ling, feigning incredulity.

“No! Come on, the way you put it sounds so wrong. I’m not that kind of woman. I just went on some dates, that’s all, nothing serious.”

“Then what kind of woman are you?”

Ai Ling pinched Wei Xiang on his arm. He winced playfully.

“So, this is not serious too?”

“Well, no, not serious at all, just a casual date,” Ai Ling said, before breaking into a laugh.

Wei Xiang, too, had gone through a break-up that took a while to get over. His last girlfriend had cheated on him with a colleague, her supervisor at work, a married man with three children. And she had broken up with Wei Xiang, because she had wanted another life with the married man, which was something that Wei Xiang could never wrap his mind around. He could not imagine why anyone would want to live like this, and after the break-up, like Ai Ling, he had refused to keep up any contact with his ex.

Once, when Ai Ling was over at Wei Xiang’s place—he had decided to cook a meal for them—she peeked into one of his photo albums, curious about how his ex looked. She had expected to confirm some of her suspicions—to have Xiang’s ex marked out in some obvious ways—but the person she saw in the photographs was no different from any woman on the street: pretty, yes, but not special in any way that was physically apparent.

Yet, Ai Ling still felt a sort of fascination about what the woman had done, to give up what she had with Wei Xiang to be a mistress to a married man.

The break with Ian was not as clean as Ai Ling had wanted. Though she had ignored all his calls and emails, he still turned up unannounced on her doorstep several times; once, he had made such a ruckus that her parents had no choice but to let him in, and she had to shut herself in her room while he pleaded with her parents to talk some sense into her, to make her change her mind. He cried on every occasion. Ai Ling’s parents had asked her to resolve the issue with Ian, to get back together, because Ian was a good man, and it was hard to find someone like him. Ai Ling ignored her parents’ advice, and even in the heat of her inner conflict, she chose to stick to her resolve, to not budge from her decision.

The months that followed the break-up were a long period of adjustments, changes and coming to terms with her new status, as if whoever she was when she was with Ian had to be remade in the light of the current circumstance. She had chosen to avoid any contact with Ian’s friends; some had chosen to take his side, and Ai Ling was told in no uncertain terms, from their messages and emails, about how they felt about the whole situation. Others were more sympathetic, and it was the latter group who Ai Ling did not want to see. She did not feel the need to justify herself to them. Apart from this, Ai Ling took to her new life with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, with an unspoken, underlying hope that whatever she was doing would somehow, one way or another, lead her to a clearer perspective of her life, a deeper understanding of her own actions and decisions. It was a long way to go, Ai Ling had to admit, and she had to watch herself, lest she get distracted by a thousand and one things.

“And you don’t have any regrets after the whole incident, after the break-up?” Wei Xiang posed this question to her, more than once.

Ai Ling had often wondered about Wei Xiang’s longstanding interest in her failed relationship with Ian. They had been dating for five months then, and Ai Ling liked the pace the relationship was taking—consistent, steady, unhurried. They had taken their time to know each other, and after the first flush of romance had come and gone, what remained was a growing bond of affection. What they agreed upon was to be frank with each other, no matter what.

“What’s the point of regret? Regret is for something you did not do when you should be doing it. And I did what I did. The rest is history to me. It doesn’t matter. A lot of things don’t matter after a while.”

“But surely you must have felt something like regret, during the months after the break-up.”

“I can’t remember now. Maybe I did. It doesn’t matter anyway.”

Sometimes, Ai Ling wondered whether Wei Xiang saw something in her that she could not see. Was she the kind of woman a man would feel an instinctive need to protect, to take care of, or did she appeal to a type of man who liked her assertiveness, her independence? Ai Ling knew how she looked—her lanky frame, small breasts, shapely nose a few degrees from aquiline—but how the different, unequal parts of her body added up to something that could tell the whole story of her character was never apparent, something that remained a mystery to her. Sometimes, when she looked deeply into herself, she would feel a brief alarm at the chasm that existed between her external and inner selves.

“But why do you like me?” she asked Wei Xiang in bed, while spending her first night over at his place.

“Well, you are really beautiful and sweet and gentle and caring and…”

“No, I mean, what do you really like about me?”

“You are very special…”

“Are you sure you know anything about me at all?”

“I don’t, but I want to, a bit at a time.”

“You know I can be stubborn and petty at times, right? And I’ve my moods, too.”

“Yes, I know. But…”

“But what?”

“But I still like you.”

“You’re hopeless.”

When she said yes to Wei Xiang’s proposal, Ai Ling knew she was making the right decision. She had expected it for some time—they had been going out for three years at that point—and she was already preparing herself mentally for it. She had just hit twenty-eight then, and knew she was happy with Wei Xiang, a happiness she knew she had a role in its nurturing.

And at that moment—when she said yes—she had meant exactly what she had said. And, for once, in a long time, she had not doubted herself, or the choice she had made.

7

CODY

Late at night, you stumble out of a recurring dream, like a suffocating man breaking through an invisible barrier, your breaths laboured, your body covered with a film of sweat. Shards of the dream have lodged themselves in your fevered mind. Turning to face the blank wall, you can see in the faint illumination hairline cracks creeping up like railway tracks, disappearing into the ceiling. You stare at the wall for a long time to calm yourself down.

You drift into overlapping states of wakefulness and sleep—you can no longer tell which impressions are real or dreams. You can still feel your body working, like a well-tended machine: the breaths in your chest (in-hold-out, repeat), the tiny pulse in your wrist (tick-tick-tick), the curl-in-curl-out movements of your fingers (twitching, twitching). Life as a machine, going and going and going, persistent, dumb, unbearable.

You look up at the expanse of the white wall, all the way to the ceiling. Space, so much space—how could one ever fill it up? You stare until your eyes—dry like sandpaper—start to hurt, tiny specks floating across your vision. You study the unmoving shadow on the wall, a dark mountainous ridge.

You stretch out your hands, and the muscles in them ache anew. Triggered by the sudden movement, your body stirs to life—a forest catching fire. Flashes of heat flare at your joints, moving outwards. With the quickening of blood through your body, you can feel your cock hardening. You reach into your shorts and stroke yourself, mind still dazed. Slowly the act itself takes over, demanding every ounce of your attention, sinking you into the vagaries of desire. You find yourself masturbating to images of Chee Seng, salvaged from the depths of your memories.

“Really, you have to meet him,” Ai Ling had gushed over the phone. “He’s a catch. You’ll like him.”

She had called Cody during his lunch break, bursting with the news that she had met an old friend from junior college, a teacher, and over coffee with him, found out that he was gay and single.

“I don’t know,” Cody said, playing down her enthusiasm. Ai Ling had tried, unsuccessfully in past attempts, to fix up blind dates for him, whenever she met gay men from her previous jobs or from other friends and acquaintances. She had believed, without checking the person’s background—as long as he was gay—that he would be suitable for Cody. To get her off his back, after her first few attempts, he had gone on a date with a guy she had highly recommended, only to find him a complete bore, with no other interests besides his job as a stockbroker in a securities firm.

“I’ll be your chaperone, to take the pressure off. You really need to meet him,” she said.

“Come on, you’re making me seem desperate.”

“Well, you’re always complaining to me about being single, and how there are no longer any good men around. Or am I wrong?”

“Fine. Why don’t you arrange something and I’ll come along?”

“You won’t regret this, I promise. He’s very cute, definitely your type: tall, dark and handsome.”

“Isn’t that every gay man’s type?” Cody shot back. Ai Ling let out a cackle and ended the call with an update-you-later.

The date was set for a Sunday afternoon, coffee at Starbucks outside the Orchard Cineplex. Cody was running late, and as he approached the table at the café, he had a few seconds to observe his date before Ai Ling saw him and got up to introduce them.

Chee Seng was tall and solidly built, with a tanned, almost sunburnt complexion. Over coffee that afternoon, he kept up a brisk, low-key conversation, able to hold his own without Ai Ling’s help, directing most of his questions at Cody, basic questions about his life, work and leisure. Every time Chee Seng smiled, lines would frame the contours of his mouth, his teeth bright against his dark skin.

Cody discovered that Chee Seng had been a teacher for about a year, and before that he had worked as an air steward for three years. “Too long,” he stressed.

“Why did you quit?” Cody asked.

“I wanted to do something else,” he replied, “something more meaningful.”

“And so you chose teaching?”

Chee Seng raised his hands in a gesture of I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing, grimaced and laughed.

After two hours in the café, they left. Chee Seng insisted on driving all of them back. He dropped Ai Ling off at her place in Bishan before driving Cody back to Ang Mo Kio. Along the way, he asked Cody whether he was keen for another round of drinks since it was still early, only slightly after six. Cody agreed, and Chee Seng turned into the McDonald’s drive-thru, near the block of flats where Cody lived, and bought two iced coffees. After parking the car, they walked to a nearby park, alternating between light conversation and brief snatches of silence. Chee Seng touched his shoulder to Cody’s as they walked, sometimes brushing against his hand, grazing it lightly. Chee Seng’s laugh was full, unabashedly robust, and Cody found himself laughing along with him, caught in the undertow.

When the daylight started to fade, they turned back and walked out of the park. Cody glanced at his watch, undecided on whether to end the date, when Chee Seng asked if he would be interested to have dinner with him sometime.

“Of course,” Cody said.

“How about tomorrow?”

Cody agreed without hesitation. Chee Seng smiled, and for the first time that day, he looked shy, almost awkward. At the lift lobby of Cody’s block, they hesitated, unsure how to proceed.

“So this is where you stay,” Chee Seng said.

“Yes, my whole life.”

“Well, I hope to visit one day, if it’s okay with you.”

“Sure, one day.”

Then Cody moved to kiss him, a light peck on the lips, before pulling away. Chee Seng looked surprised, his eyes wide. Then he flashed a grin and started walking backward, waving at Cody as he headed back to the car. When he was gone, Cody took the lift up, and felt the nascent stirring of desire kicking at his heart.

Chee Seng was getting ready to leave, slipping on his white Jockey underwear. He rarely stayed over at Cody’s place on weekdays because of his work.

“I need to go. It’s getting late,” he said.

“Why don’t you stay for the night and save yourself all the travelling?” Cody said, patting the empty space on the bed. The crumpled bedsheet still retained Chee Seng’s body heat, warm to the touch.

“Not today, okay? I got a long day at work tomorrow, some teacher-parent meeting to attend. This weekend, definitely,” Chee Seng said, tucking the tail of his striped shirt into his dark pants, checking himself in the body-length mirror behind the bedroom door. He gave his hair a few tousles. Cody sneaked up to him and put his arms round Chee Seng’s waist. They studied themselves in the mirror. Cody kissed the nape of his neck, breathing in the muskiness of his skin.

“You look sexy in your work attire,” Cody said, stroking Chee Seng through his pants.

“Come on, you’re horny again?” Chee Seng said, but did not stop Cody when he unzipped the pants, and fished out Chee Seng’s semi-hard cock from the tight underwear. Dropping to his knees, Cody took him into his mouth. Chee Seng held Cody’s head with his hands, raking his hair. Cody looked at their reflections in the mirror as if he were someone else—a stranger—watching a secret, private act. He watched how his mouth moved, how his hands slid up and down Chee Seng’s legs and waist and ass, the flickering of tongue over the swollen head of the cock. Chee Seng closed his eyes and stood on the balls of his feet, immersed in the pleasure.

Cody pulled back for a moment. “Look,” he said, nodding towards the mirror.

Chee Seng opened his eyes and watched as Cody took the cock into his mouth again. Cody hastened his movements, and Chee Seng’s cock contracted involuntarily, a quick spasm.

“I’m coming,” Chee Seng said, tilting Cody’s chin so that their eyes met. An agonised expression streaked across Chee Seng’s face as he came hard. Cody loosened his grip as the convulsions slowed and stopped. Then he swallowed.

Chee Seng grabbed Cody by the shoulders, pulled him up and kissed him full on the lips. Then he pushed Cody onto the bed and pulled down his underwear brusquely. By the time they were both finished, Chee Seng was so tired that he ended up staying the night.

“Where are you bringing me?”

“You’ll know when we get there. It’s not far from where you stay,” Chee Seng said, turning into the car park beside Yio Chu Kang Stadium. At eleven-thirty, it was deserted, the streetlights barely illuminating the empty parking lots between the few cars and vans. Several had window curtains drawn, which made Cody wonder whether this was a haunt for couples to make out. How did Chee Seng know about this place? Had he brought other guys here before?

