by Ho, Lauren
Suresh came over to me and put a hesitant arm around my shoulder. “Andrea, I’m really—”
“Who’s this?” I asked, pointing at the man next to Anousha.
His eyes grew shifty. The man had no poker face, like me. “Oh, him? That’s Noush’s dad. You know, Mr. Singh.”
Mr. Singh. Mr. Singh. Then the coin dropped. I remembered where I had seen that aristocratic face before: hanging in a gilded frame above the receptionist in the lobby!
I dropped the frame with a dramatic clatter onto the teak tabletop. “You shit,” I hissed. “You lying sack of shit.”
Suresh grimaced and started backing away from me. “What now?” he muttered.
I pointed at him like we were in Salem in the 1600s and he had just announced that he voted for legalizing witchcraft and women’s suffrage. “Anousha is Inderjit Singh’s daughter. Your fiancée is the daughter of one of the founders of Singh, Lowe & Davidson!”
“Yes, and?” replied Suresh, feigning innocence. “It’s not like it’s anyone’s business.”
A cold fury enveloped me. “Oh, but it is,” I hissed. “It’s a goddamn conflict of interest, that’s what it is, and it should be declared, especially when you’re on the partnership track.”
“But I’m not,” he said, the lying turd, now approaching me with a placating palm outstretched. “I mean, I was. But I … it’s … it’s complicated. I’ll explain it all later. I want to know why you came here tonight. Tell me, please.”
“Don’t try to change the subject, asshole. I see everything clearly now, how you lied to me, manipulated me into—I mean, you were scheming to get partnership all this time … b-by getting into my hear—head to confuse me, you … you pinworm infection!”
“What? What the hell are you on about?”
“So you deny it?”
“I was not scheming, and I certainly wasn’t hiding the fact—I mean, I … Fuck!” He pulled his hair in frustration. “I have never used my relationship with Anousha to advance my career, how can you even—”
“Fuck you,” I said.
“I can ex—”
But I didn’t want to listen to another lie, so I did the only thing I could still do with dignity: I ran.
9:45 p.m. WhatsApp messages and texts from Suresh. I have deleted them without reading. There’s really nothing left to say. Putting the phone away.
10:05 p.m. Several missed calls from an unidentified number. What is this, amateur hour?
10:25 p.m. Voicemail from Suresh. Deleted.
11:45 p.m. Work emails, too? Too bad we’re no longer working on any files together, asshole. I deleted all of them without opening a single one. Then emptied the trash folder before I could change my mind. Archived all his incoming mail to a folder titled “LYING SCUM FOREIGN TALENT (HERE TO STEAL MY JOB).”
How could I have ever liked him, maybe even more than platonically, when I have a man like Eric Deng? (Also, why was it always “Eric Deng” in my head and not just “Eric”?) How could I have put everything I have with Eric in jeopardy like that? What was it about Suresh that tripped me up like this?
1:08 a.m. Asshole cowaqrd. Wine bertter lover. Who needsa the asshol ewhen I ahv wwine …
39
Thursday 15 September
5:15 a.m. What’s the point of trying to sleep when I have a knife in my back? Can’t believe Mong wasn’t going to propose me for partnership this year, just because of VizWare. After everything I worked for. As for Suresh … hiding the fact that his future father-in-law is Inderjit Singh.
Nest of vipers, I tell you. Nest of vipers. Thank God I no longer have to share an office with Suresh.
Well, there’s still a chance I can get Mong’s and everyone else’s vote, if I salvage VizWare.
8:12 p.m. Suresh had dropped a new strip on TLTS. Water and Rhean had moved past killing for “good” but were now killing to satisfy their own needs for each other.
It’s not looking good for our murderous couple.
Wednesday 21 September
8:00 p.m. Left work earlier than usual. Couldn’t concentrate. What’s the point?
9:15 p.m. Home. Launched Angry Birds. Opened bottle of wine and bag of off-brand Cheetos.
9:35 p.m. Opened second bag of off-brand Cheetos. Dejection apparently increases my appetite.
11:45 p.m. Put phone away. Eyes blurry. Another thing my law firm has taken away from me.
