LAST TANG STANDING
Lauren Ho

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in the USA by Putnam, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 2020

First published in the UK by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

Copyright © Lauren Ho 2020

Cover design by Caroline Young © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover illustration © Shutterstock.com

Lauren Ho asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008400071

Ebook Edition © June 2020 ISBN: 9780008400095

Version: 2020-05-22

Praise for Last Tang Standing:

‘I absolutely adored it. It is the funniest rom-com I’ve read in a very long time. I can’t believe it’s a debut – the writing is so slick, the characters are so real, the pacing is so perfect! Andrea stole my heart … I cannot wait to get my hands on whatever Lauren Ho writes next’

BETH O’LEARY, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Flatshare

‘Andrea Tang is wise, witty, flawed and perfectly written. I adored her story, and felt so seen by it. If you loved Crazy Rich Asians you’ll gobble this up!’

LAURA JANE WILLIAMS, bestselling author of Our Stop

‘Witty, vibrant and full of characters I’d love to go for drinks with. As a reader who loved Bridget Jones back in the day, I’d say that Andrea is the millennial Bridget’

LOUISE HARE, author of This Lovely City

‘Last Tang Standing has bucketloads of charm. Both affecting and uplifting, this book is for anyone who has ever had a problem with family and boundaries … in fact, for anyone who has ever had a family’

KAT GORDON, author of An Unsuitable Woman

‘Last Tang Standing is escapism at its best … Andrea’s romantic and professional shenanigans made me smile from start to finish, and there were few pages where I didn’t laugh out loud. Your ideal literary antidote’

CAROLINE MACKENZIE, author of One Year of Ugly

‘Joyful, exuberant and very funny. An absolute treat’

NICOLA GILL, author of The Neighbours

‘A smart and witty depiction of navigating the world of dating, coupled with the messy (but amusing) dynamics of family life’

JENNIFER JOYCE, author of The Accidental Life Swap

‘With snark levels reminiscent of Bridget Jones herself … A lush portrayal of Singapore life filled with vibrant characters and a lovable leading lady readers will root for’

KIRKUS REVIEWS

‘This fun, upbeat tale remains entertaining throughout. Ho’s cute, quippy love story is sure to captivate rom-com fans’

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

‘Fresh and fun, Last Tang Standing delivers a modern take on romance that is relatable whether you’re in Singapore or San Francisco. Lauren Ho should be on your reading list no matter where you live!’

JEN FREDERICK, New York Times bestselling author of Heart and Seoul

‘Your new favourite singleton is here and her name is Andrea Tang! Lauren Ho’s irresistible Last Tang Standing sparkles with that perfect match of hilarity and heart on every page … You’ll fall in love with this warm, witty and winning tale’

AIMEE AGRESTI, author of Campaign Widows

‘Last Tang Standing is a hilarious transcontinental romp filled with characters that crackle off the page. Lauren Ho’s incisive, sharp voice lays bare one of the central questions in many professional women’s lives – is everything we give up to live a “good life” worth it?’

ANDIE J. CHRISTOPHER, USA Today bestselling author of Not That Kind of Guy

Dedication

For Olivier

Epigraph

Remember that your relatives are only human—That means they can be killed.

—Andrea Tang Ancient Chinese Proverb

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Last Tang Standing

Dedication

Epigraph

Part I: Spring is Coming

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Part II: Two Birds, One Stone

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Part III: Salty with Age

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Part IV: No Fluke

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Part V: The Last True Self

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Publisher

Part I

1
Tuesday 9 February

Hope. That’s what the Spring Festival, the most important celebration in the traditional Chinese calendar, is supposed to commemorate, aside from signalling, well, the coming of spring. Renewal. A time for new beginnings, fresh starts. Green stuff grows out of the ground. Politicians fulfill their campaign promises, concert tickets for A-list pop stars never get scalped, babies get born and nobody gets urinary incontinence after. And Chinese families all over the world come together in honor of love, peace, and togetherness.

But this is not that kind of story. This is a story where bad things happen to good people. Especially single people. Because here’s the deal: for folks like me who find themselves single by February, Spring Festival is not a joyous occasion. It’s a time for conjuring up imaginary boyfriends with names like Pete Yang or Anderson Lin, hiring male escorts who look smart instead of hot, marrying the next warm body you find, and if all else fails, having plastic surgery and changing your name so your family can never find you. For desperate times call for desperate measures, and there is no period of time more desperate for single Chinese females over the age of thirty everywhere than the Annual Spinster-Shaming Festival, a.k.a. Chinese New Year.

God help us persecuted singletons; God help us all—spring is coming.

It was noon. Linda Mei Reyes and I were sitting in a car in front of our aunt’s house in matching updos, smoking kreteks and hunched over our smartphones as we crammed for the toughest interview that we would face this year, the “Why Are You Still Single in Your Thirties, You Disappointment to Your Ancestors” inquisition. Our interrogators lay in wait, and they were legion. The Tangs, our family, were very prolific breeders.

Each year, as was customary on the second day of Chinese New Year, Auntie Wei Wei would host a lavish luncheon for all the Singapore-based Tangs. These luncheons were mandatory Family Time: everyone had to show their faces if they were in town; the only acceptable escape clauses being death, disability, a job-related trip, or the loss of one’s job (in which case you might as well be dead). If you’re wondering why Auntie Wei Wei commanded such power, aside from the fact that she was housing our clan’s living deity (Grandma Tang), it’s because she was our clan’s Godfather, minus the snazzy horse head deliveries. Many of the older Tangs were in her debt: not only did she act as the family’s unofficial private bank for the favored few, she’d basically raised the lot of them after my grandfather passed away in the 1950s and left my grandmother destitute. As the eldest of a brood of nine siblings, Auntie Wei Wei had dropped out of secondary school and worked two jobs to help defray household expenses. That’s how her siblings all managed to finish their secondary schooling, and for some of the higher achievers, university, even as it came at her own expense.

At least karma had rewarded her sacrifice. After migrating to Singapore in her late twenties, she had married well, against the odds, to a successful businessman; when he died soon after (of entirely natural causes), she’d inherited several tracts of land, the sale of which had made her, and her only daughter, Helen, eye-wateringly wealthy. Hence her unassailable position as de facto matriarch of the Tang clan, since there is nothing that the Chinese respect more than wealth, especially the kind that might potentially trickle downstream. Posthumously.

Ever since I moved to Singapore from London about six years ago, as the sole representative of my father’s side of the family in Singapore I’d been obliged by my very persuasive mother to attend Auntie Wei Wei’s gatherings. Since my father was her favorite sibling, Auntie Wei Wei had paid off a lot of his debts when he passed and now she basically owns us, emotionally, which is how real power works. I used to enjoy these gatherings, but since Ivan, my long-term partner, and I broke up nine months and twenty-three days ago, way too late for me to find another schmuck to tote to this horror show, there was ample reason to dread today’s festivities. Why, you ask? Because Chinese New Year is the worst time to be unattached, bar none. Forget Valentine’s Day. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen then? Some man-child you’ve been obsessing over doesn’t send you chocolates? Boo-hoo. A frenemy humble-brags about the size of her ugly, overpriced bouquet (that she probably sent herself)? Please. Your fun blind date turns out to be the Zodiac Killer? Tough. Just wait till you have to deal with Older Chinese Relatives. These people understand mental and emotional torture. They will corner you and ask you questions designed to make you want to chug a bottle of antifreeze right after. Popular ones include: “Why are you still single?”; “How old are you again?”; “What’s more important than marriage?”; “Do you know you can’t wait forever to have babies, otherwise you are pretty much playing Russian roulette with whatever makes it out of your collapsing birth canal?”; “How much money do you make, after taxes?”

As we’ve been programmed since birth to kowtow to our elders, we force ourselves to Show (our Best) Face at these events, no matter how damaging they can be to our ego and psyche. So that is why, dear Diary, two successful women in their thirties, dressed in orange floral cheongsams they panic-bought the night before, were trying so hard to get their stories about each other’s imaginary boyfriend straight to placate an audience that they will not see again for another year.

“It’s easy for mine,” Linda was saying. My cousin and best friend, Linda is only half-Chinese (the other half being Spanish-Filipino), so she had some wiggle room with the family, but even the normally cold-blooded litigator was sweating in the air-conditioned car. “Just remember that Alvin Chan, whom you’ve met before by the way, is not just my boss but my boyfriend, and just, you know, extrapolate from there. Make up the details.”

“What do you think I am, an amateur?” I snapped, holding up my iPhone to show her a photo of her and her “boyfriend” at a recent gala. I pulled up a screenshot of Korean actor and national treasure Won Bin—unlike Linda, I did not have a hot boss. “Now you remember that my boyfriend’s name is Henry Chong, he’s a Singaporean Chinese in his late thirties, he’s the only child of a real estate mogul and a brilliant brain surgeon, and he looks like this.” I held the phone in front of her face so she could be inspired by the perfection that is Won Bin.

“Too many details,” Linda said, not even looking at the screen. “It’s always the details that trip liars up. Keep it simple.”

“Not if you’re prepared, like I am. You, however, look wasted.

“I’m prepared. And I’m dead sober,” she said emphatically before burping gin fumes in my face. Yet somehow her softly braided updo looked fresh while mine was already unspooling, like my life.

I muttered the Lord’s Prayer, or what I could recall of it, under my breath. It was going to be a long day. “Remember, Henry’s a partner in a midsize Singaporean law firm. He is currently meeting with a client in Dubai, and that’s why he can’t be here with us today. Oh, and he’s tall. And hot.”

“Got it,” Linda said, rolling her eyes. She took a deep drag from her third “cigarette” of the morning. “Anything else I should casually drop during the convo? Maybe the fact that he has a massive cock?”

“If you’re speaking to one of the older aunties, then yes. Go for it, with my blessings.”

Linda sighed, stubbing out her “cigarette” in an ashtray. “Got it. And if anyone asks, Alvin’s skiing in Val-d’Isère.”

“Val-de-Whut?”

“Val-dee-Zehr. It’s in the French Alps, you peasant.” She grinned. “Here’s another tip: peppering a convo with unpronounceable place names usually deters further lines of questioning. Most people don’t like looking unsophisticated.”

“Good point,” I said. “OK, in that case nix Dubai, make it Ashgabat.”

She flashed a thumbs-up. “Ashgabat it is. Anyway, there’s a chance that none of the relatives will remember who I am since I’ve not been back in Asia for over a decade, so I might be safe from attack.” Linda’s family was somewhat estranged from the clan, one of the reasons being that her mother had married an “outsider,” i.e., a non-Chinese; plus, having spent most of her formative years attending boarding school in England meant she was less involved, and less inclined to be so, in clan affairs. That was why she kept a low profile with the Tangs since her move to Singapore last Feburary as part of her firm’s new market expansion plan. “I could have skipped this whole do and just stayed home, so remind me why I’m putting myself through this shitshow again?”

“Because you love me?” I said brightly.

She snorted.

I narrowed my eyes. “You owe me, woman. Without the help of my excellent notes and last-minute tutorials you would have failed your final year of law school, since you hardly attended any of the lectures.”

“Keep telling yourself that. Anyway, I seem to recall being promised a champagne brunch at the St. Regis if I did well today.”

“Yes,” I grumbled. “I just hope you put as much effort into Henry’s history and character development as I did for Alvin’s.”

“Don’t worry. I didn’t graduate top of the class—”

“Second. I was first.”

“—top of the class for nothing. I’ve got the whole story down pat. Relax.” She punched me in the back. “Straighten your shoulders and try not to look so browbeaten. It’s no wonder you haven’t been made partner.”

It took all my self-control not to stab her in the eye with my cigarette.

Perhaps sensing she was in mortal danger if she didn’t change the subject, Linda took out a bottle of Febreze and proceeded to baptize us with it. “Anyway, I have one last piece of advice before we go in.”

“What?” I said, between coughs.

She pinched my arm, hard. “Whatever happens in there, do not cry in front of them. Don’t give those jerks the satisfaction.”

“You are hurting me,” I yelped, eyes welling with tears.

“I really hope no one gives us ang paos,” Linda said darkly, oblivious to the suffering of others as usual. “They get extra bitchy when they do. I’d rather they just insult us without feeling like they earned it.” She was referring to the red envelopes containing cash that married people traditionally give out to children and other unmarried kin regardless of age or sex during Chinese New Year. For kids it’s a great way to get extra pocket money, but getting ang paos as an adult in your thirties was a special kind of festive embarrassment, akin to getting caught making out with your first cousin by your grandmother. At least the adult recipient can comfort himself imagining the internal weeping and gnashing of teeth the married ang pao giver must undergo as he is forced to hand over his hard-earned cash to another able-bodied adult. In our experience, the intrusive questions and snide put-downs were definitely the giver’s way of alleviating the mental agony of this reluctant act.

“Let’s not be too hasty,” I said, crossing myself in case she had jinxed us. “Last year I made almost six hundred bucks easy, three hundred from Auntie Wei Wei alone.”

Two breath mints and liberal spritzes of Annick Goutal later, we were red-eyed and ready to face all the orcs that our family tree could throw at us. Auntie Wei Wei lived in an imposing double-storied bungalow in a quiet, leafy neighborhood in Bukit Timah. The gate and double doors of her home were thrown wide open with no security guards stationed at the gate, no salivating rabid dogs on patrol, and no military booby traps set up on the grounds. You could literally just stroll in. Which we did.

In all honesty, the casual indifference of wealthy Singaporeans to what I would deem basic precautionary measures and, quite frankly, the sheer lack of initiative shown by local burglars never failed to amaze me as a Malaysian. Even I could have picked this place clean with no trouble or special training whatsoever. All I would need is a couple of duffel bags, maybe a sexy black leotard, a pair of sunglasses, Chanel thigh-high boots, a French accent …

“Are you daydreaming again?” Linda’s voice broke my reverie, in which I was back-flipping over a field of laser beams à la Catwoman (circa Michelle Pfeiffer).

“No. Why?”

“You’re just standing there, drooling. Get in.” She pushed open the front door, which had been left ajar.

I stifled a sigh of envy as we made our way to the reception room. Despite it being the umpteenth time I’d stepped into her home over the years, I was impressed. The mansion, with its black marble floors, high ceilings, and bespoke wallpaper, whispered of entitlement and the power to buy politicians. Auntie Wei Wei had had the place decorated in chinoiserie of the highest order. It was hard not to gawk at the fine detailing on the antique porcelain vases and lacquerware, the elegant scrolls of Chinese calligraphy and ink paintings, or to refrain from touching the dancer–shaped blooms of the rare slipper orchids flowering in their china bowls and the stuffed white peacock, with its diamond white train of tail feathers, perched on its ivory base in one corner of the room. All that was missing were some casually scattered gold bars.

