Effigy

WL was the Mr. Big of my time―such presence, always laying claim on spaces, on people, on things, and with amiable, effective authority. Women never found it very difficult to like him―handsome eyes, shades of youth in that peach-kissed complexion, still-full hair, thinning only very slightly; a trained charmer who always had a backhanded way of complimenting women, tormenting them with a certain offhanded masculinity. Men found him a disconcerting friend―generous, easy to trust, but because of which they accord him with a degree of distance, of suspicion, to which he seldom acknowledged and certainly never appeared to care.

WL. It would have been too predictable, too pedestrian to have fallen for him, because he couldn't help but to encourage the chemistry between us―former colleagues―to blossom into something else. I was barely 21. He was well into his thirties, married, and not unhappily so. Just one of those men, I remember thinking. Just one of those men, wolf-toothed and pigeon-toed, hawk-eyed with romantic lust and a natural intellect.

I didn't tell myself to be careful of him, because―and only in retrospect can I readily admit this―the element of danger was intriguing for me. Could I join him on his half-dance and not tango myself all the way to hell? Could we stay―friends, even if we indulge in intimate conversations not quite appropriate for the edict that govern us as colleagues?

His marriage was practice made perfect. I sensed that he had not fallen out of love with his wife, but he had grown out of the man that he was when they were first married. To stay completely loyal to her would mean a return to that innocence, which, of course, he had lost long time ago. Like most unfaithful men, it was never his intention to cheat. That seems to suggest something petty, a dubious double-dealing that did not call into question the fact that the human heart has the capacity to love more than one person, and sometimes this duplication of love occurs within a marriage. Sometimes it was merely entertainment, I think; days can get dull, and nothing thrills like a game of seduction. Was it wrong? Is it? I'm no moral police. Fact is, I understood the game WL was playing. I did not necessarily wish to become the game, but to trail along with the hunter―that was something else.

My relationship then had relaxed into a routine―it was comforting and stable, and I did not especially want to jeopardise it. But I was bored, young, restless: my usual gods with their shady tenets. WL and I often worked late together―leaving after to one quiet bar or another became an unspoken pattern. It was our thing. No big deal. We would slouch over some worn bar counter, pick our poison, and talk until I could no longer invent any excuse to the ex or, for that matter, my mother, for staying out this late on a week night.

The beauty of it was how consistent this arrangement was. He never asked for more. I never questioned his motives. We left much of it―our chemistry―to the music, to our conversations, to our long aimless drives around the island. We sang songs, held hands, and laughed our way through a year of companionship.

'I think my boyfriend is cheating on me,' I'd told him once. The juke box was playing cupid. Tacky love songs flavoured the air.

Him, with the last silver of scotch in his glass. Eyes shadowed with tender sorrow. 'Define cheating,' he'd replied, softly, without judgement, but heavy on irony.

To my horror I began to cry, blanched by the sock of pain in my stomach at the falling of my words: my own guillotine, as always. He held me for a while, heartbeat to heartbeat; mine random, his deliberate, both beating, bloody, beastly.

'We are always cheating,' he allowed, later, on the drive to my home. 'Cheating time, cheating death, cheating one another. It's what we do.'

I did not want to justify or juxtapose, so I merely kissed him on the cheek and said good night.

When he had to leave Singapore for work commitments, that was exactly how we said our private goodbyes. A long talk, a strong drink, a big hug, and a small kiss.

Today, after months of silence, we finally met: casually, of course. His wife was there. A beautiful couple, still. I no longer need to care about someone else's well-being, and I've come to see that WL never really did. Another stolen Romeo―did I not crib the best from him and leave the rest to that pallid, pretty, pale slip of a woman he calls wife?

Memories chafe. They're stuck, dirty needles in my veins, evaporating sulphur and sickness into a void that loving and leaving and cheating and wanting have forged. I'm parched with pertinence.