Chapter 30
30
Monday 16 May
Called the office and took a week off. Kai was worried, but I assured her once again I was not close to death’s door but had to deal with “an urgent family matter.”
Mong was not so understanding in his email. “What family? The whole reason I hired you was because you have no family in Singapore! And you said you were single!” I had to tell him I had contracted viral fever and was close to death’s door, upon which he stopped emailing.
Anyway, am on my way to the airport now with a disheveled Linda in a limo cab. We’re flying to the Maldives in two and a half hours! Linda’s dad’s friend’s business partner owns a swanky six-star resort there, and since it’s the start of the monsoon season he’s been pretty generous in giving us free accommodation in one of his two-bedder villas: the only thing we’ll have to pay for is any F&B (code for “alcohol”) consumed throughout our stay. Smart move, Linda’s dad’s friend’s business partner. Smart move.
Linda was, understandably, quite furious that she had been kept in the dark about Luxembourg and the whole lead-up to yesterday’s shenanigans until today. She revived from her fugue state of Massimo-less depression to give me an earful when I confessed why I needed to get away from Singapore; even though she liked Suresh, who she’d met several times at various lawyerly events, she was worried about his baggage (I know, I know, this coming from the lady who had been dating a married man).
“Not only were you pooping where you eat, you had to go for the pretty toilet magazine, didn’t you?” she said, pulling another nonsensical metaphor out of thin air. “I always said to you, Andrea, stay away from the pretty boys, they’re poison, but did you? Did you listen to La Linda?”
“You said stay away from the boy toys, not pretty boys.”
“Stay away from the kiddos
and
the pretties. Pretty boys are to be avoided like the plague. They are so prized, their sense of entitlement is beyond that of pretty girls. They’ve never had to work hard in bed, ever. I won’t be surprised if Suresh turns out to be a bad kisser and a stinker in bed—the boy looks like that K-pop star you’re always mooning over—what’s his name, Won Won? Bon Bin? Bing Bong?”
“Won . . . Bin . . . ,” I said through gritted teeth. “He’s an
actor
.”
“Actor, pop star, whatever, I say ‘same-same in Korea,’” said Linda dismissively.
“
Those are two separate professions—two!
And how can you even confuse Won Bin with Bing Bong? Bing Bong is a character from
Inside Out
, a beautiful animated film that we’ve watched together,
twice
!” I hissed. “Did you even bother reading the Henry Chong brief I made for you in preparation for Chinese New Year?”
“Why are we arguing about ancient history? Especially since you’ve only got yourself to blame for being such a crap liar that no one bothered to ask for a photo of Henry,” was my best friend’s cavalier reply before she pulled out a hip flask that smelled suspiciously of rum.
Too late to back out of Maldives trip now. I’ll have to charge all bar drinks to her credit card.
5:10 p.m.
Maldives is amazing—clear skies, cotton-candy puffs of clouds, lush vegetation. We flew in a sea plane to arrive at the
super exclusive eco-resort. The resort is insane, wooden villas on stilts perched over crazy aquamarine water and undead coral beds everywhere. And since it’s super low season, the management is offering us a villa each! This trip is going to be off the charts. I feel sorry for all the suckers missing out on the low-season rate.
Linda, my pet, has pulled out her AmEx Centurion and passed it to the hotel, quibbling not. We’re going to be drinking till we turn as blue as the water.
6:05 p.m.
Urgh. It’s started to drizzle.
6:08 p.m.
Shit, the 4G is down. No internet!
6:20 p.m.
Total downpour.
6:25 p.m.
Wi-Fi dead!
6:33 p.m.
Still dead!
6:58 p.m.
STILL DEAD!
7:15 p.m.
Decided to go hang out at the bar, since there was nothing else to do in the villa. Thought of dashing through the drizzle but found that rain had turned into a storm with mad buffeting winds. Called the butler. He came with a huge umbrella, which was useless as the rain was falling
diagonally
(?). My long peasant skirt was drenched by the time I arrived at the main restaurant, where Linda was waiting, somehow dry and unscathed.
9:00 p.m.
Excellent nosh, wine. Who cares if rain? Who cares about Anousha and Suresh? More wine!
10:45 p.m.
