Casa Cantata

By Merlin T. Williams

Michael Campbell is a family man. He has a precocious three-year-old daughter, and she is the love of his life. The family is fractured, however, due to a road accident that claimed the childs mother. Michael is a single parent who struggles mightily to provide his child, Christina, with some semblance of a normal life.

Normal, because Michaels life, in his other world, the world of adults and the business that they conduct, is far from normal.

Enter the Tan family. It is said that the rich and their lifestyles are the envy of those who can only gaze, grovel, or be gracious from afar. Mr. and Mrs. Tan are the rich among the rich in Singapore.

Michael is compelled to dance the dance of intimacy with them by forces that not even he fully understands.

He is ushered into their world of splendor, of sensory overload, and of serpentine intrigue because of a simple misunderstanding. That misunderstanding creates a cascade of events that change Michael, and his daughter, forever.

Michael is a wounded man. And even though his injury is unwittingly self-inflected, it is taken advantage of by others who introduce him to an agenda that is not his own. Power behind the power in the world becomes his master.

Michael is well grounded in the world that he shares with Christina, but the constant movement of the unstable tectonic plates in his other life render him vulnerable to their deadly ring of fire.

Follow him as humor, honest effort and the helping hands of others enable him to maintain the balance needed to straddle the great divide that defines his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514427576

Merlin T. Williams

Merlin T. Williams is the author of Capistrano, a novel that examines ego, empire building, and the emptiness that all too frequently attends individual striving for greatness. Merlin is a Canadian by birth and, when not on international speaking tours, resides in that country.

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Copyright © 2015 by Merlin T. Williams.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015919209

ISBN:   Hardcover     978-1-5144-2759-0

             Softcover       978-1-5144-2758-3

             eBook            978-1-5144-2757-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 12/16/2015

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

About The Author

DEDICATION

To kindred spirits, Anne and Chuck Anderson. Their quiet, coffee and cake commentaries, as well as forbearance, tempered by a disciplined attention to detail, provided both the ministration and midwifery for this story.

Cantata

a musical composition or narrative featuring vocal solos with frequent chorus accompaniment

Sine qua non

a qualification or condition, an indispensable element

CHAPTER 1

Well, let me see…OK, are you ready? Here we go. Once upon a time, not too long ago and not too far away, there was a beautiful princess and her name was… The words just automatically came out of me as I stared into the perturbed, angelic face mere inches away from my own on the bed.

My daily priming of the story telling pump, which, more often than not, started with the long ago and far away routine always made me smile to myself. I was like the Art Carney character, Norton, in the Saturday night TV broadcast of the ‘Honeymooners’ in the 1950’s. He would always work himself into the song to be played on the piano with a few bars of ‘Sewanee River’. And Jackie Gleason, as the impatient, bus driving Ralph Kramden, would always react angrily by pounding him hard on the shoulder.

Oh daddy, you always start your stories always the same way. Christina thumped my chest with her clenched, baby fist. Art and life, I thought. One always imitating the other.

Always it’s about a princess and always it’s not too long ago and always it’s not too far away. Christina sat bolt upright beside me, folded her arms in front of her and gave me her best pout. Not achieving the immediate result she expected, she fell backward on the bed and dug her toes into my side.

OK, little miss smarty pants, then you tell me. What will my story be about? C’mon, what will the adventure of the princess be this time? I know, maybe you should tell daddy a story instead.

No, no, I want you to tell me a story. You promised, remember. Anyways, I bet I know who is the princess. I bet her name, hmm, let me see… Christina was already a master at feigning the face of deep thought.

I know! I bet her name is Christina. Am I right Daddy! Is Christina her name? She snuggled in beside my neck just below my ear.

The girl in the story. The girl in the story. The story you will tell me. C’mon I am ready now. Now you can tell me the story. My story. Just for me, my story. Christina squirmed in even closer beside me and placed her free arm across my chest.

That’s all my daughter had to do and I was lost.

"OK, here we go. You’re wrong. The little girl in my story is not Christina. Her name is Viven. Maybe it’s someone you know.

Oh Daddy, I know. I know who is Viven. That’s my name too. My name is Christina Viven Campbell and I live in Jakarda, that’s in Indo…Indo…nee…sha. Viven is my mom too. She is in heaven now you know. She buried her face in my neck almost as though she was attempting to hide.

I had to do something to stall what I knew was about to happen.

