by May Seah
Under the intensity of her glare, he offered mildly: “You could at least run these things by me first.”
“You’ll do as I say,” she said firmly. “Did you eat lunch? Do you want some cake? Some clients sent us a box this morning.”
“Er, is that topless magazine shoot off?”
“Oh, you’re right. No cake for you. By the way, there’s been talk of putting you in your own reality TV show.”
“I’m not doing that!” He was genuinely horrified. “Besides, why would they want me? I have no life to speak of. Get Holliday to do it—she’d love it.”
“That’s what I told them, dear,” Minnie said. “I’ll see if I can talk them out of it. But I suspect it’s because reality shows like these are cheaper to produce. Speaking of cost cutting—we had an analyst in here the other day. Said our advertising revenues are falling like crazy, sponsors aren’t biting, audiences’ attention spans are getting shorter, blah blah blah. So the long and short of it is that all our budgets have been cut. And they’ll be doing whatever it takes to get ad money.”
Keh sighed. “Can they at least bring back the prawn curry on set?”
Minnie snorted. “You’ll be lucky if you still get kopi. Ours is not to question why.” She shuffled some papers distractedly. “How’s The Second-to-Last Magistrate coming along? You’d better enjoy it while you can—it’s probably going to be the last period production for a long time. Period shows cost a whopping extra—all those props and costumes and stunts. Nostalgia sells, but it’s certainly not cheap to fake.”
Keh didn’t answer. He was busy observing Minnie closely through narrowed eyes.
Something was different about her today. Usually, this female dynamo charged from one brusque moment to the next with a dictatorial fury that made Mussolini look like Colonel Sanders. Today, she was positively brimming with good cheer—by Minnie’s standards, that is. During the course of their conversation, he could have sworn he’d seen the corners of her mouth twitch, like she was almost smiling—although he quickly banished this thought as being patently impossible.
She noticed his silence and looked up from her phone. “What?” she barked.
“Somebody’s in a good mood today.”
She made an unglamorous hacking noise in her throat. “You’re so annoying when you smirk, Jonny Keh.”
“What’s happened? Did you strike the lottery?”
She blinked at him for a moment. “Well…” she stepped closer to him and cleared her throat. “Actually…you know my great-grand-aunt in Malaysia?”
He recalled that Minnie did have a few elderly relatives in Malaysia; she had been born in either Muar or Klang, he couldn’t remember which. In fact, he believed, she had just returned from a trip to visit them.
“Did you see her? How is she?”
“She’s dead.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks. I found out while I was up there going through the paperwork with the lawyers, that the old vixen had been sitting on a nice little pile all this while and never told anybody.” Her bugle voice lowered itself conspiratorially. “She lived in Malacca, but she owned a big plot of land—we think somewhere in Johor—and it’s worth at least a couple of mil.”
Keh seized her hand. “Are you going to quit your job and live in luxury for the rest of your life? Am I going to lose you?”
As a further sign of her good mood, she actually allowed him to grasp her hand. “That’s not all,” she whispered hoarsely. “On that land, there’s a house, and it’s filled to the rafters with Peranakan antiques that she squirrelled away over the years. Those are worth another bloody fortune.”
“Minnie, I’m torn between being happy for you and genuinely scared that tomorrow you’ll retire early and leave me without a capable manager. When will you come into your inheritance? Next week? Next month?”
“Er, that’s the thing. We haven’t actually located the plot of land.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah, apparently she left some sort of vague map—X marks the spot. It’s all a bit Nyonyas of the Caribbean. But you know how old people are—my great-grandaunt probably wouldn’t have known a GPS coordinate if it bit her in the derriere. Anyway, once the map’s been found, they’ll notify me straight away.”
“And then you’ll be a gazillionaire.” Keh let a long breath pass through his lips.
“You’ll never see me again.” This time, she actually smiled. It took all his willpower not to recoil from shock.
“I’m happy for you, Min. You deserve a break.”
