This is rated R solely for the use of profanity. The setting is Singapore, so you might not recognize some words, or the grammar of the spoken English. The Esplanade is a prominent landmark in my country, as is the mall/office tower next to it, Raffles City. If you're curious what they look like you can Google image search 'Esplanade singapore'. This is classified under Science Fiction purely because the category was described as one encompassing stories set in the future, which this is, but I would not personally call it such. Cheers!
Nadia is spending her twilight imagining, remembering, and wondering if there remains any difference. The last fingers of shadow are long and wistful along the walls. With darkness will come the crying. The hoarse, shrill breath of shuddering forms; the clammy and asphyxiating closeness of underground fear. The murmurs, too – muted, meaningless reassurances between those who were lucky enough not to be walking alone when it happened.
She shuts her eyes and wills it all to fade to a silence, the silence from before, when the air was as thick and slow as time itself, and the shine of sun was creeping through the glass. If she concentrates hard enough she can recall how it was, looking out the window and cherishing the fifteen minutes of solitude remaining before the office returned from lunch. Far below, the thinning crowd; the starving swell of people pressed in melting suits receding into impassive buildings. The buildings, she reflects, never broke for lunch. They never broke for anything, back then. They stood in ordered ranks of glass and steel as tides of men and women daily ebbed and flowed, in and out their doors. This was her secret joy, watching the city at lunchtime. She had narrowed it down to a range of mere minutes, when the numbers would lessen each day, and the sprawl of sweaty bodies would track back from favourite haunts into stacked and air-conditioned crates. Those left behind always looked slightly forlorn to her eye. But they dutifully roamed, miming curious things, so that she always had a view from her window, and so that she could create and recreate their conversations in her head.
“Na-dii-a,” The rustle of plastic and a scuffle of step caused her to swivel behind her in her chair. It was Mark, dangling her lunch beneath her nose. Too cheerful, as always. “Guess what I got you.”
“White carrot cake.”
He appeared crestfallen. “How you know?”
“It smells oily.” She leaned over to press the five-dollar note she had prepared into his namecard holder, on his desk opposite hers. “And you have no imagination.”
Mark brought her carrot cake whenever she spent her lunch break indoors because that was what the stall next to his favourite beef noodles sold. It wasn’t her favourite, but she didn’t mind; she never complained, and he never thought to vary a routine that worked.
“We’re not paid to have imagination.” He eased his lanky self into his chair, stretching out his legs. “We’re paid to count their money.” He retrieved the dollar bill from the holder where she had tucked it, and held it up between both thumbs and forefingers, waggling it in her face for effect. Lee Kuan Yew’s high forehead took on interesting contortions as the note was crinkled and smoothed again. Tucking it into his shirt pocket, his eyes rolled up to the air-conditioning unit that blew unconvincing spurts of lukewarm air in his face. “And this, my friend, is what we get in return. No air-con. Shit, man. Is this Singapore or what?”
“It broke down half an hour ago.”
“You tahaned this for half an hour?” He loosened his collar, already darkened with sweat from the sun outside. “Well. Serves you right for not eating with us.”
His eyes on her were faintly quizzical as she busied herself with her food. “I had work to finish. Alice wants this in by the end of the week.”
“This being Monday.”
“It’s nothing to do with you lah.” Her tone was a little sharp; she caught it, softened her voice. “Look, I just wasn’t feeling well. Thanks for buying me lunch, okay? I’ll eat with you guys tomorrow.”
The delight in his dark brown eyes was infectious, but she only permitted herself the slightest of smiles. She didn’t need him trying again – even if he did smell nice, and had long lashes behind his ridiculously oblong glasses, and a playful way of saying her name that she pretended to hate: Na-dii-a. The look on his face even now was intent, and she was wary. He leaned forwards, and started to speak. But the distant blast trembled the room beneath their feet, and the word was stillborn, unspoken.
Instead he said, “Fuck. What the fuck?”
