I dressed in a khaki skirt and T-shirt and crossed the living room again, aware of the men’s shapes suspended behind the couch but not looking at them. Once in the kitchen, I fought the urge to close the door, since I couldn’t stay there forever. The alternative was to close the living room curtains. I spooned out my yoghurt and poured my juice, left the kitchen to put them on the dining table, and crossed the living room to the window. I went to the corner where the curtain begins and pulled it across. When I arrived in front of the painters though, I had to stop.
I’d never come this close to a foreign labourer before, window or no window. I’d bought vegetables and ginger from shopkeepers in Little India, but those Indians weren’t new to Singapore, or temporary. My gas man is a Chinese Singaporean named Jacky Chan, who complains of having no girlfriends while the movie star has so many. My plumber is a Malay Singaporean named Rosli, who prays in the mosque near my apartment and appears to have no idea that his ring tone is actually the tune to Hava Negila.
I pass foreign labourers in the car and glimpse them digging roadside ditches or pruning the magnificent fecund trees that divide Singapore’s expressways. In the evening rush hour, I see them being returned to their sleeping quarters in the backs of open trucks, even when it rains. They have the richest, silkiest hair in the country, and the best hairstyles. They have the roundest muscles. They trump the bespectacled locals for sex appeal. But we don’t meet, and we don’t talk.
They were so funny, this trio of strangers with paintbrushes. They were working on the stretch of stone under the window, so I could see them from their shoulders up, and their heads were roughly level with my breasts. That’s where Mr Flappy Mouth was looking. The devil in the middle was talking, smiling, flashing his white teeth, gesticulating; I understood he was trying to convince me not to close the curtain. The third worker continued to consider me calmly. Even when I looked him straight in the eye.
He’s the one who came to the door at lunchtime.
He didn’t take off his shoes and make ‘may-I-come in?’ motions. He stood and stared at me again.
“Hello,” I said.
“You offend me,” he said. “I am a married man.”
“What? It’s my apartment.”
“Cover yourself,” he said.
“I am covered.”
“Cover yourself all day,” he said. “Every day. Everywhere.” Then he turned to walk back to the elevator. Turning around released the body odour from his clothes. He stank so badly it made my nose itch. It wasn’t a street-person stink; it was stewed spices and garlic oozing through his skin on waves of sweat. It touched me that he held his head so high while smelling like he was fermenting.
“Wait a minute,” I demanded, wanting revenge.
He turned.
“Was your marriage arranged?”
He nodded.
“Were you allowed to see your wife before you married her?”
“No.”
“Wouldn’t it have been nice to see her through a window first?” His head started back as if I had thrust something at him-a snake, or a burning torch-and he turned the corner.
As I prepared my seminar outline that afternoon-I give a kick-ass workshop entitled “PowerPoint Perfection”-I kept thinking about the guys at the window. They live so far from their families if they are married and from potential partners if they are not. I just assumed that they were constantly randy. You can easily get that impression from their curly eyelashes and proud noses. They look imperious, ready to command a woman’s favour, even as they inhabit the lowest of the lower echelons of Singapore’s workers.
I never expected to be anything less than desired, particularly by guys from the sub-continent. Hindi movies make it clear that they’re not afraid of the bigger girl. And now here’s this guy telling me I’ve got it wrong. All afternoon, as I was getting the timing right on the section of my presentation entitled ‘Understanding the Human Attention Span’, I was thinking this guy must, from time to time, let his mind travel beyond the shores of his wife’s body. But I made myself drop the subject when it started feeling like that cliched argument you listen to at every third or fourth cocktail party in Singapore, the one about the superiority of arranged marriages or love marriages. Not only are these discussions boring, but I’m divorced so I’ve got no leg to stand on in either camp.
I didn’t plan to pursue the subject, with myself or anyone else, but in the early afternoon of the next day, I was walking back to my building from the parking lot when I passed the trio from my window napping on newspapers on the grass by the entrance. Well, the other two were napping. The offended one had his eyes open, and I stopped and looked down into them. I wondered if he’d been thinking about me.
“Why are you not married?” he asked after a moment.
I thought about it. “I’m too tall,” I told him.
He laughed. He actually guffawed. The wicked one’s eyes rolled a little, but he didn’t wake up. Mr Flappy kept on drooling into the sports section.
“Aren’t you lonely?” he asked. His consonants sounded as if he were bouncing them off rubber.
“Not really. Aren’t you?”
His face clouded over, and he looked away.
“Maybe you have pictures of your wife with you.”
He shook his head slightly.
“What about of other women?”
“Stop,” he said, and turned onto his side, facing away from me. Like my husband used to, at the end of a bad day.
I went inside. I hadn’t swum that morning because I’d been in meetings, pitching my workshop, so I hurried back downstairs in my Speedo, testing myself to see whether walking past him in a swimsuit and towel would make me feel ashamed.
He wasn’t there, which made me angry. I did twice as many laps as usual, took a bath, and had a cup of tea standing naked at the living room window.
Once I’d calmed down, though, I was ready to let it go again. He and the boys moved on to Block D, I shot up to Hong Kong to deliver my two-day intensive seminar to the sales team of a major clothing manufacturer, our paths didn’t cross. Then, when I got back, I saw him, coming out of the men’s toilet by the pool as I was approaching to do laps. When he saw me, he looked like he wanted to turn around, but pulled himself together. We walked toward each other and stopped.
“Hello,” I said. I had wanted to sound a bit cold, but it came out warm.
I was happy to see him.
“Hello.”
“Nearly finished with the painting?”
“No. It is ongoing,” he said formally.
“That’s work, isn’t it? It goes on.”
“You are not working.”
“I do work.”
“Sometimes.”
“It pays nicely. And I’m only supporting myself.”
“You are completely alone.”
“With my thoughts.”
He nearly smiled. We were quiet for so long that we either had to say goodbye or open a new subject.
“You went to university, didn’t you?” I asked.
“Technical college.”
“And what did you study?”
“Electricity.”
“Uh-huh? So, tell me, when you were studying, did they give you diagrams of electrical connections to help you understand?”
“Of course.”
“Pictures of women also help you understand.”
If his skin hadn’t been so dark, I’m sure I would have seen him colour in anger.
“We were having a nice conversation. Why did you ruin it?”
“We were having a boring conversation,” I said. “Think about it. Excuse me.”
I went around him and padded over to the pool. As I dove in and started to pull myself through the water, I had to wonder if I shouldn’t be a bit more respectful of his culture, a little more gentle with his sensibilities. But a few laps later I concluded that I was really thinking of his wife. I married a prude myself. They need lessons.