“Fariz! Dude! What you doing here?”
He peers up and beams, squirrelly cheeks emphasised by his wide smile, eyes vanishing into a cloud of wrinkles. Physically, Fariz is nothing like the other ghouls, skin sallow instead of brown, accent revealing his private school breeding. Innocuous and cherubic, he wears his station lightly, his shirts looser, preferring geek-chic to six-hundred-dollar suits. Case in point: today’s faded Ghibli T-shirt.
“I just wanted to see how the soup’s coming along.”
I veer closer, inspect the pot. A dessicated face, mostly bled of collagen, glares up. The soup itself looks fantastic: syrupy yellow, gelatinous, the steam silky with the promise of flavor. Absently, I scoop more Marmite into the seething cauldron; a dash of anchovies, another helping of shiitake extract. Almost perfect. If it wasn’t against six kinds of humanitarian laws, I’d put the recipe online. I grab the lid and close off the view, before smiling desperately at Fariz. “It’s going great. Better than I am, at any rate.”
Truth be said, I actually like the ghoul. Ignoring the dietary predilections, the unfortunate need to develop shisha blends from flavored man-rind, Fariz could almost pass for normal.
He scratches at the back of his scalp, nails only fractionally too long. “I know! I know. I’m sorry. We weren’t expecting the company. Uncle’s extremely big on courtesy—”
A lie, but I take it. He always means well. “Yeah, it’s fine. That isn’t my problem. I—”
“I know.” Fariz winces, retreating behind a rack of condiments, looking uncomfortable. “I know about the, uhm, London trip. It’s sudden. But there’s a point to it. It’s to keep you safe.”
“Are you serious?” I cross my arms. “That’s what you’re going with?”
“And Uncle, he—I—” Fariz deflates, palms fanned out. “Look, it’s meant to be a test. Do well and we give you a get-out-of-jail-free card. Do superbly, and Uncle might even consider a raise, or a place on the family property. You know. Stuff.”
“Stuff.”
“Stuff,” he repeats, hangdog, begging for a break.
I sigh, relenting, and sigh again when Fariz brightens. “You sure this isn’t some kind of double-crossing whatever-you-want-to-call-it?”
Exhaustion has clearly minced my capacity for language.
“I’m sure.” A beat. “Well, no. I’m not sure. But I’m sure Uncle likes your food, which counts for something. Cannibal chefs are in short supply.” Another pause, longer, more thoughtful. Fariz shrugs, meek, stoop-shouldered. “You know how it is with him. He schemes. Something is always up, but it’s not like he’s going to spend that much money just to get you shot, right?”
“I know you say that to make me feel better, but somehow it’s not working.”
“Best I’ve got.”
I consider needling him further, but there’s no point. I dig two fingers into my shoulder blade and rotate the adjacent arm, wincing as muscles realign and ligaments click into place. “I thought the Greeks were in Vegas? The Olympus?”
He shrugs. “They’re everywhere, but the big bosses are in London since, like, forever.”
“Fair enough. Mamak?”
“I guess Man Utd is playing tonight.”
“Liverpool’s going to win.”
“Hah. Sure. Let’s go. I’ll get the shisha.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“WAH, THIRTY-SIX-HOUR FLIGHT ah?”
I examine my boarding passes—four in total: two printed on crumpled A4 sheets, two freshly minted and official—and flip them over in my hands a few times. “Yes? No? I’d like to buy a vowel?”
The flight attendant titters obligingly, hand over mouth. She’s a cherubic, aggressively cheerful figure, with silvering hair worn in defiant Princess-Leia buns and a throat glittering with bronze necklaces. “Just saying. Most people will not fly such long distances for their first trip overseas.”
A question dangles in her last remark: how could a thirty-nine-year-old man have avoided travel for so long? I ignore it, slot a tired smile into place and balance an elbow on the counter. “My boss is special.”
I wink. She laughs, the sound richer, less restrained. “Cheap, you mean.” A lidding of kohl-sharpened eyes, a hint of disdain. “I hate bosses like that. I bet you he’s using air miles for your trip. That’s why he’s making you fly for such a long time.”
