Scarlet Sashes

Pressing her golden Juicy Couture bag against her chest,

2008-11-24T00:08:00.001+08:00

Jennifer gingerly joined the other passengers; it was sweltering as they hurried through the open doors of bus 74 - like a swarm of ants scrambling into a wall's fissure.

Jennifer barely tapped her smartcard on the beeping device before she found herself pushed roughly inside. She felt only faint air-conditioning; she saw people already standing, but looked around for seats anyway. There were none. A couple of frumpy older women stood blocking her entrance to the rear, their arms clinging onto a vertical grab bar by the backdoor. The blue-green of their taut nerves surfaced under their thin skin, but the women held on - like stubborn tentacles stuck to the steel rod.

Someone behind her gave a shout - Jennifer knew it was the driver - and with effort the two sour-looking women pulled away and slid slowly forward. Jennifer followed, and reached the rear just as the double-decker bus lurched. She hated this part of the ride the most - the first twenty minutes when she was forced to stand, to press herself against wet bodies that slipped and slapped about her like oily sardines.

Jennifer eyed for the least greasy-looking inch on the nearest grab bar and pinched two fingers around it. She felt a little heady, and refused to think about whose hands had perspired over it minutes before. Instead, she concentrated on admiring her murky reflection on the windows: twenty and tall, with porcelain skin and raven hair, and eyes that spoke before her painted lips did. Her beak tilted upwards, at an angle where fishy faces of the passengers fell away and she saw only psychedelic splotches of what must be evening light.

She released her fingers from the cool rod and fanned herself, wondering for the third time why she hadn't just taken a taxi home. Then she could've avoided the rush-hour stream for one evening - one luxurious evening home after school, with no one to step on her strappy Novo heels, assail her nostrils with waves of body odour, or contaminate the air-conditioning.

The bus jerked at the next stop, and Jennifer saw something glint. She looked down and saw for the first time the person seated a short distance away from her: a scrawny Chinese man in his late forties, dressed in loose muddy-green shirt and trousers. His shoulder-length curls looked like thirsty seaweed; the wink had come from its roots, where it shone strangely. He looked almost flammable. His swarthy round face was dry and sparsely cratered, like a biscuit. Jennifer briefly considered averting her eyes, but like a terrible accident she was drawn to him, and couldn't look away.

He spoke first.

"What're you looking at?"

Jennifer stiffened. She suddenly felt very warm, and thought the air-conditioning must have died. She looked around to see if anyone noticed.

"I'm over here, missy," he said this time in Mandarin. "Something wrong?"

She saw two yuppies nearby, dressed in identical office-wear and sitting side by side, their eyes closed. She wondered if they were really sleeping, or just avoiding her gaze; the other standing passengers were looking elsewhere. Only the Chinese man continued to stare at her, with a straw hat on his lap, running his coarse fingers along its brim.

Someone pressed the bell. It jolted the nodding passengers and all at once they upped and left, like numb fishes spilling out from a net. It was this bus-stop outside the central train station that Jennifer waited for everyday, when she could finally have one of the newly-vacated seats for the remainder of her journey. She saw the last bunch of sweaty schoolboys alight, dressed in attires as uniform as the temperatures of the tropical climate...

"Missy, are you DEAF?" The man said loudly. "You look like you better sit down."

Perspiration now beaded into a necklace too tight for her and as the man hurried in her direction she opened her mouth to scream, but nothing escaped. Her knees finally gave way to the heat, and the fisherman extended a steady hand; he felt her forehead and yelled something to the driver. The bus lurched to life, and with the same hat that he took with him to his routine fishing trips to Pulau Ubin, he fanned it quickly over his face.

Jennifer tried to keep her eyes open as the straw hat flitted between them, like the cheerful wag of her Labrador's tail, like the fins of a dying fish.

She wished the crow would stop crying.

2008-09-26T23:03:00.003+08:00

Its drawn-out calls distracted her, and now she couldn’t find her pink woolly cardigan. The cardigan she knew he liked, for the first time they met he’d said it reminded him of cotton candy – and cotton candy was sweet. Never before has anyone said she was sweet.

It was still dark, and she felt around for her clothes, half-willing herself to turn on the light. But she mustn’t; it would be too bright. Everything was always too bright – the shade of her lipstick, the homemade Puttanesca he left untouched, the satin shirt she only just bought for him. She never got the colour right.

She stole a glance at the sleeping figure sprawled on the familiar bed, his face turned away. She saw a lot more of his back now. She said goodbye to it in the mornings, the dishwashing gloves still wet on her hands as she rushed out from the kitchen; when the time came for bed, she whispered goodnight and curled up behind him as closely as she dared. She would always wait, but for hours he would continue to sleep, very still, with deep breaths. He was always too tired.

