Last Tang Standing
I shrugged. “I was given only two choices: law or medicine. I didn’t know there was any other path open to me: my mother basically said it was either one of those or be disowned.” I made a face. “I think she threatened to disown me every time I tried to make choices that diverged from what she would have picked for me.”
He chuckled. “Sounds familiar. I guess you could be luckier, since in my case it was the threat of dismemberment. Or was it disembowelment? I don’t remember. Just thank your lucky stars your parents aren’t doctors who could actually carry out their threat.”
I laughed, against my better judgment. Laughing at your enemy’s jokes is a sign of submission. I dug my fingernails into my palms.
“So tell me, given all that you know now: what would you be if you could be anything else?”
I pretended to think this over. “I did want to be a marine biologist. Or was it a mermaid? One of those. And you?” I was not going to reveal my dreams to my competitor. I mean, once upon a time, when I was young and foolish, I’d wanted to be a writer.
“Writer,” he answered immediately.
“What a cliché,” I said. “You and every sad lawyer I know.”
“Clichés exist for a reason; many a lawyer started out as a wee little lad or lass interested in storytelling,” he said. “Although I suppose I’m more of a comic book artist at this stage than a writer. I’ve got a graphic novel, which I plan to get published one day, lying in my desk drawer.”
I hated that I had my own unfinished manuscript of sorts lying in my drawer as well, notebooks full of poems about the dark side of law and single life in Singapore. Not that I was going to divulge its existence to Suresh. No, as far as I was concerned, this secret hobby of mine would stay in its drawer, because that’s where hobbies belong in real life. I could hear how disdainful I sounded when I continued, “Aside from your, erm, graphic novel, have you written anything?”
“I have,” he said, smiling. “I have my own superhero comic strip online.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” I said disparagingly.
“Erm, yes, erm. But mine is, well, quite successful. Have you heard of The Last True Self? About a shape-shifting vigilante who murders to protect the oppressed by sucking their life force out by touch, but is doomed to take on the form of the last person he touch-murders?”
“No,” I said. “Sounds super boring.”
He leaned forward and whispered, “Well, I’m the creator. But don’t tell anyone at work, since I don’t want people to think I actually have hobbies, or a life, outside of the law.” He winked.
“Um-hmm,” I said, nonchalant but silently taking notes for future evil reference.
“Also, people have been trying to figure out who the creator of TLTS is for some time now, since, you know, I killed so many real-life celebrities and politicians in my comic strip. I’ve had death threats.”
I fought the urge to blurt out, “And now I know your Achilles’ heel, sucker!”
He seemed reassured, foolishly, by my silence. “Seriously, though, what drew you to read law?”
I hesitated, then said, truthfully, “I wanted to fight for justice for the oppressed. Like Batman. Or you know, like Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Suresh sipped at his tea. “What area of law did you originally want to practice in?”
“International humanitarian law. You?”
“Criminal law.”
We both fell silent as we reflected on how far we’d deviated from our ideals.
I gingerly picked out the second fish eyeball and swallowed the slimy, chalky thing whole, nearly gagging in the process. “Lemme guess, Tiger Mom?”
“Tiger Dad,” he said. “Well, Tiger Parents, really.”
We smiled wanly at each other in commiseration.
“So, Suresh Aditparan, my next question is: would you do things differently when it comes to your kids? Or do you think tiger parenting is the way to go? I mean, all things considered, we turned out pretty well.” Great, now I was drawing parallels between us and complimenting him. Some Power Lunch this was turning out to be.
He gnawed on his bottom lip as he thought this through. “I think I’d one hundred percent do things differently. I would tell my children to dream big, that I would support them in anything they wanted to do. Anything, that is, except dentistry and accountancy.” He grinned. “One has to draw the line somewhere.”
I laughed against my will. It’s as painful as it sounds, trust me. I couldn’t believe that I was starting to enjoy myself.
Then he leaned forward and adopted a businesslike tone. “Let’s cut the bullshit, Andrea. This isn’t a friendly orienteering lunch, is it?”
“Excuse me?” I said, thrown off course by the lack of segue.