I rolled on my side and grabbed Christina with both hands at her waist. I lifted her up above me and as I did so, she instantly and instinctively straightened her body out, pointed her toes and stretched her arms out in front of her much as a diver would in anticipation of entering the water.

Yes you are Christina Viven Campbell and now you are flying high above where we live. It is very calm right now. See the plane is soaring just like a bird high in the sky.

The face I saw flying through the air, all bravery and bravado, was not that of my daughter. I was looking at her mother, Viven.

I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes and I knew that there was nothing I could do to stop the water that would completely blur my vision and make story telling impossible.

But now it is getting bumpy. Better fasten your seat belt little lady. That was all I managed to blurt out before I lost control. I quickly dropped my daughter to my chest, clung hard to her and through my sobs tried as best I could to mimic the sound of a sputtering plane engine.

I held on to the three year old tightly and rocked her back and forth in my trembling arms.

Go tell Aunt Brodie…go tell Aunt Brodie…go tell Aunt Brodie, the old grey goose is dead.

It had been my mother’s lullaby to me when I was a child.

It’s OK Daddy. It’s OK. I know the old grey goose too.

Fighting hard, I regained some of my composure.

Oh, yeah, little miss smarty pants. So what happened to the old grey goose. I was talking to the ceiling fan. I could not release Christina from my bear hug. I did not want her to see that her father had been crying.

She died in the mill pond standing on her head. Christina squirmed out of my arms, sat on my chest and looked down at me solicitously.

I know that. You sing the old grey goose song to me all the time silly. Christina rubbed the tears from the corners of my eyes with her thumbs and staring intently at me added…

I love you Daddy, you are my most favorite person in the whole world you know. I love Siti too but you are my very best favorite. Christina dug her arms between the pillow and my neck and gave me a big hug.

She smelled of the baby bath oil that lingered after her morning scrub at the hands of Siti my pembantu, a treasure of a girl recommended to me by Colonel Satu. From the outset, Siti had become Christina’s surrogate mother.

You don’t need a woman in the house, not as far as I can tell, what with your monthly visits to Singapore and all. The Colonel paused and looked pointedly at me for a moment and then continued. But Christina is another matter. A young girl needs a woman that she can bond with. And the girl I am going to send to you comes from a strong Christian family and her father tells me that she is very good to do house work and she is very loving with children.

As was the case with almost every pronouncement that issued forth from the mouth of Colonel Satu, it had been more a command than a polite suggestion. And he had been right. Siti’s loving, but strict manner had won over both of us.

She was a thin slip of a girl but I knew that her genetic encoding had already conspired to transform her into a plump little woman within the decade whether she produced offspring of her own or not.

Most Indonesian women were very fetching when they were young but they succumbed to a matronly mold long before their time.

Viven, my darling wife for far too short a time and the mother of my child had been an exception. In fact, she had been the exception to every stereotypical notion I had ever had of a woman. A completely unselfconscious creature who lived and supported her family back home by her wits and feminine wiles.

Manadonese by birth, hence of lighter skin than most of her fellow Indonesians, she had been the star attraction in a club for gentlemen in Manila called Capistrano. She had brought life to a place that had been of my conception and my creation. Conception, creation, and life. The adrenalin rush of it all. And all so long ago, it seemed.

And when curious people had asked what had happened to her, I had always donned my protective armor, and nonchalantly answered that she had been run over by a rabbit.

If I got the right response from them to my cynical humor, one of, what appeared to be, heart-felt concern, I would elaborate. The rabbit, I would tell them, was the name of a bus company in the capital of the Philippines.

Never would I share the story of Christine’s birth. On the road, in front of the bus, in the rain, and a Swiss army knife incision to free our daughter from the death chamber that her mother’s lifeless body had become.

That had been Divine intervention. That was a pact that had been struck between me and my Maker. That had been my message that I was alive for a reason.

Daddy, always you do that. Christina thumped me again with her fist as she peered down into my face.

What, my darling little girl. What are you talking about?

Always when you start to tell me a story, you pretend I am gone away.

I’m sorry Christina. I was still on the airplane. Are you still on the airplane? I lifted her up again as far as I could above my head.

She giggled in delight but almost immediately let her arms and legs drop lifeless toward me. She stared knowingly down into my eyes.

I know you will go away soon you know. And then it is only me and Siti in the house alone. All alone.

And what makes you think I will go away soon my little so smart one.