Before Cody’s mind could raise more doubts, Chee Seng pulled into a lot, at the farthest end of the car park. Switching off the headlights, the car went dark except for the panel of red-orange lights on the dashboard. Chee Seng reached over to pull the lever under Cody’s seat and slide it backward; it went three-quarters of the way down. The next moment, his hands were on Cody, unbuttoning his shirt, fingers cold on his skin.

“I thought we were having a chat.”

“Yes, we can chat, or we can do something else,” Chee Seng said, his breath landing on Cody’s cheek. Cody leant in to kiss him.

“Okay, let’s chat then,” Cody said, nibbling Chee Seng’s right earlobe, moving down his neck, taking in the scent of his cologne. Extending his body, Chee Seng accidentally pushed the air-con button to high, and cold air gushed out of the vents. He fumbled to turn it down.

“It’s so cramped. I can’t even stretch,” Cody said.

“Let’s go to the back,” Chee Seng said. Cody crept across the lowered seat, trying not to bump into anything. Chee Seng was close behind, his hands never leaving Cody’s body, guiding him gently to the back seat. Turning around to face him, Cody felt a sting of self-consciousness as Chee Seng hurriedly began to take off his clothes. Cody looked out the darkly-tinted side windows, scanning the surroundings for movement, keenly aware of the risk that they were taking. His heart pounded, and he froze.

“What’s wrong?” Chee Seng asked, lifting his head.

“Do you do this often? We might get caught.”

“Don’t worry, there’s no one around. It’s safe.”

Not wanting to sound too insecure, Cody did not ask again. I don’t have to know everything about him, Cody reminded himself. It’s only been two months since we started dating, and there’s plenty of time to get to know him, so why the insecurity? Brushing aside his uncertainty, Cody focused on getting back into the moment, to what they were doing.

In the cramped space of the back seat, they moved tentatively; they were still new to each other’s bodies so they took their time, with Chee Seng leading the way. Quickened breaths interrupted the silence of the quiet car, and their skins broke out in perspiration, tingling with rawness. Holding down Cody’s body with his, Chee Seng coaxed him into a fierce, quavering orgasm.

“Does this turn you on?” Chee Seng asked, after they had dressed and were back in the front seats, ready to leave. The headlights were on, casting a pool of buttery light on the tarmac in front of the car. Cody’s body, softened by the heady release, was still sticky, still yearning.

“Yes, but…” Not knowing how to finish the sentence, Cody laughed and leant across to give Chee Seng a long kiss.

8

AI LING

Swallowing the eyeball, the seagull turns its attention back to the woman’s body, assessing it with unfaltering concentration. It pecks away a stray strand of hair from her sand-speckled forehead. The woman’s face is swollen and discoloured, bruises darkening into islands of deep green and indigo on her sunken cheeks, and around the eyes. In the mute sky, a fellow seagull, newly arrived, sounds out a mournful cry, dipping and rising in the wind. The seagull on the beach looks up and regards the other bird. Then it flaps its wings forcefully and skips up into the sky, disappearing in the direction of Phuket, in pursuit of the other seagull.

The blood seeping from the empty pit of the eye socket has hardened into dark crusty trails on the woman’s face, and stained the patch of sand around the head into a crimson peninsula. Already the body is transforming, breaking down quickly in the heat and humidity. The muscles have finally relaxed, causing the body to sag, giving it a languid, restful demeanour. Rising from the body: a complicated mixture of smells, strong and overripe.

An agitated gust of wind blowing in from the sea lifts the woman’s torn shirt, revealing the bulge. The gastric acid is gradually eating out the stomach, dissolving its contents into a slushy broth. Bloated with noxious gases produced by the digestion, the stomach has grown distended, like a balloon, pressing itself against the sand. The woman’s hands, claw-like and protective, rest on it.

Suspended in the quiet sea inside the woman’s body, the tiny form remains inert, enclosed in a shrinking world.

During the second year of their marriage, Ai Ling had a miscarriage that she kept secret from Wei Xiang, barely a week after she had tested herself with a home pregnancy kit. She had wanted to tell him on several occasions, but the moment was never right. Then one morning, she woke to terrible cramps and bleeding, and had to call in sick after Wei Xiang left for work. Over breakfast, he had commented on how pale she looked, which she shook off with a smile. She stayed in the toilet and did not come out until she heard the front door close.

Ai Ling tried to staunch the bleeding with sanitary pads, but they were completely soaked through in no time. She threw on a loose-fitting shirt and left for the neighbourhood polyclinic, numb with pain and fear. She held her dark thoughts at a distance and focused only on her breathing. Two hours passed before her number was called. The polyclinic doctor, a short, balding man with a stern expression, was surprised that Ai Ling had endured so long—she should have called an ambulance instead—and gave her a strange, sympathetic look. The doctor asked about her husband, but Ai Ling gave a vague, noncommittal reply and looked down at her hands. She was transferred to the nearest hospital for the operation.

Ai Ling checked out of the hospital the very same evening after she was stitched up. While standing at the taxi queue, she called Wei Xiang on her mobile phone, telling him that she was running late and would not be cooking that night, that he should buy something back for dinner. In the taxi, she told the driver to switch off the air-con and roll down the rear-side windows. She pressed herself against the door, the warm rush of air hitting her face, and put her hands on her tender abdomen, feeling nothing except for a fist of pain inside her. Everything happened so fast, she thought, but now that it’s over, I don’t want to think about it.

She felt her skin go cold and clammy; something tightened inside her, leaving her out of breath. She had to ask the driver to stop by the side of the road so that she could get out to vomit whatever was still inside her stomach.

Ai Ling carried on as usual after the incident. She went to work at the childcare centre every day, knocked off at six, prepared dinner and ate with Wei Xiang. Sometimes she would watch the TV programmes with him, and sometimes she would read the books she had borrowed from the library. At night, she stayed to her side of the bed, quiet and still. The rush of happiness she had felt when she first held the pregnancy test indicator was now a distant memory, something that might have happened to another person in a fleeting scene in a movie. What a silly person, she would have said if she had seen such a character. She would have clucked her tongue and rolled her eyes, reaching for the TV remote to change the channel.

Sometimes, when her mind drifted as she was picking up the toys after the kids at the childcare centre, or stir-frying a dish at the stove, Ai Ling would wonder about why she had kept the pregnancy and the miscarriage from Wei Xiang. Just after they got married, Wei Xiang told her in passing that they ought to hold out on having a baby in the first few years of their marriage, so that they could enjoy their couplehood, just the two of them; since then they had not talked about it. Now her silence was sealed, and she would have to carry the burden of her secret stolidly.

