16
Being in the hotel room offers huge relief. Once we get inside, I close the door, lock the deadbolt, and then—bliss. For just one moment, I allow myself a chance to relax. I lean my head against the door, closing my eyes and breathing deeply. We’ll get through this, I tell myself. We will.
“Wah, look this room. Bagus banget!” Ma says.
Reluctantly, I open my eyes and turn around. She’s right. Despite this being the cheapest room at the resort, it’s beautiful—two queen beds piled high with fluffy pillows and even fluffier duvets, a floor-to-ceiling window that opens out to an expansive balcony, modern furnishings all around. And it’s nicely air-conditioned, giving us respite from the unforgiving heat.
I take off my shoes and put them next to my mom’s and aunts’ shoes in the entryway. Already, Big Aunt and Fourth Aunt have grabbed the thick terry cloth robes in the closet and put them on over their clothes. Ma glares at Fourth Aunt. “Excuse you, your own room will have robe also, don’t use mine.”
Fourth Aunt shrugs, tying a knot around her robe. “I’ll bring my robe by once I check into my room.”
I hurry between them, breaking up the glaring contest between the two. Ma would never think to ask Big Aunt to remove her robe, so if she wants to wear one, she’s going to have to fight it off Fourth Aunt. “I’ll call and ask for an extra robe, Ma. But before that, we need to resolve the issue with the cooler.”
“What issue?” Big Aunt says. She’s already made herself at home on the chaise longue, leaning back like a fifteenth-century lady.
“Well, unfortunately, way too many people have seen us lugging the cooler around. I’m pretty sure it looks hella suspicious, so I think we need to get rid of it. Also, it’s clear that if we keep the body inside the cooler, we’re never going to be able to move it off the island before tomorrow evening, and I’m pretty sure he’s going to start smelling by then.”
“Aduh, amit amit deh,” Ma says.
Big Aunt looks up at the ceiling, quiet for a while. “No use ‘amit amit,’” she says, finally. “Meddy is right, by tomorrow body will smell. We cannot wait until then. We need new plan.”
“Fortunately for us,” Fourth Aunt says, jumping into one of the beds, “we’re surrounded by the ocean. Just dump him in the sea and be done with it!”
My instinctive reaction is to refute her, because most of Fourth Aunt’s ideas are flighty and not at all well thought out, and as Ma always grumbles, Fourth Aunt isn’t the most responsible person around. But then I realize that she has a point. Aside from burying the body in the desert, the ocean isn’t a bad option. We could put him in a duffel bag, fill it with rocks, and then dump him in the water. With any luck, by the time he’s found, he’ll be so bloated they won’t be able to identify him.
Wow, my thoughts went to a dark place there. It’s shocking how quickly I’ve adjusted to the thought of, you know, killing a guy, to getting rid of his body. I never thought I had it in me to think like this. Once, I found a wallet with $200 in it on the dance floor of a nightclub, and I actually turned it in. That’s the kind of rule follower I am. But the thought of going to prison, and not just me but my family, because they’ve inadvertently helped to kill Ah Guan, is unthinkable.
“That’s actually a really good idea, Auntie,” I say. “All we have to do is—”
There’s a knock at the door, and we all freeze.
“Room service. I’ve got your bags here.”
Perfect timing! I rush to open the door, then step aside as the bellboy deposits all of our luggage inside the room. I’ve brought only a small overnight bag, but my mom and her sisters are chronic overpackers, and within minutes our room is filled with giant suitcases. I tip the bellboy, and he leaves.
Then I turn, grinning, and say, “Okay, all we have to do is put the body in one of these bad boys and weigh it down with rocks and then tonight, we . . .” I falter. We what? Climb up with a heavy-ass suitcase to the top of the cliff and throw him down to the jagged rocks below? Steal a yacht and drive it out to the middle of the Pacific Ocean and dump him overboard? All these things are easy in theory, but as I’m about to say them out loud, it sounds ridiculous. How would we manage to carry it up to the top of the cliff in complete darkness? That’s an accident waiting to happen. And stealing a yacht? I don’t know how to even begin to do that, and if we somehow managed to get our hands on the keys, none of us knows how to drive a yacht. Is that even what it’s called? Driving? Or do you boat a yacht? This is hopeless.
“We what?” Ma says, her eyes wide with expectation. I can’t bring myself to admit that I have no fucking clue what we do from there.
My phone boops with a text, and I groan, remembering that I’m way overdue at the bridal suite.
