13
It’s chaos. Big Aunt sees the contents of the cooler and immediately understands. Second Aunt and Ma, blocked from view by me and Big Aunt, flap around us, yelling in such rapid Indonesian that I beg them to stop and switch to English before my head explodes trying to make sense of anything. Meanwhile, Big Aunt is just standing there, eyes wide, rattled for the first time I can remember seeing in my life.
Everything we’ve piled on top of Jake last night—the blankets, the baking supplies—are still inside, but instead of a neat pile hiding his body, they’re now a mess, packs of flour open, white powder and colorful sprinkles all over. And Jake—
I have to look away before I lose my shit. Because Jake—oh god, Jake—
“He not dead last night,” Big Aunt says, her voice coming out all dazed. “When we put him inside cooler, he still alive.”
“What?” Ma and Second Aunt yelp.
Ma pushes me aside and takes a look at Jake, his face now uncovered in what must have been his struggle to try and get out of the cooler, and she shouts too. But what she actually says is: “EH! THAT MY LILY GUY!”
All noise ceases, sucking the entire walk-in fridge into silence. As one, we all stare at Ma, who’s staring at Jake. Jake, who’s in a very different position than what we left him in last night. Jake, whose mouth is frozen open in what must have been a cry for help. Jake, who—
—is being prodded in the head by a carrot-wielding Ma.
“Ma! What are you doing?”
“I just check to see maybe he sleeping, maybe we can wake him up. Eh, Ah Guan, qi lai ah,” she says. “Shi wo, Chan Ah Yi.” She pokes his cheek again with the pointy end of the carrot but gets no response. “Aduh, he really dead this time. Wah, this so bad. So bad!”
My eyes fill with tears. It’s too much, all of it. He was awful, but even he didn’t deserve such a horrible death. “Ma, I’m so sorr—”
“Who am I going to get my lilies from now?”
I stop mid-sentence and stare at her. We all do.
“Why you all just stand like statues? This is big problem! Lily very expensive, you know! Ah Guan, he give me best price, and—” She freezes, a look of horror on her face. Maybe she’s just realized how ridiculous she’s being right now. “Aduuuuh! He suppose to bring in one last batch of lily for wedding!” I guess not. “Now my arrangements all will be lopsided! Aduh, gimana ya? How? How?” She flaps around at us.
Breathe, I tell myself. Fortunately, Ma’s little meltdown seems to have had a calming effect on Big Aunt, who straightens up and brushes her hands down her front like she’s cleaning invisible crumbs off herself.
“Okay, San Mei,” she says. “Hey!” She clicks her fingers sharply, and Ma stops flapping. “Stop that,” she scolds gently. “Is okay. You no need lily, your arrangements still be very pretty.”
Ma smiles and gives an “Aw, shucks!” face. I mean, really now, the woman and her priorities.
“So this boy not Jake?” Big Aunt says.
Ma shakes her head. “This is Ah Guan, my lily supplier. Remember he brought mangoes from Indo for me! I think his English name is . . . Timothy? Tommy? Something like that.”
“But Ma, how—I don’t understand,” I say. “You said you met him online. How come—I don’t even know where to begin. Did you tell Jake—I mean, Ah Guan—about going online to find me a date?”
“Of course I tell him! I tell all my suppliers! Ah Guan, Lin Mei Auntie, Yi Mei Auntie, Rong Na Uncle, they all know. I always tell them my daughter, she so pretty and kind, but she still single, aduh, how she refuse to give me grandchildren. Every time I got good boy to ask her out, she say she don’t want to. You not remember? I try to set you up with Ah Guan but you keep saying no, give me this reason, that reason. Ah Guan ask why. I say I don’t know, but my daughter is torturing me, she never want to go out with boy—”
“Okay, so you’ve been telling everyone about my dating life,” I say, through gritted teeth.
“Lack of dating life,” Second Aunt says, helpfully, from the far corner of the room where she’s—yet again—doing Tai Chi. “Draw Big Watermelon,” she says under her breath, swinging her arms out and up, “and then cut in half . . .”
I ignore her. “And what did Ah Guan say to you?”
“Wah, he so helpful deh,” Ma says, smiling and nodding. “He tell me is okay if you don’t want to get set up with him. He say I should make you go on Internet find boyfriend. I say, aduh, Meddy will not want to do that. He say it’s okay, got very good website for young people. He show me dating website and say, why not create a profile for you, then easier to persuade you to use it.”
My mind spins. “So he knew you were using it and pretending to be me?”
“Of course not, you so silly! I keep asking you to use dating website, but you don’t want to, so finally I use it for you. I don’t tell Ah Guan. I just use it, and then wah! Hotel owner message me, and so kind, make such good match—oh.”
There it is, finally. Realization dawns on her face. Even Second Aunt pauses her Tai Chi movement to watch as Mama mentally digests what she’s just told us. Her face scrunches up like a ball of tissue, and her mouth drops open in an enraged wail.
“He trick me? Use me get to my daughter!?”
Big Aunt nods solemnly. “I hear about this kind of Internet scam before. Is called goldfish.”
“Catfish,” I say.
“No, I’m sure is call goldfish. Because pretend got gold, but actually just a fish.”
I know better than to argue with her. Second Aunt snorts from where she’s wobbling on one leg.
“What is it?” Big Aunt snaps.
“Nothing,” Second Aunt says, raising her other leg slowly.
Big Aunt turns back to face us. “Anyway—”
“Is just so typical,” Second Aunt says. “Because you always know best, right, Da Jie? Da Jie always correct. Who decide to put this Ah Guan boy in cooler? Is you. We just follow blind, don’t ask questions. Now turn out Ah Guan not dead, but we kill him by putting him inside cooler.” She pushes her palms out in front of her slowly, moving her feet in a gentle circle.
Big Aunt takes a deep breath. “Anyway—”
“Now you going to tell us again what to do, even though so obvious you don’t know also.”
Big Aunt rounds on her. “And you do, is it? If you know what to do, then you say lah! Don’t stand in corner doing Tai Chi; come tell us solution.”
Second Aunt pointedly ignores her and continues moving her palms round. I’m sure Big Aunt is about to explode when her cell phone rings. She picks it up, still glaring at Second Aunt, and speaks in rapid Mandarin. “Si Mei, you’re here already? Okay, good. Yes, I know it’s very early, but we have a problem. Come meet us at the kitchen. Just ask them take you down here. Now, yes.” She hangs up.
Fourth Aunt is here. I don’t know why, but it makes me feel better to know that the whole family is here, even though realistically I know it doesn’t make much of a difference.
“We need to decide what we’re going to do,” I say quickly, before Big Aunt and Second Aunt can get into it again. “Now that we know Jake isn’t Jake, and the real Jake—Nathan—is still alive, that means the wedding is definitely going to go on as planned. Which means, like it or not, we’ve got to show up and do our jobs and pretend that everything’s okay.”
They’re all looking at me funny, and it takes a second to realize that I’ve just taken on a leadership role with MY AUNTS. Whoa. I quail under their gazes. “Um, sorry, that was just a suggestion, I didn’t mean to—”
“No, you are right, Meddy,” Ma says, smiling fondly.
Big Aunt nods. “You right. The wedding continue on. We must get rid of body before guests come. If we leave body here, only matter of time before someone find. Okay, we think of plan. Sekarang jam berapa?”
I glance at my phone. “Quarter to nine.”
“I have to do hair and makeup for bride and mother and bridesmaids,” Second Aunt says.
“Aiya! My other flower suppliers all coming soon also,” Ma says.
“And I need to finish up welcome cakes,” Big Aunt says. “Meddy, what time you start photos?”
“I just need to be there to take photos when the bride’s makeup is nearly done, so I have time right now. I can take the cooler out and, um—get it onto a yacht and take it back to the mainland. I’ll drive it back to your bakery.”