For a long time after the miscarriage, Ai Ling avoided having sex with Wei Xiang. She could not bear the thought of it; her body felt depleted, sapped dry of any desire, and she did not want to do anything that might cause it to hurt in such a terrible way again. So she remained rigid and tense when Wei Xiang tried to initiate sex, brushing off his advances. She would stay up late on weekends, watching reruns of the Taiwanese drama serials on TV till the wee hours, only going to bed after Wei Xiang had fallen asleep. One time, in a fury of lust, he overpowered her, clamping down her flailing fists and legs, reaching into her shirt to grope her breasts, and she had to fight him off with every bit of strength to get away from him.

In his confusion and frustration, Wei Xiang spat: “What is wrong with you? You have to tell me.”

Ai Ling threw a pillow at him, left their bedroom and slept in the spare bedroom for a week.

Three months after the miscarriage, while she was clearing out the wardrobe drawers in the bedroom, she felt something behind a stack of old clothes. Pulling it out, she saw that it was a pair of infant shoes, still held together with a plastic band, the price tag of $5.90 on the sole. Ai Ling stared at the shoes as if they were a relic from ages ago, one that had suddenly landed in her hands, although she could not remember when or where or who had bought them, or why they were kept at the back of the drawer. She did not hear Wei Xiang until he was standing behind her, looking over her shoulder.

“What is that?” Wei Xiang said.

Ai Ling spun around and held out the pair of shoes, like a thief surrendering her loot, unsure of the punishment awaiting her.

“Wait, I remember. I bought them a few months ago when I was at the mall. Aren’t they adorable?” Wei Xiang said. Ai Ling stared at him, still holding out the shoes. She could feel the immense weight in her hands.

“Do you still want them?” Ai Ling said, putting the shoes into his hand and stepping back. Wei Xiang adjusted the laces and chuckled to himself, as if amused by his impulsive decision to buy the tiny shoes. Ai Ling bit her lip. She wanted to laugh, all of a sudden, at this scene playing out in front of her, at the absurdity, the irony. She let out a choking noise.

“Let’s keep them. It’s a waste to throw them out,” Wei Xiang said, tearing away the price tag. “Just in case we plan to have kids when the time is right.”

Ai Ling said nothing. Then she turned away and returned to the task of clearing out the drawers.

Wei Xiang kept the shoes, hanging them by the laces near the dresser table, where Ai Ling could not avoid them. She decided one day, when Wei Xiang was at work, to throw them out. She put the shoes in a plastic bag and left for the neighbourhood park.

It was late afternoon, and the park was quiet except for several runners and a few mothers pushing strollers or chatting on the benches near the children’s playground. Ai Ling walked past them and avoided looking into the strollers. She headed for the large pond located near the south exit of the park. The water was jade-green, overrun with water lilies, arrowheads and duckweeds, giving off a raw, earthy smell. There was no one around as Ai Ling made her way down to the edge of the pond. The water touched the tips of her toes, darkening the fabric of her sandals. She could step in and sink right to the bottom, and nobody would notice or save her.

Ai Ling stirred the water with her fingers and watched the ripples rouse the clump of duckweeds. Taking out the pair of infant shoes, Ai Ling placed them on the surface of the pond, making footsteps on the water. She relaxed her hold—the shoes seemed to float for a moment—and then quickly pulled them out and put them beside her on the soggy ground. Slipping out of her sandals, Ai Ling sank her feet into the water, feeling the coldness permeating her skin. Stirring the water, she could imagine the disturbance her feet were causing, scaring away the tadpoles and fish. She waited for something to bite her, to pull her down into the depths.

But all she could feel was the slow, heavy movements of her kicks. She picked up the infant shoes again and dropped them into the pond. The bright colours of the appliqués on the shoes—of an elephant and a bear—were quickly darkened by the water. The shoes suspended for a breath of a second in the water before sinking. She stared at the spot, watching the bubbles form and then pop.

Ai Ling heard a cough and saw an old man with a cane looking at her from the pebble-strewn path a few metres away. She withdrew her feet from the pond, the sensation of chilliness lifting off her wet skin. Without looking back, or paying heed to the old man, Ai Ling walked away. It was only when she was almost out of the park that she realised she had been walking barefoot, having left her sandals beside the pond. She considered heading back to retrieve them, but gave up the thought. She could always buy a new pair. There was no rush.

As Ai Ling had hoped, Wei Xiang did not notice the missing pair of infant shoes, and she did not care to remind him about them. He was forgetful, she told herself, and it was not necessarily a bad thing.

9

CHEE SENG

It was Christmas night, and I was alone. The moment I stepped from Exotica’s main hall into the tight space of the toilet, the sound of loud dance music became muffled. My battered eardrums hummed, as if a field of insects were chorusing inside. No matter where I turned in the dance club, the volume of the music was uniformly deafening; it would take a few days for the humming to fade. I checked my watch; it was almost two, maybe time to make my way back to the hotel. The amount of alcohol I had consumed numbed my thoughts, but still I wasn’t ready to face Cody just yet. I washed my hands at the shallow aluminium trough that functioned as a wash basin, and splashed my face with water. I dried off, then made my way through the thumping music and writhing bodies to the front door of the club.

Cody and I had planned to check out Exotica together, but he suddenly changed his mind. We were back in the hotel after dinner with Ai Ling and Wei Xiang—they had headed off for a walk—lazing around and watching the local news on TV. He wanted to stay in and rest, claiming exhaustion from a whole day of activities.

“Come on, it’s Christmas,” I said. “There’ll be lots of people there, it’ll be fun. You said you wanted to go just now.”

“I’m pretty tired though. Why don’t you go and enjoy?” he said.

“It won’t be the same without you,” I said. “So typical of you, agreeing to something and then backing out in the end, so fickle-minded.”

“I’m just really tired now. Anyway, you know clubbing is never my thing. I only ever went because you wanted me to go.”

“Fuck, now you tell me this.”

“Chee Seng,” Cody said, but I had turned away, storming into the toilet.

