The Movie That No One Saw

by May Seah

  “You would be very frustrated at work if we were all uninteresting. All your stories would be non-stories,” he said. Just behind the row of delicate candy-coloured conservation shophouses, construction cranes were pulling half-formed office buildings upwards into the sky as traffic revved steadily past them.

  “You make a good point,” April replied, lifting her dark hair off her neck and fanning herself a little as she moved through the sweltering air. The glimpse of a few soft wisps, plastered to the nape of her neck, quickened his pulse. Her ponytail bobbed like a question mark swaying with her movement.

  “Hey, look! It’s Adjonis Keh!” a little boy said as he passed, pointing and staring openly. The child was hanging from the hand of his mother, who stopped in her tracks to gasp and simper at the sight of Keh. “You’re not real,” the child called after him as Keh smiled, tipped his cap to the mother and walked on. “I saw you on the TV! Everything on the TV isn’t real!”

  Catching up with April, he said to her, “At least I can fake it. I still give you fairly good quotes, right? Go on, ask me a question. Any question.”

  She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully up at him as he fell into step beside her. He was not sure if he discerned a playful lilt in her voice: “What is the question you most frequently ask yourself?”

  “That’s not a proper question,” he said with a frown.

  “Why not?”

  “You can’t ask a question about a question—it’s a cop-out.”

  “But without a question, is an answer still an answer?”

  Just then, a gaggle of uniformed schoolgirls penetrated his disguise with excited gasps and squeals, and April stood politely aside while he obliged them with selfies, then smoothly extricated himself from their clutches and walked after her.

  “You think you’re clever,” he said, sneering exaggeratedly as they crossed the road at the traffic light, the sun radiating heat down and the asphalt wafting heat up. “Okay. Two can play at this game. The question I ask myself most frequently is, ‘Why don’t I know all the right answers?’”

  “What if you’re not asking the right questions?” She turned abruptly in the direction of a laksa stall. It was the one that had accidentally been awarded a Michelin star because it had the same name as a posh Chinese restaurant—there had been a small scandal in the news, but long after apologies had been made and the star transferred to the rightful recipient, the stall still benefited from the publicity.

  As they approached, the delicious smell of the spicy stock grew steadily richer. Already, he could taste the brine of the cockles and the tender bite of the rice noodles melting into the orange heat of the gravy. It was all making him feel vaguely philosophical.

  “What if we’re just characters in someone’s story?”

  “Don’t be so unoriginal. If you say, ‘We are all stars of our own movies,’ I’m going to smack you.”

  “If I only had a penny for every time you rolled your eyes at me.”

  “Okay.” She turned to him. “Here’s a question that isn’t about a question. What would you do if you didn’t have to worry about being watched all the time?”

  They had arrived, and he noticed that stall next door boasted a large signboard advertising chilli crab; both stalls were filling rapidly up with a lunch crowd, and it was becoming clear that some of the people eating at the outdoor tables had already seen through his cap and glasses. Even the stall owners were now ignoring their customers to point at him and gesture excitedly to one another.

  “I would eat in front of strangers,” he said. He pointed to the fluorescent crab that lit up the sign like a scarlet beacon of promise. “I would eat chilli crab with my bare hands in full view of other people, with sauce all over my face and running down to my elbows, and bits of coriander stuck in my teeth.” He laughed. “Come on. Let’s dabao the laksa and eat it in my car.”

  But she stopped him. “No,” she said. “You go on ahead to the car. I’ll get the food. Hurry, or you’ll be stuck here forever taking selfies with every single person and their grandmother.”

  When she got in the car several minutes later, she was holding a large paper bag. “We’re going to a special place,” she instructed him.

  They pulled up at a nondescript housing block and he followed April up to a flat on the fifth floor. A neat row of potted plants lined the corridor under the window and the gate was painted a cheerful turquoise. April rang the bell, and the door was answered by a greying couple who greeted her effusively.