Always before you go away you pretend with me that it is you and me, you and me on a airplane. Always you do that.

Christina squirmed out of my grasp and fell on top of me. Her foot stabbed me in the groin as she fell.

The response of my body to the pain was immediate. I doubled up, held my breath and willed myself, through gritted teeth, back to at least a partial equilibrium. Christina and I rolled back and forth as one across the bed. Unaware of the discomfort her falling appendage had inflicted, Christina laughed and giggled like a child at an amusement park who was enjoying her favorite ride while strapped into some moulded version of a TV cartoon character she knew well.

It had been the right decision, some months earlier to start to wear jockey shorts when my daughter and I were alone in the bedroom. Her innocent questions had become far too pointed.

Daddy, why are you different than me and Siti?

Blissfully unaware of the nature of the question, I had nonchalantly answered,

Christina I am the same as you and Siti. We are all people. We are all a blessing from God. You know that. Thinking that my answer was sufficient, I had turned to my daughter in anticipation of a nod of acceptance. But, Christine’s agenda was not going to be dismissed that easily.

No daddy, I mean why is it only you who has a hot dog? Christina looked toward and pointed at my penis so that there would be no doubt as to the source of her curiosity.

I asked Siti one time and she told me that you do not have hot dog, you have snake. Snake, only snake with only one eye. Christina laughed at the analogy that had been given to her by the lady of the house.

Christ, I thought, my daughter was no longer an infant. She was becoming acutely aware of her environment, everything in her world, and especially that which appeared to her to be aberrant.

My mind moved to the perverse, as it always did when I was confronted by the potential for multiple answers and multiple interpretations that my words might precipitate.

A cartoon I had seen of two young children came to mind. A little boy was facing a young girl, a classmate of his perhaps, in a playground. He had stretched the elastic waistband of his pants outward and had said to his friend, See, I have one of these, and you don’t. Ha, ha! The immediate response of the young girl was to stretch out her elastic waistband too, peer down inside and say, "Ha, ha yourself.

My Mom told me that I am special down there and when I grow up, I will be able to have as many of what you have as I want!"

Sex, sin and the sine qua non it seemed.

How would Christina’s mother have handled the question? What nonchalant response would Viven have devised had she been with her daughter.

And Siti, what the hell was the matter with her. Why would she use the favorite Indonesian description of the male appendage with a little girl. Females and their conspiracies. No wonder they were so good at playing the game. They all started so young.

I promised myself that I would have a serious talk with Siti about the direction she was giving to Christina when I was absent. And soon.

Well sweetheart, it’s like this. To make new little babies there has to be an egg and a sperm to make the egg grow. The man has the sperm and the lady has the egg. And one day, when you grow up and you meet a young man and you fall in love and you get married you will have children of your own.

I paused to see if my message was getting through to Christina.

And that will be because the sperm of your husband, the one man you really love very much, will meet the egg that comes from you and together you and your husband will be blessed with a baby, a new child, one that you and your husband will love very much. I paused again.

Just like I love you so very much because you are my beautiful daughter, the child of me and your mom, Viven who is now in heaven.

Where, I wondered did all that half-truth bullshit come from. I was repeating the same crap that had been fed to me when I was young.

Some wag had put it right. Those who do not learn from the lessons of history, are doomed to repeat them.

No, no daddy. Only I want to know if it hurts to have a silly thing like that because always it is sticking out like a hose for the garden and always it is in the way when you sit down!

I would tell my story of the birds and the bees to my friends at the Mercantile Club over lunch whenever a new expat in Jakarta joined us. And if he volunteered the information that he too was the father of a daughter, I would end my story with the remark that Christina and I always slept together when I was home and that she would always position herself so that her hand rested comfortably on the bulge that only I possessed in the house.

What I was doing was perverse and it was deliberate. I termed it, my Lenny Bruce moment.

Lenny Bruce was a self-destructive American stand-up comedian whose singular focus, when on stage, was to stick his finger in the eye of the post Eisenhower, ultra conservative, hypocritical social mores of the time. For him, they represented a prison.

One of his routines involved telling his audience that he had a four letter word in mind, a word that was considered to be obscene to utter in public that started with an s and ended with a t. And he was going to tell them what it was. Knowing full well that the club patrons thought they knew what the word was and also aware of the fact that there were people in the audience whose sole purpose was to find and prosecute lewd performances, he deliberately stalled the moment of truth by ranting and raving about how sick society was.

