So, I’ve got a story published in this weekend’s edition of that community-level-newspaper-for-a-state-in-which-I-used-to-live-but-no-longer, Selangor Times. Yay! They are a cool outfit, the ST people: they’ve had a fiction section since they started a year ago — a remarkable feat of consistency.
Go read via this finely-crafted clickable.
Old-hand readers of the blog (all three of you) will recognise this as the same story of failed Tourism Malaysia-office, banana-boat rendezvous that I posted all those months back. So yes, progress. Here’s the ending bit:
“Biah?” her husband said, suddenly, tentatively, as if a train of thought had completed a loop in his head. “I was wondering.”
He grinned and said: “I was wondering whether Biah would like to go to the beach this weekend. For so long we haven’t gone, isn’t it? I think it might be fun. Just two of us, like we used to.”
Pn Rubiah giggled aloud. “What nonsense are you talking, Abang?” she replied. “Look at me. How am I supposed to go to the beach like this? I can’t fit into my swimming dress. I can’t even walk properly.”
“Ala, we can do it,” he said, all sweet-talky. “It will be fun. It will be like we are dating.”
She frowned playfully, then shook her head. “Don’t want, Abang. Don’t want.”
“Come la. With me,” her husband said.
“Don’t want,” Pn Rubiah answered. “Nonsense la you.”
“Alright,” he sighed, but not without mischief. “Later I go with some other woman, then you know.”
Pn Rubiah pinched his arm. They laughed about it. After sharing a slice of cheesecake, they paid for dinner, got into the car, and started driving for the highway, and for their home in the middle of palm-oil country. Her husband yawned, and said nothing.
Pn Rubiah told herself: I am happy.
The places where this piece is set actually exist: the Seremban-Port Dickson Highway, and Bandar Springhill. Both were built in the late 1990s. I thank Dr M for inspiring me to write tales of loneliness and mediocrity in contractor-designed, half-tenanted suburban in-between spaces.
And your eyes do not deceive you: USCI University has just built its fourth campus in Springhill. I suppose all those wide-open oil-palm vistas will really help broaden young minds, yes?
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