Half an hour later, Marinah cruised back to her penthouse. She had told the pig driver to drop her at the gate and walked the short length of the covered path, past the security to the elevator. The guard looked up at her and then at the wall clock.
"Miss Marinah, there are five calls for you. Would you like to receive them or .........."
"Thank you, Hashim, I will return their calls tomorrow morning."
"Yes ma'am," Hashim handed to her the list of numbers.
She scanned the five numbers, all familiar except one. Who the fuck is this? Nobody has her penthouse number without her knowledge. Someone who has her number must have given her number to this fifth person.
She waited at the stainless steel elevator door and noticed a group of boys swimming at the pool, looking in her direction. A couple was courting at the cement long chair oblivious of the cold hard cement. She smiled the ironic thought: the rich becomes richer and the poor becomes poorer. Marinah knew these two yuppies well. They sold their house in Kepong and moved with his parents to this upper class area. For the sake of prestige, they labored on limited living and fucking space. But they are good couple, polite, friendly and helpful never interfering into the neighbours, a culture quite unusual for Malaysians.
Marinah wondered why the lift took a few more seconds to move down. When the door opened, she stepped in.
The mercedes slowly moved off in the dark.
Marinah stepped out and went to the security house.
"Hashim, can you tell me who, pointing to the last telephone number, this caller............."
Marinah turned to see the lift crashing down from the top floor to the sub-basement with a deafening roar of steel plates, cables and cement blocks. The alarm bells together with the screams from the neighbouring residents was chaotic.
"Call the police and ambulance" said Marinah and calmly walked back and reached her penthouse by the goods lift. There were screams and people rushing to the sub basement. Some were trying to pry open the door saying,
"Miss Marinah is inside"
Marinah opened the door and stepped in. She saw a man looking down at the chaos twenty storeys below and smiled.
"Waited long, Icy?"
"Yea, one hour. You are going to pay for this," still looking at the scene below.
Marinah laughed. "Lets have supper," kicking the valise to the corner with the umbrella and walked over to join Icy at the window. Marinah noticed tonight she was taller than Icy. She laughed again and began to take off her thigh high boots.
"Leave them on, baby, you know I have that strange weakness for slim legs and high boots"
"Yea, without them, you are already weak enough. And with them you would be comatose " and both roared in laughter.
Marinah walked over to Icy at the window and he gave her a long wet kiss. She leaned back on his chest and he rested his chin on her shoulder. He glided his hand to her breast and she moved her hand to his groin. Both turned to watch the scene below and both felt at home. The ambulance moved off with someone on a stretcher. Marinah noticed a man trying to open the back door but the ambulance quickly left with siren wailing and red lights flashing.
"Lets eat, I am famished. Are you not hungry?"
"I could eat your boots!"
And both roared again.
Icy is a great chef of Chinese cuisine. He came into the penthouse at 10.00 pm and started cooking. He opened the fridge, took out the meat, chicken, and vegetables.
Hm........ where is the wok? This chinaman cannot cook without a wok.
Within minutes he found the wok sitting upside down on top of the bust of Beethoven next to the piano. Beethoven looked like a British soldier of the Second World War except for the chin strap. This Marinah has strange sense of humor.
Self trained cooking produced un-orthodox cooks. No recipes, no weighing or measures produced shocking cuisines. Icy cooked on what was available and made the best dishes of them. Icy saw the granite mortar and pestle at the bottom shelf and smiled. He had convinced Marinah that no doubt the mortar added a lot of personal touch to the spicy sambal-balachan (grounded chillies with salted prawns), the pounding gives severe headache to the floors adjacent and below. LOL LOL.
"Try this: 2 fistfuls of dried chilli, 1 cup of prawn paste, 3 fistfuls of dried prawns, a touch of white garlics, a bit of sugar, a spoonful of ajinomoto, quarter cup vinegar, half cup salt and one cup water. Put the whole lot in the liquidizer set at 3."
Marinah looked at him and demurred. "Wait till Meh (Mother) hears this. This is crazy."
"Well, you pound your traditional sambal belacan and I do this. Lets compare", as he washed an empty jam bottle at the sink.
He decanted and scrapped the product into the jam bottle while Marinah was still pounding. He then washed the remaining product into the wok and cooked a dish of fish and meat ball soup.
Marinah squatted up from the mortar and challenged:
"OK, lets compare"
Icy took a finger of her product while Marinah tasted the machine made one. She closed her eyes, suddenly widened, and said,
" Ya lah, it tastes great. How is mine?" asked Marinah.
"Hmmm, good, but mine is better " and grinned.
"Asshole!!" and both roared in the kitchen.
Right, rice cooked, dishes made, cups, 2 plates prepared..... a sound at the door. 10.30 pm. She can't be back that early. Icy looked to the door and saw a shadow move past.
Icy stacked the 5 dishes on top of one another on the warm range, switched off the kitchen lights, picked up the Rameraz and started warming up on Bach Toccata and Fugue in D minor, the libretto he just downloaded from the internet while cooking supper. Hmm, this Vanessa Mae is very good in her violin rendition of Bach. Now a guitar variation has come up on the net and the room was filled with stataccos and rasquendos, synchophant with "the violin player" rising out from the sea. Interesting.
Icy was about to download another piece of music from the net when he felt the floor tremor and a loud roar at the sub basement. He walked to the window and saw a crowd running towards the elevator door.
"Give me a minute to change and lets eat". Marinah stripped into to a loose cotton baju kurong (a long sleeved buttonless shirt extending to slightly below the knee).
Icy and Marinah brought the food to the dining table next to the kitchen. Marinah poured the water while he ladled out the rice to the two plates. The supper was eaten quietly and quickly, a culture inherited from the Chinese. Do not talk with your mouth full. Tonight there was something unusual with the spicy soup.
"What is it?" asked Marinah
"Huh? Oh, a blade of lemon grass picked from the guard house and one Hacks sweet. Since there is only one sweet. I might as well put it in the soup to share amongst us".