Only at the end of his performance, and almost as an afterthought would he say the taboo word. But the word was not the one that the audience, nor the censors, had expected. The word was snot.

The vernacular for nasal waste, had, for some reason, sufficient virtue to be victorious over its counterpart that described solid bowel waste. Bruce always laughed sardonically as he spit the word out almost like a dare, almost like an adolescent defying authority.

And as was the case with Lenny Bruce, I would, along with the other diners at the table, the others who knew my punch line, wait for our guest’s reaction.

We were never disappointed.

It was a certainty, in my mind at least, that all men who sired female offspring harbored feelings that were incestuous in nature. And the difference between one man and another in that regard, was merely one of degree.

My primitive research methods into this primordial phenomenon represented the victory of REM over the SEM. No effort was ever made to factor in a standard error of the mean, deviations from the true mean resulting from chance. My conclusion was based on rapid eye movement, mine. And not those recorded in my sleep state either. It was viewing father and girl-child interaction as they attended back yard barbeques, at birthday parties, team sports events for youngsters, at the whole myriad of social events that punctuated daily family life.

The neophyte at our table, would fidget and rearrange himself on his seat and avoid our smirking gaze by busying himself with the menu.

I would allow his discomfort to continue for a time and then I would explain what happened to be the truth.

Christina would always settle in beside me so that her hand rested comfortably, like a cup, on my throat, over my Adam’s apple, and it would remain there the entire night.

Never spoken of was the fact that I looked forward very night to my return home. Regardless of the hour and regardless of the condition I was in, I was always alone. Alone, because I knew that just behind the front door my daughter would be curled up asleep. She would be wrapped in a blanket on the tile floor, waiting for me to gather her up in my arms and take her to our bed.

CHAPTER 2

Colonel Satu’s office, or at least the one that he chose to make public, was located just off Jalan Sudirman behind Lapangan Senayan, the seventy thousand seat stadium that hosted, among other things, the Jakarta soccer team. It had been built to satisfy the Indonesian penchant for bragging rights based on bigness. The fact that the gradient between the rows of seats was insufficient to allow spectators to see over the heads of those in front of them never seemed to matter. Everyone stood, either in the walkway or on their seats during the playing out of the spectacle on the field anyway.

Asian Security Systems occupied the entire second floor of a two story structure made of white cement. Or at least it had been white when it and its sister buildings had been built some twenty odd years earlier. Now the exterior was a weather beaten splotchy grey. And the avenue that connected the buildings to the outside world suffered from the ravages of time and neglect as well.

Broad and tree lined with palms by design, it had not withstood the annual torrential rains that punctuated every er month of the calendar. The trees that remained looked more like emaciated, defeated soldiers who could no longer stand at attention. Dead, dark brown leaves, like spiked remnants of prehistoric creatures lay strewn in the gutters and along the broken cement sidewalk.

Jakarta was, to my mind, the modern world in microcosm. Over populated and under managed, it was gradually but inexorably sinking under the weight of the dominant species that occupied it.

I had no doubt that nature would, as was always the case with any species that ran rampant, create a check and balance. It would dispatch at least one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse: Pestilence, War, Famine or Death. And the result would be catastrophic. For the human population at least. Indonesian insects, on the other hand, which were far more organised and adaptable, would reassume the mantle of dominance which had been theirs in an earlier age.

Sari, the Colonel’s secretary was a comely woman in her early thirties. Small breasted and slim, she always looked very svelte when she wore a red outfit. And she almost always wore a red outfit. She knew that the color suited her.

Comments from the Colonel’s visitors reinforced the veracity of that color choice.

The singular strength that Sari possessed, the one that kept her exclusively employed, ostensibly at least, by the Colonel, was her ability to keep her mouth shut. Her voice was her ally in that regard. It was half an octave too high to be taken seriously by most listeners no matter what the subject of her discourse was. Most of the time she sounded more like a winey child than an executive secretary.

The high reputation for personal competence she enjoyed regarding the administration of the office was sustained by means of a filing system that was of her creation and one that only she understood.

She possessed an uncanny insight into the Colonel and the intimate machinations that his mind manufactured. When prompted, she would comment on his daily, sometimes hourly, mood swings and on his satisfaction index regarding the state of his business affairs as well.

All was useful information to have prior to an audience with the man in self-styled military uniform. And all was a good fit with the real job that Sari was entrusted to fulfill. She and I, of necessity, were closer than we allowed anyone, including the Colonel, to discern.

