Walking back to the bed, his eyes adjust to the darkness, and he sees a figure move in the corner. Dania is standing by the window, wearing one of his Oxford shirts and looking out at the city skyline outside. She doesn’t turn to face him; she stands completely still, her arms wrapped around herself. Steven wonders if the protocol in this situation is to walk up behind her and hold her or to just lie back down on the bed and wait for her return. He chooses instead to do neither, and stands behind her with his own arms folded across his chest.
“It’s a beautiful view,” he says. “Too bad it feels like the inside of a toaster out there.”
“Hardly,” Dania scoffs. “A toaster oven is a dry heat.”
Steven chuckles and steps closer. Dania looks back at him with a slight smile. He wonders if this is the part where he puts his arms around her and kisses her shoulder softly or any of that. Instead, he walks over to the window and stands beside her, leaning on the windowsill and feeling the blow from the air conditioner. He faces her and tries to ignore the wine headache swirling around in his skull. He also tries to not be so obvious when checking out the silhouette of her body underneath his shirt that she’s wearing.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks.
“Too much to drink.”
“Me too.”
“I think we pushed it a little hard.”
“More than usual, I’d say.”
“Could’ve been worse.”
“All things considered, yeah.”
“You look different without your glasses.” Her voice is deep and sultry, as if she is singing onstage again, just like earlier in the night.
“Like him?”
Leave me out of this, Scotty calls from the darkness.
“No,” Dania says, “not like him. Different.”
“Different how?”
She pauses and scrunches up her face, as if she knows what to say but not how to say it. “You look serious all the time. With or without the glasses on your face. But without them you look sad.”
“You mean old?”
“No. I mean sad. You don’t sleep well.”
“Not tonight, no.”
“Not usually.”
He smirks and looks back out the window. He says nothing because she’s absolutely right. If it’s not a weird dream, it’s a lot of tossing around in the bed. If it’s not that, it’s random bouts of insomnia. He feels as if there’s always something left undone, even when he’s restless with nothing to do. One reason he loves an incredible view is because it gives him something to look at when he’s having trouble sleeping.
“You sleep well?” he asks.
“Not really.”
He furrows his brow and takes a deep breath. He doesn’t know if it’s late at night or very early in the morning at this point, but the city looks extremely busy regardless. He wonders if Singapore City is the type of place that is constantly going, twenty-four hours a day. For all its energy and culture, Toronto shuts down promptly at 2 a.m.
“The accent,” he says. “I can’t place it.”
She grins. “A little here and there. This is here. London is there. I was born here, but my parents moved us over there when I was eight years old. I moved back about ten years ago.”
“London, England?”
“No, London, Afghanistan.” She looks at him as if he has two heads. “Of course London, England.”
“We have a London in Canada too, you know.”
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“Learn something new every day.”
Steven smiles. That’s something Scotty used to always say. It was usually after Steven had just taught him something. Come to think of it, Scotty seemed to say it all the time. He had a stable of regular catchphrases he doled out whenever the situation called for it.
“You came back here to pursue the singing career?” Steven asks. It certainly seems like the UK would be a better place for an aspiring pop star, but what does he know?
“I wanted a change that felt familiar,” she says, and turns away from him and looks out the window. A full minute passes before she says anything, the sound of the air-conditioning filling the silence between words. It startles him when she speaks again.
“Do you really think I wanted to be here because you look like him?” She’s quiet and keeps her gaze aimed at the brightly lit skyscrapers in the distance. The air-conditioning is loud, and that awkward rattle has returned.
“No,” Steven says. “I don’t know. Maybe. Is that terrible of me?”
She says nothing, but shrugs her shoulders. Scotty is surprisingly quiet in the background.
“It’s happened before,” Steven says. “It happened all the time, really. All the way back to high school. I had girlfriends who wanted to be with him because he looked like me without being me.”
“You shared them?”
“They left me for him.”
“Really? Didn’t you resent him for that?” she says as if she pities him, and he wishes he hadn’t told her.
“Sometimes, but it was never anything serious. He just played with them and moved on. It’s what he did.”
The corner of one side of her mouth goes up, and Steven realizes what he just said. He catches himself and tries to rewind a step. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“It’s okay; I get it.” She smiles. “Did you ever pretend to be each other?”
All the time, Scotty chimes in.
“Sometimes. We switched classes here and there. I took his English finals for him a couple of times. He took more than one calculus exam for me.”
She smiles big and touches him on his hand, which is resting on the windowsill. He grips her hand lightly, and she returns the squeeze harder.
“What about with girls?” she asks. “Did you ever pretend to be him?”
Tell her about Kathy Varillo. Scotty snickers mischievously.
“Once.” Steven snorts remembering it. He was only sixteen.
“What happened?”
“I lost my virginity.”
