Now That It's Over

21

AI LING

In late October 2004, Ai Ling had told Wei Xiang about a four-day trip she was hoping to take by herself to Cha Am, a beach resort town along the western coast of Thailand, to “get herself sorted out”. When Wei Xiang asked to accompany her, Ai Ling declined, offering the answer she had prepared in advance: she needed some time on her own, to take a breather from work, to think. Ai Ling then smiled and patted his arm, brushing away his worry.

The morning she landed in Bangkok, she took a two-hour coach ride to Cha Am, and arrived at the beachfront resort tired but elated. She felt as if she had finally pulled off an impossible feat and was being rewarded with the prize she had wanted: silence and solitude. They gave her a room on the third floor, from where she could see the silver surf on the beach and hear the white noise of street sounds—snippets of Thai songs, children playing, cars driving by. Her room was simple enough, a queen-size bed with a low bedside table, a large mirror beside the door, and a small beige two-seater sofa that faced the floor-to-ceiling windows. From her luggage, she took out her toiletries bag and went for a quick shower. When she was done, she lay on the bed, hair damp, and allowed her body to sink into its silky comfort, the bedsheet cool against her skin. She fell asleep and woke up half an hour later, feeling the drag of lethargy in her body. She sat up on the edge of the bed and watched as the water swept along the coastline, the sea stretching into the far horizon.

In her half-drowsy state, Ai Ling remembered Wei Xiang’s face at the airport that morning, how his eyes were alert with attention, searching hers for some sort of an answer to the questions he dared not ask. Again, Ai Ling had given him the details of her itinerary and the contact information of the hotel where she would be staying. When they parted at the departure gates, Ai Ling could not help but feel a deep sense of relief, as if she were finally freed from her obligations, her tiresome old self. The recollection of her relief brought a stab of guilt, and Ai Ling quickly let the feeling pass. She was not here to feel the same things or have the same thoughts. For the next few days, she did not want to be her usual self; she wanted to do things differently, and for her own sake. She only needed to answer to herself.

Ai Ling got up from the bed and opened every window in the room, letting the breeze in, sending ripples across the rumpled bedsheet. The greasy smell of frying oil wafted into the room, reminding her that she had not eaten since breakfast with Wei Xiang at the airport, and she could feel her stomach growling. Dusk was approaching fast, scattering stolen light across the sea; Ai Ling caught her reflection in the large mirror, suspended in this quality of light, and for a moment she felt strangely out of body. “Light and shadow is all,” she said in a self-deprecating tone to her own reflection. Then she laughed and dressed for dinner.

As Ai Ling passed through the foyer, she glanced over at the alfresco hotel bar, where a few occupants were having drinks; a television was blaring a football match with loud commentary. A face turned to her and she was surprised to recognise who the person was: a man who had taken the same coach from Bangkok to the hotel, whom she had barely acknowledged during the bus journey. He was in his late twenties, lean and bespectacled, with neatly parted hair. Ai Ling had wondered whether he was a fellow Singaporean and was apprehensive about making further contact, even with a glance.

But the man was smiling at her now, and Ai Ling felt compelled to return it. He watched as she passed through the foyer, and she was suddenly conscious of her movements and her loose, knee-length sundress. She quickly erased the thought from her mind; still she could sense the curiosity emanating from the man’s stare, like a source of heat. She quickened her steps.

At thirty-five, Ai Ling knew she was already past her prime, that words like “pretty” or “attractive” no longer applied to her. She had not cared much about such things—these vacuous aesthetic labels that differ from person to person—though she was aware of the gradual fading of her looks, something beyond her control. She knew she had crossed some line, one that had separated her younger self from the current one, and often wondered how this transition had taken place, and at which point in her life. She felt centuries old in her body, in her mind.

Yet, it was times like this—a cursory glance from a man or a woman, weighing and assessing her looks—that Ai Ling was called back to her own physicality, and was reminded once again that every feature of her flesh was being calibrated and compared against different measures of beauty. She often felt shrunken by the limitations of these judgements, by the narrow-mindedness of the people who employed such measures. She did not want to be part of this, yet she somehow felt drawn in—no, unsettled—by the young man’s look, which carried some sort of response to what she was unconsciously looking for. In his look, she was remade in a different light—a more attractive light—and this thought was oddly refreshing, the transformation of her self in another person’s determined gaze.

She was still pondering this when she stepped outside onto the busy street, and her attention was swiftly diverted to the flow of cars and people, almost crashing into a group of children playing at a standing water tap and splashing water at each other. The hem of her dress got wet, though it did not bother her. Strolling along the long stretch of Ruamjit Road, she swung her glance from the restaurants, convenience stores, massage parlours and dingily-lit bars that lined the main street to the setting sun that was submerging itself into the dark water. The nearby crash of the waves fought its way into Ai Ling’s ears, rising above the din of loud music and human chatter. After walking almost the entire length of the street, Ai Ling backtracked to the restaurant that had looked promising when she first saw it, a chalkboard outside advertising seafood phad thai and green curry. The restaurant was not much more than a large seating area made up of six tables, with an open kitchen at the entrance and living quarters behind the beaded curtains where the owner and his family supposedly lived. She was ushered to the smallest table at the front of the restaurant. Seated, Ai Ling pointed to the chalkboard, indicating what she wanted. The server, a slim girl in her late teens, wearing cut-off jean shorts, took her order and went into the kitchen. The only other two occupied tables were taken up by locals. A beat-up television hanging in a corner of the restaurant featured a drama with mostly frowning actors. Ai Ling took in her surroundings and the conversations around her with a detached interest; she always liked this sense of separateness from other people, of watching from a distance.

From the corner of her eye, she saw someone standing outside the restaurant, studying the menu on the chalkboard. It was the same young man from the hotel bar. His eyebrows arched when he saw Ai Ling sitting there, and in the next moment, he was asking whether he could join her table. Ai Ling, finding no excuse to offer, nodded her head.

“I hope you don’t mind,” the man said, levelling his gaze at her.

“No, it’s okay,” Ai Ling said, before turning to watch the show on the TV. The man, after a pause of a few seconds, began to talk.

“I saw you just now at the hotel. Are you travelling alone?”

“Yes, I’m on holiday.”

“That’s great. Cha Am is a great place. It’s my second time here. You’ll love this place.”

“I hope so.”

“This restaurant is one of the best here. They serve the best phad thai, with the fish sauce they use. You won’t find any place that serves better.”

“I’m sure I’ll like it.”

Despite her best efforts, Ai Ling found herself gradually entering into a conversation with the young man, Daniel, and coming to learn certain aspects of his life. How he had quit his job recently, as a logistics engineer in a manufacturing firm, and was planning to backpack for a while before he returned home (yes, he was a Singaporean, as Ai Ling had expected), that he did not know where he would head next, planning to be spontaneous about the places he wanted to go. In return, Ai Ling told him that she too was taking a break from her work, that she had heard about Cha Am from a colleague, that she loved the hotel and the view her room offered.

When the food came, they ate in silence. Whenever Daniel’s gaze strayed—when he turned to grab the tray of condiments or talk to the server—Ai Ling would glance at him. She noticed the dimples near his mouth and the slenderness of his ears. His smile was uneven, the left side of his lips tilting upwards in a slight smirk before the right side caught up. Even when Ai Ling was hesitant to talk, Daniel pressed on with questions that were never too specific or personal.

After their meal, Ai Ling decided to head back to the hotel.

“So early? The night is young,” Daniel said as they stepped into the cool night air. Traffic was light at this time of the evening.

“I’m a bit tired,” Ai Ling said.

“Then I’ll walk you back.”

“No no, it’s okay.”

“Nah, there’s nothing to do here when it’s dark. May as well head back to the hotel where I can catch a football match or something on TV, and maybe have a drink.”

They walked back slowly, occasionally turning their attention to other passers-by, to the patrons that had filled the bars. They chatted across a range of topics, and before long they were back at the hotel. There, Ai Ling bade her companion a good night and climbed the stairs to her room, not turning back for another look.

In her room, Ai Ling took another shower and lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, thinking about the evening she just had. She could not keep hold of her own thoughts, which seemed to pull her in many directions, so she turned on the bedside lamp, took out a paperback from her bag—Toni Morrison’s Beloved, highly recommended by Cody—and tried to focus on the words on the page. After several attempts, she switched off the light and watched the parade of shadows on the ceiling near the open windows, waiting for sleep to come.

For the first time in a long while, Ai Ling woke up without a thought in her head, her eyes snapped wide open to the first light of the day. She took in the silence of the room, immersed herself in it. She stayed in bed until the alarm on her Nokia phone went off, and then she forced herself to get up.

After putting on her running attire and shoes, she headed out for a run. The hotel was quiet at this hour, with only a concierge manning the reception desk and a young woman setting up continental breakfast in the hotel lounge. The morning air bristled with a slight chill, which Ai Ling shook off with a quick warm-up. The street along the beach was largely devoid of people, except for the street hawkers peddling vegetables and fish, and the housewives shopping for groceries. Ai Ling took off in the direction of the hill, on the western side of town, keeping a comfortable pace. A mangy stray dog with garish pink patches of skin came up to her, sniffing at her heels, and ran with her for some time before it was distracted by an old man seated on a bike who threw something—leftovers of his breakfast, some bones and rice—in its direction. Ai Ling slowed her pace, thinking the dog might catch up but it did not return to her side. When she came to the foot of the hill, she turned back, this time running on the beach. The rising sun shone across the water, causing the crests of the waves to sparkle in explosive brilliance. Ai Ling squinted.

Near the hotel, she collapsed onto the sand, her perspiration forming a dark U on the front of her grey shirt. Nearby, an elderly man with a basket in hand was combing the wet sand for crabs, while two boys played in the water, their thin torsos shiny in the morning light. Ai Ling sensed someone approaching from behind her, and she turned to see a small Thai boy walking towards her, five or six years old, wearing a dirty purple T-shirt and tattered shorts and hauling a dirty cloth bag over his shoulder, a bottle of mineral water in his hand. Closer, Ai Ling noticed the boy’s large sunken eyes, turned-up nub of a nose and set of crooked brown teeth. He looked gaunt, as though he had gone for a long time without proper rest or food. His smile was hopeful, expectant.

Ai Ling raised her hands to indicate that she did not have any money with her and the boy frowned. Then, with a series of hand gestures, Ai Ling pointed to her hotel across the two-way street, indicating that she would run up to her room and grab some money, and the boy, following her gestures, smiled and handed over the bottle. Ai Ling thanked him and spoke a few short phrases in English, but the boy shook his head, waving his small hands. He sat down on the sand and opened the dirty bag, which held bottles of water and juices, and Ai Ling noted that the bag was nearly the same size as the boy. She lifted her arms in a gesture to tell the boy that he was strong, and he burst into laughter, his face brightening instantly. They sat for a while in silence, looking out at the sea.

When Ai Ling finished her water, the boy asked for the empty bottle. He put it into his bag, preparing to leave. Rising with her, Ai Ling told the boy to follow her to the hotel. When she offered to carry the heavy bag of drinks, the boy politely shook his head and hunched forward to counter the weight. At the entrance of the hotel, the boy stopped, his eyes on the staff inside, looking wary of trespassing into a place where he did not belong.

“Wait here,” Ai Ling said. The boy nodded.

Though it took only a couple of minutes for Ai Ling to dash up to her room to get the money, by the time she returned to the hotel entrance, the boy had disappeared. Ai Ling examined the street in both directions and then at the beach, hoping to catch sight of the boy, but he was not there.

Thoughts of the boy stayed with Ai Ling as she went about her day. At breakfast, she expected to see Daniel once again, and just as she was about to grab a plate at the buffet table, he was right beside her with a morning greeting. His hair was damp from a shower, his face scrubbed pink, his cheeks unshaven. In his sleeveless shirt, he looked younger than his age, more rugged. This time, he sat at Ai Ling’s table without asking. As they ate, Ai Ling brought up her encounter with the boy on the beach.

“I see those kids in the street here all the time,” Daniel said, slicing a wedge out of his pancake, dripping with syrup, and forking it into his mouth. “Their earnings go back to their parents or relatives or whoever hires them, you know. I heard that some of them have been kidnapped from elsewhere and brought here to work from morning to night, sometimes surviving only on scraps.”

“How come nobody is doing anything about this?” Ai Ling said.

“Maybe it’s not their business to interfere. It’s much easier to close your eyes to what is happening, to pretend nothing is wrong. Maybe it’s just too much trouble.”

“I wish more could be done for these kids somehow. To help them out of their situation.”

“And then what? What happens after you’ve saved them? Who’s going to take care of them, give them a shelter, feed them? It’s not so easy.”

Ai Ling said nothing; perhaps Daniel was right. She was a tourist, an outsider, after all. In two days’ time, she would leave, go back to her life in Singapore, and things would remain the same here, the kids continuing to hawk their wares—drinks, cigarettes, mineral water, cut fruits—and living the only life they knew. It was foolish to think that she could befriend a boy, make him laugh, and that would be all to fix things.

“So what are your plans today?” Daniel said, changing the subject. He eyed her with interest.

“I think I’ll do some reading, and perhaps shop around later. Maybe go for a swim if it’s not too hot.”

“If you want, I could rent a motorbike or a car and we can head somewhere. There’s a forest park a short ride away, with limestone hills and caves we can explore. It’ll be fun.”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass. I appreciate your offer though.”

“Sure, anytime.” Daniel shrugged, the intensity gone out of his smile.

Back in her room, Ai Ling willed herself not to think about Daniel or the boy, but her mind kept returning to them. She smiled to herself at Daniel’s flirtation, at how he was trying to get her to go out with him. If she had been a different kind of woman, living a different life, she might have taken him up on his offer. In her seven years of marriage to Wei Xiang, Ai Ling might have felt unhappy at times, but she had never questioned her love for him, even as she sometimes felt drained by his dependence on her, which often left her weary.

She had to be mindful of avoiding Daniel for the next two days.

Ai Ling picked up Beloved and attempted to read. She had not been able to get through two pages since arriving in Cha Am, and her failure to do so again did not surprise her. It might have been the wrong book to bring along. Creeping into the bed and lying on the cool bedsheet, Ai Ling imagined herself floating on the surface of a river, gliding away. She closed her eyes; the image of the young boy surfaced, along with the memory of the infant shoes sinking into the darkness of a pond. It had been many years since her miscarriage, but the sudden memory gripped her hard. She did not suppress it; instead she allowed it to pull others out of the pit of her subconscious. She saw herself at the hospital, standing by the roadside vomiting, the blood coming out of her that never seemed to stop. Her stomach ached now as if it, too, were recollecting the past, and she cringed with the imaginary pain.

If she’d had the child that she actually lost, would it be the same age as the boy she saw that morning? Ai Ling shook her head roughly, wanting to dislodge herself from the path that the thought was leading her towards, unwilling to know what was at the end of it. She opened her eyes and looked out the windows; the sky had changed to a dark sheet of grey, a thunderstorm breaking out in the distance, moving inland.

The heavy rain did not let up till the early evening. Ai Ling stayed in her room, dozing in and out of sleep, her mind groggy with half-remembered dreams. Her body felt dull, sluggish, as if she were swathed with several layers of heavy clothes. Beloved lay beside her, its pages curled from the humidity, the spine loosely holding the novel together, although one of the pages had escaped its grasp. She got up to drink from the tap in the toilet a few times, and to brush her hair. In the harsh light, her face looked tired, the lines around her eyes and mouth more pronounced. She put on another application of moisturiser.