  “This is Sparky and Sandy,” April said to Keh by way of introduction. “Sandy has only thirty per cent of vision in her left eye. Sparky is blind.” She turned to the couple. “I’d like to introduce you to my friend, Jon.”

  Sparky, a tall, reed-thin man in a button-down cotton shirt and grey Bermudas, held out his hand for Keh to shake, then clapped him on the shoulder. “Glad to meet you. Have a seat,” he said.

  The three-room flat was small and sparsely furnished, but very clean and well-appointed. In the living room, behind the sofa, was a large bookshelf spilling over with books; Keh wondered if Sandy and Sparky were sad that they couldn’t read them any longer.

  “Yes, sit down, dear,” said Sandy, who was comfortably plump and wore fluffy pink bedroom slippers. “We’re always so happy when April comes to visit us. And we love meeting her friends.”

  “She’s such a good girl—and so talented,” Sparky said, as April, busy setting the table in the middle of the dining room, unveiled a large box of chilli crab and another of fried buns, catching Keh’s eye and smiling. “She wrote our friend Tim’s obituary. It was so well written. That’s how we met, you know. When Tim’s son read it to us, we just had to contact her so we could thank her.” They all sat down at the table to start the meal. “And what do you do, young man?”

  “Oh, I work in television production,” Keh said.

  “Ha! We don’t own a television. Can you guess why?” Sparky laughed uproariously.

  “Stop teasing our guest, Sparky.” Sandy dipped a bit of her bun into the sauce. “We have a radio, but we don’t need to have white noise in the house,” she chuckled. “What we enjoy is when April reads to us. I like murder mysteries and Beat poetry. Sparky likes Kierkegaard. What books do you like to read?”

  “Jon will read to you a little later,” April said, smiling over at him. He nodded, because his mouth was full of fresh, hot crab and his face was smeared with thick, red sauce viscous with strings of egg white. And he was happy.

  Once they were leaving Sparky and Sandy’s house and walking towards his car, he turned to April. “Thanks for doing this for me,” he said.

  “Thanks for reading Shel Silverstein to them,” she said.

  He grinned at her, that winning, toothpaste-selling celebrity smile that had been proven to have consistently high efficacy rates, and let his eyes linger on her face.

  “Why won’t you be mine?” he said. “Say yes now and we’ll ride off into the sunset together on an e-scooter built for two. And in a couple of years, we’ll settle into married mediocrity and have two-point-five children and volunteer to be traffic wardens at elite primary schools before they’re even born so they’ll have the best shot at getting accepted.”

  She laughed lightly and quickened her pace, forcing him to lengthen his stride if he wanted to keep up. She was smiling, but a little sadly, because she knew what he did not know: that he loved her, but not as much as he loved the image of himself he thought he saw reflected in her.

  12

  Rain had not fallen in so long that large patches of grass had started to turn brown, and birds searched desperately for puddles of water to snatch a drink from. But this did not deter legions of fans from showing up to see their favourite stars at the Fly Me Away road show.

  A large stage, complete with LED screens and enormous speakers, had been built in the middle of the field behind Marina Bay Sands. Makeshift tents served as the backstage area, with a holding room, hair and make-up, and a chang
ing room.

  The stage segment, in which the show’s cast members interacted with the host and select fans, had just concluded and the actors were milling around backstage, having perspiration dabbed off their faces by the make-up artists and trying to regain optimal body temperature by standing in front of the portable air-con units.

  Presiding over the chaos was Minnie, who, with a couple of assistants, was looking after her actors’ welfare.

  It was at times like these, during on-the-ground events, that Minnie wondered drily to herself what the difference was between a showbiz manager and a kindergarten teacher. Looking after the talent was no walk in the park. Tasks such as making sure organisers and event staff were instructed on what to do and what not to do for and around the talent fell to her. The talent came to her if their wardrobes malfunctioned, their parking needed validating, or their egos required airing and brushing. Outside the boardroom, it seemed to her that her job was the glorified equivalent of wiping snotty noses, dishing out applesauce and calling for order. In the private holding tent, she surveyed her charges maternally.

