Singapore

November Rain

D. Biswas

Believe me when I tell you I’m a good man, with a sound explanation for the large Louis Vuitton handbag sitting at the back compartment of my wardrobe, though I’m neither married nor live with a woman. The contents of the bag are not your everyday items either … but more about that later.

A bag like that would tell you that we Singaporeans value our place in society above all else. When we encounter one another for the first time, we behave much like our pet dogs, who sniff each other out during their walks – we check out handbags and shoes and watches to size up our counterparts. So, let me begin by telling you I used to work as a private investigator; if not for the law, then by its side. My job gave me the ride of a lifetime, but ultimately washed me up on the shore minus a couple of body parts.

The last guy I chased ended with him getting caught, but I fell onto the MRT tracks at Bishan, and an oncoming train sawed off my legs. I can still feel my shins and feet – they itch and scratch sometimes. But my legs end at my thighs, and I’ve learned to accept that.

It didn’t go as badly as it could have gone. My company retained me as a freelance online investigator, and I still had this large airy apartment. They needed someone with experience to track suspicious activities online.

The automatic wheelchair made life easier, and the leftover tools of my trade provided the only worthwhile entertainment: I often trained my best telescopes and binoculars on my neighbours in the low-cost HDB complex opposite.

I had grown used to snooping on people throughout my career: cheating spouses, company employees, and aggressive loan sharks. I ferreted out their secrets, or pulled the plug on their double lives. Now that I lived alone, looking into other people’s lives became my only way of connecting with them. The constant fear of discovery gave me an adrenalin rush – a pale shadow of my bygone days on the job, but a legless man takes what he can get.

One November evening, I saw two young women move in to one of the HDB apartments across the street. They hadn’t had time to buy curtains, and I had a clear view of their rooms through window grills. I had my telescopes set beside my black leather couch in my living room: the larger one for greater distances, and the smaller one for nearer objects, which I concealed behind dark-grey blinds. As usual, I tried to lip-read, guess the relationship between the women, their nationalities. I wanted to know their covert, veiled lives. I pegged the girls down as Filipinas come to Singapore in search of work. One wore a black uniform, and I knew straight-off she worked at the reception of a hotel. The other wore jeans and a top, and going by her bulky arms, held a job that involved physical labour. She looked too self-assured to be a maid, and her steady walk intrigued me. It gave her grace and authority at the same time.

That evening, I watched them as they stepped out of their kitchen into the living room. They carried tapau packs of food and ate them sitting on the ramshackle sofa by the flickering light of the television. The ‘hotel receptionist’ went to bed early. The other one, my favourite, stayed up watching TV. Her legs moved from side to side, making her long, loose culottes flutter. Her feet sat on a small wooden table.

As I watched her, I tried to imagine where she worked. Not any place fancy, but not too shabby either. I imagined swinging by her workplace and flirting with her as she went about her business. I may not have legs, but my chest and arms are muscled from lifting the weight of my body onto the wheelchair and off it again.

I could not see what she was watching, because the TV sat on the other side of the window, but it didn’t make her happy. She sniffed from time to time, her nose rising, and pursed her lips. Her long hair, possibly wet from washing, lay over her shoulder and she ran her hand through it, untangling it and twisting the hair that came away into a ball. Her spaghetti top pasted to her with sweat. From time to time, she raised the top from her body and blew down her front. I wondered if they had air-conditioning.

Watching this girl was better than calling up people or throwing parties. Neither would allow me to watch a girl this way. It was better than paying for company, which would have slapped my desperation in my face, and saddled me with a painted mask of fake smiles and sympathy. This flesh-and-blood girl felt as if she were sitting beside me. True, I could not touch her, but one can’t have everything.

Near midnight, she got up and pulled off her top. She wore no bra, so her breasts spilled out. They sagged a little on her petite frame, the nipples pointing sideways. My palm sweated, making the telescope’s focus-ring slip. The image blurred because I turned the ring the wrong way in my frenzy, and by the time I readjusted it, she had switched off the light in the living room. I waited for her to switch on the light in her room, but she went to bed in the dark.

*  *  *

The next morning, I got my coffee and sat down by the window. It rained in a steady drizzle, and I waited for the girls to wake up. I had finished most of my work the evening before, which left me free to blast old Guns N’ Roses songs via iTunes on my surround-sound speakers.

I focused the telescope on the window of the night before, and there she stood. Home alone, she strutted around the apartment like a figure from porn anime cartoons: heart-shaped, childlike face unaware of her near-naked body. She wore a pair of pale blue cotton panties and held a pen and notepad, possibly planning furnishings. They certainly needed some curtains. I hoped they wouldn’t get them any time soon. Her straight silky hair fell over her hips, and touched her bare thighs. She made notes on the pad, took measurements, and stood chewing her pen, looking at one corner or the other.

She must have been used to walking around without much on, because she still acted as if she had clothes on. It continued to rain as I watched her, the falling drops of water like string curtains. I gripped my telescope with both hands, longing for her to face the window again, as Slash made love to his guitar, playing November Rain. I loved that song; the strings made me happy and sad at the same time – calm, centred. They worked this time as well, though she did not return to the window.

That weekend, they put up their curtains. But my girl didn’t seem to think she needed them and left them wide open. She and the other girl worked shifts. The star attraction of my telescope worked the day shift and spent most of her evenings at home alone. As if in answer to my prayers, she padded about near-naked and threw off her clothes the minute she came back home from work or wherever.

Once I had figured out her routine, I planned my week’s work around her schedule. In the evenings, she went into the living room in a white towel after her shower, wet hair pasted to her body. I resented that towel, she could have used it to dry her hair instead. She sipped from takeaway cups and sometimes walked right to the window.

Later, she sat eating in front of the evening soap on television. I still couldn’t see what she watched, but it made her cry a lot. She went to bed by eleven.

*  *  *

One evening, a month later, I watched my Filipina walking around as usual in her towel. She turned away from the window and I lost her for a few minutes. I waited for her to come back, nose glued to my telescope. She returned with a tall man, a wiry, tanned ang moh who would have made a good race-jockey if not for his height. He wrapped one arm around her neck as they kissed. Her towel slipped down. My hands went to my boxers at the sight and went to work.

The couple went to work as well. The man’s T-shirt and shorts flew off as he stumbled and fell back on the sofa, his spidery hands on her breasts. The window cut off my view as she sat on him, her head thrown back. She rose and fell while the dimple on her chin drove me crazy as it went up and down.

As she panted, his hands crept up to her throat, and gripped it hard. Horrified, I held my breath. But she did not struggle, just kept moving faster, her eyes large, frantic. I pulled up my shorts, and began counting the floors to the apartment, wavering between making an emergency call or trying to rush down myself. But before I could grab the phone, the man let go, and she looked up to meet my eyes.

I ducked immediately, and when I got up, she had the towel wrapped around her hair in a turban as she rode piggy-back on the shoulders of her guy, laughing. Her body looked like a violin, her legs out of eyesight, wrapped around his front.

In the weeks that followed, I saw her and the ang moh every weekend. They spent most of their time in her room with the curtains drawn. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. This bothered me. My whole career had once hinged on remembering faces, but I’d fallen into the habit of never trying to meet people’s eyes ever since the wheelchair. I felt like snuffing them out if they turned away first. But losing touch with your skills couldn’t be a good thing either.

A week later, on a bright Tuesday, my doorbell rang. My housekeeper only came on Saturdays, and I never had any visitors. The guards hadn’t called from the gate to announce a visitor either. When I opened the door, I expected a cleaner, or a courier delivery. But instead, there she stood, my Filipina.

‘I can’t stand outside, let me in,’ she said. ‘I saw something shining on your window that day. My boyfriend lives in an apartment on this floor, so I knew exactly where you were.’ No preamble, no hello.

She talked as she walked: confident, unselfconscious.

‘You don’t look too bad, eh,’ she said. ‘I thought you are a pervert, but now I see …’ She looked down at where my legs ended.

Her face crinkled into a smile, her lips a little lop-sided, her eyes black, melting. Below her eyes ran a few more wrinkles than I had seen through my telescope. I made way for her, but still could find no words. I wheeled myself to the window, where the two telescopes stood.

‘I’m sorry,’ I managed after a long minute. I could sense her standing right beside me, her warmth seeping through my arms.

She walked about the room, taking in the sparseness. I’d never made any attempt to make my home anything other than functional.

‘How long you been like this?’ She walked to the front door, latching it shut. I hated how direct she was, but liked it at the same time. She stepped toward me, not flinching at the sight of my legs.

‘None of your business,’ I turned away.

‘You’re a good one to talk about that!’ she turned my wheelchair around to face her. Her nose flared in anger, but her eyes grew moist.

‘This is why I don’t meet people. I’m not one of your soap operas …’ I began, bile rising in my throat.

Look at your game, girl … Axl Rose whined from the speakers.

‘But I am your soap opera, right? You know I watch serials on TV. You see me cry. You can spy on people when you want, but the minute …’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, and this time I meant it. Having telescopes did not give me the right to do what I did. Sad, sad, maaaad game, Rose wailed, and I wanted to get up and shut him off.

‘I meant we’re all human. Different things work for different people,’ she murmured against my ear. The window darkened, and I felt her lips on my face, caught a whiff of jasmine as her long, straight hair curtained about me.

