“Bought anything?”
“No, there was nothing I wanted. Let me shower first, I’m all sweaty.”
“Okay.”
In the toilet, Cody stripped and threw his clothes into the sink, and then stood under the jet of hot water in the shower. The room quickly filled up with steam. Summoning up images of the men from the sex show, he masturbated and came quickly with a brutal convulsion that left him panting against the wet wall tiles. He caught his blurry reflection in the fogged-up mirror, a dark silhouette moving beneath a cloudy veil of condensation. He washed himself twice over with soap, dried off and put on a clean pair of shorts. He used up a small travel bottle of mouthwash, the insides of his mouth bristling with tiny pins. He dried his mouth with a towel, turned away from the mirror, and stepped back out into the dark bedroom.
“Cody?” Ai Ling called.
“Yes?”
“Can you come over here?”
He padded over to her bed. Moonlight illuminated Ai Ling’s face in a warm glow. Cody sat on the edge of her bed, but could not read her expression. Ai Ling reached out and touched his hand, drawing it to her.
“Do you like me?” Ai Ling asked.
“Yes, of course. You’re my good friend.”
“Only a friend?”
Cody hesitated. “Yes, a very good friend.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
For a long while, they stayed like that. Cody could hear a car passing on the road outside, a rumbling sound that surged and then gradually faded. In the dark, he could sense Ai Ling’s thoughts taking several turns across the busy, intricate landscape of her mind. He resisted breaking her train of thought with a sound or movement, even though he wanted desperately to know what she was thinking.
Then, without a word, Ai Ling moved her body aside on the bed, and Cody lay down next to her. She turned her back and pushed herself into him, radiating heat. He put his arms around her shoulders, and she nudged closer to fit into the contours of his body. He inhaled the scent of her hair.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Ai Ling did not say anything, nor did she move away. She drew Cody’s arms tightly around her. Cody listened to her falling slowly into sleep, her breaths getting deeper and longer, and then she disappeared into the world of dreams. He stayed awake for as long as he could, but soon he too fell into the void of sleep.
25
CHEE SENG
“Don’t bring so many things. Just travel light. It’s only for a few days,” I told Cody, two days before the vacation to Phuket, taking out my haversack from the store room, giving it a shake.
“Yes, I’ll just bring my underwear because I’m not leaving the hotel at all. I heard the weather is going to be extremely hot,” Cody said.
“Okay, sure, whatever suits you, lazy ass. Just don’t wear any of my shirts.”
Cody was sitting on the sofa in front of the television watching a Channel 8 drama series. The volume was set to low, and from where I was standing, I could barely make out the dialogue.
“When are you going to start packing? We’re leaving the day after tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow. I’m a fast packer, unlike you, always so slow. I know what to bring. Anyway, it’s only for a few days, so I only need three changes of clothes.”
“Yes, fast packer, always forgetting things, always asking me whether I brought extra.”
“And you always bring so many things. I’m just trying to help you make full use of all the things you have brought. See, I’m actually helping you in a sense.”
“Yeah, and if you forget anything for this trip, you can forget about asking me for it.”
“I won’t.”
It had not been easy living with Cody since we moved in together after getting a place of our own two years ago. I was used to a certain lifestyle with a fixed routine, having lived almost my entire life with my mother and three younger brothers, and it was tough to break away from what had been comfortable for me. In the beginning, it was trying to figure out what worked for both of us, finding the right amount of space—personal and physical—that each of us needed, and coming up with a routine in which we could anchor our lives, together and separately. We quarrelled from time to time, though nothing serious. Because of his work as an editor, the spare room in our flat was converted to a study for him. On one of the walls he had framed some of his freelance features that had appeared in well-known regional travel magazines, pieces on Angkor Wat and Borobudur.
Through trial and error, we had managed to carve out a domesticated living arrangement that was part mutual agreement, part compromise, in which we still had our own freedom, our individual lifestyles. We had, in popular parlance, an “interdependent” relationship, which seemed to be the politically correct way to describe a non-needy, self-sufficient relationship, which in our case, was undeniably true. We had some things in common for sure, and for other things we could not quite come to terms with, we left them as they were or closed our eyes to them, which was the usual way we dealt with things that we could not change. We learnt to live with what we could manage.
“Did you print out the air ticket confirmation?” I asked from the bedroom, after packing my luggage.
“Not yet, can you print it out?” Cody shouted from the sofa, where he was now watching a tennis match on the sports channel.
“I’ll use your laptop,” I said.
Entering Cody’s workspace in the study felt like a minor form of trespassing. It was filled almost entirely with his stuff—books, magazines, CDs—and very little of my own, only a small section of the bookshelf which held my hardcover books, and files full of bills, letters and tax statements. Despite the organised mess in the room, his large work table was relatively clutter-free: only a laptop computer, a note pad, a stationery holder filled with 2B pencils and a drinking glass. The laptop was switched on, and, because Cody had not created a password, I was able to access it. It always felt strange using his computer, which was part of his guarded turf; he never allowed me to read his works until they were published, afraid of jinxing them.
His incoming chat messages were flashing. I clicked on one of them and a message popped into view. Blood drained from my face as I read it; I checked the other messages in the history folder. When I was done, I left the messages as they were, open and exposed. I sat in the swivel chair for some time, unsure how I should react—to confront or to ignore? A deep wariness settled over me, turning my insides cold. Then, after breaking through the strong grip of my thoughts, I did what I had come in here to do and printed out the ticket confirmation.
That night, after Cody had finished watching the tennis match on TV and I was brushing my teeth, he entered the bathroom and stood behind me, trying to catch my stare in the mirror. Instead of meeting his eyes, I focused on the foam building up in my mouth, overflowing and dripping into the sink. He wrapped his hands around my waist and rested his chin on my shoulder. I bent to spit out the foam and started to rinse nosily. Cody stood behind me, waiting for me to finish. When I looked up, drawing his eyes to me, he remained silent, unable to utter anything. He must have read my expression: Don’t bother to explain.
I took one of the pillows and slept on the sofa. At one point, Cody came out and sat near me, his head bent low.
“I’m sorry. It was nothing,” he whispered. “Please come to bed.”
“No, go away.”
“I’m really sorry. It was just a one-time thing, nothing more.”
I turned away from him. Cody tried to mutter something, but his words were caught in his throat. He sat beside me through the night, his presence a malignant force. I was wide awake the whole night, keeping up the defence.