27
For the first time in my life, I don’t hesitate. There isn’t even a split second of “What do I do now?” The moment Jacqueline crashes into the pool, I drop all of my precious camera gear and go in after her.
We’re in the deep end—the pool is about seven feet deep here, and all that tulle, the frothy layers of lace, they look light and airy, but on land alone the whole thing weighs over fifteen pounds. Underwater, her dress might as well be metal armor. I catch her arms and pull up, but it’s like trying to move an anvil. I don’t even have time to think “Oh my god, she might drown.” I yank up, my legs going kick, kick, kick frantically. Somehow, we both break the surface of the water. Jacqueline draws in a desperate, wheezing gasp before my strength gives out and we both go back down. My lungs are screaming, my chest is on fire, and my muscles are water. I kick again, but my legs are so feeble.
Bubbles froth around us all of a sudden. Feet and legs spear down. Bodies dive in. Hands reach out and catch us, wrapping around our arms with viselike grips, and before I know it, I’m breaking the surface for the second time. Air rushes in, clear and sharp and painful. I try to gulp it in. Cough, maybe throw up a little, try to breathe again.
“Easy, easy, it’s okay,” a low voice says.
My eyes keep rolling back in my head and I feel like I might pass out at any moment, but still, somehow, I recognize the voice and the arm wrapped around my chest, keeping me buoyant.
“Nathan—” I say. Or try to say, rather. It comes out as a choked gurgle.
Jacqueline. Save Jacqueline!
“She’s okay, she’s okay. The lifeguards got her.”
Sure enough, a few feet to my right, there are two lifeguards helping Jacqueline. They’ve thrown a float around her and are heading to the side of the pool. My relief is short-lived. I glance up at the stage, where about half of the bridal party is still struggling to rush off, and as though the entire universe has been waiting for me to look, it’s at this moment that one of the bridesmaids, in her hurry to run off the stage, trips over Ah Guan’s prone body.
She falls heavily; even from where I’m wading in the water, I can hear the thud.
“Nearly there,” Nathan says reassuringly, but I barely register it.
The bridesmaid scrambles up, her face a mask of horror. As she stands, she accidentally kicks Ah Guan. He doesn’t move, merely lies there like a sack of potatoes. Her mouth drops open. Her shriek pierces through my entirety, stabbing through all of the chaos and panic of the crowd.
“He’s dead!”
They don’t hear her at first. Not most of the crowd, anyway. They’re all too focused on the spectacle that is Jacqueline. Phones have been whipped out, all of them aimed at the frothy white mass being tugged to the side of the pool by muscled lifeguards.
But then another bridesmaid comes to help the first one up.
“He’s dead!” the first one screams again.
“What?”
“That guy! He’s dead!”
The second bridesmaid looks at Ah Guan. Sticks out a hand, her face disbelieving. “Yo, dude.” She pokes him. And then she rears back, her face a mask of horror. She doesn’t shout, but when her mouth moves, I can see clearly what she says. “Shit. He’s dead.”
• • •
The hotel’s security team is doing their best to keep the peace, but it’s next to impossible to keep the peace when two thousand privileged guests have just discovered a dead body. There are screams, dramatic gasps, even more dramatic swoons, and a lot of demands to “speak to the person in charge.” The person in charge is Nathan, and he’s currently giving orders to have the altar cordoned off and the guests to be escorted back to their rooms while he calls the sheriff’s office.
Someone’s wrapped a towel around me, which I quickly soak through, drenched as I am in my clothes. The previously warm sea breeze has turned cold. The storm is coming, and the wind bites through my wet towel and clothes like a knife. I shiver. I should go inside, but I can’t bring myself to leave, not when the dead body of the man I killed is right in the middle of everything and there are thousands of people around me pointing and shouting.
Nathan’s striding everywhere, giving orders into his walkie-talkie. He’s also drenched, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He stations two guards to block anyone with morbid curiosity, which as it turns out is everyone here, from getting down the aisle. Even though the guests seem horrified, they also seem fascinated, hopelessly drawn to the dead body.
“Meddy!”
I very nearly cry when I turn to see Ma and my aunties rushing through the crowd. Even as I watch, Big Aunt elbows a tall man out of the way to make room for Ma and the other aunties. Love swells through my heart. My bossy, loud, overwhelming family is here. Everything is—well, it’s unlikely that anything would be okay, but at least I won’t be going through it alone.
Ma finally squeezes out of the crowd, and I rush to greet her with a hug. She’s never been a hugger, but I don’t care, not right now. I just want to smell her scent. For one fleeting, precious moment, I catch the smell of home—freshly laundered clothes and a hint of fish sauce—and I breathe it all in, taking strength from it.
“Meddy, you okay? How? What happen?” my aunties cluck around us. “Aduh, why is the body there?”
