Ode to Broken Things (13 page)

The client frowned. “Yes. And, before you ask me again, yes also to the statement that one of the rulers has been briefed about this matter. I know this… all of it.”

“You will be detained under the isa,” said Abhik.

Both men turned to him in irritation. “I know, young man, but it won’t be my first time,” replied the client. “This is my country, and I can say this because of who I am. Therefore I must.”

“Our country,” Singh corrected him gently, “but you are right; very few people can speak up as you have been doing.”

The client acknowledged the barb with a slight nod. “You are preaching to the converted my friend; I, too, want One Malaysia for all Malaysians.” He turned to Abhik, “I need to go. Can I leave you to finish this, or do you need me here?”

Singh nodded at Abhik before clasping the client’s right hand in a firm handshake. “Thank you again. This will make a big difference. And rock some political sampans.”

“I only want that murderer to rot in hell, Mr Singh. No political ambitions here, only nationalism. They may say what they like on the streets, but I don’t ever want to hear this implication from you again.”

Abhik collected the sheaf of papers in his hand and reached for the clear folder. A collage of pictures stared back at him: the young Tibetan model in a shampoo advertisement, her black hair gleaming against the white orchids tucked behind her ear and smiling so hard that her eyes crinkled with delight; then the picture of a barren field, burnt into black patches with bloody body parts; then the close up of a black silk scarf, thrown to the ground in the shape of batwings.

Abhik angrily shoved the papers into the folder, obscuring the photographs completely. He heard the soft swish of the door closing behind the client and Singh, as he registered their murmured goodbyes.

If only all older men were equally harmless.

Abhik had called and, for the first time in this relationship, Agni heard a hint of possessiveness. “Bondhu!” he fumed, “It’s impossible to get anything but voicemail when you’re out spending time with the American
dadu
again.”

“Give me a break, Abhik! He’s a
dadu
alright, old enough to be my father!”

“With your track record, B, being old enough to be your father
is
the big attraction.”

She hadn’t thought about this possibility earlier. Certainly not when she had dropped Jay off at Chinatown, pointed him towards the Moorish colonnades of the railway station and the national mosque, told him that they used to be the most photographed buildings in Malaysia before the Petronas Towers, and driven off towards the airport. Since then, she had been preoccupied with the airport problems, and had focused all her energy on work.

Now, manoeuvring through the narrow labyrinths of the back offices at the airport, Agni reflected that maybe Jay liked her company a little too much. That
almost
hug near Leboh Ampang had been unnerving. Older Bengali men did not behave like that. She wasn’t looking for a relationship with another man old enough to be her father. Definitely not another American. Abhik and she were still trying to understand what was happening between them and, although it seemed so nebulous, it was enough for her. For now.

She should tell Jay about Abhik. She had hinted at it earlier, but maybe it was time to make it clear. She may be misinterpreting any interest; the man seemed half-crazed about her mother. What was with the pendant around his neck he kept touching when he spoke about her? The guy could barely keep his hands still at any time! Next time, she should just ask him outright whether that had belonged to her mother, mention Abhik as a casual note in her own romantic history, and let it drop.

She stopped at the satellite building of the airport, and peered into the darkness of the car park. This was where she had met Greg, six years ago.

The airport project brought Greg to Asia, where his team was hired by the Malaysian government to ensure the new airport would be “World Class,” whatever that meant. Greg, who had flown to Malaysia to forget a bitter divorce, had seen Agni on the lacerated soil of the airport site on a hot tropical afternoon.

“You were my mirage, Hon’,” he said later. “Such a hot day and there you were, shimmering, in oasis-blue silk, the heat making the air behind you waver. I didn’t stand a chance darlin’!”

Weeks later, while snuggling up against each other during a long lunch break in his apartment, he would tell her that the secretaries had already told him that Agni was “itchy,” but the innocuous Malay word
gatal
contained a multitude of meanings
.
“
Just fixin’ this itch,
” he would drawl, scratching her inner thighs with his stubble.

His condominium was next to the office, and their long lunch breaks made them both lose weight. More than the expatriate lifestyle he offered, it was his old-world gallantry Agni found irresistible. She was a young engineer on her first multinational project, and Greg provided the first glimpse into a more glamorous lifestyle. Agni had lost her virginity to an aging rock musician who had wooed her with his ballads, but that relationship had flagged against the relentless consumerism of Kuala Lumpur.

She knew enough to indulge Greg; once the project was over, he was sure to leave. In the meantime, she found him a heady experience, a growing-up addiction.

She liked the way he asked for what he wanted, and got it. She loved the way he touched her. Greg would lift her wrist, kissing the vein that throbbed inside, his tongue darting in delightful circles. “You have such fine bones,” he once said, circling her wrist with thumb and forefinger and twisting lightly.

“Compared to yours?” She teased. “It’s all the dead meat you eat. Pretty soon you
matsallehs
all start looking like dead beefy slabs, yah?”

She ducked from his pillow.

“Don’t knock my diet, woman,” Greg mock-growled. “I once lassoed a fridge with a chain and hoisted it on my back when I was moving apartments. Couldn’t get all that strength from the fart-food you eat.”

Greg’s appetite was a revelation in many ways. He had prowled the cities of Asia, tasting its women like samples on a buffet. “Hon’,” he teased Agni one day, “such a smorgasbord, amazing women of all sizes!”

The Malaysian airport project was a hothouse of liaisons, mostly illicit. The women were largely local clerical staff, even the young Malay woman who surprised them all with her fluent German. The Australians, the Swedes, the Welsh, and the Norwegians, none of the men were exempt from a furtive grope in the car park, in elevators, in places hidden from their wives who sipped afternoon margaritas while the children were cared for by Filipino maids.

Was it the brevity of an engineering project that encouraged this suspension of morality? The men would complain about bureaucratic corruption, accepting as their due the perks of colluding with the powerful. Screwing the local women was a perk too. Sure, they reasoned, working closely together with their assistants until two or three in the morning to meet project milestones led to temptations that were hard to resist. It was easy for both parties, this quick fuck on a non-negotiable deadline.

That’s what Agni had thought too.

But when the project was winding up, Greg reeled her in. He spoke of a university in the town he was returning to, no racial quotas to keep her out, just a mingling of the best brains and thoughts. Agni ended up in a small college town in Texas for two years, ostensibly studying for a Master’s in Computer Science. She did not tell her grandmother about Greg.

It wasn’t that bad actually, small-town Texas; the worst was becoming Agnes from Agni, but at least her surname didn’t change. They never did marry, although the issue hung between them like a problem easily rectified, like halitosis or some problem with a fancy medical name and a traditional cure.

Using Greg to get her degree was something Agni did with a clean conscience. Sex with him was fun, and she was innovative enough to make him feel he was getting his dose of
kama sutra
, as advertised. She was his bit of exotica that made fragrant
pilau
as a side dish when his colleagues served grilled trout, and she had once whipped up an ethnic
tandoori
turkey for a Thanksgiving with a difference. She never intended anything to be permanent, but being his hothouse orchid in the field of magnolias started to take its toll.

“Oh, Agnes!” A guest would shriek, helping herself to more
pilau
, “I
love
Indian food!”

“But we don’t eat none of that, sweetie,” she would continue, pointing to the curry. “Goats are pets where I come from.”

Ultimately, it wasn’t the food that made Agni realise how foreign she was; it was the colour of turmeric.

She cooked through her homesickness, conjuring up what she had left behind by being able to close her eyes and smell and taste. Her favourite dishes out of her grandmother’s Malaysian kitchen all had the yellow paste melded into the flavour. As she made those dishes in her Texan kitchen, Agni would relentlessly cover her tracks, mopping up the obstinate yellow splatters before they became a part of the spotless laminates. She scrubbed with abrasives, detergents, and bleach, yet the yellow stains on the tabletop, the blender, the kitchen towel, the microwave oven, and her nails – all of it would be a fresh reproach when the sunshine poured in every morning. A gaudy colour, so out of place.