Somewhere, between the dim clatter of four-a.m. thoughts and the hunger scratching at my belly, a light bulb coughs into life. “How long’s a trip to London normally?”
The flight attendant glances slightly away and waggles a hand. “Twelve, fourteen hours? Depends on the weather.”
Click. “Oh.”
Professionalism yields to compassion and she stretches up to pat me on the arm, smiling kindly. For one hysterical moment, I consider telling her that I cook people for a living, just to see if she can keep acting the saint.
“It’s fine,” I declare at last, folding my travel documents into my pockets, the unhealthy impulse drowned. “Trust me, he’s done worse.”
Another laugh, marginally less unrestrained, fishing for an explanation. I pull away, muttering appreciation, hoping to escape before she gets it into her head to interrogate me further. When it comes to topics associated with the Boss, the phrase ‘if I tell you, I’d have to kill you’ is pretty much literal.
Kuala Lumpur International Airport swallows me in seconds. It’s big, too big. Not labyrinthine, in the way some places are, but just unconscionably vast, acres of wasted space pockmarked by overpriced stores, gray tiling and dull steel, a shrine consecrated to the small man’s need to compensate for small things.
Getting through customs is easier than I expected. The bored security officers don’t waste time asking questions, barely glancing over my papers. Immigration is even faster: a quick two-step with a machine before I’m plunged into the departure hall. I glance at my cracked Seiko, minute hand wobbling dangerously. Two hours to go.
ONE SIXTEEN-RINGGIT MEE goreng—a too-salty plate of noodly styrofoam that almost made me storm the kitchen in protest—later, I’m at my gate, clutching my bag to my chest and self-conscious in the face of the stares. Ang mohs in crisp navy suits glance over occasionally, gazing critically at my knock-off Levis and no-name hoodie.
Or maybe the tattoos.
Probably the tattoos.
Hopefully not the tattoos.
I glance at my forearms. The flesh is brindled with scars and ink, veins crawling in between, still decently muscular even if the skin’s already beginning to wear thin. Not that many ever notice, too riveted by the tattoos that line me from throat to toe. I inspect them carefully, every nightmarish polyp, every painted eye, every elongated limb, nails twining in double helixes, fingers crossed against every misfortune. Stillness, silence.
So far, so good.
I look up into the eyes of a tow-headed toddler, nauseatingly adorable and utterly fearless, mouth and eyes spherical with wonder. I flash the start of a smile, but his mother darts forward, ushering him away with a hiss of a warning.
“I wasn’t going to give him candy, I promise!” I call to their retreating backs, slightly too loud. The kid turns, waves exuberantly, before his parent grips his arm and forces it down. She doesn’t turn, but the rest of the passengers do, scowling and shaking their heads, contempt in their expressions.
With a shrug, I hunch into my chair and don earphones, play one of the podcasts that Minah had loved, a bizarre radio show about a town that doesn’t exist. My eyes shutter and I stretch out like a lump of dough kneaded flat. Then time skips, and somehow consciousness is returning, dispensed in increments by an obnoxious tap-tap-tappingon my shoulder.
“Sir?”
I dislodge an earphone, let it fall, Metallica blaring tinnily from the tiny bud. The world can stay on the other side of my eyelids just for a minute longer. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but we are boarding.” A quaver of stress.
I bolt up, startling the g
angly flight attendant, and push the heel of a palm against my eyes. The world swims with halogen light, silhouettes and shapes muddling into a confused haze. Slowly, it resolves into milling bodies, clumped up between aisles, cattle being led to the roast, bags and children at ready. Up front, a plump woman shouts for all remaining passengers to board.
“Sorry. Early flight. First flight. You know how it is,” I offer, gathering my luggage.
His quizzical stare says otherwise, but he holds his smile nonetheless, too well-trained to object. “I hope you enjoy your flight, sir.”
“Me too, buddy. Me too.”
YOU KNOW WHAT they say about the best laid optimism of mice and men?
Nothing.
