Black Cat

The cafe was a short walk from the block. Striped awnings over a row of outdoor tables, a chalkboard specials list, oat milk as the default rather than the ask. Amandha had already claimed a table outside when Wen arrived. Beside her chair sat Yogi’s pram, its back folded flat into something closer to a bed than a seat, and a small metal bowl of water set on the pavement next to it.

The place Kaia picked was two streets off the main road. A cafe under a HDB block, with air conditioning. Six tables, a chalkboard menu, a woman who plated everything herself. Wen had walked past it a dozen times without going in.

The pantry fridge needed clearing. It always did on Fridays — end of shift and there it all was: three tupperwares from God knows when, two cups of yoghurt with the names half-worn off, a bag of grapes somebody had meant to finish on Tuesday. She had her apple in one hand and was going through it shelf by shelf when her phone buzzed.

The woman across from me had just left a job she’d held for eleven years.

It was the end of the week.

The lift always took a while in that block.

My children and I no longer speak.

Lina’s door was open. The pungent smell reached him from the corridor — dried chillies, oil beginning to catch. Sunday.

Sunday morning. His flat.

The flat was in Queenstown. Resale, a 3A HDB on a high floor. Eight months on the renovation, doing what architects do when they finally have a space entirely their own: built exactly what he wanted, without compromise, because there was no one to compromise with.

At seven fifty-five Lina put the kettle on. While it boiled she switched on the row of lights above her armchair and adjusted the bags on the table — three of her own, a clutch from Nong in Chiang Mai, a small crossbody in several colours — the rose gold hadn’t moved in two sales — from another woman whose name she always forgot but whose work she trusted. Phone on the stand, battery pack plugged in. She poured the water over the leaves and left it to steep.

I billed in six-minute increments. Every hour of the day was divisible, assignable, recoverable as income. Six minutes was the smallest unit of time the firm could convert into something countable. The number didn’t lie. It said exactly what had been turned into something that would count.

She arrived at the Black Cat at ten past nine with a bag of galangal she hadn’t trusted the assistant to buy correctly. And the brioche loaves — Mark’s, from the morning, taken from the oven at seven forty-five.

The alarm went at five-forty.

The car arrived two minutes early. I noticed this before I noticed the lack of smell.

She sat in the car for a few minutes before going up.

His name was Raymond.

The emails had started in October.

The Vietnamese mill in Hall A was better than the Taiwanese one.

The fair was in District 7, in a convention centre built to accommodate the particular chaos of several thousand people looking for things to buy and sell at scale.

He booked the flight on a Tuesday. No particular reason for the Tuesday. He had the number of the factory contact from the first trip — the man who paused before answering because he was calculating honestly. He sent a message the night before. The man replied within the hour. He would be there.

“What works. What it costs.”

He booked the flight in the final weeks of the studio’s closing.

She asked if I loved her.

The plane came in low over open water and David watched the coastline arrange itself below. Flat. Dense. The particular geometry of a city that had decided what it was going to be and built accordingly.

The driver was already waiting when David cleared immigration.

He woke at seven without an alarm.

He got home at seven-thirty.

The clinic was in Orchard. Eighth floor of a medical building, the kind that housed twelve different specialists behind frosted glass doors, each with their own receptionist and their own particular version of the same waiting room chairs. He’d gotten the name from Marcus, who’d gotten it from someone at his gym, the referral travelling the way referrals travelled in Singapore — through networks, through trust, through the particular confidence of someone saying just go to him, he’s good.

Karen had given him the address the week before. A condo at the edge of Toa Payoh, older than the new HDB going up around it, the kind that had been there long enough to stop trying to look like anything other than what it was.

Marina had left the food on the table and gone to her room by the time he arrived.

The week had been ordinary.

She was standing past the barrier with her bag still on her shoulder, the way she always stood when she was waiting for something — weight forward, already moving toward the next thing, her eyes going through the crowd with the efficiency of someone paid to read rooms.

He confirmed with the client at nine PM from his hotel room.

The client had needed someone to go.

The room looked good.

The space felt gentle on my body.

I stayed.

Some relationships were like this too.

Wen arrived early because her client was always late. Not dramatically. Just enough to suggest that time bent more easily around her than around anyone else.

Three decades ago I stood at an intersection where petrochemical industry met residential, flanked by the Yarra River. A strip of grass between dusty road and water. Thirty meters long. Six meters wide.