“I know you don’t like me”—I opened my mouth to deny this, but he cut me off with a gesture—“but it’s OK, you’re not very likable either. You are borderline rude, to be honest, glowering at me like I don’t have eyes in my head. I get it, you don’t have much competition around here. But we don’t have to like each other to work in the same office. You stay in your lane, and I’ll stay in mine. And soon we’ll be out of each other’s hair when the office reno is done.”
What a pompous, arrogant jerk!
When the meal was over I tried to pay for it in a last-ditch attempt at a Power Move but was foiled at this because he had already left his card with the reception when he entered. The boy was almost more Chinese than I was!
Clearly, I would have to find other ways to establish my alpha status, and soon. Starting by setting up an anonymous Instagram account and spamming him. Let’s see who’s rude then!
8:55 p.m. OMG. The Last True Self has close to 55K followers on Instagram and 38K followers on Twitter. And what’s worse: Suresh is good. The comic bursts with style, satire, and dark humor, and lots of opportunity for catharsis (his vigilante, Water, has killed John Mayer (!), among others).
Water is an absurdly handsome, John Wick-ish mercenary vigilante who gained his deadly powers (life-force absorption and shape-shifting) and lost his wife after a freak accident at the experimental lab where they both worked almost two years ago. Each time he touches someone with his bare skin, he immediately kills them and takes on his victim’s new form temporarily until his powers recharge and he morphs back, although with each kill he loses a few more of his memories. So while each kill lessens the pain of his wife’s loss, it also takes away more of her, of him. As a result of his powers, he’s a bit of a loner and has not been involved with anyone since his wife died. To touch someone is to take that person’s life; hence the only time he does any touching, aside from himself when no one is watching except God, is when he is ready to kill. It can get a little one-note; it would be nice if Suresh injected, as a counterpoint to all this directionless murder, a bigger agenda for the killing. Maybe a righteous desire to reduce world population to counter global warming—something controversial but logical. Just so there’s narrative tension. And maybe a sex scene or two #justsayin.
Not because I find the protagonist hot, of course. Because he looks a heck of a lot like his creator, and that would mean I find Suresh attractive, which I don’t.
All the same, there’s enough here to please a casual reader. I’m impressed. Using the anonymous IG account I had set up to spam him, I began to follow TLTS. Just to better understand the psyche of my enemy.
11:35 p.m. Looked up from screen, dizzy and ravenous, and realized that I’d finished two years’ worth of TLTS in one sitting. Now I’m hooked, with no choice but to continue following TLTS. I’m contributing to his following and, indirectly, his revenue stream.
Worst of all, dear Diary, was the jealousy. Suresh might not have figured it out yet, but if he ever wanted to take a leap of faith, he could switch careers and do something he was passionate about. He had options, whereas I had none.
11:40 p.m. Urgh. Can feel the downward spiral over life choices beginning.
11:55 p.m. Decided to join Ben for a drink at Boat Quay.
1:20 a.m. Saw Ben in action. He is like a relic of the past, going up to younger women and shouting at them over loud music while they blink at him, unimpressed.
1:23 a.m. Come to think of it, is that how I will look to people when I am out with Orson, a boy who has never used a VHS tape player in his life?
1:30 a.m. Oh God. Oh God. Need tequila.
1:45 a.m. Have had tequila, many. Considered, for a panicked moment, whether I should sleep with Ben. Then for some reason I heard Suresh saying, “One has to draw the line somewhere.”
2:38 a.m. Tequilas w why we mustr never have a trade wart with mexivco!1
3:20 a.m. Drunkenly made out with sowmeo who looked lke Ivan befr realize he does nott at all, when car drove by alldey light see.
3:45 a.m. Whaar m I doing? Needa to get my datng life in shipshape like carreer or end up ksssng men in alley.
4:10 a.m. Home.
7
Saturday 20 February
Valerie called at 10:30 a.m., violating our group’s golden rule: “No calls before eleven on a Saturday, unless you or someone we know is dying.”
“Andrea! I’m in big trouble,” she said with a megaphone. “I don’t know what to do or who to turn to!”
“Whaaaat?” I moaned. Someone inside my head was banging a timpani in tandem with my heartbeat.
“Are you listening to me?” Valerie shouted.
