Last Tang Standing

by Ho, Lauren

  “Revenge,” Linda said when I questioned her motives. “For when she called us a bunch of loser spinsters.”

  “She never said that,” I told her.

  “Her eyes did.”

  “It was Auntie Wei Wei. And I’m pretty sure she didn’t say it in those exact words, either.”

  “Same thing. The sins of the parent shall be visited upon their children, haven’t you learned anything from Game of Thrones? The other Tangs will just have to be collateral damage.”

  Dear God, Linda was a right nutter.

  “Besides, this way we won’t have to talk to any of them. En plus, I got a sweet discount for the trip through my connection, and you, my dear, will not have to pay a single cent. Consider it an advance birthday gift. Well, except for the ‘respect’ deposit, you’re on the hook for that. But that’s for your own good, since we do need some way to rein in your destructive tendencies.”

  I gave her a hug. Linda was many things—but she was mostly my dearest, kindest girlfriend.

  After a turbulent flight, am now in Chiang Mai surrounded by dejected or wild-eyed corporate types in a silent retreat. The resort looked like something out of a Condé Nast feature, all wooden-villas-in-the-middle-of-a-decorative(?)-paddy-field pretty, and posh to boot. How posh, you ask? The girls and I were issued pure linen resort wear (as standard uniform), pure organic cotton pajamas; everything was organic and locally sourced; the drinking water was “energized” with semiprecious stones and infused with herbs and flowers; proper king-size beds in every room, complete with a heated hot tub in each bathroom for “reflective evening soaks”; there was a resident yogi who was of some international renown; and every evening, angels were summoned to bless the dreams of the residents. Linda did not slum it, even when she was on a revenge mission.

  Unfortunately, despite its twelve-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton luxury, it was also one of the stricter retreats, where guests were supposed to spend ten days in “blissful,” strict silence, practicing yoga, meditating, staring blankly into space while composing haikus/bucket lists, the like. There were some group meditations and yoga sessions, but we were not even allowed to interact then, as eye and any other form of contact between guests was strictly prohibited. Writing notes to the staff was allowed, but that was it. Breaking the vow of silence had expensive consequences: you could have your “respect” deposit forfeited—something I couldn’t afford. To nip any temptation to reach out to the evil modern world, there was zero tech on the compound, unless you count the stupid old-school phone at the reception that was only to be used in case of an emergency. No modems, no Wi-Fi, no mobiles, not even any books or music, just our naked thoughts, desires, dreams, bodies, merging with the universe.

  Fuck. That.

  Helen and the other cousins quit after the second night and presumably flew home, or so the note from the reception said. I laughed—silently. Until I remembered that I was still stuck on the resort.

  By the fourth day I was ready to escape the compound or pay good money for ten minutes on the internet. I was even willing to use dial-up internet. Anything!

  By the fifth day I was literally shaking with desire whenever I thought of my phone, even my work phone. I couldn’t remember why I had quit the firm if it meant I couldn’t type on that lovely, tactile keypad. I missed my phones. I mean, I couldn’t even play Candy Crush (which I am by no means re-addicted to).

  By the sixth day I was begging Linda, who was oddly enough serene in the absence of all tech, to take me home, in sign language, whenever we were alone in a community room. She would give me her Evil Eye but keep mum, not because she was afraid of losing the deposit but because the rest of the guests were pretty hard-core. I had seen them gang up on another woman who, on the third day, had started muttering at the portrait of the venerated guru, shushing her so vigorously (and perhaps releasing their own pent-up frustrations) that she burst into tears and was escorted off the premises, presumably never to see her deposit again.

  So far, so bad: Linda wasn’t caving in, and I couldn’t afford to crumble.

  Here’s what was happening chez moi. We were supposed to meditate and keep a journal of our thoughts at the end of the day, to catalog them, which apparently helps clarify them and thus nudge our brains into resolving emotional conflicts. In reality I found myself doodling and composing long, rambling poems to Suresh. In the poems I would explain how I really felt about him, how I regretted pushing him away every time he tried to make a move, until it was too late. Then at the end of the night I would mouth the words before I’d shred them methodically into long strips, deriving a kind of weird satisfaction from the destruction of my truest thoughts, my innermost feelings, in such a tangible way.

  Not that I would ever show Suresh those poems anyway: they were terrible. Most of them rhymed.

  On the seventh night, desperate, I ignored house rules and rapped on Linda’s door, shaking with the need to talk to someone.

  She opened the door in what was most definitely not standard issue silent retreat wear: a racy black silk negligee. Not surprisingly she was holding a smartphone, and the screen was showing a semi-naked Jason modeling equally racy boy thongs. I was too far gone to bother quizzing her how she had managed to smuggle these things to her room—instead, I lunged.

  “Gimme,” I rasped, my first word to another human in days. She raised the phone high, grabbed me by my robe, and pulled me into the room as I flailed for the phone.

  “Gimme,” I moaned, scrabbling for the phone in desperation.

  “Keep your voice down,” she hissed, “or we’ll get caught.”

  “I’m out,” Jason said, above my head. “Call me when you’re alone again, lovebug.”

