Chapter 19
19
Thursday 31 March
7:10 a.m.
I have learned my lesson, dear Diary. I must never take foolish chances and go off-piste dating again, lest I end up with another Orson. If I had stuck to the plan, I’d be with someone like Ivan instead of in this sad state.
7:13 a.m.
Why had I broken it off with Ivan again?
7:14 a.m.
Oh yeah. I remember now.
7:16 a.m.
What kind of goddamn name is Orson anyway? I must have been high the night I met him.
Anyway, must concentrate on responsible adulting, i.e., dating suitable men and getting ahead in my career.
8:20 a.m.
Texted my mom and told her grudgingly I would accept her help in arranging
one
blind date with rando’s son. Baby steps, baby steps.
8:25 a.m.
She texted me one word:
DONE.
9:35 a.m.
Valerie texted me to ask me, and I quote verbatim, “for a private audience tomorrow at Crystal Jade @Paragon to discuss an important issue concerning La Linda.”
This will be our first lunch together, Together Alone. The
thought stresses me out: what if we have nothing to say to each other and I have to stare at that face for an entire lunch? Or worse: what if I couldn’t enjoy my food because of it?
12:20 p.m.
TLTS
dropped a new strip, in which Water, when executing the CEO of a credit ratings agency that gave triple-A ratings to toxic mortgage-backed securities in a dark alley, meets a mysterious woman called Rhean, with similar powers as him. She looks very familiar and he can’t shake the notion that he knows her from before.
This is an intriguing, and welcome, turn of events for the comic strip.
Hmm. Let me see: so the woman’s name is Rhean, which is practically derived from “Andrea”; she’s tall, svelte, and a redhead, the total opposite of me. Which means she’s totally based on me. I’m flattered. I’ve never had someone literally make me a character in a comic strip before. It’s almost—sweet, to be respected so much by a competitor.
Friday 1 April
Wow. This has been an intense day, and it’s barely 3:00 p.m. The good news is that I survived (a) eating alone with Valerie for two hours (!) without too many awkward pauses (she’s surprisingly quite funny), and (b) staring that whole time at Valerie’s strange Bride of Chucky face and managing to finish my meal. The bad news is that I now know that Linda is sledding straight into a hillock of disaster-flavored turds, full speed, because I’ve heard some very disconcerting news.
Apparently, Valerie, who had been speaking at a private investment seminar at Fullerton Hotel (art investment for newly minted
millionaires with too much money and no clue about art), had stepped out of the room to take a call when who else did her beady eyes spy but Linda, her arms around the waist of a man as they stepped into a lift heading up to the rooms. A man, she claimed, who was wearing a gold band on the fourth finger of his left hand: a married man.
“
What?
Are you sure it was Linda? This is not some elaborate April Fool’s Day prank, right?”
“Positive. I was five feet away, hidden by a potted plant, but there’s no mistaking Linda. She’s pretty unmistakable, especially with that Fran Drescher laugh.”
She was right; you could hear it from a mile away.
Valerie leaned forward, her eyes deadly serious, and whispered, “The most shocking thing was she was kissing him,
butterfly-style
,
all over his face
the
entire time!
In broad daylight!
”
We both gagged simultaneously. Who was this imposter and what had she done to our Linda?
“Who’s the Romeo?” I demanded once I’d recovered, feeling more hurt than shocked. I couldn’t believe she had not confided in me, which told me that this man was special. Linda usually gave me every dirty detail of her dating life. It was part of her charm as a friend, since I could live vicariously through her sexploits, which were manifold and casual.
Valerie shrugged, her expression frozen in place. “He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t identify him. The guy was wearing Ah Beng
*
aviators.
Indoors.
” Valerie loved her italics.
We rolled our eyes in sync and shuddered. Both of us shared a dislike for people who wore sunglasses indoors when they were not visually challenged.
“And you’re sure that he’s married?” Linda has one rule when she dates: no married men. She’d experienced firsthand the repercussions of her parents’ infidelities. “Maybe his ring is just for bling?” I offered weakly. It was dawning on me that Linda had been hinting at this in our conversation a few weeks ago, though at the time I’d assumed she was talking about one of my Tinder prospects.