It was apparent that every (official) member of our clan had made the effort to Show Face: man, woman, legitimate children, and domestic help; although it was almost 1:00 p.m., three hours after the gathering had officially begun, the place was still packed with close to fifty people. As per usual with such gatherings, everyone was dressed to the nines with their most impressive bling. You could hardly look around without a Rolex, Omega, or Panerai, real or fake, nearly putting your eye out. Key fobs of luxury cars faux-casually dangled or peeked out from pockets. Most donned red, an auspicious color for the Lunar New Year. Many Tangs were also red in the face from the premium wine and whiskey they were knocking back like there was no tomorrow, courtesy of their host. A free-flow bar can bring out the reluctant alcoholic in any Chinese, Asian flush and stomach ulcers be damned. But for me and Linda, boozing Tangs are not usually the problem: it’s the sober ones we had to be wary of, the ones drinking tea as black as their stony hearts, their beady eyes looking for fresh prey. I had vivid memories of being forced to recite the times table or some classical Chinese poem in front of these raptors, their breath bated as they waited for me to make a mistake so they could run and get my parents—that way, we could all be shamed together. That’s how they get off.

At least the food looked amazing; I would have expected nothing less from Auntie Wei Wei. In one corner of the hall was a long buffet table laden with drool-inducing Chinese New Year delicacies such as whole roasted suckling pig; at least four different types of cold noodles; steamed sea bass; beautifully crispy Peking duck; fried spring rolls; pomelo and plum chicken salad; and niangao. On a separate table, the desserts: a huge rose-and-lychee cake flanked by two different types of chocolate cake; assorted glazed mini-cupcakes; macarons the perfect red of cherries; trays of golden, buttery pineapple tarts; bowls of pistachios, cashew nuts, and peanuts; platters of cut tropical fruit; and bright pyramids of mandarin oranges and peaches. It was too much food, but by the end of the evening everything would be gone. Gluttony, after all, is a Chinese art form and we’ve had millennia to perfect it.

Over the din of Chinese New Year songs blaring from sleek Bang & Olufsen speakers and drunken chatter, Linda and I looked for Grandma Tang so we could pay our quick respects before joining our single, pariah peers. Linda, being a head taller than my five foot three, scanned the room and found a queue waiting to greet Grandma Tang, who was wearing a crimson batik cheongsam and all the imperial jade in the world. Someone had seated her in a thronelike high-backed chair in one corner of the hall on a makeshift pedestal, where she could peer imperiously (but blindly) down at the crowd. She was so old and wizened that when we got to her and wished her the standard Chinese New Year greeting of a long, prosperous (never forget the “prosperous”), and happy life, she grunted in derision, which is the old lady equivalent of “hah!”

I get my sense of humor from her, of course.

After wishing her thus, we waited for a few uncomfortable seconds before realizing, to our growing horror, that she had no intention of giving us elder singletons ang paos. And so, to the chorus of jeering children, we made our shamefaced way to the other end of the room, where a herd of our similarly luckless-in-love cousins were huddled together for safety. The swiftest path to them, however, brought us by some sober aunts who were stationed by the bar, simultaneously haranguing and groping a terrified waiter. There was no way we would be able to avoid them.

“Walk fast,” I hissed, gripping Linda’s right palm in mine so that she wouldn’t canter off in the direction of the bottles of Johnnie Walker Black lined up on the bar’s countertop. “And don’t look around.” We pretended to be deep in a discussion, laughing maniacally as we scurried by the aunts, but to no avail. One of the women, deep in her seventies and dressed in an ill-fitting burgundy cheongsam, detached herself from the gaggle of vultures, I mean, aunts, and lurched over, grinning at me. It took me a while to recognize her as she had slathered on a Beijing opera mask of makeup, and by then it was too late. Leering at me was none other than Auntie Kim, the tyrant who used to make me recite the times table in front of all the Tangs when I was a wee preschooler. I say “auntie,” but to be honest, even though I see her at every single Tang gathering, I have no idea if she’s really my aunt or if she is even related to me. In many parts of Asia, it is perfectly acceptable to call anyone above the age of forty, be they relative or not, “auntie” or “uncle” in lieu of ever learning their actual names—the grocer, the taxi driver, the retired accountant who does your taxes, the local pedophile—anyone. Unless, of course, you are about the same age or older. Then you’re just asking for a good old slap in the face.

I scanned the room, looking for an open window, a friendly face, or a hatchet, but there was none. I tried to catch the attention of my unmarried cousins, clustered a few steps away. Two of them waved before averting their eyes. Cowards.

“Andrea Tang Wei Ling,[fn1] why so late?” Auntie Kim shouted in Singlish to all and sundry as she scanned me from top to toe, ignoring Linda (Linda was right: she had effectively been forgotten by our family). “Why you here alone? No one want you issit?” She chuckled. “Aiyah, I just joke only, but maybe also true hor, hahaha!”

Everyone within earshot was smirking. Someone’s loser kid chimed in in a singsong voice, “Auntie Andrea doesn’t want to get married because she doesn’t want to give us ang pao because she’s stingy!” This outburst was greeted with laughter. The loudest laughs came from my feckless single cousins.

Normally Linda would have left me to die in the proverbial gutter by then, but Linda had KPIs[fn2] and she was not one to disappoint. Without hesitation, she shoved me aside and clasped the woman’s papery hands in her own. “Auntie Kim, don’t you worry about ol’ Wei Ling here. She’s doing very well. It took some time, but she’s finally found herself a man!”

I wished she wouldn’t say it with such gusto.

“Really, ah? Who?” Auntie Kim was incredulous.

“Henry Chong. Oh, he’s such a darling, way too good for Wei Ling, really. Very smart. Very handsome. Very big, er, shoulders.”

“Hen-Ree?” Auntie Kim mused, sucking on the vowels like they were her missing teeth. “Hen-Ree where right now?”

“Not here,” I said petulantly, my arms crossed to hide my sweating pits.

“Oh, he’s always flying here and there, that busy bee,” Linda said. “Henry’s a partner in a big law firm. Very big. Two, three hundred employees.” She leaned close to Auntie Kim and stagewhispered, “He’s very, very rich.”

“A lawyer?” Auntie Kim exclaimed. “Rich some more … good, good. And he is Chinese, right?”

“He can trace his Chinaman lineage all the way to the first caveman Chong to have carnal knowledge of a woman, Auntie,” Linda said, poker-faced.

“Wah?” Auntie Kim’s grasp of English was as strong as Britney Spears’s vocal range.

Linda tried again. “Henry is one hundred percent Chinese, pure as rice flour.”

“Oh, like that, ah, good lor. Make sure you keep this one, Wei Ling, don’t let him fly away, can!” said Auntie Kim, mollified. Having received all the information she needed, she handed us each an ang pao and lurched away, her ropes of gold chains clanking, this time heading in the direction of my terrified twenty-nine-year-old cousin, Alison Tang, who’d just arrived and was about to slink into a corner. The trooper had worn pink lip gloss and styled her hair in pigtails to appear younger. Alas, Auntie Kim, despite her decrepit condition, was not so easily fooled. “Alee-son! Alee-son! Where are you going? Why nobody with you again? Why—”

“Let’s go,” I said, dragging Linda past a trio of red-faced men exchanging loud and drunken reminiscences till we reached the singles posse. Our presence was acknowledged, barely; nobody wanted or dared to break eye contact for too long with their phones. Most were legitimately working (Not even the most important holiday for the Chinese can stop me from slaving for you! was the subtext they were channeling to their bosses), while some were Facebooking or surfing mindlessly. The most brazen one of all, Gordon, was browsing Grindr profiles. I watched him text-flirt with one guy after another and wished I could do the same and put myself out there in all my mediocre glory.

To my horror I realized, when Gordon started laughing, that I had spoken out loud without meaning to, which tended to happen when I was under stress. “Andrea darling, just do it! It’s really easy. Want me to set up a profile for you? On Tinder, of course. Or that hot new location-based app everyone’s talking about, which is like Grindr but for straight people. You know the one: Sponk!”

I demurred; Tinder and Sponk heralded the death of romance to me. As if you could reduce the search for the all-important Someone Who Won’t Kill You in Your Sleep to a thumb-swiping exercise based (mostly) on photos. And since I had no Photoshop skills to speak of, I didn’t stand a chance—everyone knows that you had to have a hot profile photo or at least one where you looked like you hadn’t given up in order to get any matches. These days I resembled a slightly melted, sun-bleached garden gnome, no thanks to my punishing schedule at work. Maybe if—

“Why, look who it is, my favorite niece, Andrea!”

I turned and saw Auntie Wei Wei, resplendent in a sunset-orange silk baju kurung and dripping in diamonds, striding toward us. My stomach clenched; I knew why Auntie Wei Wei was coming over and it certainly wasn’t to praise my sartorial choices or make small talk. She always had an agenda when it came to members of the clan; she stuck her nose in everyone’s affairs and gave unsolicited advice or orders, but nobody dared to contradict or stop her.

“I’ll pay you five hundred bucks if you come out to Auntie Wei Wei right now,” I whispered in desperation to Gordon. When I didn’t receive a response, I swiveled my head and saw that Gordon and the gang of smartphone-wielding cravens had somehow migrated to the far side of the drawing room and were all texting as if their lives depended on it.

I turned back around and found myself face-to-face with the matriarch of the family. Behind me, I heard, rather than saw, Linda sidling away like the traitorous lowlife she was, but alas for her, the gin from earlier in the car was already working its dulling magic.

“Linda Mei Reyes!” Auntie Wei Wei said in her loud, commanding voice. “The prodigal niece herself. Now isn’t this a lovely surprise to have you grace us with your presence at long last.” She gave Linda a dismissive once-over. “Huh. Still as hipless as a snake. Where have you been hiding all this time? Did your father finally decide to cut the purse strings?”

Linda froze. This was the only chink in her armor—her financial dependence on her father, despite what she proclaimed to the world. “I’m the partner of a law firm and my boyfriend skis in Val-d’Isère,” she said weakly to no one.

“Well, good for you, working with Daddy’s pals. I’ll say this for José—he always took care of his children, which is more than I can say about my sister.” She shook her head and tsk-tsked. “As for you, Andrea”—Auntie Wei Wei turned her attention to me; the blood in my veins ran cold—“are you sick? You’ve lost a lot of weight. I can see right through you.” She waggled a finger at me. “You need to fatten up or you’ll lose what’s left of your figure. Men don’t want to marry scrawny women, you know.”

I gave her a rictus grin to match my loser, non-childbearing hips. Last year I was too fat, this year I was too thin: Auntie Wei Wei could give Goldilocks a lesson or two. “Gong xi fa cai, Auntie Wei Wei. You look well,” I said, lying. Auntie Wei Wei looked like she had crossed the Botox Rubicon in the dark.

“It’s the exercise and regular facials, you should try some—I can park a Bentley in one of your pores. Anyway, did you come with Linda? What happened to Ivan?”

“I have a new boyfriend,” I said, after I’d successfully fought the impulse to pluck out Auntie Wei Wei’s eyeballs. “His name is, ah, is—”

Auntie Wei Wei cut me off. “If he’s a no-show, he’s not serious. You youngsters these days.” She sighed. “You know you’re wasting your best years being a career woman, right? The Tang women tend not to age well, I must say, speaking from a personal standpoint only, of course.” She gave me a pointed look.

Don’t cry! Distract her! Distract her! “What about Helen, then?” I blurted before I could stop myself. I felt kind of low bringing up her still-single daughter, who was turning thirty-eight this year.

“Oh, haven’t you heard?” Auntie Wei Wei’s frozen eyebrows gave a heroic spasm of joy. “That’s our big announcement this Chinese New Year: Helen’s engaged! She’s marrying a banker, Magnus Svendsen—isn’t that a lovely name? Mag-nus! So regal!”

“What?” I squeaked, most eloquently. Helen Tang-Chen, who I knew for a fact to be openly gay to all her contemporaries, was getting married—to a man? What sorcery was this?

Auntie Wei Wei couldn’t have looked more self-satisfied. “It’s a little bit of a whirlwind romance, I must admit, but who am I to stand in the path of true love? We’re having the Singaporean reception at Capella in May of next year, just after my big sixtieth birthday bash. That’s more than enough time for you, and Linda, to find a date, I’m sure. And maybe”—she gave me another pointed look—“both of you could get a more flattering outfit this time, something less … off-the-rack?”

I tried to find my voice but my throat was closing up.

Auntie Wei Wei’s tone conveyed the pity her eyes couldn’t. “You know, I always thought my daughter would be the last to marry among all the Tang women of your generation, but it looks like that’s no longer the case.”

A wave of nausea overwhelmed me as the realization broke: for the first time in my life, I would indeed be last at something.

“You traitor,” I said for the umpteenth time.

We were sprawled on the couch in Linda’s penthouse apartment in River Valley, performing the postmortem on Auntie Wei Wei’s party with a little help from a bottle of tequila and a bag of Doritos.

“I had to, Andrea, I had to. You saw what she was like!”

“You betrayed me. Just left me alone in hostile territory!”

Linda yawned and stretched. “Oh, quit your histrionics. You would have done the same. Besides, she got her claws in me anyway. I’m still smarting.”

“Can you believe she only gave us fifty dollars each as ang pao,” I said feelingly, “when she was way, way more vicious this time?”

Linda shrugged. Money talk bored her—what excited her was winning. At everything and anything. And status. And designer bags. “I don’t get it. When I saw Helen in Mambo last December, she swore to me that she was never, ever getting married until gay marriage was legalized in Singapore. And now she’s marrying a man? What gives?”

I was stalking Magnus Svendsen on my smartphone. “Have you seen how hot this Magnus looks in his photo? And it’s, like, a photo from an annual report. Nobody is supposed to look hot in those—you can’t even openly use filters on LinkedIn.” I squinted at the photo. “Look at that face! He’s so … so … symmetrical.”

Linda glanced at the offensive photo in question and made a face. “Urgh! How unfair. The very least she could have done was take one of the wonky-looking ones off the market. Maybe he’s also gay?”

“Does Auntie Wei Wei know that Helen is gay?” I asked hopefully. Not that I was planning to throw her under the bus, of course.

Linda rolled her large hazel eyes. “Of course she knows. Don’t you know that she once caught Helen messing around with her tutor in their house? But Auntie Wei Wei just pretended like it never happened.”

My stomach growled; I had barely eaten at the gathering from all the pretend-texting and one bag of crisps was not enough. “I’m hungry. Pass me the Doritos?”

“We’re out of Doritos.”

I fell to my knees in mock despair. “Dear God! Can anything else go wrong today?”

“My Netflix is down,” Linda added. She checked the bottle. “And we’re finally out of tequila.”

I curled into a fetal position on the carpet. Clearly this day could get worse.

“Wait.” She disappeared and came back with an opened bottle in her hand and a glass. “Here. Have some of this cooking wine. Not sure if it’s still good, it’s been sitting in the fridge for about three days since Susan made spag bog for me”—Susan was Linda’s part-time help—“but you have plebian taste, so.”

“Wine is wine.” I sat up, ignored the proffered glass, and took a giant swig from the bottle before passing it to Linda, who guzzled half of it after a sniff and a wince. That’s what I liked about her: she might look like Harrods on the outside, but on the inside Linda was straight-up T.J.Maxx—hobo without the chic.

