The Longer Walk
36. He had been in other people's questions all day.
Lina’s door was open. The pungent smell reached him from the corridor — dried chillies, oil beginning to catch. Sunday.
She was at the stove, her back to him, watching the paste. Mark was at the table with a coffee and a book and raised a hand without looking up. The bags were stacked near the window, nine or ten in two loose groups.
The oil rose from the rempah. She turned, looked at him.
“Pecah minyak,” she said.
“My mother was in the corridor at six. My father wanted toast. May is managing alone — I’m still looking for the second carer, her role still being sorted.” He put his bag down. “It was a morning.”
Lina set a mailer on the table. “Sit.”
He pulled out the printer, then the flat-pack boxes — some of the bags wouldn’t fit the big padded mailer. They worked the way they always worked — him on the contacts, the labels. Her on the packing. The smaller bags went into mailers; the structured ones into boxes, tissue first, closure checked, name in ink.
“May can’t do it alone anymore,” he said. “I’ve been through three interviews. None quite right.”
Lina took the next mailer.
“There’s another interview tonight. A carer from the Philippines.” He matched the next address. “The bio looked —” He paused. “She looked like Marina.”
Lina looked up but said nothing.
From the stove, the smell of the paste settling. He went back to the labels.
His phone buzzed on the table. He glanced at it.
Lina was watching the glance. He looked up and noticed her looking.
“Amandha,” he said.
She was quiet. Something moved across her face.
“That Amandha,” she said. “From the Chiang Mai time.”
“Yes.”
She didn’t press. She passed him the next package.
From somewhere in the flat, Mark turned a page.
By noon the packages were stacked by the door. While he carried the last boxes over, she moved to the stove. A pot from yesterday — devil’s curry, the smell arriving before the lid came off. She turned the heat low and left it.
They ate at the table where the bags had been. Mark came through, took a bowl, went back. The curry was better than it had been the day before. It was always better than it had been the day before.
She wiped down the counter.
“Your desk,” she said. “Where is it now.”
“Still in the study.” He got up, poured himself a coffee. “But the study isn’t mine anymore — calls run late, May has the back room, the next one will need a room too.” He paused. “It’s getting smaller.”
“It was always the same size.”
“Yes.” He closed the bag. “It’s filling up in the right direction. I just haven’t moved my desk yet.”
She wiped down the counter. Didn’t look at him.
“There’s a table here,” she said. “If it gets too tight.”
He looked at the table. The stacked packages by the door. The kitchen still smelling of the paste she’d made for forty people she would feed tomorrow.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Yoga,” she said.
“Yes.”
She made a clucking sound.
From the other room, Mark raised a hand.
He closed the door behind him.
He was early. The studio door was unlocked and the mats were still stacked. Rena was at the back, running a cloth along the windowsill, and turned when she heard him.
“Someone’s early,” she said.
“Left when I could.”
She nodded. She went back to the sill.
He set his bag down and unrolled his mat and laid down on it. The room was quiet — the quiet of a space before it fills.
“I’ve been thinking about something,” she said. Still at the window, not turning around. “You don’t have to —” She stopped. “Actually. Can I ask you something.”
He leaned on one elbow and waited.
She turned. Folded the cloth.
“Twelve years,” she said. “I’ve been doing this twelve years. I have students who have been coming since the beginning. I have students I’ve trained. And every month I still have to — “ She set the cloth on the sill.
He didn’t say anything.
“I want to thrive. I want more students. This — what I have is barely survival. But I don’t want to become —” She gestured slightly. “A gym. They sell access. You pay, you have a slot. They don’t need to know you. I’ve been here twelve years. I know what people are carrying. Which ones hold everything in the jaw. You can’t put that on a sign outside. And the gym two streets over can undercut me every time.” She stopped. “That’s not what this is.”
He looked at her. “You want the money.”
She paused.
“The students are how you thought you’d get there.”
“I sit down to write something — the newsletter, the posts,” she said. “And the words come out like a lie. Not wrong exactly. But not this.” She gestured slightly. “I delete them or I send them anyway. Either way I’m tired after.”
He sat down on the mat.
“Tell me more another time,” he said. “When we have more than ten minutes.”
She pulled air through her teeth, slow. Not quite a laugh.
The door opened. Two women came in, mats under their arms, talking.
Rena turned back to the room.
The students left. She moved through the space — folding blankets, straightening bolsters. He stayed on his mat against the wall.
She came and sat across from him.
“Now we have more than ten minutes,” she said.
He nodded.
“I’ve been doing it instinctively,” she said. “From who I am. That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it.”
He nodded.
“So what’s the actual problem.”
He shifted, sat up straighter. “Your livelihood and what you care about are the same object. Every decision you make in here carries the question of whether the next student is coming. You can’t step out of it. It’s not instinct — instinct is already working. Not discipline. Not compulsion.” He paused. “As long as the income and the caring are the same thing, every move you make collapses them on top of each other.”
She was quiet.
“What fixed it for you.”
“The cables,” he said. “Something that ran while I wasn’t watching. Once the income wasn’t tied to what I actually cared about — then what I cared about could just be itself.”
“I don’t have cables,” she said. “But I have students I care about.”
“That’s the trap,” he said.
She looked at him.
“The students you care about are also the income. Every time you walk in here, the thing you love and the thing that pays the rent are the same. You can’t separate them. So every student who doesn’t come back is two things at once — a loss and a threat.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Yes.”
“You know how to let people find what’s already there,” he said. “Most teachers already know what you’re about to feel. You wait to find out. Every teacher you’ve trained carries something they can’t name. It came from you. You’ve been doing it for twelve years and you’ve never written it down. I’ve been here watching you do it.”
She was still for a moment.
She looked down. Then slowly around the room. The bolsters stacked against the wall. The water stain on the ceiling she’d been meaning to have looked at.
“That’s not cables,” she said.
“Not yet.”
She made the sound again.
Outside, the light had gone orange. The Sunday crowd on Orchard Road, taking up the whole pavement. He took the MRT — the longer walk home.
The day was still in him. The corridor at six, the toast, Lina’s kitchen, the paste, the table she’d offered, the text from Amandha still unanswered, the interview still to do, Rena’s sound.
He walked with it.