Standing at the windows, Ai Ling watched the progress of the rain, from the initial roars of the thunder to the riotous downpour, a gleaming curtain of silver needles. The sea had come to life with the arrival of the storm, roused by its own rage, the waves whipped into a frenzy, spiky white crests that pierced the surface of the water. The streets were empty. Nothing moved except for the rain and the sea.

During one of her naps, Ai Ling heard a soft knock on the door, which, in her semi-conscious state, she had thought was the pelting of rain on the windows. She did not move to answer it. It could be the hotel concierge or Daniel, but Ai Ling did not care. She waited for the person behind the door to move away, for silence to return to the room.

She got out of bed when she could sleep no more. She showered, put on a loose dress, and stepped out of the room. The rain had died down to a ghostly drizzle, so faint that, as she stood under the hotel’s front awning, she barely felt it on her skin, only a light tingling. The sky was a deep blue that softened in degrees as it met the horizon. The street lights stood against the dusk like solitary figures, beaming out their islands of yellow rays. Ai Ling had only taken a few steps when she felt a shadow looming over her. She turned to see Daniel, holding an umbrella.

“Where were you the whole afternoon? I couldn’t find you.”

“I was sleeping.”

“You sleep very soundly. Maybe that’s why you didn’t hear the knocking.”

They laughed, and started to walk in the direction of the restaurant where they’d had dinner the night before. With Ai Ling’s assent, Daniel ordered the same dishes as before, along with a plate of fried prawn cakes. He assaulted her with questions once again, and Ai Ling answered them politely. After dinner, he asked whether she was interested in walking along the beach—the weather was cool after the rain—but she declined. As they headed back to the hotel, the man brushed his hand against Ai Ling’s, and when she did not move away or shy from it, he took hold of her hand. As they strolled down the street, Ai Ling wondered how they looked to the other passers-by, who might mistake them for a couple enjoying an evening walk, talking about the quiet, intimate affairs of their lives, and she could not help but imagine the life she could have with this stranger. She wondered whether Daniel wanted children—a boy or a girl, or both. She did not skimp on any detail that would make this imagined life better or richer or more satisfying than the one she had.

Back at the hotel, Daniel asked Ai Ling whether she was up for a drink at the bar. She hesitated, then shook her head. Daniel looked puzzled, thrown off his axis, unable to reconcile what had preceded—a good meal together, the conversation, the hand-holding—with Ai Ling’s returning taciturn behaviour. Not knowing how to pull out of the situation, she stretched upwards and kissed him lightly on the cheek. His eyes brightened fleetingly with a flare of hope, but she had already extricated herself, and was moving towards the staircase. She heard Daniel calling out to her, but she did not turn around.

In her room, Ai Ling sat on the sofa and gazed out the windows. When her mind had finally settled into its usual flow, she got up and called the reception from the bedside phone, informing them that she would be checking out in the morning and enquiring about the coach schedule back to Bangkok. Done with the call, she started to pack her things.

In the early morning, Ai Ling woke up feeling nauseated, and threw up what she had eaten the night before. Dousing her face with cold water, Ai Ling tried to hold down the waves of sickness that continued to stir her insides, even when she had nothing left to vomit. The pain came and went like serrating pulses of light. She returned to bed and fell back to sleep. When she woke an hour later, she felt much better, returned to her usual self.

With some time to kill before she had to check out at eleven—she wanted to avoid Daniel by all means—Ai Ling decided to go for a swim in the sea. She put on her one-piece and headed down to the beach. The day held the promise of fair weather, the air skin-sobering cool with a hint of a bite, still retaining the memory of the rain. The beach was empty except for a handful of early risers doing their morning exercise.

Putting her towel down on the sand, Ai Ling surveyed the beach from one end to the other: no other swimmer in sight. She stepped to the water line, then plunged straight in, giving herself entirely to the nerve-numbing shock of the cold water. For a few seconds, her body only registered the biting pain that surrounded it before a blossoming sensation of warmth started to spread out as she moved her arms and legs, pushing her body onwards. She swam for a long time without stopping. When she paused to look back at the shore, everything seemed so distant—the town on the coast, the people, the hills that rose in the south. Apart from her sonorous breaths, the sea was silent. With her feet hovering in a colder, deeper part of the water, Ai Ling could envision the lower regions of the sea, the unknown watery abyss where blind creatures swam, hunted and lived out their existence. Ai Ling suddenly felt infinitesimal, disembodied, her heartbeats insignificant against the mass of countless heartbeats that reverberated in the dark, echoing chamber of the sea. Along with this realisation, she also felt a jolt of surprise, as if she had only now been made known of the significance of her life, an experience so brief in its secret, elusive joy.

The morning sun had spread itself across the surface of the sea, which pulsated with light. Ai Ling stayed in the water, floating on her back, her face open to the sky. Her ears, submerged, picked up the clicking sounds of the sea, a rumbling of its interior, beating with life. The sunlight warmed her face. Ai Ling did not know how long she stayed in this position—her mind had slipped into a state of blissful thoughtlessness—when she heard a sharp sound, rising above the clamour of the sea. She lifted her head and turned towards the shore.

Standing at the edge of the water was the boy who had offered her a drink the day before, gesturing wildly. Ai Ling waved back and looked in the water around her and knew the cause of the boy’s excitement. What first looked like a bunch of small, translucent plastic bags discarded into the sea was actually a school of jellyfish, stringy tentacles hanging from the milky dome-like caps of their bodies. They were all around her. The boy’s piercing voice carried through the air like a siren.

With slow, nimble strokes, Ai Ling made her way carefully between and around the jellyfish, her heart leaping inside her each time she came close to one of the tentacles. Once she was finally clear of them, she pounded her way swiftly through the water, desperate to be back on land. She reached the shore, panting, but the boy was no longer there, only a trail of footsteps in the sand that disappeared further up the beach.

In her ears, Ai Ling could still hear an echo of the boy’s voice, fainter and weaker, until it disappeared completely.

22

CHEE SENG

I change into my old clothes and have a simple breakfast of gruel and salted black beans. Before we set off, the old woman brings me one last bowl of the bitter brew and has me drink it. Carrying the bundle of food she has prepared for me, she leads me out of the compound of the hut, past the furrowed plots of long beans, peas and water spinach, onto the cleared-out path that snakes into the dense forest. I follow her closely. I have no idea where she’s taking me, but I do not ask. We walk without stopping until the sun is hovering above the tree line. We finally exit the forest, the hardened-soil path widening out into a gravel-filled road. Coming to a stop at a clearing, the old woman looks at me. With a firm hand gesture, she tells me to stay put. She points to the end of the road, where it disappears down a slope, and stares in the direction for a few seconds. Then, after taking a last glance at me, she turns and re-enters the forest. I watch as she slips between the trees and vanishes out of sight.

No vehicle appears as I stand by the road, waiting. The day is becoming warmer. The dew on the grass has already dried up. The tall Casuarina trees lining the sides of the road stretch into the distance, the leaves rustling with the occasional breeze. The intermittent bursts of sharp trilling from birds hidden amongst the branches provide the only soundtrack to the quiet surroundings. I stretch my legs to work out the kinks. It has to be late morning now. I pick up the bundle by my feet and, glancing in both directions, decide to take the descending route, down the hill.

“I think it’s this way,” I said, pointing to a branching path that led into a thicket of bushes. We had been walking on the narrow, muddy path for the past twenty minutes and seemed to be heading nowhere. Cody, coming to a stop beside me, glanced at where I was indicating, his face a curtain of sweat.

“You sure?” he asked, taking a bottle of water out from his haversack and passing it to me. He wiped his face on the sleeve of his T-shirt, leaving dark stains. Since I was the one who had suggested the trek on our fourth date, I could not tell him what was worrying me, that we might be lost.

“Yes, it’ll lead us to the main route that will bring us back to the starting point,” I said.

Cody nodded, took a swig of water and went ahead of me onto the path. Then turning suddenly, he grabbed my hand and pulled me towards him. “You smell good when you sweat.” He took a long sniff and kissed my neck.

“Wish I could say the same thing about you,” I said.

“Well, guess you have to get used to it then.” He hugged me, and I could feel the wetness of his shirt against my body, soaking my shirt, touching my skin.

We walked for another three hours to get out of the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, having long run out of water and covered with scratches and bites. This incident later became a funny anecdote that Cody would tell our friends over dinners to illustrate the extent he had to go to woo me, that although he had known I had lost the way, he did not have the heart to tell me so.

But would he do it again, he was often asked, a follow-up question, and he would say, turning to me, smiling: maybe, maybe.

The closely clustered trees tower over me, the thick unruly undergrowth edges out onto the cracked tarmac, the long road curves round a bend before emerging again. My thoughts slip in and out of the crevices of my mind, gaining no real purchase. The sun is now at its zenith, blinding. I take off my shirt and tie it around my waist. My skin feels taut, as if I might burst out of it anytime, like a snake shedding its old skin.

My pace has slowed considerably, and I can feel blisters mushrooming on my torn soles. I glance back occasionally for signs of movement, but there’s nothing, only a long grey stretch of road traversing the landscape, winding through the trees. Two dark smudges move through the sky in unison—eagles? One of them lets out a doleful cry, dips low and disappears into the treetops, while the other cuts a straight path ahead. I watch as it flies beyond the hills and vanishes into a bank of low-lying clouds.

For the first three months I was dating Cody, I was also casually seeing another guy on the side. Andy was twenty-eight, and worked as a senior data analyst in a market research firm; we met through a mutual friend. He was fine with the arrangement, as he had just got out of a six-year relationship and wasn’t looking for anything serious. Because nothing was asked besides mutual pleasure, we enjoyed the sessions we had, with some lasting up to three, four hours. Right from the start, because I knew what I was in for, I did not expect much from him, and was wary of making any unnecessary demands on his time. We met when we were free or bored or horny, and we left the rest of our lives opaque to each other. There was nothing else to hold us together, and we were okay with what we had.

So when Cody asked whether I was seeing anyone else over brunch one morning, I was caught off-guard. I studied his face to see whether his question was asked out of plain interest or suspicion. I could not sense the intention behind his expression.

“Why do you ask?” I said.

“Just curious. You’re always checking your mobile phone,” he said, biting into his kaya toast, a light dusting of bread crust falling to the table top.

“It’s a bad habit, I guess. Okay, I promise not to check my phone so much,” I said.

“No, no. It’s okay with me. I’m just wondering, that’s all. So? Are you seeing anyone else?”

I smiled. Cody’s look was a mix of anticipation and curiosity.

“Nobody serious. I’m ending it anyway.”

“Oh. Who is he?”

“Just a friend. Well, a friend of a friend, actually.”

“You like him?”

“He’s okay. But he’s not you.”

“Ah, trying to flatter me?” Cody smiled, looking like he wanted to say more, but in the end he refrained. I deleted Andy’s number from my phone and did not answer his calls or messages after that. He persisted for a while, and finally I had to meet him over coffee to explain.

“So that’s why you are avoiding me like a plague? You just have to tell me straight. I’ll understand,” said Andy.

“I just thought perhaps it’s better to tell you face to face.”

“So this is it? You are serious about this guy?”

“He’s decent, and I like him.”

“How long have you been seeing him?”

“A few months.”

“You should have told me earlier. At least I would have some time to look around for another fuck buddy.” Andy laughed, but there was no mirth in his laughter.

“You will find one soon enough, with your looks.”

“I don’t know. It’s not easy to find someone who is compatible, you know.”

“You will, I’m very sure.”

After coffee, Andy offered to drive me home. Coming to the block of flats where I lived, Andy pressed me into my seat. “For old time’s sake,” he said.

“No, better not, people will see.”

“Not that it has bothered you before. Come on.”

“No,” I said, but Andy was already lifting my shirt, teasing my nipple with his tongue. I dropped my hands to my sides. Andy unzipped my jeans and reached in, stroking my cock against my underwear.

“You’ll miss me. You sure you want to give this up?” Andy whispered into my ear, grasping my cock with an assertive firmness. And when he kissed me, dipping his tongue into my mouth, I relented. He bent down and took my cock into his mouth, glancing up at me, silently commanding my attention. When I was about to come, he pushed my cock deeper into his mouth. Unable to hold back, I shot my load, and he swallowed demonstratively.

“You sure you want to give this up?” Andy asked again.

Tattered images cloud my mind as I trudge, my pace slowing to a snail’s crawl, the sweltering heat of the afternoon sun dulling my thoughts. Chafing against my worn-out shoes, the blisters on my feet and ankles have swelled to white, soggy patches, leaking blood and pus. Every little movement takes Herculean effort, even keeping my head up to check what’s ahead of me. The bundle I’m carrying on my shoulder feels like a bag full of concrete blocks, digging into my flesh.

Feeling faint, I amble towards the shade of a tall tree with sprawling roots, and collapse in a heap onto the grassy ground. I close my eyes against the shifting light filtering through the tightly-knitted canopy of leaves. Something hard and sharp jabs my shoulder, but I’m too exhausted to move away. My breaths are slow and mechanical, my mouth a burning furnace. I fumble for the bottle of water in the bundle, remove the cap, and pour the contents over my face. The water runs into my mouth and nose; I gag and throw up everything that I’ve drunk.

Everything starts to slip away from me—I imagine my body slowly disintegrating into the dark soil, sinking into the depths.

Lying in bed in the dark, Cody and I talked about death, the kind of death we envisioned for ourselves.

“Something quick and fast, definitely,” Cody said.

“Like what?” I said.

“Like a car crash or a sudden accident, something totally out of the blue.”

“So drama, so David Lynch-y.”

“Ha, but without the sexual fetishism. Yeah, that way there is no suffering at all, gone, just like that.”

“In a blaze of glory?” I said. Cody’s laughter echoed in the room. “For me, it’s simple. I want to die surrounded by my loved ones.”

“That’s so cliché, boring. Think of a better one.”

“I always have this fantasy that I’ll die of an incurable disease. There I am, on my deathbed, and I have just made a terrible confession to my family. There are tears all around, the nervous clasping of hands, and everyone offering kind words, consolation, forgiveness. You know, the whole works. And then I die very slowly, very beautifully.”

“What the fuck! What’s wrong with you? This is so fucking Korean drama, so totally unoriginal.”

“I know, I know. It’s weird. It’s just a fantasy.”

“I always knew you were such a drama queen!”

“Fuck you.” Cody leant in to kiss me on the forehead. I caught the scent of toothpaste on his breath and sought out his lips.

A savage cry pulls me back from the shadow land of dreams into the present. I open my eyes to the bright, piercing sunlight, and look around. Where has the sound come from? Was it a part of my dream? Peering into the dark undergrowth, I can’t discern any movement. Perhaps I’ve conjured it up in my imagination—the sound seemed wild, distorted, unnatural. I push myself upright and lean against the rough trunk of the tree. I survey my surroundings and the quiet road in front of me. Nothing moves.

