by Ovidia Yu
“Hey there. Here for the wine-and-local-food do?”
Frank and Lucy Cunningham were glad to see him. They were early, as Lucy explained. They had expected to get lost but they had not. Lucy was doing most of the talking, and Harry guessed the dinner—perhaps their whole trip—had been her idea.
“How many people attend these things?” Frank Cunningham wanted to know.
“First time ten people showed up,” Harry answered. “Second time only six. I have no idea how many people will be turning up tonight, but the food is good. It’s definitely an experience you won’t get anywhere else.”
“Oh goody,” Lucy Cunningham said. She peered in through the window, but though she could discern two women pottering around inside, no one came to the door. “Doesn’t look like they’re going to be ready for a while. We’ll go look around first. We saw an antique shop.”
Typical tourist types, Harry Sullivan thought.
“So who is coming tonight?” Mark asked again.
Selina thought that her earlier silence should have made clear that this was not something she wanted to discuss. For a moment she wondered whether Mark was deliberately trying to provoke her, but one glance at him made her dismiss the thought. He looked as blandly uninvolved as that stepmother of his . . . which was good because Selina didn’t know who was going to turn up that night. Laura Kwee was in charge of taking down the names and collecting payment. In the run-up to the previous two dinners, she had called or texted Selina every time someone called with an inquiry. Selina had made it very clear that this had to stop—“If you’re going to bother me with every detail, I might as well do it myself!”—and since then, there had been no word from Laura Kwee.
Selina felt a quiver of foreboding that she tried to suppress. Perhaps she had spoken more sharply to Laura than she need have. Maybe she’d offended her. But that woman could be so dense sometimes. The shiver she felt was not exactly in her gut—more in her bladder. She wondered if there was time for Mark to drive her up to Aunty Lee’s house to use the toilet. Selina did not use public toilets, not even the one at the wine café that was maintained daily by contract cleaners, supervised by Nina. It was not just a matter of cleanliness but of privacy. Selina could not bear the thought of any stranger using the toilet after she did. No matter how carefully one cleaned up, there were bound to be some traces left—it seemed to her the grossest invasion of privacy. But as Selina decided to get back in the car, Mark finished securing the travel case holding his precious wine bottles onto its wheeled trolley and locked the vehicle.
“Mark, I have to use the ladies’.”
“No problem. You’ve got lots of time.”
“Mark!”
Mark continued toward the entrance of the wine café without waiting for her or offering her his arm, as he used to do during their courtship and the early days of their marriage. Absurdly perhaps, she was now angry with her husband for not waiting for her to answer the question she had been angry with him for asking.
“I don’t know,” Selina called after him. “I have no idea who’s turning up tonight. I don’t even know how many people are coming—or if anybody is!”
It was ridiculous that she tried so hard to help him, she thought, when he was so ungrateful. Well, not exactly ungrateful; Mark was programmed with a reflex that made him say thank you, even to people like waiters and servants whom Selina did not notice. But at the same time he was so blindly unaware of how much Selina did for him all the time and every day. One day she would drum it into him in a way that he would never forget. It would be so satisfying to see him taken aback. And one day soon she would hit him with the information that would make him realize exactly how well she knew him and he’d never take her for granted again. But for now she hugged her delicious secret to herself. Some people could not keep a secret to save their lives. Selina Lee knew and had benefited from that failing. She held her own information close to her, enjoying the potential power it gave her. Feeling better, she followed Mark.
The back door to Aunty Lee’s Delights was held open for them by Aunty Lee herself.
“We don’t know how many people are coming for dinner tonight,” Selina told her. “Laura Kwee was supposed to handle it and she never got back to me, it’s not my fault.”
“Ah, Silly-Nah!” Aunty Lee said. “Good, you are here. Laura Kwee already gave us thumb drive with info last week for all the sessions. Eight people for dinner tonight, nobody paid yet—ha ha—except you and Mark no need to pay of course! Did you hear about the body they found on Sentosa? Don’t you think that the poor girl must have been murdered?”
