4
WEDNESDAY COMES. I HUNKER DOWN AT THE LIbrARY TO WAIT AS ZEEdecided she needs to go home to “freshen up” for her date with destiny.
Remember, be inconspicuous, I text her as a reminder, because Zee, her survival instincts dulled by a life of luxury, has a predilection for flash and excess. We cannot stalk someone in a custom blush-pink Bentley, such as the one her mother is driven around in.
Zee’s driver picks me up half an hour before I know the boy’s athletics team breaks from its weekly practice session in a black Toyota Vellfire with tinted windows, i.e., her most inconspicuous family vehicle. Once I’m in, she brings up the privacy screen and I change out of my uniform into stalking-friendly attire I’d packed for this trip—a black sleeveless cotton dress for me and my white Keds. I give her a once-over: Zee is elegant in black jeans, a long-sleeved jade-green kurti, and a deep eggplant-hued headscarf, paired with seriously high black leather mules.
“Those look uncomfortable,” I say.
“But my feet look amazing in them.”
“I thought we were supposed to be incognito. Inconspicuous.”
“Yes, that’s the idea.” She applies a hot-pink lipstick straight from a tube. “Just in case.” She grins.
We hang out for forty minutes, playing cards and gossiping, and almost miss Taslim when he slinks out of the gate wearing a baseball cap and clear-lensed glasses, only his height and his lemon-yellow Apple watch strap giving him away, into a waiting taxi instead of his usual SUV, but not before scanning his surroundings like he’s a very bad undercover agent in a hard-boiled crime novel. Interesting. It seems like Mr. Perfect might have a secret, and I am going to expose him. Not literally, of course.
~
Pak Ismail, a driver I don’t recognize—Zee informs me he usually drives for her brother—obviously isn’t any ordinary middle-aged man. I mean, the way he dispassionately scans me up and down, the way he sits ramrod straight despite being in his sixties, and is actually more built than most of my peers, should have alerted me to that.
The super-fluid weaving between cars as he accelerates us down the busy highway, Royce Taslim almost six cars ahead and making a turn to the right that we would have missed if Pak Ismail hadn’t slalomed across two whizzing lanes of traffic to catch it, really gives it away, though.
“The trick,” Pak Ismail says in Malay, not really looking at the road at all as he makes the right turn, smiling at us in the rearview mirror the whole time, “is to always keep your target in view, but not to follow too closely.”
I screech when he brakes just in time to avoid flattening, I don’t know, a literal child who decides to dart across the side road just then.
Zee is unfazed. “Pak Ismail is ex-military,” she says, as though it’s supposed to comfort me. Military means nothing to me. What he did in the military—that’s more relevant. Who cares if he’s the world’s best sniper if he drives like a madman, which is a big part of his job?
I almost cry when Pak Ismail closes the gap between us and Taslim’s cab to two cars, and then we hit rush-hour traffic on one of the highways, where, somehow, defying traffic rules and all safety precautions, a two-lane highway becomes three-lane, even four-lane at one of the exits, and we have to slow to a life-saving crawl through a classic KL traffic jam as we tail Taslim’s cab into the bustling downtown. I settle down in my seat and admire the view of a metropolis dressing up for its night shift. It is almost 6:45 p.m., and the light outside the tinted windows is just starting to fade to a smoggy pink-hued extravagance, even as the army of skyscrapers flares into life. It’s chaotic and beautiful and electric, but best admired from afar, not while wading through a sea of traffic.
“Where is Taslim headed?” I grumble, “Don’t droids have to power down at night?”
“I’m starving,” Zee complains. She has melted into a human puddle on the seat next to me and is making dramatic mewling noises.
“You’re not starving; you’re hungry,” I say, but I root around in my bag and pass her the seaweed crackers I’ve been saving for pre-dinner munchies. “It’s in—”
“—sulting to all the actual starving people in the world who are dying from it, I know I know, I shouldn’t say that, I’m monstrous.”
I shut my mouth. Zee has preempted me, word for word.