It had been too easy for me to flirt with Sari over the phone from Manila when I was stationed there and needed the security expertise of the Colonel for some country manager meeting. And it had been stupid of me to continue the sexual innuendo banter over lunch with her when I had occasionally visited the Colonel in Jakarta.

Worst of all, in retrospect, it had been cruelly foolish of me, to have, upon my hearing of her imminent visit to Singapore to see an oncologist, there was a family history of breast cancer, to have surreptitiously handed her an envelope containing $500.00 US. The envelope had been placed in her lap, and my hand had remained holding it there longer than necessary as a conspiratorial whisper had intimately suggested that the money was just to make her visit to Singapore more pleasant. I hoped that she had understood what I had meant, but I was not entirely sure.

She had returned from her trip with a clean bill of health, a butane lighter in the shape of a lion for me, and a decidedly different gaze directed my way whenever we met.

This female focus, one that sparkled, the special one that spoke of more than mere passing interest in the recipient of the look, was made all the more uncomfortable by my change, our change, in circumstances.

I now lived in Jakarta. Distance was no longer a defence. I had had a daughter with an Indonesian woman, and best of all from her perspective, that Indonesian woman was now no more. The Colonel had told her my story of love lost, in great detail. Of that, I was certain.

And, of course, the compromised circumstances that we both shared only served to exacerbate matters further.

Watch where you plant your bamboo, I thought, as I opened the office door, you might not be able to control how or where it grows. I took in a deep breath and opened the office door.

Salamat pagi, Sari. Good morning. How are you today?

Oh, Michael, it’s you. I am fine thank you. You look very handsome today. Is that a new shirt for you? It makes your eyes look even more blue you know. Sari grinned at her own compliment and waited for a response. I looked down in feigned modesty hoping that the moment of manufactured magic would pass. But Sari was not about to let her attempt at intimacy pass by so easily. She decided to take a different tack.

And how is your beautiful daughter, Christina. I bet she is getting bigger now. And still she is looking more like her daddy I bet…you…you make beautiful baby with Indonesia lady you know.

Well, I don’t know about that. I would not want any lady, young or old, to look like me.

"Maybe you should make more Indonesian babies with, with other Indonesian lady.

A moment of uneasy silence passed between us.

Anyway, did the Colonel tell you that I would come by the office today. I will be flying to Singapore tonight and he mentioned that he would like to see me before I leave.

Yes, of course, Michael. Sari spoke to me without ever shifting her gaze away from my eyes. Whatever signal she was searching for, I promised myself, would not be sent.

Let me buzz him for you right now. Sari’s thin lips parted into a wide smile as I passed by her and entered the inner most sanctum of Asian Security Systems.

I took in another deep breath in anticipation of becoming a player in another one of the Colonel’s deals that had gone decidedly south.

*     *     *     *

It took longer to get from the Colonel’s office in the center of Jakarta to the gated entrance to Sukarno Hatta airport than it did to actually fly to Singapore. And even the patung Bali, the placid lions carved in stone that guarded both sides of the entrance to the facility, could not speed up the process of departure.

The flight, done in fast forward, was a ritual of, take off, cruising altitude, then almost immediate descent and touch down at Changi, Terminal 1. It was all over in less than an hour. Hardly enough time to even notice, let alone admire the gorgeous, young creatures whose saronged presence in the cabin allowed one’s fancy to fly even higher than the clouds that the aircraft seemed to skirt.

The Raffles Hotel, the grand old lady of Singapore, for travellers of means, was my usual destination. The spacious, marble tiled floors in and around the lobby, the inviting, wide winged wicker chairs, and the lavish use of mahogany and teak to compliment both public and private spaces, made the place a deserving twin sister to the grand Manila Hotel in the Philippines. General MacArthur’s castle when he was king of the place, post World War ll.

But not this time.

What I wanted, what I needed, was anonymity.

And the mushrooming office complexes and chain hotel towers of glass and steel that were redefining the Singapore skyline made that task easy. They dwarfed Raffles. They reduced everything about the old grand lady, from its raised entrance step to defend against encroaching rain water to its colonial style architecture, to a quaintness, to a curiosity piece from a distant and defunct era.

I chose the Shangri La that was just off Orange Grove Road. The Tower Wing, the Garden Wing and the Valley Wing, over seven hundred rooms in total, made it perfect for the business that was pleasure and the business that was pain that had made Singapore my destination.