“Thanks, Jonny. Anyway, back to business. I’ve just gotten wind of your next film assignment.”
“What is it?”
Minnie smiled again, and the effect was no less jarring. “You’ll be playing”—she paused dramatically—“an actor!”
“Sorry?”
“You’ve been cast in a movie about actors making a movie. It’s called The Movie That Everybody Saw. Holliday and Jerome are in it, too. Won’t that be fun?”
Keh blinked. He felt as if he were sitting at a desk in a hollow examination hall, pen poised in hand, clock ticking loudly, and staring blankly at the question paper, which bore one question in bold black ink: “Won’t that be fun?”
He had not studied for the exam. He had not attended any of the classes. In fact, he had entered the examination hall thinking it was Physics 101, but it had turned out to be Philosophy 404.
Would it be fun? He did not know the answer. And, for some reason he could not explain, a forbidding feeling built in the pit of his stomach.
9
Keh got out of his car and crossed the pavement in the sweltering heat, wiping off the perspiration that formed instantly on his nose. Just as he’d been wrapping up his scenes for the day, he received a text summoning him to his manager’s office.
There could not have been two worlds more different than the sprawling production backlot and the towering corporate offices of Moving Talkies Pictures.
The offices were housed in a steel-and-glass building all the way across the property, facing the main road. To get there, you had to ride a buggy or risk melting in the daytime heat. But once you got inside, the air conditioning was always set to an arctic temperature and the marble floors and walls gave off echoes of corporate iciness.
He had to go through a few security scans in the lift lobby and through several imposing glass doors before feeling an overpowering sense of déjà vu, as if there was nothing playing on TV but reruns of reruns. He thought he had seen this episode before, and he had no desire to see it again. He exited the office building and put his Ray-Bans back on.
10
Long after the sun had gone down, the tropical air was still full of residual heat. It settled densely into the hibiscus shrubs on Shallot Road, scenting the night with syrupy humidity. While returning home after one of his vision therapy sessions, Keh mulled over what his optometrist had said to him.
He had been undergoing vision therapy for a long time now, and as the years had gone on, the sessions had morphed from doing the exercises in earnest futility to ending early and sitting around Dr Chan’s office instead, drinking coffee and discussing the important matters of the day, such as whether the combination of a cigarette lighter and strategic flatulence could actually cause ignition.
Dr Chan had an unruly shock of hair, thick glasses and a perpetual smirk, all of which conspired to make him look like a mad scientist. In the field of optometry, the young doctor was considered one of the best in the country. But even he had been forced to concede that the therapy was not doing Keh any good.
Today, as they’d sat sprawled out together on the lime green couch in his office, Dr Chan had said, as casually as if discussing the weather, “I’ve been working in the lab on some lens implants for you. Anyhow do one. Don’t know if it will work.” He slurped on his coffee and smirked to himself.
Keh watched him carefully and wordlessly until he spoke again.
; “We both know the therapy isn’t working. But if we can fix your vision using the new technology—simple as using a specially developed lens, like corrective eyewear—then we have an instant solution.”
“How far along have you gotten?” Keh asked, trying to keep his tone even.
“Don’t get too excited,” Dr Chan said calmly, crossing one gangly leg over the other. “I’m just mucking about in the lab lah. Anyhow do one.”
But Keh knew that his friend would not have mentioned the subject at all if he hadn’t had a certain measure of confidence that his experiment was on its way to yielding results. A spreading new hope unfurled before him, even as he tried to temper it for fear of being disappointed.
This had been weighing on his mind all the way home that evening. As he stepped into his lift, his thoughts of what it would be like to finally watch his own films were interrupted by a baritone ballyhoo.
“Hold the door, Jon Keh,” commanded the tall young man in a fringed black caftan and ripped jeans who strode into the lift: his neighbour, Junqiang Pereira.