I sat on the edge of the bathtub, waiting for the anger to run its course. My mind was a train wreck from the events of the past few days, after discovering the chat messages on Cody’s computer. The guise under which I kept my emotions in check had been rudely ripped away, and all the old hurts had resurfaced. More than anything, I was angry with myself for losing my cool yet again. I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths, but it was hopeless.

When I opened the door, Cody was standing right outside. He stared at me, and said, “Okay, I’ll come with you.”

“No, don’t. I don’t want you to go. I don’t want to force you to do something you don’t want to do. I’d rather have a good time at the club, without you sulking and hating every second of it.”

“But I want to go,” he said weakly. And because I knew he was doing this only to pacify me, it infuriated me even more.

“I don’t want you to go, you understand? Just fucking do what you want to do.” I grabbed my wallet and watch from the bedside table, slipped past him and left the hotel room.

Outside the club, someone took my hand and pressed his mouth to my left ear. “Hey, what are you thinking?”

I turned around and looked at the young man, the same one I’d been dancing with for nearly an hour; with the thunderous music sweeping over us, I could not get his name—was it Danny, or Benny? He had approached me at the bar, where I was downing my third bourbon and Coke, and pulled me onto the dance floor. Danny or Benny, twenty-six, Malaysian, was holidaying in Phuket (“second time here”) with some friends (“all straight, and boring”). With his toned frame and pale, smooth complexion, he looked much younger than his supposed age.

“I thought I lost you after I came back from the bar,” he said, gripping my hand. “Are you leaving already? It’s still early.” His face was flushed. I kissed him on the cheek; my head was spinning from the alcohol I had consumed. Even standing on my feet was becoming a challenge; the world shuddered under my feet, seemingly about to give way.

“Yes, this old man needs to have his rest soon. He’s not getting any younger,” I said.

“Aw, you’re not that old. I like you. Come with me,” he said, pulling my hand, dragging me onto the sidewalk. A few locals, chatting and smoking under the club’s bright signboard, looked in our direction; one of them laughed and threw his cigarette to the ground, crushing it under a heel.

“Steady, steady,” Danny or Benny said, pulling me closer to him. I detected faint cologne, mixed with the scent of cigarette smoke. Exotica’s house music gradually softened as we moved away from the club. Under dimly-lit lampposts, the busy streets, lined on both sides with bars, clubs and drinking holes, were still choked with people at this time of night—a bevy of drunk Caucasians arguing outside an Irish pub, two locals haggling with a youngish-looking prostitute at a corner, the street hawkers hollering and delivering food orders to customers sitting around rickety, makeshift tables. In the muggy air, the smell of pungent spices, diesel oil and dusty tarmac mixed in my nostrils. Someone called out. I glanced back to see where the sound was coming from: a crash, and a burst of laughter. The bright neon lights scorched my retinas, and the music continued to ring in my ears. The night was alive in a thousand ways, fragmented into light and music and movement.

“Down this way,” Danny or Benny said. We slipped into a dark alleyway, between a beachside hotel and a three-storey shophouse. He pressed me to the wall, his arms moving down my back to my ass, his tongue frantic in my mouth. He pulled back—a gaping pit of desire opened up inside me—and grabbed my hand, then led me through the darkness. I followed, drunk on lust.

As we progressed, I could feel the dense, salty air of the sea on my face, the night breeze tunnelling through the alleyway, through our hair and sweat-drenched clothes, touching our warm skins with light, ephemeral brushes. And then, as though we had finally broken through the diaphanous veil of the night, we were out in the open, on a patch of sand, facing the sea. The waves, glittering with moonlight, broke on the shore, sending up sprays of froth. I stopped, out of breath, and stared mutely at the dark sea.

Danny or Benny was looking at me, a smile on his face. He stretched out his hand, sweeping across the view.

“Beautiful, right?” he said.

He took two steps forward and glided down the small dune, swinging his arms to balance himself. I followed him and fell on my back into the sand. He reached out to pull me up, and guided me towards the deck chairs hidden in the shadow of a wide umbrella on the beach.

There, he held his body against mine on the deck chair and straddled me, his hands kneading my chest and arms. He lifted my head and pressed his lips to mine; I tasted beer, cigarettes and mint. I bit his upper lip. Our tongues met. I moved my hands across his muscled back and into the back of his tight jeans. He arched to allow my hands to slip easily under his underwear, breaking our kiss, releasing a soft breath into my ear. I felt the firm curve of his buttocks and trailed down the smooth groove between them with my fingers. He pressed his erection to my stomach, grinding it against me, then unbuckled my belt and unzipped my jeans. Already I could feel the dampness on my underwear, the strain of my erection against it. Tracing the contour of my cock against the underwear, he whispered into my ear: “I want you to fuck me.”

He removed his shirt, and I licked his chest, tasting the salt on his skin, nibbling his hardening nipples. The sea breeze swept over us, drying the sweat on our skin, raising goosebumps that heightened the sensitivity of each touch, each kiss. Against the lapping of the waves, we could only hear our own breathing, and the soft groans that escaped our mouths.

He reached into my underwear to free my erection, touching his forefinger to the tip of my cock. “You are dripping wet,” he said, and brought his finger to his tongue, licking it. Then, throwing me back on the deck chair, he bent down to kiss my chest, moving down my torso till he came to my crotch. I arched towards him. Teasing the head of my cock with his tongue, he looked up at me suppliantly, as if waiting for me to give the go-ahead. I grunted my approval; he took my cock all the way into his mouth, slowly. I closed my eyes and sank into oblivion.

After a while, he stopped and looked up at me. “Let’s go back to your hotel room,” he said, his look expectant.

“Sorry, I can’t.”

“Why? Don’t you like me?” he said, his hand gripping me tighter.

“My boyfriend is staying with me.”

“Oh.” His voice registered a hint of irritation. He released his hold on my cock and pulled away, putting his shirt back on. After straightening up, he planted a light kiss on my cheek.

“You should have told me earlier,” he said. And then he left.

I shook my head, suddenly overcome by a surge of crippling lethargy. I sank back onto the deck chair and stretched out the heavy sack of my body. The wind had turned chilly, stinging my face and arms, but I made no move to leave. The light of the crescent moon played on the rippling surface of the sea. I folded my arms across my chest, curled up my legs and closed my eyes. As I listened to the waves, I could only think of Cody, alone in the hotel room, waiting for me to come back to him.

Yet, even if I could muster all my strength and brace myself for what was to come, I knew it was impossible to return to the way things were before, to the lives we had.

