Then She Was Gone

Malee was an outrageously good-looking woman. She was tall, her hair was long and shiny, reaching almost to her waist. She had long shapely legs and her body was magnificently curvaceous. She was the consummate flirt and she dressed in a way that I always described as just this side of respectable. I don’t think I ever saw her angry or sad. She wore a permanent smile and she had an infectious laugh. I would have done anything for her. Well, within reason.

I had an apartment on the seventeenth floor overlooking The South China Sea and from the living room window you could see a hundred ships at anchor off Singapore’s east coast. At night, the view was truly spectacular. Malee loved the view. She would slide the window open and lean on the sill letting the sea breeze gently caress her face and blow through her hair. Sometimes, she would loosen her clothing to let the cool night air fan her breasts. No one could see her except maybe the odd sailor on the graveyard watch out there on the ocean, but no-one ever complained. If there was nothing much on the telly, sometimes I would take her from behind as she took in the coolness of the night. That would probably have been a caning offence in crusty Singapore if the coast guard had happened to look in our direction. Funny how I never thought of that at the time.

It was a problem for Malee to stay in Singapore. She would get a tourist visa on entry, sometimes for 30 days but mostly those frosty Singaporean immigration officers would only stamp her in for fourteen days at a time. She would fly back to Bangkok and usually stay for a few weeks in Thailand before returning to Singapore. It was a nuisance and quite expensive. Occasionally I would take her to Malaysia or Batam for a day or two but coming back into Singapore was always a problem. Once, the miserable bastards at the Tuas Crossing immigration office gave her 3 days when we tried to come back after spending a few days in Johor. When I suggested to the officer that I thought he might be being a tad over zealous in the performance of his duties, he said in his superior Singaporean manner, “This is not your wife, just your girlfriend. She and you have no rights here.” Well fucking zeik heil to you too, Chink. I kept that thought to myself, though. We went to Jakarta together once. I wangled the trip on company expenses. We had a reservation at the Hyatt and a return flight booked for 3 days later. The immigration officer at Jakarta airport wanted to give Malee the third degree. He wanted to know where she was staying, did she have money and where was her return ticket? She looked at me while he was asking his stupid questions and said, “I don’t think much of Indonesia”. The officer snapped at me “No talking, no talking”. I wasn’t in the mood and told him that I would talk as much as I wanted and he could go fuck himself. If I was being generous, I would have said that these little ‘jobs worths’ we jealous.

One day, Malee was packing a few things for one her regular return trips to Bangkok but I noticed that she was not quite herself. She seemed a little preoccupied but I didn’t press it. I assumed it was just the hassle of having to zip back and fore all the time. I drove her to the airport and walked her to the departure concourse. She turned to me and I noticed her eyes were misty with tears. I’d never seen that before. “Do you like kids?” she said out of the blue. I already had a daughter back in the UK who was about twelve at the time. “Sure” I said “But I couldn’t eat a whole one.” Malee sniffed hard and forced a smile. I waived her off and went home.

A couple of days later she phoned me from her hometown in Isaan. She said she was in hospital and had just terminated a pregnancy. I had no idea. I thought we had been so careful. More children were never in my plan but I would have shouldered the responsibility if I had been given the chance. Malee never came back. I tried to trace her but I never had a chance. I didn’t even know the name of her hometown for sure.

She never asked me for anything, she never came back for the rest of her things and I never heard from her again.

Union Hill

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