  Jerome Goh was sitting back in a chair, his long legs carelessly sprawled in a relaxed attitude, while the make-up artist dabbed some finishing touches of powder onto his brows. Jerome was generally a good boy—and anyway, it was easy to overlook his faults because he was so handsome. Indeed, if one had to choose between being intelligent and being good-looking, Minnie thought, only a fool would choose intelligence.

  The thing that vexed her most about him was that he could not be trusted to style himself for any occasion—his fashion sense, if you could call it that, was decidedly normcore, for lack of a better word—and she’d had to hire him his own dedicated personal stylist, just to keep him from appearing in public in ratty shorts, chewed-up flip-flops and week-old T-shirts. How nice it must be, she thought, to be so pretty that you did not even care about wearing deodorant, much less have any sense of responsibility about your image in the face of your brand sponsors.

  There was Holliday, busily live-streaming herself doing something or other. Minnie was intimately familiar with Holliday’s type and did not devote more time than was necessary to thinking about her. If you’d seen one Holliday Heng, you’d seen them all. To fall into this category, you didn’t even have to be extraordinarily beautiful— you just had to take yourself too seriously.

  There was Michael, an actor who insisted on going by one name only, like Madonna or Aristotle, except that, unlike those luminaries, his name did not stand out quite so much, which caused exasperating headaches for Minnie when she had to bring him up in the presence of business partners. Michael was also an opera singer on the side, taking on tenor parts in stage productions, and was occasionally asked to perform on variety shows. In fact, he had just given a rendition of “Nessun Dorma” during the road show. Many years ago, rumours abounded that he and Decibelle Ding were involved in a torrid love affair involving an unspecified crime of passion in the wings of the Esplanade Theatre. Exciting times for those in the gossip circuit.

  Then there was the celebrity couple consisting of Verandah Lim and Brashton Lim: the Lim-Lims. Their high-profile relationship had begun five years ago, when Minnie’s bosses decided that it would be great publicity for Verandah and Brashton’s respective careers—and for the soon-to-be-released movie they were co-starring in—if they were revealed to be secretly dating. The only fly in the ointment was that they were not dating, secretly or otherwise. But this was far from insurmountable.

  Their elaborate romance was imaginatively designed and strategically carried out entirely over social media. The soft-focus photos were beautiful. The sponsored gifts were jaw-dropping. The declarations of love were faultlessly composed. The fans went wild.

  Eventually and surprisingly, they fell truly in love, got married and were now possessed of two young children, Brno and SuperlitAF. For the sake of gender equality, the family had decided to adopt a double-barrelled surname; to Brashton’s credit, it had been his suggestion. When their nationally televised wedding was held, some people had speculated meanly that they were doing it for the gifts. But it was plain to Minnie, who had spent more than enough time behind the scenes with them, that they were really in love with each other.

  Minnie looked upon the Lim-Lims with doting indulgence because they brought in lots of cash by endorsing products like diapers, formula and various household cleaning products.

  And she often wished that all the actors under her charge had the social skills and emotional intelligence that fate had bestowed upon Verandah in particular. It would have made her own job of drumming up positive publicity so much easier. Verandah Lim-Lim was one of those people who knew instinctively what was expected of her in every situation. She calibrated her image accordingly, to give people just what they wanted—no more and no less.

  Adjonis Keh, on the other hand, was exactly the same in public and in private. That was his best quality, and his greatest flaw.

  It came, perhaps, from the poor child’s never having been able to view his own image on the screen. His eyes, beautiful though they were, were weak. But the boy was a dear, and his popularity was profitable, and he really was astonishingly good at acting. Minnie had been in the business long enough to know that success never smiled on any one person for too long; and yet it had favoured Jon Keh in the way that fortune favours the wise, the fool or the brave. She felt quite protective of him, which was why, during the fan meet-and-greet that was about to take place, she was not allowing any of the fans selfies with him. It would be far too much for his eyes.

