THE CITIZEN
“How are you today?” Robert Sebastian Cheong says to me.
I ask him if he saw the ape man and the naked woman rushing past him. He frowns, bringing the vape to his mouth, and then bringing it back down again, skipping a drag from the contraption and sparing me from a cloud of raspberry smoke.
“Are you alright?” he asks. His smile uncertain, his eyebrows half-raised and twitching.
It’s fake, I tell myself. Robert Sebastian Cheong, caring for me? I make to spit at him, but lose coordination between tongue and throat and end up coughing.
Robert Sebastian Cheong leans towards me. I feel his hand on my shoulder, threatening me, controlling me. I jerk away in fear, causing him to exclaim in shock, dropping his vape on the floor. And then he says something that completely blindsides me.
“I did see the robot,” he says, softly, “it was carrying a naked girl. And it was heading up towards Bishan Park.”
He looks up from his shoes, his face transforming from a frown to one of concern.
“Don’t follow it,” he says.
“Why?” I bark, turning away from him.
“Because it’s dangerous,” he says, “because it’s long gone by now… you won’t be able to find him.”
“If it’s long gone, how can it be dangerous?” I argue back.
He ignores my question, continuing, “Bishan is a huge place. How are you going to find its hideout?”
Robert Sebastian Cheong has a point. And I hate it. But why is he helping me? Is he not complicit in the subjugation of the Singaporean populace? His smug face belying a world of privilege, the clueless beneficiary of the harvesting of the labour of the common man of Singapore, refined and distilled into the stored capital of a rich family infused into every fibre of his being.
I think about punching him, bloodying his nose, but then he dodges my fist mid-air and I stumble forward, landing on my face. My forehead cracks open the vape lying on the concrete, spilling raspberry fluid everywhere. And then I black out.
I dream of a world where the ape man is living in my house. We argue about the housing budget, and I lose. Which isn’t a surprising outcome when your opponent is taller, darker and hairier than you. The problem is: living with the ape man means a constant shortage of shampoo, and a drain that’s blocked every other day -- leaving the bathroom as a stagnant pool of lather and hair. He maintains that he doesn’t eat much, that he offers me bananas every day, that he gives me free massages. He often grouses about the lack of a adequate hairdresser in this “curs’d country”, and spends his time dreaming of a freedom from the chains of civilisation, a return to the primitive, his noble savage roaming the jungle, living the hunter gatherer lifestyle and bathing in the rivers flowing with clean unpolluted rainwater. In the dream, I begin to ask myself if the ape-man is the villain or the hero.
I wake up, and Robert Sebastian Cheong comes into focus in front of me. He’s reading a copy of the Economist, sipping from a small thimble sized cup containing what I presume to be espresso made from fair trade Arabica coffee beans. It’s then when I notice that I’m lying on my bed, in my home, and it’s night time.
“How did I get here?”
Robert Sebastian Cheong looks up from his magazine.
“I brought you here,” he said, “after you fell down, Tan Vee Bun called you on your phone. When I picked up and told him of the situation, they instructed me to bring you here. ‘No hospitals’, he said.”
He continues, raising an eyebrow, “you’re an important man.”
He chuckles, “the reincarnation of Lee Kuan Yew.”
I spring up from the bed. “Who told you that?”
“I did.”
I spin round and see Tan Vee Bun standing in the doorway. Alive. He looks exactly the same -- no wounds or bruises or any sign of manhandling on his body. Behind me, Robert Sebastian Cheong gets up and approaches Tan Vee Bun, wrapping his arms around his waist. He whispers something into his ear, and then kisses him full on the lips. For a few seconds of silence, the two of them leave their foreheads resting against each other, breathing in each others’ scent, and then Robert Sebastian Cheong leaves the room. I hear the front door open and close as he walks away from the flat.
A tense silence.
“What did he whisper to you?” I ask.