The Oddfits (19 page)

“Son, you finish the rest of breakfast. We’ll see you later.”

“Goodbye!”

“Congratulations again! We’re so proud of you!”

In the blink of an eye, Olivia and James had grabbed their briefcases and slammed the front door behind them, leaving Murgatroyd sniffling to himself at the dining table.

The door suddenly opened again, and his father’s voice called out, “And don’t even
think
about not going on the Quest and staying behind to help your poor parents get through this terrible crisis, even though it would help us
immensely
.”

The door slammed shut again.

There was, of course, no question about it.

As the lift descended, James turned to Olivia. He grinned.

“How do you think that went?”

Olivia smiled. “Rather well.”

“Funny, isn’t it? Can’t remember a damned bit about what he explained in his letter.”

“Hmm, it is funny, isn’t it? Well, we’ll never know now. Bit of a shame I flung it out the car window.”

James’s grin widened. “You’re adorable when you’re angry.”

In response, his wife leaned in and kissed him long and hard.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter
what
this ‘Quest’ thing is, does it?” she whispered once their lips had parted. “The important thing is that the boy must be stopped.”

Back in the flat, Murgatroyd had made a phone call. And in the Madagascar-Aplomb Territory of the More Known World, Ann had received it. She had been in the kitchen of her abode, indulging in a glass of sparkling wood-scented water. The early hours of her morning had been spent composing detailed reports on the two new Territories she had been helping explore during the past month, and it was time for a break. Luckily, sparkling wood-scented water was her favourite drink, for in the archipelagos of Madagascar-Aplomb, there was little else available. Some of the more populated Territories had settlements of up to a hundred people and were able to facilitate regular imports of food and beverages from the Known World. The Territories that were widely chosen for settlement also tended to have plants that could be eaten or made into drink. Madagascar-Aplomb, on the other hand, had no edible plants—at least, as far as she knew. And it had only one resident: herself. She had chosen the Territory for its tranquillity rather than its practicality. In Madagascar-Aplomb, there was no dry land. Only water stretching out as far as the eye could see. Floating on the eternally calm waters were enormous blocks of pale-coloured wood—islands, one could call them. There was also sky—a cloudless stretch of pale blue that turned lilac with the rising and setting of the sun. That was all there was.

In one of these floating wooden islands, Ann had created her abode. Although waterproof, the wood was soft, and readily yielded under the pressure of any sharp metal object. Ann had used a gardening spade and a spoon. The block of wood she had chosen was so large that she had been able to hollow out for herself a bedroom, two sitting rooms, a kitchen, and a series of filing closets where she kept important documents in meticulously organized stacks, each one up to two metres high. Her bathroom was a small open-air deck fitted with a set of wooden stairs that led into the surrounding seas.

There were never storms in Madagascar-Aplomb, only the light showers that provided Ann with her drinking supply. A catchment area Ann had carved out on the top of her abode collected the fizzy water that fell from the skies, and funnelled it through a long tube Ann had drilled through the wood to a little basin in her kitchen. And it was from this little basin that Ann filled her cup—the only cup she possessed. She lived on this water and a small supply of groceries she would bring back weekly from another Territory. Some would have called the place inconvenient, but Ann didn’t really think so. “Simple.” That was the word for it.

The dwelling had taken her a little over fourteen months to complete in full, and although her handiwork was simple, crude even, she felt completely satisfied. The feature that gave her the most pleasure was the floors and ceilings, which she had shaved so thin as to be almost transparent. Through the translucent wood above she could see the sky, and through the translucent floor below, the gentle lapping of the waves. And at a certain time of day, the sunlight would stream through the room, through the ceiling and floor, hitting the water beneath and making it shimmer and flash.

Ann had been standing in her kitchen, staring at the sky, sipping water, and thinking of how she should call Murgatroyd to check on his wellbeing. The phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hello? Can I please speak to Ann?”

“This is she.”

“This is Murgatroyd.”

Ann was pleasantly surprised by the coincidence and she tried to let it show in her response. “I know. Why are you calling?”

Like her mentor, Ann had never been very good at expressing warmth.

Murgatroyd hesitated. “I
. . .
I can’t go on the Quest.”

Ann set her cup down on the floor, instantly on the alert. “That’s a shame. Why can’t you go?”

“I can’t leave my parents.”

“
Can’t
leave them?” she asked. “Why on earth not?”

Murgatroyd took a deep breath. “My father has cancer.”

Ann was silent for a moment. “Oh. That
is
a shame. I’m really sorry to hear that, Murgatroyd. When did you find out?”

“Just now.”

“I see.” Taking the mobile phone with her, Ann walked briskly to the filing closets.

Murgatroyd continued. “My parents said I should still go, but I think they actually want me to stay.”

“Do they now?”

Entering the fifth closet, she cradled the phone between her chin and shoulder. She took down a tall stepladder hanging on the wall to her right and set it next to Stack 6M.

Murgatroyd gave a little cough. “Erh. I’m sorry about all this.”

“Sorry?” she repeated. Climbing the stepladder, she examined the colour-coded alphabetized tabs lining one side of the column of files. Lightning quick, she whisked a file out of the stack, leaving the rest of the column undisturbed.