  Of course, all the fans really wanted was a picture with their favourite actor.

  So, a giant life-sized cardboard version of Keh had been printed and set up in the tent. After each fan had met briefly with Keh himself, they were to proceed to the standee to take their pictures with it. That way, everybody got what they had come for.

  Keh sat now, on a folding chair, in the shadow of his own image. It was a cutout of him in character from his currently airing show, the popular aviation-themed drama Fly Me Away, dressed in the character’s uniform and smiling like an orthodontist’s dream; he had played First Officer Leong and the show was a hit. The colour printing was of the highest quality, Keh noted, and the cardboard even more so; it was as solid and weighty as plywood, giving the standee a hefty presence. It was actually even bigger and taller than himself. The fluorescent lighting in the tent cast a streaky sheen over the standee’s beaming face, which now loomed amiably over him.

  “Wow, that’s a really good one,” Verandah Lim-Lim remarked as she walked by on her way out, her eyes admiring the cardboard standee. “Good angle—you look so handsome! Who doesn’t love a man in uniform?”

  “Thanks,” he said, but didn’t add more because he was quietly conserving his energy for when he would have to interact with dozens of excitable fans. He could already hear them getting louder and louder, forming a disorderly queue outside.

  “Are you ready, Jon?” Minnie shouted from the entrance. “Stand by.”

  The first group of fans was already at the door, shrieking energetically. Keh stood up and braced himself with good humour.

  But the first fan through the door passed him right by and made a frantic beeline for the standee, and all the others followed.

  “It’s First Officer Leong! He’s so handsome!” they shrieked, their phones already out and snapping away.

  More and more fans crowded rapidly into the tent, and as the body heat in the close quarters multiplied, so did the volume and the chaos.

  Around the standee, the crowd was building and swirling like a feeding frenzy. Everyone wanted a selfie with their arms around it; with their hands holding its hand; with their lips pressed against its face. They swarmed over it like desperate houseflies.

  “First Officer Leong encouraged me to quit my job and travel the world as a travel blogger,” one girl shrieked.

  “First Officer Leong helped me conquer my phobia of flying,
” a slightly older woman announced, placing a bouquet of flowers reverentially at the standee’s feet.

  “First Officer Leong said really woke things that comforted me when my parents split up,” another girl cried, tears running down her face.

  Even at the point of being mobbed, First Officer Leong smiled serenely out. And then he started to wobble at his base.

  “Hey,” Keh called out. But his voice was swallowed up in the noise of the rabble. “Look out!” he shouted, as the standee began to rock violently and the fans’ screams increased. He rushed forward. As he pushed several girls out of the way of the inevitably building danger, he saw, in a flash of panic mixed with helpless resignation, his own shiny face toppling heavily towards him.

  Before he had time to react, the unwavering smile crashed down upon him, crushing him beneath its bulk and weight.

  13

  Adjonis Keh woke from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a bodiless head.

  He knew then that he had dreamt that he had woken from a dream and was dreaming still, but that was okay. Dreams, as any avid movie or television viewer knew, were essential plot devices. And, as a matter of fact, in this particular dream world of rapid eye movement, he was writing a screenplay. It was for a movie in which he was also starring. He saw his own disembodied hands typing away at a computer, moving at a furious speed. At the top of the document, he observed that the title read: The Guardian Angel.

  It was the story of the titular angel—played by himself—who had been sent to watch over the Tiong Bahru Plaza branch of Guardian pharmacy.

  In fulfilment of his sacrosanct mission, the angel spent his days stocking the shelves with pills, cotton buds, Cetaphil and cough syrup. Dressed in the uniform of a button-down shirt and cheery orange apron, he passed his on-duty time sweeping the floors, wiping down the shopping baskets and dusting in the stockroom. When necessary, he assisted customers in finding purchases they needed and bagging their items in filmy orange plastic.