She sat cross-legged on the floor next to me. “You know, I heard what that witch said to you. I’m sorry.”

“No biggie,” I said. “It didn’t hurt at all.”

She hugged me. “Shh. It’s just me here. You don’t have to lie.”

My lower lip trembled. “It should have been Helen,” I said. “She was supposed to be my fail-safe, the Last Tang Standing.” Now there would be no one else (older) to share the burden of deflecting criticism on being single from my relatives.

“There, there.” She kissed me and let go. “I really don’t know why you still go to these things just because they’re hosted by family. I wouldn’t have.”

I had often debated this, too. Linda didn’t understand because culturally she was more Westernized than I was. And she really wasn’t part of the clan and never had been; having lived most of her life in the Philippines, she had never grown up within this support system. Auntie Wei Wei and the rest had seen my mother and me through when everything had come crashing down on our family, when we found out about my father’s cancer and the bills, and when my mother had her own health issues. They were interfering, they were nasty, but they were still family. For all that they had done for me, I had a duty to show up and humor them, at the very least.

You don’t run away from family.

“Anyway, you let your family dictate what you should or should not do way too often. Is this how you want to live your life? What about what you want?”

“What are you talking about? I make my own choices.”

“So you say. You’ve been incepted so hard you can’t even tell, or rather you don’t want to, what’s your decision and what’s theirs anymore.” Linda began ticking off a laundry list of items. “Let’s talk about how you live in Singapore instead of London, like you’ve always wanted to, just so you can be close to your family.”

“It’s called sacrificial love, thank you very much.”

“Sure, but you don’t see your mother more often than when you were living in London, do you? And let’s not forget how you’re an M&A lawyer when you never gravitated to that during law school. Or how every man you’ve dated since you moved back home has been the male version of your Ideal Self According to Ma.”

“I don’t have a type,” I protested weakly.

“Whatever you say.” Linda yawned and began doing yoga stretches. “Anyway, I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but since they’re harassing you to settle down and you have no willpower to defy them, why don’t you start dating again?”

I glared at her. “I make my own decisions, not my family. Anyhow, the way things are going at work, I don’t have time to date, not if I’m going to be the youngest equity partner of Singh, Lowe & Davidson.”

“An admirable quest! Hear, hear!” Linda said. She swigged from the bottle of wine. “Here’s to us, sexy, independent working women!”

“Well, you’re independent until your salary runs out. Then you go running to Daddy.”

“Shut up.”

I gave her a big kiss on her right cheek. “You know I love you. Thanks for coming today, really. It meant a lot to me.”

She shrugged. “You’re welcome. Oh, and FYI, I booked us our table at St. Regis for the champagne brunch you owe me.” She laughed at my sour expression. “What, did you think La Linda would forget?”

I stared glumly at my lap and shook my head. When it came to collecting debt, the Chinese never forget.

2
Saturday 13 February

Received a call on my mobile phone at the butt crack of dawn (10:35 a.m. on a Saturday), waking me up from a terrifying nightmare where I had dropped my work mobile into the toilet just before an important call, thus losing all the progress I had made on Candy Crush.

I stared at the caller ID, which flashed “Unknown.” That could only mean one thing: it was my mother. Even pervert-stalkers and telemarketers know better than to mask their caller ID if they wanted the call picked up.

Knowing she would just hit redial until she got through, I answered the call. “Hello?”

“Where are my grandchildren?” she said without preamble.

I groaned, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. “And hello to you, too, Ma.”

“Don’t ‘hello’ me. I don’t want ‘hello.’ I want grandchildren, Andrea,” she admonished. Really, who needs a biological clock when you have a Chinese mother?

“Well, Mom, if we are to follow the cultural and religious norms that you hold dear, then first, I need to find a man, then we need to date for a sufficient amount of time to ensure that he’s not a serial child molester or a substance abuser, then I need to manipulate him into marrying me since there are so many younger, hotter women out there, then—”

“Then why did you and Ivan break up?” she cried dramatically. I could almost hear the Arm Fling. “Auntie Eunice called me after Auntie Wei Wei’s gathering to tell me that you came with Linda, no boyfriend in sight. I had to find out from my least favorite sister-in-law that my own flesh and blood had broken up with her best prospect? How could you?”

I sighed. So the cat’s corpse was out of the bag. “I’m dating someone new,” I lied halfheartedly.

She snorted. “I know what ‘dating’ means to your generation. It means no-strings-attached sex. If you’re giving it away for free, which man will want to marry you?”

I rolled my eyes. If only my mom knew how little action I was getting down south, where a secondary forest was on its way to becoming a primary one. “OK, Mom, I get that I need to meet a man, make him fall in love with me, marry me, and impregnate me. I’ll get on it right away. Can I go now?”

“I can’t believe that even Helen is getting married,” my mother said huffily. “It’s … it’s … so—unexpected.”

“Why not?” I asked, with interest. I wondered how much my mother actually knew about Helen’s orientation.

“She’s so flighty,” was all my mom would say. “But at least she got her act together in the end, unlike you. Just last week at Auntie Loh’s Mahjong Friday—you remember Auntie Loh, my hairdresser from the nineties, the one whose servant ran away with a Bangladeshi man?”

“No.” Why did mothers always think that if they recited random details about a person you’d never met in your life, you’d somehow magically know what they were talking about?

“No? Well, anyway, did you know that her youngest daughter, Jo, who’s your age, is expecting twins again?” Her accusatory tone suggested that getting pregnant with twins was just as easy as walking into a supermarket and picking them off the shelf, if I would just get down to it.

I made a suitably noncommittal sound.

A loud sigh on the phone. “Wei Ling,[fn1] ah, you have a nice face, nice body, unless you’ve grown fat like when you were studying in England, a good career—so tell me, why are you still single? Are you too busy at work?” She paused before saying, “Do you need me to help you in that department, maybe set up another blind date with someone’s son? What was wrong with the last one, that nice boy, Simon?”

I shuddered at the recollection of the one blind date my mother had set up for me with the son of a “good friend” (by which she meant some rando she had met, once, at church), just before I met Ivan. Simon was a limp rice noodle of a man who made white noise seem exciting. “Please do no such thing unless you want me to light myself on fire,” I said. To myself. Out loud, I said, “I don’t need help meeting men, thanks.”

“I’ll start asking around,” she replied, ignoring me completely, as usual.

“Ma! I told you I have options.”

“So what’s the problem? Why haven’t you gotten serious with anyone after Ivan? Are you being too picky? You modern girls want too much, that’s the problem with this generation. You don’t know how to compromise!” said the woman who once told me to drop a boyfriend in college because he was “only a biology undergrad.” She ranted on in this vein with great vigor. I grunted occasionally as I let my mind drift. Counterarguments were counterproductive—it was better to just sit back, take a chill pill (sometimes literally), and tune out. I set my personal phone down on the bed, pulled my down comforter over it to muffle her voice, took one of my work mobiles out, crunched a Valium, and launched Candy Crush.

“… I was already married and pushing out your sister when I was half your age. If you followed my advice and locked down Ivan years ago, you’d be married by now!”

I grunted. It was rich of my mother to talk about marriage or give me any relationship advice at all. They had divorced with decided acrimony when I was twenty-two. Even though my mother had deigned to care for my father when he was sick with cancer, they had done so bickering till the (well, my father’s) bitter end. That’s what happens when you marry at twenty (the peak of my mother’s physical attractiveness); they swiftly found out that aside from being from the same sub-ethnic group and having gone to the same university, they had little else in common. Ironically, my friends’ parents who had met through arranged marriages were still happily married, voluntarily going on cruise vacations together, where they partook in cooking classes, senior orgies, etc.

“You really should take my advice and find a man. Every time you disobey or ignore me and do your own thing, you always end up regretting it. There’s just no substitute for life experience.”[fn2]

This, dear Diary, is her answer to everything: she’s eaten more salt in her life than I’ve eaten rice, i.e., she has more life experience than me by virtue of being older, hence I should defer to her judgment in all matters, at all times.

“Time is running out, not just for you. I’m in my sixties, as you know. I’m not getting any younger.”

A tremor entered her voice. “If I’d been born in Laos or North Korea, I’d be dead by now. Even now my body is breaking down from all the menial labor back in my youth.”

Just to be clear: my mother worked as a clerk for a judge for two years. That’s the only job she had before she married my father and became a housewife.

“Sometimes I wake up, my heart and bones aching, and I wonder—is this how the end looks like? Dying alone, in Kuala Lumpur—without a maid? And no grandchildren?”

Quel emotional blackmail!

Now she hardened her voice. “I’m a simple woman, with simple needs. All I ever wanted in return for the sacrifices I made for my children is their love, and grandchildren. But what do I get instead? A work-crazy elder daughter, who just so happens to be my favorite child, in Singapore that I never see and the other one living in sin with that … that”—she exhaled with force—“Malay boy.”

Same thing again. She was referring to Kamarul Siddiq, my younger sister Melissa’s Muslim boyfriend, a brilliant conservation architect in Malaysia, whom my sister had never brought home for introductions because my mother categorically refused to accept him, which was a crying shame since Melissa was going to marry him anyway.

“And here I thought we were talking about my ovaries,” I said, attempting to defuse the tension.

“Don’t be blithe,” she said. “One Halle Berry success story and you think it’s fine to delay having children. Wait, wait, wait! And then one day you wake up and you’ll find that your womb has become a prune! And you’ll be all alone, you’ll regret—”

I took a deep breath and ended the call before she could hear me dry heave. Luckily, I had my inhaler at hand. This was a new development in her approach to my singlehood; she never used to be so direct and so aggressive about it. It used to be gentle, the occasional earnest reminder: “Oh, wouldn’t it be nice if you’d come over for dinner with that nice young man of yours, Ivan? Do you spend enough time with him? Work is not everything in life.” (She can say that with a straight face because I’m senior enough in my career.) Then two years ago she began to get passive-aggressive—I can still see the texts she sent after I messaged her to wish her Happy Mother’s Day last year: Thanks, but I can’t wait till I start getting Happy Grandmother’s Day texts! followed by Auntie Ong’s daughter just gave birth. She’s younger than you, isn’t she?—but even that was still tolerable. Since my thirty-third birthday last December, however, the situation had devolved into outright badgering. For example, before she’d found out that I was single again, she used to demand that I drag Ivan down to the registry and just sign the papers first and plan the wedding later.

Doesn’t she have anything better to do with her free time than fixate on her daughter’s lack of prospects? you ask. Wouldn’t she rather spend her golden years discovering exciting new prescription drugs or the cerebral delights of reality TV? No, Diary, she would not. My mother doesn’t have time for leisure, or retirement for that matter—that’s for rich white people. When she’s not hustling to sell some multilevel-marketing product of the day, she’s obsessing over how she will marry me off—the last item left unchecked on my mother’s checklist of Life Goals (for me). The rest of them, as established a long time ago (when I was an embryo, essentially), were as follows:

 Go to a Top School (kindergarten/primary school/high school must be appropriate feeder school for top university) (done)

 Go to a Top University (done)

 Become a doctor (specializing is very much encouraged), lawyer (attaining counsel or partner level), investment banker, or a millionaire (legit currencies only) businesswoman [this goal is within reach, since I’m a lawyer and am already on track for partnership—only a little ways to go to the top!]

 Own a piece of property by the time I turn thirty-five (done—well, almost: only twenty-eight more years of mortgage payments to go!)

And the one my parents thought would be the easiest for me to achieve, but in reality was anything but:

 Get married by thirty, so I can reproduce, and the vicious cycle can begin once more

Before she decided I was not making as much progress as she’d like on the marriage front, my mother used to harp on and on about how important career was, how I had to make as much money as I could and be the best. Then, as soon as I turned twenty-eight, her tune changed completely. Now it was all about the man and the wedding and the babies (in this order, of course). How if I wasn’t en route to getting sprogged up I was basically an ingrate, that I was displeasing my ancestors, even those I’d never met. Now my mother was all “focus on the family.” Not that I didn’t see her point, of course.

You see, most Asian countries are not welfare states; we basically need the little moppets that come after us to be successful so they can in turn feed us. That’s why family is so important in most traditional Asian cultures.

I am oversimplifying, of course.

I know what you’re thinking: screw that, you don’t have to do this. You can just shake it off and do your own thing. Right?

Problem is, you can’t just shake off centuries of cultural mind-fuckery that tell you that you are nothing but a sandworm without the benevolence and sacrificial love of your parents, who fed your worthless child self and molded you into the acceptable, if not exceptional, adult that you are, and that the only way you can ever hope to repay them is if you take the hopes and dreams your parents had for you and gently but surely stuff them down your brain hole, make them yours, and realize them, or betray your parents and burn in the special place in Chinese Hell for unfilial children while eager but inefficient Chinese demons disembowel you ad infinitum.

And that, my friends, pretty much sums up the concept of Filial Piety.

To be fair, it’s not as though following her Life Goals had caused me harm. In fact, so far, so good. I am disrupting a traditionally male-dominated industry. And I don’t hate the idea of marriage and kids (to Confucian guilt-trip into taking care of me in my old age, naturally). It’s just—I need time to achieve the other goals first. If Sheryl Sandberg, unicorn woman, can have it all, so can I—albeit on a more modest scale.

I just need a strategy to fend off my mom before I make partner. Aside from matricide.

3
Sunday 14 February

2:35 p.m. Today is Day Which Must Not Be Named (it’s no coincidence it shares the same first letter with “vomit” and “Voldemort”). Urgh. Bought Linda her stupid champagne brunch today upon her insistence and paid Urgh Day primo rates for it. Hated every simpering couple in sight. Comforted myself with the thought that one out of every three marriages in Singapore will end in divorce. That’ll teach them to believe in love.

As a gift Linda got me three boxes of Ladurée macarons and told me to go wild. I got her a card (hey, she was already getting a free alcoholic brunch).

I didn’t receive any other V-day presents aside from Linda’s, unless you count a five-dollar e-coupon from my favorite patisserie. No cards, either, not even an anonymous one. The only V-day texts I got were from my sister and two of my female colleagues. The only way this day could get any sadder is if I get one from my mother.

4:45 p.m. Got an email from my mom. She only sends me emails when she wants a paper trail for her records (she does not trust messaging apps). I opened it with trepidation.

It said:

Happy Valentine’s Day, darling. You remember Auntie Mavis, my friend from church, right? Her son went to Harvard Medical School and is still single. She would like very much if the both of you could get together over dinner next week. Should I give her your number?

I broke out in hives and deleted the message.

5:05 p.m. Speaking of things that make me break out in hives, I texted Helen to ask her out for a coffee. Will casually use the occasion to ask her about her sham marriage. I might glean some useful information that I can use later on, when I destroy her.

6:08 p.m. Helen just replied:

I guess you’ve heard the Good News lol lol *confetti emoji*

Two LOLs? The smug bitch.

She suggested meeting up the next day, meaning she had probably been savoring this gloating session for some time. I agreed, even though I had to reschedule a couple of client meetings. Nothing is more important than finding out the truth.

