You don’t talk much, says the boy.
When evening comes, Merla prepares the kind of meal she normally does — three dishes and rice. Zach hangs around in the kitchen, mostly perched on a stool by the breakfast bar, swiveling from side to side as he chatters away while she stir-fries. Eventually growing tired of talking to himself, the boy reaches into his worn-out rucksack and removes a large black folder and a copy of the day’s tabloid. She stops and stares. It was months ago when she last laid eyes on a newspaper, in the study, transfixed by an article on the front page of the Straits Times: Maid Tries to Flee, Jumps from Fourth-Story Condo. Merla did not hear the footsteps coming until it was too late. The man grabbed her wrist in a vicelike grip. I kill you, he said.
Do you want this? Zach asks. She turns away. Feigning nonchalance, he moistens his fingertip and flicks through the tabloid, in truth trying to find something that he thinks might start a conversation, eventually settling on the single finance page. Look, he says, holding up the paper. Philippines to Become Sixteenth Largest Economy by 2050. No response.
Merla sets a place in the middle of the long dining table, positioning the cutlery with painstaking precision. As she serves the food, he asks casually, And you? As he has not seen her put any aside, the response Zach anticipates is that she will eat what he leaves behind. She is visibly thrown by the question, her glance at the food too furtive. At last he sees her bony frame, dry complexion, sunken eyes. She shrinks further under his plain gaze. Zach weighs his options. He moves everything from the dining table to the utility room where he finds, tucked away at the back, a set of folding chairs and a plastic table. Merla watches in astonishment. He sets down the dinnerware and saunters back to the kitchen, rummaging around for a second bowl and an extra pair of chopsticks while she trails along like a lost creature. Finally, his eyes light up as he finds what he is looking for. The boy returns to where the food is, sits down, and peers at her expectantly.
Over a fortnight passes without them seeing so much as the man’s shadow — one of his occasional spells of unexplained absence to which Merla has become accustomed, and for which she prays. Zach comes and goes as he pleases, suns himself by the pool and in the manicured garden, where this boy who grew up in a shabby high-rise is enjoying the novelty of figuring out how to use a lawnmower. He has been sleeping over some nights, in the master bedroom, whether or not with the man’s consent Merla cannot tell. It is not for her to ask. But she changes the bed linen and plumps up the pillows after each time, leaving the sliding doors wide open to clear the room of the tang of male adolescence. It is the same smell that pervades the upstairs gym which he has taken to using, just next to the room with the closed door.
Can I have a look inside? he asks, not really for permission — since he wanders freely — but because it is the only door in the house that is locked. Merla shakes her head and hurries away.
When they eat, it is in the utility area, him engaged in one-sided chitchat, her with eyes cast down at her lap. He always helps with the washing up, though only after he has placed the man’s iPad in a stand and set it on the kitchen counter, with the screen facing the sink, playing an episode of America’s Next Top Model. He pretends not to see that she pretends not to watch. Tonight, however, he surprises her. No iPad. Instead, he sets his black folder on the counter. It is a portfolio, the kind every model, or aspiring model, possesses; this one filled with photos of Zach, the most striking among them amateurish at best. What do you think? he asks, slapping his palms together childishly. Merla returns her gaze to the soap suds. She shrugs.
He knows people, Zach says after a while.
Later, while Merla is ironing, Zach engages in a series of phone calls. With his mates, he sounds jovial and frivolous. To his presumably deaf grandmother, he shouts in deliberate, slow, monosyllabic dialect, though Merla can tell the exchange is tender. Then comes a theatrical coyness in his demeanor which immediately fills her with dread. He is talking to the man, in increasingly excited tones. Zach mouths to Merla: He’s coming back tomorrow! The conversation is in Mandarin mingled here and there with a word or two of English. One particular word is all it takes to propel her into a further state of panic.
Party.
Fumbling around her apron and withdrawing from one of the pockets a single key, Merla walks away with uncharacteristic speed, carrying with her his puzzled stare. It is not long before she finds Zach standing beside her in the den, slack-jawed. To her, this room, with its black walls, black rubber flooring, and blackout curtains permanently drawn, is as unholy now with all the lights on as it is when lit with only garish candlesticks and lava lamps. She looks down, focusing on twisting the key around in her fingers while he takes it all in. Everything has been contrived with care, from the racks of chains, handcuffs, whips, to more bizarre equipment and instruments of bondage and torture that neither of them can name. Here was the scene of her first beating, within minutes of her becoming acquainted with the house, sparked off by the involuntary, almost imperceptible shaking of her head when she was told she was to clean everything in the room, every day.
Oh my god, says Zach, barely audible. His line of vision is directed toward the ceiling, where large mirrored panels cover every inch, magnifying the depth of the chamber. In spite of herself, Merla glances up, instantly flinching at the sight of their reflection. In her earliest encounter with this room in its intended use, when strangled cries and hoarse growls and cigarette smoke and chemical fumes invaded her senses, she lifted her head so her eyes could dodge the bare bodies, only to be shaken by what she saw in the mirrors as a bloodcurdling negative of the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel.
You must go, she says to Zach. She is taken aback by the sound of her own voice. He has already left the room.
The following day, there is no sign of Zach. She does not dare to call out for him, for anything, so she searches around the house, floor by floor, room by room, every hour. Nothing. Just after nightfall, the Ferrari appears, at the front of a small convoy of trophy cars carrying about a dozen people, all male. The man leads his guests through the doors. Only three of them are young. Raucous laughter reverberates through the house, cigar and cigarette smoke spreading, thickening. A glint from a Rolex watch. A flicker off a heavy gold chain. Overpowering eau de cologne. Behind the kitchen door, Merla goes about filling the large tray. A bucket of ice, cognac, and bottles of mineral water. Two vials of Viagra, four bottles of GHB, a large bag of pure cocaine. She prays that tonight she will only need to do this once. Bent low and with eyes down, she carries the tray past the lounge where the men are gathered and makes her way up the stairs toward the den, slowing down a fraction when the doorbell suddenly chimes. Seconds later, she judders to a halt from the sound of Zach’s voice. An Evian bottle tumbles off the tray, hits the glass stairs, and rolls noisily down... one... step... at... a... time... She freezes. The laughter dies.
Leave it! she hears the man shout.
Her heart at once pounding and heavy with dismay, Merla finishes the task at hand as swiftly as she can, and withdraws to her room, latching the door behind her. She wraps her rosary beads around her wrists and clasps her hands tightly around the crucifix. A feeling threatens to engulf her, the sense that she is fouled, like a beached seagull overwhelmed by slick. But even the black swell of a spill cannot sully the red of a seagull’s flesh and blood.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners...