Stoned

Sometime late in the afternoon.

Raj surveyed the city.  Emptiness resonated back to his 7th-story Robson Heights perch.

The middle of civilization, he thought. The towers, the mosque, UMNO, Dayabumi, Maybank. And the Royal Palace downhill from the Chinese graveyard.

All for what? And at what cost?

He turned from the veranda. Put his knees on the marble floor. He emptied the desk drawer he'd removed earlier and listed the contents:

a dozen keys on a steel ring

three spools of cellophane 

Mongolian Cards

a ruler
a pink guitar pick

EastPower AAA batteries

two tube-like 5" flashlights

the Pioneer remote

a steel triangle

the stapler

Cinderella pen
plastic rosary beads, white

two egg maracas

 Zigzag rolling papers
the pewter letter opener

Better to be focused. No use contemplating the demand for payment of back taxes, the pile up at work, the indifference of the grown children, the brutal change of heart.

Then she came home, and again they went through the motions, had the empty exchange. And out she went again. In a manner neither of them had expected.

When it was done, Raj paced the room for five minutes, and concluded there was no other way. He walked to the front balcony, noted the call of the azan, observed Genting's lights above the city.

Then he bent down in a wrestler's posture, came to grips with granite Ganesa, and took a deep breath. In an instant he'd lifted the statue onto the stool, and then three-feet higher, onto the balcony's four-inch wide rail.

He stood back to contemplate his labor. That was when pitched voices could be heard rising up from below, and an emergency siren was coming in from the distance.

They're in Brickfields, he thought.

He took hold of the neatly cut end of a meter-length clothesline chord. The frayed end had already been secured through the trunk of the elephant god. Lifting his right foot, Raj tied the loose end around his ankle.

Then in a measured jump, he hopped onto the railing's narrow surface, taking care that the statue didn't list.

The stone was well fixed.

In another instant, Raj turned his eyes up toward the heavens above, away from the voices gathering below, away from the world he'd encountered, away from her body there beneath his swaying feet--- and he gave his stone-cold god a swift sharp shove.