The Oddfits (16 page)

“Oh hell,” he muttered, fishing in his pocket for his phone. He didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello?”

“Kay Huat?”

“Yes? Who is this?”

“Shwet Foo.”

“Shwet Foo? Where are you calling from?”

“Payphone. Just got out of work.”

Kay Huat could feel the inspiration draining out of him with every second of this phone conversation. “Can we talk some other time? A bit busy right now.”

“Just very quick, I promise. You remember I told you about that woman?”

Kay Huat’s ears perked up. He picked up his mug and took a long sip of coffee. “What woman?”

“The one in green. The one who gave me the card about the Quest.”

“Oh yeah,” Kay Huat said, feigning absentmindedness. “I
think
I remember now.”

“So, erh. I tried to call.”

So little Shwet Foo had tried as well
. Kay Huat almost laughed out loud with relief. “See man? I told you, right? Scam one!”

“No! Not scam!”

Kay Huat leaped to his feet. “Hah? What do you mean, ‘not scam’?” He began pacing agitatedly around his flat.

“Not scam!”

“How can not scam? The number didn’t work, right?”

By now, Murgatroyd was grinning to himself like a madman. He
knew
Kay Huat would be pleasantly surprised. “It worked! I’m going!”

“What? Going where?!”

“Erh
. . .
hold on. Running out of time. Must add money.”

Murgatroyd dug excitedly in his pocket for change. Just telling Kay Huat about his decision was bringing back his determination to seize his chance and go. Kay Huat’s voice, sounding oddly frantic, came faintly through the receiver, which Murgatroyd held pressed to his chest as he put an additional coin in the pay-phone slot.

“Hello, hello? Going where? Hello? Shwet Foo?”

“Sorry, I had to add money.”

“Never mind! Going
where
?”

“On the Quest! This Friday!” Murgatroyd got a thrill just saying it. So he said it again. “This Friday!”

Murgatroyd heard a loud crash in the background. “Eh, Kay Huat? What was that?”

“What was what?”

“I heard a sound.”

“Oh. Nothing, nothing. Just spilled a bit of coffee.”
Just relax, Kay Huat. Breathe deeply. Stay calm. Sound calm. Try to sound happy and calm.
“That’s great, Shwet Foo! Good for you, man!”

“I know! But I need your advice. Can we meet tomorrow for dinner?”

“Don’t you have work?”

“Got Tuesdays off, remember?”

“Erh, yeah. Of course. Of course. How about my dad’s stall at Golden Serenity?”

“Okay, can. Thanks, Kay Huat! Sorry to call you so late.”

“No problem, man. Oh, and Shwet Foo?”

“Yes?

“Don’t do anything until we talk, okay? Do
nothing
, okay?”

“Okay!”

“See you tomorrow.”

“Yup! Tomorrow! Thanks, Kay Huat! Goodnight!”

Feeling confident that all would turn out right, Murgatroyd hung up. And despite the presence of an amorous young couple making out with each other in the shadows next to the payphone, he felt uninhibited enough to dance a little jig of joy.

CHAPTER 14

There is something disquieting and unnatural about empty restaurants. Restaurants are meant to be full—stuffed with people stuffing their stomachs with food. And once the people have stuffed themselves to their hearts’ content, they should pay their bills and leave in order to make room to stuff in other people waiting to stuff themselves. An empty restaurant is a starved, sickly restaurant; the stench of desperation hangs about it and drives people away. The prospective customer takes a tentative peep inside and sees its listless waiters, its dusty plates and cutlery, and its overeager proprietor advancing at an alarmingly brisk trot with welcoming arms spread wide before the prospective customer promptly panics and flees to wait forty-five minutes for a table at the busy establishment next door.