“Oh no!” Mark said, stopping abruptly.
“Mark? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing—just . . . the wineglasses are all wrong. And the circles on paper haven’t been numbered.”
“Laura will do that.” Selina snapped out of her reverie. “She’ll be here any minute now. I’ll just give her a call.”
“I don’t think she’s coming,” Mark said. “Can you just—”
“She said she would do it!” Selina snapped. She turned away from him. It was no use trying to get a connection inside the shop. Selina was sure Aunty Lee’s equipment was jinxing her phone signals.
Her phone bleeped a message announcement just as she reached the door. She pulled it out (she would have to remember to switch it to “silent” later—Mark hated being interrupted). Once she saw whose phone it was from, Selina already guessed the message. “You two go ahead, I have to take this,” she said to Mark and Aunty Lee. They had already gone on to discuss glasses and marker pens with Nina.
The message was from Laura Kwee’s phone.
Sorry not feeling well, can’t make it tonight. Marianne said she can’t come either. It was signed with Laura’s usual smiley face.
It looked as though Laura Kwee, dense or not, had taken offense after all. Selina’s lips tightened. She did not have time to play Laura’s stupid games.
2
Wine Dining
“So no Laura Kwee means no live entertainment tonight!” Aunty Lee chuckled when Selina passed the news to her.
“She said Marianne Peters isn’t coming either,” Selina said, not laughing.
“No, Marianne is out of Singapore,” Cherril Lim-Peters said, entering just then. “And Mycroft isn’t coming either, he sends his apologies.”
“Oh. Why?” Selina was peeved. She had already told several people that Mycroft Peters was part of their dining club. He was a high-profile lawyer and NMP—nominated member of parliament—and Selina considered his wife a poor substitute. Cherril did not even speak good English.
“He had something on tonight.”
“You reserved three places. This is going to upset our seating plans.” The least the woman could do was offer to pay for her absent relatives. The Peters family was rich enough.
“So sorry. But something came up.” Cherril handed Selina precisely seventy dollars for herself. Selina preferred not to deal money openly so they could all keep up the impression this was a social occasion, a gathering of friends. That was why Laura Kwee had been brought in to help. But Laura Kwee was not there and money was money. Selina took it.
“It’s eighty dollars,” Selina said stiffly.
“Mycroft said you told him seventy. I’m getting the ticket under his name.”
Actually Cherril had left Mycroft Peters comfortably at home, dining with his parents.
Cherril Lim-Peters was under no illusions. She had been a flight attendant before her marriage and Selina Lee was not the only one to turn up her middle-class nose because of that. But Cherril was trying to learn social graces and this wine dining was a good opportunity. Cherril had learned a lot during the previous couple of weeks—and not just about food and wine. She had been eager to return even if her husband was not. Mycroft had said it was up to her.
The Peters family had long been friends of Aunty Lee and her late husband. They lived along Binjai Rise much farther into the same housin
g estate. Renovations had added a two-story wing with a kitchenette and an additional domestic helper to the household so that Cherril and Mycroft had some privacy, though the whole family still sat down to dinner together every night. Cherril, who had been used to eating in front of the television or computer when not swallowing instant noodles standing in the galley, had found these dinners difficult to get used to—but things were not as bad since Mycroft’s sister, Marianne, had gone off on holiday. And without Mycroft or Marianne around, Cherril hoped to get something out of that evening’s wine dining that would make things even better.
There were not going to be eight people at that evening’s wine dining after all.
From his comfortable smoking spot behind the tall potted plants edging the sidewalk, Harry Sullivan watched the people gathering inside. Though he liked being punctual, he didn’t like hanging around inside waiting for food to be served. It made him look too hungry and eager to please. He glanced at his reflection in the window of Aunty Lee’s Delights. Though the lights were on inside, it was still bright enough outside for him to see himself clearly reflected. It was not a bad picture. His hair was still all his own and still close to the brown black of the photograph in his passport. Standing five foot eight, he had been considered short back home, but here he was comfortably average. And he guessed he was more than average in other departments too, going by the feedback he had received. He allowed himself a small smile at the memory.