I pull the bundle into my lap and take out a bun. Its skin has toughened, and already a few ants are crawling on it. I brush the ants aside and sink my teeth into the bun, the fillings spilling out of the corners of my mouth, flecks of vegetable falling on my chest. Within seconds, the bun’s gone. I’m tempted to eat another, but hold back, knowing that my supplies are limited. There’s no knowing whether I’ll be able to find other sources of food when I run out. I reach for the half-empty bottle of water and take a few sips, which barely satisfies my thirst. I have to keep moving. How long before night comes? The sun has hidden behind a strip of gauzy clouds. The insects buzz incessantly in the lethargic afternoon air.

Suddenly, something moves at the edge of my peripheral vision; the skin on my arms prickles. Turning towards the direction of the movement, I brace myself—what is it? Across the road, partially hidden behind a tree, a presence—something or someone? How long has it been there, without my knowledge? Its shape remains indistinct, its edges blending into the surrounding darkness. It simply stands there, an outline cut out of the fabric of the forest.

I stare for some time before the image slowly resolves into something that hits me like a punch in the stomach.

It’s the boy from the old woman’s hut, the one we buried.

I push myself off the ground, my legs unsteady. Leaning against the tree trunk, I blink several times, unable to make sense of what I’m seeing. The boy must be a projection of my fatigued, heated imagination, I tell myself. Yet, there he is, standing twenty metres away, staring, not moving. Perhaps he is some other boy who lives nearby and has chanced upon me—a stranger in the middle of nowhere; there’s absolutely no way he can be the same boy I buried two days ago.

Neither of us makes a move, each staring at the other across a chasm. My mind is a field of warring thoughts, failing to come up with a plausible explanation. I gather whatever remains of my senses and strength, and take a step forward. The boy immediately takes a step back, moving into the deeper shadow provided by the trees. In the darkness of the foliage, his skin glows with an aura of pale light. With each movement, his figure becomes smaller and smaller, flitting from tree to tree with preternatural ease.

I grab the bundle and move in ungainly steps towards the disappearing boy, not wanting to lose sight of him. Tripping over rocks and tree roots, I pick up my pace, trying to narrow the distance between us. But no matter how fast I’m going, I’m unable to cover enough ground to reach him. His retreating figure hovers at the margin of my vision, like a fixed point on the horizon, directing me. Ignoring the pain shrieking from every part of my body, I pursue the boy in fits and starts, my lungs on the verge of collapsing, each breath a razor-sharp intake of air. The perspiration stings my eyes and blurs my vision, but still I have the boy in my sights.

Cutting through thick undergrowth and thickets of shrubs and thorny bushes, I finally emerge into a clearing that looks out onto a sloping hill where I see a clutter of huts with wisps of smoke rising from them: a small village. Breathless, and bent with exhaustion, I look for signs of the young boy, but he’s nowhere to be found, leaving no tracks or traces of his presence. He has disappeared as simply and swiftly as when he first appeared.

“What were you like as a boy?” I asked Cody once.

“I don’t know, I can’t remember. You ask my sisters next time we go over to their place for dinner.”

“Seriously, nothing from your childhood? Like what did you do in school, who were your friends?”

“No, really, I can’t remember much of my childhood. Maybe some memories and impressions from here and there, but nothing worth remembering anyway.”

“But aren’t our impressions what count in how our memories are formed?”

“We embellish our memories all the time, don’t we? I mean, we revise them according to how we see and feel about our past at different points of our lives.”

“Yes, but they are all we have, right? Anyway, we can’t go back in time to relive what we’ve gone through, so we are stuck with what we can remember. But really you can’t remember anything from your childhood?”

“Well, if you are so dying curious to know, I guess you could say I was a weird kid.”

“We’re all weird in our own ways. When I was like six or seven, I used to catch butterflies and eat them because I thought their wings were so soft and light, like candy floss. Except their bodies were too gooey for my liking, bitter too. But their wings dissolved in my mouth like powdered sugar.”

“Damn, Chee Seng. Really?”

“Now you tell me something about your childhood, anything.”

“Okay, if you must know, my father always said I was very quiet, sometimes too quiet for my own good. Apparently I could go for days without saying a word. This was after my mother passed away.”

“For days?”

“Yes, my father told me I had a so-called ‘episode’ after she died, though I don’t remember anything about it now. He told me it went on for a week, and at the end of it, he was so worried that he even considered admitting me to the hospital, because I wasn’t eating or drinking. I just lay in bed the whole time and refused to talk to anyone. And then one night, I simply snapped back to myself and carried on like the past few days had never existed. My father told me all this later on. Like I say, that period of my life is a complete blank. It’s not like it’s something I’d want to remember.”

“You don’t remember a single thing from that incident?”

“Nothing. Anyway, it’s not important after a while, so why bother?”

By the time the villagers understand where I want to go, I’m exhausted beyond measure, no longer able to stand upright, and finally collapse. They carry me into a tiny thatched hut and lay me on a dirty straw mat. A cold drink is brought to my lips, and I gag and spit up while trying to swallow. Strange voices fill the air around me as my sight slowly resolves into a series of heavily-creased faces that crowd my vision. The villagers bring out plates of rice and fried vegetables and cajole me to eat, but I decline, my stomach raw and pulverised. Once again, I seek directions to return to Patong, through a fluttering of hand gestures and an odd word here and there. The men shake their heads and sigh loudly, uttering a stream of words, the gist of which I understand to be: don’t go, stay, wait. Again, I beseech them for help until they walk away to talk amongst themselves.

A small group of young children in tattered, threadbare rags surrounds me, excited like a litter of puppies, asking question after question, none of which I can decipher. Finally, one of the men comes up to me and takes me down a lane to where a row of houses stands. Women stand at the thresholds, watching us with open curiosity. In front of a small narrow courtyard, the man points to a rusty motorbike with a badly-torn seat, gets on it, and motions for me to hop on. He revs out of the village, a spray of dust trailing behind us. Not wanting to fall off the bike, I grip the man’s waist, praying that my strength will hold up for as long as it takes to get us to Patong.

Even before we reach the outer fringe of the town, the road is already jammed with traffic and people moving in both directions, making it almost impassable. Along the way, winding down the hills, I finally see the full extent of the destruction that has been inflicted on Patong and the beaches that line the coast; from high up, the town looks like a huge debris-clogged swamp, dark brown with large pools of brackish water glistening in the afternoon light, studded with stumps of decimated buildings. The shoreline has cut deeper inland, like the curved edge of a sickle. The sea remains proudly innocuous, placid.

The drive slows to a trickle, sometimes barely moving at all. Occasionally, a shrill vehicle siren sounds out, and a small path suddenly, miraculously, appears, making way for an ambulance or emergency vehicle to pass, and immediately after it has passed, the path would be swallowed up again, the cars and bikes and humans coming together like an organic mass. In a few pick-up trucks, I see piles of blackened bodies, barely covered by flimsy tarpaulins, hands and feet sticking out, stiff as mannequins. The death smell that rises from these bodies is thick and rank and cloying, forcing me to hold down the little that is in my stomach.

The man drops me off at a makeshift medical centre, previously a school with a basketball court and three-storey buildings, a Red Cross sign hanging on the gate. He looks concerned, but after I give him a thumbs-up, he drives off, disappearing around the corner. Standing amidst the sweaty swirl of people, I have no idea where to go, unable to discern the way back to the hotel. From nowhere, someone pushes me roughly aside, issuing a shout, and carries a body into the medical compound—a young girl in the arms of a woman, her head lolling like a broken doll, her ashen face bloated. The woman—mother? sister?—is screaming indiscriminately, her voice cracked and hoarse, until a nurse appears and directs her into one of the tents. The air is abuzz with a taut tension, alive with the flow of movements and cries and smells.

Rooted to the spot, I suddenly feel a sharp jab of longing, to be back in the hut with the old woman, somewhere up in the hills, away from all this misery and death.

23

WEI XIANG

The coastal town of Patong is in a much worse state than Wei Xiang imagined, from where the boy has led him over the course of the day. Rows of houses and shops that run parallel to the beach have been flattened to rubble; palm trees are slanted at impossible angles or have been ripped out of the earth. Near the beach, the pewter sea water is stagnant and foul-smelling.

From time to time, Wei Xiang catches a glimpse of a bloated body bobbing in the water like discarded flotsam, or caught between staggered piles of debris. The boy does not seem to pay much attention to these distractions, focused only on leading them onwards, still not saying a word. Wei Xiang has somehow concluded that the boy is either deaf or mute, or both, and has given up trying to talk to him. Even without the aid of a common language, he has found it easy, almost effortless, to communicate his intentions to the boy, whether to stop or slow down or make a detour; the boy is able to read him without any trouble or assistance. But when Wei Xiang tries to read the boy’s face for signs of distress or fear, he gets nothing—the boy’s expression is stone-like, his eyes always looking straight ahead, as if expecting something important to appear any time soon.

Whenever they come to the flooded places, Wei Xiang stoops to lift the boy onto his shoulders, and they wade slowly through the water. The boy’s weight feels negligible—a bag of feathers—and Wei Xiang has to hold on to the latter’s ankles to keep him steady.

Sometimes they stop to allow small teams of rescuers to pass, hauling bulky bags containing bodies. The rescuers are often so engrossed—frazzled by fatigue perhaps, or numb-shocked by their task, Wei Xiang can’t tell—that they rarely look up to take heed of the passers-by who have stopped to stare at them. Wei Xiang holds his breath as they pass, his guts turning at the barest hint of the fetor of death.

They have gone on for hours without rest, and at some point in their seemingly pointless meandering, Wei Xiang has started to question his own actions, this blind ceding of will and reason to a complete stranger—a boy—being led to places unknown. What has compelled him to do this—an unexamined motive, or a dark impulse? What is preventing him from staying put, or going in the opposite direction, or more importantly, doing what he ought to have done in the first place—finding Ai Ling?

Wei Xiang stops in mid-stride, and the boy walking beside him stops as well, looking up at him. Wei Xiang flings up his hands in exasperation and shakes his head. The boy watches him for a few moments before reaching out to pull at his hand, tugging him to continue walking.

“No, I can’t follow you around all day. I’ve other things I need to do,” Wei Xiang says. “I need to find my wife, she’s missing. I have to find her. Do you understand me?”

The boy gives Wei Xiang a peculiar look, one heavy with sadness, and releases his hand. He drops his shoulders and looks away, as if contemplating his next course of action.

Around them buzz different hives of activity: scores of locals are breaking up the towering stacks of rubble along the streets, frantically searching for missing people; skinny, dark-skinned kids, oblivious to the destruction, are playing in the water, leaping from the shaky peak of a pile of mortar. Wei Xiang feels a deep, fractured sense of disconnection from the scene before him, a man severed from life.

He sits down heavily on the curb and puts his face in his palms. In his bones, he feels the heaviness weighing down on him, the hours and days of mindless exertion and fear, walking the tight rope of desperation and dread. He can’t take another step. He rubs his eyes on his sleeve and sinks into himself. Wei Xiang imagines that he looks like one of the survivors he has often come across the past few days—sitting by the roadside or near a collapsed house, a soulless look on their faces, their bodies reduced to hollow shells. He has felt helpless looking at them, and now he is one of them. He shakes off this mental image and looks up, and in his temporarily glazed vision, the world before him suddenly becomes hazy, as if he were looking through thin gauze.

The boy is still standing beside him, hovering at the periphery of his sight, waiting. Wei Xiang stares at the boy’s bare feet, caked with mud and streaked with tiny red cuts. They look frail and breakable, like feet of clay hardened in the heat of the sun. Wei Xiang takes off his sandals and places them before the boy, nodding at him. The boy steps into them and starts clomping around clumsily, a faint smile playing at the corners of his mouth. Despite himself, Wei Xiang chuckles and proceeds to tighten the straps of the sandals. The boy moves to take them off but Wei Xiang signals to him to keep them. The boy practises walking around with the sandals, trying not to trip.

Wei Xiang hesitates for a moment as he stands up, uncertain what he should do next or where he ought to go, the gritty grains of sand poking into the soles of his feet. He rubs his feet across the surface of the ground and surveys the surroundings—where is he now? He senses a heavy density in the air, something he has not been conscious of for a while: the salty smell of sea water. The sea must be near.

Narrowing his eyes, Wei Xiang tries to make out the silvery horizon in the distance. Then turning in the opposite direction, he scans the rugged features of Radar Hill—the subtle gradation of green that changes imperceptibly with each shift of sunlight that breaks through the cloud cover—and the deep scars of hiking trails and paths that wind up and round the hill. A thought sneaks into him: Ai Ling planned for a trek through one of the forests in Phuket—was it for today or yesterday? The days are all muddled in his head. In the itinerary, the trek would end up at a lookout with the “best views of Patong and the sea”, according to Ai Ling. Wei Xiang feels his chest tighten. A wild thought suggests itself to him: maybe Ai Ling has gone up the hill on her own and lost her way there. But she has never been an impulsive person. Still, the thought persists, creeping down a darker path: what’s to say that she did not change her mind at the last minute, and ran up the hill? Just days before the trip, Ai Ling was behaving rather erratically, acting out of sorts.

Wei Xiang recalls the night before their trip, when she left the house late at night to go to the nearest pharmacy to buy motion-sickness pills; neither of them had ever been ill on their previous trips, let alone from motion sickness. As expected, Ai Ling came home empty-handed after an hour. Wei Xiang could not imagine what had possessed Ai Ling to head out alone in the middle of the night to look for something that they would not need, knowing well that the shops in their neighbourhood closed at ten. When she got back, all she offered as an explanation was that she was afraid she would get nauseous on the flight. In the end, she bought the medication at a pharmacy in Changi Airport before their flight.

A touch shakes him from his daydream. The boy has nudged him and is pointing at a distant spot towards the sea, signalling for Wei Xiang to follow him. Whatever he’s feeling, whatever misgivings or doubts, Wei Xiang can sense the boy’s urgency, evident in his animated gestures, beckoning him to take heed. The sun is edging towards the west of the island, tracing the height of the hill; it must be around four o’clock. It would be foolish to turn back now; it’s already too late to change to a new course of action.

So, with Wei Xiang’s silence as consent, the boy takes off down the street in the sandals. They slip through the ravaged townscape, across fallen, twisted telephone poles, through a flooded backyard filled with bloated bodies of chickens, stiff dark-hued feathers covering every inch of the water surface—Wei Xiang can smell the air getting danker, heavier in density—towards the sea. He feels a charge of adrenaline in his blood, aware that he’s running headlong into all kinds of danger, not knowing what will become of him should the waves rise again.

Closer to the sea, he can’t differentiate between the brown-and-gunmetal floodwaters and the sea itself, where one ends and the other begins. The water comes up to his knees at times, and then recedes to ankle-height, before another step brings him to a pause on soft, sticky mud. The closer they get to the sea—bare, wasted land around them, quiet and solemn like a cemetery, one or two coconut trees standing in stubborn resistance—the fewer people they see, until there’s no one in sight. The wind, pushing in from the Andaman Sea, whips in Wei Xiang’s ears, skimming the skin of the water. The boy stops, looks around, and moves to higher ground, away from the tangled roots of the thicket of mangrove they have found themselves in. By this time, Wei Xiang’s feet are covered with cuts and scratches, and the sea water is aggravating and numbing these wounds at the same time. Wei Xiang makes a deliberate effort not to look at the cuts, though he’s feeling a considerable amount of pain.