I sat up, very slowly, in bed, and whispered, “Sorry, the line’s pretty bad, can you repeat the whole thing again?”
“I need to babysit my niece, and I have no idea how to take care of a child! You’ve got to help! You have a younger sister, weren’t you always saying?”
I didn’t tell her that Melissa practically raised herself, she was so level-headed. I mean, I turn to her for advice, not vice versa.
Valerie said her brother Cameron’s helper was on leave and Cameron was in the States on a business trip, and Zi Min, her sister-in-law who was also a real estate agent, had some rental properties she had to show that day. I agreed to come with her after enduring another minute of high-pitched begging. By the time she arrived at my condo, barely twenty-five minutes later, I had downed a bottle of special Korean ginseng energy drink, one coconut water, and two double espressos, and was feeling almost human. Unsurprisingly, after I’d vibrated into Valerie’s car, I turned my head and found a prone Linda lying on the back seat. Her face was a particularly vibrant hue of zombie gray.
“Hi, sweetie, thank you so much for agreeing to help,” Valerie said. She motioned at Linda. “That one back there spent the night at mine after we had a heavy night out in Clarke Quay. Between you and me, I can’t believe she’s still alive.”
Linda groaned and unleashed a cloud of mint-veiled alcohol breath. She should really have been sleeping off her hangover at Valerie’s place, but since Valerie and I were the kind of friends who had never hung out alone, it made sense that even her hungover ass was a good buffer against awkward small talk. “Keep your voices down, will you,” she pleaded.
I turned my attention to Valerie, who, under the world’s largest sunglasses and a cap, looked bright and hard-shiny in the daylight. “How come you’re totally fine and she’s half-dead?” I asked.
“I’m not an alcoholic,” Valerie replied.
We arrived at the condominium in Tiong Bahru where Valerie’s brother lived. Valerie was begging us to hurry as we were already nine minutes late and her sister-in-law was a stickler for punctuality. “She’s going to freak,” she said in a panic.
Which was exactly what happened.
“You’re late,” Zi Min barked, her arms crossed. I eyed her warily, since the apple never falls far from the tree and we were supposed to take care of her daughter. Zi Min was classically attractive: tall, porcelain-skinned, and thin but B-cupped, she was dressed in a flowy long-sleeved white silk top paired with dark blue jeans and matching denim Chanel ballerina flats and bag. There was no doubt in my mind that she was a conventional pain in the ass.
“Sorry,” Valerie said meekly, seeming to shrink into herself. I felt bad for her; she really needed to toughen up.
Zi Min jerked her chin at our direction. “So. Who are these people?”
“These are my friends from, ah, work. They are here to help me take care of Lilly. They have a lot of experience with, uh, children.” I nodded on cue, the enthusiastic smiley nod of a Jehovah’s Witness. I had my arm slung companionably around a sunglassed Linda (mostly to prop her up). Linda had already been Febrezed, but we stood a little ways back, just in case.
Zi Min was in too much of a rush to bother vetting us in the care of her only child; she let us in without further debate. She motioned down the hallway. “Lilly just came back from ballet and she was supposed to be having chess lessons but her coach canceled.” She scowled. “Make sure she doesn’t watch TV. She has to complete her homework, then practice her piano drills for two hours for her piano class tonight. For a treat, she may complete four advanced Sudoku puzzles before you drop her off for her piano lesson at five o’clock.”
“For a treat,” Linda repeated in disbelief, jolted out of her hungover stupor.
“Y-e-s,” Zi Min said. “Just four puzzles. There’s lunch in the kitchen, some quinoa salads I got delivered, but if you’re still hungry, there’s leftover oat and quinoa porridge in the fridge. Lilly is on a gluten-free diet as she is getting super fat. OK, I really have to run. I’ll try to be back by four thirty in order to send her to piano class. Sometimes she fusses and I have to smack her.”
“Where is she now?” Valerie asked as I watched Linda turn a magnificent shade of pukey indignation.
“In her room, studying chess openings. Please watch her!” She had a change of mind and kicked off her ballet flats before shoving her feet into a pair of towering Charlotte Olympia platform pumps. Maybe she intended to intimidate her clients into signing the lease. “All right. Goodbye. Have fun.”