I hated checking into a hotel that I did not know. In the absence of staff recognition, there was at best a cool functionality. A polite police interrogation. Good afternoon sir, do you have a reservation? May I have your name? How do you spell Campbell. Oh, thank you, it’s with a p. Will you be with us for just one night? Do you have any bags the porter can help you with?

I felt like going into a diatribe about Winston Churchill and his remedy to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition. The inquisition at the front desk was something up with which he would not have put. But I was pressed for time and the young man in front of me would have thought that Mr. W. Churchill was merely another guest staying at the hotel.

The ritual of key card in exchange for credit card imprint completed, I turned and was about to follow the finger of the desk clerk to the appropriate elevator.

Oh, are there any messages for me.

One moment sir, let me check. Oh, yes there is. From a Miss Elizabeth I believe. She left the message about forty-five minutes ago. I took the message myself. Here you are. The young man in the hotel suit had gone from annoyance with himself for his oversight, to a feigned largess as he handed me the enveloped note, to indifference as he prepared his face for the next guest in the check-in line.

Were he a baseball player, I thought as I walked away, he would have just struck out. He forgot about the message, he got the name of the sender wrong and his focus on me had not lingered long enough to suggest a legitimate concern for my wellbeing.

Welcome to Singapore, I thought. The acumen of its business community was the envy of most other Asians, particularly in adjoining Malaysia. And the haughtiness and condescension of its population toward all outsiders evoked easy dislike.

The island nation was like a living experiment aimed at determining how many people could be squeezed into a zero availability of land space without having them resort, like lab rats, to cannibalism. The expats who lived there jokingly referred to their temporary home as a fine place to live. The fine they were referring to being the tickets bestowed on those who broke the labyrinth of laws aimed at maintaining public order.

Every intersection had video cameras for yellow light runners, every taxi had a bell system that rang when the driver exceeded the posted speed limit with the onus being on the passenger to report the infraction. Even a gum chewer walking on the street could be the recipient of a ticket. Gum, it was felt, had too long a half-life after it was discarded by the chewer.

As I was about to stab the up button beside the elaborately engraved elevator door, an arm firmly wrapped itself around my waist and I was immediately enveloped by the seductive smell of Chanel.

Well, what a small place is Singapore, Michael. You just arrive in Singapore? I am so lucky meeting you here, in the lobby of the Shangri La. Do you have important business to do in Singapore. I’ll bet that you do. My soon to be elevator mate looked up into my face, winked, and grinned widely.

It was Ebeth and she was talking loudly enough for everyone in the lobby to hear her gushing greeting, everyone, including her intended audience, namely, those behind the check-in counter. Thank God it was Ebeth and not Susie who had arrived early. Ebeth’s words were certainly enough to draw passing attention, but Susie’s flirtatious antics always attracted the sustained stares of any and every lobby crowd.

Ebeth, more than most of her friends, possessed the innate ability to mould her body to immediately melt into the curvature of a male torso whether from the side, front or from the rear. She coupled with every man she was truly happy to see in a way that was at once intimate but always just short of being crude. That body chemistry, no, alchemy, coupled with the mantle of black, wavy hair that cascaded down past her shoulders, hair that always danced when any light fell upon it, created a moment, a moment that prompted most men to forget everything, including themselves. The overwhelming desire to engage in immediate reckless abandon with Ebeth relegated all other agenda items in the male mind to mere trivial pursuit.

God, I thought to myself, how I adored trophy wives. Trophy wives that is, who were in the display case of others.

"Darling, you look, and you feel and you smell absolutely heavenly. I have made up my mind, right here and now. I will be changing my agenda for all future visits to Singapore. From now on, it will be every two weeks, not just once a month.

You are too beautiful for me to see only once a month. Stand back and let me look at you, I mean all of you. Truly, young lady, you look absolutely gorgeous."

Thank you Michael. I love it. You are very much gentleman, you know. Ebeth grinned widely and promptly covered her feigned look of self-consciousness with her hand and then added, Only I wish all the men I know, and you know who, will say same as you Michael.

Hyperbole worked well with Ebeth. She lapped up my words much as a cat would a bowl of cream. Every time Ebeth and I played our cat and mouse game together, it became more and more difficult to decide who was the feline and who was the food. Or maybe it was that we had, over time, become very adept at playing both roles. Practice makes perfect, so the saying goes, but our perfect practice had made the improbable, possible.