Soon they come to a stop and Wei Xiang realises that they are standing at a breakwater, a few metres above sea level, facing out into the expanse of light and water. All around, the unbreakable membrane of silence. He takes in the panoramic view and catches his breath, his lips cracked and bleeding. The boy has barely broken a sweat, his body radiating an otherworldly sheen. Following his gaze, Wei Xiang shields his eyes from the glare of the sun and stares out into the distance, trying to see what the boy is intently looking at.

Along the horizon, towards the northeast, a dark smudge rises out of the water, a hazy ridge of land masses. They must be smaller, outlying islands that pepper the fringe of the main island—hundreds of them, according to Ai Ling, who read up on the geography of Phuket in the guidebook, most of them too small and insignificant for any geographical or historical interest. Ai Ling had wanted to hire a guide and rent a boat to view these islands, to see some of them up close, to know what it’s like to step foot on these lands that have rarely seen human existence.

The boy takes a step forward and, without a word, dives into the water. Wei Xiang squats on his haunches, blood rushing to his head, and scans the water for the boy. Nothing, except the rough, continuous lapping of the waves against the cracked stones of the breakwater. He stays motionless, counting the long seconds—sooner or later, the boy will have to come up for air. Still he does not dare to move a muscle; anytime now, the boy will have to emerge.

And then, a few metres from where Wei Xiang is staring, a head pops up out of the water. He gasps and lets out a shout. The boy swims unhurriedly towards him. When he gets to the wall of the breakwater, he grabs onto the gaps between the stones with his fingers and pulls himself out of the water. The wet clothes cling to his scrawny frame with a downward pull, but the boy is unperturbed, his attention focused entirely on the act of scaling the wall—a grip, a tug and a pull, repeat.

When he reaches the top of the breakwater, Wei Xiang stretches out his arm to take hold of the extended hand, and yanks him up with a final pull. Still dripping, the boy steadies himself, his chest heaving. The sandals have disappeared from his feet; they must have fallen off during the dive. Wei Xiang pulls off his T-shirt and puts it over the boy’s trembling body. Then on impulse, Wei Xiang hugs the boy. The wetness and rigid coldness of the boy’s body goes right through Wei Xiang’s shirt and touches his skin, making his heart lurch. He pulls away.

The boy opens up his hand, palm faced upwards. Something glints in the light. Wei Xiang looks at it, and then takes a longer, harder stare. It does not make any sense, this thing the boy’s holding in his hand. A silver ring. The boy lifts it higher, as if beseeching Wei Xiang to take a closer look.

Wei Xiang reaches for the ring and looks for the carvings on the inside of the band—the tiny inscription is there: AL + WX. He pinches it in his fingers and glares at the boy, fear mounting. The ground seems to have fallen away from him, and Wei Xiang feels as if he were hovering in mid-air, waiting to hit the ground. The boy returns his stare; something softens in his expression. Tilting his head, he regards Wei Xiang with a puzzled look, and then turns to gaze out into the sea, to where the cluster of islands stands, a mirage of light and land. A few strands of wet hair fall across his eyes.

Wei Xiang collapses to the ground, his mind a gathering storm of dark thoughts. Something catches at the back of his throat. He looks up into the empty sky and feels everything around him coming at him, all at once, with a sharp clarity: the sultry heat, the distant call of a passing seagull, the crash of the waves, the grit of the tiny pebbles embedded in his soles. He thinks about Ai Ling, and the boy, and about the strange, unfathomable ways that life can bring and hold things together—but he can’t understand anything, not a single thing.

Wei Xiang closes his fist, holding the ring in the heat of his tightening palm, and brings it up to his face. Ai Ling—her name surfaces like a faraway dream, half-forgotten. He says it again and again, and each repetition of the name brings a certain, fearful finality to it.

Then Wei Xiang feels the light pressure of the boy’s body against his side, drawing him back to the present, to the breakwater where he is now. A growing despair is eating its way out of him, and all Wei Xiang can feel is the abysmal sense of coming apart, endlessly.

From somewhere around him, Wei Xiang hears the lilt of a song. It takes him some moments before registering the fact that the boy is singing. He sings for a long time without a break or an end; the song resounds in Wei Xiang’s ears, sinking into him, penetrating him. He finally comes apart, in the middle of it.

Even after the heat of the day has drained away, with the sea breeze blowing over them, leaving behind a speckling of salt on their skins, the song goes on uninterrupted, suspending Wei Xiang in a soft, protective spell.

24

CODY

Ai Ling had wanted to get away for the long weekend after their final-year examinations, back in 1991, before she and Cody started looking for full-time jobs. She had saved up for a short trip over the semester, working the evening shift as an assistant in a dental clinic while studying for her finals. She wanted Cody to accompany her—she had just broken up with Ian, and needed to get away for a while—so he agreed. She brought up Bangkok as the destination, since it was within her budget and he could not come up with a better place. They quickly settled on the travel dates, and Ai Ling started looking for accommodation and cheap air tickets.

Cody had known her for three years by that point, ever since hitting it off during orientation camp in the first week at university. She was a Social Sciences major, while he was doing English Literature. They got along so well that many of their university friends assumed they were a couple—Ai Ling rarely mentioned Ian even then—and for a while they did not discredit the assumption. Sometimes in lighter moods, Ai Ling and Cody would laugh about it, turning the whole thing into a joke. Ai Ling revealed very little of how she actually felt about him, and they left things platonic, casual and undemanding.

Because they spent so much time together in school, studying at the library during breaks and meeting for lunch, Cody never felt the need to build a friendship with another woman. With Ai Ling around all the time, he had gained a certain social legitimacy that was helpful, even useful, to navigate through university life. He was grateful for the security that came with it. Even at that age, he was still not ready to reveal his other covert self.

They decided to fly out on a Thursday afternoon and come back on Sunday night; the hotel Ai Ling booked was in Silom, in the heart of downtown Bangkok. Because it was her first time taking an overseas trip without her parents, she had to lie and tell them she was going with two female classmates.

“No way was I telling them I’m going with you, they would have killed me,” she said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Well, I’m their good daughter,” she replied, “and I don’t want them to worry too much about me.”

The budget hotel was located on Sala Daeng, a two-lane road that branched off the main thoroughfare of Silom, and when they checked in, Ai Ling asked for a room with two beds; because it was an off-peak season, they were given a room on the fifth floor, facing the road and towering office blocks. Because Cody had been to Bangkok once when he was nineteen, just before entering the army to serve his two and a half years of compulsory National Service, Ai Ling asked him to plan the itinerary; he used the most current Lonely Planet guidebook he could find at the library, which featured the usual tourist spots: Chatuchak weekend market, Wat Arun, Patpong.

Since it was still too early for dinner after checking in, they decided to check out the shops along Silom. Ai Ling was in a good mood, keeping up the chatter as they walked along, peeking into shop windows, restaurants, convenience stores, and catching fragments of music and conversation drifting from staticky radios and dusty televisions. At six-thirty, the street became thronged with office workers, street hawkers, beggars and tourists of all stripes, and they stayed close to avoid losing each other. Standing outside one of the massage parlours where the masseuses sat on plastic chairs and talked gregariously, Ai Ling read the massage options available. The masseuses studied Ai Ling with mild curiosity before turning a more direct, practiced look at Cody. Ai Ling asked whether they should give it a try and he shrugged. “Up to you,” he said.

“Then let’s do it,” she said, and approached the counter to book a session for both of them. Without asking, she requested for a male masseur for Cody while she opted for a female masseuse. “No hanky panky,” she said, giving him a wink. He smiled and shook his head.

They were both led into a large, dimly lit back room with several mattresses on the floor; each massage area was separated by thick curtains hanging on rods suspended from the ceiling. Through the curtain, Cody could hear Ai Ling change into the proffered loose shirt and wraparound knee-length shorts. The masseurs arrived shortly, bowing and muttering a soft greeting. Cody kept his eyes closed throughout the massage, unable to relax. When the masseur’s hands moved from Cody’s feet to his inner thighs, his mind slipped naturally to sex, and thoughts of Terry.

At that point, Cody had known Terry for three months, but nobody else knew of his existence, not even his close friends. They had met at a party at Rascals, a disco located on the ground floor of the Pan Pacific Hotel, exchanged numbers, and Terry had suggested they meet up for drinks shortly after. Despite his initial apprehension, Cody agreed to it. Terry, as it turned out, was more or less the person he was the night they met: frank, affable, candid. Like Cody, he was a student in his second year at a different university, studying electrical engineering. Unlike Cody, he was more outgoing and sporty, a tennis and rock-climbing enthusiast, and even though he was a year younger, he had already had past relationships with much older men. Mostly he talked during the first date and Cody listened. After that, they met up more regularly, sometimes three times a week, and usually at cafés or restaurants of Cody’s choice. Terry was happy to oblige.

On their third date, Cody suggested a fast-food restaurant in the housing estate where Terry lived with his parents and elder brother. After dinner, Cody asked to visit his place. Since his parents were at home that evening, Terry ushered Cody straight into his bedroom. Barely had he closed the door before they were all over each other. Terry kissed Cody hard and asked whether this was something he wanted, and if he was comfortable with it. The words tripped over one another as Cody uttered them in a thick, hoarse drawl: Yes, yes, yes. Terry undressed him and guided him to the bed, and showed him what needed to be done. Against his body, Cody felt out of place, dislodged from his own physicality, displaced and removed at a distance even while he was fully in the moment, drinking in every touch and sensation as if it were the first and last pleasure that he would ever experience. He was hungry and voracious and achingly open. When it was over, Cody collapsed onto Terry and began to cry; Terry held Cody and cooed as if mollifying an injured child. From then on, they would end all their dates at Terry’s place, having sex at every opportunity. Cody felt constantly ravenous and restless, always fidgeting and frustrated as if making up for what had been hitherto denied to him.

It was the thought of sex with Terry that caused Cody to have an erection while having the massage in Bangkok. In a panic, he jerked upright from the mattress, surprising the masseur, who quickly apologised for his strength. Embarrassing as it was, the erection did not wilt, and when he lay back on the mattress, the cause of his erratic behaviour became apparent to the masseur. The man chuckled to himself and resumed where he had left off. Cody gave him a large tip later when paying. “So generous, he must be really good,” Ai Ling said as they were leaving the massage parlour. Cody gave a blank smile and nodded.

The next day, they visited the temples in the morning; to escape the heat in the afternoon, they headed to Siam Square, navigating the busy alleyways and seeking out hole-in-the-wall restaurants for meals and coffee. At one point, Ai Ling slipped her hand into Cody’s and he held it, unquestioningly. They did not talk about what the gesture meant—out of modesty on her part and deliberate obtuseness on his. It meant nothing to Cody, just an expression of friendship, and he left it at that.

In the evening, they went to Chinatown and ate seafood in a restaurant that was highly recommended in the guidebook: black pepper crab with vermicelli, chilli-fried squid and barbecued tiger prawns. Done with their dinner, they took a taxi back to Silom, alighting at Patpong. The streets were ablaze with noise and neon; the touts, coming out of the woodwork and armed with dog-eared laminated lists of sex shows, were badgering the tourists in loud, beseeching voices, sometimes even tugging them forcibly towards the clubs. Ai Ling and Cody were approached by a young woman in a leopard print mini-dress who waved and rattled off a list of sex acts, pulling Cody’s arm playfully. Ai Ling walked faster and dragged him away. “So aggressive,” Ai Ling said with a growl. They made their way through the brightly-lit stalls selling 50-baht T-shirts and knockoff handbags, purses and watches. At a pirated-VCD stall, they stopped to scan the titles and eventually bought five VCDs for only 200 baht. After drinking some coconuts at a roadside stall, they decided to call it a night.

At the hotel, Ai Ling complained about an upset stomach, and disappeared for long stretches in the toilet. They tried to trace it back to something she had eaten, but Cody had eaten everything that she had. After taking two charcoal pills, she decided to sleep it off while he scanned the television channels with the volume muted. When she woke up later, she was feeling better but worn out. They lay on their separate beds and watched Police Story 2 starring Jackie Chan; during the commercials, Cody would get up to walk around the room or peek out the window, feeling the itch of restlessness. Ai Ling, sensing his agitated state, suggested that perhaps he should go out and do something, rather than stay cooped up in the hotel room with her.

“Just go, don’t worry about me. I just need to rest,” Ai Ling said.

“I’ll go out for a short while and then come back.”

“Just go and enjoy yourself. Don’t worry, I’m okay. Switch off the lights before you go.”

Stepping out of the hotel, Cody took the printout out of his pocket and orientated himself to the streets indicated on the map with his actual location. He had solicited information from acquaintances he got to know at the parties at Rascals: the best go-go shows, the most outrageous theme nights, and the types of men available at different establishments. He had kept the printout in the inner pocket of his backpack, afraid Ai Ling would see it. He did not think he’d be able to visit any of these places since Ai Ling was with him all the time; now her sudden illness left him free to do what he had planned to do secretly without her, and the elation he felt was complicated by a nagging guilt.

At the entrance leading into Boys’ Town, Cody paused to look at the colour-saturated clutter of signboards advertising a variety of shows and services, arrows pointing to what was hidden behind the half-closed doors and heavy velvet curtains. A tout approached and brandished a folded, laminated cardboard. “Sir, you want cute boys? You want see fucking shows? I have. Come with me.” Cody moved away from him and stepped into Boys’ Town.

Keeping a moderate pace, staying in the middle of the lane, not daring to venture too close to any establishment, he caught glimpses of neon-lit flesh. A few of the dancers caught his stares and returned them with virile smiles. He looked away, conscious that his movements had become slow, deliberate and heavy-limbed. The patrons sitting at the tables outside the bars, mostly middle-aged and Caucasian, turned to survey the moving crowd, their hawk-like eyes moving in succession from person to person. A short, strongly-built man wearing a white tank top and a tattoo in Thai script that wrapped around his biceps came up to Cody and shouted into his ear: “We have show now, you want see? Only two-hundred baht, one drink. Muscular men, you like?”

Numbing his nerves, Cody made his way into the club, pushing past the curtain and entering the smoky room. Any sense of order or clarity had dissolved in his head; all he could feel were the pure, dark urges of his physical self. He followed the tattooed man and sat where he indicated. A series of stares came his way, some lingering longer than others, but Cody sat stonily still, unable or perhaps unwilling to acknowledge or reciprocate these looks. Up on the raised podium, oiled-up muscled men in swim trunks labelled with number tags were swinging their hips lazily in a pantomime of seduction. Loud, thumping dance music pounded through the club as repeating patterns of strobe lights wallpapered the lurid interior. Along the perimeter of the podium were three staggered rows of benches, filled with a mixed audience of locals and foreigners. Not daring to let his eyes stay too long on anyone, Cody glanced from one dancer to another, taking everything in but registering nothing.

An announcement came on during a break in the music, and the dancers left the podium single file. The stage lights dimmed for a second, and in the next instant, three men of similar build appeared on the podium, naked, each nursing an erection. Cody held his breath, his insides seizing up, throbbing with an acute, inexplicable ache. One of the men bent over, holding his ass up in the spotlight for a moment, before another man stood behind him and penetrated him slowly, while the third man stuck his dick into the man’s mouth.