The door slammed shut behind her. We heard her heels clattering down the hallway as she ran. A flurry of swearing, then blessed silence. All of us breathed a sigh of relief. Almost immediately, one of the bedroom doors creaked open and a girl’s head peeked out. “Is she gone?” Lilly whispered.
“Yes, sweetie,” Valerie said, smiling as much as the Botox would allow.
“Oh, thank God!” Lilly stomped out of the room, slammed the door, and threw herself onto the couch. “I hate her.”
“Now, now,” Valerie said, awkwardly petting the girl’s head, “she is your mother.”
“I know, Auntie Val,” Lilly said. “But she’s mean and controlling. I never get to do anything I want, and you follow her every instruction.” She looked around and pouted at me. “Would you let me watch TV, please?”
“Well, now …” I looked at Valerie. “I’m not in charge here, sweetie. Your aunt Val is.”
“Hold on,” Valerie mouthed. She sidled to the TV console table and parked her handbag directly in front of an insidious-looking stuffed rabbit with exposed teeth, the only incongruous object in the minimalist living room, which had obviously been decorated by a Scandinavian monk with expensive taste.
“Now you can,” she said with a grin.
Valerie turned the TV on and the three of us joined Lilly on the couch without further ado, Lilly gripping the remote control with both hands, her eyes trained on the TV on which five nubile Korean girls were gyrating to techno music and alternatively rapping and yowling. She had the slightly gormless look of an entranced gopher. Poor kid. Valerie explained that every minute of the child’s day was scheduled, down to the second. Piano lessons, creative writing, coding, drama therapy, chess lessons, and because Zi Min had hopes that Lilly would excel at a sport, ballet and kiddie golf. Of course, you must understand that these were just after-school enrichment classes designed to gild Lilly’s academic CV—God forbid that the kid actually decided she wanted to be a ballerina, a professional athlete, or a violin teacher. Every Chinese parent knows that those extracurricular activities were just that—extra.
I’ll have to admit I don’t think I had it this rough: what Lilly was experiencing was next-level Tiger Parenting. Val’s brother, Cameron, was a high-flying investment banker, and Zi Min was a senior director of a large real estate agency: they had big dreams and only one offspring, so the poor child was essentially hostage to her parents’ wishes forever.
But for now the little monster was just hanging loose, her legs splayed over the glass-topped coffee table as she munched on yellowing breath mints that she had salvaged from the bottom of my bag. “I never get to eat candy,” she confided. “You aunties are the best. I wish all of you were my mommy.”
I looked over at Valerie, who was beaming despite having just been called an auntie.
We watched four hours of TV, Linda, Valerie, and I taking turns napping while Lilly watched music video after music video and ate all the breath mints we collectively owned. When she was hungry she asked for McDonald’s, which I was only too happy to oblige. You should have seen this kid’s eyes when she saw the food arrive—I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone that excited to see gluten. Linda revived soon after the Big Mac and Coke and she brought out a stack of cards and taught Lilly how to play poker. We were all sorry when the time came to drop Lilly, whose eyes had now crossed from watching almost six hours straight of music videos, off at her music school (her mother had called at 3:00 p.m. to say she had an “emergency errand” to run and would be late, but reminded us to “use all force necessary to get Lilly to her lesson”).
And then Lilly’s vacation from the real world was over.
I pulled up in front of the music school ten minutes late and did the very Malaysian thing of double-parking with the hazard lights flashing. Lilly refused to leave the car. She threw an epic kicking-and-screaming tantrum, stopping only when Valerie said she would have to call Zi Min and tell her that Lilly wouldn’t go to class, at which the child almost immediately stopped fussing, fear evident in her eyes. When Valerie and I finally managed to usher her to her class, Lilly was in tears. To be honest, I was almost in tears myself—who knew a child could bite so hard?
Later, as I drove us back in the car, Valerie said quietly, “I want one.”
Linda, who’d once said that Halloween was great because that was when you could poison the kids you didn’t like with the sweet justice of candy, turned to Valerie and said, “I think you’d make a great mom, Val.”
As for me, having survived today, I went straight to my neighborhood pharmacy and bought a pack of extra-thick, dolphin-friendly condoms, which were helpfully on sale. Score!
