in the bed behind her. No one had ensnared her in any domestic tussle. She had a job, she had her house (almost paid off), she had her CPF savings. All was not lost. Above all, there was her art. Yes, that had always served even if it didn’t make any money. She could still paint, could still create. Francisca still had a way of being honest with herself, despite the prowling diversions of her tiger-woman lifestyle.
The morning light was just beginning to do its little halo-dance around the outlines of apartment blocks. A shaft of it began to walk a finger through the slit in the curtain. Francisca took it as a signal to action and stepped up to the canvas. She lifted a brush from the Chinese inkstand on the table next to the easel where she kept her materials. She looked at the green soapstone piece carved with three monkeys ascending a mountain. The pool at the bottom was the muddy pot that she now dabbed into like a water-bird taking a morning drink.
Such a silly saying, yet for her it meant that she could turn a blind eye to the necessary sins of her day job. She didn’t have to listen to the bleating voices of family expectations and she wouldn’t ever have to speak again to this latest jerk slumbering in her bed, once she sent him off without breakfast .
She focused her eyebrows as if she was a mathematician searching for a way to crack the formula.
With her brush, she added a few final touches around the lips and softened the lines of the painted tummy, then signed the portrait in the bottom right hand corner. Then she moistened her finger with her own wetness, dipped it in the red paint on the palate and, with a flourish, dotted the “i”.
A PERFECT EXIT
Aaron Ang, Singapore
If you could, would you choose the way you were going to die? What would it be? More importantly, would you use it when the time was right?
These were questions Koh Kwan How and his friends often tossed around when he was much younger. Now almost all those friends were gone, and Kwan How was looking at joining them soon. At eighty-three, he had seen a lot of life and too much of death. And now he knew, very much so, which way he would choose. And yes, he was ready to use it. He knew what constituted the perfect exit. And he also knew that it was just about the right time.
All his pleasures were being snatched from him: old friends, loved ones, places he had known and loved. And now even simple, everyday pleasures were being stripped away. It seemed every time he went to his doctor, the man had another list of things he had to deny himself. Kwan How had begun calling the man Dr No: no spicy food, no Kopi-O, no alcohol, no pets… no, no, no. And, of course, no major physical exertion. His heart was far too weak, his doctor warned, just couldn’t take sudden exertion. “No sex, of course,” the pompous shit had instructed him. Then he had the gall to add, with that smug grin men like him seemed to take pleasure in, “But I guess in your case, that hasn’t been any real temptation for a long time, has it, Mr Koh?”
That ass! Koh was tempted almost every day, at least twenty times. Just because he could no longer act on it… Until about ten years ago, maybe less, he would make his way to Geylang once every fortnight. He’d look around, see what was on offer, then head off to a massage parlour or take a hotel room with one of the pretty China girls who trawled the coffee shops there, looking for old men like him with their plump pensions. What mainly transpired with these girls, at either the parlours or in the hotels, was what Koh and his friends used to call “a quick, helpful handshake below the waist.” Well, he was an old man, even then.
But he still yearned, achingly, to make love to lovely young women as he had many years before, when he himself was much closer to their age. But that, he knew, was just the faint buzz of a dream he could never act upon. Or so he thought.
He met her through the Internet. A nephew had shown him how to connect with the contact groups; after several rounds of exploring, Kwan How came upon the kinkier groups himself. And with that, the one he wanted: the Beyond the Borders group.
He was quite surprised that so many women replied to his blunt request:
“Older gentleman seeks lovely young lady to help him kill himself through sex.” He was worried that at least half of them were police agents who might see this endeavour as a form of assisted suicide. But for Kwan How, it was simply a matter of “imposing a natural death”; as Dr No took delight in reminding him, vigorous sex would almost surely be the end of him. Which was exactly what he wanted. It was, for Koh, the perfect exit.
And this one was perfect in her own way. He had scanned through at least a dozen photos sent to him on the Net, and they all looked interesting, but he was jolted when her picture came up. Su Lon. No, it wasn’t her, couldn’t be; but it looked so much like her, as he remembered her, from over sixty years earlier.
Su Lon was the first love of his life. In some ways, still the only special love. His first love, his first sexual experience. And now this one — what was that name? Sharlayne, this Sharlayne looked so much like his Su Lon. As if she had somehow sprung over all those decades, as lovely as ever, preserved simply by his memory of her. Incredible.
He made contact and they bounced several e-mails back and forth before he sent her his telephone number. Then there was nothing for four days. He began to think she was just playing with him, using him as a joke she could share with her gleefully callous friends. But late that Sunday evening the phone rang, waking him up. “Mr Koh, this is Sharlayne. From that Beyond the Borders group? You wanted me to help you with your project?”
“Yes, yes,” he replied. “That’s right. I… I would like your help. Very much.”
They arranged to meet the following weekend, at his place. He would take care of all the formalities, he assured her, including any necessary legal precautions. There would be no way any authorities would associate her with his death. This would be seen as purely a consensual act between two adults — with very unfortunate consequences. He was surprised that she didn’t seem too concerned about this part of the arrangement though.
When she arrived around 4 pm Saturday, he was waiting nervously for her. In fact, Koh was perched on a metal chair facing the front door, reading fitfully from a newspaper while throwing glances at the open door. He had almost convinced himself that she wasn’t going to come after all.
When the bell rang, he couldn’t see her through the grill: evidently, she was standing off to the side. Koh quickly threw his paper down, hauled himself up, went to let her in. When he opened the grill, she peeked from around the corner. “Mr Koh, is it?”
“Yes, yes,” Koh replied. “Koh Kwan How. Just Kwan, if you like. Kwan is fine.”
She nodded and stepped in. She seemed strangely shy at this point, considering how they had met and what she was there for. She was even looking down, demure in a way he would never have expected from this new, anything-goes generation. When she glanced up, this girl looked even more like Su Lon than she had on the monitor. He was staring at her, transfixed, until finally she peered at him nervously. “What?”
“Incredible,” Koh said in a raspy voice. “Oh, sorry, it’s just… You look very much like someone I… I knew. A long, long time ago.”
“Do I? Oh yeah, thanks. You look like a lot of people I know too, uncle.” Koh winced at her calling him uncle, but not enough for her to notice.
He offered her a drink, then found her a can of the Yeo’s chrysanthemum tea she had asked for. After taking a long draught, she frowned and looked around the room, as if assessing his taste in furnishings or sense of feng shui.
For a moment, he was even afraid that she was about to tell him that she had reconsidered and now just wanted to call the whole thing off. But instead, she said something that stunned him. “You want to, like, take our clothes off, uncle, see what we’re talking about?”
“Yes, yes, that might be… That’s a good way to start, I’m sure.” He was still a little stunned by her