10

CODY

Your mind is raw and foggy, skinned of any real memories, floating without thoughts. You close your eyes and, almost instantly, they flip wide open, unable to rest. Your shorts are damp, and the fabric sticks to your legs. Have you pissed without knowing it?

Your body is now a separate being, acting on its own will, keeping your mind hostage. You force your mind to sharpen, to will your arms to move. Your fingers twitch and your hands tremble; you ball them into weak fists. It’s enough to send a tightening ripple along the length of your arms. Slowly you lift your hands to your face, and stare at the creases on the palms, the deep lines that crisscross across the surface of the skin.

It’s bewildering to think how the years can pass so quietly, so mercilessly; you looked up one day and noticed the deep, unseen shift in the things of your life—the places, the people, how they had changed, imperceptibly and fundamentally, over time. You know, in the core of your heart, that you too have changed, and in ways that are completely unknown to you; and in this newly-unravelled knowledge, you are left grappling, surprised not by the facts—because these changes have taken place right before your eyes, even though you could not truly see them yet—but by the realisation that time changes everything in its sweep, always moving in one direction, ahead of you, leaving you behind, stranded.

Your life is in your own hands—but how foolish it is to think that one could have any real, permanent control over one’s life, over every aspect of it, when life is as random and faithless and fragile as it comes. For a moment, your existence is a thick fog that hangs in the air, obscuring the landscape; in the next, it lifts and vanishes into nothing.

What Cody remembers from his nine years with Chee Seng: late-morning breakfasts, ten-kilometre runs around Bishan Park, Chee Seng’s failed attempts at baking raisin scones, visits to the rental shop to get DVDs for their Saturday movie marathons, three-hour games of badminton with friends on Sundays, and the urgent lovemaking of their early years. They did almost everything together, because they wanted to be with each other all the time—and never stopped to consider where they were going, and soon became forgetful, careless, complacent.

First year: they watched movies, ran, cooked meals, made love everywhere, travelled, pooled circles of friends together for gatherings, read the same books.

Second year: they opened a joint savings account and split the bills equally. They travelled to places they had always wanted to visit: Krabi, Hanoi, Shanghai.

Third year: they took up volunteering and different activities, to “broaden their lives”: aikido for Chee Seng, rock-climbing for Cody. They became more visible to their respective families and attended family gatherings together—weddings, funerals, baby showers. More places: Taipei, Tokyo, Sydney.

Fourth year: Chee Seng was promoted to subject head in school, and Cody quit for a new job as an editor in a trade magazine that specialised in aviation news. For travel, they decided to visit Paris, Madrid and Barcelona, and used up two eight-gigabyte memory cards for photos. They had a huge fight that year, and did not talk for a week, but things got back to normal in the end; the cause: money.

Fifth year: they went to numerous property launches to see whether they could find a place to buy, but could not reach a mutual agreement; with Chee Seng it was always money and whether they could afford it in the long run, while with Cody, it was convenience and accessibility and privacy. They adopted a dog from the animal shelter, a black Labrador they named Ninja, and took turns to pay for its upkeep: veterinarian visits, food, grooming. From the start, the dog liked Chee Seng more than Cody. They limited their travel to only Bangkok that year, and only for three days, because of the dog.

Sixth year: a quiet year of domesticity. They both changed mobile phones and upgraded their data plans. They babysat for Cody’s three nephews and niece. They went for walks in Bishan Park with Ninja; he had grown bigger and friendlier, and less demanding, and was greatly loved by the children of Cody’s sisters. They signed up for a marathon at the end of the year; Cody finished an hour faster than Chee Seng. They explored eastern Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak, its quiet beaches and lazy, rustic towns.

Seventh year: they finally found a flat that they both liked, within their budget; after a longer than expected renovation, caused by unnecessary delays and several arguments with the contractor over material defects and poor workmanship, they moved in. The flat wiped out almost all their savings, but they finally had their own place, and they hoped things would get better; they had been fighting more and more, and over increasingly trivial things. Travels: again Barcelona, and five months later, Taiwan. There, they had a threesome with a twenty-eight-year-old Taiwanese man who worked as a software engineer in an online-gaming company. Cody chatted up the guy at Funky, a dance club, and he took a liking to both of them. Chee Seng was apprehensive at first, but Cody convinced him that it was just a one-off thing, nothing more, and he gave in eventually. They brought the guy back to their hotel, and took turns to fuck him. The guy left after they were done, but expressed interest in meeting up again, no strings attached. They did not pursue this, in any case. Chee Seng and Cody talked about what happened after they came back, and because they were both averse to the idea of an open relationship, they left things as they were. Ninja had missed them while they were away, and so they bought him a chew toy shaped like a bone.

Eighth year: Cody was promoted to senior editor, and started sending out résumés for other better-paying jobs. Less than two months later, he received an offer to work in a company that handled custom publishing for government-linked agencies. Job scope was not much different, but he did get a twenty per cent pay raise. Chee Seng was promoted again, to head of department, and complained incessantly about the increase in workload. They still fought, naturally, and when it got worse, Cody would sleep on the sofa in the living room, or go back to his father’s flat for a few days. Reasons: money and housework and Ninja. They took longer to reach a truce, and when they could not find common ground for a ceasefire, they turned the other way and pretended otherwise. The days passed, and they would still have meals together, and from time to time they would still make love, quickly and efficiently. Sometimes, to avoid the trouble or inconvenience, Cody would masturbate in the shower. Always, there were things to do, to make do, to follow up: the leaking air-con, the weekly groceries, Ninja’s vaccinations. And then Ninja died that year of heatstroke, which was primarily Cody’s fault. He brought the dog out for a run around the neighbourhood, forgetting that Ninja had grown both old and overweight. After less than a kilometre, the dog collapsed to the ground, whining in agony, his mouth lined with froth. He shat all the way to the animal hospital, and the vet kept him under tight watch for twenty-four hours, but Ninja did not respond to any treatment, so they had to put him down. Chee Seng and Cody were inconsolable, grieving for Ninja as though they had lost a son. They cremated him and brought his ashes back in a porcelain urn, keeping it at the back of the wardrobe. They threw away all of his stuff, but Cody secretly kept his leash. Chee Seng did not blame him for what happened, but Cody had already assumed the guilt. That year, they took separate trips overseas: Chee Seng to Phnom Penh, and Cody to Bangkok.

