Tham Cheng-E - Surrogate Protocol

“Now walk forward six steps and I’ll follow,” Vivian instructed in a whisper. Anton complied and paced forth, seemingly emboldened by a desire to impress his fascinating dance partner. At the end of it Vivian unexpectedly yanked herself back, causing him to lurch forward and reach for her.

“I said six steps,” she chided through a frozen smile.

Before Anton could apologise, Vivian recovered from the deliberate move and inserted a foot between his legs and orchestrated a rather convincing side step by rapping them to the left and right. She then lifted Anton’s arm high and had him spin her around—or rather, she spun herself and dropped back into his arms. There she began rocking to a slow cadence. Anton tried to follow but fell so hopelessly out of sync that she rolled her eyes and flung herself into another double-timed promenade walk down the floor.

At the far end of the floor she pulled him into a close embrace, lifted a knee and wrapped her leg around Anton’s in execution of a caress. Anton, suddenly self-conscious, brought his legs together.

“I’m shining my shoes,” Vivian snapped. “Open them!”

Anton put out his leg and froze in place like a mannequin. Vivian drew up to him, and pressed her cheek against his. Over his shoulders Vivian observed the constables. The bartender pointed them to a door and they took the bait, believing that their suspect had fled through the kitchen and back to the streets.

Her ruse had worked flawlessly.

“Lap!” She barked, now charged with a burst of ecstasy.

Anton bent a knee and she leapt onto it and ran her hand affectionately down the side of his face before shoving it away. The move startled Anton, and his bewildered expression amused her so much that she flew into a string of laughter and executed another double-timed march down the floor.

They danced on with their foreheads touching as the tango piece progressed to its final bars. Vivian, now supremely thrilled, wanted to end it all with a dramatic fall-and-catch. But for fear that she might fracture the back of her head she opted instead for a more conservative corte . She executed a lápiz ; leisurely inscribing a wide circle with her free leg before bringing herself and her unseemly partner to a bow with a leg extended far behind her. Anton, still locked in the kettle-posture, mistakenly bent both knees in the bow and shot out his free leg only when he saw what Vivian had done, just in time for the ending note.

Applause rippled across the dancehall. Vivian and Anton wove their way past the envious gazes of couples, particularly the ogling gentlemen, and went over to the cocktail bar. Vivian pulled the jacket off Anton and dropped it back on the seat from which it was taken. Anton, flushed and sweaty, blew out his cheeks and stood awkwardly beside her.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Vivian unfurled a sandalwood fan and began fanning herself.

“Like what?” said Anton.

Before Vivian could speak, a Kling left his cases of liquor at the kitchen and came bounding over to them. “You never tell me you can dance?” He delivered a jarring slap on Anton’s back and hung the last syllable of his speech on a grin.

“I can’t, Amal,” said Anton. He turned to Vivian with the intention to introduce her but faltered when he realised she hadn’t told him her name.

Instead, she reached her hand past Anton and made the introduction herself. “I’m Vivian,” she said. “You got any engagements with your friend tonight?”

Amal, puzzled by the question, retracted his grin. “Only deliver liquor lah .”

“I’d like to take him out for a drink, to thank him.”

“Thank him for what?” asked Amal, shifting his gaze dubiously between them.

“Why can’t we have a drink here?” said Anton to Vivian.

She nodded at the cases of liquor Amal brought in. “But they aren’t real, are they?”

Amal’s expression darkened, clearly put out that she had realised they were bootlegging counterfeit liquor to the club. He looked at Anton, who declared his innocence by shaking his head.

“Just a drink.” Vivian threw him a wink. “And you’ll have him back.”

Vivian was certain that Anton would come along. And when he did it made her happier than she thought she’d be. Maybe it was a nice respite from the murder she had committed less than an hour earlier. Or maybe it was something else—something she’d always craved but never confessed to. She brought him to a spot along an alley where the mellow illumination of gas lamps accentuated the rusty shades of its mouldy, peeling walls.

On a moisture-warped table sat dishes of stir-fried beef, steamed peanuts, roasted pork and oil-drenched greens. Vivian poured the sixth serving of Chinese huangjiu into Anton’s glass and topped up her own. The clear red-brown liquid sloshed luxuriantly and gave off a fragrant waft of herbs and alcohol. Behind them, a wizened wizard of oriental stir-fry clattered away at his wok over a roaring furnace. The tables around the stall were filled.

“How many palms did you grease to get this job?” Vivian took a sip out of her glass and watched Anton over the lipstick-stained rim.

“I don’t know,” said Anton, chewing on meat and greens. He washed them down with a sip of wine. “Amal does the negotiating. I only help him.”

“And you think that’s sensible?”

Anton shrugged. “We’re partners.”

Vivian lifted her chin and fanned her neck. “That’s what they’ll make you think.”

“So why are the police looking for you?” said Anton.

“Mistaken identity.”

“Really?”

Vivian poured him another drink. “I’ve never met someone who could hold his liquor as well as I.”

Anton looked at the two empty wine bottles at the far side of the table. “You drink very well for a lady.”

“And you’re the first who’s standing up to the challenge.”

“Maybe it’s in my blood,” Anton uttered without thought and resumed eating.

That response worked up a fantastic possibility that made her very excited. What are the chances? The thought left Vivian’s lips in a whisper. She considered the impossible odds of them being acquainted so fortuitously and couldn’t help breaking a smile. She surveyed Anton, her shrewd, darting eyes now seething with curiosity.

“So what is in your blood?” she asked.

Anton frowned, uncertain of what she meant.

“Let me see your palm,” she added.

Anton acceded, thinking it to be a round of amateur palmistry. She took his hand tenderly in hers and traced the creases with a finger. Then with a flirtatious smile and a flick of her wrist something pricked Anton’s pinky and drew blood.

“What was that?” Anton withdrew his hand. “What did you do?”

“To see if you have venereal diseases,” Vivian pouted innocently.

“Venereal?”

“I like being safe.” She leaned away and adjusted her gown at the waist. “Safer for my clients too.”

“Clients?”

“Don’t you want it?”

“I…” Anton fumbled at the allusion of her words. “Do we have things like that?”

“Afforded only to the rich. A client gave it to me,” she said. “To keep me clean .”

Anton poured himself another drink, though it would do little to calm his nerves.

“So do you want it?” Vivian cupped her chin and playfully joggled her eyebrows.

Anton’s jaw fell open and he made such a fool of himself that Vivian reeled back and hid her rancorous laughter behind the sandalwood fan.

“You, Anton, are such a prudish, proper young man,” she said.

By the end of their supper Vivian had swooned, slumped across the table like a log with her head resting on a thin white arm. From her beaded purse Anton extracted a crumpled blue card that bore a tiny, scarcely recognisable monochromatic portrait of her and an address. It was quite a run from where they had supped, and the rickshaw puller—a sunken, sun-dried Chinese man with bulging calves and enormous callused feet—agreed to take them only after much haggling.