Chapter 27
27
But it turned out that it wasn’t really Massimo’s fault—well, not directly.
“It was his wife,” Linda sniffled, through a fistful of pink toilet paper (she had exhausted my entire supply of facial tissues, pocket tissues, wet wipes,
and
kitchen towels).
“Explain,” I said.
Apparently Linda and Massimo had just come back from Capricorn Isles or some other such exotic locale two nights ago, and after he had dropped her off at her place, she had let herself into her apartment without a second thought and almost run straight into the Poonster’s current missus, Berenice Chan. And her Gregor Clegane-ish bodyguard. With preternatural calm, Berenice said she had broken into Linda’s apartment with the help of the bodyguard to “talk.”
“Haven’t you heard of calling someone on their mobile?” Linda asked sarcastically.
“I’ve always been a big believer in connecting face-to-face,” said Berenice.
Linda, furious, told them to leave or she was going to call the security.
“Call the security? On me? You have some nerve,” Berenice shouted. “I’m the one who should be calling the police on you. I’m an actress! I’m a star! That’s my fucking husband you’re screwing!”
“So what?” Linda shouted back; she was very fond of raising
her voice, Linda was. “He
seduced
me in the first place. I wasn’t even interested in him when I first met him, you know. I thought he was just like any other rich fuck. I thought he was
fat.
” Tears sprang unbidden to her eyes. “And now, even though I still find him fat, I look past that because we get each other, and he swears he’s going to leave you anyway!”
By now Berenice was practically hyperventilating in anger. “Wow! That’s original. And you believed that asshole? Did you ever think about me, about my two children?” Berenice grabbed a vase and flung it at Linda, who ducked just in time as the vase shattered behind her against the wall. “You slut! You shitty slut!”
“Stop calling me that, you alliterative bitch!” Linda shouted, taking off her heel and throwing it at Berenice, hitting her squarely in the chest. (Linda swore to me that the scene had unfolded exactly as recounted above, but this being Linda, a little narrative embellishment is to be expected.)
That’s when Berenice ran to Linda’s kitchen counter and grabbed one of her ceramic knives. Brandishing it, she threatened to kill herself right then and there if the latter didn’t leave her husband alone.
Linda dared Berenice to go through with her threat; she didn’t believe that Berenice would actually do it—after all, the bodyguard, who was probably with Berenice most of the time and who probably knew her better than her own husband did, simply blinked at her threat. Then Berenice drew the knife across her left wrist before she was tackled by the bodyguard and Linda bound her bleeding wrist with a scarf. They got to the hospital in good time, dropping Berenice at the emergency room, but the bodyguard advised her not to wait with them for the sake of Massimo’s reputation. And now Linda only had the absence of breaking news on Singapore TV to have any assurance that Berenice was alive. She’d been camping at my place since that night.
The story being told, Linda slumped back on the sofa, depleted.
“And what about Massimo? What does he think about it?”
“I don’t know,” she bleated. “I haven’t heard from him since Capri.” She dissolved into tears again.
I was furious. Not once—not once! After all that Linda had been through? That man was a coward and a cunt. How about that for alliteration.
“I keep seeing her slitting her wrist,” Linda said raggedly.
“There’s no way you could have known that it wasn’t an empty threat,” I comforted her.
“If she dies, it will all be my fault, I-I-I . . .” Linda began sobbing anew. I hugged her and held my tongue.
Friday 6 May
8:20 a.m.
Somehow we managed to catch some shut-eye before dawn broke, and somehow I managed to drag myself out of bed when my alarm rang at 7:30 a.m. I quickly showered, dressed, drew my face on, and got ready to go.
“I’m leaving for work,” I said, standing over Linda’s prone figure on my bed.
She looked up at me, her usually elegant curls mussed, her cheeks blotchy and cross-hatched with pillow creases. “Must you?” she bleated.