She stroked my jaws, worked her way down to my throat, my chest, as she took off my shirt, biting my neck. ‘Let’s have some fun, okay?’ she whispered.

I sat there, mute with shock. I had dreamt up similar scenarios a dozen times, got off on them, without any hope of them ever turning real. And now here she was.

She stood up, turned the wheelchair towards the black leather couch. I could have moved the wheelchair myself, but I let her do it. I lay on the couch and watched her instead. The next I knew my boxers had fallen to the floor. Her right hand flitted down between my legs. With her left hand, she touched whatever was left of my legs, first time in eight years someone had done that. She did not shrink from the pinkish, rounded stumps I had turned away from hundreds of times in the mirror.

I saw her undressed, slim waist fanning into wide hips. But instead, a frilly, butterfly-printed cotton top worn over shorts stared back at me. Maybe she should have dressed her age. My attention wandered as her fingers flitted between my legs and she declared, ‘Well, you sure got what it takes. I think we could be friends.’

Half-sitting, half-lying down, I gripped the couch with both hands. She got lost in her own pleasure, not knowing I lay beneath her. She stopped only to pull out a condom from her brown-and-black Louis Vuitton bag. Her need frightened me. Like a dark cave on an unexplored island, it called to me but offered no promise of return.

When I did emerge, I didn’t feel so bad. After she washed up and left, I drew up a mental list of things I knew about her.

Lili could be her real name or a fake; I did not know her surname. I knew her boyfriend (had to be the ang moh, because no one else visited her) was my neighbour. That is why he looked so familiar – I must have seen him on one of the rare trips I made outside, but not remembered. I shoved that thought aside and focused on her.

‘Aren’t you scared your boyfriend will find out about this?’ I asked her after a few visits. By now, she had told me she worked at the Sentosa aquarium as a cleaning supervisor and that her American boyfriend worked at the same place as the dolphin trainer. Their work schedules matched, so she showed up at my place when he went out with the other ang moh boys.

‘Isn’t fear of being found out half the thrill? No one knows that better than you!’

I nodded, partly because my mouth had found better things to do than talk.

‘I like you,’ she said, ‘you never say no to anything. And you’re so … different.’ She struggled for another word, then gave up. ‘You’ll never give me a bag like that one,’ she continued, pointing at her Louis Vuitton, ‘but that’s okay.’ She dipped into her bag to pick up a condom and fit it in place. Her hands gripped my stumps as she levered herself on top of me.

I did want to speak up right then, but kept quiet. She had rescued me from my eight-year celibacy.

‘Say my name,’ she said, her thighs rising and falling, straddling me, ‘we’ll have fun today. I have goodies in my bag, you’ll see.’

I looked into her eyes, but did not obey her.

‘Lili,’ – she bent over me – ‘call me Lili,’ and when I still did not speak, she pushed at my shoulders with both hands. ‘I need to hear my name.’

This annoyed me. Not only did I feel out of practice and nervous about coming too soon, I had never vocalized during sex before, or been ordered about by a woman. Izzy Stradlin and Axl seemed to agree, growling and menacing my speakers, as they launched into Back off bitch. But Lili wasn’t done. She pulled my hands from her hips and drew them to her neck. ‘Press hard.’

‘No!’ It came out guttural, hoarse.

‘Yes.’ Her voice cold, steady. ‘That is the only way I come.’

‘OK.’

‘You must say, “OK, Lili”. I tell you before. Call my name!’ I could still hear her over Stradlin’s thundering guitar, so she must’ve been shouting. Her face remained calm though.

I closed my mouth. My mind wanted one thing, my body another. I had never been submissive before. But the moist cave of her desire sucked at me exactly as if she had a tongue down there, a tongue that pressed and mated with me at all the right spots, making me wish to live in that darkness, never come back to light.

But Lili lifted her body off mine, letting in the freezing air from the air-conditioning, and I began to lose my erection. In that blast of cold air, I suffered all the hours of loneliness of the past few years, the longing to talk to someone, hold a woman in my arms, bury myself in her.

Face of an angel with the love of a witch … blasted Rose from the speakers. At that moment, I hated Lili.

‘OK, Lili, whatever you want.’ I closed my eyes as she swirled her tongue on me before impaling herself again. She held my hands and put them about her neck. I stroked her throat with my thumb, feeling one horizontal line cutting across it, and below it, another. As I pressed a little, a pulse raced under the skin, just below her jaw.

‘Press hard!’

I held her but added no pressure. She reached out to her handbag and pulled out a black plastic packet. It crackled as she opened and put it over her head, making her look like an abused prison-camp inmate.

‘Now!’

Knowing I might do some real damage, I gripped her throat a little harder than before, but not much. I dipped my fingers over the plastic and ran my thumb in small circles.