6:10 p.m. I take that back, universe. Of course making partner is way more important.

6:15 p.m. Just saw Helen’s fiancé, Magnus, being interviewed on local news. Apparently, he’s some kind of Iron Man veteran. The lens of the cameraman lingered lovingly on his super fit body. Goddammit, why couldn’t he have a SpongeBob body? Why? Why?

7:30 p.m. Took a cab to Orchard Road to buy myself an LV bag because no one else will and it being a classic model means it can totally be classified as an investment, according to some listicle.

8:05 p.m. Louis Vuitton was chock-full of gleeful shoppers, and a goddamn queue of soulless consumers.

8:30 p.m. Left the queue in disgust.

8:55 p.m. Bought Earl Grey and lavender buttercream cake from the kind, e-coupon-giving patisserie.

10:10 p.m. Decided to drink. Discovered a bottle of vodka in the freezer. Well, maybe “discovered” is not quite the right word here.

11:25 p.m. Took Tuppi out. Discovered batteries were flat. Too lazy to go the manual way. Watched The Walking Dead instead.

2:20 a.m. Woke up disoriented and distressed from the recurring nightmare of taking my exams and getting a B on every paper and having to explain myself to my very unimpressed mother. Had to calm myself by focusing my gaze on the framed first-class honors degree hanging on my wall as my self-worth slowly regenerated. Tomorrow is a new day.

Monday 15 February

7:10 a.m. Is it Monday already? Urgh, back to work. Wish I was one of those hip children who works for a cool company with bean bags, beer pong, and prescription drugs, but I’m not. I have to actually work for a living in a crappy job like the rest of the world, using 80 percent of my waking hours to eke out a living just so I can enjoy what’s left of my week for the remaining 20 percent and not be homeless. Unlike Linda, whose parents are loaded and intent on spoiling her to make up for their absenteeism during her formative years, my parents are middle class and from the “I’ve-raised-you-till-the-legal-drinking-age-now-please-fuck-off-and-let-me-die-in-peace” school.

7:45 a.m. Rush hour. I plunged blindly into a seething mass of commuters trying to board the MRT.[fn1] Managed to squeeze into a carriage by virtue of elbowing someone in the boobs, and now she’s left on the platform, fuming. Well, she can comfort herself that it wasn’t molestation.

7:50 a.m. Ah, shit. Am now crotch-to-shlong with a poker-faced blond cyborg in cycling gear so tight I could see inside him. If the train makes an emergency stop I will fall pregnant. It is not the way I wish to go about it, so have placed an expensive handbag between us as a makeshift condom. Sorry, Prada.

Am trying to think happy thoughts but failing. Hate everyone in sight who managed to score a seat, even the young mother in a sundress carrying a toddler. Especially the young mother in a sundress carrying a toddler. Woman, if you’re not rushing to work, why take up rush-hour space?

Some people are so selfish, rubbing their happiness in other people’s faces.

8:10 a.m. Arrived at the law firm where I will soon become partner, Singh, Lowe & Davidson. Our office is just an eight-minute stroll from the Raffles Place MRT station. We’d just relocated to this spanking-new building two months ago, as befitting our ambitious expansion plan in the region. I stepped past the plush-carpeted lobby with its soft lighting, minimalist artwork, framed portraits of the founding and senior partners, and hot receptionist, and entered the real office, what we called the “Chumpit,” which had its own, less glitzy entrance away from the carpeted lobby. That’s where the real bowels of the office began: more than ninety lawyers were spread out over two floors in open-concept, junior associates’ hell, except for the few of us that had enough seniority to share proper offices until they finish renovating the floor upstairs for the new partners, counsels, and senior associates (the current partners have their own offices, of course).

Luckily for me, I was one of the people who actually had an office, an office I was now attempting to sneak into, because I was ten minutes late, even though technically work starts at nine but nine is for unambitious losers and I am not an unambitious loser but an ambitious, no-holds-barred loser—I mean, winner.

“Morning, Andrea,” announced my officemate, Suresh Aditparan, at a decibel loud enough to wake the undead.

I scowled at Suresh, who had probably arrived at his desk just a few minutes earlier than I had, because his computer screen was tellingly blank and beads of sweat coaxed by the unforgiving Singaporean sun were coursing down his temples. Unluckily for me, for the past nine working days I’ve been sharing my office with Suresh, a hotshot M&A senior associate who’s British with some Singaporean roots (a Singaporean Indian mom, my PA tells me).

“Morning, Subhan, I mean, Suresh,” I said, purposely dismissive in a retaliatory Power Move.

We both turned on our computers and proceeded to Power Type with the vigor of (youngish) people who had not had sex in a very long time (longer in my case than his, I’d imagine, but still).

Suresh joined the firm five years ago, but had been based in London and for most of the last three years was the Singapore-London desk rep for the law firm (in part due to the interest in Singapore/Hong Kong/Southeast Asia from Europe, the increasing cross-continental investment and business relations between these continents in the clients we represent, and the bragging rights in having a swish London address, elevating the overall prestige of the firm, that’s my guess). He’d just returned to Singapore at the start of the year and was now my Little Buddy (management’s new pairing strategy to encourage quicker integration of “new” joiners into the system, and also to orient them in the new office).

I don’t like sharing the office with Suresh, even though he smells like cinnamon. He has a habit of saying annoyingly posh things like “loo,” and he’s tall and conventionally, boringly attractive (golden-brown skin that will turn ashy if not moisturized, hazel eyes framed with such thick eyelashes he’ll definitely have droopy eyelids one day, a rakish mop of silky black hair that will most likely never make it past his forties, and, if I’m held at gunpoint, a rugby player physique, but only like a so-so rugby player whose favorite food is tacos), so now I have female visitors to the office I never had before, such as my nemesis, Genevieve Poo, I mean, Beh.

Genevieve is one of those women who’s just perfect. Not because she’s stunning—she’s not, but she’s very well-manicured, and is always clotheshorsing lustworthy designer threads. Her family is pedigreed—her uncle on her father’s side is a former minister of foreign affairs, her mother’s family are politically connected Chinese. She speaks perfect Mandarin, fluent Japanese, and business Korean, aside from English. And she went to Cambridge, then Harvard Law. On top of it she’s married and has two children, with another on the way—that’s what she does when she was not putting me down in front of others and trying to steal my files: she reproduces. Her husband, Jonathan Beh, a successful real estate multimillionaire, seems to exist solely to gift her with Hermès bags and impregnate her (not necessarily at the same time or in that order)—big, planned families are trendy status symbols these days. The only thing that made me feel slightly superior to her was the fact that she was still a senior associate despite having worked at the firm for longer than I have, possibly because she was always taking maternity leave. Serves her right.

Anyway, as I was saying about Suresh: I don’t trust him. He looks like he cleans between his toes. Every day.

More important, Suresh was a potential threat to my career advancement, since we had about the same amount of experience and seniority, and we were both on the same team working under Mong. Mong (short for Toh Sim Mong) was one of the senior partners at our firm and our boss. He was a legendary M&A lawyer and it was my dearest wish to be just like him, minus the divorce and the kids he had fathered but who knew him not. Typically, only one senior associate per department was promoted each year, hence why I was keeping a very close eye on Suresh’s manicured paws. Suresh had just that bit more experience on cross-continental deals (especially with European jurisdictions) than I did, and because of this he’d been tasked with servicing some of my larger clients such as Sungguh Capital and Poh Guan Industries as support, but I have the advantage of having squatted in Singapore longer than him, and being a permanent resident in Singapore makes me a more attractive candidate to promote.

Nonetheless, he’s still a formidable threat. I spend a lot of my time glaring at him when he’s not looking (our desks are facing each other’s). Goddamn Foreign Talent,[fn2] coming here and stealing jobs from locals.

At no point during this train of thought did I find it ironic that I was a Foreign Talent myself.

Suresh did have one identifiable weakness: he was getting married. His partner was a third-generation British-Indian ob-gyn. Kai, my PA/trusty spy and confidante, whose services I unfortunately had to share with Suresh for now, told me that they were betrothed. I know why Suresh is keeping mum on his upcoming nuptials. He’s afraid that people at work would start expecting that he was going to impregnate his fiancée sooner rather than later, even if she was currently still in the UK with no definitive plans to move over. Then nobody will promote him.

It makes no difference to me personally whether he is single and available, or not. Even if he were single, Suresh is forbidden fruit.

Most Chinese parents, no matter where they are in the world, want their kids to bring home a mate of:

 Chinese ethnicity (trade-offs are tolerated in some families, but rare—however, likelihood of acceptance increases inversely the longer the errant offspring in question remains single).

 High earning capacity and/or wealth: MD or similar (Lawyer, Investment Banker, Consultant[fn3]). Otherwise, being a rich and successful entrepreneur is also acceptable; legit royalty is, of course, welcome.

 Compatible religious faith (which, unfortunately, tends to mean non-Muslim, as the Islamic faith encompasses cultural practices, customs, and beliefs deemed incompatible or at odds with our traditions and cultural practices).

 Good family background: nebulous, but usually linked to social status and wealth.

 Compatible values or the “Nice Guy” catch-all: Chinese parents prefer conservative, traditional mates, believing that such mates also subscribe to values like filial piety, which can only benefit them; so if you’re rocking studded sneakers, wreathed in dragon tattoos, and/or believe that elderly retirement homes are acceptable resting places for your parents/in-laws, well goodbye, my friend.

Despite possessing all other desirable qualities, Suresh fails the first and possibly the third criteria. Anyway, not that it matters. Suresh is taken. And it’s not like I’m attracted to him.

Also this is my year to shine. This is my year to make partner, and everything else must come second. Only then, if all goes well, maybe I’ll beat Hairy Helen to the hitching post somehow.

3:40 p.m. Dashed out for a “client meeting,” but in reality am having coffee in a chic café at One Fullerton with Helen.

3:55 p.m. Arrived five minutes late but of course Helen was not there. Urgh. Power Move. We’ll see who pays the check.

4:25 p.m. Helen made an appearance almost twenty minutes late, just as I was really starting to stew, sliding into my booth without a whiff of apology. She looked polished in a long-sleeved black boxy top, black jeans, a navy blue Chanel 2.55, and tons of designer bling, her hair a very cute pixie cut with a silver ombré effect. We air-kissed each other and exchanged perfunctory pleasantries.

“WTF,” I said/asked when we were seated.

“So you’ve heard about the wedding and you’re dying to know what gives, am I right?” she purred. She lifted an arm lazily, flashing a huge yellow diamond ring that might also be a weapon, and a waiter materialized so fast with menus it was as though he’d been standing there the whole time, which of course he hadn’t been, seeing as I’d not been served. Linda tells me it’s because I don’t give off the “I-will-tip-you-despite-being-Asian” vibe—i.e., I look cheap.

“Yes, pray explain, and in generous detail.”

She laughed. “Let me get my coffee first. What would you like?”

She sneered at my choice (“Cappuccino after ten in the morning? What are you, a peasant?”), ordering two double espressos instead. Typical bossy Helen.

I smiled with as much nonchalance as I could fake. “So, why are you getting married, and in a hetero marriage no less? I thought you were holding out till gay marriage was legalized here. What happened to your principles?”

She giggled. “You are so jealous, you should see your face. I don’t even have the heart to tease you, you poor, poor thing.” When I didn’t slap her (not because I didn’t want to but because I saw one of the partners in my law firm queuing for coffee), she sighed and steepled her hands. “Seriously though, woman, you know I live large, right?”

I rolled my eyes. “Quite,” gesturing to her armful of diamond Love bracelets and Richard Mille watch of the day.

Helen nodded grimly. “Well, Mummy told me that if I didn’t get hitched—to a man obviously, this is Singapore—by the time I’m forty, she would turn off the money tap. And she would throw me out of the house and take me out of her will. Isn’t that insane? Her only daughter! As if any of the other money-grubbing Tangs are worthy.”

When I didn’t rise to the bait, she continued. “I had to act fast after that ultimatum, so I found myself a willing fish. I’ll be damned if I have to start buying Zara clothes by default instead of ironically. You might as well just toss me into a meat grinder and call it a day.”

I pressed my lips together in a thin smile—Zara was my go-to apparel store. “It took your mom this long to threaten to cut you off?”

Helen shrugged. “Oh, she’s threatened before, twice, but she’d never brought up disinheriting me. This time she meant business. Her lawyer was there and everything.” She brushed invisible lint off her watch and flicked a sly look at me. “You know she’ll take you out of the will, too, if you’re single. All the Tangs of our generation have to be married to inherit. And trust me, you’ll want to be in that will.”

I swallowed and felt faint. Did I! I’d never have to work again. As for my tiny credit card debt situation …

To steady my staccato heartbeat, I dug my nails into my palms and changed the subject. “So tell me: is Magnus straight?”

“Yup!” Helen said cheerfully. “Straight as an arrow.”

“Is he … is he aware of your sexual orientation?”

Helen giggled. “Please, Magnus wasn’t born yesterday. Of course he is! Don’t feel too sorry for him though: he gets to move into Le Grand Maison Tang in Bukit Timah, he gets an outsize allowance and access to the family pool of luxury cars, and anyway, I have this whole open marriage arrangement with Magnus and we have a prenup, so both of us will be fine.” She winked. “But hey, the things that private bankers would do to keep their top clients, eh?”

“He’s your private banker?” I gasped.

Helen nodded. “Yup, he’s been managing my money for years. That’s how I got to know him.”

“How is this ethical?” I said, scandalized, realizing how naive I sounded as soon as I’d finished.

“Well, it’s not like I’m forcing him to marry me. He’s a consenting adult.” She rolled her eyes and leaned forward to grasp my hand. “You’re still single after Ivan, aren’t you, poor dear?”

I glared at her. “Yes.”

“Are you still waiting for your knight in shining armor?” she said mockingly. That’s the problem with family: they know all your sore spots.

“Nope. I’m not looking,” I said through gritted teeth.

She held up her hands in mock surrender. “Chill, I just thought maybe I could offer some advice to beat the system, which is still rigged against us women, unfortunately.” She gestured to a passing waiter for the bill. “Look, even if you’re happy being single, it is very practical at our age to find a partner—there’s security and comfort in having someone around, especially if they are your equal. So why not? It doesn’t have to be the One, la-di-da—we’re past that bollocks. My mother had an arranged marriage, and didn’t that work out fine for her! And your parents had a love marriage that went belly-up in the end, didn’t they?”

I grunted.

“My point is, waiting around for the One is not sound investment advice, so why not try to be more transactional like me? Think Big Picture. Also everyone knows that in Asia, being married gives you extra cachet. Single women in this part of the world can be slayers and still not command the respect they deserve. I should know.” She sighed. “It really is the smart thing to do if you want your mother and the world off your back. Take my advice, Andrea: be pragmatic and shop for a man. You can still be a hotshot career woman like me, but at least you’ll cover all your bases.”

“You make some interesting points. If only I had your money,” I said, one eye on passing servers, one hand on my wallet.

