Chapter 32
32
Wednesday 1 June
11:28 p.m.
Mong called me this morning with an excited voice. Turns out Eric had indeed given a file to my department, with the strict instructions that I would be the lead senior associate on it.
I was flushed with pleasure at the loud stream of hearty congratulations from Mong. The only thing that detracted from my pleasure was the strange feeling of guilt and shame I felt. But surely this was not nepotism—he said it himself: we were just casual friends!
Speaking of which, we’re going out again tonight, for a dining-in-the-dark experience. As friends, of course.
Thursday 2 June
Went with Eric to Karma to watch stand-up comedy, of the open-mic, anyone-can-do-it variety. I’ve always enjoyed the thrill of unearthing new talent at open-mics.
Not tonight, though. Heard so many bad jokes about porn and masturbation that at the end of the evening I couldn’t look Eric in the eye for suggesting that as a fun night out.
Friday 3 June
Tonight we’re watching an arthouse film, German, Cold War, subtitles only. The potential for amorous overtures at a film such as this is just—endless.
At the rate we are going, I’m beginning to think he’s friend-zoning me.
Saturday 4 June
11:25 a.m.
In a foul mood. Just woke up and found Linda doing something completely inappropriate on my living room couch. When we came back from Maldives, she’d promised that she would move out; she’s still parked in my living room, moping and bingeing rom-coms when she’s not at work. All because of Massimo Egghead. My beautiful leather couch is no longer cream-colored but gray, and there is a permanent smell of vodka in the air. I may never get rid of her.
I
need
to get rid of her.
2:10 p.m.
Back from solo lunch. Could have had lunch with Eric, who asked yesterday, but decided not to. I’m very confused: is he really trying to be my friend? Can straight women and men, where at least one of them finds the other attractive, ever just be friends without it getting complicated?
In contrast, Valerie and Ralph Kang were regularly smushing uglies in all manner of dwellings and non-dwellings around the city-state. Mr. Kang, it would seem, delighted in having outdoor sex, especially in seedy back alleys where the possibility of contracting dengue along with jail time for public indecency and internet infamy got him hot and bothered.
“Younger men are just so . . . vigorous,” Valerie gushed, while I barfed a little into my mouth. Not wanting the sex gravy train to stop, she was even contemplating getting butt implants at his suggestion. I told her it was a bad idea and sent her loads of “surgery gone wrong” listicles, but she was too far gone, even if she didn’t care to admit it. What was a butt implant in the grand scheme of things if you’re already mostly flammable?
“I’ve got some referrals for a good plastic surgeon in Bangkok,” she told me. (
Really?
I thought.
What happened to your
current
surgeon(s)?
)
“Why have elective plastic surgery if you’ve, er, never had any before?”
“Ralph might be my last chance at the One. I’m already forty-s— Never mind,” she said, flustered.
“You don’t look a day over twenty-eight,” I lied automatically. She appreciated it, though. Sometimes that’s what we need from our friends: sweet, sweet lies. “Ralph looks
so
much older compared to you.”
Valerie perked up. “He does, doesn’t he? He could use a good maintenance regime consisting of a monthly chemical peel, IPL photofacial, and maybe either a vampire facial or a Venus Freeze to hold everything together.”
“Right, right,” I said, making mental notes of everything so I could google later.
Linda, though, was a whole big pile of cow poo that needed more than the glue of lies to hold her all together. For some reason the news about Twitter Avatar Man and his third wife had really gotten under her skin. Nothing I said or did made any difference to her fugue state when she was not at work: not bribery, not threats, not even flattery. She didn’t want to engage or talk, even about herself; she was increasingly lax about personal hygiene and upkeep; she wouldn’t even eat, she, a woman who once cry-ate her way through different body parts of a suckling pig in front of me
when she had a bad breakup at uni. It was like living with a teenager again, except this teenager was a functioning alcoholic with bottomless funds to cushion her downward spiral.
The situation needed to stop—I needed help. More specifically, I needed outside intervention.
Sunday 5 June
Spent today in the office. Opened the door and half-expected to see Suresh, placidly typing, before I remembered that he was a slimy file-stealing worm that had a fiancée.
Had a foursome with Eric Deng and two strangers—in a board games café (tsk-tsk, gutterbrain much?). Over three hours of intensive Monopoly, which is one of my favorite board games, although midway I flashed back to Catan with Suresh and had to dig my fingernails into my palms to stop myself from comparing that night with this. Didn’t help that it was in the exact same board games café we were last in.
Midway during a particularly intense round of gameplay, Eric got up to get me a beer from the counter—and I totally slow-checked his butt. And then I looked up and caught him clocking me doing just that. The old, passive me would have frozen and ducked my head or pretended he had something on the seat of his pants, but the new me, the I’ve-seen-things me, met his gaze full-on. A challenge was issued. Ball’s in your court now, Eric. I’m not friend-zoning you at all.
Monday 6 June
Nearly tripped over Linda’s prone figure on the way to work. When asked, she said she had permission to work from home that day.
And then I found out the extent of Massimo’s depravity. Kai had heard on the PA grapevine that Massimo was still a client at Linda’s law firm—what’s more, he’d specifically asked for her to be the partner in charge for his files, so that even while she was dodging his calls (she is made of very stern stuff, in her own way), she couldn’t dodge him at work if he chose to show up. That’s why the firm is being so lenient with her—because she’s still one of the top billing partners. And that’s why she’s choosing not to show up at work on certain days.
Scary how much your PAs know about you. That’s why, in our world, we have a saying: keep your PAs close; keep your enemy’s PA on retainer.
Saturday 11 June
I’ve decided to bring Jason into the mix. If there’s one aspect of Linda’s personality I can count on, it’s her vanity. Having a young, attractive male in the house would be just the thing she needed to jolt her back to her normal self.
It’s a sign of how Singaporean I’m becoming: relying on Foreign Talent to work on jobs I don’t want to do myself. Go me!
Anyway. I invited Jason to have brunch at my place today, but not before letting it be known to Linda in an off-hand way that Jason was coming, and in less than thirty minutes she had showered; washed and deep-conditioned the rat’s nest that had sat on top of her oily face for two weeks; scrubbed, toned, and moisturized; sheared off her armpit and leg hair; and poured her skinny frame into denim shorts and an airy boho-chic white top she had “borrowed” from my closet, looking fresh-faced and beautiful without makeup. She’d even brushed her teeth and gargled. My plan had worked like a charm.
“Hi, Jason,” she said primly, sipping on a glass of iced tea (iced vodka with a smidge of tea) when Jason sauntered into the living room carrying cupcakes and looking like he had walked out of a Gap commercial.
“Hey,” he said cautiously; I guess he wasn’t used to being the center of her attention. Linda put on her best wide-brimmed smile and gestured for Jason to sit beside her at the round dining table. I rolled my eyes as I watched him approach, without guile. It was like watching Bambi circle a panther, thinking the latter wanted to be his friend. He should be afraid—she hadn’t eaten a man in weeks.
Nonetheless, brunch went better than I could have envisaged. We talked about everything light and airy, nothing serious (that had been the brief to Jason), and Linda lost a bit of that old dishrag look in her eyes. Brunch became drunken dinner became drunken movie marathon, and everyone was having a whale of a good time, not least because I had appointed myself Linda’s new chastity belt, having wedged myself between Jason and Linda for maximum Rebound Romance Inhibiting Efficacy (it’s not an easy task for any man to resist Linda once the old girl started turning on her charm). For this visit, Jason’s purpose was to act as much-needed eye candy and trigger Linda’s dormant hormones; now that the purpose had been served, I had to keep her from consuming him—it was early days, and he was becoming dear to me. Having Jason and Linda around made me realize how much I had missed my friends, even flighty Valerie, who had now replaced me with Ralph. I was not going to let Linda’s raging libido and loose morals endanger the delicate pH of our raggedy band, at least not yet.
Later, when Linda had drunk herself into a dark, mumbly sleep on the living room floor, Jason and I hung out in the living room, watching episode after episode of
Keeping Up with the Kardashians
, with Jason giving me a blow-by-blow to catch up on the backstory I had missed by not following them from the beginning; he
definitely had an unhealthy knowledge of the Kardashian/Jenner family trees.
We were discussing which Kardashian/Jenner each one of us was most like (I was allegedly a Kendall, for being low-key) when Jason piped up, “You know, it’s funny that you guys are so close. You seem like polar opposites. I know you’re related, but how did you become friends?”
The Linda and Andrea origin story was not complicated, I told him. We more or less ran in the family circles, having grown up together in Malaysia before Linda emigrated with her parents to the Philippines when she was ten. But we didn’t grow close until we bumped into each other at the law faculty in the same university in London. Then we started spending time with each other—her dependency on my meticulous notes probably the main driver at first—and became close over time. We had had some good times in London before I had to come back to Asia. I’d like to think I was one of the reasons she chose to relocate to Singapore over Shanghai when she was given the opportunity to grow her law firm’s presence in Asia—that, and the local hawker food scene. I liked her fierce devotion to her tribe (well, except for her recent flakiness, that is), and I envied her untidy, adventure-filled lifestyle, where anything could happen and did. I don’t want to be her, but I’m a little in awe of her.
OK, maybe I want to be like her, just a tiny bit.
“She’s always challenging me to step out of my comfort zone,” I said.
“That’s exactly what I like about her,” Jason said, blushing.
And then the veil was lifted from my eyes: Jason had always been into Linda!
A bolt of lightning hit me, a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone kind of lightning. A sly idea formed in my head.