But they should say something. Because my obstinate hope for a decent voyage is quickly annihilated. Hell isn’t a place where horse-faced demons keep wardrobes of fraying human skin; Hell is twelve hours with no place to go. Hell is the endless drone of colossal engines. Hell is a middle seat in a row of four, with a single mother and her airsick son on one side, a screeching teenager on the other.
It really should have occurred to me that something was amiss when the flight attendants shook their heads and apologized for the full flight. No free seats, they said, in funereal tones. I shrugged. Of course, I shrugged. I had no idea what they meant. But now? Now, I do.
“Sorry,” the mother says for the fifteenth time, dabbing at her progeny’s lips. The boy beams queasily up at me. The paper bag in his grip sloshes.
“It’s fine.” I pull my elbows closer, knees throbbing from repeated collisions with the seat in front. “Everything’s fine.”
The teenager is the worse of two evils, I decide, patience slimming to nothing. I glance over to see him craning over the aisle, iPad brandished like a trophy, one leg jabbed into my square of space again. Briefly, I consider stomping his foot, partly because he’s encroaching on my territory, but mostly because I don’t like his attitude.
High school preppiness and I have never agreed. Not when I was a teenager, and certainly not now, especially when it comes served in an ugly cardigan. I study the kid. He’s got the kind of jaw that didn’t start out pretty, but has since been tweezed and pulled into some kind of acceptability, the skin rubbery and bright from the cosmetic surgeon’s care. The perpetual scowl doesn’t help, minor underbite adding a caveman quality to his petulance. Probably never had anyone tell him ‘no’ in his life.
A sigh escapes when his friends stampede from adjacent seats, pouring across the corridor to gawk at the tablet, its surface emblazoned with a close-up of tanned breasts. And all this would be okay, really, if he would just move his fucking leg.
“Hey, if you could—” I prod the adolescent’s ankle with a toe.
He ignores me.
“Kid. Seriously.” Another push, more empathic than the last. “Kid.”
That gets his attention. He rotates and we make eye contact, and I balance a thank-you on the tip of my tongue, prepared to gush over the kindness of youth. But nothing follows, no sorry, no quip, no belligerent comeback. Nothing. Only a continued stare of increasing awkwardness. Twenty seconds later, with enough pageantry to incite a round of laughter among his cohorts, he looks very deliberately away.
Fuck it.
I put my foot down. Literally.
The teenager yelps like an injured Pomeranian, recoiling into a ball of limbs, knee pressed to his concave chest. “What the actual fuck, man?” he roars, pure upper-crust snobbery matching the crest hand-stitched onto his rumpled blazer.
“Sorry.” I peer down at my feet, tone as mild as I can make it. “I didn’t see your foot in my spot.”
“What the fuck—” he repeats, as though I said nothing at all, spinning about to address his peers, jabbing a finger at me. “Did you see? Did you see what he fockin’ did? I’m going to kick your arse. I’m going—”
Feigning deafness, I lace my fingers over my belly and gaze forward. Unreasonable behaviour is a tango for two.
“Did you see?! Did you—”
“Sir,” a new voice interrupts, and we all look up as a stewardess sways down the aisle, the picture of concern. “Could we ask that you lower the volume? Other passengers are trying to sleep.”
“He fucking stepped on my foot.”
I shrug. “I’d been sleeping. How was I to know that he’d moved his foot there? I’m very sorry—”
“Sorry? Sorry? You did that on purpose.” A gleam of teeth in the corner of my vision, the stink of whiskey adding character to the kid’s halitosis. “You fucking did that on purpose.”
“Sir.” The stewardess again, her billboard-ready smile slipping, just a fraction. Nine hours is enough to unravel anyone’s facade, especially if it’s been picked at, one stitch at a time, by people like us. “There are children on board. I don’t think their parents would appreciate the use of foul language. And”—her voice drops, conspiratorial, even as she sinks to a crouch—“I don’t think you should be using that kind of language either.”
