For an hour, Marina listened to the most exquisite music she’d ever heard. The bald man stood in the middle of the stage and sang hauntingly in a language unfamiliar to her. His crimson lips made large O’s and made him look like a clown, and as she stood there in the middle of Blue Boy, amidst sweaty strangers and the strange music, she felt beauty. Her feet ached and her toes pinched against the new silver straps, but she felt a calmness wash over her, as if the city she had yearned to come to had just welcomed her into its fold.

* * *

It was almost midnight on a Friday and I was walking down Jalan P. Ramlee. I’d decided to take a cab and meet Karin at the club.

Every two weeks, I took Ecstasy. It had begun as a girly night out some months ago, but it had become regular. Sumi didn’t like it, said it made her feel like the world is coming to an end, too much emotion, can’t handle it. But Karin, well. Karin and I loved it.

I got off just behind the Shangri-la Hotel as I didn’t want to get stuck in the tight squeeze of cars. The taxi driver appreciated it too and raised his eyebrows as I asked him to keep the change.

There was a crowd and the sharp click-clack of handmade heels. Expensive cars purring in a row, all inching towards the valet. Women in designer clothes, sequined tight-tight skirts, expensive glittery clutch bags, guys with slicked-back hair and straight backs.

Karin was my age, 26, and had recently married Cleo Magazine’s most eligible bachelor of the year. The wedding was a no-expense-spared glittery weekend affair at the Carcosa. A colonial-style extravaganza of white and gold; guests partied on the hotel greens, drinking from gold-embossed champagne flutes under tents that had twisty gold minarets, tulle from chandeliers, lilies everywhere. The cake was a five-tier frosted dream—it was the most delicious vanilla butter—and guests stayed on partying at the Long Bar till dawn.

I’d known Karin since we were kids at Methodist Kindergarten in Petaling Jaya. Her German father and Cantonese mother lived three doors down from our street in Section 5, and we had grown up together. Karin, beautiful, long-limbed and sleek like a gazelle, with bouncy copper curls and piercing blue-grey eyes. She was on the cover of every magazine in town, and one of the most sought-after models in Malaysia and Singapore. And she had married Kai, who was also of mixed blood—Malay-Irish—and they were KL’s celebrity couple of the moment. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Kai and Karin.

Karin’s father was a structural engineer and had travelled frequently around the region. One night he showed up with a skinny Thai woman at their door and asked Karin and her sister to call her “Big Sister”.