In villa. Discovered that I could get 4G if I stood very still two feet by the open window in my bathroom, on top of the toilet lid, which is surprisingly solid. By turning work phone, which had sporadic 4G connection, into a hotspot, I was able to use my personal phone. Launched Sponk just for shits and giggles and was amused to see the bar manager on it. Who was he hoping to match with, the guests? There’s like thirty-five of us, max; low season it being. Hmm. Oh well, he is rather attractive. Maybe—
10:47 p.m.
Linda walked into the villa, found me in the washroom and confiscated my phones. All three of them. Says she will only return the office phone to me on Wednesday—if I’m good.
11:05 p.m.
There is no twenty-four-hour computer room. What kind of six-star resort is this?! And apparently, according to the receptionist, because we were “in the middle of nowhere,” the Wi-Fi will not be fixed till Friday.
Friday.
Tuesday 17 May
Has not stopped raining, and I have not stopped drinking with Linda, since this morning; absence of phones (thus, work) is causing anxiety that can only be soothed by copious amounts of wine.
Hit on the bar manager IRL during the Tuesday Tequila Sunset Hour and was rejected like an expired credit card. No wonder no one tries in real life anymore. Don’t even know what I was trying to achieve. It’s almost as though I’m self-sabotaging.
Wednesday 18 May
Raining again, surprise, surprise.
No office phone from Linda. It’s fine. Let Suresh handle all my work crap.
Did nothing but eat and drink. Reread somebody’s copy of
Kane and Abel.
I don’t know what it is, but I’ve been to resorts all around the world and there is always, always a novel by Jeffrey Archer, Judith McNaught, and/or Michael Crichton in each “community library.” I wonder what books will be in a doomsday bunker.
Mojito Magic Hour at the hotel’s pool bar. Snagged myself a spot at infinity pool bar and waited for Linda to arrive, but she never did. Drank alone. Linda and the bar manager emerge from her room, both looking distinctly worse for wear.
When Linda saw me her face blanched and she cried out after his retreating back, “Shafiq, remember to unclog the tub, too. It’s very, ah, clogged. Thank you for your good work on the air-conditioning.”
Dear Diary, his name wasn’t even Shafiq—it was Abdul. For Linda to voluntarily screw the help, there must have been a paradigm shift in how she approached dating; usually she only goes for those with power and/or status. Maybe this whole Poots incident has caused her to reevaluate her beliefs.
Thursday 19 May
Phoneless in Maldives
Net Sematary
(No) Avatar
Good Lord, what did people do before the internet?
Friday 20 May
8:15 p.m.
Sun out today so decided to go swimming in the sea for the first time since landing. It was fun until something stung me and I nearly exploded in pain. Had to get treated by the nurse, who told me that it looked like a “common jellyfish sting” and I did not need to be emergency evacuated as I was, she insisted, “not going to die” and that she was sure despite “only being a resort nurse.” She shunted me off to the recovery room, which was basically a room with a massage table and a small medical cabinet, hardly reassuring at all.
Had time to reflect, sober, in the recovery room. Maybe I’m truly self-sabotaging, since am allowing myself to be seduced by unavailable Suresh rather than wholeheartedly giving Eric Deng a shot. It’s time to grow up and
stop
being like Linda in this respect. She was not a good role model in the romance department.
Saturday 21 May
Rained all day. My plan to access internet through PC in “reading room” was foiled as apparently “the torrential rain and thunderstorm prevented the technician from flying.” Wished I was back home in Singapore, where I have phones and a computer and Netflix. Nature is cool, but there’s only so much one can take of it, sans filter.
Then, miraculously, and rather cruelly, the rain stopped an hour before sunset.
Since it was our last night anyway and we must drink, we went to one of the pool bars to watch the sunset. Linda popped a bottle of vintage Krug champagne. “It was a good vacation, wasn’t it?” she said, after drinking straight from the bottle. “No phones, no men.”
I chugged the champagne before passing it back to her. I watched the sun melt into the ocean like something out of Candy Crush. “It’s so good to be off-grid,” I said, lying.
“Great, then I’ll pass you the phones tomorrow.”
“Yeah, whatever.” I could take another twenty-four hours, no problem.