Over the next twenty minutes, the acts varied only slightly with a change of men and positions, each performing their roles in a parody of lust and exaggerated pleasure. Cody’s drink, a Singha beer, came halfway during the show; he took a single sip that left a bitter, corrosive taste in his mouth. When the show ended, he stumbled to his feet and made his way to the exit as if fleeing from a fire or a crime that he had unknowingly committed.

Bursting out of the club, with the night air cooling his heated face, he made ghost tracks back to the hotel, trying to slow the pounding of his heart. The hotel room was dark when he entered; a voice rose from the darkness.

“Cody? Is that you?” Ai Ling said.

“Yes.”

“Back so early?”

“Yes, it was too crowded out there.”

“I must have fallen asleep immediately after you left.” Ai Ling’s voice was groggy, sticky with drowsiness.

“How are you feeling?” Cody asked.

“I think I’m okay now. My stomach’s not hurting anymore.”

“Good. Do you want a drink or something?”

“No, I’m not thirsty.”

“Think I’ll shower now. Go to sleep, if you’re tired.”

“I think I’ve slept enough. What did you do just now?”

“Nothing much. Just walked around and checked out the street stalls.”

“Bought anything?”

“No, there was nothing I wanted. Let me shower first, I’m all sweaty.”

“Okay.”

In the toilet, Cody stripped and threw his clothes into the sink, and then stood under the jet of hot water in the shower. The room quickly filled up with steam. Summoning up images of the men from the sex show, he masturbated and came quickly with a brutal convulsion that left him panting against the wet wall tiles. He caught his blurry reflection in the fogged-up mirror, a dark silhouette moving beneath a cloudy veil of condensation. He washed himself twice over with soap, dried off and put on a clean pair of shorts. He used up a small travel bottle of mouthwash, the insides of his mouth bristling with tiny pins. He dried his mouth with a towel, turned away from the mirror, and stepped back out into the dark bedroom.

“Cody?” Ai Ling called.

“Yes?”

“Can you come over here?”

He padded over to her bed. Moonlight illuminated Ai Ling’s face in a warm glow. Cody sat on the edge of her bed, but could not read her expression. Ai Ling reached out and touched his hand, drawing it to her.

“Do you like me?” Ai Ling asked.

“Yes, of course. You’re my good friend.”

“Only a friend?”

Cody hesitated. “Yes, a very good friend.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes.”

For a long while, they stayed like that. Cody could hear a car passing on the road outside, a rumbling sound that surged and then gradually faded. In the dark, he could sense Ai Ling’s thoughts taking several turns across the busy, intricate landscape of her mind. He resisted breaking her train of thought with a sound or movement, even though he wanted desperately to know what she was thinking.

Then, without a word, Ai Ling moved her body aside on the bed, and Cody lay down next to her. She turned her back and pushed herself into him, radiating heat. He put his arms around her shoulders, and she nudged closer to fit into the contours of his body. He inhaled the scent of her hair.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Ai Ling did not say anything, nor did she move away. She drew Cody’s arms tightly around her. Cody listened to her falling slowly into sleep, her breaths getting deeper and longer, and then she disappeared into the world of dreams. He stayed awake for as long as he could, but soon he too fell into the void of sleep.

25

CHEE SENG

“Don’t bring so many things. Just travel light. It’s only for a few days,” I told Cody, two days before the vacation to Phuket, taking out my haversack from the store room, giving it a shake.

“Yes, I’ll just bring my underwear because I’m not leaving the hotel at all. I heard the weather is going to be extremely hot,” Cody said.

“Okay, sure, whatever suits you, lazy ass. Just don’t wear any of my shirts.”

Cody was sitting on the sofa in front of the television watching a Channel 8 drama series. The volume was set to low, and from where I was standing, I could barely make out the dialogue.

“When are you going to start packing? We’re leaving the day after tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow. I’m a fast packer, unlike you, always so slow. I know what to bring. Anyway, it’s only for a few days, so I only need three changes of clothes.”

“Yes, fast packer, always forgetting things, always asking me whether I brought extra.”

“And you always bring so many things. I’m just trying to help you make full use of all the things you have brought. See, I’m actually helping you in a sense.”

“Yeah, and if you forget anything for this trip, you can forget about asking me for it.”

“I won’t.”

It had not been easy living with Cody since we moved in together after getting a place of our own two years ago. I was used to a certain lifestyle with a fixed routine, having lived almost my entire life with my mother and three younger brothers, and it was tough to break away from what had been comfortable for me. In the beginning, it was trying to figure out what worked for both of us, finding the right amount of space—personal and physical—that each of us needed, and coming up with a routine in which we could anchor our lives, together and separately. We quarrelled from time to time, though nothing serious. Because of his work as an editor, the spare room in our flat was converted to a study for him. On one of the walls he had framed some of his freelance features that had appeared in well-known regional travel magazines, pieces on Angkor Wat and Borobudur.

Through trial and error, we had managed to carve out a domesticated living arrangement that was part mutual agreement, part compromise, in which we still had our own freedom, our individual lifestyles. We had, in popular parlance, an “interdependent” relationship, which seemed to be the politically correct way to describe a non-needy, self-sufficient relationship, which in our case, was undeniably true. We had some things in common for sure, and for other things we could not quite come to terms with, we left them as they were or closed our eyes to them, which was the usual way we dealt with things that we could not change. We learnt to live with what we could manage.

“Did you print out the air ticket confirmation?” I asked from the bedroom, after packing my luggage.

“Not yet, can you print it out?” Cody shouted from the sofa, where he was now watching a tennis match on the sports channel.

“I’ll use your laptop,” I said.

Entering Cody’s workspace in the study felt like a minor form of trespassing. It was filled almost entirely with his stuff—books, magazines, CDs—and very little of my own, only a small section of the bookshelf which held my hardcover books, and files full of bills, letters and tax statements. Despite the organised mess in the room, his large work table was relatively clutter-free: only a laptop computer, a note pad, a stationery holder filled with 2B pencils and a drinking glass. The laptop was switched on, and, because Cody had not created a password, I was able to access it. It always felt strange using his computer, which was part of his guarded turf; he never allowed me to read his works until they were published, afraid of jinxing them.

His incoming chat messages were flashing. I clicked on one of them and a message popped into view. Blood drained from my face as I read it; I checked the other messages in the history folder. When I was done, I left the messages as they were, open and exposed. I sat in the swivel chair for some time, unsure how I should react—to confront or to ignore? A deep wariness settled over me, turning my insides cold. Then, after breaking through the strong grip of my thoughts, I did what I had come in here to do and printed out the ticket confirmation.

That night, after Cody had finished watching the tennis match on TV and I was brushing my teeth, he entered the bathroom and stood behind me, trying to catch my stare in the mirror. Instead of meeting his eyes, I focused on the foam building up in my mouth, overflowing and dripping into the sink. He wrapped his hands around my waist and rested his chin on my shoulder. I bent to spit out the foam and started to rinse nosily. Cody stood behind me, waiting for me to finish. When I looked up, drawing his eyes to me, he remained silent, unable to utter anything. He must have read my expression: Don’t bother to explain.

I took one of the pillows and slept on the sofa. At one point, Cody came out and sat near me, his head bent low.

“I’m sorry. It was nothing,” he whispered. “Please come to bed.”

“No, go away.”

“I’m really sorry. It was just a one-time thing, nothing more.”

I turned away from him. Cody tried to mutter something, but his words were caught in his throat. He sat beside me through the night, his presence a malignant force. I was wide awake the whole night, keeping up the defence.

The next morning, we followed our own routines determinedly. We had breakfast, read the newspapers, and put away the dishes. One thing we did not do was talk about what had happened, as if nothing was amiss. I did not want to ruin the trip, I rationalised; we would have time to talk about this soon enough, just not now.

There was nothing to stop me from punishing Cody with my silence. On the morning of Christmas Eve, we met Ai Ling and Wei Xiang at the airport to check in together. At the time, I was still not talking to him, distracting myself with the usual drivel with Ai Ling, leaving Cody to Wei Xiang. On the plane, I plugged my earphones into the inflight entertainment system and turned away to look out the window. At one point, Cody leant in to check whether I was asleep and lowered the window shade. When we were waiting for the mini-bus at the airport to take us to the hotel in town, Ai Ling pulled me aside and asked whether everything was okay. I pulled out the excuse of my inability to sleep before an overseas trip, and gave a tired smile. She looked at me, unconvinced, but did not probe further.

In the hotel, after we had got the keys to our adjacent rooms, we arranged to meet half an hour later for a walk to Bangla Road, a few streets away. Alone with Cody in the hotel room, I was unable to face him. It felt like a century had passed since I sat at his work table and read the messages on his laptop; my anger was still there, but somewhat diluted, its edge blunted, and I could not work up the energy to fuel it again. I did not know what I was supposed to feel and act, and so I did nothing.

“Let’s not do this,” Cody said, coming out of the bathroom, his face wet from a wash.

“I’m not doing anything.” I tore into my luggage, tossing pieces of clothes on the bed.

“I mean, let’s don’t fight. I know what I’ve done and I’m really sorry, I am.”

“Sure, that’s easy. Just say sorry and everything is forgiven? It’s not that easy.”

“Then what do you want me to do?” Cody came up behind me, putting his hand on my shoulder. I flinched and pulled away.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what you can do.” I looked into Cody’s face, hoping to find something there to defuse my rising anger. He stepped in front of me and placed his hands at the back of my head, pulling me into the proximity of his body. I fought to break away but he kept his hold on me, his arms tight around my back. I felt suddenly worn out, drained.

“It’s not over,” I said.

“I know. Let’s just do this a step at a time. You can take it out on me later on, if you want. I understand.”

Cody pushed aside the luggage on the bed and began to peel off my clothes. Wordlessly, I let him. He nuzzled my neck and kissed my ear. Whatever I felt—anger, resentment—quickly receded into the background, replaced by an inebriating rush of sensations. With little resistance, I yielded, not just to the physical act of sex and its pleasures, but to the familiar, restorative comfort of a lover’s touches, a return to safer shores. Perhaps, I sensed, Cody was trying to redeem himself, to assuage his guilt by offering the very thing that I needed—the refuge of his body, its irrepressible hold and heft.

Yet, barely had we finished, after Cody left the bed to shower, that the old feelings came sweeping over me again, like ghosts that had always haunted the dark passageways of my mind. Everything felt forced, useless—my thoughts, our actions, the need to salvage what was lost. In looking for some sort of respite, a truce, I came up blank, hitting a wall. The sounds of showering came to me from the open door of the bathroom, along with the broken snatches of a song that Cody was humming. I stared at my palms, unable to master what I was feeling.

When Cody came out of the bathroom, I got to my feet and started to dress. We were already running late. Ai Ling and Wei Xiang must have been waiting for us in the hotel lobby. Time to move on.

Ai Ling wanted to check out the Banzaan market at Sai Kor Road while Cody and I were keen to head down south to Karon Viewpoint, a short taxi ride away. Ai Ling gave us the address of the hotel, just in case. “Don’t get lost,” she said.

The taxi driver, sensing that we were new in town, haggled for an exorbitant fare that we managed to cut down by half, and hastily dropped us off a few streets from our destination. With nothing to guide us, we fumbled our way to the location through a maze of small lanes that wound past corrugated tin-roofed houses that hugged close to one another and open plots of knee-high grass where chickens and small dogs wandered, searching for scraps of food. At one of the ramshackle shophouses, we bought two bottles of mineral water and asked the shopkeeper for further directions since there were no signs to indicate where we were. A pack of boys stopped their game of football to watch us pass; one of them lifted an arm to salute us, which Cody returned with a similar gesture. The rich smell of frying food wafted out of windows, along with staccato sounds of canned TV laughter and sudden explosions from action movies. Mosquitoes buzzed around us like a party of persistent, unrequited suitors.

We would have walked past a side entrance leading to the viewpoint if I had not noticed a mangy dog limping out of it, emitting a low, unthreatening growl. A gravel path led upwards into the shaded enclosure of tall trees with signs pointing to different routes. We took the route which would lead us to the promontory that overlooks Kata Noi Bay, and beyond that, the Andaman Sea. Cody went ahead of me and we walked in tandem, breaking the silence when one of us spotted something interesting—a heavy shrub abloom with star-bursts of white-petalled flowers, a patrol line of shiny-shell ants each the size of a fingernail, the sighting of a brightly-feathered bird resting on a branch. From time to time, we would stumble into a clearing, and the sudden touch of sunlight on our sweaty skins felt salubrious. Later, when we slipped back into the comfort of the shade, it felt like we were entering the shallow end of a pool, cool and curative.

When we reached the promontory, the sun was dissolving over the far horizon. The sky was a riot of warm smudgy reds, yellows and oranges. A flock of seagulls clung to the craggy surface of the cliffs, among the rocks jutting out of the coast; from where we stood, we could hear their faint cries. A strong sea wind ruffled the unruly patches of grass that sprouted out of the dry, clayey soil.

We drank from our bottles of water and stared out into the sea. Given the time of the day, nearing evening, we were the only people at the observation point. The silence around us deepened. Cody drew near and stood beside me, his shoulder touching mine.

“I’m glad we did this,” he said.

I kept my silence. The trek up the hill was tiring, but it had at least distracted me from my thoughts. Cody’s hair was whipping manically in the air, and he tried to placate it with little result. Then he reached for my hand, gripping it. He opened his mouth but before he could say a word, I cut him off.

“No, not now, let’s not talk about it now.”

In that moment, looking out into the sea, everything seemed impossibly clear, every thought fallen into its rightful place. This glimpse of clarity had a sobering effect on me before it quickly passed, leaving behind a wearying sense of sadness, a new weight in the pit of my gut. But for the moment it lasted, nothing else mattered—my life, Cody’s, our relationship.

“This won’t last forever, will it? What we have before us now?” I said, nodding my head at the view. The sky had already darkened into heavier shades of its original colours. The winds were getting stronger now, and the air cooler.

This time, it was Cody who remained silent. He released his hand from mine and stepped to the edge of the promontory, looking down at the sea. He picked up a small stone and threw it down. I strained my ears to hear the stone hit something—a rock or the water—but of course, at this height, it was impossible to hear anything. Cody straightened up and turned to me.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, and then added, “Shall we go? It’s getting dark, and it’ll take a while to get out of here.”

He came up to me and put his arms around me. Closing my eyes, I held the scene in my mind, trying to burn it into memory as if the moment were already a thing of the past, and there was nothing to do but to hold onto its simulacrum. We stayed like this for a short while, the shadows at our feet stretched into dark, slanted lines.

“Let’s go,” I said, and took a long, hard look at the fading sunset, already tipping into evening. Then I turned and walked towards the gravel path that would take us down the hill, back to Patong, back to the lives we had no choice but to live.

26

WEI XIANG

Awake and lying in bed, Wei Xiang stares at the dusty shafts of light streaming through the curtains, and listens to the filtered sounds of shouting coming from the streets below. He recalls the boy and several scenes from their forages through Phuket over the past few days, how the boy led him through the torn landscape, taken him to the edge of the sea and brought up the ring from the depths. Even as Wei Xiang tries to conjure up the boy’s face from memory—a face that can never seem to settle into any set features—he still can’t get a full image in his head, only bits and fragments, the deep scar across his left eye. He shoots a glance at the side table where he sees Ai Ling’s wedding ring and reaches for it. This is just not possible, yet here it is, the proof right in his hand, irrefutable.

