The Night Tiger(63)
Hui glanced up. “Don’t look so worried about me, Ji Lin. You really are sweet.”
Touched, I tried to laugh it off, changing the subject. “Can you tell the Mama that I won’t be in this week?”
“Why not?”
I explained about Y. K. Wong following me after work last Friday and then almost running into him twice at the hospital this weekend. It was too many coincidences for comfort.
“Tell her my mother’s ill or something.” And I really needed to find another job, though it didn’t seem like a good time to bring that up.
“What about the private party in Batu Gajah this Saturday?”
“I’ll do that.” It would pay well.
We talked about the arrangements for the party, though my heart wasn’t really in it. It might be the last time I worked with Hui and Rose and Pearl. Perhaps it’s for the best. Especially if I wanted to become a nurse. Still, melancholy settled over me, like a personal rain cloud. Goodbyes were always like that.
Hui said, “Let’s practice drawing your mouth.” A cupid’s bow was tricky, and I never had the patience to do it properly.
“Don’t bother with me—won’t you be late?” I said, as Hui, pleased with her handiwork, brushed cake mascara on my eyelashes.
“Let him wait.”
“Who is it?”
“That bank manager who comes in on Wednesdays.”
He was in his late fifties, liver-spotted like a toad with a habit of licking his lips. “Don’t you mind?”
“Old is better,” she said carelessly. “Young men expect you to fall for them and do all sorts of things for free.”
“Hui!” I said, laughing. “You’re terrible.”
“Don’t trust men, Ji Lin,” she said sadly. “Not even that charming brother of yours.”
* * *
Hui told me not to wait for her. She wasn’t done with her toilette, though I’d hoped to walk out with her to her date, but she shook her head, “It’s getting late,” and so I went downstairs.
It wasn’t actually late at all. In fact, it was still early enough that I’d be just in time to sit down for dinner with Mrs. Tham and her husband’s nephew. Not wanting to go home, I turned up Belfield Street instead. Trishaws and bicycles rushed by, squeezing past bullock carts and the occasional motorcar. At the corner of Brewster Road and the wide green space of the Ipoh padang, a cricket field built by the local Chinese community to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, I stopped in front of the FMS Bar and Restaurant. FMS stood for “Federated Malayan States,” and both locals and expatriates came to drink at the long bar and order Western dishes prepared by a Hainanese chef: sizzling steaks and chicken chops, washed down with icy beer. I’d never been inside, though I’d passed its gracious, colonial fa?ade many times.
One day, I decided, I’d go in and buy myself a steak. Though I wasn’t sure if they allowed single women. As I turned to go, the wooden doors of the FMS Bar swung open. My heart jumped as someone caught me by the arm.
“Ji Lin?” It was a young man with a fashionably skinny mustache. Because of this, I almost didn’t recognize him.
“It’s me, Robert! Ming’s friend, Robert Chiu.”
Robert was the one who’d given me that unwanted sticky kiss on the bench outside the watchmaker’s shop. He was very much the young man now, and knowing what I now did about the price of things, expensively turned out. But he gave me the same eager, half-excited look he had then, which surprised me. If I’d been turned down by some skinny girl from Falim, I probably wouldn’t have been so happy to see her again, but Robert evidently had a more forgiving disposition.
“What are you doing here?” His eyes traveled up and down. I knew that look; at work I was very careful with men who stared like that, but it was just Robert, I told myself. And besides, he’d no idea about my part-time job.
“I was just passing by,” I said.
Evening had fallen, that magical blue twilight hour, and the yellow radiance from the FMS Bar shone through the door and window transoms.
“I haven’t seen you in so long,” he said. “How have you been?”
We chatted about inconsequential things. Robert was reading law in England and was back for the holidays. He talked hurriedly, the words tumbling out as though he was afraid I’d walk away. Stories about university and people I didn’t know that I listened to with only half an ear.
He’d stopped talking and was staring at me again.
“I’m sorry,” I said guiltily. Poor Robert, all that money and still so dull. “You were saying?”
“Nothing. Just that, you look nice.”
It was probably the light that spilled out from the bar, warm and flattering, bathing everything with a golden glow. Even Robert looked rather distinguished with his expensive clothes and neatly slicked hair. I dropped my eyes but Robert misunderstood.
Encouraged, he said, “I heard from Ming that you’re not married yet.”
I said cheerfully, “No, I’m apprenticed to a dressmaker.” Best to be brisk at times like these.
“Do you like it?”
“Yes,” I said, lying through my teeth.
“I’m surprised that you didn’t go on for higher studies. Like teacher training or nursing.”