The date went really well.
Selvia had a warm sense of humour and was clearly a little bit crazy, so I really liked her. We talked a lot about Hannah and she said they were not really close friends, but she was worried that the date would upset her. We agreed to keep it secret, which of course just made it more exciting.
She told me she was jealous of Hannah because she had her Irish boyfriend. She said she could never find a boyfriend because she was too shy. I raised my hands in the air and then theatrically pointed at myself and she laughed.
I told her that good couples always have pet names for each other, so I wanted to give her a nickname. She agreed, and for some reason, I thought about a Seinfeld episode where George Costanza says if he had a girl, he would called her either Soda or Seven. Se7en is one of my favourite movies, and Selvia kinda sounds like Seven, so I just blurted it out. She said she loved the name Seven, so I promised to call her that from then on.
There was a pause and we looked at each other. It was that electric moment where you both know you're going to go home and sleep together. Each can see in the other’s eyes -- it is decided.
I'll skip the sex scene. Not so much because it wasn't special, maybe more because it was. This wasn't like picking a girl up in a Blok-M bar, where sex and money are reciprocal obligations. This was something real, with no ulterior motives muddying the waters.
Plus, I can only come up with so many euphemisms to describe my cock. No, actually, one more: "glistening purple-helmeted throb-rocket". OK I'm done.
Suffice to say, my dick got what he wanted and over the course of three weeks Selvia and I basically fell in love. It was always in the back of my mind though, that this could never end well, as my business in Jakarta was nearly over and I couldn't see any real likelihood of returning. I simply chose not to think about it and enjoy the moments life allowed Seven and I to be together.
At the end of the three weeks, I sat her down and told her that we couldn't be together. She said she knew that. I said if I can come back for work I will, but I didn't want her to stop looking for her perfect guy and made her promise not to hold onto hope.
I hugged Seven and stroked her hair and I didn't want to let go. I knew there are pain ahead for both of us, and I was angry at myself, both for letting my emotions get away from me, and for taking advantage of Seven. I should have been smarter, more guarded, and --
And this would be the last time I would ever hug her.
I pulled back and looked at her face. She was crying. She touched my cheek and I was a bit surprised to realise she was wiping a tear away.
"Drama," I said.
She laughed. "Yeah. I hate goodbyes."
"Me too. Let's just say 'see ya'."
"OK, see ya!"
"Yep, cya!"
I put her in a taxi and sent her home. I felt tingly, like my body was in shock, as the car whisked her away from me.
On my last night in Jakarta, I hit Blok M again and got myself ridiculously drunk. I was in My Bar at 4am and this girl came up to me, put her cleavage about 1cm from my face and said "HI Harvey!"
I looked at her a moment and realized I knew her face. She was a girl I had been with months ago, when I had first arrived.
"Linda?"
I remembered she had had huge breasts. I looked down to verify they were still there. Yep. Still there. Wow, were they ever? Had they gotten bigger?
I didn't even have to conference with my dick to know what I needed to do.
If I hadn't been drunk I'm sure I would have felt something. Guilt, fear, sadness, I don't really know. But the blissful numbing effect of the alcohol got me through it. Linda was a beautiful girl, with just the right proportions and features for my inebriated, primitive man-brain to respond to.
We had lunch at Pizza Hut the next day before my flight and we had a good chat. She made a comment that she could never find a boyfriend because she was way too much of a slut and I laughed.
I figured there wasn't much chance of her being jealous with me, so I took a risk and told her about what had happened with Hannah and Seven.
Her first comment surprised me a bit. She said, "How do you know she was really sick?" I thought for a moment and said, "Well there was an infection, I could feel it, and the doctor showed me on an x-ray... ?"
"OK, but that's an old trick," she said. "Hell, I've done it before. Not to you, because I like you, but to assholes."
I had to catch my flight, so hugged Linda goodbye, making sure to press myself one last time against her massive fun bags. She kissed me on the mouth and said "make sure you text me next time you're in town. If I'm not fucking someone else, I'll come over and fuck you."
I laughed, said thanks, and headed to the airport.
Linda's words kinda echoed in my mind in the following couple of weeks. It hadn't occurred to me that someone could fake an illness, and even though I felt I had seen and felt the infection first hand, there was something about Linda's casual statement that rung true.
I was fairly naive to the scams and general hijinks of working girls back then, so I hadn't really thought about the situation critically until now, and if I was to be honest, there were lingering doubts that I had been ignoring.