“Hey, I’ve got a brilliant idea,” I said. “Why don’t you move in? I have an empty room and you have a crazy housemate. I’ll charge
you minimal rent, and I can finally evict Linda.”
And that way, you can always be around me and Linda.
“You’re a little afraid of her, aren’t you,” Jason observed.
“Yep.” I admitted this a little shamefacedly.
“It’s a good thing I’m not. I’ve dealt with women like her in my family, and I know exactly how to handle her. So yes, I’ll be your fall guy.”
We shook on it and continued watching TV until we fell asleep around dawn. So it’s settled, Diary—Jason moves in with me in a little over two weeks. He has no official lease in his old place anyway and is practically squatting in the broom closet he calls a room.
I also now have an excuse to evict Linda. I am very happy. I can’t wait to tell her when she wakes up, if she ever does.
Wednesday 15 June
Linda has been giving me the silent, wounded treatment since Saturday, but my eviction notice seems to have kick-started a getting-her-shit-together movement. Interestingly, she has moved into the spare room. The living room is bottle-free and the floors swept and mopped; even the couch has been buffed with some kind of cleaning product and looks almost presentable. My fridge has been restocked, or, rather, stocked for the first time, with fresh fruits and gourmet food like French and Spanish cheeses and healthful artisanal dips. Even the alcohol has been replenished. Best of all, Linda has started showering regularly again. She’s even keeping regular, respectable working hours.
I should have threatened her with eviction weeks ago.
9:55 p.m.
I came home today to find Linda and dinner waiting for me. Linda made spag bog from scratch. She motioned for me to
join her at the dining table. I’ll admit that I was hesitant—she hasn’t drunk since Sunday, as far as I know, and she was unpredictable when sober. She also had abandonment issues, an explosive temper, and was very, very dexterous. I sat down at the farthest end of the spotless table from her.
She served me the pasta and we ate in silence. The spag bog, with its blend of beef and lamb mince, was delicious, but I couldn’t enjoy my food. Linda wanted something from me, and I was afraid I knew what it was.
“Please don’t kick me out,” she finally said, mid-meal.
I sighed. “Jason’s all packed and ready to move in,” I reminded her. “And you have your own place. You’ve been squa— living in my living room for over a month. I’m sorry, babe, but you can’t stay here forever.”
“I’ll pay rent,” Linda pleaded. “I’ll pay triple what Jason can offer you!”
“You know I didn’t ask Jason to move in because I need the money,” I reminded her gently. “Now, what’s really going on?”
Her lips trembled. “I don’t want to be alone in that apartment, after what happened. I-I don’t feel safe.”
Oh, jeez, I had no idea that she felt unsafe. I got up and gave her a tight hug. “Listen, that jerk does not deserve your tears and we are going to clear the shit out of your house when I get there. Plus, Berenice’s visit was just a one-off incident and we’re going to make sure nothing like that ever happens again, I promise. Tell you what, this weekend I’m free, so I’ll get a contractor to come over to yours and we will install the most badass security system we can find. No one’s going to be able to break into your home ever again.”
She sniffled and nodded, clinging on to me like I was the only buoy in a turbulent sea. There was something touching about seeing Linda so vulnerable. It almost made me feel sorry for her, until I remembered that she liked to sleep naked, and that, among other
unspeakable reasons, was why I was going to have to reupholster my couch, if not burn it altogether.
Friday 17 June
2:35 a.m.
Went to the kitchen to get a glass of water and found Linda doing the unspeakable on my couch again. She moves out TOMORROW.
You know, this whole Poots saga has reminded me that we have to make sage dating choices. Obviously, one cannot be ruled by libido and have zero quality control (Linda).
I thought fondly of Eric. The other night, after Monopoly, he had given me a hug that had lasted longer than three seconds. We were definitely getting somewhere. In the fullness of time.
Saturday 18 June
3:15 p.m.
Just came back from Linda’s, where a state-of-the-art security system has now been installed by two men who looked like they had, at one point or another, broken out of a maximum-security prison. The security system incorporates biometric readers, security cameras, light and motion sensors, and other nifty extras, including a monthly subscription to the security firm’s surveillance services. Linda’s father is going to find a very interesting surprise on his Centurion supplementary credit card bill this month.
8:05 p.m.
Linda sent me a short WhatsApp video of her lounging in the living room watching a Will Ferrell movie, a glass of white wine in one hand. She gave me a thumbs-up. All seems well.
11:40 p.m.
Heading to Linda’s. She said it’s an emergency.
1:45 a.m.
Back at mine
with
Linda. She refused to let me leave without her. She’s unpacked and installed herself back in my living room again to my great chagrin, claiming that my spare room is “really a closet.”
2:20 a.m.
I have
got
to stand up to the women in my life, otherwise I’m never going to be rid of them. At the rate Linda was going, I won’t even have space to accumulate cats, much less a worthy partner!