I hesitated then snapped myself out of it. I still had a job, and she was an adult. And before the incident, she had left me in radio silence for weeks. “I have a really important meeting I can’t cancel, but I’m going to try to take the afternoon off, so I’ll see you later, all right? I’ll call you. We’ll grab an early dinner out.”
“OK,” she said humbly.
I left the house in a cloud of anger and self-righteousness. Even though it wasn’t Massimo’s fault that Berenice had tried to end herself in Linda’s home, I was angry that he hadn’t tried to contact her to see how she was holding up. I was so preoccupied about the situation that I almost forgot about Suresh until I saw the back of him at his desk, his large Marshall headphones bopping on his head as he typed in fitful bursts. Even though Suresh was wearing a particularly unflattering, ill-fitting oxford shirt for casual Friday, I could still see the muscles in his shoulders and his back. They were very large, angry muscles. Perfect for carrying lovers to the bed, or corpses to the trunk of waiting cars.
I cleared my throat and gave myself a mental shake.
Get a hold of yourself
, I told myself sternly. Suresh was just a friend. What had happened on the trip and in that car was just a one-off. After all, he hadn’t been with his fiancée in, what, five months? Lack of intimacy can do strange things to a person. I should know.
“Do you always stare into middle distance like that when you’re microsleeping, or has your brain malfunctioned?” said a lizardly voice. I blinked and focused on the newly Botoxed face of Genevieve, who, I think, was smirking at me.
“Can you practice your Medusa stare on someone else?” I muttered, my face burning. Not the best comeback, but I was suffering from lack of sleep.
Suresh must have sensed the disturbance in the Force; he turned around and removed his headphones. “What’s up, Genevieve?” he asked, politely icy. Since the
ang pao
matrix incident, Suresh shared my distaste for her.
“Mong and Yasmine want to hear about your Luxembourg trip,” Genevieve said. “Apparently there was some, ah, less-than-pleasant vibes between you and Langford-Bauer. And the closing might be . . . delayed?” The way she said “delayed” you’d think
they’d just announced they were giving up border control in Singapore.
“A misunderstanding, that’s all,” Suresh said smoothly. “But we’re handling it and the closing will be just fine.”
“I’ll tell the partners,” Genevieve said silkily. She gave him a lingering sexy stare before slinking out in her long-sleeved, super tight white bandage maternity dress, which somehow looked obscenely good on her toned body. Urgh.
“She looks like a mummy—get it? Mummy?” Suresh said, mimicking one with his arms outstretched and shuffling forward. I giggled before I came to my senses with a jerk. To laugh with the enemy!
On a lousy pun!
Suresh shut the door and faced me. “So, you did a nice runner the other night.”
“I didn’t,” I squeaked.
He stepped closer to me and all rational thought ceased. “We need to talk.”
I stepped away from him, sat behind the security of my desk, turned toward my screen, and pretended to scroll through emails. “What’s there to talk about?” I said, avoiding his gaze.
No dice. He came over to block the screen with a file and discovered it was blank. Our eyes met, mine guilty, his intense. “Look, about what happened, on the, urm”—was it my imagination or was he blushing?—“plane . . .”
“What? Nothing happened.” I forced myself to look him in the eye. “Nothing.”
I might as well have thrown a bucket of ice water on the smoldering embers in his golden-brown eyes. “Oh, is that so?” he said. It felt as if the temperature in the room had dropped several degrees Celsius. “I guess there’s nothing to talk about, then.”
We retreated to our separate sides. My thoughts were in a tumult. I wanted to hurdle over the table and jump into his lap. At the back of my head, however, was the insistent reminder that
Suresh was engaged. And from what I knew about Anousha, she seemed like the kind of woman who would practice her own version of sati and throw a rival onto a burning funeral pyre.
11:55 a.m.
Was reading news (fine, tabloids) when I came across a feature of Helen and Magnus’s engagement party in
Tatler
. The bitch had not invited me!