Wei Xiang gets out of bed, refusing to give in to the downward spiral of thoughts that threatens to cripple him into paralysis. Action is better, and to keep in motion—that is the thing he should do. No point thinking about things that lead nowhere. He steadies himself with the thought as he runs through the few places in his head—emergency centres, makeshift hospitals, schools—where he has been the last few days. He was told that there are two new emergency centres, which also serve as drop-off points for dead bodies, located at Phuket Town. After changing into a new set of clothes and gathering up his watch and the well-worn map, Wei Xiang charges out of the room.

As is his habit now, he makes it a point to stop at Chee Seng and Cody’s room. He knocks on the door a few times and listens to movements behind the door. No sounds. The day after the flood, Wei Xiang heard a feeble voice when he knocked on the door: Cody. So he’s in there; but why is he hiding? And where is Chee Seng? Whatever the case, Wei Xiang is at a loss at what to do with Cody. Isn’t he worried about Chee Seng? Shouldn’t he be doing something instead of locking himself in the room? Even if he should barge in and force him to come out, Wei Xiang knows it would be pointless if Cody lacks the will or wherewithal to deal with what has happened. And if this is what he has chosen—to hide in the room—there is nothing much Wei Xiang can do. He knocks a couple more times, and when he hears a faint sound from inside, he turns and walks away, ready to begin his day. He stops by the front desk for directions—it will take about an hour to walk to the new, and nearest, emergency centre—and steps out into the noisy street.

The situation in Patong has changed little, even though it has been four days since the tsunami. While the water in many parts of town has subsided, only calf-high at places nearer to the sea, many roads are still blocked by the debris of fallen huts and shops. The decomposing bodies that littered the waterlogged streets are slowly disappearing, having been picked up by teams made up of local and foreign volunteers, as well as by residents looking for their lost kin. Yet the stench of death has stayed in the air, like an invisible, malodorous blanket settling over the entire town, and worsens during the long afternoons when the sun bakes everything in sight. Wei Xiang holds his breath when he moves through certain streets, the foul, dank smell of decomposition coming from haphazard piles of rubble. Once, he steps on a severed hand with loose red strips of flesh trailing from its end, and quickly kicks it aside. By refusing to acknowledge what he’s seeing, disconnecting the object from its association, he is able to control his stomach from churning; it’s something he has to put into practice at every turn, a survival tactic.

With the morning still young, the air is cool, sunlight scattered across the puddles along Bangla Road. Already, people are thronging the main road of the town—lines of rescue workers clearing the collapsed walls of a shophouse, while a demolition crew drills the large sections of the broken structure into smaller, manageable chunks; scattered groups of locals searching under the rubble, still hopeful; ragtag gangs of children running from site to site, curious, craning their necks to see what has been uncovered, shouting lustily. Whenever another body is discovered, Wei Xiang rushes towards it, his heart sick with anticipation and fear. But none of the bodies he has seen so far is Ai Ling.

The new emergency centre, which Wei Xiang took two detours to locate, is manned by the locals, and try as he might, he can’t convey what he wants, but they do not stop him when he goes into the different tents, lifting up the flaps and checking the occupants inside. Once Wei Xiang has exhausted his search among the injured in these tents, he heads for the open compound where there is a long line of bodies enclosed in thick bags of varying size. When he attempts to unwrap one of the bags, a matronly woman with short cropped hair stops him with a raised voice and a stern stare. Wei Xiang tries to explain what he’s doing, but the woman shakes her head and points to a notice board where they have taken photographs of the deceased and pinned them up. Scanning the photographs with as much detachment as he can muster, Wei Xiang finds himself holding his breath every time he comes across a grainy photograph of a woman, trying to see beyond the death mask for any familiar features he might recognise. But Ai Ling is not in any of the photographs, a fact that gives Wei Xiang the barest of hope.

Leaving the centre, he checks his map and looks around the street for a prominent landmark from which he can orientate himself, and catches a glance of a man standing in the midst of a crowd, his movements slow, hesitant. Chee Seng. Wei Xiang leaps at the recognition and rushes towards him, shouldering his way through the thick crowd. When he places a hand on Chee Seng’s back, the latter whips around, a flash of tense alarm sweeping across his face. Looking at him, Wei Xiang can sense Chee Seng trying to pull something out of his memory, his eyes blank and uncomprehending. He waits for him to break out of his daze, but Chee Seng remains rigidly impassive. Wei Xiang grows exasperated; he pulls him aside, to a less crowded part of the street, where only the facade of a row of shophouses stands; a half-destroyed wall displays a faded monochrome photograph of a young couple in traditional tribal garb, a metal holder nailed under it, filled with the scrawny burnt ends of joss-sticks.

“Chee Seng, are you okay? Where have you been?” Wei Xiang’s words trigger no reply. Noticing Chee Seng’s cracked lips, Wei Xiang grips his shoulders, speaking firmly into his face, “Wait for me here. Wait here. Don’t go anywhere, you hear? I’ll be back.”

When he returns with the bottle of mineral water, which he has taken from the emergency centre, Chee Seng is still standing in the same spot. He shoves the bottle at him and watches him drink. Apart from a few scars and dark bruises on his face, Chee Seng seems relatively unscathed, at least from what he can see. Where has he been the past few days?

“Where’s Ai Ling?” Chee Seng mumbles.

“I don’t know. I can’t find her.”

“What about Cody? Is he with you?”

“He’s okay. He’s at the hotel.”

“Is he injured? Did anything happen to him?”

“He hasn’t left the hotel room at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“He locked himself in the room on the day of the tsunami, and has not come out at all. But I could still hear him from behind the door this morning. Come, let’s go back. You’ll see,” Wei Xiang says, motioning to Chee Seng to follow him.

It takes almost an hour to reach the hotel; they have to stop a few times so that Chee Seng can rest. Arriving at the hotel, Wei Xiang sees a porter cleaning the front steps, sweeping up the hardened clumps of soil and debris with a bamboo stick broom, and depositing them into black rubbish bags. The man glances up warily, then recognises Wei Xiang and presses his hands together in a greeting. Wei Xiang smiles and enters the hotel with Chee Seng, walking past a group of Japanese tourists standing around in the lobby, engaged in solemn conversation.

On the fourth storey, they walk along the quiet corridor until they arrive at Cody and Chee Seng’s room. Wei Xiang looks at Chee Seng, waiting for him to do something, but he stands rooted to the floor, paralysed and uncertain. Wei Xiang, sensing his hesitation, says, “He’s in there.”

Chee Seng returns a perplexed look, but does not make a move. Knowing that there’s nothing more he can do, Wei Xiang leaves Chee Seng in front of the room, and walks away.

Standing at the entrance of the hotel once again, Xiang pauses to consider his next step. When he looks around, he sees the boy with the scar standing by a slanted lamppost a street away, in the same clothes he has been wearing for the past few days—a torn white singlet and khaki shorts. For a second, Wei Xiang isn’t sure it’s the same boy, but as his mind slowly pieces together the features, he runs towards the boy, afraid that he will lose him if he should hesitate a second longer. As he approaches, the boy looks up at him, a thin line of a smile breaking across his lips. Before he can reach him, the boy is already walking away, silently signalling to Wei Xiang to follow.

“Wait, where are we going?”

The boy stops to glance back at Wei Xiang, as if to convey his reply: Follow me.

They cut across Phang Muang Sai Kor Road, choked with rescue trucks and medical vans. The local and international news agencies have sent in reporting teams to cover the disaster, descending on the survivors like packs of vultures searching for the best stories, the most memorable sound-bites, mikes and audio recorders thrust into the faces of people willing to give interviews. The young boy keeps a steady pace, paying no attention to what is happening around him, weaving through the crowd without stopping. They move south, to Karon, then Kata, through places that reveal new scenes of destruction, the landscape littered with ruins and brokenness. Before long, they are standing at the entrance leading up to Karon Viewpoint. Wei Xiang can faintly recall Cody and Chee Seng mentioning this place in the conversation at their last dinner, something about the views of the sunset. Ai Ling wanted to check out the place the day after their dinner, the day she disappeared. This shard of memory is now as foreign to him as something conjured up by someone from a different time.

The boy does not wait for Wei Xiang to catch up; he slips into the shady canopy of the trees, onto a rock-paved path that ascends in gentle-curving bends. Wei Xiang trails behind him like a shadow. After what seems like a long trek up the hill, they stumble into the blinding light of the afternoon sun, into the clearing of the promontory, the calm, undisturbed sea below them stretching to the vanishing line of the horizon, and in the distance the dark patches of islands. The boy walks to the edge of the cliff and points to somewhere out in the sea. Wei Xiang looks in the direction that he’s pointing: a series of small islands scattered at the southeastern side of Phuket. Is this what the boy has wanted him to see? But why?

“What’s there? What are you trying to tell me?” Wei Xiang asks. The boy gives no reply.

Wei Xiang looks down at the waves breaking against the sleek walls of the cliff, sending up huge sprays of water, the sound of the impact like a distant rumble of thunder. How many of the dead are still lost at sea? How many will be returned, in the days, weeks or months to follow? Will Ai Ling be one of those returned? Barely has the thought entered his mind that Wei Xiang realises what he has been secretly harbouring in his heart, something he has refused to give utterance to. He shakes his head hard, as if the act of doing so will dispel the thought from him.

When he turns his face aside, he notices the boy looking intently at him, and in his stare, Wei Xiang sees something akin to sympathy. The boy puts his hand on Wei Xiang’s stomach, and again points to the islands. He pats it several times.

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me,” Wei Xiang says, his voice cracking as the words come out of his mouth. “Please help me understand what you’re saying. Please.”

The boy suddenly looks crestfallen, an expression of helplessness clouding his face. His eyes slowly fill with tears. He opens his mouth but nothing comes out. Unable to articulate what he wants to say, the boy seems stricken. Apart from his furtive gestures, which are barely adequate to convey his intention, they are lost to each other, strangers grasping at shadows.

The boy leans his head on Wei Xiang’s stomach, tears wetting the front of his shirt. Wei Xiang holds the boy’s head in his hands, stroking his hair. He smells a hint of eucalyptus rising from his shaking body. When the boy breaks from the embrace, he turns to look out at the islands again. And then he gives Wei Xiang a long, thorough look before turning back to walk into the forest, vanishing into the darkness. Wei Xiang watches the boy leave, and in his absence, the promontory feels bare and desolate, a place marked only by silence and emptiness.

After the boy has disappeared, Wei Xiang heads back to Patong. In the recesses of his heart, Wei Xiang knows—without knowing why—that this is the last time he will see the boy, and now it’s up to him to make a decision, to act. But to decide what, and to act on what? He can continue to search for Ai Ling and hope that at any moment she will turn up, that things would be all right. But this no longer seems possible to him now, this continual, indeterminate search, in light of what the boy has prompted in his heart.

With no destination in mind, Wei Xiang stands at a junction along Thaweewong Road, with streets branching into several directions. He wants the boy to appear again, to see him standing at the lamppost, signalling to him, showing him what he needs to do. Perhaps, if he waits long enough, the boy will reappear, and, because he wants so much to believe this is true or possible, he is willing to wait for as long as he can. And so he loiters at the junction, the flow of people around him breaking like water over a rock. Then, as afternoon tilts into evening, Wei Xiang is unable to keep up the blind hope any longer. He closes his eyes, forcing himself to snap out of his delusion.

Though he has no clue where he should head next, Wei Xiang turns into one of the alleys and walks to the end of it. He only wants to walk and walk and not turn back, as far and as long as his legs can carry him, before he finally collapses—perhaps to the farthest reach of the island where the land disappears into the sea. In his mouth, he holds onto Ai Ling’s name, saying it over and over again, an incantation he hopes will lead him to a specific location, where he can find her at last, until it finally hits him that what he’s really doing is trying to take hold of the grief that has only just materialised inside him, a grief that will never let him go. He stops in mid-stride, doubles over, and starts to heave, gasping, as if someone has just punched the air out of him. Then he pulls himself together and staggers on.

Without meaning to, Wei Xiang finds himself back at the edge of the sea. Why is it that everywhere he goes on the island, he returns again and again to the sea, as if it were never out of sight, always present, always here to remind him of what he has lost? Now, looking out across the expanse of water, Wei Xiang can no longer drum up the strength he needs to deal with the doubts that have finally overwhelmed him. He feels utterly sapped, his mind in tatters.

He takes off his shoes and steps into the sea; the waves crawl to meet his feet, cooling his skin. He moves slowly through the water, which embraces him like a tight second skin. It is only when the water comes up to his chest and the ground under him pulls away that he hears someone calling out to him. Wei Xiang cranes around, and on the shoreline he sees someone in the subdued afternoon light, a dark figure, waving at him. And Wei Xiang knows that he will not be able to take another step further, that this is as far as he can go.

Even as the voice is calling out to him—louder, more urgent—Wei Xiang remains still, his body swaying in the gentle tug of the waves. For a long time, he stays like this, hoping and waiting for something that is lost to him forever.

27

CODY

The room holds the silence well, the walls letting nothing in. As you lie on the floor, time no longer makes any sense. Your thoughts have grown vague, more oblique, worn smooth by repetition. Chee Seng, Ai Ling, Wei Xiang—mere figures that appear like nebulous shadows on the horizon of your perception, disappearing in a flicker of thought. When you do not stir, they stay where they are—dark, ominous creatures strutting across the plains of your mind, wary of one another, yet hungry for contact. Thoughts of them hurt your head, like knife slashes.

Your body’s noises: persistent stomach growls, tight pops of the joints in your legs and arms as you turn, breaths inhaled and expelled in long bursts. Your body resists all effort to shut it down, continuing relentlessly, not stopping until every part of you has eventually turned to dust.

A gecko chirps from somewhere in the room—a peal of shots from a toy ray gun. Your heartbeat thumps in your wrist.

The night after the dinner and their big fight, Chee Seng had stormed out of the hotel room. Shortly after, Cody, too, left the room, unable to bear its oppressive silence. He ran after Chee Seng, thinking he could catch up, but by the time he got to the street outside the hotel, Chee Seng was already gone. Droves of people filled the street, stopping to eat at the food carts or play shooting games at the makeshift stalls or surround a street performer guiding his monkey through a series of tricks. Recalling the name of the club that Chee Seng had mentioned earlier, Cody went back into the hotel and asked the receptionist for clear directions. The club was only five streets away, and given that he was still wired from the fight, he decided to walk there.

The evening breeze cooled his skin and brought some relief. He followed a group of locals, dressed in tight T-shirts and jeans, down a side street and found the club, located at the end of a narrow lane; the sign above the entrance was bright and kitschy. He paid a nominal entry fee and entered the club, the tight space of the hall akin to a dark, clammy hole in which strobe lights beamed and sliced and glided over the dancing figures and shaking silhouettes.

It took little effort to find Chee Seng across the huddle of tightly-packed bodies, partially hidden from view. He was talking to a young man, his face pressed close. The man looked at Chee Seng with an overt interest, putting his hand on Chee Seng’s chest and shoulder, pulling him into a hug. The moving tableaux of electric lights and shadows across Chee Seng’s face gave his expressions a heightened quality, as if he were trying to shape his features according to the moment. On his lover’s face, Cody recognised something he had not seen for a long time: a look of unequivocal desire.