Ninth year: they went to work every day and ate out most evenings. They still talked, but about things that were of little consequence. They ran, and occasionally caught a movie at the cineplex. They went to bed at the same time, and paid the bills through the joint savings account on time. They planned to get another flat, but this time for rental income. They kept themselves busy the whole year, and tried to stay sane and healthy. They were close to the ten-year mark, an achievement, something to be proud of. Then Cody’s ex-boyfriend Terry called one day to invite him out for dinner; he was going to be posted to Shanghai for a six-month job assignment and wanted to celebrate it with Cody, for old times’ sake. Things fell into place swiftly afterwards: a few drinks after dinner, a long, nostalgic talk about their shared past, an innocent enough kiss, then the familiar touches of an ex-lover. Everything that was bound to happen happened, and that was that, the oldest act of betrayal in the history of love.

So when Ai Ling suggested the trip to Phuket at the end of December, Cody was more than willing to take it up. He needed some more time to carefully think through what he wanted out of his relationship with Chee Seng, and was hoping things would take a turn for the better.

Somewhere in the dark room, the ringtone of a mobile phone sounds: the opening chords of the Coldplay song “Clocks”. Chee Seng’s phone. The song plays for a minute or so, before it stops, and then resumes again a moment later. This happens another three times. You creep over to the pile of clothes strewn on the floor beside the cupboard, pick through the clothes—the song’s getting louder—and find the phone in the pocket of Chee Seng’s Bermuda shorts. The song cuts off just as you’re fumbling to see who the caller is. Seven missed calls from Chee Seng’s mother.

You grip the phone and sink back to the floor. After accidentally touching a button, the main screen comes on with a photograph: you and Chee Seng, taken at the beach on your first day in Phuket, the sunset draining away behind you, the sky a dark blue. Chee Seng’s arm is around your shoulder, holding you close so that you could both fit into the frame. You had tried a few times, adjusting postures and smiles, before Chee Seng was finally satisfied.

You click on his message inbox and scroll through the messages. Most of them are from you, several from his mother, and others from mutual friends. All the messages are either very recent or very old; Chee Seng has a habit of clearing his inbox regularly. He once told you that it’s because of the lack of memory on his mobile phone, but you know it’s just another expression of how he has always lived his life, his singular way of managing things; the fewer things one has, the lesser hold and influence these things have on you, he told you once.

Towards the bottom of the inbox, you see that he has saved all the messages that have come from you. You click on a message, one dated back to when you two first started dating:

Do you wanna come over to my place later? We can order in and watch a movie. Any movie, your choice. I’m fine with anything. Let me know. Miss you.

And further down, as if backtracking in time, another message:

I had a great time this evening. Hope you have enjoyed it too. Can’t wait for the next time we meet. When can I see you again? Haha. Good night, dear.

You continue to scroll through the messages. In the earliest ones you glimpse forgotten past events, words of love, the first flushes of emotions. You can’t remember most of the messages that you sent to him, yet they clearly mean something to Chee Seng, important enough to keep.

And the more you read, the weaker the grip of your understanding of this person who has sent these messages; it’s nearly impossible to comprehend this strange construct of a person that is the younger you, so far removed from who you are now. You hit the Sent box and read the messages that Chee Seng has sent in response. When you’re done, you close your weary eyes, your mind strangely empty of thoughts, suspended in a limbo.

And you stay there, in this state, for a long time, willing yourself to feel nothing, to be nothing.

11

WEI XIANG

By the time he has run down five flights of stairs to the second floor of the hotel—the lift has stopped working—Wei Xiang is completely out of breath, his heart slamming in his chest. There is already a commotion at the makeshift front desk that has been relocated from the lobby to the second floor foyer: a stocky, dark-skinned woman in a sundress is gesturing wildly and yelling at the hotel manager, while the latter is trying and failing to mollify her. Wei Xiang can hear the woman from where he’s standing, an intense volley of angry words, and though he does not understand a single word—Spanish? Portuguese?—he can guess at the gist of what she wants, or what anyone in the current situation wants. He, too, is about to do the same thing, if not for the motley group of hotel guests queuing at the desk, staring openly at the one-sided altercation, waiting their turns. Behind the manager, two female receptionists are cradling phones to their ears, talking rapidly and glancing furtively at the guests.

Wei Xiang walks down the final flight of stairs and stops two steps above the standing water that has flooded the hotel reception and lobby. The velvety sofas have toppled, their wooden legs sticking above the water like limbs of dead, stiffened animals; the large glass-paned table in the waiting area has shattered into webbed pieces, and the side tables have floated to the other end of the lobby, jumbled in a tight configuration. Torn magazines, books, newspapers, Lonely Planet guidebooks and travel pamphlets, warped and water-bloated, drift on the surface of the mud-grey water, banging listlessly against one another. A few landscape paintings have fallen off their hooks and bob in the water, the paint dissolving into smudgy blots and splotches of colour, their wooden frames broken. Two Caucasian children, oblivious to the danger around them, are playing in the stagnant water that comes up to mid-thigh, throwing handfuls of dirty water at each other. The wall lighting fixtures and decorative standing lamps have either been short-circuited or switched off; the lobby is shrouded in a palpable gloom.

Five men, hotel staff, are rummaging through the mess, salvaging what they can: shoes and sandals, small pots of fake geraniums and daisies, brochure holders, clothes hangers, rugs, umbrellas. Two of them are carrying black trash bags, into which they throw everything that is broken, tattered, or in an irreparable state. The men go about their task in an orderly manner, as if this were a regular part of their daily work routine. A few female staff, dressed in their black-and-white hotel uniforms, appear with large plastic buckets and metal pails, forming a line that snakes from the lobby into a room at the back of the hotel. They begin to fill these containers with the dirty water, and pass them up the line. Looking at them, Wei Xiang can’t help but wonder how long it will take them to clear away all the water. To Wei Xiang, their feeble attempt to relieve the situation seems futile, pointless even, akin to emptying the sea with spoons and ladles. From outside the hotel, overlapping yells and cries can be heard.