“You know, lah. All the trouble you had to go through. But I should stay. My father is more important than the Quest.”

Ann descended the stepladder carefully, Murgatroyd’s file tucked underneath her right arm. “Quite.”

“I’m sorry,” Murgatroyd said, feeling compelled to apologize again.

Ann sighed. It was a sigh of disappointment and frustration. “I’m terribly sorry to hear the bad news about your father. But Murgatroyd, may I ask you something?”

There was no reason for Murgatroyd to say no. “Erh. Yes?”

Ann was now sitting on the floor, spreading out the contents of Murgatroyd’s file in front of her. “Do you believe everything your parents tell you?”

Murgatroyd was stunned. “Say again?” he asked, though he had heard her perfectly.

“Just a question. If you do change your mind, I’ll be at Bedok Jetty on Friday anyway. Perhaps I’ll see you then. Goodbye.”

She hung up and surveyed the documents before her. She wasn’t quite sure what looking at them again would do. Unable to push the matter from her mind, and unassured by the One’s conclusion that all was fine, she had perused the file several times since. Now she looked through its contents for the ninth time since Sunday: copies of school transcripts for Murgatroyd Floyd Shwet Foo, a clipping of a newspaper interview with “promising Singaporean teen” Seng Kay Huat, dental records and medical checkup results, restaurant reviews for the Colonial Table and L’Abattoir, a thick sheaf of research and observation notes, and the like.

She felt now what she had felt each time she had looked over the file since her meeting with the One: puzzled. She couldn’t believe that she had somehow missed it all before. Murgatroyd’s life simply wasn’t unfolding according to the expected pattern. It wasn’t just the fact that he possessed such a high level of oddfittingness and that he had somehow managed to retain it for so long—that was only the first peculiarity. The second was his obvious emotional attachment to the people in his life, and his life in the Known World itself—entirely out of keeping with his extreme oddfittingness. The more oddfitting you were, the greater the sense that you didn’t belong, the greater the unhappiness, the restlessness, the acute emotional and mental isolation. And the greater the desire to leave it all behind. Oddfits with Murgatroyd’s levels of oddfittingness didn’t ask for more time once they found out who they were; they left the Known World without a second thought.

Then there was the third peculiarity—perhaps the peculiarest of all: the unhealthy, downright harmful relationships he had with his employer, his best friend, and above all, his parents. At the heights of their oddfittingness, Oddfits inspired feelings of mild disdain and were perceived as awkward and eccentric. But
this
(and here, she reached for the photocopy of the photograph she had scrutinized so many times before—a little terrified Murgatroyd and his gleeful parents by the hyena exhibit at the zoo) she never seen or heard the like of.

Something was terribly wrong.

Murgatroyd had to be removed before it was too late.

She made up her mind. She would contact the One and the Other and arrange an emergency meeting. She would request that an exception to the guidelines be made for Murgatroyd. But first, she had some other calls to make.

Stunned by what Ann had said about his parents being liars, an uncharacteristically angry Murgatroyd had redialled Ann’s number to give her a piece of his mind. What did she mean? Was she accusing his parents of lying to him? About
cancer
? There had been very few times in his life where Murgatroyd had been provoked to feelings of outrage, and this was one of them. To his surprise, he found himself speaking with someone from the KFC delivery hotline. In his confusion, he ended up ordering a twenty-four piece family meal, all drumsticks and thigh meat, with extra whipped potatoes and coleslaw.

After Murgatroyd hung up, the phone rang again.

“Murgatroyd, it’s Ann. Could you do me a favour?”

Murgatroyd sputtered, too caught off guard to remember the exact words he wanted to use to express his indignation. All he could come up with was: “You know, what you said just now about my parents was not very nice.”

“Yes. Unfortunately, niceness is not one of my strong points. In any case, tomorrow morning, I want you to go to the 7-Eleven convenience store on Tampines Street 81.”

The specificity and unexpectedness of the request surprised Murgatroyd. “Hah? What for?”

“Just to visit a friend. Trust me. He’ll be expecting you.”

“But—” It was too late. She had hung up again.

Murgatroyd felt very confused. His mind replayed the two conversations he had just had with Ann, but in reverse. Visit a friend at the 7-Eleven? Why did she want him to do that? Did he believe everything his parents told him? Why shouldn’t he believe them? Weren’t they his parents, after all? Of course the right thing to do was to stay with his cancer-stricken father.

He consoled himself. If he didn’t have the Quest, at least he had his job. He counted himself extremely lucky that his attempt to talk to Shakti that night about quitting had been so unsuccessful. At least he was still employed, and he was sure that would help a little with his father’s medical bills. But in the meantime, he sat in the kitchen, concentrating hard—as per his father’s request—on all the good times that they had shared, and on all of his father’s admirable qualities in general. The KFC deliveryman arrived, and not knowing what else to do, Murgatroyd paid him and took the food with a sigh. The faint nausea that had seized him at the sight of his mother’s heavy, eggy omelette after he had learned about the cancer, was now intensified ten times over by the greasy smell of deep-fried chicken. He ran to his bathroom to throw up. Feeling somewhat better, he then retired to his new bed and recommenced thinking loving thoughts about his father.