As I made my way up the steep driveway to the Mitre Hotel I almost rememberd the girl's name. The one hanging off my arm with hair in her eyes and smoke curling around her mouth, spilling her Corona... disgraceful.
I kick a can up to the front gate. It rattles for a moment but Uncle doesn't hear us.
"Uncle...hey Uncle." I said rocking the gate back and forth with my eyes closed. My lovely companion now at my feet, tossed gently on the filthy concrete.
Uncle comes shuffling out from behind a door. He pulls up his suspenders and yawns a wide, black, toothless yawn like a lion in some forgotten zoo. He stares for a moment through his swollen eyes "Ahhhhh..." he says.
"Two Tiger Beers" my eyes still closed. Uncle pushes them through the gate and falls backwards into his peeling imitation leather recliner, an empty birdcage at his feet. In a moment he is snoring again. There is the chatter of the bugs, a few far off laughs but other than that we're alone. At least I'm alone, my companion is asleep, her long fingernails curled around her phone. It's pink, like everything else.
I grab a three legged chair and balance myself against the crumbling pillar all peeling and dusty. Another time I might have seen this place when it was alive. When it rivaled the Raffles Hotel. Men in white turbans and white gloves parking cars. The yellow candle glow of a chandelier dripping down the walls like honey, socialites smoking cigarettes, and music coming from real live people.
Now the Uncle runs the place. Pushing warm canned beer through a rusty gate for two bucks a go. They say you can still stay here. But why would you? It has become a dumping ground for everything people want to get rid of. The main lobby and ballroom are filled with old matresses, waterlogged boardgames, broken plastic pistols that still spark, and books and magazines of every description. Not one worth reading. None of the stools at the bar match. Some covered in green slashed vinyl, another a wooden number from some pirate themed place on Boat Quay, and another and another, nothing matched.
Gotta hand it to this place though, it's still got charm. This ain't how I pictured my Sad Luck Days. I pictured a cold place, lonely and gray. Singapore is bright and sunny, friends around every corner. Except tonight. I stare at my companion, sprawled on the stairs...what was her name. I pick one of the beers off the ground and crack it. There his a huge bang. Uncle and the girl both wake with a start, and look back and forth in unison. She lays back down but Uncle is up, he is squinting his eyes and sniffing the air. Suddenly he jumps to his feet, slips into his mismatched bedroom slippers and starts opening the front gate.
"What is it? Hey, Uncle what is it!?"
He waddles off into the darkness. I look inside, the case of Tiger beer is sitting on the ground torn open like a fresh kill. Under the lip of the wound I can see a can or two just picking up the twitching fluorescents. Should I grab one?
Just then uncle comes running into the light holding a huge durian in his arms. The smell of the durian is strong, sweet and mysterious. Uncle holds it out for me to see. I get real close. It's covered in small sharp wooden spikes. The small, intricate valleys awash with ants, thousands of them. The whole surface of the fruit seems to be alive, twisting and growing in the old man's hands. It was beautiful.
A word for word transcription of a conversation I had with Tom Cruise, the world famous actor, at a Hotel in Melbourne Australia on May 26th 2010.