Shakti disliked seeing L’Abattoir empty, even if it was because the restaurant was closed, as it was now. It reminded her too much of her failure period, of night after night spent sitting in the empty dining room of the Colonial Table, gulping down calorie-free Coca-Colas, which turned into Coke and whiskeys, then just whiskeys as the evenings wore on. The memory caused her to wince even now: the flies buzzing lazily and loudly through the empty rooms; the few diners they did have looking uneasily at the empty tables all around them, wondering where everyone else was, what everyone else knew that they didn’t; the dirty dishes and silverware and perspiring half-empty water glasses which remained uncleared on deserted tables as the waiters, unaccustomed to labour, chatted idly together in the bar area.
But what’s past is past
, Shakti told herself as she sat down in the darkened interior of L’Abattoir.
There’s nothing to fear anymore.

On the nights that she came to the restaurant, her usual practice was to leave before the restaurant closed, either while the last guests were still lingering after their meals, or while the staff was still in the process of shutting down for the evening. Lights out and locking up were left to the manager. However, to the manager’s surprise, Shakti had shooed him out the door, telling him that she would lock up for the night. The manager, who was very familiar with Shakti’s temper, left promptly without a word.

The dining room was dark, illuminated only by the thin beams of moonlight and streetlamp glow shooting in from the gaps in the curtained windows facing the street. Except for the occasional whoosh of a passing car on the road outside, all was quiet. In the shadows, like an old spider absorbed in contemplating prey past and prey to come, sat Shakti Vithani, at the same table where she had sat earlier with Shwet Foo. She was meditating on what had passed between them. It was simply inconceivable. He—
he
of all people—was thinking of quitting
her
restaurant. Leaving
her!
After she had picked him out of the gutter! Her eyes narrowed as she conjured up for herself in her mind the spineless, wretched figure of Shwet Foo. Her teeth clenched in fury. So this is how she was to be repaid! All her hard work, all her loving care, flushed down the toilet by a pasty-complexioned hunchback!

But then again, she was a reasonable person. Perhaps she was being too hasty. After all, he hadn’t turned in his resignation yet, had he? She had to get to the bottom of all this. What had spurred Shwet Foo to even consider such a course of action? And more importantly, was it a real threat?

At the far end of the room, something in the shadows stirred. Shakti looked up. She spoke aloud. “I certainly hope you’re not this sloppy when I send you out on jobs.”

There was no answer. Shakti sighed.

“For heaven’s sake, come out already! I haven’t got all night, you know.”

Again, there was movement, and out of the darkness emerged a thin figure all in black, striding slowly towards her table. As he came closer, it became apparent that what at first appeared to be nothing but a shadow across the lower portion of his face was, in fact, a strip of black cloth. Not that this should have come as a surprise—it was the same cloth he always wore during performances. But then again, he always used the sword during performances too, and to see him carrying it outside the arena, to have him holding it while standing so close to her in a dark, deserted space where no one could hear her scream—that
was
a teeny, tiny bit unsettling.

Arching one eyebrow, Shakti looked as nonchalantly as she could at the glinting blade in his right hand. “So, do you take that thing with you wherever you go?”

Never taking his eyes from her face, he placed the sword on the table, the handle within easy reach. As he seated himself in the same chair that Shwet Foo had occupied only minutes earlier, Shakti couldn’t help but admire, as she always did, the wildness and ferocity in the eyes that remained locked on her, as if he were sizing up an enemy before a great battle. During his performances, she noticed the same look in his eyes whenever he was presented with the animal he was to slaughter. On the face of things, treating a helpless chicken or duck or cow as a formidable opponent would be considered a rather ridiculous thing to do. But somehow, when the Duck Assassin did it, staring intently at his victim before the final blow, he made the act something more than the mere butchering of a dumb animal. It became the slaying of a great and powerful beast, the execution of a necessary purifying sacrifice, the completion of an exquisite work of art.

These same wild eyes continued to fix upon his employer as he unwound the strip of cloth hiding his mouth and chin. And even though Shakti already knew, had already seen, what lay beneath many times before, she could never completely stifle the gasp that would inevitably escape her. His face was not disfigured in any way—not in the technical sense of the word—but the mouth that it revealed! A thin gash, inexplicably cruel in expression, as if Whoever, Whatever had made him had slashed a knife across his face instead of giving him a pair of lips. The gash curved slowly upwards into a sickle. Pleased at finally eliciting from his employer some evidence of fear, the Duck Assassin leaned back in his chair and pressed the bony fingers of his hands together in anticipation.

He had already made a modest name for himself by the time Shakti had happened upon him and hired him for the restaurant. His origins were mysterious, and the rumours widespread. Some said that he came from a wealthy family—one that spoiled him in his youth and cultivated his cruelty by allowing him to torture the household servants in the same way they allowed him to torture the household pets. Some said that he came from a wretchedly poor family, and that his mother and father had abused him with all manner of objects, blunt, sharp, and piping hot. Others who claimed to know him better than anyone else did insisted that he was a demon, the son of the devil himself, formed and begotten in the fires of hell. Shakti told everyone who asked about him that he had been a poultry butcher at a duck rice restaurant in the red-light district, which was undoubtedly true; though beyond that, his past was indeed subject to the wildest of speculations. If he did come from hell, Shakti had often reflected, he certainly made one hell of a butcher.

Many years ago, while she was still in the process of designing her new restaurant (not yet christened “L’Abattoir”), Shakti’s old Oxford school chum Nigel Viswanathan had mentioned to her an open-air restaurant in Geylang that was fast acquiring a reputation for serving the best duck rice in town—and that one factor working in their favour was that they now slaughtered their own poultry fresh in the back.

“All fresh, Shakti! Completely fresh!” Nigel had told her. Dear Nigel, as his friends called him, never ceased to be astonished at the world, with all its wonders great and small, no matter how long he continued to live in it.

Dear Nigel had recounted his visit to the restaurant thusly: “I ask the owner, ‘Hey, sir! How do you make this duck so tender, so tasty like this?’

“He answers, ‘Sir, we slaughter it fresh!’

“I ask, ‘Sir! How fresh?’

“He says, ‘Sir! Right behind those doors there! Just seconds before we braise it.’

“I say, ‘Sir! You’re pulling my leg!’

“He says, ‘No, sir! I prove it, I prove it!’ Then, he disappears and comes back with a dead duck in a plastic bag, feathers still on!

“‘Touch it, sir!’ he tells me. ‘Feel for yourself if warm or not!’

“I touch it! Sure enough, still warm! Amazing, no?”

Not actually that amazing, but Dear Nigel was always more than happy to be impressed. Shakti, on the other hand, was not so much impressed as quietly furious. From what Dear Nigel was telling her, Sin Mee Famous Duck Rice Eating House was a cruder, more primitive version of her own idea. While she initially felt jealous that some low-class, nose-picking
ah beng
had beat her to the idea, she was also relieved that she would, at least, be offering a more refined, elegant, pricier version. But she had to make sure. And so on a Sunday afternoon, she gingerly navigated her BMW sports sedan through the crowded streets of Geylang to reassure herself that Sin Mee posed no competition.

On an island where Modernization and Progress had ushered in an era of contentment, convenience, and safety for its citizens, Geylang had become a sanctuary for those who hungered ungratefully for more—those who yearned to indulge in pleasures ranging anywhere from the mildly unvirtuous to the downright illegal to something hovering in between. The lustful satiated their passions in government-sanctioned brothels with prostitutes imported from Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, China, and India, while gambling fiends found relief in the illegal secret dens in apartments and alleyways. Late-night eateries lining the main thoroughfare and the
lorongs
just north of the red-light district soothed the growling bellies of midnight gluttons, and among stalls heaped high with great thorny fruits prowled durian addicts, hunting for the finest in season: the orange-gold creaminess of the Mao Shan Wang, the melting pale canary-grey of the XO, the uncomplicated fleshy yellow of the classic Sultan, the bitter brightness of the Black Pearl. Even those suffering from severe nostalgia for the Singapore of bygone “backward” days sought refuge in Geylang, strolling through street after street, feasting their emaciated memories on the colourful unrenovated shophouses and their eroding concrete spiral staircases. It was this unashamed mingling of sensuality and hunger, decay and vitality, memory and forgetfulness that drew people to Geylang. And it was all this that earned it Shakti’s repulsion and disdain.

