When you put it like that in so many words, it seemed obviously true.
Look at how people were today: spoilt brats at best, enraged loonies in their hearts most of the time.
‘We all hate each other,’ she admitted to Om, with a gasp.
Om nodded and told Penny she should meditate. She explained that Mike had to have opium because he was too far gone to meditate, he would never break through the reinforced concrete of his ego, but for Penny, a woman with a good heart, there was a chance.
Now Penny found herself encouraging Mike with his opium habit, so she could stay on a few more days with Om and learn to meditate. Both women made sure Mike had plenty of finto keep him quiet while they went to temple and sat in silence in a semi-lotus position. Penny knew she was slow in spiritual matters, but not entirely without talent. With Om’s help, she developed a vague understanding of the ancient teaching and an appreciation of the peace it could bring to the heart.
When Mike was able to walk, which happened for a couple of hours in the evening of each day, he would wander into the jungle and sit on a fallen tree trunk. That must have been where he caught cerebral malaria.
Penny flew into a panic. She didn’t want a person’s death on her conscience; she wanted to get him to a hospital in the UK straight away, but Om wasn’t so keen. She thought that if Mike died there in her village surrounded by monks whispering into his ear, there was a chance he would be reborn as a human, maybe even as a Thai Buddhist, so he would have a great chance of personal evolution in his next life.
If he went back to the West, on the other hand, even if he was in time to be cured, he would just go back to his old ways and be reborn as a rat or something even lower down the scale.
Penny gulped. This was another leap she was not prepared for. Her mind immediately thought up a good old British compromise: suppose they got him to Bangkok and, when he was better, introduce him to Buddhism? Okay, he might not achieve a human rebirth that way, but he could maybe reach monkey or chimpanzee level—further up the scale than rat, anyway. She hardly realized how her thinking had changed under Om’s influence.
‘I’ll do whatever you want,’ Om said with a smile.
Penny understood this was some kind of test the Buddha was putting her through. Had she got the message strongly enough to dare to do let Mike die?
Mercifully, for the Buddha was nothing if not compassionate, the decision was made for her. Mike succumbed to the particularly virulent form of the disease in just over thirty-six hours. Om made sure that nine monks sat around his deathbed connected by a piece of white string and chanting in a way that his spirit could hear and understand.
After they had burned his body in the temple oven, Penny said: ‘I want to stay here, but I could never be a nun—I don’t have your kind of strength.’
‘I know,’ Om said.
As it happened, one of her brothers had recently lost his wife, also to malaria. He was a good big-hearted guy, if a bit lazy, with a huge beer gut and a big sprawling house full of scruffy kids just down the road…
BREAKING GLASS
Dawn Farnham, Singapore
Slut, she thought as Alex ran his hand through his silky black hair. It was a movement which allowed his coat to fall open revealing the outline of his narrow waist and toned torso against his shirt. Within a second, his hair had fallen again, boyishly, onto his forehead.
She was looking at him over the rim of the coffee cup from inside her office. He was talking to one of the secretaries. Talking to? Chatting up, sexing up more like, she thought. He was a typical male slut. He was the director and star of his own show, moving the rest of the cast, women and men alike, like puppets. He used his looks and intelligence like a plunging neckline, to get what he wanted; success, status, approval, attention. But he was very, very good. It was effortless.
Apart from this one movement of his hand, he stood still when he talked to the girls in the office, a certain stillness that seemed to speak of depths, of virile assurance. We would go slow, it said, I’m a man with a slow hand.
It was the girls that moved, swaying into him, inclining their empty heads towards his lips, putting out their hands to his arm as if was a magnet and they were iron filings.
Iron filings; it was good, she thought. Dancing around him like mindless shavings, throwing themselves against him, flattened, will-less, until he turned off the charm and they fell sliding to the floor.
He glanced towards her office. It was the tiniest movement of his eyes, but she saw it. She had studied him. At length. He was Chinese, like her, but he had come from privilege and old money, and she from the HDB Heartlands of Singapore. They were matched in education, credentials and abilities, but they’d got to this place along very different roads. Alex was the only thing that stood in her way to the top of one of the most powerful companies in the Lion City.
The week’s events would decide which of them got the job of managing director in the company. The chairman was looking at retirement in a few years. Whoever got the job would be the next big boss. Level playing field, the chairman had said. He was a man of principle, of an old-fashioned kind of morality in life and in business, and she believed him. The glass ceiling was only cracked and splintered in many companies, but in this one, she felt she could smash it with her fist and reach the stars beyond. It was an incredible feeling.
Alex had tried very hard to charm her and she had been very careful to be casually and smilingly uncharmed. He was discreet, but women talked and she was certain of his intentions. The only way to get what he wanted was to discredit her. The only way he could do that was to seduce her.
He was tempting though, she had to admit, from the safety of her office as he walked down the corridor. He moved like a boxer, light on his feet, broad-shouldered, powerful, lithe, athletic. He was all promise. A promise of smouldering heat, skin on skin, of dreamy and intoxicating bliss. He stirred fantasies in a woman’s head. Dangerous fantasies. She put down her coffee and took a long drink of cold water.
The four-day meeting with the clients was at an island resort. One of those places with seven-hundred-dollar-a-night native cabanas on a perfect tropical beach.
The island was erotically charged. It was ridiculous to bring a delegation of business executives and clients to such a place, away from husbands and boyfriends, wives and girlfriends. When she was boss, she’d make sure they had four-day conferences in tents in Siberia. Survival was just the thing to knock sex on the head.
Dinner was a pleasant affair, the clients happy, the food good, the wine flowing. Alex had offered a dance, but she had refused. Getting into proximity with him was not a good idea. As she left for her cabana, she saw he had his arms round one of the secretaries and felt a momentary twinge of envy, which quickly vanished.
She took a bath and changed into her nightgown, let down her long, glossy, black hair and looked at herself in the mirror. Thirty-nine, figure good, button nose, great eyes, skin still fresh, pert tits. She laughed and poured a glass of champagne.
There was a knock. Room service with more champagne, she hoped.
Perhaps Siberia was a bit harsh.
‘Suchen, sorry it’s so late.’
Alex was standing at the door. His eyes left hers and dropped slowly down her body. It was a look of pure admiration. She had nothing on underneath this thin garment and, she suddenly realized, her breasts were outlined against the satin.