“Okay, good, very good.” Big Aunt takes out the key to her bakery and hands it to me. “He quite heavy you know. You take Si Mei with you.”
I nod. Normally, I would hate to be such a bother to others, but I have enough self-realization to know I would struggle to carry Jake’s—dammit, Ah Guan’s—body out of the cooler and into Big Aunt’s fridge. I’ll need all the help I can get.
As though thinking of Fourth Aunt has summoned her, there’s a knock on the fridge door, and I look through the plastic curtains to see Fourth Aunt’s face peeping through the window. She waves at me, and I go to unlock the door and usher her through the plastic curtains.
“Why is everyone gathered inside the fridge?” she says, then she sees the open cooler with Ah Guan’s body in it. “Why’s that thing here? Wasn’t he supposed to be at the bakery?” She looks closely at him, interest piqued. “Huh. He’s not bad looking.”
Sometimes I think that Ma and Fourth Aunt are always at odds with each other because they’re just too similar. Priorities—neither one has them.
Big Aunt quickly fills Fourth Aunt in on what’s happened and our plan, and Fourth Aunt groans when she’s told she and I need to go back to the mainland to stash the body in the fridge. “I just got my nails done,” she moans, showing us her nails, which have been blinged out with crystals and, on her pinkies, even feathers. Ma cringes.
“Who do nails like that? How do you wash your bum when you have feather on your nails?” Ma says.
“Very carefully, not that it’s any of your business how I wash myself.”
Ma wrinkles her nose and flaps a hand over it. “So unhygienic. So not practical. You won’t be able to cook, bathe, clean—”
“I can do all of those things! I’m about to help your kid clean up her mess, aren’t I?”
Ma turns red, and I wince. The lowest, most painful blows my mother and her sisters strike with is me and my cousins. That’s how you know that Ma and her sisters are truly fighting—they talk shit about each other’s kids. I hate that I’ve become a liability for Ma, that from now on, this will forever be dredged up as a trump card against her. My nails may be impractical, but at least I didn’t kill someone like your daughter did!
“We are happy helping,” Big Aunt says, giving Fourth Aunt a look. “Is what family do. Now go, quick. We lose so much time already.”
Nodding, I replace the blanket on top of Ah Guan and close the cooler before grabbing the handle and pulling. It’s heavy, but it rolls easily enough on all four wheels. The handle feels a bit shaky, and I wonder if it’s built to carry the weight of a full-grown human male. I’ll have to be very careful with it.
Big Aunt walks out of the fridge first, and then Second Aunt and Ma hold open the swing doors for me as I pull the cooler along behind me, followed by Fourth Aunt, who frowns at her nails as she walks. Big Aunt looks as imperious as ever, not a hint of guilt anywhere about her.
Xiaoling, who’s busy putting gold luster dust on the decorative flowers, looks up at the procession. “The flowers are almost done, chef.” She spots the cooler and comes toward me, saying, “Let me help you with that. The back wheel catches sometimes—”
“No,” Big Aunt barks, and Xiaoling shrinks back, her eyes wide. I feel awful for her. All she’s done is try to be helpful. “You doing more important things,” Big Aunt says. “Must finish the flowers before guest arrive. Kuai yi dian!” She claps and Xiaoling positively jumps to attention, scrambling to finish painting the flowers.
I mouth a thank-you to Big Aunt and continue walking through the kitchen, trying my best to look like I’m not pulling a cooler full of dead dude behind me. Second Aunt, Ma, and Fourth Aunt walk ahead, which is good, as any and all attention is immediately attracted to them instead of me. With Fourth Aunt’s flamboyant clothes—she’s wearing a flamingo-pink sequined top and bright turquoise pants—it’s impossible to take your eyes off her. In contrast, I’m in my “Don’t look at me, I’m the help” all-black photographer’s outfit. With any luck, everyone will assume I’m hotel staff all the way back to the yacht.
Fortunately, the kitchen staff is just as busy as before. No one gives us a second glance; everyone is too occupied with chopping and frying. We make it out of the kitchen without getting asked any questions and breathe a sigh of relief.