‘Not like that – I need some strength.’ Lili moved faster. ‘And I’ll tell you when it is enough.’

‘How?’ By this time, I wanted to slap her off me and be done with it.

‘I’ll dig my nails in your arms like this,’ she growled in my ear. She pressed the half moons of her nails so hard into my arm, I winced. ‘I may pass out for a bit, but that’s normal, okay?’ Her voice jarred, but I ignored it, and tried to focus on the guitar strings in the background instead.

‘OK.’

‘Go!’

Her voice had the crack of a bullet at the start line of a race. She picked up more pace. I closed my eyes, not liking the way her nose peaked under the black plastic hovering over me.

But with eyes closed, my brain called up for me that same strangled-calf look she had with her boyfriend. She must have controlled him then, just as she was controlling me now, while looking the terrified victim.

She gripped my hands, urging me on. I could feel the tension building up, and knew I would explode soon – if pain was what she wanted, that’s what she would get. I gave it all I had.

Her hips slackened their pace, shuddered and tightened about my loins with her release. In the throes of my orgasm, I held on, gripping and clutching as I came.

When I opened my eyes, Lili had gone limp. I laid her gently down on me, taking the plastic off her head, smoothing back her hair.

As my heart slowed its hammering, I felt a peculiar stillness. It was not the post-coital calm I was growing used to in the last few weeks, nor the strains of November Rain that had now begun to play.

Lili’s body on top of me felt heavy, and I pushed her a little to the side. Her head lolled on to her bag, making it roll over and spill her things. Something slipped to the floor and dropped with a thunk; a metal collar. Her body no longer joined mine. She had passed out. Her legs fell to the floor at awkward angles like that of an accident victim. I propped myself up on my arms, and stretched out to gather her to myself.

‘Lili?’ I tapped her cheek with my fingers as I lifted her.

But she did not answer. When I put my hands around her neck to lift her head, I felt no pulse under her jaw. I put my ears to her chest, heard no beat. Panicked, I shook her, but her body moved in all directions at once.

I let myself fall from the couch, dragged myself to the wheelchair, jammed its wheels, and clambered up. I went to the kitchen, filled a glass of water and splashed it on Lili’s face. Her skin looked ashen, as if someone had slipped a sheet of carbon paper beneath it.

I stared at her for a while, not sure what to do. I wheeled myself to the wireless phone, picked it up, but almost immediately put it back on the cradle. The jasmine of her hair filled my head, making it impossible to think, and then under the perfume, I imagined I smelled something gone bad.

No one would have seen her. The corridor was empty when I let her in, and no camera covered my door. The footage at the lobby camera would show her enter the building. But I remembered that she always came unannounced, without any word on the intercom from the guards. So she must have had an access card … I rifled through the bag and found it. I breathed easier then, because she could have just as easily been visiting her boyfriend next door.

Before I could think further, I went to the living room, wiped Lili down with tissues. I switched off the lights and wheeled myself to the balcony, her body on my lap. No one in my condominium could see me, and unless the HDB apartment opposite harboured a telescope enthusiast, I could get away with it. I heaved Lili’s body upwards and shoved it over the balcony parapet. I wheeled myself in and pulled the glass shutters closed.

*  *  *

It has now been six months since the last time Lili left this building. The neighbourhood was in an uproar for a few weeks after her death, and the boyfriend still remains the main suspect. The police made their rounds, asked me a few normal questions, but didn’t look though my apartment. If they had, my training would have saved me. I put my telescopes in storage. I knew not to leave any evidence lying around. Or perhaps not. I’ve kept that LV handbag.

I know I should get rid of it, flush its ashes just like I did with everything else from that night – the condom, the black packet, the tissues. But I haven’t got down to it yet. Instead, I take it out from time to time, running my hands on the leather, laying out the things it contains: a tube of Endless Red L’Oreal lipstick, tissues, a packet of condoms, a steel-weave collar with a padlock, a coiled whip. After a while, I put the things back one by one. That bag knows exactly what I’ve done, and will tell anyone who bothers to ask.

But I feel it has stayed behind with another purpose: so I can use its contents. There has to be a reason why the ang moh had no good alibi, why no one came looking for me; perhaps destiny has other plans. I’ll have to be more careful next time. The challenge would be to find a lure, because matter-of-fact girls like Lili are rare. I’m sure I can think of something.

The strings of November Rain no longer soothe me. For now, it’s time I returned to my binoculars and telescope. They’ve been gathering dust far too long.

D. Biswas loves reading books, observing people, and drinking tea. She tinkers around with people in stories, trying to figure out what makes them tick, because she can’t do that in real life. She asks ‘what if?’ every time something out of the ordinary catches her eye. She has published a bunch of stories, and is now tinkering with the people in her first novel. Find out more about her at Amloki.com.