Coco and Me
Coco is my new best friend in Singapore. Even though she’s dead. And we never met. I guess I should say, she would have been my best friend, if we had met, and before she was murdered.
Tragic End to Coco’s Sad Life
That’s what the newspaper headline said and I knew I liked Coco right away. She was a prostitute. Murdered in a small alley off Sarangoon Road. (I live just off Sarangoon Road!) Not in a brothel, but we were practically neighbours. Granted, I have a lovely view of Singapore and a security guard at the gate and a terrace with enough room for a pony. Coco wasn’t so lucky.
But she was friendly and popular (we share that in common, if I knew anyone in Singapore) but I’ve never worked as a prostitute in a Shophouse. We could have talked about things like that over a Tiger beer and had some dinner, maybe Chilli Crab, though rather messy and a lot of effort for little bounty. Or so I would have liked.
When she prostituted in Chinatown, Coco was making $4,000 a month. (I’ve been to Chinatown, but not when it was infested with whorehouses. That was in the 70s.) She was hard working, no holidays and on the job from noon till 9pm, 7 days a week. At her death, she was making $30 a trick in a squalid, dingy whorehouse that reeked of urine. According to the paper, Coco was still pulling in $3,000 a month when she died. That’s a lot of sex for a woman that should be nearing retirement.
Coco drove into Singapore every day from Johor Baru, Malaysia. I didn’t even realize you could drive to Malaysia until yesterday. I’d heard something about a bridge, but couldn’t visualize it. Malaysia was always a faraway place, when I was in Canada. Vague. The other side of the world. Now we’re neighbours, just across a bridge.
Still bigger things consume me. I’m trying to conquer the simple act of buying milk here, milk that doesn’t taste like a sugary milkshake, full of preservatives so it doesn’t spoil for weeks, or melamine from China. These things are closer now. Melamine in Chinese eggs in Hong Kong. It’s more real.
Her mother realized that her daughter’s life had come to a violent end when she recognized Coco’s sparkly high-heels in the passenger seat of her vehicle on the news. What an odd thing to notice. I suppose Coco had nice taste in shoes. Something her mother envied. I imagined her causing a fuss, yes, yes, yes. Knife in chest. Squalid urine soaked shophouse. Stolen gold chain. Staggering into the street. Yes. Yes. Yes. Prostitute. I understand all this. But where are the shoes?”
Poor Coco. If we’d ever met, I knew we’d friends. But unfortunately, I’m realizing that Singapore is full of Cocos’, girls just like her. And if I put my mind to it, I’ll find a Coco of my own.
Tags: coco, murdered, prostitute