To avoid detection, Cody dissolved into a corner of the club, hiding in the dark, his eyes never straying from Chee Seng or the man. They danced for some time before turning to the bar for drinks, with Chee Seng paying for them both. Cody watched, riveted, as if watching a play, two men on a stage with their lines and movements and gestures executed in perfect harmony. He was not sure what he could do at that moment; just the idea of crossing the room and confronting Chee Seng was almost unbearable, a feat that required unimaginable strength that he did not possess. He continued to watch as they danced, and then later left the club, laughing like schoolboys sharing a private joke. Cody followed them, keeping a fair distance. They flitted down several dark lanes, sometimes stopping to kiss, before emerging out onto the beach.

In the darkness, they sneaked under a huge open umbrella and made out on the deck chairs. Cody crept closer—he felt exposed, conspicuous under the milky glow of the moonlight—and he saw everything. They were taking off their clothes, frantic in their urgency, and then one of them stopped suddenly; Cody could not tell which one. Neither moved. After a while, the other man moved away, trudging through the loose sand back towards the road. Cody did not move until he was sure the man was finally gone. From where he was hiding, he could hear the waves hitting the shore, their gentle pulses.

Cody crept over to where Chee Seng was lying on the deck chair with his eyes closed. He did not move when Cody came closer, perhaps too drunk to notice. Cody blocked the moonlight that shone across Chee Seng’s body and waited for him to sense Cody’s presence. But there was no sign of movement; he had passed out, dead to the world. Cody stood and waited for his thoughts to straighten themselves out. He shook with fury and sorrow at the state they were in, at how they had allowed things to fall into this mess.

Before he knew it, Cody was weeping, soundlessly and wretchedly, for all that he had lost—there was no way they could stop what was coming. And when he was done crying, he stared at Chee Seng’s sleeping form, then turned his back and walked away.

The dreams, when they come, pull you deep into their folds, ensnaring you.

In one of them you’re in a room, not unlike your hotel room, and people are passing through it in multitudes, coming and going in such numbers that you have to squeeze your body into a foetal position for fear that you’ll be trampled. Yet there is no danger of that, as they never come close enough to even brush against the sides of your body. They walk past and, without looking, throw things at you: a flower, a handful of soil, a tattered book, a plate, a dead snake, a dirty rag, a wad of saliva, a handkerchief embroidered with flying swallows, rice, hair. These things slowly pile up. Yet, even under the cumulative weight of these familiar objects, you do not feel as if you’ve been weighed down; instead, what you feel in the dream—soft and impenetrable—is a strange sense of security, as if a place of refuge has suddenly been revealed, and it’s a place that can take you, broken, into its depths. Each object that covers you carries its own weight of history and significance, one that you somehow know instinctively and exactly; soon, you are completely covered, buried out of sight. The darkness is full and complete and assuring.

In another dream, you find yourself being eaten by a beast twice your size, a cross between a hunchbacked wolf and a steely gargoyle, heavily muscled with matted fur, and wet, yellow pits for eyes. It glances at you, then turns its attention back to the gaping hole in your torso, devouring your insides. There is hardly any blood, and the beast is taking its time, chewing leisurely before swallowing. You can only feel the faintest trace of pain. Somehow, it is the right thing to do, offering yourself up to the beast. You’re not afraid. Only when it has eaten its fill do you feel a jolt of desolation, of forlornness, and the sensation is not the pain of self-annihilation or death, but of desertion, of severance. The beast turns its head and glares at you; in its bright enraged eyes, you see how the beast sees you, as a man with nothing to lose. In his stare: pity, contempt, recognition. Then, after shaking its body roughly and flicking away the blood, the beast rises to its full stature and roars. And without even a final look, it turns and saunters off.

Cody woke early the following morning still in his clothes, the acrid stink of cigarette smoke and alcohol emanating from his body. The sunlight seeping in between the half-drawn curtains was weak and feeble, the sky just starting to lighten. The other half of the bed was empty, though the sheet was roughened up. His mind felt heavy and sodden, unwilling to snap to full wakefulness. Sounds travelled up from the street to reach his ears: an occasional shout, a dog’s whiny bark, the revving of a bike.

Was he still where I left him last night? Shouldn’t he be back already?

Cody pulled himself out of bed and went over to the balcony, drawing back the curtains and pushing open the glass doors. He blinked and scanned the rusty rooftops of the three- and four-storey houses nearby, most of them bedecked with antennae or satellite dishes. Farther out, the hills rose out of the mist, like a woman casting off her membranous robes for a fresher set of green. The air carried the coolness of the night, and hurt his lungs as he took in a long breath. Leaning against the railing, he glanced down at the street and saw Ai Ling emerge from the hotel, dressed in a white T-shirt and running shorts. For a moment, she stopped and looked around, and Cody wanted to call out to her, but before he could, she was already running down the street, towards the beach. He watched as she turned down a corner and disappeared.

His thoughts went immediately to Chee Seng—they would have to talk about the previous night’s dalliance once he returned, and the thought of a potential fight was enough to cast a shadow of weariness over his mind. He sat down on the rattan chair at the balcony and rubbed his face roughly. Then he closed his eyes and leant back in the chair. Without intending to, he fell into the pit of sleep.

When he woke later, to the sound of something breaking in the near distance, he was thrown momentarily into a state of disorientation. A long series of cries and shouts rang out. As he stumbled to his feet, his vision whitening out for a second or two, he looked out into the streets below.

For a long time, he could not properly register what he was seeing. It felt wrong, as if the images before him had all given up their forms and meanings and purposes, jumbled up into chaos, into spectacular disarray, and nothing could put them back in their rightful places again.

The heavy, mercurial waves, coming in fast and livid, had swept everything up in their wake, and from where he stood he could only feel their full-on urgency. A succession of voices rose and quelled and faded, and then rose again. Hands reached out of the surface of the choppy water, bodies collided with other bodies, smashing into walls and trees and telephone poles. An explosion of birds took to the sky. The tough, unsparing wind carried the wails and cries deeper inland.

Cody did not know how long he stood there watching, but at one point he turned and stumbled back into the room and shut the glass doors. He switched on the television, but it had gone dead, its reflective surface a blank, unresponsive darkness. Then he pulled the curtains shut and lay on the floor and closed his eyes to the world raging outside.

A knock on the door. You’re roused from the dark well of sleep. The dim universe of the room materialises before you, light-stripes seeping through the fabric of the curtains. Is it morning or afternoon? You breathe in the dust of the cold floor and imagine it entering your body, settling over tongue and lungs, accumulating in layers of sediment.

The knocks come again. You hold your breath, wishing for them to go away. Your body aches. The room holds the fragile silence even as the knocks penetrate into every corner and ricochet against the walls. Three knocks, pause, three knocks.

Go away. Go away, please.

There is a respite, as if the person on the other side of the door has finally given up. You coil up and open your mouth; your tongue feels parched and raw. You utter something; the words vanish under your breath: Go away.

The knocks resume. Someone calls out your name: “Cody, it’s Chee Seng. Please open the door.”

You press your hands to your ears. You shift your body, which feels heavy and ancient and mountainous; your arms and legs move like glaciers, inch by inch, breaking apart in their movements. Three more knocks, fired off like gunshots. You edge yourself up against the wall, your heart jackhammering, your thoughts narrowed to the rigid mechanics of your body. You fold your knees into sharp angles and push yourself up. Every joint in your body flares up in blasts of vengeful mutiny. You hold still and try to straighten your body—nausea seizes you but soon passes—and take a small step. The ground shakes unsteadily, as if about to give way under your weight. You take another step.

The voice again, louder: “It’s me, Cody. Open up.”

Then you’re at the door, leaning against it. The knocks stop. You can feel the person behind the door silently acknowledging your presence, waiting for you to make the next move. You place a hand on the door handle and, with some effort, push it down. The door opens slowly towards you, and, after what seems like a lifetime of missteps and stumbles and doubt, you peer out of the room and hold your breath and never let it go.

28

CHEE SENG

I have come back to Phuket alone every year after the tsunami and stayed at the same hotel, until it closed down several years later. In its place, there is now a large gelato shop and an adjoining playground that draws in hordes of sweaty tourists, mostly parents with children in tow. I have chosen a new hotel along Thaweewong Road, just beside the beach, where I swim every day if the weather permits. Some nights, when the breeze is cool and light, I go for long walks along the beachfront, from one end to the other, looking out at the night sky pierced with sharply blinking stars. On these walks, my mind is crowded with thoughts about the past, though the memories that surface no longer have any hold on me.

They never found Ai Ling, and in the end, after a week of searching and waiting, Cody and I returned to Singapore, leaving Wei Xiang behind to keep up the search.

“She’ll turn up,” he said. “It’s just a matter of time.”

He stayed for another week before returning home, heavy with a broken spirit. A small wake was held, where most of the mourners sat quietly in twos and threes, wary of making eye contact with Wei Xiang. Before we departed, I left a note, offering him our condolences. After replying with a thank-you email a few days later, I never heard from Wei Xiang again, though I tried to contact him several times, to meet up for coffee or a meal.

I usually do not have an itinerary when I come to Phuket, preferring to go where I want to go when I feel like it, or stay put in my hotel room reading and sleeping and thinking. My mobile phone is switched off throughout my stay, so there is no way I can be found if I’m lost or missing—a thought I entertain quite frequently. For the first three years after the tsunami, whenever I returned to the island, I would try to find out where the old woman had lived, and whether she was still alive. Though the island is not big—you can complete a car ride along its coast in less than two hours—there are hilly regions in the north and east that are relatively remote, the interiors only known to the well-versed locals who have stayed on the island for decades. On the map, there are a multitude of passable vehicular routes, interspersed with small, nondescript villages that all look alike after a while. I would hire a motorbike driver, and using my well-worn map direct him to the places I had marked down. I was lucky, in my third year, to locate the village where I was able to find help after my long walk out of the forest. Through my driver-translator, I was able to get a clearer picture of what had transpired the day I stumbled into the village, though further questions about where I had come from were met with a muted response. Unwilling to give up, I pressed on with the few leads I had, going down every route indicated on the map, looking for signs along the road that would show me a way into the forest, and lead me to the old woman’s hut, to the unmarked grave where the young, unknown boy was buried. But all the routes I took ultimately, eventually, led me back to the town, no matter the distance. There was never going to be a way to find what was already lost—this was something that took me much longer to realise, and finally come to terms with.

Yet, every time I come back to Phuket, I can’t help but remember the old woman and the dead boy. The long years have passed, but the memories continue to hold strong as if they have already sunk into parts of me that still want to remember. Perhaps, remembering is the hardest part of everything that happened—the constant dredging up of memories that have stayed deep inside me, holding me to the past. They would have crushed me, if I had not learnt to live with them over the years.

My relationship with Cody did not survive after we came back, though we kept at it for another three months before deciding to end it. The separation was easier and more painless than I would have thought. I found a new flat, moved out, and quickly established a quiet life of simple routines. I kept myself busy, and the life I made slowly took on a definite—although not entirely unfulfilling—state, a life I could somehow manage with little disruption. It is strange and oddly easy how one can get used to being single after a period of adjustment.

I was clearing out some old boxes from the storeroom a few months ago and came across Cody’s old Motorola phone. The battery was dead so I searched around the flat for the phone charger, and realised later that I had thrown it out—the phone was already many years out of date—along with the other old, unused electronic parts, during my move. I wanted to check what was in the phone, to read the messages, but the urgency passed soon enough, and it seemed rather fatuous after I thought through it.

Yet it does not mean the memories are dead to me. I’ll be on the MRT heading to work, or washing the dishes after dinner, and suddenly a random memory sneaks into my thoughts—an image of Cody or the old woman, or sometimes the dead boy. These images flit and linger for a while, but I do not allow them any purchase on my mind; I have learnt to keep a distance from these old memories, to blunt their edges.

It is only during my annual trips to Phuket that I allow myself a deeper introspection, to give myself permission to think about those days back in 2004. I would walk down Bangla Road in Patong and see two men walking towards me, and I would pause and remember a similar scene from that time. Even a glance at a peddler hawking preserved tamarinds and sour plums near a junction was enough to trigger a fragment of memory about the old woman. And there was that time I came across a beggar boy with a shrivelled right foot at the night market in Phuket Town, wearing a tin can strung around his neck, and sitting before a dirty, badly scrawled square of cardboard—there was something about his face, in the tilt of his head, that caused a lurch in my heart; but of course it wasn’t him, it couldn’t possibly be. For one thing, there was no scar across his left eye. I knew enough to keep my thoughts grounded, to differentiate the real from the imagined. It’s not easy though—the pull of the past is a siren’s call, beckoning and summoning, and it’s inevitable to be tricked from time to time.

On my last trip to Phuket, I visited Phromthep Cape, at the southern tip of the island, having spent a day of walking without any particular aim or direction in mind. I had been there a few times over the years, and I always loved the views it offered—the sunset, the outlying islands, the sea. There was still a light crowd at that time of the day, mostly tourists armed with phone cameras, and I made sure to skirt the lighthouse and the shrine, to escape the noise and commotion. I took a narrow foot path down a slope and followed it for a while, as it wound itself up a slight incline, past dry shrubs of calf-height brown grass, and ended at a quiet lookout. From where I was standing, I saw two dark spots—eagles? seagulls?—moving across the sky, one behind the other, punctuating its wide, clear expanse. They never flew close enough to the island for me to identify them. For some time, I watched them glide through the sky before they disappeared, farther out into the sea.

Sitting down, I heard the tall grass swishing around me, and when I listened closely, I could hear the waves—so soft, barely there. Maybe because I was trying hard in such moments not to stir up anything in my head, I heard something: the faint traces of a song. I looked around, straining to catch further wisps of it, but there was nothing but the sound of the waves, and the wind making its way through the grass. I looked out to the sea—already darkening in the dying light—and let my mind quiet itself. Then, turning to my right, looking farther down along the coast, I saw something—a figure, standing at another viewing point along the ridge. I studied the figure for a while—a man, clearly—and waited for him to—to see me? to make a move? to disappear? I could not complete the thought in my head then.

But as I watched the man’s solitary figure, his stillness, I could not help but think about Cody and the last time we had stood at such a promontory—was it a lifetime ago?—and looked out at the sea, hearing the waves coming to us as if from another world, breaking into ours. In my mind’s eye, I saw both of us standing there, taking in the view, immersed in our own thoughts, alone in our separate worlds.

I could have let my imagination go—to recreate this memory in my head again—but I did not. The memory would not have been real; I would have coloured it with something else, and it would not have done me any good, to confuse what was there with what wasn’t. I would have changed Cody in that memory, making him into a man I wished he had been, but of course, he had always been who he was, no matter how I had imagined him in these memories.

I must have been steeped in my thoughts, for when I looked at the man again, I noticed that he had turned in my direction, holding his hand up. For a moment, I thought he was waving at me, and I wanted to return the gesture. But he was merely shielding his eyes from the glare, his gaze trained on something along the distant shoreline, down the coast. I dropped my half-lifted hand to my lap, feeling foolish at my near-mistake.