The afternoon had not gotten off to a good start. Shakti had spent half an hour looking for a parking spot, and when she had finally found one, she had to nudge two grubby bicycles out of the way with her back fender in order to claim it. Disoriented by her search for parking, she ended up wandering embarrassedly and hurriedly through several brothel-lined
lorongs
. And then when she had finally made her way to the restaurant area of the neighbourhood, a crack in the sidewalk caught one of her high heels, snapped it in two, and sent her tumbling to the ground. By the time Shakti finally arrived at the stronghold of her imagined enemy, she looked considerably less awe-inspiring than she had intended to look. Her face was shiny and flushed with heat and mortification, and her hair, so fearsomely full-bodied that morning, was deflated and damp. Her expensive and elaborate turquoise and gold necklace lay across her neck tangled and askew, and her feet were now sporting cheap Hello Kitty flip-flops purchased from a nearby vendor after the untimely death of her Jimmy Choos. She had braved many perils to size up this potential culinary rival, but it had been worth it. Now that she was here, she was relieved to find that Sin Mee Famous Duck Rice Eating House didn’t amount to anything after all.

It was the type of establishment you showed up at in shorts and sandals after a day of smashing rocks, or whatever smelly construction workers did all day. There were red plastic stools clustered haphazardly around circular tables, all of which could be easily stacked and folded after closing time; bird carcasses hanging on meat hooks in a smudgy glass window which proudly bore a certificate with a hygiene rating of C; and patrons perusing laminated menus with bad photos of the restaurant specialties, accompanied by descriptions in Chinese and ungrammatical English (“famous briase duck rice”). Adjusting her necklace and fluffing her hair, she breathed a sigh of relief.

After sampling a plate of their duck (which, she had to admit, was rich, flavourful, and tender), she struck up a conversation with the owner—a bald, simple, potbellied Chinese man dressed in a dirty off-white singlet and striped Bermuda shorts. And when she had showered him and his establishment with enough flattery, she asked if he would mind showing her the slaughtering area. That was where she first saw
him
: in an open-air, white-tiled area enclosed by walls on three sides. The floor sloped ever so gently towards a gutter and drain in the far corner for the simple reason that bits of animal were much easier to clean off when all one had to do was give the whole place a thorough spraying with a hose. In the very centre of the rectangular area stood a squat stump of a wooden chopping block, dark with use, sticky with clots of blood, flesh, and feathers.

“Come, come.” The owner stepped into the slaughtering area, and motioned for Shakti to do the same. She saw that there was somebody inside already: a sullen, lanky Chinese youth who couldn’t have been more than twenty years of age, squatting by the far wall where several cages of live ducks had been stacked. The young man was wearing a blood-spattered white butcher’s apron, a white hat, and a rectangular white mask which hooked over his ears and covered the bottom half of his face.

“This lady wants to see you at work!” the owner said.

The young man raised himself off his haunches, yanked a duck out of one of the cages by its neck, picked up a cleaver lying nearby, and stalked over to the chopping block. Firmly pressing the side of its head against the wooden surface with his left hand, he raised and lowered the cleaver above the bird’s neck several times for precision. As he did so, it seemed to Shakti as if he were looking the bird dead in the eye. Finally, he raised the cleaver high to deliver the final blow. There was something about the manner in which this was all carried out that mesmerized not only Shakti, but the owner as well. Their attentions dangled, suspended from the cleaver poised in midair.