“You won’t believe the day I’ve had,” Junqiang sighed, without even letting Keh get a greeting in. “They went over our performance reviews today. I mean, if nobody is hitting targets, that means the targets are unrealistic, right? I don’t care that they grade us on a curve, because obviously I’m one of the highest performing members on the team, but linking individual effort to the company’s revenue just doesn’t take enough factors into account. Plus, thanks to the new administrative system they implemented, I can’t even apply for leave without the request going through five different supervisors. And now they’re apparently going to revoke our dental benefits too. One of the space aliens has already upped and quit.”
Junqiang worked at a multinational theme park as Marilyn Monroe. He was requisitely tall, with narrow shoulders and beautiful legs. The rest, he liked to say, was just smoke, mirrors and memory foam.
As Marilyn, his job was to make appearances, greet visitors and pose for photos with them. In the theme park’s rigid hierarchy of performing characters, he was pretty much at the top, and he had fought tooth and nail for many years to climb that bitter, bloodstained ladder, as he always told anyone who appeared to be listening.
“I’ve a good mind to go up to Human Resources and bang on their door—but what good would that do?” he continued, hefting his huge leather tote on his shoulder and fanning himself with one hand. “Their bonuses are in peril this year, too. Everybody works so hard, and instead of red carpet treatment, all we get is red tape.” He turned to Keh. “Eh, is it true that you’re dating Holliday Heng? I read that on No Star Too C-List Online. She’s hot.”
“No,” Keh said. “Sorry.”
“I knew it. That woman doesn’t exist outside of Instagram, does she? Because if she were real, how could she resist you, Adjonis Keh?” Junqiang grinned and leaned confidentially in. “Can I tell you something?” He paused dramatically, then said, almost shyly, “I’m in love.” In an excited squeak, he added, “With Minion Dave.”
“Oh. Congratulations,” Keh said, uncertainly.
“Her name is Ling. She’s been Minion Dave for the last year. They said they would promote her to Minion Bob in six months, but they didn’t—wankers. I’ve never met anyone like her before. She’s The One, Jon.” Junqiang gave an energetic little hop, making the elevator shudder from side to side.
“I’m happy for you,” Keh said, clapping his neighbour on the back.
Junqiang’s face darkened. “Well, there’s one catch. She’s married,” he said. “To a bastard who’s cheating on her.”
“Ah,” Keh said, wondering if he should find something more to say, but knowing that Junqiang wasn’t really listening, anyway.
“That sorry excuse for a man must be the biggest fool on this earth—to have a girl as amazing as Ling and not cherish her.” He looked Keh intensely in the face. “If we can catch him in the act with the other woman, there’ll be grounds for a clean and swift divorce. And then Ling and I can be together.”
“How are you going to do that?”
He waved his phone in front of Keh’s nose. “I’m going to follow the bastard around and get him cheating on video.” His chiselled jaw clenched menacingly and in the harsh lighting inside the lift, all the bones in his lean face stood out in stark relief.
“Good luck, my friend,” Keh said sincerely, as the doors opened onto Junqiang’s floor. “Just remember to get out of costume before you start tailing the guy.”
Junqiang’s face broke into a grin. “Marilyn always gets her man,” he called back, disappearing in a flurry of black fringe, leather and deafening baritone laughter.
11
The reality TV show was given the title Temple of Adjonis.
Minnie hadn’t been able to get him out of it because the manufacturer of the vanilla yoghurt had signed on as the show’s sponsor.
They’d wanted the show to be almost wholly unscripted, depicting the hedonistic—or, at the very least, undisciplined—lifestyle of a famous, successful and nationally desired celebrity, with all the wild parties, backstage intrigue, scandal and heartbreak.
What they hadn’t counted on was for Keh to disappoint them so dramatically. As it turned out, his life made for such poor television that a week and a half into filming, the producers started to call emergency meetings.
It wasn’t just that his days were regular and routine: they consisted unvaryingly of an early morning workout, followed by long hours on set, then straight home to bed. His life simply attracted no dramatic energy. Nothing even approaching the previous rescue of Holliday took place while the crew was filming the show; in fact, his work on set went off without a hitch, directors threw no tantrums and no one squabbled with anyone. His unflappable constancy made Steve Jobs’ wardrobe look like a Mardi Gras costume.