Valerie snorted, which in itself is a feat because it meant she could still contort the muscles around her nose.
“Child,” Valerie said in the same voice one uses to talk to, well, a child. “No man will scare off pussy by wearing a band on his fourth finger, even if it’s ‘just for bling.’ We must face the fact that our best friend”—
mine
, I thought—“is screwing a married man, something she crucifies others for doing. I am sure he’s Singaporean, at least he sounded like one, and he definitely has money: he had a Ferrari key fob dangling from his trouser pocket and a to-die-for pair of croc skin loafers, and the air of someone who’s used to being listened and deferred to. His lack of discretion is a sure sign he’s bad news: he was not even trying to hide the fact that he’s married and cheating on his wife, which tells me that he must be a very powerful or very stupid man indeed, and God forbid he is both.”
I chewed on this as I hurried back to work. Linda was not the most level-headed person when she wanted someone, but this guy sounded like bad news. I added this to the list of things I needed to resolve on an already staggering to-do list.
8:45 p.m.
My nervous, staccato bursts of typing drew Suresh’s ire.
“Could you please type normally,” he said, irritated. “I have an angry client and an even angrier fiancée.”
“Oh,” I said. I glanced over and saw him staring blankly at the screen with an expression I knew well. It was what I called the Monday Horror Show™ face, a combo of constipation, existential
horror, and resignation. With some hesitation, I got up, went over, and gave him the chastest, most scholarly of shoulder pats. Suresh’s shoulders were dangerous territory: they were taut with muscles that invited lingering caresses. I quickly brought up mental images of hairy men in tight polka-dotted Speedos to quell any unruly carnal urges. “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked in my most professional school counselor’s voice.
He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Yes, but are you sure you really want to hear about it?”
“Sure!” I said, widening my eyes. “Isn’t that what colleagues are for?”
Yes
¸ I thought, mentally channeling Mr. Burns,
tell me your deepest darkest secret, which I will never use against you, pinky swear, muahahaha.
“Not really.” A small smile creased his face. “But it’s what friends are for. And we’re friends, I’d like to think.”
“Well, friendly rivals, anyway,” I said, trying to keep my gaze from straying off the planes of his face toward those insanely sculpted shoulders.
“We’ve had a fight,” he said. “Noush and I . . . we’ve had a massive row about Singapore. She doesn’t want to move here, and I don’t want to move back to London. I get it. I mean, I loved London as a child and a student. But Singapore is my home now. I want to be with my parents.”
I shrugged. “I’m not saying I’m on her side, but for the sake of argument, if one of you has to move, why can’t it be you?”
He got up from his chair and began pacing. “Look, it’s much easier for her to find a job here, with her excellent credentials and experience—she even has a standing job offer from one of her former professors who’s working in a private hospital here as the head of his department! Besides, being a working lawyer in London at a law firm like ours is not great. I barely slept five hours a night and I was working myself to the bone—I mean, even more so than here. I hated working and commuting in London—all that smog
and cold weather and long commutes in the Tube where it gets so crowded that someone’s nose is always wedged in your armpit.”
“Right,” I said. The idea of pressing my nose against Suresh’s suit in a crowded train was oddly more appealing than it ought to have been.
“I just want her to be here, you know? Anousha’s my fiancée. We should be in the same city, don’t you think? If you were my fiancée, wouldn’t you want to live with me instead of living across a fucking continent and being a couple only on paper? Does she even love me?”
I kept quiet. I knew the answer to that question, and it wasn’t something I think he would have wanted to hear right then. Instead, I said, “Maybe you should go to her. Go to London. Take some time off to, urm”—I made my voice soft, like my unflexed butt—“
rekindle the romance.
”
He rolled his eyes. “Nice try, woman. You’re not out-billing me. In fact, maybe it’s better this way so I can, y’know,
focus on my work
.”
I narrowed my eyes. Looks like we were in for a long Office Face-Time Battle tonight. Unluckily for him, I had forgotten to wear deodorant and I’d just had a three-bean chili from the new Mexicana place down the street with dangerously empty seating. Game on.