Martoons

Cast of characters

Mr Go

Taxi driver

Miss No

*

“Ayeesh. We ran out sooner than I thought,” said the taxi driver.

“How low are you?”

“We’ll be running on vapour soon!”

“How far are we out of Chinju?”

“About 10 kilometres from the Rotary. You want me to call another cab to take you in? Might take a bit of time for it to get here though…”

Go’s mind was already racing ahead and thinking what to do next. Ten kilometers … that’s jog-able. 

He didn’t know how it had got there but had his destination clearly in mind: RAW FISH. And for some reason he was craving a coffee and a cigarette…

Seemingly random instructions echoed around his head – again, no idea of their source but feeling an unremitting compulsion to obey them.

The tone of voice – remarkably and eerily similar to Miss No’s: “When you get to Chinju and the Rotary area, proceed to the raw fish restaurant and relax.

“There is a coffee machine outside RAW FISH – you know it well – get yourself a coffee, have a cigarette and then you need to do the following…”

* What is he then supposed to do? *

“Stop, stop,” Go ordered Cabby. “I go out here.”

*

Memory Jog        

Squatting down on the motel room floor and staring intently at the bunched-up comforter, No’s paranoia of Santa Kang briefly subsided.

Instead, she was experiencing some wicked flashbacks. Mr Go had just mentioned jogging …

Last spring at Go’s apartment – when their relationship was on its last legs and he was just back from his regular night-on-the-town activities…  

“You arrived home a minute ago and you’re going out again?” she squawked at him.

“It’s the middle of the friggin’ night! And where on earth is there to go at this ungodly hour?”

Go’s recent hankerings for late-night jogging seemed to occur frequently – and annoyingly – on the very nights when Miss No was most in the mood for ‘horizontal’ fitness.

And this night was no exception.

Except, even though she (or he) didn’t know it yet, this would be the last time.

As Go slipped slyly out the door in his track suit – and the usual cigarette dangling from his lips – Miss No suppressed her frustration and forced out a compliment:

“Be careful! Don’t get hit by a car – they might not be able to see you.”

“You’re right,” he quipped back, “I’ll be running so fast it will look like a blur.”

She did admire his recently-renewed interest in fitness but was frustrated because it was just another way she was losing control over him.

Her grip had been weakening for months.

She’d been letting it slide because she had – once and a while – been getting her way with him at night.

But those occasions were becoming rare and Go’s new-found early a.m. athletic enthusiasm was quickly converting No back to a nun.

As the apartment door slammed behind him and Go took off into the night, No asked herself why stay with him at all?

Outside of work, the only time he was with her was when he was sleeping.

She hadn’t been happy for months but had kept putting off the inevitable. Oh how happy she’d been as merely an innocent employee of his way back when.

* Why had she still been staying with him? *

Despite his humble background (which her family would never approve of), Go’s acumen for business and his more liberated views towards women were highly attractive to Miss No.

She’d heard that a woman’s choice of a marriage partner was her most important career decision, and here was Mr Eligible right off the bat.

“This must be fate!” she’d exclaimed in those early days.

Without telling her family, she’d taken her life savings and an inheritance from a deceased, rich relative and rented a luxury ‘villa style’ apartment.

Telling her family nothing about her plans, she then coolly coaxed boyfriend Go to move in with her.

He’d been skeptical.

* How come? *

“I like living on my own in my dingy little bachelor’s suite,” he chuckled.

“But you live in squalor,” she countered.

“Yes, but it’s my own gig. I’d rather preside over my own pig sty than be a guest in someone else’s pristine palace.”

“It’s just the way I am, I guess. With you I will feel compelled to clean and I hate cleaning.”

After relentless pressure, she persuaded him and established herself, ostensibly, as his housekeeper.

“But what’s the catch?” he wondered as he carried his main suitcase up the stairs to the villa on moving-in day, cigarette dangling from his lips.

“If you want me to quit smoking, no problem. I’ve been meaning to give up the habit anyway.”

She waved him off but he found out her plans soon enough – marriage – and he wanted no part of it. Things between them were already intense enough.

Their living-in-sin arrangement caused a riff with her parents (they’d somehow found out). For Miss No’s part, though, that just encouraged her more.

She wasn’t a one trick pony. Marriage could wait. Her true end was to control a business of her own. Even if it was someone else’s business that she planned to eventually take over.

At any cost.

*

Tomorrow: No asks for more from Go.