Tham Cheng-E - Surrogate Protocol

“What are you doing?” Song croaked, the pain now wrenching tears from his eyes.

“My job,” Vivian said, her eyes travelling impassively across the screen. “Should’ve been more selective over who you chose to kiss.”

A cybernetic infusion now flowed in the veins of the wretched man, having been transfused from Vivian’s deadly kiss. It mingled with his Serum, embedded itself into his cells. By the tap of a key Vivian had them programmed, and the infusion hitched a ride on the bloodstream and began its dutiful journey towards his racing heart. Song felt the faint prod of pain in the ensuing seconds. His chest numbed as the infarction steadily took hold, and the reality of it drove him to a state of hysteria. As the growing pain compelled him to kneel, Vivian released her grip on him. He folded, clutching his chest and falling to his side. Inside him the cybernetic infusion sealed the arteries until the mounting pressure ruptured them all. Blood decanted from his mouth in ugly splutters, drowning his cries. On it went like a broken fountain, and Vivian watched.

But her triumph wasn’t to last. A signal buzzed. She reached for her ear and tapped on the accessory—a delicate armature of spring steel over her auricle, from which dangled a string of three small pearls.

A male voice cackled. “Constables are entering the lobby right now.”

Vivian breathed a curse. She should’ve been more careful. Song’s ruse, though fruitless, wasn’t intended to work on its own. Beside the balcony Song’s body twitched through its last flicker of life. Before a gilded Victorian mirror she threw on a dark flowing shawl and affixed an ornate fascinator over her head.

Then she retrieved the blade, her briefcase and left the suite.

Four constables, dressed in the khaki uniforms of the colonial police force, clattered past her on their way up the grand curving staircase; the Sikhs in their striped turbans and the Malays in their songkoks. They had batons slung on their black leather belts.

Vivian exited the hotel and strode down the street, veering neither to the left nor right. She took to the alleys and immediately the air turned foul with the stench of rotting food. Her Cuban-heels went clapping loudly across the rutted, broken tarmac, occasionally avoiding the sprawled legs of destitute opium-addicts.

At the Zion the constables, having made the tragic discovery, pattered down the stairs in haste. They conferred with the front desk and learned about the woman who had shared the room with Song—the one in a shawl and fascinator. A bellboy pointed them to the street and out they went.

The alley took Vivian to the northern end of The Great World. An avenue of novelty stalls led south, flanking a central aisle teeming with patrons. In one corner an Indian yogi began swallowing the knives he had been juggling and a Malay fire-eater spat bursts of flames at his audience. Farther on, a shrivelled guru in a white turban charmed a glistening black spitting cobra. At a shooting gallery one could hear the snap of air rifles and the crash of stricken light bulbs.

She plowed through bands of steam that drifted from one side of the street to the other, her cadence deliberate and urgent. She passed rows of stalls blazing with huge cooking fires. Ducks and chickens, hideously waxed and flattened, hung from rafters.

The clatter of boots neared. She ventured a sharp right turn towards the Atlantic cinema. There the stench of the river was heavy against the musk of wooden crates and burlap. She shouldered her way past the movie-going crowds and burrowed through a dodgy little entrance set into a wall plastered in an eclectic patchwork of outdated advertisements and movie posters. A row of date palms lined the building’s front, and above a grand oak-framed entrance The Flamingo flashed in gaudy, pink neon script.

Inside, the roof was high and ribbed in ornate arches of teak. Cast-iron electric lamps hung from them. An octagonal dancehall sat in the centre, lively with dancers. A band in white jackets played on stage.

A bartender at a makeshift cocktail bar watched Vivian navigate the sea of tables, politely rejecting dance offers by regulars and tipsy sailors who knew her to be one of the club’s most sought-after taxi-dancers. At the bar she slipped the briefcase through the table’s skirting, took off her shawl and fascinator and luxuriantly tossed free her pin curls. Amid the glorious notes of Paul Whiteman’s Flamin’ Mamie , Vivian whispered something into the bartender’s ear and waltzed over to the dance floor.

The constables entered and began roving between the tables.

Undaunted, Vivian accepted a dance offer from the nearest patron—a blond, red-faced sailor with a thick chest and a small head. He was wildly flinging his dance coupon in front of her and was so pleased at her acceptance of his offer that he pecked her rudely on the lips. Vivian, eyeing the constables over his hulking shoulders, overlooked the outrage and started jiving him up with rock steps and jitterbugs. It didn’t take long before he started making excessive bodily contact. Then he slid his hands over her bottom and groped, hard.

Vivian hit the roof. She drove a covert fist into the sailor’s sternum and knocked so much wind out of him that his eyes rolled back. He went limp in her arms and his weight almost dragged her to the floor.

The other sailors went wild. They lobbied desperately for Vivian’s attention, thinking that their mate had swooned after drinking too much, rather than from the stealthy blow of a woman. The constables approached, ostensibly drawn to the excitement.

Served by her quick wits she left the floor, pilfered a jacket off the backrest of an empty chair and seized someone from behind the cocktail bar who happened to be carting out a case of liquor. She doused his flat cap off his head and threw the jacket over him.

“Wear this and don’t get fresh with me,” she adjusted the collar of his white shirt and dragged the bewildered man away from the bar.

“I can’t dance,” he muttered.

Vivian did not answer. With tremendous aplomb she swung him out onto the floor just as a tango piece took form. The boorish sailors, unfamiliar with the nascent Argentine genre, retreated grunting and whinging, their places quickly taken by elegantly-dressed couples of superior taste and sophistication. A violin rose in a mysterious prelude to the emerging beats, the accompanying piano sprung alive. The night’s special had begun.

Vivian rested her arms seductively on her partner’s shoulders and leaned her face close to his. “Help me out on this. It will just take a minute.”

“I’ll embarrass you,” said the man.

“What is your name?”

“A… Anton.”

“Anton,” Vivian whispered. “Just move with me.”

On a beat she flew into the tango, twisting to the left and right before stumbling forward in a cue for him to hold her close. He did, albeit with such diffidence that she had to forcibly wrap his arm around her waist.

The commencement of a chorus melody sent them whirling into a reverse embrace, which Vivian then developed expertly into a promenade saunter with Anton in tow. They reached one end of the floor and Vivian spun about. She positioned Anton stiffly like a tea kettle, lifted his arms in a flaring posture and tugged at them to coordinate a parallel walk. Anton took the cue but not without such effort that made him perspire. His arms began to sag.

“You’re a teapot, Anton,” said Vivian. “Keep the spout up.”

She attempted a few stylistic boleos , a half-giro, then dragged Anton across the floor in a doble frente —a quick march with the lady slightly ahead. She swivelled, a little too violently for Anton’s standards. Her hair flew wild, and from them wafted a sensuous scent.