I talked to a few work mates about it, but, being from Singapore, they barely knew it was possible to lie, let alone scam someone deliberately. I'm not saying Singaporeans are straight-laced, but they don't carry rulers in high school because they can use their laces to draw straight lines.
It was really bothering me, ticking over constantly in my mind. Could she have faked the whole thing? Could the hospital have been in on it? Oh my god, surely Seven wasn't in on it!
Distracted, I cracked open Facebook. Hannah's boyfriend Gavin had accepted my friend request. I had completely forgotten I had tried to add him, but I clicked through his profile a bit. There were lots of photos of he and Hannah, arm in arm, and they looked pretty happy. I banished the negative thoughts from my mind and tried to just be happy for them.
I didn't hear from Selvia at all during that time. I guess she had taken my advice about moving on. I forced myself to be happy for her too. I was alone, in Singapore, hating it, bored out of mind, but hey, at least every other fucker was happy.
I tried going to Geylang, Singapore's so called red light district, but it just wasn't fun like Jakarta's Blok M. It was just a bunch of dark dodgy brothels, a few freelancers on the streets, and some weird Korean lounges.
None of that was my scene, or perhaps my heart just wasn't in it, so I just people watched a bit before heading back to the hotel.
I basically reverted into a fugue state, wandering around Singapore like a zombie, working long hours and doing little more than just sleeping in between. Did I mention I hated living in Singapore? There was nothing there for me but work.
A couple of months passed in that vain.
One day I logged onto Facebook and saw that Hannah had posted a picture of herself with a new scooter. I clicked through and saw that she had recently also taken her entire family on a beach holiday. There were pics and she never looked so happy.
I wondered if maybe her boyfriend had funded the whole thing, but he hadn't even coughed up for the hospital bills, so surely he wouldn't be paying for her to jet set around Indonesia with such a large entourage? I didn't see him in any of the pics, and there was no mention of it on his profile. In fact, he appeared to be in the UK working as best I could tell.
On a whim, I messaged him. "Hey Gavin, I'm a friend of Hannah's. Looks like you and Hannah are really happy, it's good to see."
He happened to be online and replied in a few seconds. "Yeah, thanks mate, appreciate it. She said you also helped out with hospital so cheers for that too."
I thought for a moment, and then replied, "Yeah, no worries, she's a good friend." I paused, and then without thinking much, I added, "Was it expensive?"
There was an excruciatingly long pause before he replied. "Nah, not too bad, mate, around 9 million rupes. She brought me the receipts."
That's right, I remembered Hannah had taken the receipts. Neurons began to fire.
Another message arrived. "But you know that right, I thought you paid for some of it?"
"Yeah, that's right."
Some of it?
My mind was racing. He was saying he knew I paid for it, so did that mean my suspicions were unfounded? It still didn't sit right with me. I watched the blinking cursor on the screen, as I tried to arrange the variables in my head. Should I just ask him outright?
Once more, he answered my question before I could ask it. "I'm glad you all got paid back. Cheers for helping out, though."
My hands typed "No worries, my pleasure" but in my mind, it all suddenly clicked.
Hannah had taken the hospital receipts so she could show Gavin and get his sympathy. Of course no self-respecting man would allow some foreigner friend to pay his girlfriends' bills, so he gave her the money to pay me back my generous loan.
But instead of paying back the supposed loan to me, she had just kept the cash, gone on holidays and bought a new scooter! It all fit!
I considered telling him right then, but something held me back. There were repercussions to be considered here. What would happen if he knew the love of his life had double-dipped? Would he be mad enough to leave her? Would she know I was the one to tell him?
And I still didn't know the extent of the deception. Had she even been sick at all?
So I just said "cheerio" to Gavin and signed off Facebook as quick as I could. I didn't sleep that night, thinking the whole thing through and trying to work out what I should do.
Next day at work, my boss called me and told me he had to send me back to Jakarta for a week to do some follow up work on the project I had completed there.
"Of course you do," I said.
"What?" he replied.
"Nothing," I said, "I'll book the flights tonight."
I hung up the phone and chuckled to myself quietly in the stale Singapore office.
A couple of Singaporean workers peeped over their partitions like meerkats to investigate the weird sound coming from the foreigner's cubicle. They quickly realised he was just acting crazy as usual, and went back to their work.