Out in the quiet hallway, our footsteps and the clack-clack of the cooler’s wheels seem deafening. Mama glances back at me and says, “Meddy, you don’t pull like that, you pull like this.” She stops, adjusting my posture so I’m standing straight up. “No slouch, that is bad posture; later you will hurt your back.”
“Actually,” Second Aunt says, “I learn from Tai Chi Quan this is best posture.” She comes close to me and readjusts my posture, muttering, “Knees bend a bit, yes.” Between her and Ma’s adjustments, I’m now standing awkwardly, slightly leaning forward, knees bent, arms all weird and stiff.
“Aiya, no,” Ma says. “I been taking ballroom dance. I know good posture. Chin up, Meddy.”
“No offense, but I don’t think that right now is the best time to give Meddy posture adjustments,” Fourth Aunt says.
I nod gratefully. “Fourth Aunt is right.” Ma’s expression looks like I might as well have punched her right in the heart. “But thank you for your help, Ma and Second Aunt. You’re both right, my back was starting to hurt.”
Ma and Second Aunt smile smugly and—thank god—resume walking. We walk the rest of the way to the lobby in relative silence, save for Ma muttering to herself, “Aiya, no more cheap lily.”
The lobby is a lot busier than when we first arrived. Ma’s underlings have arrived, wearing their trademark bright red and gold shirts, the colors of good fortune in Chinese culture. With an excited squeal, Ma rushes over to survey the arrangements. She’s been working on these for weeks, designing each centerpiece and flower stand, overseeing the workmanship meticulously. Now, she beams with naked pride as the crates are opened and her workers take out the most elaborate flower sculptures and arrangements I have ever seen. She barks out orders—this tower to the ballroom, that vase to the bridal room—and is about to scurry off, giving out more orders, when she stops and turns back to me.
“Meddy, oh—I forget about the you know what—” she says, but I wave her away.
“It’s fine, Ma. I’ve got everything under control.”
“Okay. Okay, you be careful, ya.” She squeezes my arm and then is off, shouting to a worker to be careful with the peonies.
My phone beeps with a text message.
Seb [09:51AM]: I’m here! Super early, but that’s what you get from the world’s best second photog!
Meddy [09:52AM]: Great! Go to the groom’s suite and start taking photos.
Seb [09:53AM]: Aye, aye boss.
A hotel receptionist hurries toward us. “Excuse me, sorry, are you the hair and makeup artist?”
Second Aunt nods.
“Oh good, I’ve got instructions to take you to the bridal suite. Please follow me.”
Second Aunt glances at me, her eyes questioning. “You going to be okay or not?”
I smile at her. “Go. I’ll be fine.”
“Okay, Auntie go first then. You be careful.” With that, she leaves, and I’m alone with Fourth Aunt. And the body. “You doing okay, Fourth Aunt?” I can’t even begin to describe how bad I feel about dragging her into this. I’m the least close to Fourth Aunt out of all my aunts. Maybe it’s because of her ongoing feud with Ma, or maybe it’s because she’s the opposite of me in every way. Whatever it is, I’ve always felt a little awkward around her, and now we’re supposed to go all the way back to San Gabriel Valley with a dead body. This is fiiine. I am totally okay with this plan.
“It’s way too early for me to be awake.” Fourth Aunt sighs. “I’m going to look so haggard at tonight’s performance.”
“You? Haggard? Never.” I pull the cooler up again and resume walking. “You’re looking great, Auntie. Very glamor—oh.” Outside the lobby, the long, winding path leading back to the pier is made of loose pebbles. My stomach drops. How the hell am I going to wheel the cooler down this path? Why would anyone make a path out of pebbles?! This is a serious design flaw! What about people in wheelchairs, or parents with strollers, or people carrying dead bodies in giant coolers?
“Would you like me to call you a buggy, miss?” a hotel receptionist asks.