She shrugged. “Honey, there are tons of solid men out there who are looking for a good companion. You just need to be intentional and get professional help if necessary. Be open-minded and the universe will provide. Oh, by the way”—a silvery, fake laugh—“put your grubby paws away, old girl, it’s my little treat. I gave them my card on my way in.”

I took my time to get back to work after Helen’s gloating session, meandering along the pristine Singapore River and watching people eye it longingly after a long day of pointless work (I know that look well). Maybe she was right. Maybe I was approaching love and relationships all wrong, ascribing foolish romantic notions to what was essentially a very quantifiable commodity. Maybe I should take a leaf out of her book and just find someone Good Enough. It was, after all, a very Chinese way to go about things. If I cut down on nonessential activities, like exercise, I could maybe carve out some time to manage this aspect of my life. Embrace technology; use the platforms, apps, whatever. The search for a Good Enough Fella would surely be a breeze if I had a very targeted, simple criteria for a suitable match.

6:10 p.m. Back at my desk. Have no work but must outlast Suresh in time logged in the office. Emailed Linda about convo with Helen. Linda is full of admiration for Helen. Apparently, there is a similar arrangement chez Reyes with Papa. Linda, who claims to have never fallen in love, thinks Helen is on the right track, but she’s adamant that it would never work for me because I’m a “big sap with unrealistic expectations when it comes to love.” Well, people can change.

11:45 p.m. Back home. Had to wait till Suresh gave up and left the office. I win!

12:55 a.m. Have made a decision. Aside from the fact I stand to lose a chance at inheriting, I don’t want to be the odd unmarried one of my generation. It’s very much a status thing. If Helen, who’s the definition of unconventional (she has taken work sabbaticals, plural, on a voluntary basis!), is bowing down to social conventions and getting married, why should I be any different? If you can’t beat them—join ’em.

That being said, the prospect of rejoining the dating pool is a bit unnerving. I mean, have you seen some of the men out there? Gross.

The other day I saw a man in his late twenties, a good-looking guy in an immaculately tailored shirt and dark gray trousers, placing his iced kopi in not one, but two small plastic bags, before daintily carrying the bags by the handles away from his pants. I followed him, which is a totally legit reaction. He walked a grand total of 150 meters, then he lifted his drink out of the plastic bags and threw them into a trash bin outside his office block.

You see what I’m dealing with?

I’m not saying I am flawless. I am not. I binge-watch trash TV. I’ve eaten cereal for dinner, after having it for breakfast and lunch the same day. And just last week, in order to shave precious minutes of prep time before work, I dumped some talc onto the roots of my unwashed (for the second day) hair, pulled it into an “elegant” knot, washed my grease trap of a fringe, blow-dried said fringe, and called myself fit to show up as such to work. And I did. It was not my first time doing the ol’ Just-Wash-Your-Fringe-in-a-Pinch routine. But at least by being a little lax with my personal care I saved water. What’s Mr. Turtle-Killer’s excuse?

I know it sounds like I’m making excuses so I don’t have to put myself out there. I am. I’d been together with my ex, Ivan, for a little over five years after all. That’s more than a sixth of my life. The breakup really affected me, even though somewhere along the line we just kind of drifted apart and we eventually decided, after a mature, calm discussion where nothing was broken or hurled at the wall, that we had to Consciously Uncouple.

That’s the official version of the story, anyway.

Ivan and I met during my first year in Singapore at a Malaysians-working-in-Singapore mixer. Someone had introduced us, which was a good thing since I was not prone to striking up conversations with random men, especially attractive and articulate ones like Ivan, who was working in a private equity firm. Men like Ivan seemed to favor a certain type that I wasn’t: models. Yet twenty minutes after being introduced he was still flattering me with his undivided attention.

I decided that if he was still talking to me then maybe I should try to make real conversation. I was intrigued by him, beyond his qualifications (he’d worked for six years in London with Lazard after graduating from Imperial College with a first-class degree in finance, and was now VP at Warburg Pincus—yes, he’d casually mentioned this, just as I’d casually mentioned my own qualifications. Welcome to Asian Speed-Dating 101.) There was just something magnetic about his confidence. He knew where he was going in life, he loved what he was doing, and he was performing at the highest echelon. Ivan was inspirational, aspirational. I felt like I’d met my match, a kindred spirit.

I was so comfortable around him that when he asked me what brought me back from London, where I had been working as a solicitor at Slaughter & May, I told him.

“My dad passed away two years ago, and my mother hasn’t been the same since then. Her health isn’t good; she had a mental breakdown, just went into this total fugue state for weeks and scared the crap out of me. I couldn’t leave her alone, and my sister was unreachable, taking a gap year in South America.” I rolled my eyes to show how silly I thought the concept of a gap year was. I could tell he was exactly the kind of person who would get it.

“Oh,” he said, looking discomfited, “I’m sorry to hear that. Were they very close?”

I laughed. “Hardly. Maybe never. My parents are, were, divorced and they parted on terrible terms. They were always fighting, but my mother was still devastated when she heard about his passing. I figure that you can only hate someone so much if you had once loved them in equal measure.”

He sighed. “I wish my parents were divorced. All they do is fight when they’re in the same room, on the rare occasion when they leave the operating theater to see each other and their offspring.” He knocked back the rest of his drink and winced. “I think they love me, but what do I know?”

I think that sealed the deal for me, right then and there—the fact that his parents barely communicated with him. Score!

Naturally, when he asked for my number at the end of the night, I said yes. He was very much the type of man that any Chinese parent would approve of, with his clean-cut looks, impeccable manners, solid career prospects, good family, and legit Chinese ancestry. On paper, Ivan Lim was prima facie perfect boyfriend, even husband, material.

On paper.

Anyway, as I was saying, I am very bad with men. And now, apparently everyone who’s single was On The Apps. Linda, for one, had been urging me to try them for some time since the Breakup.

Maybe I should just do it. What did I have to lose? How hard could it be? I mean, I use LinkedIn, and isn’t that a goddamn minefield?

I stopped playing Candy Crush ironically and downloaded Sponk, since it was the latest, hence the best. Like Happn, which I categorically refuse to use because of its spelling, it uses location-based technology to something something techy, only with way more precision and real-time blah-blah: it’s all very stalker-friendly and, more important, time-saving, since you can meet immediately once you’re matched, like when people used to meet IRL in bars but without the difficult decoding of body language.

When the time comes, which will probably be next quarter, since I have a couple of nasty closings to deal with soon, I just have to launch it in a crowded area and it will send out a Winky Bat Signal of some sort. Or maybe later in Q3 this year. No rush. Although I should probably set up my profile. Every good Chinese knows the proverb: dig your well before you are thirsty.

Within ten minutes I had uploaded my LinkedIn profile photo (very appropriate and professional, giving out the best vibes to future husband, who will be from Ivy League or at least national top ten university) and created a succinct, well-crafted summary of my personality and achievements, especially my recent inclusion in Singapore Business Review’s “40 Most Influential Lawyers Under 40,” which is a list even Helen couldn’t buy her way onto.

When I was finished I read out loud this gleaming manifesto to my desirability. I couldn’t believe no one else was using their LinkedIn profile on dating sites, especially here in Asia. What an oversight. I couldn’t wait to be overwhelmed with requests to be Sponked.

4
Wednesday 17 February

2:05 p.m. Worked through lunch. No respite from the flurry of emails, each titled “URGENT” with a varying number of exclamation marks appended, each for a different closing scheduled in the next two weeks. Cannot afford to dash out and grab sandwich but must eat as stomach is now emitting weird hobbit growls that elicit chuckles from Suresh, who has ordered a healthful vegetarian meal before lunch hour. Can’t believe that I had to eat a candy bar from the office vending machine again. How is anyone supposed to stay slim in this job once you are past your twenties? Everything just congeals in fat rolls stored in the thighs and around the waist, in internal fat purses that your cells now carry. Briefly fantasize about suing law firm for not providing healthful food and snack options, like Google or similar tech companies with their bean bags and sprawling cafeterias where one can order sea bass or other line-caught and gently massaged fish, with a side of organic [insert name of trendy root vegetable] crisps.

Ooh. WhatsApp message from Linda. I surreptitiously grabbed my phone and tried to read it under a binder of case notes.

Linda:

Ladies night at Little Green Aliens. Up for it?

I typed back:

Who else is coming?

Linda:

Just you, me, Ben the investment banker, Filipino Jason, and Valerie from the art gallery

Whenever lawyers hang out with non-lawyers, they feel compelled to flesh out details of said non-lawyers’ occupations, in the manner of someone describing a rare, exotic animal.

Me:

Cool. Am in. C U dere.

Stared at sentence before retyping it to read:

See you there.

Felt very old.

The five of us—Linda, Ben Wallich, Valerie Gomez, Jason Sy Garcia, and I—met after work at Little Green Alien, one of those rare nights when I’m out of the office by 7:30 p.m., surprising even Suresh. Being super competitive, both Suresh and I are facing off in an escalating Office Face-Time Battle, where we stay at work way longer than necessary with no tasks to complete except to score Brownie points with our own overworked and unhappy boss. I think I have a good lead over him, though, since he has a terrible future deficit to make up for in his Face-Time Piggy Bank—Kai told me he had applied for two weeks of leave this September so he can start scouting for locations for his wedding, slated for next August. Which means he must bill like crazy the next two quarters if he wants to beat me for this financial year. Ha! Serves him right for getting married and having someone who loves him!

LGA was one of those hipster “secret” speakeasy cocktail bars with mixologists so sanguinely youthful that you start expressing breast milk at the sight of them. Linda was fond of expensive designer cocktails with exotic ingredients, which obviously cost a lot of money, but since she was able to afford it and doesn’t mind extending that privilege to all of us, we graciously allow her to ply us with drinks. Monday night at LGA meant two-for-one cocktails, and despite the fact that I had a closing in four days, I was downing them like there was no tomorrow. By the second round even I, with my hardened lawyer’s liver, was feeling a pleasant, will-snog-anyone-who-asks-me high. Well, anyone except the man in the suit over there with the sausage lips. Or his friend with the oily comb-over. Reality can be such a literal buzzkill.

“Challenge for today: name the most unfortunate adopted English names you have ever come across,” Jason was saying. “Winner gets a cocktail on me.”

Jason was Linda’s friend, a paralegal, and one of the six Jasons we knew. If I recall correctly, I think she went into a gym one day and chatted with him at the drinking fountain, and he grafted himself onto her on the way out and never really left; she had that effect on men, especially gay men. To distinguish him from the rest, somehow instead of calling him “Paralegal Jason” we went with “Filipino Jason” and now it’s too late and it has stuck as a rather unfortunate nickname (although “Paralegal Jason” was perhaps worse, all things considered—I am quoting Linda here). He’s quite a bit younger and single, which is surprising considering that he’s gorgeous, charming, cultured, and very well put-together in the vein of a Ken doll or one of the leads from Suits, all lean Muay Thai muscles and beautifully tailored clothes. Linda theorized that he’s gay or asexual since women are routinely throwing themselves at him and getting rebuffed, but the group as a whole is giving him the space to tell us in his own time, or never—we’re not fussed.

“Syphilis Tan!” Linda shouted, unconcerned with decorum.

I snorted. “Urban legend, surely.”

“I’m dead serious. My friend from Hong Kong taught an ESL student with that very name.”

Jason shrugged. “Meh. Next.”

“Colleague in Shanghai once told me about a Milky Chin,” said Ben, another drinking buddy of ours who flirted with Linda so shamelessly that it was amusing. Ben was Welsh, mousy-haired, bug-eyed, and a partner in a large investment bank; he was a little bizarre on most days, eager as he was to discuss conspiracy theories on every subject under the sun, but he was entertaining enough that we kept him on as our Token White Friend.

“Ouch, poor woman,” Jason said.

“Milky Chin belonged to a guy, oi oi oi!” Ben said.

Jason groaned. “That is a good one, I’ll give you that. Ben is in the lead!”

“I’ve seen Teorem being used,” Valerie Gomez said. “And Gemini!”

“Refrigerator Chan,” Linda said, her eyes bulging in competition.

“I’ve got one,” Valerie cried. “Ivanna Wang.”

“Now you’re just making shit up,” Jason said.

“Like hell I am,” Valerie said, indignant. Or as much as she could show indignity. Valerie, who is Singaporean and of Peranakan-Indian descent, was in her forties (we’re guessing—her real age remains a mystery as tightly guarded as the Vatican secret archives); her main goal in life was to look like a twenty-five-year-old, something she managed to do only under dim, hipster cocktail bar lighting, which was precisely the kind LGA had. The woman was more than a tad addicted to Botox and fillers. According to Linda, Valerie’s mom was a former beauty queen and Valerie had been raised to think that beauty was to be worshipped above all, in women and men. Other than that, she was a fun person to hang out with, though I’d forbidden Linda from inviting her along for any of our daylight jaunts; it would be too traumatizing, like finding out the pop star you idolized in your teens has become a grandmother. “I swear it on my mother’s life.”

“Please don’t,” Jason said, wincing. Catholic and half-Chinese, Jason was extremely superstitious.

“OK, fine, on my future children’s lives,” Valerie said gamely.

The group pretended not to hear this. It got awkward when Valerie said things like this. She was so excited when Fann Wong, a local celebrity, conceived after forty, and was happier than a dog with two tails when she found out Sophie B. Hawkins had a child at age fifty. The way Valerie saw it, this meant that it was entirely possible that she would be able to replicate that result. It was optimism in its purest form—the scary, untethered-to-reality kind. The kind that can make you a good dictator.

Not having a very good poker face, I made my excuses and fled. As is my fate, the queue to the single, unisex toilet was seven deep and all female. Thank goodness I always gave myself some “wee-way” (yes, I know, I went there). I slumped against the wall, pulled out my phone, and launched Sponk, just to see who was around. I scrolled through the available profiles, chose a few non-serial-killer-looking types without expecting results, then grew bored and began to play Candy Crush, which, by the way, I am in no way addicted to.

“Do you come here often?” someone said, startling me before I could finish a level.

I looked up, annoyed, to find a young man smiling at me. This is how you know you’re old: when you see anyone younger than you and you think “this young *expletive*” instead of the standard adjective-free form. Thinking that he had mistaken me for someone else, I scowled and said, “I’m sorry?”

“Oh, s-sorry,” the poor sod stammered. “I just meant—I mean, I just … I mean, er, we Sponked?”

I looked down at my screen and there he was, my Sponk partner. I froze. I hadn’t actually thought it would happen so quickly.

He gathered himself and pointed at the queue. “Do you come here often?” he blurted again.

I raised my eyebrow. “You mean, do I go to the toilet often?” I didn’t bother lowering my voice. Several women snickered.

“Ah,” said the boy, because that’s what he was, a sleek, sparkly eyed kid who looked like he’d been poured into his tight jeans and slim-cut shirt. He had the shaved sides and longish top haircut and ironic clear-lensed, tortoiseshell round glasses all boys seemed to sport like uniforms these days, although I had to admit he was not bad-looking, with a lean, toned swimmer’s body. With good height, too. “I see how that can be confusing. Let me try again.” Holding my eyes, he took two giant steps back, away from the direction of the toilet. “There. So. Hi there. I couldn’t help noticing we matched on Sponk. Do you come to LGA, in the general sense and not the toilet per se, often?”