He unfolded from the chair, and the both of them jerked to the window by her desk. Out of the splayed cityscape below bloomed a fog of dust, tiny at first, then unfurling, breathing like their gaping mouths spread mist over glassy panel, feeding and bursting on their disbelief. The cloud grew fiery edges; spreading ranks. There were shocked cries in the hallway, other spectators, doubtless. She imagined hundreds of people in their building on Shenton Way, petrified insects pressed against the glass, then multiplied that in her head by the scores of towers, flats, malls, and saw thousands of pale faces in her head. All of them watching something they did not understand. It was a strangely safe moment: she had the feeling that once it passed, once they knew, there would be danger and regret.
The burst of dust was dissipating to leaving a steady burning column of fire. They looked at it, saw the pall it cast over the gigantic dome beside it. Glints of fire rippled over the slanted aluminium shades, a thousand burning eyes.
“That’s the Esplanade,” she said – stupidly, because it was obvious it was the Esplanade, only why was it on fire? Except it wasn’t, really, it was the tall aspiring pillar next to it. “They got Raffles City.”
“They? Who are you talking about?”
The question pierced her shock to plant an instant of relief. Of course. It was an industrial accident, a fried wire. It had nothing to do with them, or anyone, except the crowd now crawling out of the shaken building. Poor things, in all likelihood having only just come in from lunch. Thousands of lunches and nothing like this before – how were they to know? Dimly she realised that Mark was moving, pacing, hitting switches along the walls. The lights had blown.
“Mark,” she asked, timid, “Did that just happen?”
“Yeah, for some reason. During the explosion. First the air-con, now the lights. Why do we work here again?”
Into her head came the realisation that there were sirens. A dim but persistent wailing that she could not ignore. Perhaps it was a figment of shock, she grasped desperately, but the look on Mark’s face told her what she needed to know. There were sirens in the world. She fumbled in her pocket for her phone, but her fingers went limp halfway. She had thought to dial home, but what was the point? There was no one there, no one there but Angie. A hysterical urge to laugh struggled in her stomach. It was a cold place now, cold and clammy despite the heat of the office and the faraway fire and Mark’s confusion. Angie. She needed to get there, needed to get to Angie. She grabbed her handbag and moved quickly toward the door.
“Nadia?” Mark’s hands on her arms, meeting her flesh uncomfortably. “Where are you going? It’s not safe.” His eyes moved to the spectacle in the window, and the distraction loosened his grip. “Shit, you have to see this. There are cars piled up. They’re not moving.” He looked very young, very scared. She took the opportunity to wrench herself away.
“Call your family.” She was gone now, or going – there was a difference, but it was slim. Mark nodded and was reaching for the phone as she left.
She wonders now, as the night settles on the faces around her, if it was a cruel thing to do. She asked him to phone for his family, as though he could have done so. She imagines, as she lies on cold stone, something other than the unrelenting nothing that must have answered his call. She imagines that there was another line, that they both indeed did intersect, that somewhere in an air-conditioned home a phone rings and a mother picks it up and hears what Mark was meant to say, before the blast. The unspoken word. She imagines these things and keeps them in her gut, so in the gloaming she can run through them again and again, but the images collapse every time into his fragile grin. Na-dii-a, this is a joke, right? Na-dii-a, where are you going? Then his grin turns hideous, the stain of caffeine chipping into the enamel, spreading from the gum, and all she can see is the pink, the brown, the skin and teeth, and then she imagines that somewhere he is dead.
It’s dark now. She pats down her bag, curling up on her side with it as a pillow. The plaintive keening from the corner sounds like the whistling hail that made the ground overhead rattle and the great blocks clatter above the station. Or the screech of slowing trains. She wonders if the trains had stopped in their tracks, whittled down to silent unmoving hulks. If there were people in those trains, connected by steel skeletons to her and this pack of frightened rats. People with their shopping, people with their prams, people pounding on the doors that, try as they might, would not open with a whoosh. Sila umbil perhatian. Demi keselamatan anda, harap berdiri di belakang garisan kuning. Your attention please. For your own safety, please stand behind the yellow line. But there was no longer any disembodied voice to warn them of the consequences, and there were no longer any yellow lines.
All Nadia wants is silence and a window with a view by her desk. She pictures that window, drowns out the sirens, calms the flailing masses, reconstructs the sunny district. Only then can she sleep, and she does so because she must: tomorrow she will be on the move.
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