Yes, Harry Sullivan was definitely looking forward to tonight’s dinner, even aside from the food that he could see being prepared now. A dim shape waved at him from the interior and he waved back, automatically assuming the genial grin that these people expected of him. Did they really think that all Aussies ate nothing but beef and drank nothing but beer? He could so easily have found their attempts to introduce him to Asian food and European beer bloody condescending. Even if he had chosen to stay away from Chinese food and snob wines, there was nothing in this pretentious little city he could not have found back home . . . he reminded himself he was only leading them on. He enjoyed this. He was the white sahib here. When he was ready, when he had made his money and established himself, he would lay it all out for them, of course. And these people would finally know how much more he had known than they did all along.
“Harry! I thought I saw you out here. I thought you were always early—can’t wait, huh?” Mrs. Selina Lee stuck out her head, tilted girlishly. “Why don’t you come on inside and join the others? There’ll be some of your countrymen coming tonight.” She laughed.
Harry could tell that she fancied him. She was flirting with him with her husband right inside, no doubt dusting fingerprints off his glasses with his fancy cloths. He responded automatically. “I couldn’t wait to see you!” he said gallantly, flirting to order as he finished his cigarette and stubbed it out in the pot of bamboo by the entrance.
Normally Selina would have told customers not to smoke there, right outside the café, because there was a law against it. But she liked Harry Sullivan and there was no reason to put him in a bad mood. Selina made a mental note to tell Nina to put up a “No Smoking” sign. Aunty Lee should have done that. After all, it was her food that was being affected.
“Have you seen the latest Island High Life? There’s a review of the café in it. Here . . .” He handed her the magazine with a wink. “You may be running this place soon!”
“Ooh, you’re terrible. You shouldn’t say such things!” Selina said primly with delight. “Coming in? They’re not ready, of course, but you can sit down and have a drink first.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “We’re all having a good gossip about the body on Sentosa. Aunty Lee loves mysteries. That’s why everything is running late tonight.”
“Last cigarette,” Harry Sullivan told her. Just then Mark Lee appeared. He was wearing a blue-and-red paisley bow tie and a light blue suit, and Harry, who had an eye for these things, could tell at once that the man was a poof even if he didn’t know it himself.
“Selina, have you seen my Montblanc?” Mark asked. “I just put it down for a moment and it’s gone. Can you ask Nina if she’s seen it?”
Ignoring her husband, Selina pouted at Harry Sullivan. “You really shouldn’t smoke so much, you know. Well, come in when you’re ready!”
As they moved into the shop and he pulled out his half-empty pack of menthols (cigarettes were bloody pricey here), he could hear the woman going, “Did you hear what Harry Sullivan said to me? He said he came early because he couldn’t wait to see me!” It took so little, he thought, to keep a woman happy. It was a wonder more men didn’t realize and take advantage of that fact.
He returned his lighter to his fanny pack. It was not exactly formal wear but useful for carrying things safely with no awkward bulges and was in keeping with his white-man-in-the-tropics image. Besides, he rather liked seeing Mark Lee wince. Mark Lee might think he had such high standards, but no matter what he dressed himself in, he was nothing more than an upstart Chink. It was definitely an advantage to be a single Caucasian man in Singapore, Harry thought. Even these wine-enhanced dinners were part of it.
When they first approached him, Selina Lee and Laura Kwee had made it clear that he was precisely the sort of patron (yes, Selina had said “patron,” which made him feel he was supporting a college or a hospital rather than a dinner club) they were looking to attract and had given him a very generous discount to boot. He had checked, of course, automatically distrusting people who talked about special deals. And he had learned from others at that first dinner party that they had indeed paid a whopping eighty dollars per head—double what he had been charged. It had made him enjoy the proceedings all the more. And of course he had found their later confrontations highly enjoyable. There was nothing more entertaining than watching women lose their tempers and take it out on each other—especially when you knew that at some level it was you they were fighting over.