Ack. So he was really trying to pick me up. One of the girls was not very discreetly pointing her phone in my direction, filming the whole thing, for fuck’s sake. I turned my back on her and moved directly in front of teenage Casanova to save him the embarrassment of being the unwitting subject of a viral video. “Look, kid, I’m too old for you, so, you know, go find some other age-appropriate target through Pounder or whatever hookup app you people use these days,” I said shortly, before dropping my gaze back to my beloved, the phone.

I pretended to scroll through the Daily Mail, scanning celebrity headlines intently and hoping he would go away. After several seconds of scrolling, I looked up again to find him still smiling at me in his oblique way. What was his problem? I was old enough to be his mom. Wasn’t there anyone else his age to chat up? “What do you want?” I said, with some exasperation. I now needed the loo—I mean, toilet. Badly.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he said through his never-faltering, Edward Cullen–esque smile.

“Not interested.”

“Doesn’t matter. Let me buy you a drink anyway. What would you like? Gin? No, let me guess. Whisky, single malt. A Highlander.” He squinted at me. “No, an Islay. Peaty and smoky.”

Ooh, yum, that did sound good. I mentally slapped myself and focused on the task at hand. “Let me get this straight: you want to spend money on an older woman who is not interested in you?”

He shrugged. “I’ll never say die[fn1] until I’m dead.”

“That’s just … that’s illogi—Never mind. Go wait by the bar. Let the lady use the toilet first.”

He actually bowed a little before he left. I turned back to face the queue. The women in it were looking at me with respect or jealousy. “Kids, right?” I said to no one in particular, to icy stares all around.

I was whistling as I walked back across the crowded room to the bar when I saw something that stopped me dead in my tracks.

Ivan. By the bar. Wearing a white polo and slim-cut dark-wash jeans. With his arm around what could only be described as someone other than me, a stick figure girl in a bad wig, if that was her real hair.

WTF.

I mean, Ivan never wore jeans when he was with me: he considered them an abomination of the fashion industry (neither formal nor casual enough, plus too hot for Singaporean weather).

He looked agonizingly happy.

I ducked behind a passing waiter, held his arms to pin him to the spot, and peered around him. “Stop moving,” I hissed.

“Erm, ma’am”—which is the polite, formal equivalent of “auntie”—“I have to serve dr—”

“I’ll give you twenty dollars if you stay still for five minutes,” I pleaded.

He shrugged and stood there, while I observed my prey as nonchalantly as I could.

Fucking H. She was young.

Some of the things Ivan said to me the night we agreed, mutually, to break up, boomed in my head: You can’t tell me you didn’t see this coming. How can you blame me when you’re never around? I want a fam—

The Slimy Young Thing touched his arm and I was gripped by an overwhelming desire to pick her up and dunk her into the nearest dumpster. Now I am a pacifist, of course. But try telling that to my heart.

They didn’t look like they were on a first date. Who was she? There was no way to know without being a proactive stalker. I had cut all social media ties with him, blocked him on WhatsApp, severed ties with all the mutual friends we had (well, most of them were his), and deleted all his phone numbers (personal, Work 1, Work 2, and Work 3 (landline)). Not that I wanted to know who she was, of course.

Just as I was ready to walk over and casually bump into them, so that I could be introduced, he put his arm around her waist and walked her out of the bar.

“No,” I whispered in agony.

“Ma’am, can I go now?” the server said tightly.

“Sorry,” I muttered. I opened my wallet to extract the money I owed him, but he waved the bills away.

“You look like you’ll need it tonight. That, or a fresh start,” he remarked, before walking away.

I heard him through a fog. I couldn’t believe it—Ivan had moved on. First. With a rather age-inappropriate palate cleanser of a girl. What about me? Why was I still stuck in some weird, monkish state of celibacy when I had wasted over five years of my life on him already?

There are always winners and losers in a breakup. And I am not a loser, not in any sense. I should get a move on, too. Starting tonight. I’ll show him age-inappropriateness, the jeans-wearing bastard.

When I rejoined the others to grab my work bag, the boy who hit on me was still waiting by the bar with an elbow planted on the countertop and no phone in sight, which sort of endeared me to him. He saw me and waved cheerily, the way an innocent child might at a strange man in a stained house robe standing in front of what appears to be a totally normal ice-cream truck (I do realize I am the strange man in this scenario).

“Who is that yummy morsel?” Valerie stage-whispered, which was enough to send me to the bar just to get away from her and the creepy realization that Valerie was biologically old enough to be his grandmother.

“Let’s start again. My name is Orson Leong,” he said, offering me a surprisingly assured handshake. “What’s yours?”

“Andrea,” I said. I motioned the bartender over and gave him my order. “I’d like a Laphroaig, twenty-one years old, neat.” I turned to Orson, expecting him to be weirded out by the fact that my drink was older than him. But he was unfazed. He ordered a beer, and when the bartender returned, he took out his credit card and waved mine away. “I’m twenty-three, you know. I can afford to buy a pretty lady a drink.”

“And I’m thirty-three,” I told him aggressively, probably to cover up the fact that I was pleased that he was not as young as I’d originally made him out to be, which was eighteen. I probably needed glasses, perhaps due to the fact that I was (non-addictively) playing Candy Crush in my free time. “Jesus’s age, when he died,” I added, before I could stop myself.

“OK, Andrea, now that we have the basics covered, why don’t we go to that quiet little corner over there away from your staring clique, and you can tell me more about yourself?”

I nodded, and he guided me by my elbow to a secluded nook by the electronic jukebox. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the dumbstruck faces of my friends turn to follow me across the room; Valerie’s looked especially comical since she had long ago lost the capacity to lift her eyebrows. I grinned and gave them a cheery wave. Let them wonder. Let them take lots of photos. That I will definitely post on Facebook publicly later.

I didn’t expect to enjoy hanging out with Orson, but I did. Orson was easygoing and had an unassuming way of asking questions with his dimpled smile that made me feel comfortable revealing things about myself that I would usually reserve for closer friends. And even though he was much younger, we conversed across a wide array of subjects with ease. I found out that Orson was working in an advertising firm as a copywriter; he read voraciously and counted Rumi and Deborah Landau among his favorite poets (pro); his favorite tipple was gin (meh); he was a dog person (hmm); and he hated EDM and reality TV (pro!).

Sometime around ten o’clock I made my excuses to leave, even though I was not at all tired but I was dangerously tipsy and considering asking him to come up to my place for a shag (I managed to restrain myself by using the clever trick of thinking of spiders every time I thought of kissing him, something I had learned about from a listicle on Aversion Therapy 101). Being the gentleman that he was he walked me to the taxi stand (a queue almost twenty people long, despite the prevalence of ride-hailing apps). I was starting to feel melancholy as the alcoholic buzz began to fade.

“Will I see you again, Andrea?” he asked, his eyes going fullpuppy on me.

“Never!” is what I should have said—he was just not right for me, and I had already taken enough selfies with him to let anyone looking know that I was a hot commodity. Instead, I meekly said, “I can’t.” Pathetic. No wonder I wasn’t partner yet.

“Why not?” he asked. He was standing very close to me and I could smell his cologne and stale tobacco and sweat.

“Not a good idea,” I said to his shoulder. I was very aware of the heat emanating from him.

“It’s the New Year,” was his reply near my earlobe. And then his lips were on mine before I could protest: they tasted amazing, young and perky, belonging to someone who didn’t need afternoon naps. It was all I could do not to chew on them, driven as I was by hormones—and hunger.

Then he broke the kiss.

“I’m sorry if I came on too strong,” he said. “It just came over me. I’m not usually like this.”

I nodded, completely dumbstruck. The queue shuffled forward. It was almost my turn.

“Listen, I’d like to see you again. Can I have your number please?”

He gave me his card, as my phone had died, and I gave him my number, my real one, even my surname. Now he can find me on the internet. Shit just became real.

When my cab arrived, he opened the door and I got in. “Good night, Andrea. I’ll text you.” No games, just a promise. Such maturity, such manliness, such round buttocks. Against my will, I began to hope that I would, indeed, see him again.

11:45 p.m. Home. Charged my phone, turned it on to find forty-plus feverish WhatsApp texts from the LGA crew group chat, with Linda’s texts being the lewdest.

“Who’s Mr. Hot Stuff?” was the general cri de coeur. I decided to let them simmer. I didn’t want to talk to them about the night when I was back to being ambivalent about seeing Orson again. I mean, where could this relationship really go? We were at totally different stages of our lives: he was probably just interested in shagging as many willing people as he could get, while I was interested in finding a suitable man for a life partner, which is difficult enough as it is. Let’s be honest: the chances of finding your true love when you’re almost in your mid-thirties are a little bleak—most of the good ones are taken, and the ones that are still on the shelf and older than you are often riddled with manufacturing or third-party defects, some so well camouflaged that you could be dating them for ten months before you accidentally find their shoebox of toenail clippings or their collection of vintage porn. I shouldn’t waste time on him when I was looking for Mr. Right—the return on investment seemed too low to be worth the outsize risk of wasting precious time—right?

On the other hand, I had spent five years with Ivan, and to what avail?

Ooh, text.

Hey gorgeous lunch or dins next Wednesday 24th K? unless u hv plans alrdy … *three emojis with heart eyes*

It was Millennial Orson. What to do, what to do.

I checked my calendar and launched Candy Crush, just a quick game thereof; no biggie, it helps me think.

Three in the morning. Oops.

5
Thursday 18 February

Emergency summit the next afternoon, over lunch, with Linda.

“You met him through Sponk?” Linda gasped theatrically. We were seated in Lau Pa Sat, a hawker center located in a large, beautiful Victorian filigree cast-iron structure in the Central Business District. The lunch crowd consisted of both tourists and office grunts, chowing down on local street food.

“Yeah, I’m On The Apps.” Yes, I said it exactly like this. “Isn’t everyone On The Apps?”

Linda sighed. “Could you please try not to sound like you’re ancient? And did you have to choose the worst app to start online dating on?”

“What’s wrong with Sponk?” I said indignantly.

“Sponk, my dear, is for furries and swingers.” She saw my mouth open to ask a question and said, “You can google that later. NSFW.”

“Thanks a lot, Cousin Gordon,” I muttered. “On the bright side, I did meet this decent, proper Sweet Young Thing, so.”

“No one decent uses Sponk; I should know,” Linda responded ominously.

“And how is Tinder any better?” I challenged. “Isn’t it a hookup app?”

“It all depends on how you screen the people, how you play the game. I’ve many, many friends who’ve met their significant others on Tinder.” She smiled beatifically. “I mean, I myself have never used it for long-term commitment, but I’m positive we can replicate Angi’s success.”

I did a double take. “Wh—So it’s just that one friend? I thought you said ‘friends.’ As in plural.”

She waved my questions away. “Potato, potahto. How old is this guy again?”

“Twenty-three,” I said meekly.

Linda whistled. “Nice. And here I thought I’d be the first cougar of our friend pack.”

“Not Valerie?” I was intrigued.

“Valerie-I’m-youngerthan-my-surgeon-makes-me-look-in-the-dark-I-swear-Gomez?” Linda said, doing her best imitation of the Rock’s signature eyebrow cock. “No way. She would never be able to accept that she’s older than the man she’s with. Unlike you, you dirty rascal.”

“I get that he’s a little younger, but he’s so mature.” I started drumming my fingers on the grease-slicked tabletop. “Would it really be such a bad idea to go on a date with him? You were just saying I need to date outside my comfort zone.”

“Depends on your objectives: a hookup or love? In my opinion, you should nip it in the bud, because you’re a serial monogamist and you’re looking for the One.”

“I don’t believe in the One,” I protested.

Linda rolled her eyes. “Please. I’ve known you since you were a toddler, remember? You inhaled Sweet Valley novels. You like all the slow songs from Backstreet Boys. You cry at every wedding, and not just because you’re not the one getting married. Face it—you’re a sucker for love, and that’s OK. What you need, my dear, is to get out there and meet guys your own age, preferably older.” She took out her phone and started scrolling intently. Her voice took on a dangerous Avon salesperson varnish, one octave higher and chirpier than usual. “Just wait till you see what I’ve got in store for you!”

She shoved the phone in my face. On the high-definition screen of Linda’s latest iPhone was my Tinder profile.

I gaped at it. “What? Wh-when and how did you access my F-Facebook …?” I managed to say. What other accounts did she have access to?

“Easy. Your password was a snooze to crack, took me literally twelve seconds, haha: ihateivan. I mean, seriously, still?” Her laughter died when she saw my face, and she cleared her throat. “But look at how good you look!” she crowed, jabbing a manicured finger at my Tinder doppelgänger. I stared at the zoomed-in view of a full-frontal shot of my face, edited and enhanced till I was barely recognizable.

“What filter is this? I look like I just popped out of the womb,” I said, squinting at my alert eyes and plumped-up lips, unmarred by years of stress-smoking and disappointment.

Linda shrugged. “Filter? Pah! This was the work of a Photoshop maestro. No filter alone could have achieved this perfection.”

Then she tapped on her screen to zoom out and I saw the body upon which my head had been almost seamlessly grafted; with a gasp I recognized the cleavage-baring black bandage dress I had worn—for our uni graduation dinner.

I looked at her and she shrugged. Innocently.

“Show me my profile description,” I said through gritted teeth. She grinned and scrolled down. “Andrea T … Hey, that’s not my age!”

“Give or take one or two years …,” Linda said cheerfully, unconcerned with being a class A, bona fide liar.

“Linda, you listed me as being twenty-nine!”

“So?” Linda’s already large eyes were wide with faux innocence.

“I’m turning thirty-four in December!”

“Geez, stop being such a stickler for details.”

“That’s rich, coming from a lawyer.”

“If I list your real age, I’ll be cutting down your market by eighty percent.”

“I don’t want to date ageists!”

“I’m being realistic,” she huffed. “Good God, it’s brutal out there. Look at me, I don’t look a day over twenty-six, am highly educated and gorgeous—”

“—and modest, don’t forget,” I added dryly.

“Yes, of course, and even then, my swipe-rights only increased when I put my age as twenty-nine. Me! What’s more, I’m sorry to say this, you!”

“Why am I still friends with you?” I muttered, palming my forehead in resignation.

“Because I’m fabulous and I’m going to get you a man worthy of your lovin’. What’s one or two li’l fibs in the grand scheme of things?”

“Lies: always a good foundation for a relationship,” I said, giving up.

The rest of the draft profile read as such:

Andrea, 29

Bubbly and adventurous salsa enthusiast (What? I squeaked, to which Linda said, Shut up and trust me, you have no choice anyway, I locked the profile and only I have the password!). I’m interested in yoga, baking, whisky (especially when it’s free), and puns. I’m very good at playing ball games, especially hand and ball-striking ones. I love a good shuttlecock.

I covered my face and rocked back and forth in my seat. “Oh God. Oh God.”

