Fly or Die?

fly or die

Sunday, February 15, 2004
My one-foot plastic tank I had it all planned out for Valentine's Day. An evening of ice-cream, Bailey's and "Love Actually" on DVD with 2 of my best single girlfriends - June, a copywriter from another agency and Mila, an old college mate. I pat myself on the back. Should Matt call, I didn't have to fib. Happily I started getting my apartment ready for the evening. About 4pm, the doorbell rang. "Matt!" I gasped as I looked through the peephole. My first instinct was to pretend no one's home like how my sisters and I did back in the old days when we wanted to avoid door-to-door saleswomen who kept calling "Aunty! Aunty! AUNTY!" We'll squat below the window, hush ourselves till the coast is clear. But I'm all grown up now, I thought, I should tell him to his face that I'm not buying! So I opened the door - before I remembered that I was still holding a mop, dressed in a T-shirt that I've used to sleep in for the last 10 years. Sweaty, probably smelly, with my hair all over my face. Well, maybe it'll scare him off, I thought defiantly. "Hi!" he said, a little taken aback that I wasn't his usual vision of beauty. "Hi," I huffed, "What are you doing here?" He beamed like a little boy, "I've a surprise for you." "Er ... what?" I said in my please-don't-bother-me voice. He stepped aside to reveal a trolley behind him. On it, a 3-feet long aquarium! Complete with pump, filter, water plants and even those algae eating fish a.k.a. DBKL fish. "For your guppies," he announced triumphantly. For 60 seconds, I stared. Breathe, gurl, breathe. "You ... erm ... like it?" I could hear the nervousness in his voice. He began shifting his feet, like a boy waiting for approval. "I ... I like it a lot," I managed a whisper. He sighed. Relieved. We spent the next hour transferring Minnie and Moe to Matt's aquarium. I still cannot think of it as mine. "This is Minnie," I showed Matt the guppy with the orange tail and red body. "And Moe, it's this colourful fella with the black dot on his tail." And how did he know I have guppies? I suspect a Trish-Matt conspiracy. "They really like their new home," he said, then looked at me, "I'm glad their mistress like it too." Please, I pleaded with my ears, please don't go red. They did. Traitors! "Er ... I'm sure they like the space ... you know, no longer confined to this 1-foot plastic tank." I held my old aquarium to my chest - like a safety blanket. "But ... this is actually very good plastic - lasts for years. Not a scratch. See!" I heard myself speak and I cringed. Nervous energy has made me cuckoo. "Yeah, do you know that this is my fifth Minnie and seventh Moe. I'm just too lazy to think of new names. So it's like they live forever but they don't actually ... you know, like The Phantom? The comic strip - the Sunday Star - no?" SHUT UP! I screamed in my mind. Matt oh Matt why did you have to go and do this? What happened to you? You are supposed to be Matt the EgoManiac. Not Matt the Fish-Loving-Aquarium-Giving-Guy. Could I be wrong all along? Could he have a latent Guppy within him that I have to coax out with dried worms and fish flakes? How can complications grow from 10 sen to RM200 in 6 hours? "Listen. I made reservations. Japanese okay with you?" "I ... er ... I got er Love Actually, erm, my friends ... er ... I mean," I took a deep breath, "Actually I'd love to go." Tell me, what could I have done? The man turns up at my doorstep - with a present that makes me go weak and now wants to feed me my favourite food. "I'll go get ready." I can still hear June and Mila screaming "Traitor!" over the phone as Matt whisked me away from Minnie, Moe and my 1-foot plastic tank. Pencil chewed at 3:05:00 am //
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