9:45 p.m. Val video-called me to thank me for my help. “You’re awesome, and I’m going to do something very special for you,” she said. “Linda filled me in on your, um, quest, and I think I know just how to help you.”
“What do you mean?” Who knew what Linda had been blathering on about in her state last night. And I have many active quests: I’ve always wanted to find out Beyoncé’s real age, for instance.
“I’m going to open my social circles to you. We’re going to go out, hunting, the old-fashioned way!” She then added somewhat unnecessarily, “For men.”
I was both terrified and intrigued. “What? How? Where?”
“There’s an event I’ve been dying to go to and to which I’ve just been put on the guestlist, so we can try that. I can’t divulge any details yet since I need to ask permission from the hostess, but I’m sure you’ll be able to meet eligible age-appropriate bachelors there.” Her voice took on a steely tone. “But if you are accepted into the fold, you must promise me never to bring anyone else, especially Linda, to the club I’m about to bring you to. It’s my watering hole. Mine.”
And then, against the laws of Botox, she glared at me.
Dear Diary, I am scared.
8
Monday 22 February
10:07 a.m. Orson just sent me a weird-cute GIF of his face superimposed onto a gigantic mandarin orange to wish me Happy Chap Goh Mei. “Chap Goh Mei” in the Hokkien dialect refers to the fifteenth night of Chinese New Year; it marks the drawing to a close of the Lunar New Year celebration. It is also celebrated as the Chinese Valentine’s Day for many Malaysians and Singaporeans (because one day of torture was not enough). In this part of the world, there exists a “fun” Chap Goh Mei tradition, where single Chinese ladies throw perfectly good mandarin oranges with their names and phone numbers written on the fruit into a body of water, where they would usually be scooped up by eager gentlemen who may or may not be looking to score a free supply of vitamin C. The origins of this custom are obscure—to foolish die-hard romantics. There is little doubt in my mind that some crafty Southeast Asian mandarin orange cartel came up with this idea as a means of getting rid of their surplus stock at the end of the festivities for profit instead of letting them rot in a landfill; certainly it also makes their lives easy should they wish to pick out the single womenfolk for their trophy wives. Sleazy capitalist bastards.
Anyway, what was I saying? Ah, yes. Orson and the Giant GIF. I thanked him and he immediately messaged back to say that he was in Jakarta on a work trip and couldn’t make Wednesday for lunch but hoped to reschedule our date to the following Thursday, and that he would miss me.
I was disappointed that we wouldn’t see each other this week, but flattered. The last person who told me they missed me was my online grocer. Who says you can’t find nice ones on Sponk.
Thursday 25 February
8:20 p.m. Urgh. Am finally done with another bloody closing.
When I had sent all the documents to the client, I shakily stood up from the desk I had been crouched over for four hours straight and took stock of the damage: my eyes were burning and out of focus; I think I lost a tooth in my coffee; something smelled of warmed kimchi and I was pretty sure it was me (maybe that was why Suresh had taken to working in the library today?). My rib cage hurt from the too-tight sports bra I was wearing instead of a proper one, because I’d run out of clean lingerie. I’ve been eating takeaway salad (OK, fine, so they were fried spring rolls and not salad per se, but there’s radish in there so that counts toward my five-a-day) for lunch and dinner from that Vietnamese deli downstairs for three effing days straight and have slept a total of sixteen hours in the last four days, in my office.
On days like this I fantasize so hard about quitting that I actually have heart pangs. Just like Suresh, my plan wasn’t to go to law school to become a corporate lawyer. I had ideals once. I was passionate about human rights. After graduation I paid my dues and put in some time at Slaughter & May, but just as I’d begun a new position as a legal adviser for a small nonprofit helping trafficked women in the UK, my father got really sick and I had to get what my mother called a “real job” to help defray their living expenses, instead of “wasting my expensive legal education.” So I did what I had to do: I went back to Slaughter & May, cap in hand, and got my old job back. Some of that money went toward paying part of Melissa’s tuition, since she was in the middle of an expensive British degree in architecture and needed to get the best grades she could instead of working part time and getting just a second-lower-class or third-class degree. No way were we going to do that to her.