Wei Xiang hesitates where he stands, holding the handrail, his feet just above the surface of the lightly rippling water. He watches the commotion around him with detachment, as if what is happening before him is removed entirely from reality, a scene from a dream perhaps, and that if he closes his eyes and opens them again, all this will disappear and everything will return to normal. But the urgency of the harried voices around him is too loud to ignore, coming through the fog that has veiled his mind. There’s no time to wait. Wei Xiang cautiously slips into the cold water, which comes up to his calves, darkening the hem of his Bermuda shorts. A porter, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and rolled-up pants, turns to look at Wei Xiang as he wades towards the flooded reception area. Holding the black trash bag, the man throws in a soggy travel magazine that has come apart in his hands, and regards Wei Xiang with a solicitous look.

“Good morning, sir. How can I help you?” the porter says, straightening his body, giving Wei Xiang a wan smile.

“What happened?” Wei Xiang can’t help asking this question, though he has already seen the aftermath of the waves, the destruction that has wrecked the town, from the balcony of his hotel room.

“We hit by big waves, sir. Very big waves. Happened in morning, very early.”

“Did you see the waves?”

“No, sir. Happened too fast, very sudden, they said. I sleeping.” He points to somewhere behind Wei Xiang, beyond the restaurant, towards the back of the hotel; the staff dormitory. Wei Xiang caught a glimpse of it the day before, a nondescript, three-storey concrete building situated beside a small mango and rambutan garden and a stone-paved footpath, with flapping uniforms, shorts, towels, and undergarments pegged on clotheslines hanging across the balcony. Most of the hotel staff, who come from villages from the northern part of the country, or from the other islands near Phuket, stay there.

Wei Xiang sees a family coming down the stairs, the father putting up his hand to stop his wife and children from stepping into the water, his three young children gasping with delight at the sight of the water-logged lobby. The man speaks to his wife in Thai, who immediately shepherds the excited children up the stairs, while he rolls up his pants and makes his way across the lobby, his arms moving in wide, exaggerated arcs around his chest, as if he were trotting through the water with great effort.

“Have you seen a Chinese woman with long hair, about this height, this morning?” Wei Xiang says, lifting his hand to a height just below his chin. “I think she might be wearing running attire.” The porter stares at him, his forehead furrowed. “Have you seen a woman like that?” he asks again.

The porter lowers his eyes, shakes his head. “No sir, I no see this woman,” he says.

Wei Xiang feels a passing moment of relief until it strikes him that Ai Ling might have left the hotel before the man came on duty, and his mind begins to crowd with other thoughts. Yes, Ai Ling is still out there, somewhere; perhaps she has found some sort of refuge before the waves came in, and is waiting for someone to find her. Maybe she’s waiting for him to get her now. Wei Xiang turns to leave.

“Sir, can’t go out, very dangerous,” the porter says, a look of concern flashing across his face. “Later waves come back. Stay in hotel, better, safe. Don’t go out.”

“I need to find my wife. She went out this morning, and I think she is missing. Do you understand? I need to find her,” Wei Xiang says, his voice cracking. He looks away, out of the dirt-smeared hotel windows, at the street and the soot-hued sky.

“Sir, messy outside. Water everywhere, hard to walk. No safe.”

“It’s okay. I can manage,” Wei Xiang says, tearing himself away from the porter, and trudges towards the open doors of the hotel. He can hear mutters of “Sir, sir” behind him, but ignores it. Moving through the sluggish water is much harder than he thought. He steps on something soft and squishy, and quickly brushes it aside with his feet. The muddy water is thicker and more viscous at the entrance of the hotel; the glass doors have shattered, leaving behind a skeletal metal frame with a barbed perimeter of glass shards. Crossing the threshold, Wei Xiang looks out into the street. The commotion behind him in the hotel fades into the background as the bustling din of the street assaults him.

The cries of children rise above the clamour of the other noises; they have taken to wandering the street, looking lost and confused, their faces mottled with dried-up mud, tears and mucus. A few kids are crying at the top of their voices, perched on piles of rubble, their clothes wet. In the street, the water comes up to Wei Xiang’s hips. Small groups of locals navigate the water with caution; some are staggering in the direction of the beach—Wei Xiang has a hard time telling which direction the sea is—while others head inland towards higher ground.

Wei Xiang sees a young woman moving frantically through the water, peering into narrow alleys, shouting something with every step: “Yari!” A name perhaps. A lean, bare-chested man is pushing a rickety bicycle missing a seat through the water, a large basket of chickens tied with ropes around its frame. The metal-grille gates of the row of shops opposite the hotel are shut tight, their faded signboards askew. Two cats patrol the zinc rooftops of the shops, surveying the sight before them with lazy contempt.

Two old women wearing wide-brimmed, straw-woven hats brush past Wei Xiang, talking loudly; one of them gives Wei Xiang a long rueful stare. Standing in the middle of the street, Wei Xiang assesses the two possible routes he can take: towards the sea, or away from it. He can also head down any of the alleyways that branch off into other parts of the town and find his way around. A hard object bumps against his calf and jolts him; he looks down and sees a small dead dog gliding away, the fringes of its matted fur trailing in the water. A group of locals carrying a torn-off aluminium panel knocks into Wei Xiang, almost throwing him off his feet; a hand, white knuckles taut, peeks out of the plastic sheet covering the makeshift stretcher, and he quickly moves aside. The path clears as the crowd makes way for the men to pass. Wei Xiang watches the procession till it disappears around a bend, near the main road. Then he glances down the waterlogged street leading to the beach and sees hordes of people making their way into the interior of the town, away from the wreckage.

Someone grabs his arm and Wei Xiang jumps, staring into the anguished face of the frantic young woman he saw earlier, the one searching for someone. He does not pull away from her touch, certain that he’s also wearing the same raw, pleading, desperate look. The woman’s voice is hoarse, but she utters the word again, like a chant: “Yari! Yari! Yari!” Wei Xiang shakes his head, and the woman loosens her grip, stumbling away to another passer-by, calling out the name.

Where the landscape has flattened out in the direction of the sea, Wei Xiang can see the ruins of toppled huts, reduced to perilous fragments of walls, carcasses of their former selves. The coconut trees have been stripped clean of foliage, their bare trunks jutting into the sky like accusing fingers.

A dizzying chill runs through him as he registers these images, his clouded mind lacking the ability to process them or put any definite meaning to what he is seeing. Everything is scrambled up, a reel of disconnected images. Yet, amidst all this, an overriding thought shrieks for his attention: Where is Ai Ling?

Stirring from his indecision, Wei Xiang takes a step, and allows himself to be pushed along with the flow of the crowd heading towards the sea.