The boy opens his mouth but shuts it again when a friend—smaller, somehow blonder—squeezes his shoulder and shakes his head no. Grudgingly, he capitulates, mouthing an insincere apology before flopping back in his seat. The stewardess flicks a glance at me. I nod, trying hard not to seem too gleeful, and don the airplane-issued headphones, pointedly cycling through a list of available media. Me? An accomplice to noise pollution? Perish the thought. I eventually settle on an inane sitcom about two first-world girls with too little problems and too many complaints, and stretch as far as it is socially acceptable, which is about two inches in each direction.
Peace at last.
Thump.
Maybe not.
I jolt up as the back of my seat is kicked again and peer into the divide between chairs. There’s just enough space to see the culprit: another teenager, this one less-obviously Caucasian, gelled-back hair streaked with green. His smile is acid, knife-thin and eager. And to no one’s surprise at all, he extends the one-fingered salute.
I sigh. Swivel. Stare at the kid beside me who is now sitting with knees spread, fingers steepled and head slightly cocked, a warlord on a winning streak, Kublai Khan gone melanin-free. His sneer broadens.
“Really.”
Thump.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.”
Thump.
“No, I don’t.”
Thump.
“Yes, you do.”
Thump.
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
“God”—he throws his hands up, sneer twisting into incredulous disgust—“what is wrong with you?”
“I’m very good at taking vicious pleasure in what few small triumphs I can enjoy?”
He gawks at me, silent, disbelieving. “You’re a fucker.”
“No, I’m just exhausted. Can we please just call it a day? I haven’t slept in—I don’t remember the last time I’ve slept. That’s more a case of my life being what it is, rather than anything to do with this plane, but that’s beside the issue.” I flap a hand dismissively. “I’m tired. We’re all tired. Can we please be tired together and fall asleep?”
“You a fag, then? You like being fucked in the—”
I lash a hand out and twist his arm, exposing the veins. “Manners.”
“What—”
“Sssh.” It takes a single thought to sieve through the knot of somnambulant spirits and I rouse it with a reminder of overdue rent. (Don’t look at me that way. We all sell a part of ourselves to make ends meet, ang moh: integrity or epidermal housing or access to an orifice, it’s all the same.) The imp—a parasite worm, really, barely cognizant of ideas like punctual payment—squirms across my skin, exiting through a recent scar. At its first gasp of air, the newborn shrieks, acquiring depth and weight, sloughing off the flesh it fought so hard to borrow.
“The fuck—”
“Sssh,” I repeat, rotating his arm further
until I feel the joint resist. And then I push harder, leaning my weight into the movement. “You don’t want to make a scene.”
The worm is free now, carapace gleaming slickly in the dim cabin lights, and we both watch as it creeps up and onto the teenager’s arm. Before he can voice another complaint, it burrows into his flesh, sliding between muscle fibers like a ghost.
“Sssh.”
Every pretense of bravado vanishes, replaced by a high-pitched, hiccuping whine.
“Now. Now, here’s how it’s going to go,” I murmur, as the worm investigates the breadth of his arm. Every now and then, the kid convulses in his seat, like he’s been plugged into an instrument of capital punishment. “You’re going to sit very, very quietly in this chair until the end of the flight. If you fuck this up, Bob Junior’s going to eat his way into your brain and ride you like the cuddliest pony in a carnival. Do you get me?”
“Y-yes.”
“Good.”
I TAKE THE worm out when we land, of course.
Honestly, what kind of monster do you think I am?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“BUSINESS OR PLEASURE?”
“Um. Neither?”
The immigration officer—a sullen, toadish, disconcertingly pink creature with a nose that’s more nostril than structured cartilage—glares. “Business or pleasure.”
“Contractual obligation?”
“Mister”—he flips a page in my passport—“Wong, was it? I’m not sure if you understand, but you’re treading on dangerous territory. If you insist on this absurdity, we may have to take action.”
“Sorry. Wisecracking’s a bit of a coping mechanism.” I sweep a palm over my head and tack on a smile. “No harm, no foul, right?”
“Business. Or. Pleasure.” Apparently no more chicanery is to be tolerated.
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