At last, Taslim’s taxi slows down and takes a turn into Chow Kit, a seedy inner-city neighborhood with the largest wet market in the city and where colonial era–shophouses housing a variety of wholesalers jostle with upmarket cafés, the shop fronts burning with neon and older fluorescent signage, the creep of haphazard gentrification steadily gathering visibility, despite the area’s reputation as a red-light district. I look at Zee and she looks at me. What is Taslim doing here?
Taslim’s taxi turns into a side road bordered by roadside vendors in carts and food trucks selling both traditional local hawker fare like lok lok and fried carrot cake and newer, more foreign fare and edge down toward a dimly lit dead end. It stops, and Taslim hops out and, somewhat unexpectedly, heads to a roadside Ramly burger stall.
“Pull over a little farther, please,” Zee tells Pak Ismail, who immediately executes a crisp left turn, narrowly avoiding knocking over a motorcyclist, and stops us in a perpendicular alley. It takes all of Zee’s strength to wrench my fingers off the armrests. I stumble out with my crutches, my face ashen, hers wreathed in a placid smile. Pak Ismail speeds off to terrorize motorists anew.
We creep over to the street, poking our heads round the corner and hoping that Royce hasn’t left. He hasn’t. He is still waiting for his burger.
Now that we’re out on the street I can smell the tantalizing aroma of bargain burger meat cooking on margarine wending its way to us. My stomach makes its plight known. “Shhh,” Zee says as though that makes a difference: We’re totally conspicuous as we are, waiting in the open with our backs to the building, occasionally peeking around the corner to check on Taslim, who, oblivious to his stalkers, is taking his sweet time with the street burger, probably enjoying the rare taste of trans fats.
After a while, we drop our guard and start watching TikToks, giggling. Thankfully, Taslim doesn’t notice us above the general din of people and traffic. He finishes his burger at last and walks to an unmarked storefront, pauses before a scarlet door that leads to the second floor, and disappears behind it.
I turn to Zee, a finger pointed at Taslim’s retreating figure, triumphant. “Did you see that?”
“Er, yes, I was right next to you.”
“Rhetorical question,” I say. “Going into an unmarked second floor of an unmarked shophouse in Chow Kit! I knew there was something seedy about Taslim. All that gel in his hair. I wonder what he’s here for.”
“It’s seven twenty, Agnes. He’s probably just here for discount electronics. This is, after all, the right place to go for that kind of stuff,” Zee says, ever the generous one.
“Intellectual property infringement is a crime.”
Zee rolls her eyes. “Okay, let’s go see what Royce is here for, then.” She starts walking toward the storefront, stomping as though the pavement is a catwalk. I straggle behind, warily glancing up and down the brightly lit street, not sure what I should be wary of but sure that when it appears, I will be prepared.
“A little subterfuge maybe? Pak Ismail isn’t here to protect us,” I hiss.
Zee ignores me and hauls butt up the stairs; her stacked mules ring out in the stairwell, which are graffiti-laced and pocked with cigarette butts, the vermillion soles winking in the dark. I am certain they will be the last thing I see. I sigh, walking up the stairs with some difficulty; with old buildings like these, disability access is almost unheard of.
We reach the top of the staircase and find a velvet curtain, behind which a susurrus of music and low chatter drift out. I exchange glances with Zee. “Whatever is behind that curtain is not discount electronics,” I mutter.
“It does look dodgy,” she concedes. “Some kind of club?”
“A sex club,” I say with satisfaction. My mind flashes with images, but in a detached, non-involved way. Oh boy, Taslim is going to get it now. If he isn’t getting it already.
“Probably means there’ll be security. We might need a password, a code.”
“We can turn back,” I offer.
“Are you kidding me? I didn’t drive through rush-hour traffic and ruin my YSL mules to turn back now. We’re going in, scaredy-cat.”
“Am not!” But I still don’t move.
We—well, she parts the curtain—
“Can I help you?” a man says gruffly from the shadowy alcove beside the door, nearly causing Zee and I to have a heart attack.
“Oh, sorry, Uncle! We’re just a bunch of lost tourists,” I squawk, clutching on to Zee’s arm.
“Who are you calling uncle?” the man cries. He turns on a light switch and a desultory bulb flickers to attention. The man is in his early twenties; he is built like a mountain. There is no doubt in my mind now that this is a sex-dungeon situation.
