Then Michelle asked May-Lin, “Is your T-shirt on correctly?”
“What?” May-Lin asked back.
“The last time we made out your tag was in front. You put it on backwards.”
“Go to hell.”
The girl in the middle stiffened, and stole glances at these two people sharing the toilet with her. She screwed her mascara cap back on. Michelle flicked her hair, tied primly by then, and laughed. Her banana earrings dangled merrily. She had been practising that laugh; the whore-laugh that she knew scared May-Lin more than it disturbed the girl who was by now pulling down the hemline of her skirt as she was walking out.
Michelle suddenly said, “May-Lin.”
“What?”
“You need concealer.”
“No I don’t. I don’t need make-up.”
“I could lend you mine.”
“No thanks.”
“Just listen to yourself, May-Lin,” Michelle went. And she shook her head.* * *In her room, May-Lin was lying on her bed with the telephone. Beside her was her shelf of soft toys. One of them was a Bobdog Michelle had gotten her for her birthday. It had one black eye and a collar with a red translucent plastic tag attached to it. That was back in secondary school when they were classmates. Even then they were only friends. They were still friends, now. It was just when Michelle wanted something from May-Lin, she was supposed to give it, like any friend should. And that included a round in the public cubicles.
“I don’t know what’s wrong,” Michelle told May-Lin.
“Yes you know,” May-Lin told her back.
“She’s been so nice to me.”
“She’s straight.”
“I know... but, you know, we went for dinner yesterday. At this place in Boat Quay. She paid for everything, and when I told her not to, she just said, never mind, I’m one of the people she would spend on.”
“What’s the name of the boy again? The one she likes?” May-Lin asked.
Michelle’s voice was icy. “Michael,” she said.
“How is he?”
“Michael is a bastard. He treats her like shit. When he wants to, he calls. When he doesn’t, he won’t. She doesn’t need someone like that. He doesn’t deserve someone like her, anyway. Just because JC˚ student, he thinks he’s very big shot. Drive car, so what?”
“How long has she liked him?”
“Don’t know lah. Met at a party. Then you know what they did? You know lah. I can’t believe how you can let a guy’s thing...”
“Eeeee. Better don’t say.”
“Yah, if I ever see it, I will faint.”
May-Lin laughed.
“If I see it, I will start laughing,” said May-Lin. “How to walk around with something like that?”
“Okay, enough,” said Michelle. “Anyway, after he did her, she thought it was true love. Funny right? You have that thing Nicole gave us? The one you copied in your diary?”
Nicole was a mutual friend of theirs, a ‘sister’. She was in her late 20s, and worked in a law firm. At a pub once, she had moved up to Michelle and chatted her up. When she realised Michelle was only 18, she said, “I don’t do girls who still wear pinafores. It’s a principle of mine.” But they became friends, and she was introduced to May-Lin. Ever since then, she became something of a mentor to the two of them, offering advice and lavishing them with Japanese suppers. She had also provided Michelle with tips on becoming an expert “cock-tease”, because she claimed to see “potential” in her. “Get them to worship the ground you walk on. Then walk all over them.” She didn’t spend as much time sharing tips with May-Lin because she didn’t think May-Lin would be particularly attractive to guys. She was butch, and that limited her potential to be a cock-tease. Nicole always had a lot of witty things to say, and whenever she came up with something, Michelle would ask May-Lin to copy it down in her organiser. Of course Michelle being Michelle, she called it a “diary”.
May-Lin took her organiser down from her bedside table. Tucked between the pages were photographs (of them in Changi Airport, one beside a Ronald McDonald statue), half-scribbled drafts of unsent letters, bus ticket hearts, paper cranes. She opened up to a page with yellow paper. These were the mini Nicole journals.
“Which one you want?” May-Lin asked.
“The one about sex and windows.”
“Oh,” May-Lin was already staring at the page on which the quote was written. She read it out aloud, but mispronounced ‘draught’, “When you have sex with someone, you mustn’t let that person open the windows in you. Keep them latched and swallow the key. Don’t let her find it. Because if she opens those windows you will realise that when she is not around, there will be a draught in your house.”
“I like the way it sounds,” Michelle said.
“Nicole’s very smart,” said May-Lin. “She reads a lot. And she’s pretty too. How come she doesn’t have a girlfriend?”
“Well, I’m smart and pretty too. I don’t have a girlfriend.”
A few months back, May-Lin would have agreed with Michelle. But at that moment she didn’t think she should let Michelle get away with a statement like that.
“Hey there are prettier girls, okay? Don’t be so proud, it’s not good for you.”
“Yah, like Angela,” Michelle answered.
“You, and your Angela. Seow.”
“Angela, Angela, Angela,” Michelle went.
May-Lin understood what that meant. When Michelle mentioned a person’s name thrice, it meant she was in love with that person. The name-calling was just a thrilling mantra; if she could not possess the person as yet,