In consternation, the producers whispered among themselves that it simply came down to Adjonis Keh’s personality, or lack thereof. “He’s a great guy and all, but somehow, he just doesn’t come across as all that interesting,” they murmured.
Frustrated—and bleeding money with each day of footage so boring it was unusable—they produced a hasty script and gave him lines to learn.
“It’s for the fans,” they explained. “You don’t want to disappoint them, right? Do it for your fans.”
From then on, he raced Formula One cars at two in the morning. He was set upon by supermodels at rooftop bars. He went for a fitting for an eye-wateringly expensive suit and accidentally spilled champagne on it. He found a baby bird fallen from its nest and nursed it back to health. Holliday was hired to go on secret dates with him, after which they ran laughing from the paparazzi while feeding each other maraschino cherries. And through it all, he enjoyed copious amounts of vanilla yoghurt from his uniformly well-stocked refrigerator.
April stopped by one day on a set visit, for which she had been instructed to get some behind-the-scenes video footage to go with a short report on how the filming was progressing.
They were filming at NTUC FairPrice that day, because an important part of Adjonis Keh’s daily ritual was to personally stock up on life’s most essential necessity, vanilla yoghurt. The cameras followed him as he traversed the dairy aisle, bathed in the hypnotic electric glow of towering shelves neatly stacked with endless rows of identical yoghurt pots, all melding into a blue and white blur.
Out of the corner of his eye, he was conscious of April’s observing, recording presence. It made him self-conscious in an almost guilty way, as if her being there in her professional capacity made what he was doing even more of an elaborate hoax.
Once the lunch break was called and he had finished dutifully posing for selfies with the excited supermarket staff, he led her towards the exit, his cap pulled low over his eyes. “I’m so glad you came by—take me away from this circus,” he quipped as they dodged an aggressively exuberant auntie’s shopping cart and marched past the canned peaches.
“Okay
, but you’d better give me some good quotes later.”
“Nothing good can come of this show.” They strode down an aisle lined with row after row of detergent powders, all packaged in bright primary colours.
“Is this what takes place in the Temple of Adjonis? Ritual ablutions in fermented dairy products, followed by a swift and efficient self-checkout and twenty cents off if you bring your own grocery bag?” she asked, the floor-to-ceiling displays of a thousand cup noodle flavours creating channels on either side of them.
“Don’t knock it—some of this bacteria is more cultured than I am.”
“This was a wasted opportunity to make a soap opera instead. Love Amidst the Lactobacillus. The ratings would have been off the charts. Hey, you should see the video footage I got—for all intents and purposes, it’s a reality show of a reality show.” The army of fluorescent lamps suspended from the high ceiling was making her eyes bright as liquorice jawbreakers. “Does that make it extra real?”
“It’s really extra how they’ve remixed my life. Did you know that I collect rare, vintage ang ku kueh moulds? Neither did I.” He put on his sunglasses, extra dark ones to deter recognition, as they stepped out through the automatic doors into the rumbling heat of the busy street, and turned left in search of a bite to eat.
She mused, speaking a little louder so he could hear her over the sound of cars passing, “I once wrote the obituary of a man who collected epaulettes. Imagine how many fascinating stories he could have told about them. People are so interesting.”
“I’m not.” A giant billboard with his face on it loomed into view, making him cringe. On it, he was selling a refreshing beverage while showing a little too much clavicle.
She patted his shoulder in mock sympathy. “If I were a celebrity, I would like to be uninteresting. It seems so much more dignified.”
She was walking lithely a little ahead of him, through a narrow passageway lined with pastel Peranakan shophouses with tiny door-frames and square windows set into the walls. He watched the hem of her red skirt move through the backdrop of the ornate tiles that covered the ground and walls, painted with jade-coloured birds and burgundy peonies.