  Linda shoved me onto the bed. “Stay there or I’m throwing the phone down the toilet bowl and you won’t get to use the phone at all.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” I breathed, winded and incredulous. But of course she would: it was an Android. Plus she probably could get a replacement at the snap of her imperious fingers, no problem, no consequences. I stayed down.

  “What do you want with the phone?” she said pleasantly.

  “Suresh. Call!” Apparently I’d forgotten how to string sentences together out loud.

  “Nope, no can do.” She waggled her finger at me. “Remember you’re here to detox, to figure out what you want. You have to go through the program, stay off-grid, be silent.” Said the woman having FaceTime sex!

  I grabbed her arm. “Not leaving till I speak to Suresh. It’s important. Wanna tell him, now, how I feel about him.”

  She studied me, arms akimbo and frowning. “Are you sure you know what you want? You just rejected a marriage proposal after seriously considering it.”

  I nodded and forced myself to enunciate every syllable. “I want to speak to—I want Suresh. I’ve never been surer of anything else in my life—I’ve just spent a week meditating on it, for the love of sake.” Fat tears pricked my eyes and dripped down my face. They dislodged the ice pick up her ass.

  “All right, if you feel so strongly about it, I’ll sort something out for you, but not tonight. Wait for my Bat-Signal.” She shooed me out of the room. “Now get going before they do the night rounds and we get caught together. My reputation will never live that down.”

  And with those parting words, I found myself out in the corridor and staring at her locked door, wondering how it was that I wanted to punch her in the mouth and hug her at the same time. There was poetry in that tension.

  I padded back to my room, the beginnings of a limerick brewing in my head.

  The next day I was clearing up the dining room after breakfast (we all have chores here. How could I have forgotten to mention this? Posh people paying for the privilege to serve their equals—there was nothing posher than that) when one of the orderlies, I mean, male attendants came up behind me and whispered, “Follow me to the New Awakening Meditation Courtyard,” before walking away. I turned and saw Arjun, the resident palm and au
ra reader (yes, I know, it’s a thing), who, upon catching my eye, winked at me.

  I briefly toyed with the possibility that he had been soliciting a sexy encounter before dismissing it outright. Arjun was close to ninety. He would probably dislocate a hip. But what could he want to say to me so badly that he would break the sacred vow of silence? Maybe I had a moldy aura or a misaligned chakra that he hadn’t wanted to point out in front of the others. Or he had looked into my future, seen something disastrous, and needed to warn me about it.

  I am a very positive, glass-half-full person, obviously.

  I stepped into the courtyard and drew a sharp breath.

  There, standing in the dappled shade of a copse of mango trees, half-hidden by a tree trunk, was Suresh, dressed in beige chinos and white polo shirt, which left nothing to my imagination (I was already starved from all stimuli). He looked lotus-flower fresh. In contrast, I looked like I had been living under a bridge, having not used a hairbrush or makeup or deodorant since the moment I entered this hellhole retreat.

  Then I recalled that I used to work in the same office as him and he’d seen me take cookie crumbs out of my bra. My sports bra. The one I would wear whenever I ran out of proper bras. So …

  I shrugged and approached Suresh’s hiding spot, stopping a few feet away out of respect for the resort rules and his olfactory faculties.

  “Enjoy,” Arjun said before skipping away. The crafty, limber old sprite!

  “Hi,” I said after a long pause where we drank each other in. “What brings you here?” Ever the elegant, subtle one I was.

  “You,” he said simply, ever succinct.

  “How did you find me? I went off-grid. This place is unlisted. Only my mother and sister know where I am!”

  “And that’s exactly how I knew where to find you. Your mom, she DMed me, via Instagram.”

  “What?”

  “Yup, she told me she was a big fan of TLTS, which she discovered while she was performing her due diligence on me”—a pointed look in my direction, to which I responded with an innocent Who, me? shrug—“but that she had a daughter who was an even bigger fan of mine, and that she was with a bunch of ladies in a silent retreat in Chiang Mai with Linda and I should go find her and be happy. So here I am.”

  I couldn’t believe it—my mother was on Instagram? Also she was helping me and Suresh get together—so that I would be happy? Was this the Upside Down?

  “So you didn’t come because of Linda?” I said faintly, trying to make sense of my off-kilter world.

  “Nah. She texted me yesterday around midnight, but that was after I’d arrived at my hotel here. Her text said that you had something you needed to tell me in person, though.” He cleared his throat. “So here I am, Andrea—what did you need to tell me?”

  “Ah, well, you see, I had this case I needed to discuss …”

  Good Lord, I just couldn’t help joking even at this pivotal moment. I tried again. “It’s, y’know, about us.” I was blushing up a storm.

  So was he. “Just so you know, even if you hadn’t contacted me I would have sought you out anyway. I’m sorry for the radio silence after the last time we saw each other in the office. I was really hurt by your accusations and I thought you were engaged to Eric, and as soon as I got to the States, I’d blocked you on all the channels, changed my number, etc., hoping to erase you from my life.”

  I nodded. I completely understood why he’d blanked me. “And did it work?”

