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"You are a very good man," said Emi, her eyes moving from the water in her glass that glistened under the lights of the hotel lounge, to mine. This was only our second meeting after the formal company dinner a few days earlier but it was clear we no longer had a business relationship. Our seats are positioned perpendicular to each other which affords us the privacy of muted conversation and indirect eye contact.
The
building where we first met...It has since given way to a high
rise
We arranged to meet at the lobby of her hotel on a hot Saturday afternoon. She had just come back from a shopping trip. Among the items in her bag is a cream coloured cotton dress from a Japanese department store nearby and two fake watches.
She tells me to wait as she goes up to her room to change. I wait nervously. Will I make a fool of myself? How will I relate to her? Will I impress her?
She arrives in the cotton dress and we leave for a night on the town. It was a meeting that only lasted a few hours at the most. It was her first time to Kuala Lumpur and I was to be her guide.
Both of us were strangers to each other. And yet words from me to her flowed like water from a newly drawn well. My life, my ambitions, my recently ended relationship. She is a very interesting woman. Someone whom I was attracted to almost immediately.
We arrive back at the hotel five hours later. It was hardly a tour of the city, just some places which were familiar to me. It was more a tour of our inner selves, our thoughts, ambitions and desires.
In her room I make an attempt at writing a poem as if trying to create the icing on the cake that would cap the very splendid evening. She smiles at the unfinished piece of work. I vow to complete it and promise to send her a copy. On the dressing table is a picture of her boyfriend, she mentions in passing.
Some barrier had been broken. But they both came from different worlds. Each tries to grapple with understanding the other. It is uncertain whether I will ever get to understand her or she, me.