1:15 a.m. Couldn’t sleep again. I decided to go to my safe place: the twenty-four-hour supermarket.
I love supermarkets. I go to supermarkets to calm down when I think of making a break from society. I enter feeling lost, but after an hour I come out calm, soothed, just a little fluorescent-light blind and drugged, but with my sense of self and worth restored. There is something so deeply meditative about walking along in the supermarket aisles: all that choice—that illusion of choice.
Let me explain. Most of the brands you see in the consumer goods section, even those fancy, seemingly independent, hippie ones, are owned by oligopolies, the same few faceless multinational corporations. So while you’re boasting that you’re a “madeby-Amish-virgins-in-Kentucky” kind of granola girl or in the “monk-blessed-and-French-mountain-filtered-piss” bottled water camp, you’re all eating the same GMOs, absorbing the same chemicals, drinking the same microplastics.
Oh yeah, what was I talking about again? Loving supermarkets. Right.
So here I was, leaving the toilet paper aisle and about to shuffle along to the cereal aisle to grab myself the latest sugar GMO bombs when I saw something that made my blood run cold:
Ivan. In the flesh.
In a T-shirt and cargo shorts, walking hand-in-hand with a familiar figure wearing a long, sleeveless white cotton dress.
And they were heading my way.
I was just about to turn around and flee the supermarket when Ivan looked up and our eyes locked.
Goddammit. Why did I have to run into Ivan when I’m buying toilet paper? Not even the fancy embossed kind, just two-ply, basic toilet paper, dear Diary, the kind you find in second-rate communal working spaces, in an economy pack. WHY COULDN’T IT HAVE BEEN THE FANCY QUILTED FOUR-PLY BLACK TP? WHY? WHY? WHY?
AND WHY WAS I WEARING JHORTS?
He began walking toward me with the woman. I steeled myself by doing a Kegel. I looked her over as discreetly as I could: Chinese, my height (who am I kidding: she’s taller), younger, longer-haired, but overall, she looked a lot like me (maybe slightly more snaggletoothed—and hunched). It was the same girl I had seen in the bar with Ivan, ages ago. The night I got entrapped by Orson.
“Hello, Andrea,” Ivan said tersely.
I smiled my most professional smile. “Ivan,” I said, as though we were distant relations instead of people who had once smushed uglies on his mahogany desk in his super luxe Hong Kong office one morning in plain view of office grunts in the opposite tower, if they had binoculars or time to look up.
He did a head twitch in the girl’s direction. “This is, ah, my girlfriend, Nessadalyn.”
I did a double take. “I’m sorry, Ness—?” I genuinely didn’t catch her, erm, name.
There was a flash of anger in his face. “Nessadalyn,” he repeated. He glanced pointedly at my toes, which were a little grubby, because #AllWorkNoLife. “Going somewhere?” he said, rather nastily.
I’d forgotten he could do that, cut me with a snide throwaway comment. “Yes,” I said. For some reason, the lie popped into my head. “I’m going on a staycation with my boyfriend, Eric.”
Hah! Game on, Ivan.
He didn’t respond, but he looked like someone had run a cheese grater against his Virus Cradle. Nessadalyn, perhaps sensing that all was not well, decided to speak up. “Pleased to meet you, Andrea. I’ve heard many good things.”
“Of course,” I said, knowing that she was lying. “And what do you do for a living, Nessadalyn?” Straight to the point.
Nessadalyn smiled. “I’m—”
(A catalog model!
An escort!)
“—working at a hedge fund.”
“Oh,” I said. “As?” (Hoping she would say PA.)
Serene smile. “Quant.” She patted Ivan on his head. “I’m gonna be his sugar mama.”
Ivan smirked at me. “We’re going to have incredibly intelligent and cute babies.”
“Oh, who said anything about babies?” Nessadalyn said with a twinkly laugh. “I’m barely twenty-seven, you old dog.”
Ivan was thirty-eight.
“What about you?” she purred, clearly winning.
“I’m a senior associate in a top law firm.” Said out loud in this manner I sounded so sad. I didn’t ski in Val-d’Isère; I was past my peak hotness; I was just a senior associate.