“I don’t know, I—” I am surrounded by people. “Let’s get out of here first.” Together, we cut a path through the crowd, my aunts elbowing chests and stomping on feet whenever they need to (and sometimes even when they don’t need to), until we’re well away from the crowd and round the side of the main resort building. There’s no one here. I guess everyone who’s in the vicinity has followed the noise and energy of the crowd to satisfy their curiosity. Still, we all look around for a few moments to make sure we’re completely alone.
“Okay, so.” I take a deep breath. “I have no idea how Ah Guan ended up on the altar. Do any of you know what happened?”
Am I surprised when my family members look down guiltily for a moment’s breath before they all point at each other and say, “It’s her fault”? I mean, I guess I am, but also not really.
“Okay.” Another deep breath. “Let’s see.” Big Aunt is glaring at Second Aunt, who’s pointing an accusatory finger at Big Aunt. Ma and Fourth Aunt are both pointing at each other. Right. So, nothing new, then. “Why do you think it’s each other’s fault?” I hold my hands up. “Wait, one person at a time. Big Aunt, you go first.”
“Why her first?” Second Aunt demands.
I shrug. “I don’t know, ’cause she’s the eldest? Isn’t that how the rules go? Anyway, we don’t have all day, so . . . Big Aunt? What happened from your point of view?”
Big Aunt shoots Second Aunt one last magnificent glare before dragging her gaze to mine. Her face softens, and she begins telling her story in rapid Mandarin.
“I went back to the kitchen to look for a waiter’s uniform for Ah Guan. There are so many waiters and other sorts of servers around, I thought it would be the perfect disguise. It’s a good idea, right?”
It takes a moment before I realize she’s actually expecting an answer, and I hurriedly nod. “Yes, very good idea.”
“So I made sure to be extra careful. I went to the locker room and checked that no one was inside, and then I looked inside the lockers one by one and aha! I found one! A waiter’s uniform. I even got his shoes. I remembered, you see, that Ah Guan didn’t have shoes on. I’m all about the details, you know, because of my work,” she adds with obvious pride.
It takes a moment for me to work out all the Mandarin words, and when I do, I say, “Yes, you are very detailed, Big Aunt. So you found a waiter’s uniform . . . but why is Ah Guan not wearing it?”
“Exactly! Why he not wearing it? You ask her!” Big Aunt says triumphantly, switching to English and pointing a finger straight at Second Aunt’s face. God, she’s good. Now that she’s done telling her part, she’s switched to English to goad Second Aunt into relaying her story in English too.
“You take so long!” Second Aunt says, rising to the bait. “And I know you will make mistake, forget this and that. Already you make such big mess of everything. Why I should stay there and wait for you to make more mistake, I ask myself? Why? No. This time, I will take charge. I have to go to groom’s suite because groom and groomsmen want hair done, so okay, I go. Inside, I see, waduh, got so many of them. So many! And all their groomsmen clothes just lying around, and these silly boys all drinking and not pay any attention, so I think, aha! This is perfect disguise. Got so many groomsmen here, who will notice one extra one? So when they not looking, I take a set and I rush back to room.”
“If it makes you feel any better, your mother and I helped to put the groomsman’s clothes on him,” Fourth Aunt pipes up.
How’s that even remotely supposed to make me feel any better?
Ma must have read the look on my face, because she says, “We are always listening to Big Aunt—” She turns to Big Aunt and adds, “Da Jie, you always give very good advice, but this time we think maybe give Er Jie a chance, since she come back with the groomsman uniform so fast.”
I slap my forehead. “It’s not about who to listen to, it’s about assessing who has the best plan!”
Big Aunt nods smugly.
“Well, at the time, it seemed like dressing him up as a groomsman was the best plan,” Fourth Aunt says.
“I just—I mean—no offense to you, Second Aunt, but it’s a terrible idea! What about the poor groomsman you guys stole the suit from? Where is he?”
“Probably snoring, dead drunk, in a closet someplace,” Fourth Aunt says with a wave of her hand.
“But—”
“Stop interrupting,” Fourth Aunt says. “Anyway, so we dressed him up as a groomsman and decided that while everyone’s busy getting ready for the ceremony, we’d try to get rid of him then.”
“So we each take one arm and then we carry him out the room,” Ma says. “We think maybe we can carry him to the back garden, leave him there on the bench, then will take long time before people find him. Nobody go to back garden, right?”
“This is not a well thought-out plan,” I moan.
“It is very well thought out! How will anyone know we have something to do with groom man dead body?” Ma cries.
I open and close my mouth, but no words come out.
“But halfway to back garden, you all come to hallway on your way to look for tea ceremony present,” Second Aunt says. “We panic! Waduh, what if they see us with body? So we quickly hide behind room service cart.”