For whatever reason I could not quite fathom, I continued to watch the man as he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted into the air. The timbre of his voice caught the lift of the wind, which carried it across the hushed landscape. I imagined those words—I couldn’t hear them clearly from where I was sitting—trailing down the slope, off the cliffs, and into the sea, fading and fading until they were no more. The sound, and the echo, gone—the things we lost to the sea.

The man stood for several moments longer, then turned to walk down a path. I waited in the growing dark, watching him leave, holding back something beating wildly inside me that had wanted to chase after him, to tap him on the shoulder, to make him stay. I held back—it was enough to have this longing, it had to be enough.

When he finally disappeared behind the bushes, I stood up and slowly began to make my way down the hilltop, heading towards the lights of the town, from where I had come.

29

AI LING

Through the thin veil of sleep, Ai Ling heard the faint chirping of birds coming from outside the hotel room. She got quietly out of bed, not wanting to wake Wei Xiang up, who was murmuring in his sleep. She leant over to plant a kiss on his shoulder. Peeking through the half-drawn curtains, she accidentally scared the birds on the window ledge into flight. Standing where she was, she could catch a sliver of the sea. She inhaled deeply; the day was still brimming with newness. She glanced over at the bed, at the sleeping figure of Wei Xiang. She would wake him up later for breakfast, after her run.

Slipping into the toilet, Ai Ling brushed her teeth and doused her face with cold water. She noted that the lines around her eyes had deepened, and the freckles on her cheeks seemed darker after a day under the sun. What did you expect? You’re not getting any younger, she chided herself. She put on some moisturiser and sunblock, and tied her hair up in a ponytail. Back in the room, she changed into a T-shirt and running shorts. Wei Xiang’s dream talk was getting louder now, though Ai Ling could not make out his garbled speech. She made a mental note to check with Wei Xiang about his dream later. Unlike Ai Ling, Wei Xiang could always remember his dreams, able to narrate them with so much detail that it felt like something that had actually happened to him, instead of something culled from the hidden catacombs of his mind. She placed her hand on his arm and kissed his damp forehead, breathing in the muskiness of his sleeping body. She loved this particular smell of Wei Xiang, which had never failed to trigger a physical longing. Her touch promptly calmed Wei Xiang down, his words turning to soft grunts.

Picking up the room key from the bedside table, Ai Ling took another glance at Wei Xiang before leaving. A short run to the beach; she aimed to be back at the hotel before 8.30am, before everyone was up.

They had walked to the beach from the restaurant the night before, after bidding good night to Cody and Chee Seng, who had wanted to return to the hotel to rest before heading out later to check out the bars and dance clubs along Bangla Road. Since it was still early, Wei Xiang suggested a stroll to enjoy the evening breeze. Walking with no destination in mind, they came to a quiet stretch of Patong Beach.

“The moon is hanging really low tonight,” Wei Xiang said, nodding towards the sea, where the moon was hovering above the dark sweep of the water. Ai Ling dug her toes into the warm sand, the trapped heat engulfing her feet. Wei Xiang, with his arm around Ai Ling’s shoulders, pulled her closer to him.

“Are you okay? You seem distracted,” Wei Xiang said. Ai Ling broke away and walked to the edge of the water.

“I’m okay. Just tired, after all the rushing about the whole day,” Ai Ling replied. Wei Xiang trailed behind, giving her the space he could sense she wanted. Ai Ling stared up at the moon, feeling the tension slowly easing out of her.

“You want to head back to the hotel now? To rest early?” Wei Xiang asked.

“No, I want to stay here for a while,” Ai Ling said.

“Sure, as long as you want.”

“Don’t you like the sea at night?”

“I do. The sound of the waves is very calming. I could stay here and fall asleep to the sound.”

“Do you want to?”

“What?”

“Stay here and sleep on the beach?”

“No, I’m just saying. I don’t think that would be safe. Who knows what could happen? We might get robbed.”

“Worse, we might get swept up by the waves and cast out into the sea while we sleep.”

“Yeah, right. Cast out into the sea.”

Ai Ling chuckled and reached for Wei Xiang. They walked farther down the beach, passing other couples lying on the sand or hidden in the shadows, dark moving silhouettes. They nearly tripped over a pair of lovers; the woman let out a cry of annoyance. They apologised and walked away quickly, suppressing their laughter.

“Come on, let’s do it here,” Wei Xiang said, slipping his arm around Ai Ling’s waist, pushing into her for a kiss.

“No, let me go,” Ai Ling said, shaking him off.

“Come on, we’ll be making love under the moon. So romantic.”

“No, it’s not! Silly man.”

Ai Ling laughed and skipped across the warm sand. Wei Xiang caught up with her and they walked on. The lights and sounds from the bars, cafes and ice-cream shops near the beachfront had faded away, leaving them in near-absolute silence and darkness, except for the waves and the bright moonlight that made the sand glow with a bluish luminescence. Ai Ling looked around her and, for an instant, felt the sharp thrill of solitude, of being separated from everyone else. She relished this sensation much deeper than she expected.

“It’s really dark here. Perhaps we should head back,” Wei Xiang said.

“No, it’s good here. Let’s stay for a while more.”

They came face to face with a jagged wall of rocks and Ai Ling began to climb it, without checking first with Wei Xiang, who followed. They found a spot among the rocks, overlooking a small inlet that was surrounded by huge boulders and jutting rock formations. Slightly out of breath from the climb, they sat and looked out into the sea. For some time, they were deep in their own thoughts, not speaking. The night heaved around them, holding them still.

The longtail boats anchored a short distance away from the shore were bobbing in the gentle waves. Shading her eyes from the sunlight, Ai Ling peered out to the horizon where the sky dissolved into the sea, into a deeper shade of blue. She fixed her gaze at the dividing line, which seemed so infinite, so far away.

Already there was a small crowd of people on the beach. Young parents with toddlers playing near the water; a few old men casting their fishing rods from the breakwater, handmade cigarettes dangling from their mouths; morning joggers, flushed from the exertion of running on sand. The food hawkers had already set up their stalls along the pavement beside the beach, the smell of frying oil carried into Ai Ling’s nose. She felt nausea rise up her throat and suppressed the urge to throw up; her morning sickness was worsening. Removing her shoes, she stepped onto the cool sand of the beach. The receding tide had smoothed out the surface, leaving behind dark trails of seaweed and crushed seashells. Ai Ling picked up the carcass of a tiny crab and examined its exoskeleton. A distant cry of a child broke her concentration; a small Caucasian boy was sitting at the edge of the water, stricken at being overcome by the waves. A young woman ran towards him, extending her arms, laughing.

Ai Ling walked into the surf. Her first contact with the cold water sent a chilling pulse of electricity up her spine. She sank her feet into the wet sand; the waves pulled away for a moment before sweeping over her feet again. She stood stock-still, enjoying the pleasure of the water and the alternating exposure to the cool air. She lifted her head to the sun.

She should have told Wei Xiang about the pregnancy last night when she’d had the chance. Yet her old fears had held her back. She was after all still in the early stages, only six weeks along. She had grown suspicious after a spate of vomiting in the mornings; the doctor later confirmed the fact. She knew she would have to keep the news to herself for the time being, until… until when? She did not know. After the last miscarriage, she had become more fearful of the way life could take away indiscriminately. There would certainly be, she knew, another chance to tell Wei Xiang. She had to be patient and wait out her anxiety.

The wavelets chugged at her feet, stronger and more pressing now. The sea birds, which had been resting on the wooden poles impaled along the shoreline, had taken to the sky and were wheeling in the air, their screeching loud and maddening. Ai Ling looked up at them, specks of darkness against the bright sunlight. The wind had picked up as well, tousling Ai Ling’s hair and sweeping it across her face.

Yes, it was the right thing to do for now, keeping the pregnancy from Wei Xiang, Ai Ling assured herself one more time before taking another step into the sea, the water coming up to her calves.

The tide drew in and they could hear the splash of the waves against the rocks. Wei Xiang and Ai Ling sat on the sandy ground, leaning against each other. Ai Ling could feel the warmth emanating from his body and wrapped her hands around him, nestling in the heat. Wei Xiang turned to smile at her, his face half in shadow. Ai Ling caught a flash of moonlight in his eyes—alert, watchful.

“You have been so quiet these days,” Wei Xiang said.

“Am I?”

“Yes, you are. It’s like you’re thinking so many things. Care to share some with me?”

“No, I’m not thinking about anything.”

Wei Xiang pressed against her, and Ai Ling’s body tensed up. “You’re really cold,” he said. “Why don’t we head back to the hotel? You can have a hot shower.”

“Sure. But let’s sit for a while more. Then we’ll head back.”

Looking out into the black mass of the sea, Ai Ling pictured her thoughts slipping out of her mind and joining the darkness around them, seeping into the night. If she were to give up her thoughts now, would her mind be lighter, carrying nothing? She had always felt much freer in the dark where she could entertain any thoughts or memories that crossed her mind, without feeling hounded or burdened by them, as if their hold over her were greatly weakened in a different state. She felt almost at peace. At this moment, sitting here with Wei Xiang, a sense of calmness welled up inside Ai Ling, a brief, transient state—she was aware of its fleeting nature—that could be broken at any time. She held firm to the fragile moment.

“Wei Xiang, you know I love you, right?” Ai Ling looked into the night sky, hesitant to face him.

“Of course I know. Why would you say that? Okay, now I’m officially worried. What’s going on in that head of yours? Come on, tell me.”

Ai Ling laughed softly, the sound fading into the night.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“You sure? You very sure?”

“Yes, nothing’s wrong.”

Standing in the water, Ai Ling stretched her toes and dug her heels into the sand. Craning her face upwards, she closed her eyes, feeling the warm morning sunlight on her skin. The balm of the water and the light felt restorative. She had always loved the sea. When she was eight years old, her parents brought her to East Coast Park for the first time. The noisy rush of the waves as they crashed onto the shore, the broken seashells that lay half-embedded in the wet sand, her headlong dash into the water, the current of fizzy bubbles that moved along the entire length of her body, down her back to her feet. How she had gasped for air, bursting through the surface of the water, yelling for her parents, wanting them to see the great feat she was performing, fighting against the waves and breaking their advance with her might, with the will and strength of her body. Her parents had cheered and clapped, and told her to come back to the shore and not to venture too far. Ai Ling had defied them—she had taken some swimming lessons in school and knew she was a strong swimmer, her swimming coach had told her—and held her head down in the water. Counting the long seconds and fighting the resistance of her body, she finally leapt up and threw her arms into the air, flinging arcs of water from her extended hands. Looking towards the shore, Ai Ling had noticed that her mother was standing so close to the water that the front of her shoes had got wet, a flash of relief breaking across her face. Ai Ling could still remember the calls of her mother then, to come back.

From the chamber of her thoughts, Ai Ling heard an indistinct shout coming from behind her. Glancing back, it took her less than a second to register a young boy standing at the tide line, trying to get her attention, waving his arms and pointing at the horizon. Ai Ling turned to where he was indicating. Far out in the distance, a high wall of water had appeared, quivering like a mirage, dissolving the boundary between the sea and the sky, gaining in height and moving in fast.

Ai Ling tripped over her own feet and fell into the water. She could hear a piercing scream coming from somewhere behind her. She regained her footing and started to run.

When they got back to their hotel room, they sat on the balcony watching the night sky. From the small bag of drinks they had bought at the convenience store next to the hotel, Wei Xiang popped a can of Singha beer and started to drink. The murmur of street sounds rose up to where they were sitting: soft bursts of voices and laughter, the occasional honking of cars, and the deep, almost subterranean beats of music coming from the nearby bars, thumping like a heart under the skin of the night.

When Ai Ling got up to go to bed, Wei Xiang followed. He reached over to turn off the bedside lamp. Shadows stretched long on the ceiling and walls, moving like dark creatures in the slanted blocks of moonlight. When Wei Xiang touched her collarbone with his fingers, Ai Ling felt every part of her rushing to meet the point of contact, her nerves electrified, awakened by a rabid yearning that reached deep into her core, stirring her alive. Wei Xiang traced his fingers down the valley between her breasts and stroked her nipples. Closing her eyes, Ai Ling imagined her body changing into something that was a different version of herself—better, fuller, wilder—and in this new self, she lost all her usual senses. Yet she was not anxious or frightened or fearful; she was beyond all these, floating at the brink of her existence, transformed.

When Wei Xiang entered her, Ai Ling gasped. She held his face close, his breaths landing on her neck, down her shoulders, into her mouth. When she came, she gave in to a dark place that was a void and a death, and in that moment of nothingness, she burnt bright, all aglow.

“I worry about you sometimes. I don’t know what you’re thinking and it scares me.” Wei Xiang had lain down beside her afterwards, and in the dim light, Ai Ling could see his chest rising and falling. She put her hand over his heart, to calm him.

“Don’t worry. I’m fine.”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“You won’t. I’m here.”

Wei Xiang held Ai Ling’s hand in the dark, squeezing it. Ai Ling breathed in deeply and settled into herself. The night drew itself around them, and they fell into slumber.

Ai Ling barely had time to catch her breath as the boy rushed up to her, grabbing her left hand and tugging her in the direction he wanted to go, to higher ground farther up the beach. Closeup, Ai Ling saw the panic in the boy’s eyes, full of warning. He muttered something without pausing, the rush of heated words escaping from his mouth, incomprehensible to Ai Ling.

“Where?” Ai Ling said. The boy looked confused, his eyebrows hitched up with uncertainty. “I need to get back to my husband.”

Ignoring her words, the boy leant backward and tried to yank Ai Ling away. She shook off his hand, taking a few steps back. The wind had whipped up to a deafening speed, howling in her ears. Shrill, frantic birdcalls chorused madly around them. From somewhere, another shout of alarm.

“No, I need to get back to him.”

The boy dropped his arms to his sides and stared at Ai Ling. For a brief moment, Ai Ling felt as if they were looking at each other through a distorted glass, across a span of shared history.

The boy turned and sprinted up the beach.

Before Ai Ling could utter another word or form a single thought, the huge wave swept onto shore and lifted her into its embrace, carrying her as far as it could, into the heart of the island, before drawing her back into its depths.

The sun dips slowly into the sea, turning the water vermillion, as darkness creeps its way across the tiny island. The wispy tufts of dry grass shiver in the light breeze, bracing themselves for the night. All is calm. The woman remains perfectly still.

The boy steps out of the water and walks up to the woman on the beach. Water drips from the boy’s body onto her back, dotting her shirt with dark splotches. He squats down and puts a hand on the woman’s hair, brushing it gently with his fingers, straightening out the kinks, freeing the tangled ends. He wipes the crusted trails of dried blood from the corners of her mouth, and fills the empty eye socket with sand. Then he places his right hand on her bulging stomach and holds it there, fingers splayed.

Closing his eyes, he listens to the world of sounds coming from inside the woman’s husk of a body. He listens, and beyond the skin and blood and flesh, he finally hears her. He clenches his hand into a fist on the woman’s stomach. He’s here—he will always be here.

And the sea, ever present, surrounding them, raging inside them—teeming, roaring, alive with its own dark appetite.

The boy sits on the sand beside the woman, his body touching hers, and looks out across the water. Together, they regard the silence of the island. The sun—now a sliver—slips below the horizon and disappears into the crepuscular folds of the approaching night.