“That’s so impressive,” Nessadalyn said, looking pointedly at my giant pack of toilet paper.
“Well,” I said, confidence at an all-time low. “I should really get going to my boyfriend’s. He, ah, wants me to, ah”—a flash of inspiration—“take a look at some of his firm’s legal documents because he’s got this huge launch of eco-hotels coming up, the first one being in Vietnam—maybe you’ve heard of it, I don’t know, no biggie—the Dulit Group?”
Nessadalyn nodded, impressed. “Beautiful properties, superb branding. You’re so lucky to be part of this deal.”
“Thanks,” I said, bemused. “Well, Eric, the group CEO and majority shareholder, is a lovely guy, too.”
“Who?” Nessadalyn said, confused.
Ivan cleared his throat. “Nessie, do you mind if I speak in private with Andrea?”
“Not at all. You take as long as you want.” Intelligent and desirable, Nessadalyn was not threatened by the likes of me.
“Really?” Ivan said, when she was gone. “Still?”
“What?” I said, gearing up for a fight that should have come a long time ago.
“I know you, Andrea. You wanted to make her feel small in the beginning, didn’t you? But unluckily for you, I don’t date stupid girls—or do you still think so little of me?”
“I never thought little of you,” I said, stung.
“Please. You never respected me because I was part of the system and I was cool with it, and you thought you were somehow special because you wanted out ‘someday.’ But guess what, Andrea, you’re still in it, you still measure yourself against it, and maybe you just need to swallow your pride and realize that it’s too late, you’re part of the Matrix, you’re no better than me or Nessie. Tell me: how’s your crusade to save the world going? Saved any disenfranchised people lately?”
I had nothing pithy to say.
“You either accept what you’ve become or reject it, then maybe you’ll make peace with it and learn to be happy.”
“I am happy,” I retorted, affronted.
He laughed. “You don’t have to convince me. And your new paramour—Eric, is it?—I hope he knows what he’s gotten himself into: a woman in her mid-thirties who still doesn’t know her own mind but thinks she does.”
“At least I don’t have a made-up name,” was all I could come up with.
“Grow up, Andrea. Or at least get your priorities right.” Then he walked away.
I spun around on my heel and headed toward the cashier. “I’ll show you,” I said, through gritted teeth, as the cashier eyeballed me warily while she rang up my purchases. “I’ll show all of you.” Ivan was wrong: I was decisive, I knew what I wanted, who I wanted, and I was going to be happy.
Thursday 22 September
Showed Eric, who’d just touched down from Indonesia, where he was scouting for the perfect island for his new boutique hotel, just how much he meant to me, several times.
When he’d caught his breath, he asked me what that was about.
“Can’t I shower my boyfriend with appreciation?”
“Sure, if it involves that kind of literal back bending.”
“I missed you,” I said.
He kissed me. “Almost makes being away from you for so long worth it.”
“You should be around more often,” I said, meaning it.
“All right,” he said, looking meditative, his left hand tousling my hair. “All right.”
40
Saturday 24 September
4:15 p.m. Eric called. “I’m outside your house. Get dressed and come down.”
I bristled a little at his tone. “Order much?”
“Sorry, but I’m just—well, I think today is the day you should meet Diana. I’ve been waiting for the right time and now that I know we’re serious about one another, it’s time to introduce you to her.”
“What?” I panicked. “But I haven’t shav—I mean, I need to iro—I mean, I need time to get dressed. I’m a lady,” I said, drawing myself to my full height.
“My darling, my daughter doesn’t care how you look. She only cares about meeting you. I’ve told her so much about this wonderful woman that I’m dating, who’s quirky and adorable and intelligent and just so funny.”
“Go on,” I said, pleased.
“Andrea, come down. I’m going to introduce her to you. Right now.”
“She’s in your car, right now?” I panicked.
“No, I’m going to bring you to her mother’s place. Get dressed.”
He drove. That, in itself, was an anomaly that spoke of the secrecy surrounding the situation, as I knew that Eric hated to drive. My heart was in my stomach the entire ride. I was finally going to meet his daughter. It was a big, big deal for me, and for him as well.