Linda beamed. “It’s perfect. It’s funny and sexy and doesn’t take itself too seriously. Win.”

“Ignoring the godawful innuendo, none of this even applies to me,” I protested. Well, except the free whisky and puns part. I began ticking off everything she got wrong on my fingers. “I don’t bake, I’ve been to all of two beginner yoga classes, and the closest I get to salsa is when I’m making a burrito. And there’s nothing here about my work, y’know, Singapore Business Review’s ‘40 Most Influential Lawyers Under 40’ and all.”

Linda rolled her eyes. “Could you please, for one sad second of your life, not shove down everyone’s throat how accomplished you are? Seriously, woman, your insecurity is quite disturbing. You have other things going on in your life besides being good at your job and being a smart cookie.”

“Like?”

“Like, ah, how you are very, ah, well-read and very, er, creative in … Anyway, just list the accolades on LinkedIn where they belong. Or, if you must brag, do it casually on purpose, the way some people take selfies standing in front of their bookshelf and the shelf behind their face is conveniently lined with books by Chomsky and Sagan and lots of dead Russians, instead of the Twilight saga in hardcover and glossy untouched cookbooks that the person bought because they went to the bookstore when they were hungry.” She gave me a pointed look, which I ignored.

“You’re right,” I said, resigned. “I just thought … there’s not a lot of truth on this profile.”

“Says who?” She leaned forward and winked. “Notice that I said ‘enthusiast’ and ‘interested in.’ That could mean anything, really, if you think about it. Maybe you just really, really enjoy watching Dancing with the Stars. And The Great British Bake Off. Meaning you love telly. And what bloke doesn’t like telly, eh?”

She sat back in her seat, looking smug as, well, a lawyer who’d just won her case.

“No further questions, your Dastardly Overlord,” I said, humbled.

“Good. Because you’re live.”

“What?” I shrieked. “Since when?”

“Since yesterday, you dork! Don’t get mad. Look how many matches you’ve already accrued. Twenty-seven!”

“What? I never chose … How many?” Despite my better judgment I was soon scrolling with Linda through the profile matches. (Apparently, in the few hours since she had hacked into my Facebook and created/linked my Tinder account, thus being able to publish my profile, all without my consent, she had already selected a few crush-worthy specimens who had also swiped right on my profile.) I did this over Linda’s shoulder, as Linda was still refusing to relinquish the phone or my new Facebook/Tinder password until I had “earned the right to use Tinder unsupervised, because Sponk.”

“You need my guidance. After all, there are a lot of creeps and liars out there,” she said, oblivious to the irony of her own words.

“So, uh, how are we supposed to handle twenty-seven Tinder chats at the same time?” I wanted to know.

“Oh, sweetie.” She gave me a pitying look, the kind she gave men when they asked her why she wouldn’t give them her number. “Fifty-five percent of these guys won’t text you beyond the first three messages because they’re just not that into you; five percent won’t make a move at all because they are too chicken shit or they want the woman to make the first move; ten percent will turn out to be liars, freaks, douchebags, socially inept, and psychos who will show themselves on my superior no-BS radar and who I will eliminate after five text lines; which leaves thirty percent worthy of navigating through, after which we will probably only find half of them deserving of our time, which leaves us with approximately three or four potential dates. I’ll have your results by Saturday morning.”

She had it down to a science.

“So let me get this straight: in order to sieve out the liars, freaks, douchebags, socially inept, and psychos, you are going to pretend to be me?”

She rolled her eyes. “Did I not make myself clear?”

“And you don’t see the similarities between you and the people you’re trying to keep away from me? None whatsoever?”

“Nope.”

“Right.” Oh well. The woman did get me twenty-seven matches. “But what if Orson—”

“No. Repeat after me: Orson is poison. Orson is poison.”

I decided to drop it. What did Linda know? She was Linda; she’d never had to compromise a day in her life. Orson seemed to like me for me. Besides, it wasn’t as though I had any other suitors—not counting the twenty-seven potential Tinder matches who were all expecting me to be some bendy yoga hottie who liked to salsa. This whole thing was doomed. By the time I returned to work I was back to giving Orson a go, if he texted again. Hey, a bird in the hand is worth twenty-seven in the bush, every good Chinese knows that.

3:00 p.m. Texted Orson to say I’d be happy to have lunch with him next Wednesday. Why wait? And I definitely didn’t need to be supervised on dating platforms/apps. I’m tech-savvy: I’m a LinkedIn Premium user, you know.

5:07 p.m. Got told off for asking Linda for the umpteenth time what was going on in the Tinder chats. She said that if I text her one more time for progress reports, she’ll start sending me dick pics. From Ben.

7:45 p.m. Orson just texted! He said he’s excited to be going on a date with a top forty lawyer. The boy can flirt! I sent him a couple of smiley emojis and chose a café that I knew Linda would never frequent and told him to meet me there at noon.

Am crushing it. Orson is probably younger than Ivan’s girl (though I wouldn’t know, there’s nothing I can see on his Facebook or his other social media platforms, not that I was looking through a fake account or anything).

6
Friday 19 February

Speaking of showing off, I awoke this morning smiling, awash with fresh purpose in life. At long last, the day I had been planning for had arrived—the day I finally take Suresh out.

For lunch.

But not just any lunch: the Establishment-of-Hierarchy Lunch. Just like the ultra-firm handshake I gave him the first time I met him, where I Showed Dominance, I have, by pretending to be super busy, managed to evade hosting the welcome lunch all Orientation Big Buddies are supposed to arrange for their assigned Little Buddy. But it was now well into his third week and I could no longer pretend that I was busy without being rude, well, ruder than I already was. And establishing dominance must be done in a classy, indirect, subtle way, like farting.

It was time Suresh understood who the alpha in the room was. The orientation lunch is all about Power Moves. For that reason I had been waiting for the right moment to invite him out on one: first of all, I had on a total Power Outfit, an exquisite, expensive tailored pantsuit in gray cashmere wool paired with a white long-sleeved cotton dress shirt (even if impractical and my boobs were melting under the layers) and a burgundy crocodile Birkin bag (that technically belonged to Linda); there’d been a significant lapse of time since his arrival before the Ask, calculated to make Suresh understand that he was very low in priority; lastly, I’d managed to book a very visible table in a quiet and expensive finedining Shanghainese restaurant that was guaranteed to make Suresh, Anglophile Indian that he was, swallow hard at the sight of all the bone china bowls and pokey chopsticks. Not to mention the fact that Suresh hadn’t had enough time to acclimate to the Singaporean weather and was still sweating profusely even in the air-conditioning, which is not in his favor at all. But this state of imbalance would not last long for men like him: I knew I had to strike soon.

I waited till he looked like he was knee-deep in a difficult file before I took a deep breath and said, “Suresh … there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

Suresh looked up from his phone, on which he was actually working, smiled, and said, “Me, too.”

In an effort to mask my true evil, I said sweetly, “You first.”

“It’s been so killer busy since I arrived, but I’ve been meaning to ask you out for lunch. How does today sound?”

“You’re asking me out for lunch?” I whispered, blood draining from my face.

“Yes,” he said. “I checked with Kai, who said your schedule was free, and since you were free I thought, why wait?”

I took a steadying breath. “Yes, sure, but where—”

Suresh’s dimpled smile deepened. “There’s this fine-dining Shanghainese restaurant that Kai said you liked. I’m a big fan of Shanghainese food myself, so I thought we’d go with the obvious choice.”

“Indeed,” I said. I made a mental note to warn Kai from divulging my schedule to Suresh in the future, even if she worked for both of us. Her loyalties should lie with me, dammit: I lent her money for her gym membership.

2:40 p.m. Just back from lunch, which got off to a bad start. Soon after we were shown to our table, I found out that Suresh had spent a year in Hangzhou studying Mandarin and knew more about regional Chinese food, and tea, than I did. He won food-ordering duties after some haggling, and proceeded to order, among other things, chicken feet in soy sauce, a Power Move in itself as this is a dish rife with possibility for disaster (of the dry-cleaning variety). Worst, when the steamed fish arrived, he looked deep into my eyes and complimented my Power Outfit as he plucked the staring eyeball out of the dead, defenseless fish, popped it into his mouth, and chewed in a deliberate manner, which meant I would have to eat the remaining eyeball.

And the lunch got personal when I least expected it. “So, have you always wanted to be a lawyer?” he asked, his lips still coated with juices from the fish’s eyeball, the psycho.

I shrugged. “I was given only two choices: law or medicine. I didn’t know there was any other path open to me: my mother basically said it was either one of those or be disowned.” I made a face. “I think she threatened to disown me every time I tried to make choices that diverged from what she would have picked for me.”

He chuckled. “Sounds familiar. I guess you could be luckier, since in my case it was the threat of dismemberment. Or was it disembowelment? I don’t remember. Just thank your lucky stars your parents aren’t doctors who could actually carry out their threat.”

I laughed, against my better judgment. Laughing at your enemy’s jokes is a sign of submission. I dug my fingernails into my palms.

“So tell me, given all that you know now: what would you be if you could be anything else?”

I pretended to think this over. “I did want to be a marine biologist. Or was it a mermaid? One of those. And you?” I was not going to reveal my dreams to my competitor. I mean, once upon a time, when I was young and foolish, I’d wanted to be a writer.

“Writer,” he answered immediately.

“What a cliché,” I said. “You and every sad lawyer I know.”

“Clichés exist for a reason; many a lawyer started out as a wee little lad or lass interested in storytelling,” he said. “Although I suppose I’m more of a comic book artist at this stage than a writer. I’ve got a graphic novel, which I plan to get published one day, lying in my desk drawer.”

I hated that I had my own unfinished manuscript of sorts lying in my drawer as well, notebooks full of poems about the dark side of law and single life in Singapore. Not that I was going to divulge its existence to Suresh. No, as far as I was concerned, this secret hobby of mine would stay in its drawer, because that’s where hobbies belong in real life. I could hear how disdainful I sounded when I continued, “Aside from your, erm, graphic novel, have you written anything?”

“I have,” he said, smiling. “I have my own superhero comic strip online.”

“Doesn’t everyone?” I said disparagingly.

“Erm, yes, erm. But mine is, well, quite successful. Have you heard of The Last True Self? About a shape-shifting vigilante who murders to protect the oppressed by sucking their life force out by touch, but is doomed to take on the form of the last person he touch-murders?”

“No,” I said. “Sounds super boring.”

He leaned forward and whispered, “Well, I’m the creator. But don’t tell anyone at work, since I don’t want people to think I actually have hobbies, or a life, outside of the law.” He winked.

“Um-hmm,” I said, nonchalant but silently taking notes for future evil reference.

“Also, people have been trying to figure out who the creator of TLTS is for some time now, since, you know, I killed so many real-life celebrities and politicians in my comic strip. I’ve had death threats.”

I fought the urge to blurt out, “And now I know your Achilles’ heel, sucker!”

He seemed reassured, foolishly, by my silence. “Seriously, though, what drew you to read law?”

I hesitated, then said, truthfully, “I wanted to fight for justice for the oppressed. Like Batman. Or you know, like Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Suresh sipped at his tea. “What area of law did you originally want to practice in?”

“International humanitarian law. You?”

“Criminal law.”

We both fell silent as we reflected on how far we’d deviated from our ideals.

I gingerly picked out the second fish eyeball and swallowed the slimy, chalky thing whole, nearly gagging in the process. “Lemme guess, Tiger Mom?”

“Tiger Dad,” he said. “Well, Tiger Parents, really.”

We smiled wanly at each other in commiseration.

“So, Suresh Aditparan, my next question is: would you do things differently when it comes to your kids? Or do you think tiger parenting is the way to go? I mean, all things considered, we turned out pretty well.” Great, now I was drawing parallels between us and complimenting him. Some Power Lunch this was turning out to be.

He gnawed on his bottom lip as he thought this through. “I think I’d one hundred percent do things differently. I would tell my children to dream big, that I would support them in anything they wanted to do. Anything, that is, except dentistry and accountancy.” He grinned. “One has to draw the line somewhere.”

I laughed against my will. It’s as painful as it sounds, trust me. I couldn’t believe that I was starting to enjoy myself.

Then he leaned forward and adopted a businesslike tone. “Let’s cut the bullshit, Andrea. This isn’t a friendly orienteering lunch, is it?”

“Excuse me?” I said, thrown off course by the lack of segue.

“I know you don’t like me”—I opened my mouth to deny this, but he cut me off with a gesture—“but it’s OK, you’re not very likable either. You are borderline rude, to be honest, glowering at me like I don’t have eyes in my head. I get it, you don’t have much competition around here. But we don’t have to like each other to work in the same office. You stay in your lane, and I’ll stay in mine. And soon we’ll be out of each other’s hair when the office reno is done.”

What a pompous, arrogant jerk!

When the meal was over I tried to pay for it in a last-ditch attempt at a Power Move but was foiled at this because he had already left his card with the reception when he entered. The boy was almost more Chinese than I was!

Clearly, I would have to find other ways to establish my alpha status, and soon. Starting by setting up an anonymous Instagram account and spamming him. Let’s see who’s rude then!

8:55 p.m. OMG. The Last True Self has close to 55K followers on Instagram and 38K followers on Twitter. And what’s worse: Suresh is good. The comic bursts with style, satire, and dark humor, and lots of opportunity for catharsis (his vigilante, Water, has killed John Mayer (!), among others).

Water is an absurdly handsome, John Wick-ish mercenary vigilante who gained his deadly powers (life-force absorption and shape-shifting) and lost his wife after a freak accident at the experimental lab where they both worked almost two years ago. Each time he touches someone with his bare skin, he immediately kills them and takes on his victim’s new form temporarily until his powers recharge and he morphs back, although with each kill he loses a few more of his memories. So while each kill lessens the pain of his wife’s loss, it also takes away more of her, of him. As a result of his powers, he’s a bit of a loner and has not been involved with anyone since his wife died. To touch someone is to take that person’s life; hence the only time he does any touching, aside from himself when no one is watching except God, is when he is ready to kill. It can get a little one-note; it would be nice if Suresh injected, as a counterpoint to all this directionless murder, a bigger agenda for the killing. Maybe a righteous desire to reduce world population to counter global warming—something controversial but logical. Just so there’s narrative tension. And maybe a sex scene or two #justsayin.

Not because I find the protagonist hot, of course. Because he looks a heck of a lot like his creator, and that would mean I find Suresh attractive, which I don’t.

All the same, there’s enough here to please a casual reader. I’m impressed. Using the anonymous IG account I had set up to spam him, I began to follow TLTS. Just to better understand the psyche of my enemy.

11:35 p.m. Looked up from screen, dizzy and ravenous, and realized that I’d finished two years’ worth of TLTS in one sitting. Now I’m hooked, with no choice but to continue following TLTS. I’m contributing to his following and, indirectly, his revenue stream.

Worst of all, dear Diary, was the jealousy. Suresh might not have figured it out yet, but if he ever wanted to take a leap of faith, he could switch careers and do something he was passionate about. He had options, whereas I had none.

