Dear Javanese Princess

Ph-l-ung. I think that's how she pronounced it, as if she held a feather between her lips. Ph-l-ung. Phlung.

She stood out the second she appeared up from a lower level with five other girls. She was wearing a candy cane patterned dress and silver stilettos. With black bangs, lily skin, taut breasts, and water puppet eyes, she called to me. I didn't see any of the others, really. Just Phlung.

She and I were led quickly up a staircase at the back of the same building by a guy with holes in his jeans and long blond locks in his face. The wear in the crimson carpet distracted me. Then there was the matter of choosing a room from two at the top level. Aircon cool over blue cotton sheets in one attracted me, and I took my eyes off Phlung.

But not for long. Just as I sat on the edge of the mattress and lit one up, she hugged me from behind, and kissed my ear. She wrapped her legs around me, and giggling softly, she explored my chest, my stomach, my groin. And I was hers. As sure as her undressing me. As slow as yellow moon rising over ancient ricefields. Bright as the smile on her face as she thanked me for a massage.

I was hers. I was Phlung's (though physically not long enough---within the hour someone came knocking on the door and belting out nonsense in Vietnamese).

And it was while walking back to my tube hotel that I realized another of Phlung's virtues: Her sincerity, the genuine desire I felt in her touch, one that had helped me to complete my purge, to relieve myself of images of you.

So that's it, now I'm free of you,  and I'm uncaring of the multiple layers of your bluff, the disconnected numbers from your collection of cellphones, the question mark shaped heart. No more delusions, my dear. 

I'm beyond your well greased smile and the feigned attraction. I'm done with your royal grab for my riches.

In fact, I'm free of all things you, Javanese Princess.

You've been eclipsed by Phlung.

The Phone Call

Dling dling. Dling dling.

Swen awoke with a shake. It was the house phone.

Dling dling. Dling dling. 

He reached to the nightstand grabbing the digital clock, and checked the time: 4:27am. The ringing continued.

That fucking nut, he thought. She's calling me. Could it be from her supposed hospital room? Or is she just back from a bar? She knows Beth is here, but she's calling anyway.

Leaping from bed, he remembered the sms he'd sent earlier in the evening. He'd questioned her story about falling ill, her flimsy explanation, her need for more cash.

He'd wanted to believe, but since he'd left her in Batam on Wednesday, just four days earlier, she'd called on Thursday to say she had to pawn the bracelet he'd just bought. Her money had run out. What was she to do?

So just before 5pm on Thursday afternoon he'd gone to POSB in First World Plaza and made a deposit into her account for 200$. He'd then sent her an sms imploring her to buy back the bracelet. (When you're an old lady, give that to your granddaughter as an heirloom, he wrote.)

But apparently the 200$ wasn't enough. On Saturday afternoon she called to say she was going into the hospital. A private hospital. A bit expensive. For that she needed more cash, she said, but he'd balked, and eventually refused to send more money.

Her phone then was disconnected, and he couldn't get through. That made him frustrated.

Later in the evening, around 10pm, when he checked his Facebook, his doubts were reconfirmed.  There on her wall-to-wall was a friend add she'd made on the very same day, around 8pm. Had she made that in the hospital?

Fuming, he sent an sms that questioned what she was up to and other things she'd told him. His worst accusation, one that he would later regret, was that her request for money one month earlier, ostensibly to go back to Medan for the funeral of her sister, had also been fiction. After all, how could he be sure otherwise?

Whatever the truth of the matter, now she's furious, he thought. She's doing this intentionally. She wants to fuck up the whole situation.

But he answered. A smarter man might have told the caller, no matter who she was, that she had a wrong number. A smarter man would have ignored the call. Or just hung up.

But Swen reached for the phone, and  he welcomed the dialog. He wanted to let her know just what he thought. So with Beth waking up and coming into the living room to stand at his side, he answered, and he asked Zarina just what she wanted, why she was calling.

Zarina's shrill voice vibrated through the handset so loudly and clearly that Beth could make out the fact that it was female. Calling at this hour, calling her husband.

And with that, 12 years of marriage changed forever. But this was far from an ending of any sort, not for Beth, not for Zarina, and least of all for Swen. In fact, it wasn't even the beginning of the end.