Even though it was almost seven, he could see they were still messing around with table arrangements.
“Laura Kwee was supposed to be here early, to help Mark set out the wineglasses. Now it seems she’s decided not to show up,” Selina explained to the room in general.
Even though the wine was being served in the company of food (a big no-no for any genuine tasting), Mark maintained the need for separate glasses. For tonight, that meant four glasses per person to be set up at their places and filled precisely to the widest point in each glass at least fifteen minutes before the wines were to be sampled. After the confusion of the first wine dining, Mark now insisted on numbered coasters being set at each place so it would be clear to everyone which wine he was discussing.
“Nina, don’t keep messing with the plates. We can’t start until the coasters are ready, so go and help Mark write down the numbers!”
“What numbers should I write, sir?”
“Don’t worry, Nina. I’ll take care of it. Go and take all the glasses off the table so that I can arrange them on the coasters once they’re dry.”
At least when Selina was head prefect in school, she had gotten some credit for her ability to maintain order. But now her efforts were just ignored, criticized, or taken for granted. She supposed this was how the PAP felt. Not for the first time Selina wondered about joining Singapore’s omnipotent People’s Action Party . . . after all, Mycroft Peters himself must have put his name forward. But she had more immediate things to deal with; and even if Mark and Aunty Lee resisted her best efforts to organize their lives, she would get the dinner in order somehow.
As Mark fiddled, Selina watched what she could see of Harry Sullivan through the window. He glanced at the bamboo pot, looked around, and finally dropped his cigarette butt in the metal prayer bin standing on the road nearby. It was not yet the Ghost Month, but people still used the bin—foreign laborers and maids, Selina suspected. Fruits, flowers (obviously stolen from National Parks bushes), and even joss sticks often appeared on makeshift altars around the bin.
/> At that moment the Cunninghams, even though they were already late, stopped to photograph the bin and the makeshift altar beside it. Selina bit back her irritation at the sight of them. As Mark was always reminding her, what other people did was not her business.
“Everything’s very expensive here,” Lucy Cunningham said, “but it’s so clean and so efficient and everybody speaks English. It’s already starting to feel like coming back home!” She was a comfortably plump woman who seemed content to look her age; no signs of cosmetic surgery or even hair coloring. But in spite of her chatter, Mrs. Cunningham looked unhappy. This was not unusual for a woman her age. What was unusual was that her face did not look used to being unhappy. It kept lapsing into contentment and even curiosity and then, as if triggered by a thought or memory, it would cloud over again.
Aunty Lee wondered what was causing this. Because under her surface coating of worry, Lucy Cunningham emitted a glow of contentment. She also had the body of a happy woman, and at moments when she forgot her unhappiness, she took in everything around her with calm, unaffected interest. Perhaps she was suffering from food poisoning, Aunty Lee thought, or an argument with the husband.
“It’s so good of you to include us at such short notice. And I’m sorry we were late, but we took a walk and there was this antique shop and Frank saw some wood carvings he wanted to take a closer look at. He’s very interested in wood.”
Mrs. Cunningham had not argued with her husband, Aunty Lee decided.
Selina was gracious as she collected money from the Cunninghams.
“So glad we’re getting a chance to experience typical Singapore dining!”
Selina hoped the Cunninghams didn’t think they were in for a “typical Singapore” experience. The whole point of what they were trying to do was to lift their wine café experience to a level above what was “typical” for Singapore. Well, that was where Aunty Lee’s cooking would come in use, she supposed. No one could say nonya cuisine was not typically Singaporean. But still, Selina thought wistfully of the day when she could get Mark a place of his own. They would have more class than this café. She would serve bread sticks, perhaps cheese and grapes like she had seen in an Island City brochure . . . when she looked up from her daydream, Aunty Lee had gone—