Dania’s eyes go wide, and she smiles so big it seems as if her mouth will swallow the rest of her face. She laughs hard and loud and smacks him playfully on the shoulder. Her hair falls in her face as she laughs, and she casually tosses it back over her shoulder with just a flip of her head. She bites the tip of her tongue lightly between her teeth and looks back out the window while still chuckling softly. For a moment, the air conditioner dominates the conversation again.
“If it’s not because I look like him, then why was it?” Steven feels her hand grip his tighter when he says this, but he still can’t help but wonder. Only earlier in the day she was his brother’s lover and he was a stranger with the same face. The one thing they have in common is the one thing they’re both mourning.
“You like Tony Bennett more than you like Frank Sinatra,” she says, and it’s true. “You won’t eat a steak if it’s overcooked. And you didn’t like The Catcher in the Rye.”
Steven doesn’t say anything. He just squeezes her hand again and looks back out the window. When he glances slightly right, he can see her reflection in the window and sees that she’s looking him up and down, her eyes searching his entire body.
“Scott loved The Catcher in the Rye.”
“Big surprise,” Steven scoffs.
Screw you, Scotty chimes in.
Dania continues, “You taught him how to tie a necktie. And your favorite TV show as a kid was Miami Vice.”
“Scotty tell you all that?”
She nods. “He told me everything about you. That’s why I wanted to be here tonight. I wanted to be with you because I felt like I already knew you.”
“I feel the same way.” Steven senses her leaning in to be closer to him.
“You do?”
“He told me everything about you, too.”
“Liar.” Dania smiles just before she presses her lips against his. Steven smells the perfume in her hair, and it instantly arouses
him just like before. It’s also the first time a woman seems to have moved from Scotty to him instead of the other way around. He wonders if that would have been the case had he shown up months earlier just for a visit while Scotty was still alive. He shakes this thought out of his head as quickly as it enters and lets her kiss linger for a moment before he pulls back to look into her eyes. He doesn’t know anything about this woman. As special as she might have been to Scotty, he never said a word about her to Steven. Just like all the other women that came before her. Steven wonders if he’s making a big, bad mistake.
Why stop now? Scotty laughs. Who are you going to offend at this point? Me?
“Were you happy?” Steven asks Dania, feeling as if his gaze could burn through her.
“Usually,” she says. “But he didn’t like Tony Bennett.”
Steven smiles as she takes him by both hands and leads him back to the bed. With one, smooth movement, she pulls him onto the bed as she lowers herself backwards, softly landing on the bed so they lie facing each other. She runs her hand through his hair and presses her mouth against his again.
“Sleep well,” she says, softly running her fingers over his eyelids to close them. For the first time in a long time, Steven thinks he will, even if it’s only for a couple of hours. In the background, he hears absolutely nothing.
Dania wakes up slowly and rubs her temples a bit. Her head must be pounding after tossing back the drinks she did. She didn’t gulp down several glasses of water like Steven did in the wee hours of the morning. Opening her eyes, she takes a minute to get adjusted to the light and then another few seconds to get her bearings. Steven imagines that she doesn’t wake up in strange hotel rooms every morning. At the very least, he hopes not.
She sits up in the bed and looks down. She’s still wearing Steven’s button-up shirt that he gave her to sleep in. He always keeps the air-conditioning very high in the room. She was shivering, even with his body next to hers, so he gave her the shirt. She smells the sleeve and smiles.
“Morning. Or afternoon. Whatever,” Steven says quietly from the other side of the room, cradling a cup of coffee in his hands. Dania turns to see him sitting at the desk, his tousled hair hanging over his face. He knows he looks exhausted, despite the huge smile from ear to ear. He extends the coffee mug in her direction. “Want some?”
Dania smiles. “Maybe later,” she says, and stretches again. Looking over at the nightstand, she glances at the alarm clock for a second and then back at Steven. Then the smile on her face instantly drops, her eyes go wide, and she snaps her gaze back to the clock.
“Your plane!” she yells, standing up. “You missed your flight!”
“It’s okay,” Steven says without a single hint of annoyance or frustration. In fact, he’s still smiling. “I rescheduled it.”
“You did what?” Dania asks.
“I changed my flight. I figured I could stay a few days longer.”
“Really?” she says, and catches her breath. “Why did you do that?”
“Seemed like a good idea at the time,” he says.
“You’re crazy.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“I thought you had enough of this place.”
“I’m already here. I should at least see more of what Singapore has to offer.”
“Oh, really?” Dania smiles and walks over to him. She leans in to kiss him, and he gently pulls her close until she is sitting on his lap. He takes a deep breath and smells her hair. “What about getting home? Your job? Your beloved winter?”
“It’ll wait,” Steven says. “I’ve got some time off coming to me.”
“What brought this on?” She smiles and kisses him.
“I don’t have anything to go home to just yet,” he says. “And I just found a reason to stick around.”
