He couldn’t keep from staring over at them, so he edged his chair sideways, in the other direction, and tried to busy himself. But this whole thing was beginning to gnaw further inside him, upsetting the carefully arranged furniture of habit and planning. Nothing like this had ever happened to him, that some details of such an incident remained so vivid—he could see, hear, even taste them right there—and that he completely forgot other details at least as important.
He pulled out a notebook, found a clean page and started sketching the tattoo. As he drew, he recalled how just kissing the tattoo on her lower back had brought her to fierce arousal, how her legs would thrash and her butt gyrate as he kissed her there again and again, his lips and tongue pressing into her pliant flesh.
He pulled out a red pen to add more colour, more “activity” to his drawing. He only had the black and the red, while the tattoos themselves flaunted other rich colours: ochre, green, gold, purple… one he couldn’t even name. But he was able to come up with a good facsimile, considering his meagre materials. He smiled: yeah, not at all bad. Maybe he should have listened to less practical people and gone into graphic art instead of law. He would certainly not have made as much money as he did now, but he might actually be happier.
When he finished, he turned back and looked over to their table. They were still talking, this time ignoring him. He added a few last strokes to the drawing; yes, that’s pretty close to the way it looked. He glanced over at them again. Even from this angle, he could see how alluring the girl was. The way her shift pulled against her body as she sat in the chair made him think of that same body naked, writhing there in the bed against the moist, pink sheets.
Wherever it had taken place.
He closed the notebook, finished his cappuccino in one long gulp and thought of just leaving, taking a wide turn away from them as he exited.
Almost immediately, however, he realised this was impossible. How could he walk away from this woman with whom he had apparently shared something incredible, yet lost so much of. He had to find out what this was all about, or at least make more of an attempt than that feeble questioning look he had thrown her.
He pulled out the notebook again, carefully tore out the page with the drawing, rose and moved quickly over to their table. The friend looked up first; the girl herself gave him just a cursory glance, turned, looked down and started twisting the edges of a serviette into tiny cones. “Could you please get out of here? We’re having a conversation, in case you didn’t notice.”
“Actually, I did notice,” he replied. “But I wanted to give you something.” He placed the drawing down on the table, right in front of the girl. Her friend looked puzzled. The girl turned to her friend and said something in a soft voice; he tried, but was unable to make out more than a few words. The friend nodded, stood up, started moving away. About a metre from the table, she spun around and pointed to her watch.
“Fifteen minutes,” the girl said, shaking her head, then turned back to him. “Okay, you can sit down if you like.” He nodded, pulled out the nearest chair to hers and started to slide it a little closer. “Not there,” she snapped.
“Take that one,” pointing to the chair on the opposite side of the table. He shrugged and settled himself into that seat.
She picked up the drawing and stared at it. Her face indicated that she was impressed. “That’s your tattoo, isn’t it?” She nodded. “You have it here,” he pointed to the spot on his own back; she nodded again. “And the other one… higher up, on the other side.”
She looked at him fully for the first time since she had first spotted him.
“Yes, so what?”
He shifted uneasily, but allowed himself to place his hands on the table.
“Do you know who I am?” He tried to control his voice, to sound calm, but a slight note of desperation slipped in.
“Of course. What do you think, that I’d forget something like that? Shit, you have an even lower opinion of me than I thought.”
“No, no, it’s not that, it’s just… Alright, now how can I explain this?” He searched for the next path to follow. “Do you know my name?” She snorted out a derisive laugh. “No, I don’t. You didn’t want to tell me, remember? You said, ‘Just call me David Beckham.’”
“No, I don’t remember, that’s the problem. I just don’t… I mean, there are so many details there from that… time together. So vivid up here.” He pointed to his head. “But then so much I just can’t recall.”
“Like?”
“Like… just your name. Did you tell me your name?”
“Of course, I did. I guess I was just too naive back then. I trusted guys.” He felt a surge of free-floating guilt. Yes, he probably had treated her terribly. That may be why he was experiencing this bout of selective amnesia.
He’d read somewhere how the brain often filters out things that are especially unpleasant, or that we’re horribly ashamed of. A defence mechanism that helps us to move on. But what horrible thing could he have done? She didn’t seem to bear any traces of physical damage. What could he have done to her inside?
“Any-thing else?” She snapped his contemplation with the harshness of this question.
“Yeah: a lot else. Where did it happen? Here in Singapore? At your place, at the uni hostel, a friend’s? Or were we somewhere on holiday?” She stung him with a look that said such an insulting question deserved only dire contempt. She turned, the bitter look still on her face, to check a message on her handphone. “I have to go,” she said icily without bothering to turn back to him.
But he couldn’t let it end there. “I’m sorry, but this has never happened to me before. Hey, I’m only twenty-seven. I usually get praised for my good memory. But I really can’t remember too much about that time we were…
together. Just the… well, the mechanics really and… your tattoos. Those tattoos were like some hypnotic medallions.”
“I see, so all you remember is the sex? Getting inside me, pumping like crazy, the stormy kisses, all that. Pushing all the right buttons, pulling all the right cords. Isn’t that what you guys call it?”
“Well, I also remember the colour of the sheets; they were pink, right?
And that ugly bedside lamp… then there was this thin rug which was a horrendous shade of green, and…” He looked up; it had suddenly come back to him. “And you said you would take me the next day to where you got your tattoos.” She said nothing, didn’t nod, but her narrowed eyes told him he was right. “You said you wanted me to get two just like them. You said it was…
necessary, that it was part of our being together.”
“So you don’t forget everything. You have a good memory for what you want to remember.”
“I want to remember it all. I want to remember your name, where we were, why we were there, how we got that far…” He stopped, suddenly realising that he had swept past what could be the key to the whole episode.
“And… why didn’t I go and get the tattoos?”
Her eyes narrowed further, as if they were turning into small creatures—mythical beings, half-reptile, half-whatever—going into attack mode. He actually started to get scared, thinking she might be able to physically attack him, take revenge for some wrong that he couldn’t remember but deeply deserved to be punished for.
“The pact,” she whispered, and then smiled. The smile looked like it tasted of strychnine. But it seemed as if this was a taste she enjoyed.
Here, he closed his own eyes, tightly. For one thing, he didn’t want to see her face at this moment. But more importantly, he needed to dig deep within himself to recover what kind of pact they could have made. If it was still there, he would find it. Nothing. He opened his eyes again, slowly, half-believing she’d be gone when he looked. But she was still there, of course.