“Maaf, maaf,” Zee says. “We’re, ah, looking for our friend, who just, ah, came here.”
“Oh, Ray?” The man smiles.
“Ray?”
“Your friend. The performer.”
“Right.” Maybe everyone went by nicknames here, to keep things impersonal. “Yes, him.”
“You have ID to prove you’re over twenty-one?” he asks me. “If not, you won’t be able to drink. We’re strict here.”
No alcohol to underage minors, but okay to the sex. Right. “Urm, we don’t, but we’ll abstain.”
“Right.” He nods. “Probably a good idea. Never know what happens when the crowd get drunk. They are much less forgiving of the performers. Lots of yelling, heckling. One of them even threw an empty bottle at the open miker who made fun of cricket fans.”
I freeze. Open miker…Dear God, it was worse than I could imagine—Taslim was involved in amateur stand-up comedy. Taslim? Who was possibly the least spontaneous, most rigid person I knew? Who epitomized the idiom better seen than heard?
Also—stand-up comedy is my jam. How dare he sully it by performing. I must watch this atrocity.
“I must watch this atrocity,” I say out loud.
A voice crackles over the bouncer’s walkie-talkie. “Malik, we’re almost full house here. Only one more seat in the house. Fire safety regulations and whatnot.”
Malik makes an apologetic face “Sorry, kids, you heard the man.”
“You go,” Zee says generously. She isn’t into stand-up comedy—she full-body cringed when she heard what was being performed. “I mean, you’re the one who’s in crutches and came all the way here and who actually likes stand-up. You can watch Taslim and let me know what you think. Then, when the show’s almost over, you call me, I’ll come over, smelling fresh and looking fine, and I’ll pretend I saw his set.” She’s already calling Pak Ismail, and I hear him say he’ll be around in ten minutes, which probably means three minutes. He had been eating roti canai in a nearby restaurant two streets away.
“Really? You sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.” She leans over and whispers, “Record the entire performance and send it to me.” With a kiss blown in my direction, she disappears down the stairs.
Malik turns to me and says, “There’s a cover charge of twenty ringgit with a drink.”
Crap. I hadn’t expected to pay anything; I had coins on me, nothing else. I pull out my phone to pay with an e-wallet and find my phone completely dead. Double crap. Swearing, I fish out my wallet and empty the change in one palm before laying the coins neatly on the table. “One…ten sen…oooh, fifty! Twenty sen…fifty…” I flash my most winsome smile at Malik. “Is there any way you can close one eye and let me in?” I push the pile of coins, which amounted to a grand sum of RM2.83, over to him. I whisper, “I won’t tell anyone if you keep this.”
Mailk pushes the pile of coins back at me. “Thanks, but no thanks. You either pay the full cover charge or you perform. Performers get in free.”
“Well then, you should have led with that! I shall perform!” I blurt, then immediately regret it. I have never performed solo onstage in my life, ever, much less in something as dynamic as stand-up comedy. But it’s that or pay, and I don’t have the moolah.
He lifts an eyebrow, this talent scout. “Are you even a comic?”
“Aren’t we all, when the spirit moves us?” I say mystically. “Especially gin, vodka, erm, rum.” I have never drunk alcohol in my life.
He chuckles. “Okay, good one.”
“So, what do I have to do to get onstage?”
“First, you need to sign up on this sheet.” He hands me a clipboard and a pen, then stamps my right inner wrist with the word comic in blue ink. It’s all very old-school. “Then you’ll need a five-minute set.”
Five minutes. I swallow hard. Could I really joke onstage for five whole minutes? I suppose if I speak really slowly, it will be over in a flash…right? I’ve watched so much stand-up comedy online that I must be an expert by osmosis. And some of these stand-up comedy sets I’ve watched were more than an hour long; I can talk onstage for five minutes, no problem. I glance at the sheet, clocking Taslim…Ray’s name. Ray Lim. Who is he afraid is going to see him on a sign-in sheet of a dinky comedy club? Quel paranoia! I shake my head and scrawl Agnes Chan on it; I have nothing to hide.
Malik grins and opens the door to an excitable babble. “Welcome, Agnes Chan.”