She knew how superficial this sounded. She knew because she had tried to explain it to her friend, Nisha, and found herself stuttering over the inanity of what she was saying. During that time, when her relationship with Greg was unravelling and finding someone to talk to was almost impossible, Nisha had become her rock.

Unfortunately, Nisha could barely sit up straight, she was laughing so hard. “Agni, it’s a yellow
stain
. Even if you had to constantly get it out, you could. It must be, um, the sex, right?”

“No!” she tried again, “Okay, you know, last Saraswati Puja, when I had to find a yellow
sari
to wear? And he just didn’t understand? I turned all the closets inside out, and I had to find a yellow
sari
, and he said, ‘
Hon’ you’d look lovely in this blue
…’”

Nisha rolled her eyes. “So? I don’t get it either; it’s a Bengali thing! Agni,
you
have a problem with yellow.”

“Ha, ha, Nish.”

Nisha drained the orange juice, and then slowly tore off little white pillows from her styrofoam cup, squelching them between thumb and forefinger. “What are you looking for, Agni? So many excuses,” she paused thoughtfully, “do you just want a fuckbuddy?”

“Huh?”

Nisha cocked her head slightly. “Maybe it’s everyone calling you Agnes all the time. Get off it, Agni, this is not a colour problem.”

She
knew
it wasn’t just her name being mangled, although that did bother her. But she considered herself lucky. Her male Malaysian friend with the common Chinese name of Ng, an impossible sound for the Texans to replicate, became ‘Angie’ in the land of JRs and Dubyas. They became pals, Angie and Agnes, the misnomers whose names were so easily interchangeable.

She ended the relationship after two years in Texas, after her old boss called her to see if she was interested in a job in Singapore. She left Greg in Houston, both of them agreeing that it was time to put some space between them.

Within three months, Greg was in Singapore for a conference at Suntec City. He said, “
No strings attached, Hon’. I need a holiday. I’ll stay at a hotel.
”

Of course he didn’t. He dropped his bags in her Zen-minimalist loft off Maxwell Road, and kissed her. After that, it was so easy to fall into bed together, no initial awkwardness despite their months apart, halting small talk taking them from a hesitant
might not happen
to a mood charged with inevitability. His jaw was rough with the stubble she liked, and the roughness merged with the moistness of his lips grazing her neck. She sank into his smell, aftershave mingling into sweat from the tropical heat. He teased a soft nibbling path across her belly, gently sucking her skin while his hands roamed her thighs.

A practiced seduction, comforting in its familiarity. When they came together, perfectly tight, she was a winged Pegasus exploding towards the sun.

They lay coiled and speechless for a while, both taken aback by how easily they had reached for each other. Then Greg said,
Come back with me
, and she laughed. They went downstairs to eat at one of the fusion cafés dotting the pastel-coloured row of restored historical shophouses. Greg’s two weeks in Singapore stretched into three.
Come back with me
, he said again and again.

Greg was so stable, so comforting… so
dull
. Singapore was filled with older Caucasian men with young Sarong Party Girls, those exotic Asian pieces so fuckable and forgettable. Agni recognised the derisive looks directed at her as she strolled hand in hand with Greg through the esplanade. Being one of those wild and wanton amoral young things whom Greg was throwing cash and trinkets at would have been preferable, for it was depressing being in this staid relationship with a man so tenacious that he was impossible to shake off.

Agni knew she had been warped by her mother and her grandmother. Her mother had died for love, and her grandmother had broken social norms to become the mistress of a married man. She wanted a relationship that was like a phoenix rising, giving up everything for love. But, instead of being a spectacular, incendiary winged bird, Greg was a rather cool penguin, both feet on the ground.

The bright lights of the highway told Agni it was time to go home. Tomorrow was the big party at Abhik’s, and she needed sleep to handle both Jay and Abhik in the same room. Especially if Abhik was getting testy. She couldn’t blame him, with all the Hindsight protestors and the Tibetan woman’s case giving him a double dose of stress every single day.

She also needed to find out why her grandmother hated Professor Jay Ghosh so much. But, for now, she just needed to call Abhik and tell him it was too late to see him tonight; that she was going straight home.