She liked his back, though. It was the same one she had put her arms around when they cycled down King’s Park some years ago, their wedding rings still snug around their fingers. The weather wasn’t so cold then, and he still had some time for her.

Turning away, she trained her eyes at the clothes piled up neatly on the floor. It wasn’t a lot to have in twenty-eight years, but it was enough. Her tote would carry them. The Chanel bag was definitely too small… not that it belonged to her. She had no reason to consider it. It was for his friend.

She hadn’t planned on finding the bag, really. When one of the felt buttons disappeared from his favourite coat last week, she’d tried looking for a spare. But then she’d seen it – a glossy new Chanel with its tag still on, tucked in one of the lowermost drawers. Bronze metallic sheen, with glittering diamantes and a matching strap. She’d smiled for a long time. She’d posed with it in front of the mirror; she’d brought it to the market.

But then it was for his friend.

He’d said to stop touching it, stop spoiling it, stop taking his things. He’d told her to give it back, and she did.

The crow by the window cried again – the same aaah aaaah sound it continued to make all morning. It sounded like a wretched baby, and for a moment she wondered why she didn’t make noise like that. Perhaps then she wouldn’t have to leave. Wouldn’t have to hear him say that it wasn’t about the bag, that he was tired, that he just needed some time alone.

She didn’t want some time alone.

She looked out, the first rays of dawn already spilling in. Soon it would be bright. She quickly packed the rest of her clothes, and looked around for her missing cardigan.

She tiptoed towards the bed – she could have sworn she saw him move – and felt underneath. She hasn’t looked there yet. Her hand closed in on something soft, and she blinked. It wasn’t her cardigan. It was a silky black tube top, with lace at the sides. She brought it closely to her nose. It smelled of dried sweat, mingled with musky perfume… but he didn’t even like perfume. He’d said so, the day she’d worn a new fragrance.

The room was now bright; she could see him clearly, and moving. Dark hair and eyes, and lines that appeared on his forehead as he squinted in her direction. Her husband saw the look of her face again. It was always so piteous.

“This isn’t mine,” she whispered.

He stared at the top in her hands, and said nothing. He knew she wasn’t going to believe him this time.

Somewhere in the distance she heard the crow give another long, sickening cry. She couldn’t wait any longer. She quickly dropped the tube top, picked up her bag and worked her numb feet out of the room. As she crossed the familiar floors she half-wondered why she hadn’t just asked him – about the silky tube top, about the friend she never saw, about everything else he had promised, or left unsaid.

Outside her house, she began to cry.

The clack of her heels

2008-07-15T21:49:00.000+08:00

on the wet gravel worked themselves into a slow, mind-numbing rhythm that reverberated within the walls of her head. A thin finger with a chipped nail of rich crimson carelessly hooked the shoulder strap of her coated leather Fendi as she advanced into the chilly night, the biting cold colliding on her unfeeling skin, her eyes vacant and unseeing.

She concentrated on nothing but the monotony of her footsteps, the echoes of which resounded in her hollow heart. It teemed with an absolute nothingness, and where her bleeding hand last clutched, it still seared from the touch of the hunter, of whom with paralysing regret, she now understood to have gravely mistaken as a lover. She let her feet carry her aimlessly into the pitch-dark alley, allowing the murky gloom to infiltrate her thoughts, the dejected passage between the peeling, dingy walls to consume her.

The caustic lash of his words – they burned her more than his callous actions, more than the friction of his relentless arms on her skin. A tear leaked from her mascara-stained eyes and as she brushed it away vaguely with her wounded hand, she tasted blood. A metallic bitterness stung and momentarily, she was brought to her senses.

Then she noticed it. The self-satisfying cadence of her footsteps no longer belonged to hers alone. She gave a tentative turn and immediately greeted a distant, clanging noise that rang shrilly into the still night.

Her lax fingers tightened around her bag; she gripped and pressed her tote against her body as she picked up her pace, consciousness flooding her mind in a coldly awakening streak. Her bent head twitched at the slightest hint of strange motion, but she kept her face forward and was overwhelmed with the sole urge to step up the movement of her feet.

The back of her neck tingled irritably; she felt her heart in her dry throat and she focused only on the sound of their footsteps – the brisk clack of her patent pumps and the accelerated crunches of the blundering, unidentified pair.

The wind in her ears fanned her fears with electrifying speed - and when the tenacious footsteps grew as loud as hers she wildly snapped her eyes shut.