I startle, and the receptionist tilts his head at the cooler. “Let me call you a buggy—”
“Nope! No need!”
He frowns, confused. “But—”
“I get buggy sickness,” Fourth Aunt says. “We’ll be fine. This old thing is empty anyway.”
We smile widely at the receptionist until he goes away, looking bemused.
“Now what?” I whisper to Fourth Aunt.
“Put those biceps to good use,” she replies, pushing the end of the cooler. It rolls off the smooth marble and onto the pebble path. We wince at the horrible crunching noise it makes as I pull, and Fourth Aunt pushes it along the path.
“This is not working,” I grunt, after only a few seconds. “People are going to wonder why we’re not putting it on a buggy.” Sure enough, when I glance back, people are taking notice, throwing strange looks our way. But that might also just be the effect that Fourth Aunt often has, being the equivalent of a human peacock.
“Pull harder,” she gasps, shoving at the cooler.
It makes more of a crunching noise and barely moves an inch. “We’re gonna have to carry it.”
Fourth Aunt doesn’t look happy, but as we’ve got no choice, I take the front of the cooler and lift, and she does the same with the back. Together, we heave the cooler up and stagger slowly down the pebble path. It’s a long journey, but with every painful step, the resort is getting farther from view.
Until Fourth Aunt suddenly stops, her eyes going wide.
“What’s going—” My words die in my mouth when I turn around, because there’s a buggy headed toward us, and incidentally, it’s occupied by Nathan and an elderly couple I quickly recognize as Tom Cruise Sutopo’s parents, that is, the parents of the groom, a.k.a. the billionaires who are footing the staggering bill for this wedding.
Nathan’s entire face lights up when he notices me, which does funny things to my stomach. My poor stomach—it can’t decide whether to knot out of sheer terror due to body in cooler, etc., or flutter with pleasure because Nathan, etc. It compromises by giving a nauseated gurgle.
Nathan hops out of his buggy and says to Mr. and Mrs. Sutopo, “Here’s someone I’d love you to meet.”
I swallow, my mouth dry.
The old couple smile politely, obviously as confused as I am because I’m a nobody. But when they see Fourth Aunt, they actually gasp out loud and grab each other’s hands.
“This is—”
“MIMI CHAN!” Mr. Sutopo positively squeals.
Mrs. Sutopo shakes her head in wonder, mouth agape. “Is it really her?”
Fourth Aunt takes this in stride. She lowers her end of the cooler gracefully before sashaying to them. Nathan helps the older couple down from the buggy. They still can’t take their eyes off Fourth Aunt, even as they clamber down.
“We’re such big fans,” Mrs. Sutopo says. Her English is flawless, her accent slightly British. Belatedly, I recall Googling her and reading that she met her husband while they were both studying at Oxford. “We’ve followed your career ever since you were a little girl.”
“Oh, that’s so sweet to hear! I love meeting my fans.” Fourth Aunt gives them a big hug, and they practically melt into her, their faces beaming hard.
“You know, our son Tom booked your family’s services for today because he knows we’re your number one fans,” Mr. Sutopo says.
Fourth Aunt’s grin is as wide as a Cheshire cat’s. We’ll definitely be hearing more about this later, when Ma’s around to listen to Fourth Aunt boast about how she’s brought in good business for us. And I will have to nod and tell them that it’s true. Ma’s not going to like that.
“But where are you two off to?” Mrs. Sutopo says. “You’re going the wrong way. The hotel’s that way.”
“Oh, we just need to . . .” My brain short-circuits. We just need to what? I almost tell them that we’ve brought the wrong cooler, but quickly realize that I would be admitting a mistake to our clients. Big Aunt would have my head for it. No, I can’t tell them that. “We didn’t want to take up too much room inside the walk-in fridge, so we’re just taking this cooler back real quick.”
“Back? You mean back to the mainland?” Mr. Sutopo says.
“That’s a whole lot of hassle just to stow a cooler!” his wife says. “Nathan, dear, there must be a place for them to store it here. You can’t possibly have these lovely ladies traipsing all across your island and across the water on such a big day.”