Linda smiled into the middle distance; I recognized her impression of Scarlett O’Hara in
Gone with the Wind
. “You know what? I think I’m going to be fine,” she said. “Thanks for hosting me at your place for so long. I’ll be out of your hair by the first week of June.”
Hallelujah!
Sunday 22 May
9:30 a.m.
Sky is an untroubled blue. Not a cloud for miles around. WTF.
8:45 p.m.
Landed. All three phones restored to my possession. It’s good to be home.
9:35 p.m.
Not good to be home. Mounting panic scrolling through ominously titled email chains dated from Friday. Apparently the coinvestor, Chapel Town, is now pulling out of the deal, and although the reasons and details are not clear, it is very bad, since that would leave Sungguh Capital waving their dick in the wind. And private equity firms generally don’t tolerate being made to look foolish. Someone was going to pay. Just hope it’s not me.
Monday 23 May
8:15 a.m.
Back in the office. Saw Suresh. Promptly ducked out of office. Went to the library with my laptop to work, pretending to be very busy with a stack of random statutes on my table. Was actually doodling on my legal pad and being totally unproductive, as I was not even sure there was any active file under which I could bill this time thus spent as “research.”
How the mighty had fallen.
Suresh sent me a bunch of texts and emails trying to get me to discuss what he calls “VizWare-geddon.” I closed them without bothering to read past the first line, just in case it was an excuse to get me to talk about us. The idea of being in the same room or file with Suresh made me want to run back to Maldives and spend the monsoon without Wi-Fi. There was also something else acting upon me, a foreign emotion: indifference. The strange thing is, even though I had originally been upset about VizWare potentially not being acquired after all my hard work, I couldn’t find the strength to get a move on fixing it. I could be making some calls, writing some emails to find out what was the underlying issue—
but I just didn’t want
to
. Maybe, after my first week off in five years, I just needed time to get back into the swing of things and to care about my work again. You know, the way most people feel on Mondays—times a thousand, I suppose.
It’s just . . . the idea of working so hard for clients like VizWare, for guys who’d rip into me like I was beneath them, just made me, well, less than enthused.
I tried to psych myself up about putting in the hours by thinking about the financial freedom I would have once I was top of the pyramid of rats. It helped, somewhat. I needed to regain my Winner Mentality.
Then I went to Mong to talk about the VizWare acquisition,
preparing to shoulder the fault of the stalled transaction with the equanimity of a eunuch confronted with the threat of a kick to the groin.
Mong looked up at me and said, “We don’t know why Chapel Town pulled out. It’s probably not even your fault. And if this is the way you’re going to act after taking a week off, you might as well resign right now. I didn’t raise you to be a quitter.”
I was emotional. “Sim Mong, thank you for believing in me.”
“Sure.” He paused for a second before saying, eyes not quite meeting mine, “Also you should know that you’re no longer the lead senior associate on the file as the other partners have requested a change.”
“What? But . . . but am I still on the file?”
“Ah, that. Well, actually, you’re off the file completely. I’m really sorry, but don’t worry, you’re doing really well otherwise.”
“But Sungguh Capital is one of my biggest and oldest files.”
“There’ll be others.”
I held it together as best as I could as I exited his office. Then I lunged into the Integrity conference room and let out a scream of anger.
7:25 p.m.
Found out via text from Kai that Mong is no longer the partner on the file (it was now Yasmine Sidek’s file; Yasmine was Genevieve’s supervising partner and the latter’s PA, Jill, had blabbed to Kai), but the client had requested that Suresh stay on as the lead since he had performed well in Luxembourg. Was that why Suresh wanted to talk? Had his whole nice-guy act in Luxembourg been just that—an act?
It had to be. I was a fool to trust him.
Stormed back to the office to confront him. But he had already gone home, not even bothering to Office Face-Time Battle. Coward.
11:20 p.m.
New strip from
TLTS
: since Water and Rhean can’t be together, physically, they’ve decided to do the one thing they can do, and do well, together—they kill.
Hmph. No parallels with Suresh’s and my real-life situation, of course.
I whipped out my phone.
You thief
, I wrote to Suresh, but did not send. Because I hadn’t just been referring to work. Sending him such a text would have been a stupid, heart-baring move, lacking in strategy—in short: not a Power Move. No matter what I felt, or what he had done, Suresh was still my colleague. I had to pretend to respect him.