Seb [11:35AM]: Uh oh, someone told the bride about the groom and buddies being dead drunk and she’s sent the MoH over to the groom’s suite.
Seb [11:36AM]: Oooh, MoH is really laying into them. These idiots, I swear.
Seb [11:40AM]: Omg, turns out they only got done drinking at like, 9AM. No wonder these assholes are still passed out!!!
Meddy [11:41AM]: Does this mean I have more time before I need to rush over to the bridal suite?
Seb [11:41AM]: Yeah. I don’t think she’s gonna be done anytime soon. But you’re missing out on a good show.
Meddy [11:42AM]: I’ll be over in a bit.
I stuff the phone back into my pocket, my mind whirring, and with a click that’s practically audible, everything falls into place. The passed-out groomsmen. The crates of alcohol in the kitchen. Things starting off with cocktail hour as soon as the rest of the guests arrive.
“This is it!” I cry.
All three women look at me quizzically.
“I’ve got it! Forget about the luggage and whatnot. We’ll hide him in plain sight. We’ll pretend he’s one of the drunk guests and then at night, while everyone’s busy at the reception, we can take him to the pier. No one’s going to think twice about yet another drunk guy. When the coast is clear, we throw him in the water. Even if he washes up to shore, they’ll just think he got drunk, fell off the pier, and drowned.”
“Won’t they be able to tell how long he’s been dead for?” Fourth Aunt says. “In CSI, they can tell, you know.”
“Well, technically, he’s only been dead for—I don’t know, less than ten hours? Because of the whole, you know, him not being dead when we put him in the cooler . . .” My voice trails off because honestly, when I put it that way, the full horror of the situation is rather staggering. The poor guy. He was a shit, but he didn’t deserve to die like that.
“Oh! Yes, yes, good point, Meddy. Yes, it is like one of those fish in restaurant, you know, they alive in tank and then they kill right before eating . . .” Ma’s voice trails off as she notices our blank stares. “Never mind, it is not like that at all,” she says.
I love her for trying, though. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure that being in the water for a while is going to mess up the forensics investigation, especially since the weather’s been so hot lately. Yay, global warming,” I cheer weakly. Bad for the environment, good for killers.
“This not bad idea,” Big Aunt says. “Is not good idea, but we trapped here, cannot get off island without calling attention, so no choice. Okay, Meddy, good job, we go with your idea.”
I have to bite back my proud smile. It’s next to impossible to get approval from Big Aunt, and for a fleeting moment, I get the urge to crow about it to Selena. Then I realize I can never crow about it to anyone. It’s not like I can WhatsApp Selena and go, “Big Aunt approves of my corpse disposal idea!!!”
I can’t believe I’m sitting here mentally bragging about this moment. I must be dehydrated. “We should probably get rid of the cooler in the meantime. Maybe like, set up a red herring, you know?”
“What red hearing?” Big Aunt says.
“Red herring. It means a decoy, something to mislead people. So, for example, I’m thinking we fill the cooler with actual food, so if anyone was suspicious about it—which I think the entire lobby full of people were—then we can always be like, ‘Nope, there’s just food in here, see?’”
Big Aunt nods. “Okay, yes, good idea, this red hearing. I will go kitchen and bring back leftover ingredients.”
“Let’s take his body out first, and then I have to go to the bridal suite to take photos.”
We all stand up, the mood in the room turning somber, and gather round the cooler.
“Open it,” Fourth Aunt says.
“Why I open? You open!” Ma says.
“I’ll do it,” I say. It has to be me. It’s my mess. The least I can do is open the damn thing. I inch toward it, and when I reach out with my right hand, I swear the skin on my hand crawls up my arm. Oh god, here it goes . . .
I flip it open and scamper back, shuddering.
My mom and aunts crane their heads forward.
“How bad is it?” I ask, from behind them. “Is he—ugh, is he oozing?”
“Huh,” Fourth Aunt says.
“Hmm,” Big Aunt says.
“My lily flowers,” Ma sighs.
This is impossible. I push past them and look. And huh. I mean, as far as corpses go, it could be worse. The first thing I notice about him is how pale he is. Which should be expected, and in theory I knew he’d hardly be rosy-cheeked, but seeing it in person is still a bit of a shock.
“Okay. Let’s do this,” I chirp. No one moves.