  “Yes, it did, at least in the beginning. I threw myself into the editorial process of the graphic novel, but as much as I love TLTS, I couldn’t concentrate. I kept thinking about how we left things. Finally it became clear to me that I needed to see you, to straighten things out between us, or nothing I do will ever be right.”

  “Why?” I said, needing to hear it from him.

  “You know why—I like you.”

  “Since when? And how?” He’d hinted in his note, but I was in full lawyer mode: I mean, I’d seen Anousha’s butt in a tight dress.

  Suresh’s gaze was on the mango tree behind me. “I know this sounds lame, but I’ve had feelings for you for some time now,” he confessed. He turned his gaze on me. “Something about the way you type, slightly cross-eyed and the top of your tongue sticking out—it’s sexy.” He shuffled closer. “On a more serious note, the more time I spent with you, the more convinced I was that you were the person I wanted to end up with, because you challenge me, you keep me on my toes, and you make me miss you when you’re not around. You’re my North Star.”

  Oh my God, this is the kind of nerd romance stuff I never thought I’d be swayed by, but here I was, tears in my eyes like a proper sap.

  We’d been inching closer and closer to each other the whole time, and suddenly my nose was touching his chest and his arms were around me.

  “So your Eric phase is officially over?” he whispered into my ear.

  I nodded. Every fiber in my being nodded. “Completely over,” I whispered in the direction of his shoulder.

  “Who ended it?”

  “I did.”

  “Why?” He drew back and looked me in the eyes. He was very beautiful in the soft morning light; I couldn’t believe he was mine.

  “Because I have feelings for you, too,” I told him, blushing as I said it. Funny how the simplest words become so hard when you’re afraid of being rejected.

  “Is that so.”

  I nodded, very nonchalant, very Catwoman-esque. “Yup.”

  “Double confirm?” he teased, lapsing into Singlish.

  “Shut up,” I said. And by way of shutting him up, I leaned over and kissed him. There was a moment of hesitancy as our lips touched; he pulled back and whispered my name like he couldn’t believe we were finally doing this, but then I tugged him back and kissed him with the entire force of my being until I felt him give in, returning the kiss with an intensity that matched mine. We wrapped our arms around each other, the kissing getting more frantic with every second, our lips—

  “Andrea!” someone screeched. “You won’t believe this, but I’m—we’re—getting kicked out of the resort!”

  “What?” I said, shoving Suresh away guiltily. Was (silent) kissing allowed on silent retreats?

  It was Linda, being frog-marched down the path by two male attendants and a porter following behind with what looked like the entire luggage collection by Louis Vuitton.

  “Phones are not permitted on the retreat, Miss Andrea. Not only did we catch her with one, she was conducting a lewd FaceTime conversation on it,” one of the attendants said, looking hassled, “and right in the middle of the Serenity Yoga room and right under the gaze of our guru!”

  I groaned. “Linda, for fuck’s sake! Could you not keep it in your pants?”

  “It was just a nipple, the uptight bastard,” Linda shouted, waving her right fist, which was clutching a mini bottle of rum.

  “It was an entire breast,” the man said, looking like he was close to tears.

  “I’m going to sue!” Linda shouted, as she was escorted off the premises by browbeaten employees. “I want my money back. I don’t feel any more energized and look how downtrodden my friend still looks!”

  “Wait a second, this man is not from the retreat,” said one of the attendants, the larger one built like a tank, pointing at Suresh. It wasn’t a difficult deduction, since Suresh was wearing “outside world” clothes. The attendant let go of one of Linda’s arms and ambled toward us with a snarl. “Hey! You there! You’re trespassing!”

  “Oh shit, let’s get out of here,” Suresh said, grabbing my hand and tugging me down the driveway, trailing the still struggling and shouting Linda and her band of orderlies. I fought to contain my giggles—who the hell gets booted off a silent retreat?

  But first—

  “Kiss me, Suresh Aditparan.”

  He smiled, drew me close, and we kissed again. And Diary, it felt just right.

  Footnotes

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  Ch
apter 1

  fn1. In Asia, Chinese naming conventions dictate that family name comes first, followed by the given name (consisting of one or two characters), as befitting our collectivist culture. Here, baptismal or English names are written before the Chinese surname + given name, and not as part of the given name. If a Chinese person is calling another Chinese by their full name, you can be sure their intentions are not cuddly.

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  fn2. Key Performance Indicator. Self-explanatory, really.

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  Chapter 2

  fn1. When my mother reverts to using my Chinese given name, she means business.

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  fn1. A Chinese proverb that literally translates to “I’ve eaten more salt than you have eaten rice, Padawan, so shut the fuck up.”

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  Chapter 3

  fn1. MRT stands for Mass Rapid Transit; it’s the transportation network or hell that rush-hour commuters have to brave every day to get to work in the Central Business District of Singapore. It spans most of the city-state and is a major component of the railway system in Singapore. It’s a giant but necessary/efficient (mostly) pain in the ass.

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  fn2. Euphemism for “Job Stealer” or “Disease Spreader” to the locals.

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  fn3. This list used to include Engineer and Teacher, but these career paths are no longer as desirable as they used to be.

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