11:40 p.m. Urgh. Can feel the downward spiral over life choices beginning.

11:55 p.m. Decided to join Ben for a drink at Boat Quay.

1:20 a.m. Saw Ben in action. He is like a relic of the past, going up to younger women and shouting at them over loud music while they blink at him, unimpressed.

1:23 a.m. Come to think of it, is that how I will look to people when I am out with Orson, a boy who has never used a VHS tape player in his life?

1:30 a.m. Oh God. Oh God. Need tequila.

1:45 a.m. Have had tequila, many. Considered, for a panicked moment, whether I should sleep with Ben. Then for some reason I heard Suresh saying, “One has to draw the line somewhere.”

2:38 a.m. Tequilas w why we mustr never have a trade wart with mexivco!1

3:20 a.m. Drunkenly made out with sowmeo who looked lke Ivan befr realize he does nott at all, when car drove by alldey light see.

3:45 a.m. Whaar m I doing? Needa to get my datng life in shipshape like carreer or end up ksssng men in alley.

4:10 a.m. Home.

Part II

7
Saturday 20 February

Valerie called at 10:30 a.m., violating our group’s golden rule: “No calls before eleven on a Saturday, unless you or someone we know is dying.”

“Andrea! I’m in big trouble,” she said with a megaphone. “I don’t know what to do or who to turn to!”

“Whaaaat?” I moaned. Someone inside my head was banging a timpani in tandem with my heartbeat.

“Are you listening to me?” Valerie shouted.

I sat up, very slowly, in bed, and whispered, “Sorry, the line’s pretty bad, can you repeat the whole thing again?”

“I need to babysit my niece, and I have no idea how to take care of a child! You’ve got to help! You have a younger sister, weren’t you always saying?”

I didn’t tell her that Melissa practically raised herself, she was so level-headed. I mean, I turn to her for advice, not vice versa.

Valerie said her brother Cameron’s helper was on leave and Cameron was in the States on a business trip, and Zi Min, her sister-in-law who was also a real estate agent, had some rental properties she had to show that day. I agreed to come with her after enduring another minute of high-pitched begging. By the time she arrived at my condo, barely twenty-five minutes later, I had downed a bottle of special Korean ginseng energy drink, one coconut water, and two double espressos, and was feeling almost human. Unsurprisingly, after I’d vibrated into Valerie’s car, I turned my head and found a prone Linda lying on the back seat. Her face was a particularly vibrant hue of zombie gray.

“Hi, sweetie, thank you so much for agreeing to help,” Valerie said. She motioned at Linda. “That one back there spent the night at mine after we had a heavy night out in Clarke Quay. Between you and me, I can’t believe she’s still alive.”

Linda groaned and unleashed a cloud of mint-veiled alcohol breath. She should really have been sleeping off her hangover at Valerie’s place, but since Valerie and I were the kind of friends who had never hung out alone, it made sense that even her hungover ass was a good buffer against awkward small talk. “Keep your voices down, will you,” she pleaded.

I turned my attention to Valerie, who, under the world’s largest sunglasses and a cap, looked bright and hard-shiny in the daylight. “How come you’re totally fine and she’s half-dead?” I asked.

“I’m not an alcoholic,” Valerie replied.

We arrived at the condominium in Tiong Bahru where Valerie’s brother lived. Valerie was begging us to hurry as we were already nine minutes late and her sister-in-law was a stickler for punctuality. “She’s going to freak,” she said in a panic.

Which was exactly what happened.

“You’re late,” Zi Min barked, her arms crossed. I eyed her warily, since the apple never falls far from the tree and we were supposed to take care of her daughter. Zi Min was classically attractive: tall, porcelain-skinned, and thin but B-cupped, she was dressed in a flowy long-sleeved white silk top paired with dark blue jeans and matching denim Chanel ballerina flats and bag. There was no doubt in my mind that she was a conventional pain in the ass.

“Sorry,” Valerie said meekly, seeming to shrink into herself. I felt bad for her; she really needed to toughen up.

Zi Min jerked her chin at our direction. “So. Who are these people?”

“These are my friends from, ah, work. They are here to help me take care of Lilly. They have a lot of experience with, uh, children.” I nodded on cue, the enthusiastic smiley nod of a Jehovah’s Witness. I had my arm slung companionably around a sunglassed Linda (mostly to prop her up). Linda had already been Febrezed, but we stood a little ways back, just in case.

Zi Min was in too much of a rush to bother vetting us in the care of her only child; she let us in without further debate. She motioned down the hallway. “Lilly just came back from ballet and she was supposed to be having chess lessons but her coach canceled.” She scowled. “Make sure she doesn’t watch TV. She has to complete her homework, then practice her piano drills for two hours for her piano class tonight. For a treat, she may complete four advanced Sudoku puzzles before you drop her off for her piano lesson at five o’clock.”

“For a treat,” Linda repeated in disbelief, jolted out of her hungover stupor.

“Y-e-s,” Zi Min said. “Just four puzzles. There’s lunch in the kitchen, some quinoa salads I got delivered, but if you’re still hungry, there’s leftover oat and quinoa porridge in the fridge. Lilly is on a gluten-free diet as she is getting super fat. OK, I really have to run. I’ll try to be back by four thirty in order to send her to piano class. Sometimes she fusses and I have to smack her.”

“Where is she now?” Valerie asked as I watched Linda turn a magnificent shade of pukey indignation.

“In her room, studying chess openings. Please watch her!” She had a change of mind and kicked off her ballet flats before shoving her feet into a pair of towering Charlotte Olympia platform pumps. Maybe she intended to intimidate her clients into signing the lease. “All right. Goodbye. Have fun.”

The door slammed shut behind her. We heard her heels clattering down the hallway as she ran. A flurry of swearing, then blessed silence. All of us breathed a sigh of relief. Almost immediately, one of the bedroom doors creaked open and a girl’s head peeked out. “Is she gone?” Lilly whispered.

“Yes, sweetie,” Valerie said, smiling as much as the Botox would allow.

“Oh, thank God!” Lilly stomped out of the room, slammed the door, and threw herself onto the couch. “I hate her.”

“Now, now,” Valerie said, awkwardly petting the girl’s head, “she is your mother.”

“I know, Auntie Val,” Lilly said. “But she’s mean and controlling. I never get to do anything I want, and you follow her every instruction.” She looked around and pouted at me. “Would you let me watch TV, please?”

“Well, now …” I looked at Valerie. “I’m not in charge here, sweetie. Your aunt Val is.”

“Hold on,” Valerie mouthed. She sidled to the TV console table and parked her handbag directly in front of an insidious-looking stuffed rabbit with exposed teeth, the only incongruous object in the minimalist living room, which had obviously been decorated by a Scandinavian monk with expensive taste.

“Now you can,” she said with a grin.

Valerie turned the TV on and the three of us joined Lilly on the couch without further ado, Lilly gripping the remote control with both hands, her eyes trained on the TV on which five nubile Korean girls were gyrating to techno music and alternatively rapping and yowling. She had the slightly gormless look of an entranced gopher. Poor kid. Valerie explained that every minute of the child’s day was scheduled, down to the second. Piano lessons, creative writing, coding, drama therapy, chess lessons, and because Zi Min had hopes that Lilly would excel at a sport, ballet and kiddie golf. Of course, you must understand that these were just after-school enrichment classes designed to gild Lilly’s academic CV—God forbid that the kid actually decided she wanted to be a ballerina, a professional athlete, or a violin teacher. Every Chinese parent knows that those extracurricular activities were just that—extra.

I’ll have to admit I don’t think I had it this rough: what Lilly was experiencing was next-level Tiger Parenting. Val’s brother, Cameron, was a high-flying investment banker, and Zi Min was a senior director of a large real estate agency: they had big dreams and only one offspring, so the poor child was essentially hostage to her parents’ wishes forever.

But for now the little monster was just hanging loose, her legs splayed over the glass-topped coffee table as she munched on yellowing breath mints that she had salvaged from the bottom of my bag. “I never get to eat candy,” she confided. “You aunties are the best. I wish all of you were my mommy.”

I looked over at Valerie, who was beaming despite having just been called an auntie.

We watched four hours of TV, Linda, Valerie, and I taking turns napping while Lilly watched music video after music video and ate all the breath mints we collectively owned. When she was hungry she asked for McDonald’s, which I was only too happy to oblige. You should have seen this kid’s eyes when she saw the food arrive—I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone that excited to see gluten. Linda revived soon after the Big Mac and Coke and she brought out a stack of cards and taught Lilly how to play poker. We were all sorry when the time came to drop Lilly, whose eyes had now crossed from watching almost six hours straight of music videos, off at her music school (her mother had called at 3:00 p.m. to say she had an “emergency errand” to run and would be late, but reminded us to “use all force necessary to get Lilly to her lesson”).

And then Lilly’s vacation from the real world was over.

I pulled up in front of the music school ten minutes late and did the very Malaysian thing of double-parking with the hazard lights flashing. Lilly refused to leave the car. She threw an epic kicking-and-screaming tantrum, stopping only when Valerie said she would have to call Zi Min and tell her that Lilly wouldn’t go to class, at which the child almost immediately stopped fussing, fear evident in her eyes. When Valerie and I finally managed to usher her to her class, Lilly was in tears. To be honest, I was almost in tears myself—who knew a child could bite so hard?

Later, as I drove us back in the car, Valerie said quietly, “I want one.”

Linda, who’d once said that Halloween was great because that was when you could poison the kids you didn’t like with the sweet justice of candy, turned to Valerie and said, “I think you’d make a great mom, Val.”

As for me, having survived today, I went straight to my neighborhood pharmacy and bought a pack of extra-thick, dolphin-friendly condoms, which were helpfully on sale. Score!

9:45 p.m. Val video-called me to thank me for my help. “You’re awesome, and I’m going to do something very special for you,” she said. “Linda filled me in on your, um, quest, and I think I know just how to help you.”

“What do you mean?” Who knew what Linda had been blathering on about in her state last night. And I have many active quests: I’ve always wanted to find out Beyoncé’s real age, for instance.

“I’m going to open my social circles to you. We’re going to go out, hunting, the old-fashioned way!” She then added somewhat unnecessarily, “For men.”

I was both terrified and intrigued. “What? How? Where?”

“There’s an event I’ve been dying to go to and to which I’ve just been put on the guestlist, so we can try that. I can’t divulge any details yet since I need to ask permission from the hostess, but I’m sure you’ll be able to meet eligible age-appropriate bachelors there.” Her voice took on a steely tone. “But if you are accepted into the fold, you must promise me never to bring anyone else, especially Linda, to the club I’m about to bring you to. It’s my watering hole. Mine.”

And then, against the laws of Botox, she glared at me.

Dear Diary, I am scared.

8
Monday 22 February

10:07 a.m. Orson just sent me a weird-cute GIF of his face superimposed onto a gigantic mandarin orange to wish me Happy Chap Goh Mei. “Chap Goh Mei” in the Hokkien dialect refers to the fifteenth night of Chinese New Year; it marks the drawing to a close of the Lunar New Year celebration. It is also celebrated as the Chinese Valentine’s Day for many Malaysians and Singaporeans (because one day of torture was not enough). In this part of the world, there exists a “fun” Chap Goh Mei tradition, where single Chinese ladies throw perfectly good mandarin oranges with their names and phone numbers written on the fruit into a body of water, where they would usually be scooped up by eager gentlemen who may or may not be looking to score a free supply of vitamin C. The origins of this custom are obscure—to foolish die-hard romantics. There is little doubt in my mind that some crafty Southeast Asian mandarin orange cartel came up with this idea as a means of getting rid of their surplus stock at the end of the festivities for profit instead of letting them rot in a landfill; certainly it also makes their lives easy should they wish to pick out the single womenfolk for their trophy wives. Sleazy capitalist bastards.

Anyway, what was I saying? Ah, yes. Orson and the Giant GIF. I thanked him and he immediately messaged back to say that he was in Jakarta on a work trip and couldn’t make Wednesday for lunch but hoped to reschedule our date to the following Thursday, and that he would miss me.

I was disappointed that we wouldn’t see each other this week, but flattered. The last person who told me they missed me was my online grocer. Who says you can’t find nice ones on Sponk.

Thursday 25 February

8:20 p.m. Urgh. Am finally done with another bloody closing.

When I had sent all the documents to the client, I shakily stood up from the desk I had been crouched over for four hours straight and took stock of the damage: my eyes were burning and out of focus; I think I lost a tooth in my coffee; something smelled of warmed kimchi and I was pretty sure it was me (maybe that was why Suresh had taken to working in the library today?). My rib cage hurt from the too-tight sports bra I was wearing instead of a proper one, because I’d run out of clean lingerie. I’ve been eating takeaway salad (OK, fine, so they were fried spring rolls and not salad per se, but there’s radish in there so that counts toward my five-a-day) for lunch and dinner from that Vietnamese deli downstairs for three effing days straight and have slept a total of sixteen hours in the last four days, in my office.

On days like this I fantasize so hard about quitting that I actually have heart pangs. Just like Suresh, my plan wasn’t to go to law school to become a corporate lawyer. I had ideals once. I was passionate about human rights. After graduation I paid my dues and put in some time at Slaughter & May, but just as I’d begun a new position as a legal adviser for a small nonprofit helping trafficked women in the UK, my father got really sick and I had to get what my mother called a “real job” to help defray their living expenses, instead of “wasting my expensive legal education.” So I did what I had to do: I went back to Slaughter & May, cap in hand, and got my old job back. Some of that money went toward paying part of Melissa’s tuition, since she was in the middle of an expensive British degree in architecture and needed to get the best grades she could instead of working part time and getting just a second-lower-class or third-class degree. No way were we going to do that to her.

I guess I’m the reason she was able to meet Kamarul in her third year. This has always made me feel a little guilty toward my mother, not because I condone her casual racism (“You can be friends with them, but you can’t date them!”), but because, since I’d borne the full brunt of the financial fallout (cancers are expensive when you don’t have good insurance!) and downplayed my mother’s mental breakdown after my father’s passing in the misguided belief that Melissa shouldn’t suffer remotely any more than could be helped, my sister never knew the full extent of how bad things had gotten. My mother recovered thinking Melissa hadn’t cared enough to return home after her degree was done a few months after my father’s death, embarking instead on a gap year with Kamarul. They’ve been inseparable since.

Anyway, the rough patch my family found itself in, emotionally and financially, is somewhat over and I could quit and work somewhere else as I had intended to before I had to move back—only I can’t. I don’t know how to anymore. The money at my job is more than anything I’ll make elsewhere; I have little savings in my bank account because of my father’s illness and a mortgage I can barely afford (I might have been a little too aspirational with the posh address I’d chosen), which is fine, just as long as I have a job. Plus, I can’t give up now: I’ve half-ruined my eyesight on pages of document review, sucked up to too many people, sacrificed too much of my youth and identity, listened to far too many lectures from my mom about languishing in the purgatory of mediocrity. It’s no longer a choice; too much hangs in the balance. I have to become partner.

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