Oh god. This is getting worse by the second.
“It was an awesome room service cart. It had all these bottles of champagne in it,” Fourth Aunt says. “Which gave me an idea. I ran back to my room and got a bottle of absinthe—”
“Why do you have a bottle of absinthe?” I can’t keep the shock out of my voice.
“Yes, why do you have bottle of absinthe?” Ma says, the world’s most judgmental smile dancing on her lips.
“I’m an entertainer!” Fourth Aunt snaps. “None of you understands the amount of energy we need to have to even get ourselves out on stage, and then afterward, we need something to help us come down. You should be grateful my drug of choice is just a shot of absinthe. Most other entertainers go with coke.”
“Coke got so much sugar,” Big Aunt sniffs. “Better drink Coke Zero, otherwise later you get diabetes.”
“She means cocaine—never mind. So then what happened?”
“I got the absinthe and we carried the body to the groomsmen suite. I just burst in there and went, ‘You boys ready to party?’ while waving the bottle around. The groomsmen were like, WOW, beautiful girl AND alcohol?”
“I think they only notice the alcohol,” Ma mutters.
“They were whistling!”
“At the alcohol!”
“Okay, okay,” I whisper-shout over them. “Then what happened?”
“Well, I used my womanly wiles to lead them to the far side of the living room, and while we opened the bottle and poured shots for everyone, your mother and Second Aunt carried the body inside and put him in one of the bedrooms. Everything went smoothly, and THEN your mother had one of her crazy ideas—”
“Not crazy,” Ma huffs. “I just want to make sure they not so—you know—not so alert. Because if they so alert, if they find out too early that there is dead body in the bedroom, then that will be very bad.”
“Ma, just tell me, what did you do?”
“I just—I see many bottles of champagne in their kitchen, so I open one or two and I put some—you know.”
I take a deep breath. Be strong, self. “I don’t know. What did you put in the bottles?”
“Just Chinese medicine, very good for health.”
“It’s weed,” Fourth Aunt says, triumphantly.
“WHAT?” Good grief, I don’t even know where to begin. There’s the fact that my mother has drugged a dozen groomsmen. Or maybe the fact that my mother carries around a stash of marijuana with her. What in the actual F??
“No, no, it is traditional Chinese medicine,” Ma huffs. Spare me from yet another round of sibling rivalry.
“Traditional Chinese medicine doesn’t include marijuana!” I almost scream, but at the last minute remember to lower my voice.
“No, original recipe call for a type of fungus—it is called dong chong xia cao,” Ma admits. “But wah, dong chong xia cao so expensive! So I look everywhere for substitute, and then someone on Internet tell me there is this very good herb, called Tetris Hydro Canned Oil. Very good for pain.”
“She means tetrahydrocannabinol,” Fourth Aunt says. Fleetingly, I wonder if she’s memorized what THC stands for just for this moment.
“THC? Ma, that’s the active ingredient in marijuana!” Oh my god.
“No, this one is different. This herb is very good for blood flow, you know how winter really affect my bones, very bad, so painful, these are helping me. It has a bit of side effect, make me feel a bit woozy.”
“They get you high,” Fourth Aunt says.
“No high, just a bit woozy.”
I close my eyes. “So between the two of you, those poor groomsmen got drunk AND high? You could’ve killed them!”
“Aduh, touch wood, don’t say such bad luck thing,” Second Aunt says, knocking on a nearby tree.
“Don’t say such bad luck thing?” I cry, torn between laughing and crying. “I mean, it’s a bit late for that, don’t you think?”
“Tch,” Ma tuts, “don’t be rude, Meddy. I raise you better than that.”
This is unreal. Another deep gulp of air. “Right, so you guys drugged the groomsmen, and then . . .”
“And then we leave, that is all,” Ma says. “When we leave they all still happy happy, all laughing.”
“But how did Ah Guan end up on the altar?”
My aunts and mom shrug, but I don’t need them to answer. I can piece it together by now. I see it so clearly in my mind’s eye. One of the groomsmen would’ve gotten a call from a panicky WP, asking where the hell are they, the ceremony’s starting soon. They would’ve scrambled to get dressed. The room would’ve been spinning, they would’ve been stumbling everywhere, and then one of them maybe went in the bedroom to get something and saw Ah Guan in bed. I watch it unfold like a movie in my mind. He totters to Ah Guan and nudges him. Figures that maybe Ah Guan had passed out, and in his absinthe-marijuana-addled mind, he thinks the best course of action is to drag Ah Guan to the ceremony. He calls the others inside to help, and one other groomsman appears. Together, they lug Ah Guan out of bed, laughing over what a lightweight he is. The floor tips under their feet and they nearly fall, but it’s all part of the fun. They no longer even know which side is up.
And that’s how a corpse ended up on the altar.