When we arrived at the gates of the condo in Bukit Timah, I was quite frankly drenched in sweat, despite my best efforts to calm myself down by imagining myself frolicking on a beach full of golden retriever puppies. (Effective, isn’t it?)
He called the apartment to let her know we had arrived, then he tapped the keycard and brought us to the penthouse. He knocked on the door and a young, slim Chinese woman answered.
“Hi, Maria,” he said. “Where—”
“Hi there,” I interrupted, sticking my sweaty palm out and enthusiastically shaking the hand the surprised woman proffered me. “My name is Andrea. It’s so nice to meet you and your daughter at last. I—”
“This is Maria, Anne’s helper.”
“Oh.” I blushed, releasing Maria’s hand. She smiled reassuringly at me as I muttered my apologies. We followed her into the living room, which was decorated in stark, minimalist style in shades of gray and off-white.
There, seated under a painting of a pastoral Italian countryside, were the women of Eric’s life: Anne and his daughter, Diana.
Anne was nothing like what I had expected. Dressed in simple black jeans and a sleeveless tank top, she was small-built, voluptuous, Indian; young and pretty, but not exceedingly so. I estimated her age to be mid-thirties. I had been expecting a tall, thin, twenty-something Chinese supermodel for some reason. I was relieved.
“This is Anne,” Eric said. Anne and I nodded at each other. “And this is Diana, my daughter.”
“Hello,” I said, shaking both their hands. “It’s very nice to meet you,” I said to Anne before repeating my greeting slower to Diana, not sure how else to communicate my pleasure at finally being introduced to her.
“Let me,” he said. Then he turned to his daughter and began signing. His daughter smiled and nodded at me before signing her reply. I watched in fascination how swiftly they conversed in a language I knew nothing of. Anne watched the conversation with a pleasant smile, but I could tell she was not pleased to see me; when she caught me staring at her, she met my gaze squarely, with icy displeasure evident in her eyes.
“She says she’s glad to meet you and she’s doing great, now that she’s met Papa’s future wife,” Eric told me with a grin. I glanced quickly at Anne and saw her flinch.
“Girlfriend, just girlfriend,” I blurted. Eric’s lips thinned.
Anne stood up. “I’m going to give you all some space,” she said. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
“All right,” Eric
replied. Anne kissed Diana and then gave Eric a very possessive hug before leaving.
“She’s nice,” I said, lying.
Eric shrugged. “You’ll get along soon enough,” he said with an unconcerned air.
“Anyway, now that you’re here, feel free to ask her any questions you want. I’ll sign it to her. I can’t guarantee the veracity of my responses if Diana here bad-mouths me, but …” He winked at me, an incongruous move on his part, and I laughed.
So the next hour flew by as Diana and I conversed with Eric as the middle man. It wasn’t even strange, after a while. Mostly I watched them signing to each other. There was so much love in his face that it showed me a whole new, very desirable side to Eric Deng, a side I wished I could see more often, this vulnerability and openness. This Family Man side of him.
It’s kind of hot.
8:30 p.m. When he suggested going to have dinner at a friend’s restaurant, I told him that I didn’t want dinner, which I must say is unusual for me. I placed my hand on his thigh and said I wanted to show him mine.
My room, that is.
“But you’ve never offered to show me your room before,” he said, surprised. “You wouldn’t even let me have a peek at your Fourth of July party.”
“That’s because back then, no man who’d seen the size of my closet would have wanted anything to do with me. But ever since Jason gave me a book by Marie Kondo, I’ve gotten much better with stuff. Besides”—I moved that hand all the way up, up—“I don’t intend to spend a lot of time in the closet.”
He floored that Maserati (as much as one can “floor” a Maserati in Singapore) and we were together alone chez moi for the first time since we started going out. I led him straight to my bedroom, where we did nothing new; yet, somehow, everything between us was different. Maybe because I didn’t hold him at arms’ length emotionally, maybe because I finally saw what kind of man Eric was—a lovely Shrek-y onion man made of layers of contradictions and complexity, but interlaced with tenderness. The physicality of the act was wrought not just out of mechanical passion, but tempered with new respect and understanding.