Sarong Party Girls by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan Page A

that Frenchy double kiss that you see those atas ­people do. So now, like that lah.
    â€œJazzy, you’re looking good,” he said, running his right hand through his nicely styled fringe and smiling. He was not bad-­looking for a Singaporean guy, actually. Married lah, but I still might have considered. His family is so rich—­who wouldn’t want? Except that we all knew Imo had her eye on him. She never told us if anything happened, but sometimes we could see her drinking very little and then waiting for Louis to offer to send her home. Sometimes she had to wait for hours, watching him drink Chivas after Chivas, pulling random girls from his office or sometimes me, Fann or Sher close to him if we happened to be nearby during one of his favorite songs. Whoever it was, he would wrap his arms around the girl as he sang each word, his mouth so close it sometimes felt as if he was eating our ears. Imo never got upset—­pointless, after all. Dancing is just dancing. And she knew she didn’t have any real right to be upset. Not that we knew whether anything was going on, or wanted to ask. These kinds of things, better not to know too much. It made it easier on those few nights when Mary actually agreed to set aside her mah-­jongg game and come out with us. If none of us actually officially knows anything about Imo and Louis, when his wife is out with us, we all can still smile, say hi hi and everything is OK one.
    â€œOf course lah,” I said to Louis, pulling back my new sexy black tank top and puffing up my small boobs. ­“People went shopping all—­just for you!” Louis rolled his eyes, stuck out his third finger and then held up his other finger to ask me whether I wanted one shot or two. “Aiyah, two lah, two lah,” he said, shaking his head and starting to pour. I could see him looking around to mentally count how many drinks he had to pour, and he had a slightly confused look for a moment when he saw that Sher wasn’t there. “Married,” I said. I could see him sighing and blinking his eyes; he shook his head and started pouring.
    After handing out glasses to the three of us, he rubba-­ed my neck a bit and whispered in my ear, “China girls! They are havoc, man. You sure you want to be in their territory? You can still change your mind, you know. Terence is holding my table at Studemeyer’s until one A.M. if we want it.”
    â€œCrazy! You think I’m scared?” I said, holding up my hands and hitting my left palm into my right fist. “Lumpar lah!”
    Louis thought for a moment, then just raised his eyebrows and nodded, smiling. He raised his right hand and gave me a big thumbs-­up. He should know better. He’s known me for how long already—­and he still dares to ask me this kind of rubbish question? China girls are nothing compared to us!
    Actually, to be honest, we were a bit scared when we walked in. When we walked in, the first thing we heard was this damn loud Hokkien singing. Yes, I know some Hokkien but walao, this song was so cheena that even I couldn’t understand what the guy was singing about. Something about girls and love and other cock stuff, I’m sure. The waitresses were all wearing these bright red glittery cheongsam-­style bodysuits that were super tight and super short. From the looks of them—­hair dark dark and straight straight, fair skin, flat nose, crooked teeth, concave chest—­I could tell that they were all really from China.
    When we first started seeing China girls popping up in the 1980s—­at first in Geylang around the brothels but then after a while, everywhere—­we at first thought these girls were so plain-­looking, what harm could they be? With faces like that, how can they win? Especially back then, those SK-­II type face creams were all still quite expensive so not everybody had fair skin—­some were still a little