Knowing that our meeting in public, were it to turn to the morose, would betray an intimacy that our almost scripted words would not, I immediately shifted gears with my lobby mate.

Ebeth, where is Susie, or is it going to be Suzanna this time who will go shopping with you?

I think maybe it is Susie, but maybe you want Suzanna more than Susie? No, maybe it is more you want Suzanna more than you want me. Ebeth pinched my right bicep as I held the elevator door open.

Don’t forget your floor, my dear. I said as I rubbed the site of her attack.

Floor eighteen for me sir. That was all Ebeth managed to yell out before the door closed on the final, small snippet of our little game.

Well done, girl. You push floor eighteen button and then floor eight button for me, OK.

But Michael, how can I see you if I am on floor eighteen and you are on floor eight? Ebeth did not wait for a reply. She burst into loud, almost raucous laughter.

I had chosen the eighth floor to ensure privacy. I knew we would be sandwiched between the kaizen cadets from Japan, the winners of the tread mill conspiracy of continuous improvement in business, and the visitors who suffered from vertigo or an irrational fear of fire. The former group, all neophytes to Singapore, festooned with the latest photographic equipment from Nikon, would be eager to snap the city from a high vantage point whereas the latter guests insisted on being closer to ground level. That would guarantee easy access to a stairwell and hence ensure their rapid escape from any inferno that might erupt and engulf their less prudent, fellow residents.

The lady in the wall voiced our arrival at the designated floor much as her sister in high end cars would inform the owner that his door was ajar or that the lights were on after the machine had been turned off. Why always the voice of a female, I thought. Greater compliance because the majority of listeners were male or was it a conspiracy of technology to cement latent lesbian proclivity should the listeners be members of the femi-nazi movement, as some of my male friends termed them. A vocal, sub-group of modern females bent on gender bending the world. Who knew!

My darling Ebeth, today you are my new wife and I am your new husband, OK. Ebeth nodded and grinned widely. So I must carry you through the doorway and into our new room. And you, you must take this card for the door. Then, are you listening Ebeth, you must take the card and you must slip it into the slot and then you must take the card out of the slot when you are finished.

You are so naughty Michael. I know card is man and door is lady. I know. Never you change Michael. You are naughty, and you are funny man. Ebeth wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me on the forehead.

I lifted my bride for a day up in anticipation of a greater weight than she proved to possess. The result was that we both thumped into the wall beside the door before I could regain my balance. To prove to me that my bride understood the innuendo of my door opening instruction, Ebeth slowing inserted the card in the slot, moved it back and forth with ever increasing rapidity, groaned and panted loudly, then let out a long sigh as she quickly pulled it out in triumph. Her faked convulsions in my arms caused me to almost drop her.

Ebeth, stop it. You are going to break the stupid thing before it will open the door.

Never I will break it Michael. And always the door will be open for you, you know. Ebeth laughed and bit down playfully on my earlobe. Playfully perhaps but with enough pressure to cause immediate pain.

You little bugger. Stop that. It hurts. Angrily, I stumbled sideways through the door, past the washroom, into the room and with a great heave threw Ebeth in the direction of the bed. She bounced twice on the hard mattress as I pulled at my throbbing ear lobe.

Ebeth giggled as she righted herself and squirmed into the bed comforter with her arms outstretched toward me. I backed away from her, still pulling at my ear and kicked the room door shut with my foot. At that moment, had she stuck her thumb in her mouth and started to suck it she would have become my little Christina.

I snarled at her and began a slow stalk of the bed and its captive like some large hungry carnivore. And when I got within range, I pounced with my arms outstretched in imitation of the wicked witch in Snow White.

My theatrics must have been credible because Ebeth tried, with a shriek, to escape the approaching menace. But to no avail. I caught her on her first roll across the king size bed and bared my teeth on the nape of her neck. She shuddered as my teeth gave way to my tongue. I got as far as tracing a line up her neck to her ear.

Flustered and breathing hard, she quickly got up and tugged at her dress and ran her fingers through her dishevelled hair.

Stop Michael, you must stop. Not yet. We must wait, you know. We must wait for Susie.

One could, while comfortably ensconced in any hotel lobby armchair, in any city in South East Asia, witness a variation on the mating ritual that Ebeth and I had just initiated. The elevator doors would open and out would stride a young, foreign male flush with his recent conquest. And behind him, somewhat disoriented and dishevelled, would stumble the young girl whose body had just serviced and satisfied his need.