Big Aunt orders, “San Mei, you take left arm, Si Mei, you take right one, Meddy, you take left leg. I take right leg.” We all nod. Thank god for Big Aunt. Still none of us moves, not even Big Aunt. Nobody wants to touch a corpse. Big Aunt claps hard and barks, “Cepat!” And we all snap forward. This is it. I don’t let myself think twice before grabbing one of the legs, right below the knee.
Oh god, oh god, I’m touching it. Argh. Whatever I thought about corpses and how they felt, touching an actual one is a million times worse. Rigor mortis must be setting in, because he’s super-stiff. It feels as though he’s flexing all of his muscles. Which is just so wrong, thinking of him flexing anything at all.
“Okay, now lift,” Big Aunt says, and as one, we do so.
And Ah Guan burps. We all shriek and drop him and clamber over one another to get away from him. We crowd around the other end of the room, gasping and staring at the open cooler.
“Is he alive?” Fourth Aunt cries.
“Ah Guan, ah, is me, Auntie Natasya. Hello, Ah Guan? You awake or not?” Ma says, smiling manically, as though he could see her from here.
I’m the first to realize what must have happened. “I think it was just trapped air from inside him coming out. It’s part of the dying process.”
They all look at me with a mixture of horror and awe.
“Meddy, how do you know such things?” Ma says.
I shrug. “The Internet? I don’t know, there is lots of random information you come across just by surfing the web.” Or, more accurately, by spending your evenings stuffing potato chips in your gob and going through Reddit.
Big Aunt nods, still looking shocked. “Very good, Meddy, you study so hard.”
And again, part of me wants to crow, “Big Aunt thinks I study hard!” A small part, though. Tiny.
Ma practically preens when Big Aunt says that, and Fourth Aunt rolls her eyes.
“Okay, let’s do it again,” I say, emboldened by my knowledge. “And don’t be shocked if he burps again. Or farts.”
Grimacing, we all tiptoe back to the cooler. I guess we’re all tiptoeing because even though logically we know I’m right about gas merely escaping a dead body, we’re still half-expecting him to leap out of the cooler and, I don’t know, attack us for killing him. Which I realize makes zero sense, but it’s hard to be logical when it comes to moving a guy you killed the night before.
“Okay, so. Everyone take a limb.” And this time, they actually do what I tell them. I don’t think I’ve ever ordered Big Aunt to do anything before, and it’s an incredible feeling when she takes Ah Guan’s right leg. We lift him up once more, and this time, no noises come out of him, thank god. We stagger toward the nearest bed and drop him on top of it, then step back and survey our handiwork.
“If we want to disguise him as a drunk guest, we’ll have to clean him up a little.” Luckily, there’s not so much blood on him. There’s just a bit of dried blood on the side of his neck from his ear. Once we get that off and put sunglasses and a suit on him, he’ll look the part.
A suit. Sunglasses. Where the hell are we going to get those?
“Need to dress him nicer,” Ma says, as if reading my mind.
“Dress him nicer? You mean put him in a suit?” Fourth Aunt says. “Where are we going to get a suit from?”
“Is not bad idea,” Big Aunt says. She’s taken out a toothpick from somewhere—Big Aunt always has toothpicks on her—and is cleaning her nails with it. She always has sugar and fondant and stuff stuck under her nails, which makes sense. Usually, seeing her clean her nails grosses me out a little, but right now, it’s surprisingly calming. Like, the sky could be falling and there’s a dead body on my bed, but by god, Big Aunt will have clean nails. “I can get suit.”
We all stare at her. She’s not even looking at us; she’s all focused on her nails. “Where, Big Aunt?”
She frowns as she maneuvers the toothpick through a tricky bit. “I notice laundry room next to kitchen. Guest send their dress and suit to laundry room to dry clean or iron. I go inside, take suit, done!” She looks up, smiling.
Could it really be that easy? But then again, it’s not like we have any other choice. “Thank you, Auntie. That—yeah, that would be amazing. I have to run now, I need to get back to the bridal suite, but I’ll get back here as soon as I can.”
“Okay, you go, I check on flowers,” Ma says, waving me off.
“I guess that leaves me to look after the corpse, then,” Fourth Aunt mutters.
I grimace. “I’m so sorry, Fourth Aunt.”
“Meh. Could be worse.” She settles on the other bed, making herself comfortable, and grabs the TV remote. “Don’t be too long.”
We all promise we’ll be back soon, and off we go to handle the next crisis. One thing I can say about the weddings we do: they are certainly never dull.