12
“Where the hell am I and what did you do with the rest of the city?” Steven asks as he steps off the sidewalk and crosses the street. The tall skyscrapers are gone and have been replaced with small shops and cafés. But, unlike the area around The Blue Bayou, this entire area is more colorful. It is also completely void of all the Western chains and theme restaurants. There are no English pubs or anything of the sort here. This area looks like the Far East Steven expected when his plane first landed.
Dania laughs. “This is Singapore City. This is the real city.”
“The real city had those towers and fancy streets and cars, my dear.”
“Wrong again. That’s the banks and all the financial stuff. This is where the real people live. This is where the real shops are. The real food.”
“Ah, yes,” Steven says. “I smell the food.”
In fact, the entire area has a very strong, very overwhelming smell. On this little corner, right on Kandahar Street, a blend of curry and pepper and all kinds of aromas hits him right in the face. With each corner they turn and each open door they pass in front of, Steven is aware that there is a lot of eating going on in this area. And all of it will probably wreck his stomach.
“Don’t be such a baby,” Dania says when he tells her this. Her slightly British accent is so damned sexy that he wonders why they left the hotel at all. He’d prefer an afternoon of intense lovemaking followed by just listening to her say his name all day long. Of course, sightseeing is the second best thing.
Steven smiles and squeezes Dania’s hip with the hand that is resting there. He’s never liked sightseeing. He prefers to go from Point A to Point B and be done with it. But the company he is with makes wandering around something he could get used to. Whether he’s taking in the local scenery or just looking at Dania when she smiles, Steven finds himself content.
Rows of small shops sell pashminas and other wrappings. There is lots of silk clothing and random other accessories. There are handbags, too, and—of course—plenty of food. If it’s not a specialty shop, then it’s some sort of restaurant. Or what appears to be what people in the West would call a diner. It all looks very busy and smells very enticing. It reminds Steven of Chinatown without the Chinese.
“It’s really something,” he says, and—for once—he’s talking about the city and not Dania’s figure. This area is fascinating to look at, with little shops and delis and people selling everything from espresso to area rugs. As he steps around another corner, his jaw drops at the enormous gold building just off to the side, a few blocks down. “What is that?”
“That’s a mosque,” Dania says. “You do have mosques in Canada, yes?”
“Of course. Just not like that. That’s huge. And it’s . . . well . . . it’s huge. And gold and colorful and fancy.”
“This entire area has a large Muslim population. There’s a reason people call it Arab Street.”
“So I see. Is that what you are?”
Dania laughs. “Hardly. They won’t have me.”
“Them and Hooters, it seems.”
“Yes, that’s it. One always follows the other.”
She squeezes up to Steven and, although she is right up against him, he doesn’t feel so hot anymore. “I was raised Protestant, if you can believe that.”
“Makes sense. The accent gives it away.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Made sense when I thought it.”
Dania stops for a second to look at some fabric a woman is selling in a tiny shop on the corner. Steven stands outside and continues to look around the area. They’re barely outside downtown, where the huge mirrored skyscrapers tower over the streets. The skyline looms just in the distance as a constant reminder that this is a huge city with huge businesses right next door. This area, as set away from all of that as possible, is still right next to the metropolitan craze.
Off to the side of the skyline, Steven sees a large, Gothic skyscraper that seems set apart from everything else. Dark and brooding, shooting up into the sky, it looks nothing like any other building in the area. It’s like no other building in Singapore City, really.
�
�Hey.” Steven takes Dania by the hand as she steps out into the street with him. “What on earth is that building all about?”
“Oh.” She smiles. “That’s the Batman building.”
“The what?”
She rolls her eyes and chuckles. “The Batman building. I forget what it’s called. But that’s what it looks like, right? Something out of a Batman movie?”
Steven looks at it again and, sure enough, she’s right. The Gothic architecture and dark brick and dark gold exterior cast a shadow over the entire area it overlooks. It surely looks like something he could see the Caped Crusader standing aloft on. It even has gargoyles.
“It’s owned by some Taiwanese billionaire,” Dania says. “He was a big fan of Batman. So, he wanted a building that looked like what he thought a Batman building would look like. And there it is.”
“Get the hell out of here. You’re making that up.”
“No, it’s true. That’s the story.”
“So what is it used for?”
“Just an office building. I think there’s a restaurant, too.”
“I’ll be damned. Is there a Spider Man building, too?”
“Yes, it’s on the other side of the city. It’s blue and red and shaped like a web. I should show it to you.”
“Really?” Steven is astonished and honestly finds himself excited to see that. Until, of course, he realizes that Dania is putting him on. The look of embarrassment on his face is enough to make her laugh and kiss him, so he doesn’t mind being played.
“There’s all kinds of different buildings here,” she says. “Nothing is the same. Just a little ways down from the Batman building, there’s a flat skyscraper.” She points her finger toward a long sliver that pops up in the distance. “You see, there?”
“Yes.” Steven shields his eyes from the sunlight.
“That building was designed so, when you look at it from a certain angle, it looks two dimensional. Like one long sliver. Or a sheet of paper.”
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