G. B. Shaw’s acerbic wit would come to mind as I would grunt and momentarily look away from the scene of youth being wasted on the young. A satiated young man and his willing but wounded mate. A panting little girl whose arousal was still ascending. The antithesis of a Masters and Johnson research moment to be sure. She, fodder for a fucking machine, and he, the winner of a race in which he was the only runner. Female orgasm as foreign concept to be sure. The boundless energy of youth sacrificed on the altar of inexperience.

You are right, Ebeth. We should wait for Susie. This is only fair to Susie. There is minibar you know. I will have drink. What drink will be good for you?

Thank you Michael. I will have only water please. Ebeth kicked off her shoes and choosing the corner armchair close to the window, climbed up unto the seat cushion and folded her legs beneath her.

Would you like your water in a glass Ebeth or is it OK in the bottle, I queried as I fixed my first double scotch of the day. Chivas Regal to be sure. The Johnny Walker would be for later I reasoned. The good stuff was for drinking. I moved to the remaining chair beside the window, stretched out my legs and grinned at my roommate.

So Ebeth, now you have been in Singapore for almost two years. You are happy here…

Oh yes Michael, Singapore has many places to shop you know and all is high quality. Only some is knock off but not so much like Jakarta. For shopping, I am very happy. And many restaurants too, with food, like in Indonesia, that is very delicious.

Like a lawyer I knew the right questions to ask, the questions that would not elicit surprise responses.

Ebeth was one of the originators of what was called, The Singapore Joy Luck Club. Whether one of the other founding ladies had ever heard of the book by the same name, written by Amy Tan, or had ever seen the movie version of it, was a mystery to me. And I never thought to ask Ebeth or the other ladies about it. I just wrote out a cheque, semi-annually, in the amount of two thousand dollars, US, made payable to The Singapore Joy Luck Club.

From the outset, I had rechristened the club with my own moniker. To me, it was the Boy Fuck Club because, as far as I could tell, the collected fees, apart from the occasional ladies night out on the town, were used to pay for the services of the young men who took the club members’ fancy because of their expertise behind a bar or their resemblance to a current rock star or sports figure. I always chuckled to myself when the rhetorical question popped into my head, ‘b’ or ‘j’, ‘f’ or ‘l’, did consonants to courtesans ever really matter?

So maybe because you know Singapore very well, maybe it is time for you and maybe other ladies in the club, maybe is good time to open business. Ever you and ladies talk about this?

Yes, sometimes we talk about this, maybe store to sell cosmetics or maybe store for fashion, maybe clothes, maybe shoes, maybe purses, but always same problem you know.

Hard to find good location close to Orchard Road or maybe too much money to make business strong right away?

Yes, but only little bit that is the problem. Big problem is most ladies only stay in Singapore short time because husband contract upcountry always will finish after maybe two years and then they must move to location of new work. David, you know my husband, for example, David says to me he will finish job in Kalimantan very soon, maybe in six months. Then, he says, boss of him already knows maybe next job will be in Canada. In a city he calls…, wait, he calls…Sudbury. Or maybe in China, upcountry close to Beijing.

Make it China, my girl, I said to myself, God, make it China. They at least, had not had enough time to despoil the entire region to the extent that the INCO smelting plant had in Sudbury. The Americans had used the area to practice their moon landing manoeuvres for good reason. And I didn`t think that occasional trips to Toronto would ease Ebeth’s sense of alienation from the happening world of haut couture found in Singapore either. Toronto women prided themselves on their ability to dress like men and the shops reflected that particular predilection.

So, David is well and he is happy with job almost finished in Indonesia, in Kalimantan?

Oh, yes, he is happy I guess. Never I talk to him very much when he is away, maybe two telephone calls in one week and when he comes home, always he says he is tired and always he watches football on TV, even at three o’clock in the morning because of time in Europe you know… This is why Michael, very much I like it when you come to Singapore. Cosy, cosy is not so important. It is always you talk to me. Always you talk to me about many things interesting. Ebeth looked away from me, down at her hands and then stared out the window.

I sipped quietly at my drink and just stared at the beautiful woman across the round, wooden table from me.

Engineers were a strange lot. They had been easy to identify even in high school. They were the skinny, pimply creeps who always brought their little inventions