Corridor

on his wife, something inside him mumbled “I’m sorry.” He felt each “sorry” plucked from him like the petals from a flower that he had been preserving to give to Shirley at some opportune moment. The next day he would start reading the classifieds again. Every day they were talking about the slump, the recession, retrenchment. He made up his mind to rewrite his resume. Maybe there wasn’t so much to rewrite, but he could just reformat it, try a different font. To do that he would have to borrow the computer at his brother’s house. Suddenly, Edward felt Shirley’s hand on his thigh. Before he knew it, his pyjama trousers were down to his knees. Shirley was undressing. She smiled at Edward and said, “Let’s go.”

Edward asked, “What do you want to do?” and she replied, “Let’s make a baby.”

Shirley made a fuss about the sex, the first kind of fuss she had made in a long time. There were times when she said some dirty things, times when she laughed and threw her head back and started moaning. There were times when she was so moony that Edward couldn’t see her irises. When Edward finally entered her, she was turning her head left to right on her rumpled pillow and thinking of that little man on the TV screen who was suspended over a manhole, his red-gloved fists (right), his bulbous nose (left), his moustache (right). And then she wrapped her legs around Edward. She reached out and felt the small knuckles on her husband’s spine. She clung on to him desperately as he did what he did to her, almost squeezing out tears because an absurd thought flashed through her mind; she was the koala on that brochure, the koala with a clothes-peg for ribs, the koala with that empty embrace.

CUBICLEAll Michelle wanted to do was “freshen up”. So she walked into the Ladies’ at the Heeren building and May-Lin accompanied her. As they pushed the door open, they brushed past the cleaner who was wearing a pastel green uniform and had a checkered handkerchief on her head, tied with a simple knot at her forehead. Above her uniform pocket was the cursive ‘Springleaf’. She was carrying a red pail with a plastic netted bowl for squeezing the mop head. May-Lin held the door open for her and she said something in Cantonese as she shuffled out, her mop stick doing a clockwise turn of brackish water in her pail.

“What did she say?” May-Lin asked Michelle.

“She said thank you.”

“That’s all? She had a lot to say.”

“She also said that you’re not like all the young people that she sees around here.”

May-Lin shrugged and trailed Michelle into the toilet.

“I’m not,” May-Lin said. She had wanted to say it out in the form of a question, but it had come out wrong. It made her sound cocky now.

It was Michelle who wanted a leak. May-Lin was all right, so she hung around near the mirrors, and she teased her fringe, re-wetting the gel. She had two earrings in her right ear, both silver studs, and a loop on her left. Her hair was in spikes, and the back of her neck was bristly. She was wearing blue-framed glasses, a T-shirt with the words “Hard Rock Café Tokyo” on it, and cargo pants. In one of the pockets was a lighter. MayLin didn’t smoke, but having a lighter with her made her feel dangerous. Anyway when she got bored she could whip it out, get a flame going and stare into it as if she were hypnotising herself. It was therapeutic, staring into the heart of a flame. At times it could bring a confession out of you. That was why people had camp-fires, not really for warmth, but because they see things in the flames, the branches cracking, leaves smouldering, the self-continued destruction in which people could see mirages of themselves wilt.

Michelle was taking a long time, and May-Lin became impatient. She called out, “Michelle, are you done?” No answer. May-Lin looked at herself in the mirror again. She took a sharp and deep breath, and then slipped both her hands into her side pockets. Then she went to the cubicle where Michelle was. The door was ajar. “Michelle,” she called again. Then she pushed the door open.

“Why are you taking so long?”

Michelle looked back at her. She had untied her hair and it fell on her shoulders. She tucked the left side of her hair behind her ear. She had banana earrings.

“Are you finished?”

But Michelle didn’t answer until May-Lin walked into the cubicle and locked the door behind her.

“I’m not finished,” Michelle answered, and smiled.

What happened afterwards was already waiting in the cubicle for the two girls. All they needed to do was walk into it and recognise it, on the walls stained with scrubs, the non-reflective tiles, the space bisected by the toilet bowl, the halogen light above them that gave a warm glow to their skins. They never planned any of it; it was the cubicle and its slight antiseptic scent that made them realise how much they missed the taste of each other.

Three times they had moved significantly enough to trigger off the sensor that sent the toilet bowl violently flushing. One of the girls would then use the opportunity to bite the other (collarbone, shoulder, vaccination bump), to send off an unexpected squeal muffled by the thunderous rush of water. When they were done, Michelle took out a felt-tipped pen from her pouch. She handed it over to May-Lin, who was leaning against the cubicle partition and grinning at her.

“What do you want me to do?” May-Lin asked, whispering.

“I don’t know,” Michelle answered.

“Then?”

“Just draw something.”

And so May-Lin scribbled down the date: 6^th Feb 1998.

“You’re so boring,” Michelle told her.

“I can’t draw.”

At the mirrors, the two girls looked at themselves with their backs facing each other. A girl walked into the toilet and took up the space between their rears. She had dyed brown hair,