Singapore Noir

This afternoon, I ride up the elevator of one of the most expensive and desired apartments in the country, a man in office clothes, my sharp jaw, the blue tie with brown stripes that you gave me hanging from my throat with my prominent Adam’s apple. When the door opens, you are there in your work clothes — a severe gray suit with a white frilled blouse. Just back, taking off your black Ferragamo stilettos in the alcove before going into the living room, one stockinged leg off the ground, one slim arm pressed to the doorframe to steady yourself. You are surprised.

I reach for you, and you struggle to keep balance. I push you to your knees. I unzip. You peer up at me, wordless, your eyes large and bright.

There, at the alcove outside your apartment, one thin door — not fully shut — separates us from the corridor and the people walking past. When you hesitate, I put my hands at the back of your head and push your face forward. Your lips part.

We are lovers. We have done this before. But in bed, close and intimate as a kiss. Now you are on your knees, and I stand above you, commanding. Both of us fully clothed, just back from a world of mundane meetings and To-Do lists. And I am forcing myself into your mouth, deep, and thrusting, so my dangling belt jangles, slapping the side of your fine brow.

A couple kissing, for a moment lost to all but this passion even as passersby are rushing to and fro, are framed in Doisneau’s famous photograph in the streets of Paris.

I look at your large clear eyes, your beautiful face, supplicant to this unseemly act, in this barely concealed space. I will remember this image as clearly as any photograph. I think this. Then I come.

In spurts. Into your mouth, across your open lips and your fair cheeks, on your fine nose, and into the deep valley of your eyes that blink instinctively.

You smile and you put me back into your mouth, cleansing me completely with your tongue. I tremble and you smile again. Then you tilt your head back and swallow. Your hand comes up as if to ask a question in a seminar, and your elegant fingers trace and gather the sticky ribbons from your face and, like a sweet child messy with chocolate, you lick each finger.

I sigh, exhaling all the air of too many air-conditioned meeting rooms where nothing is really discussed or decided, of all the hours between the time we were last together and now. I reach into my pocket for my iPhone and snap a shot of you. Then I offer you a handkerchief with my embroidered initials to clean the remnants of the mess.

“Hullo, darling,” you say, and smile pleasantly as if seeing me for the first time. “How was your day?”

2. Guilty Without Crime

I am a detective in a city that, they say, has no crime. I am a lover in a city that — let’s not pretend — has no art. I am cleaning my gun. I can do this blindfolded while listening to Fauré but not Stravinsky. I find the latter too unsettling, jumpy.

I lay the gun parts on a white cloth, clean each bit, and then put them back together with maximum speed and care, whir the chamber, squeeze back the trigger on the empty chamber: I need to be sure the weapon will work when I need it.

Then I do push-ups. Three batches of thirty, thirty and then a long forty. I take my time, and do them until my arms burn and tremble. Then I go to the bar installed in the doorway and do pull-ups until I can do no more, until my hands cannot even hold onto the bar. This is my routine.

I am forty-one now. I was strong when I was young and used to assume that I would always be fit. Now I make no assumptions.

After I cool down, I shower and eat dinner. A meal of rice, tauhu for protein, and vegetables. A bit of soya sauce and chili on the side, and a touch of garlic on the veg but otherwise plain, and clean. Eating alone, food is fuel to keep me going. I eat it slowly, munching deliberately, not to savor the taste but for better digestion; spoon after spoon, like other people swallow vitamin supplements.

I think back about what I have seen during the day. I let my mind still and find its focus, until I see the events so clearly that I can hear all of what anyone said, even the low growl of that Maserati leaving the gates of the condo and then that man in austere black and gray walking in leather soles, click-clack, in the corridor. And then I can smell the curbside grass, newly cut by the two Bangladeshi workers in orange overalls, and the whirling grass trimmers, and the scent of frying oil from the kitchen of the café near the entrance to the Botanic Gardens. Then I jot notes down in my black journal, with my Namiki fountain pen.

I have done this every evening since before I can remember — albeit until recently with a humbler pen and journal.