But what mattered most was not the furniture or the windows or the high ceilings or the grand piano in the lobby or the way the staff—Malays no less, good Malays playing submissive servants to the under-dressed hedonist tourist masses that flocked to this island paradise-shuffled around. What mattered most was that everything today stayed discreet. And as he walked along the corridor leading to the hotel lounge, brushing away an overeager bellboy asking, ‘Y.B., anything I can help you with?’ with that subservient tone in Malay, he saw her.
She was standing by the reception, looking busy. She had her BlackBerry out, and while it seemed like she was furiously tapping out a message, some important email, no doubt, the politician knew that she was paying attention to the lounge with her darting eyes. When their eyes met from across the hall, she pocketed her BlackBerry and gave a small nod. That was all. A small nod.
She looked good, just as she always did, this thirty-five-year-old woman who had been sneaking away to rendezvous with him for over four years now. She was a whore—he couldn’t bear calling her profession by any other name, as they all felt overly sanitized. Prostitute? Escort? Call girl?
Courtesan? Don’t kid yourself, Y.B., she’s a whore, pure and simple. But she was a whore he felt a great deal of attachment to, and he treated these trysts with a great deal of excitement.
He met her at the elevator. He was already inside, the only person in there, when she rushed towards the closing doors. As if to show his potent chivalry, instead of pressing down on the Open button, he instead lodged himself into the doorway, letting her pass. Cunningly, he also sneaked a grope in as she squeezed past, one hand reaching out to feel the fine curvature of her ass. She didn’t seem to like it. He did.
His room was on the seventeenth floor, a luxurious suite that was overly indulgent, even to him, for someone who was only going to be staying on the island for one night. The elevator lurched upward. He idly whistled. She smoothed her blouse. She was standing at the corner, almost vulnerable as she seemed to hide away. A poster partitioned away by a cold glass pane sat beside her, promoting the latest Filipino house band that was playing at the hotel. He opened his mouth, and tilted closer to her. Fifth floor. ‘Dahlia…’
he began.
She didn’t even seem to pay any attention.
Sixth floor. He inched closer again, small inches growing to bigger inches. He cornered her where she was. She looked up at him. Finally, some eye contact. His hand tried for her thigh, the one wrapped in the fine black stocking under her skirt. He half-expected her to slap him. She didn’t. Her furious, cold stare still kept his gaze, as his fingers brushed up. Eighth floor.
Her skirt lifted just a bit…
Then she commanded him. ‘Step away right now.’ She spoke with such strength in her voice. Domination. He instinctively followed as she instructed. He moved back to his corner. Ninth floor. She turned to face him, brushing her skirt back to its previous meticulous, flawless state. Her voice softened, but there was no mistaking the vigor still within. ‘Are you stupid?
There’s a camera right there, up above where you’re standing.’
So there was. It wasn’t like he didn’t know that; of course he knew. He just couldn’t resist. He couldn’t resist being told off, being called stupid, the sort of verbal abuse he could only find from her, or in Parliament.
‘For someone who makes such a big deal about discretion…’ she trailed off, as if uninterested in continuing in that thread. The politician looked up at the ceiling, a smooth surface refashioned as a mirror. He saw the top of her head, the push of her bounteous breasts. It was like topography to him. A silence held. Thirteenth floor. He didn’t want to succumb to apologizing. He knew he would be doing a lot of that later, in the room.
Seventeenth floor. When the elevator doors opened, he stepped out with confident strides left, towards his suite. He shuffled through his coat pockets to find the keycard. Room 1726, there. A cleaning lady, Malay again, another deferential Malay with incessant bowing, stepped away as he passed, muttering, ‘Good evening, Datuk Haji.’ The last honorific was particularly ironic. They called him a Haji as if he were truly the religious man he appeared, even as he used their facilities for illicit pleasures.
He reached his door and craned his neck to see the corridor as he grasped the handle and slid the keycard in. His whore had not followed him yet. She was professional like that. His room, when he entered, was spotless. The large bed had been done, probably less than ten minutes ago, and he stepped to the bathroom. Both the suite and bathroom doors were left slightly ajar, to invite his guest in to join him.
In the bathroom, he felt another sudden pang of worry: it was because he saw his reflection. But with the light off there, he first saw a different figure. He saw his father, the real Datuk Haji, a political heavyweight who was as much the Malay warrior before Independence as afterwards. He saw his father frown at him, liquid disapproval causing him a near panic attack.
When his clammy hands reached for the light switch and the room bathed him in light and warmth, the reflection melted into the somewhat more comforting sight of his own face.
He heard the door swing gently open as he washed his hands, staring at himself. He looked like a true Captain of Industry. At nearly fifty, he was still in perfect health, with a body that was more accurately described as
‘sturdy’. His features were solid, and in their own way, handsome. His beard was trimmed just enough, a calculated move to make him appear vaguely religious while unquestionably professional. He had a lot of hair still, in contrast to most of his party’s leaders.
He wiped his face with wet hands. He looked a lot like his father, except for missing the warrior’s icy eyes, the permanent disapproving frown. Again he dispelled the thought as he loosened his tie, hung his coat on the rack, and kicked his shoes off. He stepped towards the bed. Dahlia was already there, waiting for him.
The whore wore a grey skirt from some famous Italian brand that ended sharply at her knees, and her blouse was white and immaculate. She had glossy black high heels that highlighted her beautifully shaped feet, and black stockings like a fabric version of his yellow brick road. To top it off, she wore glasses that magnified the fortitude in her eyes. He sat down beside her.
She looked at him wordlessly, and rotated ever so slightly, one hand placed down between them and balancing her and she placed her right leg on his lap. Her foot fidgeted, and he removed her shoe. ‘No,’ she said, in English, always English, even though English was his much weaker language, ‘Put it back on, and do it again.’
There was a strict precision to this process, and she didn’t let him deviate from it in any way. He rubbed his thumb against her ankle as he slipped her black heel off. He must have done it correctly, as he was rewarded with her kissing down on his clothed shoulder, feeling her hot breath over his shirt.
She withdrew her right leg and proffered her left, one hand tracing over the politician’s back. Her fingernails pressed against the fabric of his shirt. She continued kissing. He continued removing her shoe.
Every act she chose to do was a carefully calculated step in her flawless seduction. Were the politician a more worldly man, he would have compared her grace to a geisha’s. He kissed her toe and received a sharp knock to the back of his neck from her wrist in return. He looked at her, bewildered. ‘Not yet,’ she said, glaring. The good whore giveth and the good whore taketh away: she slid both legs away from him, and no longer kissed his shoulder.