Corridor

by Alfian Sa'at

  CUBICLE

  All 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: 6th 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, and she placed her Chanel handbag on the sink counter. She took out a compact case and started to powder her nose and cheeks. Then she took out a strip of paper which was actually a transparent sticker. Using curved scissors, she cut out a crescent, peeled it off and stuck it on her right eyelid. It turned her puffy single eyelid into a double one. She raised her eyebrows and turned her head from side to side. The two girls on each side of her had finished adjusting their hair by the time she was carefully, with her mouth gaping in effort, doubling her left eyelid.

  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, at least she could have the person’s name do a three-beat waltz on her tongue. At one point of time she had gone “May-Lin, May-Lin…” And then as if realising what she was about to do, Michelle said, “Stop. No more.” She had laughed, and May-Lin laughed along with her.

  “If only she understood,” Michelle moaned.

  “For some people, however hard they try, they won’t understand,” May-Lin told her.

  “Angela’s not like that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Trust me, I know. We’re very close,” Michelle replied.

  “But not close enough,” May-Lin answered back.

  Michelle put down the phone.

  * * *

  The next day, the two girls went to the HMV record store again. May-Lin didn’t know in the beginning that it was supposed to stand for “His Master’s Voice”, and was shocked when Michelle said it stood for “Her Majesty’s Vagina”. Their exams were over, and they were just waiting for the holidays to begin. Everyone in their polytechnic was getting restless, and one of the ways they showed their impatience was by hanging out in Orchard Road after school.

  Michelle was wearing a blue and white tie-dye sheath dress, and May-Lin was in her usual T-shirt and pants ensemble. Michelle also had on a pair of strawberry earrings. Michelle bought a Nina Simone CD whereas May-Lin got herself a Vanessa-Mae.

  “Nina Simone’s got a really low voice,” Michelle told MayLin.

  “Really?” May-Lin asked.

  “Very low… I like,” Michelle said.

  After they paid for their CDs they went to the toilet. MayLin half expected it to happen because Michelle had called her to complain about Angela the night before. It always happened that way. What she couldn’t get from Angela she would later be able to obtain second-hand from May-Lin. May-Lin would be there to lick her wounds for her. So the two girls locked themselves up in a corner cubicle and started undressing each other. They didn’t know how they got to be so daring. But Michelle had read somewhere that there was no law against two women behaving improperly with each other in public places. The Queen couldn’t imagine what two women could possibly want from each other. It gave an almost poetic significance to how the HMV toilet was often used for their amorous rendezvous, considering how Michelle had once jokingly explained to May-Lin what HMV stood for.

  After it was all over, May-Lin held Michelle in a clumsy embrace.

  “Michelle, do you love me?” she suddenly asked.

  Michelle kept quiet.

  “Michelle,” May-Lin asked again, tracing a spiral, delicate as a snail’s shell, on her shoulder, “do you think we could be together? Why aren’t we together?”

  Michelle pulled her head away and looked at May-Lin.

  “May-Lin, you know you’re not my type.”

  “Then why do we do this?”

  Michelle smiled at her.

  “I don’t know, May-Lin. But you like it right? You don’t want me to stop? You don’t want me to go away?”

  “Then what’s your type? Angela?”

  “Yes. Don’t you think she’s pretty?” Would you go for her too?”

  May-Lin nodded.

  “But don’t try,” Michelle said, “we’re supposed to be friends. Friends don’t go for the same person.”

  “She’s straight, Michelle,” May-Lin said. Her voice was becoming softer, more defeated.

  Michelle leaned over and placed her cheek against MayLin’s mouth. May-Lin kissed it and then squashed her nose against it, inhaling deeply, smelling in the powdery smell of rouge. Then Michelle drew away and looked at her best friend.

  “I still think that you need concealer.”

  But she said it so tenderly. May-Lin felt a chill, and a draught that stirred the dust in a house with a thousand open windows. But no door.

  “What’s wrong?” Michelle asked.

  “Let’s go outside.”

  Michelle followed May-Lin out of the toilets and eventually out of the record store. The night air held the smell of a rain that had just passed. The two girls occupied a spot near some shrivelled plants. Just opposite them, a couple of waiters, still in their aprons, were taking a fag break. However they soon realised that with cigarettes dangling from their mouths, they didn’t have a lighter between them.

  “Miss,” one of them, a Malay waiter with an earring in his left ear, approached May-Lin. “Got lighter or not?”

  May-Lin passed her translucent lavender lighter to the waiter.

  “Thanks Miss,” he said.

  “You can keep it,” May-Lin replied.

  “No, it’s okay.”

  “I don’t smoke,” she told him. What she didn’t tell him was that she didn’t have a need for that lighter anymore. It had served its purpose. A night ago, she had set fire to her organiser, muttering to herself that all that was history, there was too much baggage, she had to learn to start anew. She had also realised that Michelle was right in calling it a diary. It would have been different if it were just an organiser, the loss would be just that of routine, of a predictable future, a momentary severance with contacts. But she had actually burned a diary, and that was why as she watched the flames grope across its weathered leather cover, the pain was unbearable.

  “What happened just now?” Michelle asked.

  “You can’t remember?” May-Lin asked back, smiling.

  “No, not that. Why were you crying?”

  “Michelle,” May-Lin said.

  “Yes, why?”

  “Do you remember when we went to Boat Quay the last time? There was this booth, this stupid Japanese machine. You put in five one dollar coins and it would take a picture of you and a picture of me. And then the computer would put the pictures together and show us what our b
aby would look like. I remember that I wanted a girl but you said a son would be better. So I let you. I let you press the button.”

  “Waste of money,” Michelle said.

  “And you asked me to take off my specs. You said the baby would look good if she had my eyes. And so it took both our photos.”

  Michelle didn’t seem to be listening anymore. She was looking at the two waiters who were fagging, wreaths of smoke surrounding them. One of them was squatting and looking up at his friend, the Malay waiter. The latter was imitating someone, who by the looks it of it, was hunchbacked and had one violently trembling arm.

  “You ran away, Michelle.”

  Michelle still did not look at May-Lin.

  “Just when I could hear the printing sound. The machine said wait, couldn’t you read the screen, it told us to wait, it was printing out our baby. You were laughing, and you kept saying it was all so crazy. I thought you were the one who was crazy. You wouldn’t let me go back and see the print-out. You pulled me to that stinky toilet then you said you needed it. But all I could think of was that baby in the booth.”

  “Please, it was just paper,” Michelle said.

  “Why didn’t you want to even look at it? We could just take a look at it, and if you didn’t like it, I could just burn it, you know, destroy all evidence.”

  “Angela asked me out tomorrow night. Do you think I should go? I don’t want to seem too eager, you know. I don’t want to give her the impression that I’m dying to be around her. Should I?”