“Of course,” Nathan says. “I’m as surprised as you are.” He turns to me and says, “You can store it in the walk-in fridge. It’s plenty big enough.”
“I really don’t want to trouble you.”
“It’s no trouble, really.”
“Nathan, dear, why don’t you help the lovely girl take the cooler back to the fridge? We’ll be alright here with Mimi. You take the buggy. We’ll walk,” Mrs. Sutopo says. She turns to Fourth Aunt and winds her arm through hers before saying, “Come, we must take so many pictures together. Oh my goodness, you are even prettier in real life!”
I watch in dismay as the Sutopos and Fourth Aunt walk away. “Um, I don’t think it’s a good idea to let them walk to the hotel. It’s pretty far, and it’s uphill—”
“I agree,” Nathan says, easily. “We’ll leave the buggy here for them, and I’ll help move this cooler back to the kitchen.”
“No, it’s okay, don’t bother, you must be so busy . . .”
He pauses, giving me that smile of his. Even after all these years, it still looks so disarmingly boyish on his rugged features, instantly taking years off and making him look all of five years old. “It’s going to be a crazy weekend, isn’t it?”
You have no idea, I want to say.
“Tell you a secret?” He lowers his voice and moves closer to me. My heart thumps painfully. “I may be pissing my pants a little at the thought of everything that needs to go well this weekend. Just a little. It’s a huge deal for us, and I just—opening this hotel was my dream. My investors are pretty nervous at the expense. I really need this wedding to go perfectly.”
I gnaw on my lip. Perfectly. Right. Which probably means no corpses being found on the premises.
Nathan rakes a hand through his hair and grimaces. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to spill everything. It’s just—” He smiles at me. “Seeing you . . . it’s amazing, Meddy, and so unexpected. I mean, seriously, what are the odds? I’m so glad you’re here. You’ve always got your feet firmly on the ground, and it’s great to see you.”
“It has been amazing,” I say, meaning every word. “And I’m so glad to see how well you’re doing. I mean, you opened your own hotel at twenty-six, Nathan. That’s incredible.”
He shrugs, blushing. “I had a lot of help. Met the right people at JLL, got seed money from my folks, got to know lots of investors . . . I didn’t do all this by myself. I just got really, really lucky.”
“Well, I’m sure you also worked your ass off.”
“A bit,” he laughs, and it’s exactly like the old times, as though we’ve picked up right where we left off. We meet each other’s eyes, and all of our beautiful history unravels in my mind’s eye. I remember every single detail—every kiss, the exact way his eyelashes feel against my face, the solid warmth of his hands—with aching clarity. “So, um, are you seeing anyone?”
My heart stutters, and I shake my head furiously. “You?”
“My family has been setting me up with various blind dates, but nothing has stuck.”
Oh god. I can feel my cheeks burning, because speaking of blind dates, mine’s in the cooler right next to him. As though reading my mind, he picks up the cooler handle and pulls, frowning when it doesn’t budge.
“It’s impossible to move it on this pebble path,” I babble. “Look, don’t worry about me, you’re slammed with work, and like you said, you’ve got investors up your ass. Just go, I’ll call for a bellboy or something.”
His frown deepens. “Let me do this for you,” he says in a gruff voice, giving the cooler a hard yank. The top of the cooler pops up a couple of inches for one heart-stopping moment before I push it back down. Jesus. I could pass out right now, I really could.
Nathan looks down at the cooler and cocks his head to one side. “Is that—”
Oh god. It is. It’s a corner of Big Aunt’s blanket sticking out like a fucking woolen tongue. I watch as Nathan moves in slow motion and reaches down to open the cooler. And I do the only thing I can, the thing I’ve been dreaming of doing for the last four years.
I grab his broad shoulders, feeling his muscles under my fingers, and pull him back to face me.
“Meddy—”
I don’t wait for him to finish speaking. I reach up, still pulling him down, and let our mouths meet in a fervent kiss.